Miscellanies 7.6.30

Just as God is not circumscribed by place, nor ever represented by the shape of a living creature, so neither is he subject to the same passions, nor in need, as created things are, so as to crave sacrifices out of hunger, as if they were food. Things that passion touches are all perishable, and to bring food to one who is not nourished is futile. And that comic poet Pherecrates, in The Deserters, has charmingly made the gods themselves reproach human beings over their sacrifices: “When you sacrifice to the gods, first you set aside the customary portion for the priests, and then for yourselves; then (it is a shame to say it) you strip the two thighs clean right down to the groin, all the meat, and leave the loin quite bare, and the backbone that is left, filed down as with a rasp, you hand out to us as to the dogs; and then, ashamed before one another, you hide it under a heap of sacrificial cakes.” Eubulus, himself also a comic poet, writes somewhat like this about sacrifices: “To the gods themselves you sacrifice only the tail and the thigh, as to pederasts.” And bringing on Dionysus in Semele, laying down the terms, he has him say: “First, when people sacrifice anything to me, they sacrifice blood, bladder, liver, heart, the outer membrane; for I do not eat the sweet parts or the thigh.”