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Autobulus
AUTOB. For this is a foundation and basis common to all piety and religion; of which if the steady rule and decreed maxims be once disordered and shaken, all the rest must totter and become suspected. And no question but you have heard what a clamor was raised against Euripides when he made this beginning of his Melanippe: Jupiter, if his name be so; ’Tis only by hearsay that I know.Eurip. Melanippe, Frag. 483 and 484.
AUTOB. But when he exhibited the tragedy a second time, he seems to have had such a confidence in the lofty style and elaborate eloquence of his work, that he thus altered the verse: Jove, for we own he has received that name From truth alone, and not from common fame.See Aristoph. Frogs, 1244.
AUTOB. What difference then is there between calling in question the name of Jupiter and Minerva, and doubting of the name of Cupid or Love? For it is not of late that Love has challenged altars and sacrifices, neither is he a foreigner started up out of any barbarian superstition, as were the Attae and the Adonii, introduced by I know not what sort of hermaphrodites and idle women. Nor has he clandestinely crept into honors no way becoming him, to avoid the accusation of bastardy and being unduly enrolled in the catalogue of the Gods. But when you hear Empedocles thus saying, And friendship too (observe my song) Is like to these, both broad and long; But this thou must not think to find With eyes of body, but of mind,
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