The Natural History of Pliny, Volume 2 (of 6)

Chapter 90: CHAP. 48. (47.)—THE MAN WHOM THE GODS ORDERED TO BE WORSHIPPED DURING HIS LIFE-TIME; A REMARKABLE FLASH OF LIGHTNING.

By the Elder Pliny

Open in WeRead

Explore more books like this:

About This Book

The volume assembles an encyclopedic survey of the known world and its living inhabitants, moving from detailed regional geography and descriptions of seas, rivers, islands, and peoples to extended treatments of humanity, its generation, anatomy, and the origins and inventions of arts. Subsequent books catalog terrestrial animals—their habits, capture, and uses—followed by comprehensive observations on fish and marine creatures, their sizes and behaviors. Accounts mix naturalistic description, reported marvels, medicinal uses derived from animals, and travel and secondhand reports, organized as topical chapters intended as a practical compendium of natural and human phenomena.

CHAP. 48. (47.)—THE MAN WHOM THE GODS ORDERED TO BE WORSHIPPED DURING HIS LIFE-TIME; A REMARKABLE FLASH OF LIGHTNING.

While still surviving, and in full possession of his senses, by the command of the same oracle, and with the sanction of Jupiter, the supreme Father of the gods, Euthymus,1259 the pugilist, who had always, with one exception, been victorious in the Olympic games, was deified. He was a native of Locri, in Italy. I find that Callimachus,1260 considering it a more wonderful circumstance than any he had ever known, that the two statues which had been erected to him, one at Locri, and the other at Olympia, were struck by lightning on the same day, ordered sacrifices to be offered up to him, which was accordingly done, both during his life-time, and after his death. Nothing, indeed, has appeared to me so remarkable, as this mark of approval given by the gods.