The scenes described took place at Antioch about the middle of the third century, 252 A.D., says the translator. This Confession was written by the penitent Sorcerer after his conversion; therefore, we are not surprised to find how much room he gives in his lamentations to reviling his Initiator “Satan,” or the “Serpent Dragon,” as he calls him. There are other and more modern instances of the same trait in human nature. Converted Hindus, Pârsîs and other “heathen” of India are apt to denounce their forefathers’ religions at every opportunity. Thus runs the Confession: O all of you who reject the real mysteries of Christ, see my tears!... You who wallow in your demoniacal practices, learn by my sad example all the vanity of their [the demons’] baits ... I am that Cyprianus, who, vowed to Apollo from his infancy, was early initiated into all the arts of the dragon.(296) Even before the age of seven I had already been introduced into the temple of Mithra: three years later, my parents taking me to Athens to be received as citizen, I was permitted likewise to penetrate the mysteries of Ceres lamenting her daughter,(297) and I also became the guardian of the Dragon in the Temple of Pallas. Ascending after that to the summit of Mount Olympus, the Seat of the Gods, as it is called, there too I was initiated into the sense, and the _real_ meaning of their [the Gods’] speeches and their clamorous manifestations (_strepituum_). It is there that I was made to see in imagination (_phantasia_) [or _mâyâ_] those trees and all those herbs that operate such prodigies with the help of demons; ... and I saw their dances, their warfares, their snares, illusions and promiscuities. I heard their singing.(298) I saw finally, for forty consecutive days, the phalanx of the Gods and Goddesses, sending from Olympus, as though they were Kings, spirits to represent them on earth and act in their name among all the nations.(299) At that time I lived entirely on fruit, eaten only after sunset, the virtues of which were explained to me by the seven priests of the sacrifices.(300)