, as also madness and fraud, and any other
of the vilest passions, into the nature and form of gods, and have
persuaded whole cities to offer sacrifices to the better sort of them;
on which account they have been absolutely forced to esteem some gods as
the givers of good things, and to call others of them averters of evil.
They also endeavor to move them, as they would the vilest of men, by
gifts and presents, as looking for nothing else than to receive some
great mischief from them, unless they pay them such wages.

36. Wherefore it deserves our inquiry what should be the occasion of
this unjust management, and of these scandals about the Deity. And truly
I suppose it to be derived from the imperfect knowledge the heathen
legislators had at first of the true nature of God; nor did they explain
to the people even so far as they did comprehend of it: nor did they
compose the other parts of their political settlements according to it,
but omitted it as a thing of very little consequence, and gave leave
both to the poets to introduce what gods they pleased, and those subject
to all sorts of passions, and to the orators to procure political
decrees from the people for the admission of such foreign gods as they
thought proper. The painters also, and statuaries of Greece, had herein
great power, as each of them could contrive a shape [proper for a god];
the one to be formed out of clay, and the other by making a bare picture
of such a one. But those workmen that were principally admired, had the
use of ivory and of gold as the constant materials for their new statues
[whereby it comes to pass that some temples are quite deserted, while
others are in great esteem, and adorned with all the rites of all kinds
of purification]. Besides this, the first gods, who have long flourished
in the honors done them, are now grown old [while those that flourished
after them are come in their room as a second rank, that I may speak the
most honorably of them I can]: nay, certain other gods there are who
are newly introduced, and newly worshipped [as we, by way of digression,
have said already, and yet have left their places of worship desolate];
and for their temples, some of them are already left desolate, and
others are built anew, according to the pleasure of men; whereas they
ought to have their opinion about God, and that worship which is due to
him, always and immutably the same.

37. But now, this Apollonius Molo was one of these foo