Great Pluto’s self the stinging arrow felt, When that same son of Ægis-bearing Jove Assail’d him in the very gates of hell, And wrought him keenest anguish; pierced with pain, To high Olympus, to the courts of Jove, Groaning, he came; the bitter shaft remain’d Deep in his shoulder fix’d, and griev’d his soul.” But if it is right to remind you of the battle of the gods, opposed to one another, your own poet himself will recount it, saying:752— “Such was the shock when gods in battle met; For there to royal Neptune stood oppos’d Phœbus Apollo with his arrows keen; The blue-eyed Pallas to the god of war; To Juno, Dian, heav’nly archeress, Sister of Phœbus, golden-shafted queen. Stout Hermes, helpful god, Latona fac’d.” These and such like things did Homer teach you; and not Homer only, but also Hesiod. So that if you believe your most distinguished poets, who have given the genealogies of your gods, you must of necessity either suppose that the gods are such beings as these, or believe that there are no gods at all. 752 Iliad, xx. 66 (from Lord Derby’s translation). 730 Chapter II—The poets are unfit to be religious teachers.