[6] Anth. Pal. ix. 270; xii. 50.

[7] Ibid. ix. 446.

[8] Ibid. xi. 429.

[9] Cf. ibid. xi. 85, 143.

[10] Cf. Anth. Pal. xi. 342, 404.

[11] Ibid. xi. 68, 237.

[12] Infra, x. 5.

[13] Athenaeus, 695, d.


XIII

For over all Greek life there lay a shadow. Man, a weak and pitiable
creature, lay exposed to the shafts of a grim and ironic power that
went its own way careless of him, or only interfered to avenge its own
slighted majesty. "God is always jealous and troublesome"; such is the
reflection which Herodotus, the pious historian of a pious age, puts
in the mouth of the wisest of the Greeks.[1] Punishment will sooner or
later follow sin; that is certain; but it is by no means so certain
that the innocent will not be involved with the guilty, or that
offence will not be taken where none was meant. The law of /laesa
majestas/ was executed by the ruling powers of the universe with
unrelenting and undiscriminating severity. Fate seemed to take a