tus, was cut to pieces by command
of the tyrant of Cyprus; and Zeno of Elea[281] ended his life in
tortures. What shall I say of Socrates,[282] whose death, as often as I
read of it in Plato, draws fresh tears from my eyes? If, therefore, the
Gods really see everything that happens to men, you must acknowledge
they make no distinction between the good and the bad.

XXXIV. Diogenes the Cynic used to say of Harpalus, one of the most
fortunate villains of his time, that the constant prosperity of such a
man was a kind of witness against the Gods. Dionysius, of whom we have
before spoken, after he had pillaged the temple of Proserpine at
Locris, set sail for Syracuse, and, having a fair wind during his
voyage, said, with a smile, "See, my friends, what favorable winds the
immortal Gods bestow upon church-robbers." Encouraged by this
prosperous event, he proceeded in his impiety. When he landed at
Peloponnesus, he went into the temple of Jupiter Olympius, and disrobed
his statue of a golden mantle of great weight, an ornament which the
tyrant Gelo[283] had given out of the spoils of the Carthaginians, and
at the same time, in a jesting manner, he said "that a golden mantle
was too heavy in summer and too cold in winter;" and then, throwing a
woollen cloak over the statue, added, "This will serve for all
seasons." At another time, he ordered the golden beard of AEsculapius of
Epidaurus to be taken away, saying that "it was absurd for the son to
have a beard, when his father had none." He likewise robbed the temples
of the silver tables, which, according to the ancient custom of Greece,
bore this inscription, "To the good Gods," saying "he was willing to
make use of their goodness;" and, without the least scruple, took away
the little golden emblems of victory, the cups and coronets, which were
in the stretched-out hands of the statues, saying "he did not take, but
receive them; for it would be folly not to accept good things from the
Gods, to whom we are constantly praying for favors, when they stretch
out their hands towards us." And, last of all, all the things which he
had thus pillaged from the temples were, by his order, brought to the
market-place and sold by the common crier; and, after he had received
the money for them, he commanded every purchaser to restore what he had
bought, within a limited time, to the temples from whence they came.
Thus to his impiety towards the Gods he added injustice to man.

XXXV. Yet nei