The fictions of the poets. Then we must not listen to Homer or to any other poet [D]who is guilty of the folly of saying that two casks
‘Lie at the threshold of Zeus, full of lots, one of good, the other of evil lots[10],’
and that he to whom Zeus gives a mixture of the two
‘Sometimes meets with evil fortune, at other times with good;’
but that he to whom is given the cup of unmingled ill,
‘Him wild hunger drives o’er the beauteous earth.’
[E]And again—
‘Zeus, who is the dispenser of good and evil to us.’
And if any one asserts that the violation of oaths and treaties, 63 which was really the work of Pandarus[11], was brought about by Athene and Zeus, or that the strife and contention of the gods was instigated by Themis and Zeus[12], he shall not have our approval; neither will we allow our young men to hear the words of Aeschylus, that
[380]‘God plants guilt among men when he desires utterly to destroy a house.’