[117] But some people we see are so brimful of folly that they are aggrieved if the whole world does not follow their wishes.
Thus Xerxes, the king of the Persians, wishing to strike terror into his enemies, made a display of action on a grand scale by creating a revolution in nature; for he converted two elements,
[118] earth into sea, and sea into earth, giving dry land to the ocean and ocean in exchange to the dry land, by bridging over the Hellespont and breaking up Mount Athos into deep hollows, which filled with salt water at once formed a new and artificial sea entirely transformed from its ancient nature.
[119] And having played the conjurer, as he thought, with the regions of earth he proceeded in the boldness of his schemes to mount to heaven also, taking, unhappy wretch, impiety as his fellow climber. He thought to remove the irremovable and to overthrow the divine host, and, to quote the proverb, he began with the “sacred line.”
[120] “For he aimed his arrows at the best of the heavenly bodies, the sun who rules the day, and little knew that he himself was wounded by the unseen bolt of insanity, not merely because the feats he hoped to do were impossible, but because they were utterly unholy, either of which reflects great discredit on the attempter.
[121] And the Germans of the most thickly populated part, where the sea ebbs and flows, when the flood-time comes there, try eagerly, we are told, to repel its onsets, brandishing their unsheathed swords and running like a hostile band to meet the oncoming waves.
[122] They deserve our detestation in that in their godlessness they dared to take arms to oppose the parts of nature which know no servitude. They deserve our ridicule because they attempt the impossible as though it were possible, and think that water like a living creature can be speared, wounded, killed, or again can feel pain and fear, or, in its terror at the attack, run away, and in fact feel all the sensations of the living soul, both pleasurable and painful.