LXVI. 1. Still there is nothing to complain of if

» Ptoallel to " Common Sense."
* Copt Pftopi — oorr. roughly with October.
* Cf, IzyiiL 2, 3. Qem-p-Khart, HoroB the Yoimger, or the '^ Child,' 80 called to diBtinguiBh him from Qera-ur, or Hoiui the Elder. Cf. Budge, op. eO., L 468 f.
THE MYSTERIES OF ISIS AND OSIRIS 347
[only], in the first place, they cherish the Gods in common with ourselves, and do not make them peculiar to Egyp- tians, either by characterising Nile and only the land that Nile waters by these names, or, by saying that marshes and lotuses and god-making [are their mono- poly], deprive the rest of mankind who have no Nile or Buto or Memphis, of [the] Great Gods.
2. Indeed, all [men] have Isis and know her and the Gods of her company ; for though they learned not long ago to call some of them by names known among the Egyptians, still they knew and honoured the power of each [of them] from the beginning.
3. In the second place, and what is more important — they should take very good heed and be apprehensive lest unwittingly they write-off the sacred mysteries and dissolve them into winds and streams, and sowing and ploughings, and passions of earth and changes of seasons.
4 As those who [say] that Dionysus is wine and Hephaestus flame, and Persephone, as Cleanthes says somewhere, the wind that drives through the crops and is killed ; and [as] some poet says of the reapers :
Then when they, lusty, cut Demetefs limbe.^
5. For these in nothing differ from those who r^ard a pilot as sails and ropes and anchor, and a weaver as yams and threads, and a physician as potions and honey-brew and barley-water ; nay, they put into men's minds dangerous and atheistic notions, by transferring names of Gods to natures and to things that have no sense or soul, and which are necessarily destroyed by men according to their need and use. For it is not possible to consider such things in themselves as Gods.