"If Outis,[1] alone as thou art, offers thee violence,
And there is no escaping disease sent by Zeus,
For the Cyclops heed not Ægis-bearing Zeus."[2]
And before him Orpheus said, speaking of the point in hand:
"Son of great Zeus, Father of Ægis-bearing Zeus."
And Xenocrates the Chalcedonian, who mentions the supreme Zeus and the inferior Zeus, leaves an indication of the Father and the Son. Homer, while representing the gods as subject to human passions, appears to know the Divine Being, whom Epicurus does not so revere. He sajs accordingly:
"Why, son of Peleus, mortal as thou art,
With swift feet me pursuest, a god
Immortal? Hast thou not yet known
That I am a god?"[3]
For he shows that the Divinity cannot be captured by a mortal, or apprehended either with feet, or hands, or eyes, or by the body at all. "To whom have ye likened the Lord? or to what likeness have ye likened Him?" says the Scripture.[4] Has not the artificer made the image? or the goldsmith, melting the gold, has gilded it, and what follows.
The comic poet Epicharmus speaks in the Republic clearly of the Word in the following terms:
"The life of men needs calculation and number alone,
And we live by number and calculation, for these save mortals."[5]
He then adds expressly:
"Reason governs mortals, and alone preserves manners."
Then:
Reason is implanted in man to provide for life and sustenance,
But divine Reason attends the arts in the case of all,
- ↑ "Οὔτις, Noman, Nobody; a fallacious name assumed by Ulysses (with a primary allusion to μήτις, μῆτις, Odys. xx. 20), to deceive Polyphemus."—Liddel and Scott. The third line is 274 of same book.
- ↑ Odys. ix. 410.
- ↑ Iliad, xxii. 8.
- ↑ Isa. xl. 18, 19.
- ↑ All these lines from Epicharmus: they have been rendered as amended by Grotius.
- ↑ λόγος [or Word].
