I think that we can best
distinguish him by having recourse to a famous old tradition, which may
amuse as well as instruct us; the narrative is perfectly true, although the
scepticism of mankind is prone to doubt the tales of old. You have heard
what happened in the quarrel of Atreus and Thyestes? 'You mean about the
golden lamb?' No, not that; but another part of the story, which tells how
the sun and stars once arose in the west and set in the east, and that the
god reversed their motion, as a witness to the right of Atreus. 'There is
such a story.' And no doubt you have heard of the empire of Cronos, and of
the earthborn men? The origin of these and the like stories is to be found
in the tale which I am about to narrate.
There was a time when God directed the revolutions of the world, but at the
completion of a certain cycle he let go; and the world, by a necessity of
its nature, turned back, and went round the other way. For divine things
alone are unchangeable; but the earth and heavens, although endowed with
many glories, have a body, and are therefore liable to perturbation. In
the case of the world, the perturbation is very slight, and amounts only to
a reversal of motion. For the lord of moving things is alone self-moved;
neither can piety allow that he goes at one time in one direction and at
another time in another; or that God has given the universe opposite
motions; or that there are two gods, one turning it in one direction,
another in another.
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