VII. We mingled our companies and sate down in and out [Sidenote: 413] of each other, and Demetrius had propounded the subject, when up sprang the Cynic Didymus, by nickname Planetiades, struck the ground two or three times and shouted out: ‘Oho! Oho! a mighty difficult subject, which needs much inquiry, you have brought us! A wonder indeed that, with so much wickedness poured over the earth, not only “Modesty and Sense of Justice”, to quote Hesiod,[134] have deserted human life, but Divine Providence, too, has packed up its oracles and is gone from everywhere. I throw out the opposite problem for you to discuss. Why have they not ceased long ago? Why has not Hercules or some other God withdrawn the tripod, [Sidenote: B] filled every day with foul ungodly questions, propounded to the God by some as if he were a sophist whom they were to catch out, by others to ask about treasures or inheritances or marriages which law forbids. The result is that Pythagoras is proved mighty wrong when he said that men are always at their best when they approach the Gods.[135] Accordingly, things which it were decent to cloak and deny in the presence of an older man, diseases and affections of the soul, these they lay bare and open before the God!’ He wanted to go on, but Heracleon plucked at his cloak, and I, almost his greatest [Sidenote: C] intimate present, said: ‘Dear Planetiades, leave off provoking the God. He is easy to be entreated and gentle: _Mildest to mortal men pronounced to be_, as Pindar[136] says. And whether he be sun, or lord and father of the sun, lord and father beyond all that is visible, it is not likely that he should deem us modern men unworthy of a voice from himself, being to them the cause of birth and nurture and being and thinking. It is not seemly, either, that Providence, our thoughtful kindly mother, who produces and maintains all things for us, should remember our misdeeds in one matter only—prophecy, and should take away what she [Sidenote: D] originally gave. As if in those old days there were not more bad men because men were more, when oracles were set up in so many parts of the inhabited world! Come here, and sit down again! Swear a Pythian truce with wickedness, whom you are chastising in word every day; join us in seeking some other cause for the alleged failure of the oracles.’ My words had some effect; Planetiades went away by the doors and in silence.