"Child of Latona, I cry to the sun--I will publish thy shame! Thou with thy tresses a-shimmer with gold, through the flowers as I came Plucking the crocuses, heaping my veil with their gold- litten flame, Cam'st on me, caughtest the poor pallid wrists of mine hands, and didst hale Unto thy couch in the cave. 'Mother! mother!' I shrieked out my wail-- Wroughtest the pleasure of Kypris; no shame made the god-lover quail. Wretched I bare thee a child, and I cast him with shuddering throe Forth on thy couch where thou forcedst thy victim, a bride-bed of woe. Lost--my poor baby and thine! for the eagles devoured him: and lo! Victory-songs to thy lyre dost thou chant!--Ho, I call to thee, son Born to Latona, Dispenser of boding, on gold-gleaming throne Midmost of earth who art sitting:--thine ears shall be pierced with my moan! Thy Delos doth hate thee, thy bay-boughs abhor thee, By the palm-tree of feathery frondage that rose Where in sacred travail Latona bore thee In Zeus's garden close." [Footnote: Euripid. Ion, 885.--Translated by A. S. Way.] This is a typical example of the kind of criticism which Euripides conveys through the lips of his characters on the stage. And the points which he can only dramatically suggest, Plato expounds directly in his own person. The quarrel of the philosopher with the myths is not that they are not true, but that they are not edifying. They represent the son in rebellion against the father--Zeus against Kronos, Kronos against Uranos; they describe the gods as intriguing and fighting one against the other; they depict them as changing their form divine into the semblance of mortal men; lastly--culmination of horror!--they represent them as laughing, positively laughing!--Or again, to turn to a more metaphysical point, if God be good, it is argued by Plato, he cannot be the author of evil. What then, are we to make of the passage in Homer where he says, "two urns stand upon the floor of Zeus filled with his evil gifts, and one with blessings. To whomsoever Zeus whose joy is in the lightning dealeth a mingled lot, that man chanceth now upon ill and now again on good, but to whom he giveth but of the bad kind, him he bringeth to scorn, and evil famine chaseth him over the goodly earth, and he is a wanderer honoured of neither gods nor men." [Footnote: Il. xxiv. 527--Translated by Lang, Leaf and Myers.]