38
But the fact is that you had no regard for the truth; on the contrary, you followed the calumnies of the poets, who declare that the offspring of the immortals have perpetrated as well as suffered things more atrocious than any perpetrated or suffered by the offspring of the most impious of mortals; aye, the poets have related about the gods themselves tales more outrageous than anyone would dare tell concerning their enemies. For not only have they imputed to them thefts and adulteries, and vassalage among men, but they have fabricated tales of the eating of children, the castrations of fathers, the fetterings of mothers, and many other crimese.g., Hermes steals Apollo’s oxen (HH Herm.); the illicit love of Ares and Aphrodite (Hom. Od. 8); Apollo, servant of Admetus (Eur. Alc.); Cronus devours his children and mutilates his father Uranus; and Hephaestus fetters Hera.
39
For these blasphemies the poets, it is true, did not pay the penalty they deserved, but assuredly they did not escape punishment altogether; some became vagabonds begging for their daily bread; others became blind; another spent all his life in exile from his fatherland and in warring with his kinsmen; and Orpheus, who made a point of rehearsing these tales, died by being torn asunderFor example, Homer was represented as a blind wanderer; Stesichorus was smitten with blindness for abuse of Helen in his verses; and Orpheus was torn to pieces by the women of Thrace. Perhaps Archilochus is the poet in exile.
40
Therefore if we are wise we shall not imitate their tales, nor while passing laws for the punishment of libels against each other, shall we disregard loose-tongued vilification of the gods; on the contrary, we shall be on our guard and consider equally guilty of impiety those who recite and those who believe such liesThe poet Xenophanes, and later Plato, had strongly protested against the attribution of immoralities to the gods.
