1. Homer, Odyssey, 14.422, 14.427-14.428, 14.434-14.437, 14.446-14.447 (8th cent. BCE - 7th cent. BCE)
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2. Aeschylus, Suppliant Women, 463, 429 (6th cent. BCE - 5th cent. BCE)
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3. Cicero, On The Nature of The Gods, 2.164 (2nd cent. BCE - 1st cent. BCE)
| 2.164. Nor is the care and providence of the immortal gods bestowed only upon the human race in its entirety, but it is also wont to be extended to individuals. We may narrow down the entirety of the human race and bring it gradually down to smaller and smaller groups, and finally to single individuals. For if we believe, for the reasons that we have spoken of before, that the gods care for all human beings everywhere in every coast and region of the lands remote from this continent in which we dwell, then they care also for the men who inhabit with us these lands between the sunrise and the sunset. |
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4. Lucian, Sacrifices, 2 (2nd cent. CE - 2nd cent. CE)
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5. Lucian, The Sky-Man, 25 (2nd cent. CE - 2nd cent. CE)
| 25. So talking, we reached the spot where he was to sit and listen to the prayers. There was a row of openings with lids like well covers, and a chair of gold by each. Zeus took his seat at the first, lifted off the lid and inclined his ear. From every quarter of Earth were coming the most various and contradictory petitions; for I too bent down my head and listened. Here are specimens. ‘O Zeus, that I might be king!’ ‘O Zeus, that my onions and garlic might thrive!’ ‘Ye Gods, a speedy death for my father!’ Or again, ‘Would that I might succeed to my wife’s property!’ ‘Grant that my plot against my brother be not detected.’ ‘Let me win my suit.’ ‘Give me an Olympic garland.’ of those at sea, one prayed for a north, another for a south wind; the farmer asked for rain, the fuller for sun. Zeus listened, and gave each prayer careful consideration, but without promising to grant them all;Our Father this bestowed, and that withheld.Righteous prayers he allowed to come up through the hole, received and laid them down at his right, while he sent the unholy ones packing with a downward puff of breath, that Heaven might not be defiled by their entrance. In one case I saw him puzzled; two men praying for opposite things and promising the same sacrifices, he could not tell which of them to favour, and experienced a truly Academic suspense of judgement, showing a reserve and equilibrium worthy of Pyrrho himself. |
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6. Maximus of Tyre, Dialexeis, 5.7 (2nd cent. CE - 2nd cent. CE)
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