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Top. XXVI. ‘Another, when anything is about to be done opposed to what has been done already (by the same person), to look at them together’: i. e. to bring together things that had been hitherto separate, and so to be able to compare them—παράλληλα φανερὰ μᾶλλον infra § 30; παράλληλα τὰ ἐναντία μάλιστα φαίνεσθαι, III 2. 9, 9. 8, 11. 9, 17. 13, παράλληλα μᾶλλον τἀναντία γνωρίζεται—a process which clearly brings out the contradiction. Brandis u. s. [Philologus IV i] p. 20 thus expresses the argument of the topic, “to detect a contradiction in the action in question.” It seems in itself, and also from the example selected, to be most appropriate in giving advice. ‘As Xenophanes, when the Eleates (his present fellow-citizens) consulted him, asked his advice, whether they are to offer sacrifices and dirges to Leucothea, or not; advised them, if they supposed her to be a goddess not to sing dirges (a funeral lament implying death and mortality); if a mortal, not to offer sacrifices’. Xenophanes here, by bringing the two practices into immediate comparison—if the example is meant to represent literally the statement of the topic, we must suppose that the Eleates had already done one of the two; deified her most likely; and now wanted to know whether they should do the other—makes the contradiction between sacrificing to (which they had done), and lamenting as dead (which they were about to do), the same person. Of Xenophanes—of Colophon, but then living at Elea, or Velia, where he founded the Eleatic school—we have already had notice in I 15. 29, and II 23. 18. εἰ θύωσι] εἰ being here equivalent to πότερον, admits equally with it of construction with the deliberative conjunctive: compare the same deliberative conjunctive in interrogation, as a modified doubtful future; τί ποιῶμεν; ‘what are we to do?’ instead of the direct, ‘what shall we do?’ Matth. Gr. Gr. 526. This passage is cited by Lobeck, Aglaophamus, Eleus. § 21, Vol. I. p. 167. Plutarch refers more than once to this dictum of Xenophanes, but supposes it to have been addressed to the Egyptians, about the worship of Osiris, and the propriety of θρῆνοι in his honour. De Superst. c. 13, p. 171 E, Amator. c. 18, 763 D, de Is. et Osir. c. 70, 379 B. Wyttenbach ad loc. de Superst. Athen. XV 697 A, quoting Aristotle, ἐν τῇ ἀπολογίᾳ, εἰ μὴ κατέψευσται ὁ λόγος: apud eundem. Ino, daughter of Cadmus and Harmonia, and wife of Athamas, in a fit of madness inspired by Hera, threw herself and her son Melicertes— two sons, Eur. Med. 1289; see the whole passage, 1279—1292—into the sea. Both of them became sea deities: she under the name of Leucothea, Melicertes of Palaemon. Virg. Georg. I 436—7. The stories of Athamas and Ino are told under those two names in Smith's Dict. Biogr. Cic. Tusc. Disp. I 12. 28. de Nat. D. III 15. 39 in Graecia multos habent ex hominibus deos—Leucotheam quae fuit Ino, et eius Palaemonem filium cuncta Graecia.
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