Thrice-Greatest Hermes, Vol. I — G. R. S. Mead (1906)

6 Miiller, i. 328. T. nourished 2nd half of 4th century B.C.
8 That is, presumably, the Celts.

consider gods, but gifts of the Gods, indispensable [indeed] if we are to live otherwise then savagely and like the brutes.

2. And at the season when, you know, these [ancients] saw the [fruits] entirely disappearing from the trees and ceasing, and those they had sown themselves still scanty and poor, — in scraping away the earth with their hands, and pressing it together again, and depositing [the seed] in uncertainty as to whether it would come up again and have its proper consummation, they used to do many things similar to those who bury and mourn.

3. Then, just as we say that one who buys Plato's books " buys Plato," and that one who presents the creations of Menander " acts Menander," so did they not hesitate to call the gifts and creations of the Gods by the names of the Gods — honouring them and reverencing them by use.

4. But those [who came] after, receiving [these names] like boors and ignorantly misapplying what happens1 to the fruits to the Gods [themselves], and not merely calling but believing the advent and hiding away of the necessaries [of life] generations and destructions of gods, filled their heads with absurd, indecent, and confused opinions, although they had the absurdity of their unreason before their eyes.

5. Excellent, however, was the view of Xenophanes 2 of Colophon that Egyptians don't mourn if they believe in Gods and don't believe in Gods if they mourn ; nay, that it would be ridiculous for them in the same breath to mourn and pray for the seed to appear again, in order that it might again be consumed and mourned for.

1 TO, irdOn — lit., " the passions."

2 X. flourished about end of 6th and beginning of 5th century B.C.

LXXI. 1. But such is not really the case; but, while mourning for the grain, they pray the Gods, the authors and givers [of it], to renew it again and make other grow up in the place of that which is consumed.

2. Whence there is an excellent saying among the philosophers, that those who do not learn how to hear names rightly, use things wrongly. Just as those of the Greeks who have not learned or accustomed themselves to call bronzes and pictures and marbles images in honour of the Gods, but [call them] Gods, [and] then make bold to say that Lachares stripped Athena, and Dionysius cut off Apollo's golden curls, and that Capitoline Zeus was burnt and perished in the Civil Wars, — these without knowing it find themselves drawn into adopting mischievous opinions following [directly] on the [abuse of] names.

3. And this is especially the case of Egyptians with regard to the honours they pay to animals. For in this respect, at any rate, Greeks speak rightly when they consider the dove as the sacred creature of Aphrodite, and the dragon of Athena, and the raven of Apollo, and the dog of Artemis, as Euripides [sings] :

Thou shalt be dog, pet of torch-bearing Hecate.1

4. Whereas most of the Egyptians, by the service and cult they pay to the animals themselves as though they were Gods, have not only covered their sacred rites entirely with laughter and ridicule — which is the least evil of their fatuity ; but a dangerous way of thinking grows up which perverts the weak and simple to pure superstition, and, in the case of the shrewder and bolder, degenerates into an atheistic and brutal rationalism.

1 Nauck, p. 525.

5. Wherefore, also, it is not unfitting to run through the conjectures about these things.1

CONCERNING THE WORSHIP OF ANIMALS, AND
TOTEMISM

LXXII. 1. As for the [theory] that the Gods out of fear of Typhon changed themselves into these animals — as it were hiding themselves in the bodies of ibises and dogs and hawks — it beats any juggling or story-telling.

2. Also the [theory] that all the souls of the dead that persist, have their rebirth2 into these [animals] only, is equally incredible.