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And if any one asserts that the violation of oaths and treaties,

which was really the work of Pandarus, was brought about by

Athene and Zeus, or that the strife and contention of the gods

was instigated by Themis and Zeus, he shall not have our

approval; neither will we allow our young men to hear the words

of Aeschylus, that

'God plants guilt among men when he desires utterly to destroy a

house.'

And if a poet writes of the sufferings of Niobe-the subject of

the tragedy in which these iambic verses occur-or of the house of

Pelops, or of the Trojan war or on any similar theme, either we

must not permit him to say that these are the works of God, or if

they are of God, he must devise some explanation of them such as

we are seeking; he must say that God did what was just and right,

and they were the better for being punished; but that those who

are punished are miserable, and that God is the author of their

misery-the poet is not to be permitted to say; though he may say

that the wicked are miserable because they require to be

punished, and are benefited by receiving punishment from God; but

that God being good is the author of evil to any one is to be

strenuously denied, and not to be said or sung or heard in verse

or prose by any one whether old or young in any well-ordered

commonwealth. Such a fiction is suicidal, ruinous, impious.