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imitated among the Scythians the mystery of the Mothor of the god' as practised by the inhabitants of Cygicus, beatinga drum and founding a cymbal strvng hom his nech like apriest oi Cybele, condemning him as having become effeminato umong tho Greeis, and a teacher of the diserae of effeminacyto tho rest of tho Scythians. Wheroforo for I must by no means conceat i0 I cannothelp Wondering hοπ Euhemerus of Agrigentum, and Nicanoros Cyprus, and Diagoras, and Hippo of Μelos, and besides theso, that Cyrenian of the name of Theodorus, and numbers of others, Who lived a sober lise, and had a clearor insight thantho rest of the worid into the prevalling error respecting th egod' mere called Atheisis; for ii they did not atavo at thoknowledge of the truth, they certainly suspected the error of tho common opinion; Which suspicion is no insignificant seed, and becomes ius germ of truo Wisdom. One of these charges tho Egyptians thus: μΠ you belleus them to bo goci, do notmourn or bewail them ; and ii you mourn and benest them, do not any more regard them as goti. d another, iniungan imago of Hercules mado of wood ior he happened most
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34 EXHORTATION TO THE HEATHEMIIercules; now is the tima to undomo for ua this thirtoenthlabour, as you did the twelve for Eurystheus, and mahe this ready for Diagoras,' and so cast it into the fim as a log of Wood.
For the extremes of ignorance are athelam and superstition,imm Which me must endeavour in heep. Anii do you not see Moses, the Herophant of the truth, enjoining that no eunuch, or emasculared man, or son os a hariot, should enter the com
gregation By the two fidit ho alludes to the implous customis Whita men mere deprived both os divine e Ny and of their virili ; and by the third, to him who, in place os thoonly mal God, assumes many gods salsely so calleri s theson of a hariot, in ignorance of his true iathar, may claim many putative fassiem.
Thero mas an innate original communion bet Mn men and
heaven, obscured throuo ignorance, but Whita noW at longin has lsapi forth instantaneousty from tho darisess, and shines resplendent; as has been expressed by oney in ius fossoWinglines:
And whatavor Elge tho sons of the poets sing. But sentimenta erroneous, and deviating hom xvliat is righ and certainly pernicio , have turned man, a creature of
heavenly orion, aWay from the heavenly lis' and sueschedhim on the earis, by inducing him to cleave to earthly objecta. For some, MDiled by the contemplation of the heavens, and trusting to their sight alone, While they looked on the motionaos the stare, strat tway Were Miged Wissi admiration, and deised them, calling the stare goti hom their motion θεος imm ωH; and Worshipped the wn,-as, for example, thetadians; and the moon, as Se Phrygians. Othera, sucising the benignant fruits of earthinorn planis, callia grata Demeter, as tha Athenians, and the vine Dionysus, as the
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Thebans. Ostem, considering the penaltim os Wichedness, deified them, Morehipping varicus forms os retribution and calami . Hence the Erinnyes, and the Eumenides, and thopiacular deities, and the judges and avengers of crime, aretho creations of the tragic poets. d mme even os the philosophera, aster the poeta, miseidois of forma of the affections in your breastε,-such as fear, and love, and jοy, and liope; as, to be fure, Epimenides of old, who mised at Athena tho altars of Insuli and Impudence. Ister objecta deified by men talio their riso hom evenis, andaro fashioned in bodily shape, sueti as a Dike, a Clotho, and Lachesis, and Atropos, and Heimarmene, and Auxo, and Thallo, Whicli ars Attic goddesses. There is a stath modeos introducing error and of manufacturing god' accordiugio which they number the twelve goci, whose birin is thethomo of which Hesiod sings in his Theogony, and of whom mor speata in ali stat he says of the goti. The last
mode remians for there are seven in all)-that which tatas ita riso hom the divina beneficence toWatas men. For, not
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comes and says: meresore, distracted Uith grievous eviis,
vented ; and those things Whicli are supposed to have talion place, are recorded os vile men who lived licentious lives:
These counseis tho Sybil, Who is at ones prophetic and poetic, enjoins On us; and truth enjoins them On us too, stripping the croWd of deities of those terribing and threat-ening massis of theirs, disproving the rash opinions formed of them by sho ing the similari of names. For there are those ho rechon three Jupiters: him of AEther in Arcadia, and the other tWo sons os Κronos; and of these, one in Crete, and tho others again in Arcadia. And there are thoso thatrachon fivo Athenes: the Athenian, the daughtor Oi Hephaestus;
