Exhortation to the Greeks 2.29

And how many Apollos are there even now, countless mortal and perishable human beings, named like the ones just mentioned? What if I were to tell you of the many Asclepiuses, or of the Hermeses that are counted, or of the Hephaestuses of mythology? Would I not seem excessive, flooding your ears with so many names? But their native countries, their crafts, their lives, and above all their tombs prove that they were human beings. Ares, for example, whom the poets honor as much as they can, “Ares, Ares, bane of mortals, bloodstained, stormer of walls,” this fickle and hostile god, was, as Epicharmus says, a Spartan; Sophocles knows him as a Thracian; others make him an Arcadian. Homer says he was bound for thirteen months: “Ares endured it, when Otus and mighty Ephialtes, the sons of Aloeus, bound him in a strong bond; he lay bound in a bronze jar for thirteen months.” Many blessings on the Carians, who sacrifice dogs to him! And let the Scythians not stop sacrificing asses, as Apollodorus says, and Callimachus: “Phoebus is honored among the Hyperboreans with sacrifices of asses.” The same poet says elsewhere: “Rich slaughterings of asses delight Phoebus.”