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This is not quite the case: but they do lament for their crops and they do pray to the gods, who are the authors and givers, that they produce and cause to grow afresh other new crops to take the place of those that are undergoing destruction. Hence it is an excellent saying current among philosophers that they that have not learned to interpret rightly the sense of words are wont to bungle their actions. Cf. Moralia, 707 f. For example, there are some among the Greeks who have not learned nor habituated themselves to speak of the bronze, the painted, and the stone effigies as statues of the gods and dedications in their honour, but they call them gods; and then they have the effrontery to say that Lachares stripped Athena,The gold was removed by him from the chryselephantine statue of Athena in the Parthenon; Cf. W. B. Dinsmoor, Amer. Journ. Arch. xxxviii. (1934) p. 97. that Dionysius sheared Apollo of the golden locks, and that Jupiter Capitolinus was burned and destroyed in the Civil War,July 6, 83 b.c., according to Life of Sulla, chap. xxvii. (469 b). The numerous references may be found in Roscher, Lexikon der gr. und röm. Mythologie, ii. 714. and thus they unwittingly take over and accept the vicious opinions that are the concomitants of these names.