The previous post in this series may be found here: https://memoirandremains.wordpress.com/2014/12/21/lucian-of-samosata-concerning-sacrifices-4/

The poets speak such eloquent words about the gods – a great deal about these most divine things when it comes to Hephaestus and Prometheus and Cronus and Rhea, nearly the entire family of Zeus.

When they begin, they call upon the Muses to sing with them, and so inspired of the gods they sing of how Kronos castrated his father Uranus, then ruled in his place. He, of course, like Thyestes of Argos did latter, devoured his own children.

Or Zeus: saved by the fraud of Rhea (his mother) who substituted a stone (his father tried to eat him); later exposed on Crete; raised by a goat; he drove off his father and threw him in prison; married many women; and just like the Persian and the Assyrians, he married his own sister. Or what of his erotic dealings, his gushing lust, recklessly filling heaven with children: some were gods; but many were bastards bred with mortals upon earth: he came as a noble shower of gold, once a bull, once a swan, once an eagle – he was more changable than Proteus! Once he sprouted Athene from his head; conceiving her right in his own brain. Finally, they say when Dionysis was half-done, and his mother was on fire, Zeus snatched out of his mother, buried him (Dionysis) in his thigh until he cut him out, because the gestation was finished.

Greek Text and Notes: 

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