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As for the various tales of rapine and wanderings of the gods, their concealments and banishment and servitude, which men rehearse in legend and in song, all these are, in fact, not things that were done to the gods or happened to them, but to the demigods; and they are kept in memory because of the virtues and power of these beings; nor did AeschylusAeschylus, Supplices, 214. speak devoutly when he said Holy Apollo, god from heaven banned; nor Admetus in Sophocles,Nauck, Trag. Graec. Frag. p. 311, Sophocles, no. 767 (no. 851 Pearson). My cock it was that sent him to the mill. But the greatest error in regard to the truth is that of the theologians of Delphi who think that the god once had a battle here with a serpent for the possession of the oracle, and they permit poets and prose-writers to tell of this in their competitions in the theatres, whereby they bear specific testimony against the most sacred of the rites that they perform.