4
“Does anyone dare,” he said, ‘to call Proteus vainglorious, O Earth, O sun, O rivers, O sea, O Heracles, god of our fathers!—Proteus, who was imprisoned in Syria, who renounced five thousand talents in favour of his native land, who was banished from the city of Rome, who is more conspicuous than the sun, who is able to rival Olympian Zeus himself? Because he has resolved to depart from life by way of fire, are there people who attribute this to vainglory? Why, did not Heracles do so? Did not Asclepius and Dionysus,The cases of Dionysus and Asclepius were not quite parallel. Zeus could not have Asclepius raising the dead, and so transferred his activities to a higher sphere by means of the thunderbolt. It was Semele, the mother of Dionysus, whom his other bolt carbonised; but as it certainly effected, even if only incidentally, the translation of Dionysus, and as one of the epigrams in the Anthology (XVI, 185) similarly links Dionysus with Heracles as having achieved immortality by fire, it is hard to see why so many editors have pruned the exuberance of Theagenes by excising mention of Dionysus from his remarks. Cf. Parl. of the Gods, 6 (p. 425). by grace of the thunderbolt? Did not Empedocles end by leaping into the crater?”
