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During the same period of time arose the poets, who were also called
theologues, because they made hymns about the gods; yet about such
gods as, although great men, were yet but men, or the elements of
this world which the true God made, or creatures who were ordained as
principalities and powers according to the will of the Creator and
their own merit. And if, among much that was vain and false, they
sang anything of the one true God, yet, by worshipping Him along
with others who are not gods, and showing them the service that is due
to Him alone, they did not serve Him at all rightly; and even such
poets as Orpheus, Musaeus, and Linus, were unable to abstain from
dishonoring their gods by fables. But yet these theologues worshipped
the gods, and were not worshipped as gods, although the city of the
ungodly is wont, I know not how, to set Orpheus over the sacred, or
rather sacrilegious, rites of hell. The wife of king Athamas, who
was called Ino, and her son Melicertes, perished by throwing
themselves into the sea, and were, according to popular belief,
reckoned among the gods, like other men of the same times, [among
whom were] Castor and Pollux. The Greeks, indeed, called her who
was the mother of Melicertes, Leucothea, the Latins, Matuta; but
both thought her a goddess.
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