Then no motive can be imagined why God should lie?
None whatever.
Then the superhuman and divine is absolutely incapable of falsehood?
Yes.
Then is God perfectly simple and true both in word and deed;
he changes not; he deceives not, either by sign or word, by dream
or waking vision.
Your thoughts, he said, are the reflection of my own.
You agree with me then, I said, that this is the second type
or form in which we should write and speak about divine things.
The gods are not magicians who transform themselves, neither do they
deceive mankind in any way.
I grant that.
Then, although we are admirers of Homer, we do not admire the lying
dream which Zeus sends to Agamemnon; neither will we praise the verses
of Aeschylus in which Thetis says that Apollo at her nuptials
Was celebrating in song her fair progeny whose days were
to he long, and to know no sickness. And when he had
spoken of my lot as in all things blessed of heaven he
raised a note of triumph and cheered my soul. And I
thought that the word of Phoebus being divine and full
of prophecy, would not fail. And now he himself who
uttered the strain, he who was present at the banquet,
and who said this--he it is who has slain my son.
These are the kind of sentiments about the gods which will arouse
our anger; and he who utters them shall be refused a chorus;
neither shall we allow teachers to make use of them in the instruction
of the young, meaning, as we do, that our guardians, as far as men
can be, should be true worshippers of the gods and like them.
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