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MOMUS Well, in Crete not only that may be heard, but they tell another story about you and show people atomb. However, I put no faith either in them or in the Achaeans of Aegium, who assert that you are a changeling.Zeus was not only born in Crete, but buried there, in more than one place. His critics in Lucian several times refer to this fact (Timon, 4; Zeus Rants, 45). Lucian very likely means the place that was pointed out to R. Pashley in 1834 as the tomb of Zeus, on Mt. Juktas; see A. J. Cook’s Zeus, I, 157-163. The Achaean version of the birth of Zeus which made him out a changeling is not mentioned elsewhere, but plenty of places gave him other fathers than Cronus, which amounts to the same thing.
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But I do intend to speak of one thing that in my opinion ought by all means to be censured.
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It was you, Zeus, who began these illegalities and caused the corruption of our body politic by cohabiting with mortal women and going down to visit them, now in one form, now in another. It has gone so far that we are afraid that someone may make a victim of you if he catches you when you are a bull, or that some goldsmith may work you up when you are gold, and instead of Zeus we may have you turning up as a necklace or a bracelet or an earring. However that may be, you have filled heaven with these—demigods! I do not care to put it otherwise. And it is a very ridiculous state of things when one suddenly hears that Heracles has been appointed a god, but Eurystheus, who used to order him about, is dead; and that the temple of Heracles, who was a slave, and the tomb of Eurystheus, his master, stand side by side; and again, that in Thebes Dionysus is a god, but his cousins Pentheus, Actaeon, and Learchus were of all mankind the most ill-fated.All three were own cousins of Dionysus, being sons of other daughters of Cadmus; Pentheus of Agave, Actaeon of Autonoe, and Learchus of Ino. Learchus was killed by his father Athamas.
