Exhortation to the Greeks 2.36

It follows naturally from this that these amorous and passionate gods of yours are portrayed in every way as having human feelings. “For surely their skin too is mortal.” Homer bears witness to this when he portrays, very precisely, Aphrodite crying out loud and shrill at her wound, and tells of Ares himself, the most warlike of all, wounded in the flank by Diomedes. Polemon says that Athena too was wounded, by Ornytus; yes, and Homer says that Aidoneus was shot with an arrow by Heracles, and Panyassis records the same of Helios [Augeas]. This same Panyassis records that Hera, the goddess of marriage, was also wounded by the same Heracles, “in sandy Pylos.” And Sosibius says that Heracles himself was wounded in the hand by the sons of Hippocoon. If there are wounds, there is blood; for the poets' “ichor” is even more repulsive than blood, since ichor is understood to be decayed blood. So they have to be provided with treatments and food, which they need. Hence tables and drinking bouts and laughter and intercourse; yet they would not indulge in human sexual pleasures, nor beget children, nor even sleep, if they were immortal and without needs and ageless. Zeus himself shared a human table among the Ethiopians, and an inhuman and lawless one when he was feasted by Lycaon the Arcadian: he gorged himself on human flesh, though unwillingly.