Chapter XXIII.—The Egyptians Pay Divine Honours to a Man.

“Moreover, among the Egyptians even to the present day, a man is worshipped as a god before his death.  And this truly is a small impiety, that the Egyptians give divine honours to a man in his lifetime; but what is of all things most absurd is, that they worship birds and creeping things, and all kinds of beasts.  For the mass of men neither think nor do anything with discretion.  But look, I pray you, at what is most disgraceful of all:  he who is with them the father of gods and men is said by them to have had intercourse with Leda; and many of them set up in public a painting of this, writing above it the name Zeus.  To punish this insult, I could wish that they would paint their own present king in such base embraces as they have dared to do with Zeus, and set it up in public, that from the anger of a temporary monarch, and him a mortal, they might learn to render honour where it is due.  This I say to you, not as myself already knowing the true God; but I am happy to say that even if I do not know who is God, I think I at least know clearly what God is.