you at the same time possessing souls that are in every respect lame and mutilated, and living in body, viz. in that which is dead. "How much better would it be for you, since you are desirous of innovation, to direct your attention to some one of the illustrious dead, and concerning whom a divine fable may be properly admitted! And if Hercules and Esculapius do not please you, and other renowned men of great antiquity, you may have Orpheus, a man confessedly inspired by a sacred spirit, and who suffered a violent death. But he perhaps has been adopted as a leader formerly by others. Consider Anaxarchus, therefore, who being thrown into a mortar, and bruised in the cruellest manner, most courageously despised the punishment, exclaiming, 'Bruise, bruise the sack of Anaxarchus, for you cannot bruise him.' This, indeed, was uttered by a certain truly divine spirit. Him, however, some physiologists have already vindicated to themselves. In the next place, consider Epictetus, who when his master twisted his leg violently, said, smiling gently and without being terrified, 'You will break my leg;' and when his master had broken his leg, only observed, 'Did I not tell you that you would break it? What thing of this kind did your God utter when {35} he was punished*? The sibyl, likewise, whose verses are used by some of you, is far more worthy to be regarded by you as the daughter of God. _But now you have fraudulently and rashly inserted in her verses many things of a blasphemous nature_**; and Christ, who in his life was most reprehensible, and in his death most miserable, you reverence as a God. How much more appropriately might you have bestowed this honour on Jonas when he was under the gourd, or on Daniel who was saved in the den of lions, or on others of whom more prodigious things than these are narrated! "This is one of the precepts of the Christians: 'Do not revenge yourself on him who injures you; and if any person strikes you on one cheek, turn the other to him also.' And this precept indeed is of very great antiquity, but is recorded in a more rustic * Christ when on the cross exclaimed, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" But Socrates in his Apology to his Judges, as recorded by Plato, most magnanimously said, "Anytus and Melitus may indeed put me to death, but they cannot injure me." ** The collection of the Sibylline Oracles which are now extant, are acknowledged by all intelligent men among the learned to be for the most part forgeries.--See the account of them by Fabricius in vol. i. of his Bibliootheca Graeca, {36}