Creation order; Rom 1; Homer vs Fate; Euripides start

proper things. For what of the things around the creation is not done in order? And what of the things that are has not kept its own taxis, and all but cries out the taxiarch? And that it has been yoked under laws it shouts, and is administered by nods of the one strong to rule—I mean God. Therefore also the divine Paul: ‘For his invisible things,’ he says, ‘from creation of a world are clearly seen being understood by the things made, both his everlasting power and divinity, unto their being without defense; because having known God, they did not glorify him as God, but were made vain, and their unintelligent heart was darkened; saying to be wise they were made foolish.’ For how were they not made foolish counseling themselves and indeed also others to think some other things beside what holds rightly? And yet what ever would someone say to those swimming upon such wretched reasonings, the myth not even pleasing to the poets beside you yourselves? For it seemed well that the administrations of the things to be done have been hung not upon some others, but upon us ourselves. And at any rate Homer, in his own poems, said that your all-best and highest Zeus had dialogued with the other demons about Aegisthus’s adultery, and the penalty upon this: Ah me, how now mortals blame the gods! For from us they say evils are, yet they themselves also by their own recklessnesses have griefs beyond fate. For instead of which, he says, do some accuse the gods as having the evils from them, and do they not rather cry down their own sin, as sending them into calamities, and those beyond fate—that is, also beyond Fate, or what seems to Fate. Therefore if someone should choose to live through rightly, and to make the most well-counseling and fairest occupations in this life, he will walk upright and will swim through the terrible things, having as fruit of a right and undistorted judgment the not falling into evils; and the word is true. For it is upon us ourselves to look upon both—unto the good I mean and the opposite; and those having made in word what is born to be admired and the track unto uprightness will come to be in the beauty of virtue; yet those leaning aside unto the opposite, and having set before the better things what does injustice, themselves destroying their own life, would be caught as certain self-doers and terrible destroyers of their own head having been proven. And that it will lie upon us ourselves to look upon both, just as I said just now, and that having fallen back into pleasures we miss the hunt of the advantageous things, would become clear, another of the poets beside them shouting aloud—this was Euripides. For he was making a little woman upon the stage sick with the unbridled pleasure, then somehow he showed her philosophizing, and saying: Women of Troezen, who dwell this last forecourt of the Pelopian land,