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If, then, anyone ask, What has this to do with Apollo?, we shall say that it concerns not only him, but also Dionysus, whose share in Delphi is no less than that of Apollo. Cf. 365 a, supra, and Lucan, v. 73-74; and for the proverb Cf.Moralia, 280 d and the note. Now we hear the theologians affirming and reciting, sometimes in verse and sometimes in prose, that the god is deathless and eternal in his nature, Cf. Clement of Alexandria, Stromateis, v. 14 (p. 711 Potter). but, owing forsooth to some predestined design and reason, he undergoes transformations of his person, and at one time enkindles his nature into fire and makes it altogether like all else, and at another time he undergoes all sorts of changes in his form, his emotions and his powers, even as the universe does to-day; but he is called by the best known of his names. Cf. Stobaeus, Eclogae Phys. et Ethic. i. 21. 5 (i. p. 184. 11 ed. Wachsmuth). The more enlightened, however, concealing from the masses the transformation into fire, call him Apollo because of his solitary state, Cf. 354 b, 381 f, supra, and 393 b, infra. and Phoebus because of his purity and stainlessness. Cf. 393 c, infra. And as for his turning into winds and water, earth and stars, and into the generations of plants and animals, and his adoption of such guises, they speak in a deceptive way of what he undergoes in his transformation as a tearing apart, as it were, and a dismemberment. They give him the names of Dionysus, Zagreus, Nyctelius, and Isodaetes; they construct destructions and disappearances, followed by returns to life and regenerations — riddles and fabulous tales quite in keeping with the aforesaid transformations. To this god they also sing the dithyrambic strains laden with emotion and with a transformation that includes a certain wandering and dispersion. Aeschylus,Nauck, Trag. Graec. Frag., Aeschylus, no. 355. in fact, says Fitting it is that the dithyramb With its fitful notes should attend Dionysus in revel rout. But to Apollo they sing the paean, music regulated and chaste.