ino inventor os War, the daughtor of Κronos; the fourth, thedau ter of Zeus, Whom the Messentans have named Coryphasia, hom her mollior; abovo ali, the daughter of Pallas and Titanis, tho daughter of Oceanus, Who, having Wichedlyhilled her fallior, adornod horsolf with her faster's shin, as itit had beon tho fleuce of a sheep. Further, Aristolle calis the first Apollo, tho son of Hephaestus and Athene consequently Athene is no more a virgin); the second, that in Crete, the son os Corybas; the third, the son os Zeus; tholaurili, the Arcadian, the son of Silenus this one is called by the Arcadians Nomius) ; and in addition to these, he specisses tho Libyan Apollo, the son of Ammon; and to these Didymus the grammarian adci a fixili, the son os Magnes. Andnow how many Apollos are therei They are numberless, mortal men, ali helpers of their fellow-men, Who similarly Withthose atready mentioned have been so called. And What Were
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by the poeta is held in the hioest possibio honour:
this dei , almus changing fides, and implacable, as Epicha mus says, Was a Spartan ; Sophocles knew him for a Thracian; thera say he was an Arcadian. This god, Homer says, Wasbound thirteon monilis:
Good luch attend tho Carians, who sacrifico dogs to him lAnd may tho Scythians never leave oti sacrificing asses, asApollodorus and Callimachus relate:
Phoebus rises propitioua to the Hyperboreans, When they offer sacrifices of asaea in him. And tho fame in another place : Fat sacrifices ol asses' flesti delicti Phoebus.
Hephaestus, Whom Jupiter cast hom Olympus, hom ita divino threshold, having sallen on Lemnos, practised the artos Working in brass, maimed in his sest:
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He thereiore lies struch With lighining in the regions os Cynosuris. Philochorus algo says, that Poseidon mus Wo fhipped as a physician in Tenos; and that Κronos fetiled in Sicily, and thero was buried. Patroclus the Thurian, and Sophocles the younger, in thres tragedies, have Mid thost y of the Dioscuri; and these Dioscuri mere only tWo mortala, is Homer is Morthy of credit:
And, in addition, he vho v roto the Cyprian poems SVs Castor mas mortal, and death was decreed to him by sato; but Pollux mas immortal, being the progeny of Mars. Thisho has poeticatly fabled. But Homer is more morthy oferedit, Who spolie as above of both the Dioscuri; and, besides,
proved Hercules to bo a mere phantom:
Hercules, thereiore, Was known is Homer himself as Onlya mortat man. And Hieronymus the philosopher describes tho malis of his body, as tali, bristlinyhaired, robust; and Dicaearchus says that he was squar bulli, muscular, darh, hook-nosed, With greyish eyes and long hair. This Hercules, accordingly, aiter living fifty-tWo years, came to his end, and was burned in a funerat pyro in inta. As for tho Muses, whom Alcander calis the daughters of Zeus and Μnemosyne, and the rest of the poeta and authors Misy and worshil ,-those Muses, in honour of Whom Wholestates have alaeady erected museums, heing handmaids, Were hired by Megacio, the daughter of Μahar. This Maharreigned over the Lesbians, and was alWays quar lling With his mite; and Megacio Was vexed for her mother's sahe. What would ine not do on her account ' Accordingly shehires those handmaids, being so many in number, and calis
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stop to his ill-temper. Whsreiore Megacio, as a token os gratitude to them, on her mothees account erected binam
pillare, and ordored them to bo hold in honour in ali thotemples. Such, then, are the Μ es. This account is in milus of Lesbos. d noW, then, hear ius loves os yom god' and the in-eredibie tales of their licentiousness, and their Munda, and theirbonti, and their laughings, and their fiora, their servitudes sto, and their banquela; and furthermore, thoir embraces, and tears, and sufferings, and lewd deligitis. Cali me Poseudon, and the trore of damseis deflo ered by him, Amphitruo Amymone, Alope, Μelanippe, Alcyone, Hippothoe, Chione, and myriads of othere; With Whom, though so mann the
passions of your Possidon Were not satiatessi
Cali mo Apollo; this is Phoebus, both a hob prophei and agood adviser. But Sterope mill not say that, nor AEthoum,nor Arsinoe, nor Zeuxippe, nor Prothoe, nor Marpissa, nor psipyle. For Daphne alone escaped the prophei and
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40 EXHORTA NON TO THE HEA THEM
the twelvo laboura in a long time, but in one night deflowerodtho fifty daughters of Thestius, and thus was at once thodebaucher and the bridegroom of so many Virgins. It is not, then, Without reason stat the poets cali him a cruei Melch
