Exhortation to the Greeks 3.43

… supposedly sacred place, rather than to anger and love of money, other daemons like them, on altars or in the streets, calling it a sacred victim; such a sacrifice is murder and manslaughter. Why then, you humans, wisest of the animals, do we flee from savage beasts, and turn aside if we happen to meet a bear or a lion, “as when a man sees a serpent in the mountain glens and starts back, and trembling seizes his limbs, and he retreats,” and yet, though you perceive and understand that daemons are destructive and accursed, plotters, haters of humankind, and ravagers, you do not turn aside or turn away from them? What truth could the wicked speak, or whom could they help? Here and now I can show you that a human being is better than these gods of yours, the daemons: that Cyrus and Solon are better than Apollo the prophet. Your Phoebus loves gifts, but does not love human beings. He betrayed his friend Croesus and, forgetting the payment (so fond of glory was he), led Croesus across the Halys to the pyre. So do the daemons lead to the fire those they love! But you, O man, more humane and more truthful than Apollo, pity the one bound on the pyre; and you, Solon, prophesy the truth; and you, Cyrus, order the pyre to be put out. Be wise at last, at least, Croesus, having learned by suffering: the one you worship is ungrateful; he takes the payment, and after the gold he lies again. It is not the daemon but the man who says to you, “Consider the end.” Solon does not prophesy crooked oracles; this is the only oracle, barbarian, that you will find true; you will prove it on the pyre.