Protrepticus (Butterworth translation)

by Clement of Alexandria

CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA

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EXHORTATION TO THE GREEKS

I

AMPHION of Thebes and Arion of Methymna were both minstrels, and both were renowned in story. They are celebrated in song to this day in the chorus of the Greeks; the one for having allured the fishes, and the other for having surrounded Thebes with walls by the power of music. Another, a Thracian, a cunning master of his art (he also is the subject of a Hellenic legend), tamed the wild beasts by the mere might of song; and transplanted trees—oaks—by music. I might tell you also the story of another, a brother to these—the subject of a myth, and a minstrel—Eunomos the Locrian and the Pythic grasshopper. A solemn Hellenic assembly had met at Pytho, to celebrate the death of the Pythic serpent, when Eunomos sang the reptile’s epitaph. Whether his ode was a hymn in praise of the serpent, or a dirge, I am not able to say. But there was a contest, and Eunomos was playing the lyre in the summer time: it was when the grasshoppers, warmed by the sun, were chirping beneath the leaves along the hills; but they were singing not to that dead dragon, but to God All-wise,—a lay unfettered by rule, better than the numbers of Eunomos. The Locrian breaks a string. The grasshopper sprang on the neck of the instrument, and sang on it as on a branch; and the minstrel, adapting his strain to the grasshopper’s song, made up for the want of the missing string. The grasshopper then was attracted by the song of Eunomos, as the fable represents, according to which also a brazen statue of Eunomos with his lyre, and the Locrian’s ally in the contest, was erected at Pytho. But of its own accord it flew to the lyre, and of its own accord sang, and was regarded by the Greeks as a musical performer.

How, let me ask, have you believed vain fables and supposed animals to be charmed by music; while Truth’s shining face alone, as would seem, appears to you disguised, and is looked on with incredulous eyes? And so Cithæron, and Helicon, and the mountains of the Odrysi, and the initiatory rites of the Thracians, mysteries of deceit, are hallowed and celebrated in hymns. For me, I am pained at such calamities as form the subjects of tragedy, though but myths; but by you the records of miseries are turned into dramatic compositions.

But the dramas and the raving poets, now quite intoxicated, let us crown with ivy; and distracted outright as they are, in Bacchic fashion, with the satyrs, and the frenzied rabble, and the rest of the demon crew, let us confine to Cithæron and Helicon, now antiquated.

But let us bring from above out of heaven, Truth, with Wisdom in all its brightness, and the sacred prophetic choir, down to the holy mount of God; and let Truth, darting her light to the most distant points, cast her rays all around on those that are involved in darkness, and deliver men from delusion, stretching out her very strong right hand, which is wisdom, for their salvation. And raising their eyes, and looking above, let them abandon Helicon and Cithæron, and take up their abode in Sion. “For out of Sion shall go forth the law, and the word of the LORD from Jerusalem,”—the celestial Word, the true athlete crowned in the theatre of the whole universe. What my Eunomos sings is not the measure of Terpander, nor that of Capito, nor the Phrygian, nor Lydian, nor Dorian, but the immortal measure of the new harmony which bears God’s name—the new, the Levitical song.

“Soother of pain, calmer of wrath, producing forgetfulness of all ills.”

Sweet and true is the charm of persuasion which blends with this strain.

In my opinion, therefore, our Thracian, Orpheus, and the Theban and the Methymnian too, are not worthy of the name of man, since they were deceivers. Under cover of music they have outraged human life, being influenced by daemons, through some artful sorcery, to compass man’s ruin. By commemorating deeds of violence in their religious rites, and by bringing stories of sorrow into worship,¹² they were the first to lead men by the hand to idolatry; yes, and with stocks and stones, that is to say, statues and pictures, to build up the stupidity of custom. By their chants and enchantments they have held captive in the lowest slavery that truly noble freedom which belongs to those who are citizens under heaven.

