Then we must not listen to Homer or to any other poet who is guilty of the folly of saying that two casks

‘Lie at the threshold of Zeus, full of lots, one of good, the other of evil lots,’

and that he to whom Zeus gives a mixture of the two

‘Sometimes meets with evil fortune, at other times with good;’

but that he to whom is given the cup of unmingled ill,

‘Him wild hunger drives o’er the beauteous earth.’

And again —

‘Zeus, who is the dispenser of good and evil to us.’

And if any one asserts that the violation of oaths