1
Plague take all philosophers who say that bliss is to be found only among the gods! If they but knew all that we endure for the sake of men, they would not envy us our nectar and ambrosia, putting their trust in Homer, a blind man and a fraud, who called us blissful and told about what is in heaven when he could not even see what is on earth. Here is an example right at hand: Helius puts his team to his chariot and traverses the sky all day long, clad in a garment of fire and resplendent with rays, not even getting leisure enough to scratch his ear, as they say: for if he unconsciously relaxes the least bit, his horses run away, turn out of the road, and burn everything up. Selene, too, goes about without a wink of sleep, giving light to night-roisterers and people returning late from dinners. Apollo, again, has taken up a very active profession, and has been deafened almost completely by people besetting him with requests for prophecies. One moment he has to be in Delphi; the next, he runs to Colophon; from there he crosses to Xanthus, and again at full speed to Delos or to Branchidae. In a word, wherever his prophetess, after drinking from the holy well and chewing laurel and setting the tripod ashake, bids him appear, there is no delaying—he must present himself immediately to reel off his prophecies, or else it is all up with his reputation in the profession. I say nothing of the devices they get up to test his powers of divination, cooking mutton and turtle together, so that if he had not a good nose, that Lydian would have gone off laughing at him.Croesus, who got up the device, according to Herodotus, to see which oracle was-the most trustworthy (Herod. 1,46-40. As for Asclepius, he is pestered by the sick: “Dire sights he sees, and touches what he loathes, and in the woes of others finds a crop of sorrow for himself.”Hippocrates de Flatibus, 1, 6; said of the physician. Why should I refer either to the Winds, that aid the crops and speed the ships on their courses and blow upon the winnowers, or to Sleep, that wings his way to everyone, or to Jack-of-dreams, that keeps vigil all night long with Sleep and serves as his interpreter? All this work the gods do out of love for man, each contributing to life on earth.
