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And they think no more reasonably than this about Apollo and about Hera and about Aphrodite. For they tremble at all of these and dread them. And yet what did Niobe say regarding Leto that was So irreverent as is the belief which superstition has fixed in the minds of the unthinking regarding the goddess, that, because she was derided, she required that the unhappy woman’s Daughters six that she bore and six sons in the prime of young manhood Adapted from Homer, Il. xxiv. 604. be shot dead? So insatiable was she in doing harm to others, and so implacable! For if it were really true that the goddess cherishes anger, and hates wickedness, and is hurt at being ill spoken of, and does not laugh at man’s ignorance and blindness, but feels indignation thereat, she ought to require the death of those who falsely impute to her such savagery and bitterness, and tell and write such stories. At any rate, we bring forward the bitterness of Hecuba as something barbaric and savage when she says, I wish I might eat up his liver, Biting it ’tween my teeth.Homer, Il. xxiv. 212. And yet of the Syrian goddess Cf., for example, Athenaeus, 346 d, or Kock, Com. Attic. Frag. iii. p. 167, Menander, No. 544. the superstitious believe that if anybody eats sprats or anchovies, she will gnaw through the bones of his shins, inflame his body with sores, and dissolve his liver.
