Be idle and drink our nectar and eat our ambrosia without doing anything! But what sticks in my throat most is that although you censure me for making men “and particularly the women,” you fall in love with them just the same, and are always going down below, transformed now into bulls, now into satyrs and swans, and you deign to beget gods upon them!
Perhaps, however, you will say that men should
have been made, but in some other form and not like
us. What better model could I have put before
myself than this, which I knew to be beautiful in
every way? Should I have made my creatures
unintelligent and bestial and savage? Why, how
could they have sacrificed to gods or bestowed all
the other honours upon you if they were not as
they are? You gods do not hang back when they
bring you the hecatombs, even if you have to go to
the river of Ocean,