But far different is my minstrel, for He has come to bring to a speedy end the bitter slavery of the daemons that lord it over us; and by leading us back to the mild and kindly yoke of piety He calls once again to heaven those who have been cast down to earth. He at least is the only one who ever tamed the most intractable of all wild beasts—man: for he tamed birds, that is, flighty men; reptiles, that is, crafty men; lions, that is, passionate men; swine, that is, pleasure-loving men; wolves, that is, rapacious men. Men without understanding are stocks and stones; indeed a man steeped in ignorance is even more senseless than stones. As our witness let the prophetic voice, which shares in the song of truth, come forward, speaking words of He changes pity for those who waste away their lives in ignorance and folly,—“for God is able of these stones to raise up children unto Abraham.”¹³ And God, in compassion for the great dulness and the hardness of those whose hearts are petrified against the truth, did raise up out of those stones, that is, the Gentiles who trust in stones, a seed of piety sensitive to virtue. Again, in one place the words “offspring of vipers”¹⁴ are applied to certain venomous and deceitful hypocrites, who lie in wait against righteousness; yet if any even of these snakes chooses to repent, let him but follow the Word and he becomes a “man of God.”¹⁵ Others are figuratively called “wolves”¹⁶ clothed in sheepskins, by which is meant rapacious creatures in the forms of men. And all these most savage beasts, and all such stones, the heavenly song of itself transformed into men of gentleness. “For we, yea we also were aforetime foolish, disobedient, deceived, serving divers lusts and pleasures, living in malice and envy, hateful, hating one another,” as the apostolic writing says; “but when the kindness of God our Saviour, and His love toward man, appeared, not by works done in righteousness, which we did ourselves, but according to His mercy He saved us.”¹⁷

See how mighty is the new song! It has made men out of stones and men out of wild beasts. They who were otherwise dead, who had no share in the and real and true life, revived when they but heard the song. Furthermore, it is this which composed the universe entire creation into melodious order, and tuned into concert the discord of the elements, that the whole universe might be in harmony with it. The ocean it left flowing, yet has prevented it from encroaching upon the land; whereas the land, which was being carried away, it made firm, and fixed as a boundary to the sea. Aye, and it softened the rage of fire by air, as one might blend the Dorian mode with the Lydian¹⁸; and the biting coldness of air it tempered by the intermixture of fire, thus melodiously mingling these extreme notes of the universe. What is more, this pure song, the stay of the universe and the harmony of all things, stretching from the centre to the circumference and from the extremities to the centre, reduced this whole to harmony, not in accordance with Thracian music, which resembles that of Jubal,¹⁹ but in accordance with the fatherly purpose of God, which David earnestly sought. He who sprang from David and yet was before him, the Word of God, scorned those lifeless instruments of lyre and harp. By the power of the Holy Spirit He arranged in harmonious order this great world, yes, and the little world of man too, body and soul together; and on this many-voiced instrument of the universe He makes music to God, and sings to the human instrument. “For thou art my harp and my pipe and my temple”²⁰—my harp by reason of the music, my pipe the universe by reason of the breath of the Spirit, my temple by reason of the Word—God’s purpose being that the music should resound, the Spirit inspire, and the temple receive its Lord. Moreover, King David the harpist, whom we mentioned just above, urged us toward the truth and away from idols. So far was he from singing the praises of daemons that they were put to flight by him with the true music; and when Saul was possessed, David healed him merely by playing the harp.²¹ The Lord fashioned man a beautiful, breathing instrument, after His own image; and assuredly He Himself is an all-harmonious instrument of God, melodious and holy, the wisdom that is above this world, the heavenly Word.

What then is the purpose of this instrument, the Word of God, the Lord, and the New Song? To open the eyes of the blind, to unstop the ears of the deaf, and to lead the halt and erring into the way of righteousness; to reveal God to foolish men, to make an end of corruption, to vanquish death, to reconcile disobedient sons to the Father. The instrument of God is loving to men. The Lord pities, chastens, exhorts, admonishes, saves and guards us; and, over and above this, promises the kingdom of heaven as reward for our discipleship, while the only joy He has of us is that we are saved. For wickedness feeds upon the corruption of men; but truth, like the bee, does no harm to anything in the world, but takes delight only in the salvation of men. You have then God’s promise; you have His love to man: partake of His grace.

