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The poets surmised her divinity when they painted her so peaceful, superb, and fatal, and when they addressed that invocation to her, 'A soul as serene as a calm upon the waters. "Thus was Eunoia led by pity into evil and suffering. She died, and the Argives still show her tomb for it was necessary that she should know death after lust, and taste the bitter fruit she had sown.
"When Eunoia, 'the thought of God, had created the world, she confided the government of the earth to the angels. But they did not preserve the dispassion befitting masters. Seeing that the daughters of men were fair, they surprised them in the evening by the wellside, and united themselves to them.
From these unions sprang a turbulent race, who covered the earth with injustice and cruelty, and the dust of the roads drank up the blood of the innocent. The sight of this caused Eunoia infinite grief. "'See what I have done! she sighed, leaning towards the world. 'My poor children are plunged in misery, and by my fault. Their suffering is my crime, and I will expiate it.
But if it were as they assert Eunoia would not be the expiating courtesan, the victim covered with stains of all sorts, the bread steeped in the wine of our shame, the pleasant offering, the meritorious sacrifice, the holocaust, the smoke of which rises to God. If they were not voluntary, there would be no merit in her sins.
Being a poet myself, and crowned with Apollo's laurel, I will make known to all the last incarnation of Eunoia. The eternal Helen is close to us; she is looking at us, and we are looking at her. You see that woman reclining on the cushions of her couch so beautiful and so contemplative whose eyes shed tears, and whose lips abound with kisses! It is she!
Since I committed the mistake of giving them bodies which dishonour them, I will myself assume a body like unto theirs, and will go and live amongst them. "Having thus spoken, Eunoia descended to the earth, and was incarnate in the breast of a woman of Argos. She was born small and feeble, and received the name of Helen.
An inert prey to lascivious and violent men, she suffered rape and adultery, in expiation of all the adulteries, all the violences, all the iniquities, and caused, by her beauty, the ruin of nations, that God might pardon the sins of the universe. And never was the celestial thought, never was Eunoia, so adorable as in those days when, as a woman, she prostituted herself to heroes and shepherds.
I thought, however, that her perdition was involuntary, and that she was dragged down by the angels in their fall. ZENOTHEMIS. It is true, Hermodorus, that men who were not properly initiated in the mysteries have imagined that the sad Eunoia was not a party to her own downfall.
Lovely as in the time of Priam and the halcyon days of Asia, Eunoia is now called Thais. PHILINA. What do you say, Callicrates? Our dear Thais knew Paris, Menelaus, and the Achaians who fought before Ilion! Was the Trojan horse big, Thais? ARISTOBULUS. Who speaks of a horse? "I have drunk like a Thracian!" cried Chereas and he rolled under the table. Callicrates, raising his cup, cried
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