Thus walking along, we were by this time got as far as the statue of Hiero the tyrant, while the stranger, although a most learned historian, yet out of his complaisant and affable disposition, attentively leaned to the present relations. But then, among other things, hearing how that one of the brazen pillars that supported the said statue of Hiero fell of itself the same day that the tyrant died at Syracuse, he began to admire the accident. Thereupon at the same time I called to mind several other examples of the like nature: as that of Hiero the Spartan, the eyes of whose statue fell out of its head just before he was slain at the battle of Leuctra;—how the two stars vanished which Lysander offered and consecrated to the Gods after the naval engagement near Aegos Potami, and how there sprung of a sudden from his statue of stone such a multitude of thorny bushes and weeds as covered all his face;—how, when those calamities and misfortunes befell the Athenians in Sicily, the golden dates dropped from the palm-tree, and the ravens with their beaks pecked holes in the shield of Pallas;—how the crown of the Cnidians which Philomelus, the tyrant of the Phocians, gave Pharsalia, a female dancer, was the occasion of her death; for, passing out of Greece into Italy, one day as she was playing and dancing in the temple of Apollo in the city of Metapontum, having that crown upon her head, the young men of the place falling upon her, and fighting one among another for lucre of the gold, tore the damsel in pieces. Now, though Aristotle was wont to say that only Homer composed names and terms that had motion, by reason of the vigor and vivacity of his expressions, for my part I am apt to believe that the offerings made in this city of statues and consecrated presents sympathize with Divine Providence, and move themselves jointly therewith to foretell and signify future events; and that no part of all those sacred donatives is void of sense, but that every part is full of the Deity. It is very probable, answered Boethus; for, to tell you truth, we do not think it sufficient to enclose the Divinity every month in a mortal body, unless we incorporate him with every stone and lump of brass; as if Fortune and Chance were not sufficient artists to bring about such accidents and events. Say ye so then? said I. Seems it to you that these things happen accidentally and by hap-hazard; and is it likely that your atoms never separate, never move or incline this or that way either before or after, but just in that nick of time when some one of those who have made these offerings is to fare either better or worse? Shall Epicurus avail thee by his writings and his sayings, which he wrote and uttered above three hundred years ago, and shall the Deity, unless he crowd himself into all substances and blend himself with all things, not be allowed to be a competent author of the principles of motion and affection?