will renounce Rome, the Parcae shall spin for you different fates, you shall become wise, you shall be happy.  SEXTUS—­Why must I renounce the hope of a crown?  Can I not come to be a good king?  JUPITER—­No, Sextus; I know better what is needful for you.  If you go to Rome, you are lost.  Sextus, not being able to resolve upon so great a sacrifice, went forth from the temple, and abandoned himself to his fate.  Theodorus, the High Priest, who had been present at the dialogue between God and Sextus, addressed these words to Jupiter:  Your wisdom is to be revered, O great Ruler of the Gods.  You have convinced this man of his error; he must henceforth impute his unhappiness to his evil will; he has not a word to say.  But your faithful worshippers are astonished; they would fain wonder at your goodness as well as at your greatness:  it rested with you to give him a different will.  JUPITER—­Go to my daughter Pallas, she will inform you what I was bound to do.

414.  Theodorus journeyed to Athens:  he was bidden to lie down to sleep in the temple of the Goddess.  Dreaming, he found himself transported into an unknown country.  There stood a palace of unimaginable splendour and prodigious size.  The Goddess Pallas appeared at the gate, surrounded by rays of dazzling majesty.

          Qualisque videri
  Coelicolis et quanta solet.

She touched the face of Theodorus with an olive-branch, which she was holding in her hand.  And lo! he had become able to confront the divine radiancy of the daughter of Jupiter, and of all that she should show him.  Jupiter who loves you (she said to him) has commended you to me to be instructed.  You see here the palace of the fates, where I keep watch and ward.  Here are representations not only of that which happens but also of all that which is possible.  Jupiter, having surveyed them before the beginning of the existing world, classified the possibilities into worlds, and chose the best of all.  He comes sometimes to visit these places, to enjoy the pleasure of recapitulating things and of renewing his own choice, which cannot fail to please him.  I have only to speak, and we shall see a whole world that my father might have produced, wherein will be represented anything that can be asked of him; and in this way one may know also what would happen if any particular possibility should attain unto [371] existence.  And whenever the conditions are not determinate enough, there will be as many such worlds differing from one another as one shall wish, which will answer differently the same question, in as many ways as possible.  You learnt geometry in your youth, like all well-instructed Greeks.  You know therefore that when the conditions of a required point do not sufficiently determine it, and there is an infinite number of them, they all fall into what the geometricians call a locus, and this locus at least (which is often a line) will be determinate.  Thus you can picture to yourself an ordered succession