ll such tales, and many like them, and many wicked tales more
shameful still, have the Greeks introduced, O king, concerning their
gods; tales, whereof it is unlawful to speak, or even to have them in
remembrance. Hence men, taking occasion from their gods, wrought all
lawlessness, lasciviousness and ungodliness, polluting earth and air
with their horrible deeds.

"But the Egyptians, more fatuous and foolish than they, have erred
worse than any other nation. They were not satisfied with the idols
worshipped by the Chaldeans and Greeks, but further introduced as gods
brute beasts of land and water, and herbs and trees, and were defiled
in all madness and lasciviousness worse than all people upon earth.
From the beginning they worshipped Isis, which had for her brother and
husband that Osiris which was slain by his brother Typhon. And for
this reason Isis fled with Horus her son to Byblos in Syria, seeking
Osiris and bitterly wailing, until Horus was grown up and killed
Typhon. Isis then was not able to help her own brother and husband;
nor had Osiris, who was slain by Typhon, power to succour himself; nor
had Typhon, who killed his brother and was himself destroyed by Horus
and Isis, any resource to save himself from death. And yet, although
famous for all these misadventures, these be they that were considered
gods by the senseless Egyptians.

"The same people, not content therewith, nor with the rest of the idols
of the heathen, also introduced brute beasts as gods. Some of them
worshipped the sheep, some the goat, and others the calf and the hog;
while certain of them worshipped the raven, the kite, the vulture, and
the eagle. Others again worshipped the crocodile, and some the cat and
dog, the wolf and ape, the dragon and serpent, and others the onion,
garlic and thorns, and every other creature. And the poor fools do not
perceive, concerning these things, that they have no power at all.
Though they see their gods being devoured, burnt and killed by other
men, and rotting away, they cannot grasp the fact that they are no gods.

"Great, then, is the error that the Egyptians, the Chaldeans, and the
Greeks have erred in introducing such gods as these, and making images
thereof, and deifying dumb and senseless idols. I marvel how, when
they behold their gods being sawn and chiselled by workmen's axes,
growing old and dissolving through lapse of time, and molten in the
pot, they never reflected concerning them t