Tatian, Address to the Greeks 8

People serve as the hypothesis of their apostasy. Having displayed a diagram of astral arrangement, they introduced a most unjust fate, just like men playing with dice. For both judge and judged exist by fate, as do killers and killed, rich and poor; all are offspring of the same fate. Every birth, as in a theater, gave these beings entertainment. Of them Homer says, 'Unquenchable laughter arose among the blessed gods.' For those who watch men fighting in single combat, each straining against the other, and who watch the man who marries and corrupts children and commits adultery, laughing and raging, fleeing and being wounded — how would they not be thought mortal? Through the very things by which they revealed what sort of beings they are, they persuaded their hearers toward the same things.

Will not even the demons themselves, together with their leader Zeus, have fallen under fate, mastered by the same passions as humans? And in any case, how are these beings to be honored by those among whom there is great opposition of doctrines? Rhea, whom men from Phrygia call Cybele, legislated castration because of her beloved Attis; Aphrodite delights in the braids of marriage. Artemis is a magician, Apollo practices healing. After the beheading of Gorgo, Poseidon's beloved, from whom Pegasus the horse and Chrysaor sprang, Athena and Asclepius divided the drops of blood; from them he saved, while she became a manslayer and war-maker from similar spoils.

It seems to me the Athenians, unwilling to slander her, ascribed the offspring of Hephaestus' union to the earth, lest Athena be thought deprived of courage through Hephaestus just as Atalanta was through Meleager. For the lame god, as is likely, the maker of pots and curved handles, deceived the unloved, orphaned child with his tricks. Poseidon sails, Ares delights in wars, Apollo plays the cithara, Dionysus tyrannizes the Thebans, Cronus kills tyrants. Zeus unites with his own daughter, and the daughter conceives by him. Eleusis and the mystic serpent and Orpheus of Thrace will now testify to me, saying, 'Place the doors, you profane.' Hades seizes Core, and his deeds have become mysteries; Demeter mourns her daughter, and some are deceived through the Athenians. In the precinct of Leto's son a certain place is called Omphalos, and Omphalos is the tomb of Dionysus.

I praise you now, Daphne; overcoming Apollo's intemperance, you refuted his divination, because, not foreknowing the things concerning yourself, he could not avail himself of his own art. Let the far-shooter tell me now how Zephyr treated Hyacinth. Zephyr defeated him; and though the tragedian says, 'Breeze is the most honored vehicle of the gods,' overcome by a brief gust he lost his beloved.