And for this reason the fixed
stars were created, to be divine and eternal animals, ever-abiding
and revolving after the same manner and on the same spot; and the
other stars which reverse their motion and are subject to
deviations of this kind, were created in the manner already
described. The earth, which is our nurse, clinging around the
pole which is extended through the universe, he framed to be the
guardian and artificer of night and day, first and eldest of gods
that are in the interior of heaven. Vain would be the attempt to
tell all the figures of them circling as in dance, and their
juxtapositions, and the return of them in their revolutions upon
themselves, and their approximations, and to say which of these
deities in their conjunctions meet, and which of them are in
opposition, and in what order they get behind and before one
another, and when they are severally eclipsed to our sight and
again reappear, sending terrors and intimations of the future to
those who cannot calculate their movements-to attempt to tell of
all this without a visible representation of the heavenly system
would be labour in vain. Enough on this head; and now let what we
have said about the nature of the created and visible gods have
an end.
To know or tell the origin of the other divinities is beyond
us, and we must accept the traditions of the men of old time who
affirm themselves to be the offspring of the gods-that is what
they say-and they must surely have known their own ancestors. How
can we doubt the word of the children of the gods? Although they
give no probable or certain proofs, still, as they declare that
they are speaking of what took place in their own family, we must
conform to custom and believe them. In this manner, then,
according to them, the genealogy of these gods is to be received
and set forth.
Oceanus and Tethys were the children of Earth and Heaven, and
from these sprang Phorcys and Cronos and Rhea, and all that
generation; and from Cronos and Rhea sprang Zeus and Here, and
all those who are said to be their brethren, and others who were
the children of these.
Now, when all of them, both those who visibly appear in their
revolutions as well as those other gods who are of a more
retiring nature, had come into being, the creator of the universe
addressed them in these words: "Gods, children of gods, who
are my works, and of whom I am the artificer and father, my
creations are indissoluble, if so I will. All that is bound may
be undone, but only an evil being would wish to undo that which
is harmonious and happy. Wherefore, since ye are but creatures,
ye are not altogether immortal and indissoluble, but ye shall
certainly not be dissolved, nor be liable to the fate of death,
having in my will a greater and mightier bond than those with
which ye were bound at the time of your birth. And now listen to
my instructions:-Three tribes of mortal beings remain to be
created-without them the universe will be incomplete, for it will
not contain every kind of animal which it ought to contain, if it
is to be perfect. On the other hand, if they were created by me
and received life at my hands, they would be on an equality with
the gods. In order then that they may be mortal, and that this
universe may be truly universal, do ye, according to your
natures, betake yourselves to the formation of animals, imitating
the power which was shown by me in creating you. The part of them
worthy of the name immortal, which is called divine and is the
guiding principle of those who are willing to follow justice and
you-of that divine part I will myself sow the seed, and having
made a beginning, I will hand the work over to you. And do ye
then interweave the mortal with the immortal, and make and beget
living creatures, and give them food, and make them to grow, and
receive them again in death."
Thus he spake, and once more into the cup in which he had
previously mingled the soul of the universe he poured the remains
of the elements, and mingled them in much the same manner; they
were not, however, pure as before, but diluted to the second and
third degree. And having made it he divided the whole mixture
into souls equal in number to the stars, and assigned each soul
to a star; and having there placed them as in a chariot, he
showed them the nature of the universe, and declared to them the
laws of destiny, according to which their first birth would be
one and the same for all,-no one should suffer a disadvantage at
his hands; they were to be sown in the instruments of time
severally adapted to them, and to come forth the most religious
of animals; and as human nature was of two kinds, the superior
race would here after be called man. Now, when they should be
implanted in bodies by necessity, and be always gaining or losing
some part of their bodily substance, then in the first place it
would be necessary that they should all have in them one and the
same faculty of sensation, arising out of irresistible
impressions; in the second place, they must have love, in which
pleasure and pain mingle; also fear and anger, and the feelings
which are akin or opposite to them; if they conquered these they
would live righteously, and if they were conquered by them,
unrighteously. He who lived well during his appointed time was to
return and dwell in his native star, and there he would have a
blessed and congenial existence. But if he failed in attaining
this, at the second birth he would pass into a woman, and if,
when in that state of being, he did not desist from evil, he
would continually be changed into some brute who resembled him in
the evil nature which he had acquired, and would not cease from
his toils and transformations until he followed the revolution of
the same and the like within him, and overcame by the help of
reason the turbulent and irrational mob of later accretions, made
up of fire and air and water and earth, and returned to the form
of his first and better state.
