Nor for Alcmena fair; . . .
No, nor for Ceres, golden-tressèd queen;
Nor for Latona bright; nor for thyself."[1]
He is created, he is perishable, with no trace of a god in him. Nay, they are even the hired servants of men:
"Admetus' halls, in which I have endured
To praise the menial table, though a god."[2]
And they tend cattle:
"And coming to this land, I cattle fed,
For him that was my host, and kept this house."[3]
Admetus, therefore, was superior to the god. O prophet and wise one, and who canst foresee for others the things that shall be, thou didst not divine the slaughter of thy beloved, but didst even kill him with thine own hand, dear as he was:
"And I believed Apollo's mouth divine
Was full of truth, as well as prophet's art.
(Æschylus is reproaching Apollo for being a false prophet:)
The very one who sings while at the feast,
The one who said these things, alas! is he
Who slew my son."[4]
Chap. xxii.—Pretended symbolical explanations.
But perhaps these things are poetic vagary, and there is some natural explanation of them, such as this by Empedocles:
"Let Jove be fire, and Juno source of life,
With Pluto and Nêstis, who bathes with tears
The human founts."
If, then, Zeus is fire, and Hera the earth, and Aïdoneus the air, and Nêstis water, and these are elements—fire, water, air—none of them is a god, neither Zeus, nor Hera, nor
