investigating things above heaven and things below the earth. And one of you nibbles at the golden chain, another at the swinging, and simply another at some other part of the myth, or all of you nibble at it all; but I, looking at the most difficult part of the analogy, grow fearful, not least because you want me not only to allegorize Hellenic things in a Hellenic way, but also to transfer their secret doctrines to our own beliefs. But if it seems good, let us first, following them appropriately, recite or allegorize in the Hellenic style, and then let us wash away their saltiness with our own potable stream. Therefore, their Zeus says, testing the gods after him, that "having let down a golden chain from heaven, if you all should take hold of it together, I indeed could easily draw this up with you along with it, but for you, pulling against me, there would be no effect at all; then indeed, having drawn all of you gods up, both as many as are male and as many as are female, I would tie the chain to the peak of whatever mountain I wished, and you I would suspend in the air without a bond." Such is this boast of Zeus, whether he is someone supreme among the other gods or the son of Cronus. But I would say this in response, that this poet, having sufficiently consorted with the Orphic secrets, does not present matters nakedly, as is his custom, but having wrapped them in the dung of myth, as someone else once wrapped Zeus, he sets them before his listeners. But as things are, you would not taste of them; but if I take away the covering, like the hide of a sacrificed animal, perhaps what is given would appear edible to you. This Zeus, then, is neither the one of the error after Cronus, nor the one born from him, but the one introduced among them as the demiurge of the universe, whom Cronus indeed begot, but a more archetypal begetter exists, the One. For the more theological of the Hellenes, by abstraction from plurality, call the first unbegotten thing 'One', from which indeed they beget Mind, which, since it partakes immediately of the One, they call Cronus, that is, a sated and most full mind; from which they beget the demiurge and introduce him for the generation of the cosmos, for which reason they name him Zen and Dia, Dia because he is the cause of the existence of all things and because he passes through all beings, and Zen because he himself gives the various movements and changes of life to beings. And after him they hand down the rest of the theogonies: gods and goddesses, male angels and female angels, male daimons and female daimons, and heroes and heroines. For great is the use of such names in the Platonist Iamblichus and in Proclus, the successor of his doctrines. Yes, and indeed Porphyry often uses such appellations, and before all of them the Juliani in the time of Marcus; for one of them was the elder, the other the younger. And concerning the younger—to interrupt the discourse for a moment—such nonsense is commonly rumored: that his father, when he was about to beget him, asked the container of the universe for an archangelic soul for his substance, and that when he was born he introduced him to all the gods and to the soul of Plato, which was conversing with Apollo and with Hermes, and that observing this soul by some hieratic art, he would inquire about whatever he wished. But this is their myth. But this demiurge Zeus, having established first and second orders of gods, implanted in them this golden chain as a kind of unanimous accord; for the chain is a symbol of their interwovenness and composition through one another. Thus, therefore, the second things cleave to the first, the third to the second, and all subsequent things to those immediately preceding them, and all are supported by the first principle, which is the Zeus of the Hellenes. But the dependent natures, bound to the first god, could not force Zeus down to themselves, whereas he could most easily draw them all up to himself; for inferior things have a turning towards