Chapter 14.—Of the Theological
Poets.
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, Musæus, 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.