Follow Offence. Offence, robust of limb,
And treading firm the ground, outstrips them all,
And over all the earth before them runs,
Hurtful to man. They, following, heal the hurt.
Received respectfully when they approach,
They yield us aid and listen when we pray;
But if we slight, and with obdurate heart
Resist them, to Saturinian Jove they cry.
Against us, supplicating that Offence
May cleave to us for vengeance of the wrong."
--COWPER'S Trans.

In the Seventeenth Book, Men-e-la'us is represented going into
battle, "supplicating, first, the sire of all"--that is, Jupiter,
the king of the gods. In the Twenty-third Book, Antil'ochus
attributes the ill-success of Eu-me'lus in the chariot-race to
his neglect of prayer. He says,

"He should have offered prayer; then had be not
Arrived, as now, the hindmost of us all."

Numerous other instances might be given, from the works of the
Grecian poets, of the supposed efficacy of prayer to the gods.

The views of the early Greeks respecting the dispensations of an
overruling Providence, as shown in their belief in retributive
justice, are especially prominent in some of the sublime choruses
of the Greek tragedians, and in the "Works and Days" of Hesiod.
For instance, AEschylus says,