'Nor yet is it proper to say in any case--what is indeed untrue--that Gods wage war against Gods, and intrigue and fight among themselves; that is, if the future guardians of our state are to deem it a most disgraceful thing to quarrel lightly with one another: far less ought we to select as subjects for fiction and embroidery the battles of the giants, and numerous other feuds of all sorts, in which Gods and heroes fight against their own kith and kin. But if there is any possibility of persuading them that to quarrel with one's fellow is a sin of which no member of a state was ever guilty, such ought rather to be the language held to our children from the first, by old men and old women, and all elderly persons; and such is the strain in which our poets must be compelled to write. But stories like the chaining of Hera by her son, and the flinging of Hephaistos out of heaven for trying to take his mother's part when his father was beating her, and all those battles of the Gods which are to be found in Homer, must be refused admittance into our state, whether they be allegorical or not. For a child cannot discriminate between what is allegory and what is not; and whatever at that age is adopted as a matter of belief has a tendency to become fixed and indelible, and therefore, perhaps, we ought to esteem it of the greatest importance that the fictions which children first hear should be adapted in the most perfect manner to the promotion of virtue.'--(Rep. ii. 378. Tr. Davies and Vaughan.) And Seneca says the same thing, with still more reason in his day and country: 'What else is this appeal to the precedent of the Gods for, but to inflame our lusts, and to furnish license and excuse for the corrupt act under the divine protection?' And again, of the character of Jupiter as described in the popular legends: 'This has led to no other result than to deprive sin of its shame in man's eyes, by showing him the God no better than himself.' In Imperial Rome, the sink of all nations, it was not uncommon to find 'the intending sinner addressing to the deified vice which he contemplated a prayer for the success of his design; the adulteress imploring of Venus the favors of her paramour; ... the thief praying to Hermes Dolios for aid in his enterprise, or offering up to him the first fruits of his plunder; ... youths entreating Hercules to expedite the death of a rich uncle.' When we reflect that criminal deities were worshiped all over the empire, we cannot but wonder that any good people were left; that man could still be holy, although every God was vile. Yet this was undoubtedly the case; the social forces worked steadily on wherever there was peace and a settled government and municipal freedom; and the wicked stories of theologians were somehow explained away and disregarded. If men were no better than their religions, the world would be a hell indeed.