[366] 369 D. “It is impossible,” argued these ancient thinkers, “that moral life and death, that good and evil, can flow from a single source. It is impossible that a Holy God can have been the author of evil. Evil, then, must be referred to some other origin: it must have had an author of its own.”—“_Some Elements of Religion_,” by Canon LIDDON (Lecture iv. sect. i.). [367] 370 E. [368] 371 A. [369] See especially the quotations from Plato in 370 F, and the application of Platonic terms in the interpretation of the Isiac and Osirian myth in 372 E, F, 373 and 374. Hesiod, too, is made to agree with this Platonic explanation of the Egyptian legend (374 C), and the Platonic notion of matter is strained to allow of its being identified with Isis (372 E, 374 F). In 367 C, a parallelism is pointed out between Stoic theology and an interpretation of the myth; and in 367 E the death of Osiris on the 17th of the month is used to illustrate, if not to explain, the Pythagorean ἀφοσίωσις of that number. As regards the identification of particular deities in this tract, reference may be made to 364 E, F and 365 A, B, where Dionysus is identified with Osiris; and to 365 F, where Mnaseas of Patara is mentioned with approval as associating with Epaphus, not only Dionysus, but Serapis and Osiris also. Anticleides is also referred to as asserting that Isis was the daughter of Prometheus and the wife of Dionysus. In 372 D, Osiris is identified with the Sun under the name of Sirius, and Isis with the Moon, in 375, a fanciful philology is called in to aid a further identification of Greek and Egyptian deities; but not much importance is attached to similarities derived in this way. In the next sentence Isis is stated to have been identified with Athene by the Egyptians; and the general principle of identity is boldly stated in 377 C:—“_It is quite legitimate to regard these gods as common possessions and not the exclusive property of the Egyptians—Isis and the deities that go in her train are universally known and worshipped. The names, indeed, of certain of them have been borrowed from the Egyptians, not so long ago; but their divinity has been known and recognized for ages._” [370] 378 A.