all hail. I go about among you an immortal god, no mortal now, honoured among all as is meet, 5crowned with fillets and flowery garlands. Straightway, whenever I enter with these in my train, both men and women, into the flourishing towns, is reverence done me; they go after me in countless throngs; asking of me what is the way to gain; 10some desiring oracles, while some, who for many a weary day have been pierced by the grievous pangs of all manner of sickness, beg to hear from me the word of healing. R. P. 162 f.
(113)
But why do I harp on these things, as if it were any great matter that I should surpass mortal, perishable men?
(114)
Friends, I know indeed that truth is in the words I shall utter, but it is hard for men, and jealous are they of the assault of belief on their souls.
(115)
There is an oracle of Necessity, an ancient ordinance of the gods,[1] eternal and sealed fast by broad oaths, that whenever one of the daemons, whose portion is length of days, has sinfully polluted his hands with blood,[2] or followed strife and forsworn himself, 5he must wander thrice ten thousand seasons from the abodes of the blessed, being born throughout the time in all manners of mortal forms, changing one toilsome path of life for another. For the mighty Air drives him into the Sea, and the Sea spews him forth on the dry Earth; 10Earth tosses him into the beams of the blazing Sun, and he flings him back to the eddies of Air. One takes him from the other, and all reject him. One of these I now am, an exile and a wanderer from the gods, for that I put my trust in insensate strife. R. P. 181.
(116)
Charis loathes intolerable Necessity.
- ↑ Necessity is an Orphic personage, and Gorgias, the disciple of Empedokles, says θεῶν βουλεύμασιν καὶ ἀνάγκης ψηφίσμασιν (Hel. 6).
- ↑ I retain φόνῳ v. 3 (so too Diels). The first word of v. 4 has been lost. Diels suggests Νείκεϊ, which may well be right and takes ἁμαρτήσας as equivalent to ὁμαρτήσας. I have translated accordingly.
