Therefore, Clea, whenever you hear the traditional tales which the Egyptians tell about the gods,
their wanderings, dismemberments, and many experiences of this sort, you must remember what has been
already said, and you must not think that any of
these tales actually happened in the manner in which
they are related. The facts are that they do not call
the dog by the name Hermes as his proper name,
but they bring into association with the most astute
of their gods that animal's watchfulness and wakefulness and wisdom, since he distinguishes between
what is friendly and what is hostile by his knowledge
of the one and his ignorance of the other, as Plato1
remarks. Nor, again, do they believe that the sun
rises as a new-born babe from the lotus, but they
portray the rising of the sun in this manner to indicate allegorically the enkindling of the sun from the
waters.2 So also Ochus, the most cruel and terrible
of the Persian kings, who put many to death and
finally slaughtered the Apis3 and ate him for dinner
in the company of his friends, the Egyptians called
the ‘Sword’ ; and they call him by that name even
to this day in their list of kings.4 But manifestly they
[p. 31]
do not mean to apply this name to his actual being ;
they but liken the stubbornness and wickedness in
his character to an instrument of murder. If, then,
you listen to the stories about the gods in this way,
accepting them from those who interpret the story
reverently and philosophically, and if you always perform and observe the established rites of worship,
and believe that no sacrifice that you can offer, no
deed that you may do will be more likely to find
favour with the gods than your belief in their true
nature, you may avoid superstition which is no less
an evil than atheism.5
1 Cf. Plato's Republic, 375 e, and the note in Adam's edition (Cambridge, 1902).
2 Cf. 368 f and 400 a, infra.
3 The sacred bull.
4 Both Cambyses and Ochus are said to have killed the sacred bull Apis; cf. 368 f, infra, and Aelian, Varia Historia, iv. 8. In De Natura Animalium, x. 28, Aelian says that both Cambyses and Ochus were guilty of this offence.
5 Cf. Moralia, 164 f, 165 c, 378 a, 379 e.