Oration to the Greeks 8

Human beings become the material for their apostasy. For the demons showed them a chart of the positions of the stars and, like dice-players, introduced fate, a thing utterly unjust. For the judge and the judged came to be as they are by fate; murderers and murdered, rich and poor, are the offspring of the same fate; and every birth, as in a theater, has provided entertainment for those among whom, as Homer says, “unquenchable laughter arose among the blessed gods.” For how can beings who watch gladiators and take sides, one for this man and one for that, who marry and corrupt boys and commit adultery, who laugh and grow angry, who run away and are wounded, not be thought mortal? By the very means through which they have shown people what their nature is, they have urged their hearers on to the same things. And have not the demons themselves, with Zeus their leader, fallen under fate, overcome by the same passions as human beings? And besides, how can one honor beings whose teachings contradict one another so much? Rhea, whom the people of the Phrygian mountains call Cybele, is said to have made castration a law because of her beloved Attis; but Aphrodite delights in the embraces of marriage. Artemis is a sorceress; Apollo heals. And after the beheading of the Gorgon, Poseidon's beloved, from whom sprang the horse Pegasus and Chrysaor, Athena and Asclepius divided the drops of blood between them: he saved lives with them, but she with the same gore became a slayer of men and a maker of war. It seems to me that the Athenians, not wishing to discredit her, attributed to the earth the child born of her union with Hephaestus, so that Athena should not be thought to have lost her maidenly strength through Hephaestus, as Atalanta lost hers through Meleager. For the lame god, it seems, the maker of brooches and curling spirals, beguiled the motherless orphan girl with trinkets. Poseidon goes sailing, Ares delights in wars, Apollo plays the lyre, Dionysus is tyrant of the Thebans, Cronus slays a tyrant. Zeus even lies with his daughter, and the daughter conceives by him. Let Eleusis now be my witness, and the mystic serpent, and Orpheus who says, “Shut the doors, you profane!” Aidoneus carries off Kore, and his deeds have become mysteries; Demeter weeps for her daughter, and some people are deceived because of the Athenians. In the precinct of Leto's son there is something called the Navel, and the Navel is the tomb of Dionysus. I praise you now, Daphne: by overcoming Apollo's lust you exposed his prophetic art, since he did not foresee what would happen with you and so gained nothing from his skill. Let the Far-Shooter tell me now how Zephyrus killed Hyacinthus. Zephyrus beat him; and though the tragic poet calls the breeze “the most honored vehicle of the gods,” Apollo was beaten by a slight breeze and lost his beloved.