Sigalion in the Shield of Croesiades or Apologetic Dialogue for the Mystery of Detected Syncretism

palm? Certainly to the second, which he previously said was of the philosophers. For he testifies that this pertains to the world, than which they opine there is nothing more excellent in things. But while he distinguished those theologies, the first and the third, of the theater, that is, and of the city, and joined them.

(o) Jove, to whom they were devoted from antiquity, and by whose worship, sects: the first,
(p) Mythical, a liar full of indignity and turpitude, which established that Jove was dead, buried in Crete, and yet was to be religiously adored.
The second, physical, (q) more just than the former, or at least less absurd,

(o) Concerning the twin Jove, the most ancient who was called Cres, contemporary with Isaac and Jacob, and the more recent ravisher of Europa, see Vossius, book 1, de origine et progressu idololatriae on the origin and progress of idolatry, ch. 14, p. 115. Diodorus Siculus, book 5, p. 33, and following.

(p) Thus Lactantius, book 1, de falsa religione on false religion, ch. 11, remembers from Ennius that the Cretans established this: "Jupiter," he says, "after he traveled around the earth five times, and divided the empire among all his friends and relatives, and left laws, customs, and grain for men, and did many other good things, was affected by immortal glory and memory, and left eternal monuments to his own. His age spent, he changed his life in Crete and went to the gods, and the Curetes, his sons, took care of him, and honored him, and his sepulcher is in Crete, in the town of Gnossos: and it is said that Vesta created this city: and in his sepulcher it is written in ancient Greek letters: ho Zeus tou Chronou Jupiter son of Saturn." These things certainly not the poets report, but the writers of ancient affairs, which are so true that they are confirmed by Sibylline verses, which are such:
Unsouled demons, idols of the dead who have perished,
Whose tomb the ill-fated Crete has as a boast.
Compare other absurd sacred rites of the Cretans observed by Plutarch, On the Cessation of Oracles, p. 524.

(q) Which Epimenides seems to have done, departing separately from the opinion of the mob, born in Gnossos, a Cretan, according to Laertius, a divine man, lauded by Clinias in Plato, book 1, de legibus On Laws. A philosopher and priest among the Cretans according to Epiphanius, heresy 42, who by this name argues his own citizens of lying, "Cretans are always liars," whose sentiment Callimachus supplemented: "Cretans are always liars, for they built a tomb for you, O King, but you did not die, for you exist forever." Hence also Plato, book 1, de legibus, vol. 2, p. 636: "We all," he says, "accuse the Cretans of the fable about Ganymede, as if they themselves had invented it, so that when their laws are believed to have had their origin from Jove, they might also attribute this to him, so that following the example of a God, they themselves might enjoy that pleasure. But, let those fabulous inventions be long gone."