“The Greek gods are poetry,” said Archias one day to his pupil. “The Romans appropriated our gods, and renamed them. But they removed their poetry. Minerva is a bad-tempered shrew and her virginity astringent, but Pallas Athene is armed and noble wisdom and her virginity like marble in moonlight.” Marcus always listened uneasily to any attack on Romans, however good-natured. “Our gods have been perverted by man,” he said, “and given man’s temper by man. It was not always so in our history. Why must man eventually degrade even his gods?”
Gods reduced by men
