Exhortation to the Greeks 4.54

Moved by this, I think, the ancient kings, despising these myths, since there was no danger from human beings, openly proclaimed themselves gods, teaching by this that the earlier gods too had been made immortal because of their fame. Ceyx the son of Aeolus was called Zeus by his wife Alcyone, and Alcyone in turn was called Hera by her husband. Ptolemy the Fourth was called Dionysus; Mithridates of Pontus was also called Dionysus; and Alexander wished to be thought the son of Ammon and to be represented by the sculptors with horns, eager to outrage the beautiful face of a man with a horn. And not only kings, but private persons too exalted themselves with divine titles, like Menecrates the physician, who was called Zeus. Why need I list Alexarchus (he was a grammarian by profession, and, as Aristus of Salamis records, he dressed himself up as the Sun)? Why need I mention Nicagoras (he was from Zeleia by birth and lived in the time of Alexander; Nicagoras was called Hermes and used the dress of Hermes, as he himself testifies)? For whole nations and cities with all their people, putting on flattery, make the myths about the gods cheap, as men dress themselves up as equal to the gods, puffed up with vainglory, and vote themselves extravagant honors. At one time they decreed that Philip of Macedon, from Pella, the son of Amyntas, should be worshiped in the Cynosarges, the one “with the broken collarbone and the maimed leg,” who had lost an eye; at another they proclaimed Demetrius too a god. Where he dismounted from his horse on entering Athens, there is a temple of Demetrius the Descender, and there are altars to him everywhere; and a marriage with Athena was prepared for him by the Athenians. But he disdained the goddess, being unable to marry the statue; he went up to the acropolis with Lamia the courtesan and defiled the bridal chamber of Athena, showing the old virgin …