Then when the sturdy youth come to sever the limbs of Demeter.The fact is that these persons do not differ at all from those who regard sails and ropes and anchor as a pilot, warp and woof as a weaver, a cup or an honey mixture or barley gruel as a physician. But they create in men fearful atheistic opinions by conferring the names of gods upon natural objects which are senseless and inanimate, and are of necessity destroyed by men when they need to use them. It is impossible to conceive of these things as being gods in themselves ;
And there is nothing to fear if, in the first place,
they preserve for us our gods that are common to both
peoples and do not make them to belong to the
Egyptians only, and do not include under these names
the Nile alone and the land wrhich the Nile waters,
and do not assert that the marshes and the lotus are
the only work of God's hand, and if they do not deny
the great gods to the rest of mankind that possess no
Nile nor Buto nor Memphis. But as for Isis, and the
gods associated with her, all peoples own them and are
[p. 155]
familiar with them, although they have learned not
so very long ago to call some of them by the names
which come from the Egyptians ; yet they have from
the beginning understood and honoured the power
which belongs to each one of them.
In the second place, and this is a matter of greater
importance, they should exercise especial heed and
caution lest they unwittingly erase and dissipate
things divine1 into winds and streams and sowings
and ploughings, developments of the earth and
changes of the seasons, as do those who regard
wine as Dionysus and flame as Hephaestus. And
Cleanthes2 says somewhere that the breath of air
which is carried (pheromenon) through the crops and
then suffers dissolution (phoneuomenon) is PhersephonĂȘ ; and a certain poet has written with reference
to the reapers,3