For if, at the most, the Greeks, having received certain scintillations of the divine word, have given forth some utterances of truth, they bear indeed witness that the force of truth is not hidden, and at the same time expose their own weakness in not having arrived at the end. For I think it has now become evident to all, that those who do or speak aught without the word of truth are like people compelled to walk without feet. Let the strictures on your gods, which the poets, impelled by the force of truth, introduce in their comedies, shame you into salvation. Menander, for instance, the comic poet, in his drama of the _Charioteer_, says: “No god pleases me that goes about With an old woman, and enters houses Carrying a trencher.” For such are the begging priests of Cybele. Hence Antisthenes replies appropriately to their request for alms: “I do not maintain the mother of the gods, For the gods maintain her.” Again, the same writer of comedy, expressing his dissatisfaction with the common usages, tries to expose the impious arrogance of the prevailing error in the drama of the _Priestess_, sagely declaring: “If a man drags the Deity Whither he will by the sound of cymbals, He that does this is greater than the Deity; But these are the instruments of audacity and means of living Invented by men.” And not only Menander, but Homer also, and Euripides, and other poets in great numbers, expose your gods, and are wont to rate them, and that soundly too. For instance, they call Aphrodite dog-fly, and Hephæstus a cripple. Helen says to Aphrodite: “Thy godship abdicate! Renounce Olympus!”[69] And of Dionysus, Homer writes without reserve: “He, mid their frantic orgies, in the groves Of lovely Nyssa, put to shameful rout The youthful Bacchus’ nurses; they in fear, Dropped each her thyrsus, scattered by the hand Of fierce Lycurgus, with an ox-goad armed.”[70] Worthy truly of the Socratic school is Euripides, who fixes his eye on truth, and despises the spectators of his plays. On one occasion, Apollo, “Who inhabits the sanctuary that is in the middle of the earth, Dispensing most certain oracles to mortals,” is thus exposed: “It was in obedience to him that I killed her who brought me forth; Him do you regard as stained with guilt--put him to death; It was he that sinned, not I, uninstructed as I was In right and justice.”[71] He introduces Heracles, at one time mad, at another drunk and gluttonous. How should he not so represent the god who, when entertained as a guest, ate green figs to flesh, uttering discordant howls, that even his barbarian host remarked it? In his drama of _Ion_, too, he barefacedly brings the gods on the stage: