s no worse than the rest.... I wrote in accordance
with some of the rules which thou lovest, O Theonoe, the life of the
young god whom I served in my childhood, and for this they beat me
like a Euhemerus and wonder what my motives can be, believing only in
those things which enrich their trapezite tables. And why do we write
the lives of the gods if it is not to make the reader love what is
divine in them, and to show that this divine past yet lives and will
ever live in the heart of humanity?

"Dost thou remember the day when, Dionysodorus being archon, an ugly
little Jew, speaking the Greek of the Syrians, came hither,
passed beneath thy porch without understanding thee, misread thy
inscriptions, and imagined that he had discovered within thy walls an
altar dedicated to what he called the Unknown God? Well, this little
Jew was believed; for a thousand years thou hast been treated as an
idol, O Truth! for a thousand years the world has been a desert
in which no flower bloomed. And all this time thou wert silent, O
Salpinx, clarion of thought. Goddess of order, image of celestial
stability, those who loved thee were regarded, as culprits, and now,
when by force of conscientious labour we have succeeded in drawing
near to thee, we are accused of committing a crime against human
intelligence because we have burst the chains which Plato knew not.

"Thou alone art young, O Cora; thou alone art pure, O Virgin; thou
alone art healthy, O Hygeia; thou alone art strong, O Victory! Thou
keepest the cities, O Promachos; thou hast the blood of Mars in thee,
O Area; peace is thy aim, O Pacifica! O Legislatress, source of just
constitutions; O Democracy[1] thou whose fundamental dogma it is
that all good things come from the people, and that where there is no
people to fertilise and inspire genius there can be none, teach us to
extricate the diamond from among the impure multitudes! Providence of
Jupiter, divine worker, mother of all industry, protectress of labour,
O Ergane, thou who ennoblest the labour of the civilised worker and
placest him so far above the slothful Scythian; Wisdom, thou whom
Jupiter begot with a breath; thou who dwellest within thy father,
a part of his very essence; thou who art his companion and his
conscience; Energy of Zeus, spark which kindles and keeps aflame the
fire in heroes and men of genius, make us perfect spiritualists!
On the day when the Athenians and the men of Rhodes fought for the
sacrifice,