teries of ali foris, and debauching of boys. For youx gods didnot even abstain from boys, one having loved Hylas, mollier Hyacinthus, another Pelops, another Chrysippus, and another Ganymede. Let such gods as these be Worshipped by your Wives, and let them pray that their husbands be such as these-so temperato ; that, emulating them in the fame practices,
Tho fomeso deities stuod each in the house, for inam' δsvs Homer; the goddesses biushing, for modesu's sae, tolook on Aphrodite .hen she had been milty of adultery. But these are more passionatoly licentious, bound in the chains Madultery; Eos haring disgraced heraeli mitti Tithonus, Selene Mith Endymion, Noreis With Eacus, Thetis With Peleus, Demeter villi Jason, Pherephatta with Adonis. d Aphr dite having disgraced heraeit Wissi Ares, crossed over to Cinyra and married Anchises, and laid snares for Phaethon, and loved Adonis. Sho contended with tho OMeyed Juno; and thegoddesses unrobed for the sine of the apple, and presented themselves naed beforo the shepheta, that he might decidewhict was the fairest. But come, let us briefly go the round of the cames, and do
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Nemean, and Pythian, and finalty the Olympian. At Pythothe 'thian dragon is morshipped, and the festival-assemblage of the serpent is called by the namo Pythia. At tho Isthmus the sea spit out a plece of miserable refuse; and the Isthmiangamea bowad Meliceris. At Nemea another a litus hori Archemorus as buried ;and tho funerat games of the child aro called Nemea. Pisais the grave of tho Phrygian charioteer, o Hellenos os alltribes; and the Olympian games, whicli are nothing elso thantho funerat sacrifices of Pelops, tho Zeus os Phidias claimssor himself. The mysteries mere then, as is probabie, gam hold in honour of the doad ; so also mere the oracles, and bothbecame public. But the mysteries at Sagra δ and in Alimus
of Attica mero confined to Athens. But those contestiand phalloi consecrated to Dionysus mere a Worid's Shame,
pervading lite mitti their deadly influence. For Dionysus, eagerly destring to descend to Hades, did not know the way;
a man, is name Prosymnus, offers to teli him, not without remard. Tho re aes Was a disgraceful one, though not so in tho opinion os Dionysus : it vas an Aphrodisian famur that was asked os Dionysus as a re ard. The god was not reluctant to grant the request made to him, and promises to fulfilii Ahould ho return, and confirms his promise With an oath.
Haring learned the way, he departed and again returned : hedid not find Prosymnus, for he had died. In order to acquithimself of his promiso to his lover, he rusties to his tomb, and burns With unnatural lusi. Cutting a fig-branch that cameto his hand, he staped the liheness of the membrum virile, and sat over it; thus performing his promise to tho dead man. Asa mystic memorial of this incident, phallat ara mised alost in honour os Dionysus throuo the various cities. For didthey not malis a procession in honour os Dionysus, and singmost shamelera songs in honour of the pudenda, ali mould gowrong,' says Heraclitus. This is that Pluto and Dionysus in Whoso honour they give themselves up to Benzy, and play the bacchanal,-not so much, in my opinion, sor the sine of
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42 EXHORTATION IN THE MATHEMintoxication, as for the sahe of tho shameless ceremonial pra tigod. With reason, thsrefore, auch as have beeome flaves of their passions ure yοur godsi Furthermore, lihe the Helois among the Lacedemonians, Apollo came under the yohe of flavory to Admetus in Pherae, Hercules to Omphale in Sardis. Poseidon mas adradge to Laomedon ; and so Was Apollo, Who, lita a goodio nothing servant, Was unable to obtain his froedom immitis former master; and at that timo the walla os Troy Were bulli by them for tho Phrygian. And Homer is not ashamedio speah of Athene as appearing to Ulysses mitti a Miden lamp in her hand. And wo read of Aphrodite, lita a Wintonserving ench, taking and setting a seat for Helen opposite the adulterer, in order to entice him to intercourae. Panyasis, toο, telis us of gods in plenty bssides in e whoacted as servants, Writing thus:
dite ultoring loud and shrili cries on account of her Wound ;and describing the most Warlike Ares himself as moundod intho stomach by Diomede. Polemo, i , says that Athenemas Wounded by ornytus; nay, Homer says that Pluto evenwas struch With an arroW by Hercules; and Panyasis relates that tho beams of Sol nero struch by the arro of Hercules; φand the fame Panyasis relates, stat by the samo Hercules Hera the goddess of marriage Was Wounded in sandy Pylos. Sosibius, too, relates that Hercules Was Munded in tho handis the fons of Hippocoon. And is there are Wonnds, there