themselves. Thus have you had my lineage, education, and companions.

And now, lest I may seem to have taken upon me the name of goddess
without cause, you shall in the next place understand how far my deity
extends, and what advantage by it I have brought both to gods and men.
For, if it was not unwisely said by somebody, that this only is to be a
god, to help men; and if they are deservedly enrolled among the gods that
first brought in corn and wine and such other things as are for the
common good of mankind, why am not I of right the _alpha_, or first, of
all the gods? who being but one, yet bestow all things on all men. For
first, what is more sweet or more precious than life? And yet from whom
can it more properly be said to come than from me? For neither the
crab-favoured Pallas' spear nor the cloud-gathering Jupiter's shield
either beget or propagate mankind; but even he himself, the father of
gods and king of men at whose very beck the heavens shake, must lay by
his forked thunder and those looks wherewith he conquered the giants
and with which at pleasure he frightens the rest of the gods, and like
a common stage player put on a disguise as often as he goes about that,
which now and then he does, that is to say the getting of children: And
the Stoics too, that conceive themselves next to the gods, yet show me
one of them, nay the veriest bigot of the sect, and if he do not put off
his beard, the badge of wisdom, though yet it be no more than what is
common with him and goats; yet at least he must lay by his supercilious
gravity, smooth his forehead, shake off his rigid principles, and for
some time commit an act of folly and dotage. In fine, that wise man
whoever he be, if he intends to have children, must have recourse to me.
But tell me, I beseech you, what man is that would submit his neck to
the noose of wedlock, if, as wise men should, he did but first truly
weigh the inconvenience of the thing? Or what woman is there would ever
go to it did she seriously consider either the peril of child-bearing or