Either let all these be blotted, or let me have the same licence.
Moreover, illustration is so irresponsible that Homer allows
himself to convey his compliments to Goddesses by using creatures
inferior to them. Hera is ox-eyed. Another poet colours Aphrodite's
eyes from the violet. As for fingers like the rose, it takes but
little of Homer's society to bring us acquainted with them.

Still, so far we do not get beyond mere looks; a man is only called
_like_ a God. But think of the wholesale adaptation of their
names, by Dionysiuses, Hephaestions, Zenos, Posidoniuses,
Hermaeuses. Leto, wife of Evagoras, King of Cyprus, even dispensed
with adaptation; but her divine namesake, who could have turned her
into stone like Niobe, took no offence. What need to mention that
the most religious race on earth, the Egyptian, never tires of
divine names? most of those it uses hail from Heaven.

Consequently, there is not the smallest occasion for you to be
nervous about the panegyric. If what I wrote contains anything
offensive to the deity, you are not responsible, unless you
consider we are responsible for all that goes in at our ears; no, I
shall pay the penalty--as soon as the Gods have settled with Homer
and the other poets. Ah, and they have not done so yet with the
best of all philosophers [Footnote: Lucian's 'best of all
philosophers' might be Plato, who is their spokesman in 'The
Fisher' (see Sections 14, 22), or Epicurus, in the light of two
passages in the 'Alexander' (Sections 47, 61) in which he almost
declares himself an Epicurean. The exact words are not found in
Plato, though several similar expressions are quoted; words of
Epicurus appear to be translated in Cicero, _De nat. Deorum_,
Book I, xviii s. f., hominis esse specie deos confitendum est: we