tle is their father, but in his actions
a tyrant and a lord; whence it came to pass that his wife, and brother,
and daughter [which daughter he brought forth from his own head] made
a conspiracy against him to seize upon him and confine hint, as he had
himself seized upon and confined his own father before.

35. And justly have the wisest men thought these notions deserved
severe rebukes; they also laugh at them for determining that we ought to
believe some of the gods to be beardless and young, and others of them
to be old, and to have beards accordingly; that some are set to trades;
that one god is a smith, and another goddess is a weaver; that one god
is a warrior, and fights with men; that some of them are harpers, or
delight in archery; and besides, that mutual seditions arise among them,
and that they quarrel about men, and this so far, that they not only lay
hands upon one another, but that they are wounded by men, and lament,
and take on for such their afflictions. But what is the grossest of all
in point of lasciviousness, are those unbounded lusts ascribed to almost
all of them, and their amours; which how can it be other than a most
absurd supposal, especially when it reaches to the male gods, and to the
female goddesses also? Moreover, the chief of all their gods, and their
first father himself, overlooks those goddesses whom he hath deluded and
begotten with child, and suffers them to be kept in prison, or drowned
in the sea. He is also so bound up by fate, that he cannot save his own
offspring, nor can he bear their deaths without shedding of tears. These
are fine things indeed! as are the rest that follow. Adulteries truly
are so impudently looked on in heaven by the gods, that some of them
have confessed they envied those that were found in the very act. And
why should they not do so, when the eldest of them, who is their king
also, hath not been able to restrain himself in the violence of his
lust, from lying with his wife, so long as they might get into their
bedchamber? Now some of the gods are servants to men, and will sometimes
be builders for a reward, and sometimes will be shepherds; while others
of them, like malefactors, are bound in a prison of brass. And what
sober person is there who would not be provoked at such stories, and
rebuke those that forged them, and condemn the great silliness of those
that admit them for true? Nay, others there are that have advanced a
certain timorousness and fear