1):--

They eat no bread, they drink no ruddy wine,
And bloodless and deathless they become.

But poetry requires gods who are active; that he may bring the notion of
them to the intelligence of his readers he gives bodies to the gods. But
there is no other form of bodies than man's capable of understanding
and reason. Therefore he gives the likeness of each one of the gods the
greatest beauty and adornment. He has shown also that images and statues
of the gods must be fashioned accurately after the pattern of a man to
furnish the suggestion to those less intelligent, that the gods exist.

But the leader and head of all these, the chief god the best
philosophers think, is without a body, and is rather comprehensible by
the intelligence. Homer seems to assume this; by him Zeus is called (I.
iv. 68):--

The Sire of gods and men. O father ours, son of Kronos, chief
of the greater beings.

And Zeus himself says (I. viii. 27):--

As much as I am better than gods and men.

And Athene says of him (I. viii. 32):--

Well do we know thy power invincible.

If it is necessary to ask how he knew that God was an object of the
intelligence, it was not directly shown, as he was using poetic form
combined with myth. Yet we can gather it from the things he says (I. i.
498):--

The all-seeing son of Saturn there she found sitting apart.

And where he himself says (I. xx. 22):--

Yet he will upon Olympus' lofty ridge remain and view serene
the combat."

That solitude and the not mingling with the other gods, but being gladly
by himself and using leisure for one directing and ordering all things,
these constitute the character of an "intelligible" God. He knew besides
that God is mind and understands all things, and governs all. For
censuring Poseidon, he says (I. xiii. 354):--

Equal the rank of both, their birth the same,
But Jupiter in wisdom as in years the first.

And this expression frequently is used "when he again thought over other
things." This shows that he was ever in thought.

But to the mind of God pertain Providence and Fate, concerning which
the philosophers have spoken much. The stimulus to this came from
Homer,--why should any one insist on the providence of the gods? Since
in all his poetry not only do they speak to one another on behalf of
men, but descending on the earth they associate with men. A few things
we shall look at for the sake of illu