Political Fragments of Archytas, Charondas, Zaleucus + Hierocles

"Cyclops, since human flesh is thy delight,
Now drink this wine*."

Being banished, most probably in consequence of this magnanimous behavior, and returning some time after to Alexandria, he gave philosophical lectures to his auditors in his usual manner. Suidas adds, that the grandeur of the conceptions of

Those men the first who of Egyptian birth
Drank the fair water of Nilotic earth,
Disclosed by actions infinite this road,
And many paths to God Phœnicians show'd.
This road the Assyrians pointed out to view,
And this the Lydians and Chaldeans knew.

But when Porphyry says that the Greeks have wandered from the path which leads to divinity, he alludes to their worshipping men as Gods; which, as I have shown in the Introduction to my translation of Proclus On the Theology of Plato, is contrary to the genuine doctrine of the heathen religion, and was the cause of its corruption, and final extinction, among the Greeks and Romans.

• Odyssey, Book ix, line 347.