Page:Ante-Nicene Christian Library Vol 2.djvu/414

400 Nor for Alcmena fair;. . . No, nor for Ceres, golden-tressèd queen; Nor for Latona bright; nor for thyself."

He is created, he is perishable, with no trace of a god in him. Nay, they are even the hired servants of men:

And they tend cattle:

Admetus, therefore, was superior to the god. O prophet and wise one, and who canst foresee for others the things that shall be, thou didst not divine the slaughter of thy beloved, but didst even kill him with thine own hand, dear as he was:

(Æschylus is reproaching Apollo for being a false prophet:)

But perhaps these things are poetic vagary, and there is some natural explanation of them, such as this by Empedocles:

If, then, Zeus is fire, and Hera the earth, and Aïdoneus the air, and Nêstis water, and these are elements—fire, water, air—none of them is a god, neither Zeus, nor Hera, nor