Hor. But you are partial: what odds is there between a stone and a lump of earth, for either of them to become a human creature? I can as easily conceive how a stone should be turned into a man or a woman, as how a man or a woman should be turned into a stone; and I think it not more strange, that a woman should be changed into a tree, as was Daphne, or into marble as Niobe, than that she should be transformed into a pillar of salt, as the wife of Lot was. Pray suffer me to catechise you a little.
Cleo. You will hear me afterwards, I hope.
Hor. Yes, yes. Do you believe Hesiod?
Cleo. No.
Hor. Ovid’s Metamorphosis?
Cleo. No.
Hor. But you believe the story of Adam and Eve, and Paradise.
Cleo. Yes.
Hor. That they were produced at once, I mean at their full growth; he from a lump of earth, and she from one of his ribs?