But Hephaestus came off quite well beside Prometheus. Who does not know what happened to him because he was too philanthropic? Taking him to Scythia, Zeus pegged him out on the Caucasus and posted an eagle at his side to peck at his liver every day.
Prometheus, then, received a sentence and served it out, but what about Rhea? One must surely speak of this also. Does not she misconduct herself and behave dreadfully? Although she is an old woman, past her best years, the mother of so many gods, nevertheless she still has a love affair with a boy and is jealous, and she takes Attis about with her behind her lions, in spite of the fact that he cannot be of any use to her now. So how can one find fault with Aphrodite for being unfaithful to her husband, or with Selene for going down to visit Endymion time and again in the middle of her journey?
Come, dismissing this topic, let us go up to Heaven itself, soaring up poet-fashion by the same route as Homer and Hesiod, and let us see how they have arranged things on high. That it is bronze on the outside we learned from Homer, who anticipated us in saying so. But when one climbs over the edge, puts up one's head a little way into the world above, and really gets up on the “back”,[1] the light is brighter, the sun is clearer, the stars are shinier, it is day everywhere, and the ground is of gold. As you go in, the Hours live in the first house, for they are the warders of the gate; then come Iris and Hermes, who are attendants and messengers of Zeus; next, there is the smithy of Hephaestus, filled with works of art of every kind, and after that,
- ↑ Plato, Phaedrus 247 b. Cf. p. 147.
