Φρυχθῆναί τε καλῶς, καὶ τιμῆς ὦνον ἀρέσθαι.
... Ἦν δ᾽ ἐπ᾽ ἀναιδείην τρεφθέντες ψευδῆ ἄρῃσθε,
Συγκαλέω δὴ ᾽πειτα καμίνῳ δηλητῆρας·
Σύντριβ᾽ ὅμως, Σμάραγόν τε, καὶ Ἄσβετον, ἠδὲ Σαβάκτην,
Ὠμόδαμόν θ᾽, ὃς τῇδε τέχνῃ κακὰ πολλὰ πορίζει, etc.
A certain kindred between men and serpents (συγγένειάν τινα πρὸς τοὺς ὄφεις) was recognized in the peculiar gens of the ὀφιογενεῖς near Parion, who possessed the gift of healing by their touches the bite of the serpent: the original hero of this gens was said to have been transformed from a serpent into a man (Strabo, xiii. p. 588).
[837] Odyss. ii. 388; viii. 270; xii. 4, 128, 416; xxiii. 362. Iliad, xiv. 344. The Homeric Hymn to Dêmêtêr expresses it neatly (63)—
Ἡέλιον δ᾽ ἵκοντο, θεῶν σκόπον ἠδὲ καὶ ἀνδρῶν.
Also the remarkable story of Euênius of Apollônia, his neglect of the sacred cattle of Hêlios, and the awful consequences of it (Herodot. ix. 93: compare Theocr. Idyll, xxv. 130).
I know no passage in which this conception of the heavenly bodies as Persons is more strikingly set forth than in the words of the German chief Boiocalus, pleading the cause of himself and his tribe the Ansibarii before the Roman legate Avitus. This tribe, expelled by other tribes from its native possessions, had sat down upon some of that wide extent of lands on the Lower Rhine which the Roman government reserved for the use of its soldiers, but which remained desert, because the soldiers had neither the means nor the inclination to occupy them. The old chief, pleading his cause before Avitus, who had issued an order to him to evacuate the lands, first dwelt upon his fidelity of fifty years to the Roman cause, and next touched upon the enormity of retaining so large an area in a state of waste (Tacit. Ann. xiii. 55): “Quotam partem campi jacere, in quam pecora et armenta militum aliquando transmitterentur? Servarent sane receptos gregibus, inter hominum famam: modo ne vastitatem et solitudinem mallent, quam amicos populos Chamavorum quondam ea arva, mox Tubantum, et post Usipiorum fuisse. Sicuti cœlum Diis, ita terras generi mortalium datas: quæque vacuæ, eas publicas esse. Solem deinde respiciens, et cœtera sidera vocans, quasi coram interrogabat—vellentne contueri inane solum? potius mare superfunderent adversus terrarum ereptores. Commotus his Avitus,” etc. The legate refused the request, but privately offered to Boiocalus lands for himself apart from the tribe, which that chief indignantly spurned. He tried to maintain himself in the lands, but was expelled by the Roman arms, and forced to seek a home among the other German tribes, all of whom refused it. After much wandering and privation, the whole tribe of the Ansibarii was annihilated: its warriors were all slain, its women and children sold as slaves.