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Sossius applauding these discourses added: Perhaps we may make a probable conjecture from Theophrastus's discourse of Music, for I have lately read the book.
Was Theophrastus's superstitious man so very foolish for pouring oil on every round stone? I think there was a great deal to be said for him. This worship of Baetyli was rational enough. They were aerolites, fallen from heaven.
They defied those very volcanic and meteoric phenomena of their land, to which their countrymen were slaying their own children in the clefts of the rocks, and, like Theophrastus's superstitious man, pouring their drink-offerings on the smooth stones of the valley; and declared that, for their part, they would not fear, though the earth was moved, and though the hills were carried into the midst of the sea; though the waters raged and swelled, and the mountains shook at the tempest.
Savages more frequently smear their fetich-stones with red paint than daub them with oil, but the latter, as we learn from Theophrastus's account of the 'superstitious man, was the Greek ritual. This anecdote about Cronus was the stumbling-block of the orthodox Greek, the jest of the sceptic, and the butt of the early Christian controversialists.
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