existence from him.[90] If we then
deprive Love of his ancient honours, those of Aphrodite will be lost
also. For we cannot argue that, while some revile Love, all spare
Aphrodite, for on the same stage we hear of Love,

'Love is an idle thing and for the idle:'[91]

and again of Aphrodite,

'Cypris, my boys, is not her only name,
For many names has she. She is a hell,
A power remorseless, nay a raging madness.'[92]

Just as in the case of the other gods there is hardly one that has not
been reviled, or escaped the scurrility of ignorance. Look, for example,
at Ares, who may be considered as it were the counterpart of Love, what
honours he has received from men, and again what abuse, as

'Ares is blind, ye women, has no eyes,
And with his pig's snout roots up all good things.'[93]

And Homer calls him 'blood-stained' and 'fickle.'[94] And Chrysippus
brings a grievous charge against him, in defining his name to mean
destroyer,[95] thereby giving a handle to those who think that Ares is
only the fighting, wrangling, and quarrelsome instinct among mankind.
Others again will tell us that Aphrodite is simply desire, and Hermes
eloquence, and the Muses the arts and sciences, and Athene wisdom. You
see what an abyss of impiety opens up before us, if we describe each of
the gods, as only a passion, a power, or a virtue!"

Sec. XIV. "I see it," said Pemptides, "and it is impious either to make the
gods passions, or to do just the contrary, and make the passions gods."
"What then?" said my father, "do you consider Ares a god, or only a
human passion?" And Pemptides, answering that he looked on Ares as god
of the passionate and manly element in mankind, "What," cried my father,
"shall the passionate and warlike and antagonistic instincts in man have
a god, but the affectionate and social and clubable have none? Shall
Ares, under his names of Enyalius and Stratius, preside over arms and
war and sieges and sacks of cities, and shall there be no god to witness
and preside over, to direct and guide, conjugal affection, that
friendship of closest union and communion? Why even those who hunt
gazelles and hares and deer have a silvan deity who harks and halloos
them on, for to Aristaeus[96] they pay their vows when in pitfalls and
snares they trap wolves and bears,

'For Aristaeus first set traps for animals.'

And Hercules invoked another god, when he was about to shoot at the
bird, as the line of AEschylus s