He that does this is greater than the Deity;
But these are the instruments of audacity and means of living
Invented by men."
And not only Menander, but Homer also, and Euripides, and other poets in great numbers, expose your gods, and are wont to rate them, and that soundly too. For instance, they call Aphrodite dog-fly, and Hephæstus a cripple. Helen says to Aphrodite:
"Thy godship abdicate!
Renounce Olympus!"[1]
And of Dionysus, Homer writes without reserve:
"He, mid their frantic orgies, in the groves
Of lovely Nyssa, put to shameful rout
The youthful Bacchus' nurses; they in fear,
Dropped each her thyrsus, scattered by the hand
Of fierce Lycurgus, with an ox-goad armed."[2]
Worthy truly of the Socratic school is Euripides, who fixes his eye on truth, and despises the spectators of his plays. On one occasion, Apollo,
"Who inhabits the sanctuary that is in the middle of the earth,
Dispensing most certain oracles to mortals,"
is thus exposed:
"It was in obedience to him that I killed her who brought me forth;
Him do you regard as stained with guilt—put him to death;
It was he that sinned, not I, uninstructed as I was
In right and justice."[3]
He introduces Heracles, at one time mad, at another drunk and gluttonous. How should he not so represent the god who, when entertained as a guest, ate green figs to flesh, uttering discordant howls, that even his barbarian host remarked it? In his drama of Ion, too, he barefacedly brings the gods on the stage:
"How, then, is it right for you, who have given laws to mortals,
To be yourselves guilty of wrong?
And if—what will never take place, yet I will state the supposition—
You will give satisfaction to men for your adulteries,
You, Poseidon, and you, Zeus, the ruler of heaven,—
You will, in order to make recompense for your misdeeds,
Have to empty your temples."[4]