And do not suppose that my song of salvation is new in the same sense as an implement or a house. For it was “before the morning star”²²; and, “in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”²³ But error is old,and truth appears to be a new thing. Whether then the Phrygians are really proved to be ancient by the goats in the story²⁴; or the Arcadians by the poets who describe them as older than the moon; or, again, the Egyptians by those who dream that this land first brought to light both gods and men; still, not one of these nations existed before this world. But we were before the foundation of the world, we who, because we were destined to be in Him, were begotten beforehand by God. We are the rational images formed by God’s Word, or Reason, and we date from the beginning on account of our connexion with Him, because “the Word was in the beginning.”²⁵ Well, because the Word was from the first, He was and is the divine beginning of all things; but because He lately took a name,—the name consecrated of old and worthy of power, the Christ,—I have called Him a New Song.

The Word, then, that is the Christ, is the cause both of our being long ago (for He was in God) and of our well-being. This Word, who alone is both God and man, the cause of all our good, appeared but lately in His own person to men; from whom learning how to live rightly on earth, we are brought on our way to eternal life. For, in the words of that inspired apostle of the Lord, “the grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men, instructing us, to the intent that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly and righteously and godly in this present world, looking for the blessed hope and appearing of the glory of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ.”²⁶ This is the New Song, namely, the manifestation which has but now shined forth among us, of Him who was in the beginning, the pre-existent Word. Not long ago the pre-existent Saviour appeared on earth; He who exists in God²⁷ (because “the Word was with God”²⁵) appeared as our teacher; the Word appeared by whom all things have been created. He who gave us life in the beginning when as creator He formed us, taught us how to live rightly by appearing as our teacher, in order that hereafter as God He might supply us with life everlasting.

This was not the first time that He pitied us for our error. He did that from heaven from the beginning. But now by His appearing He has rescued us, when we were on the point of perishing. For the wicked, crawling wild beast makes slaves of men by his magical arts, and torments them even until now, exacting vengeance, as it seems to me, after the manner of barbarians, who are said to bind their captives to corpses until both rot together. Certain it is that wherever this wicked tyrant and serpent succeeds in making men his own from their birth, he rivets them to stocks, stones, statues and suchlike idols, by the miserable chain of daemon-worship; then he takes and buries them alive, as the saying goes, until they also, men and idols together, suffer corruption. On this account (for it is one and the same deceiver who in the beginning carried off Eve to death, and now does the like to the rest of mankind) our rescuer and helper is one also, namely, the Lord, who from the beginning revealed Himself through prophecy, but now invites us plainly to salvation.

Let us then, in obedience to the apostolic precept, flee from “the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the sons of disobedience.”²⁹ And let us take refuge with the Saviour, the Lord, who even now exhorts men to salvation, as He ever did, by wonders and signs in Egypt, and in the desert by the burning bush and the cloud that, through favour of His love, followed the Hebrews like a handmaid. By the fear that these wonders inspired He exhorted the hard-hearted; but afterwards, through all-wise Moses and truth-loving Isaiah and the whole company of the prophets. He converts to the Word³⁰ by more rational means those who have ears to hear. In some places He rebukes; in others He even threatens; some men He laments; for others He sings: just as a good doctor, in dealing with diseased bodies, uses poulticing for some, rubbing for others, and bathing for others; some he cuts with a knife, others he cauterizes, and in some cases he even amputates, if by any means he can restore the patient to health by removing some part or limb. So the Saviour uses many tones and many devices in working for the salvation of men. His threats are for warning; His rebukes for converting; His lamentation to show pity; His song to encourage. He speaks through a burning bush (for the men of old had need of signs and portents), and He strikes terror into men by fire, kindling the flame out of a cloudy pillar, as a token at the same time of grace and fear,—to the obedient light, to the disobedient fire. But since flesh is of more honour than a pillar or a bush, after those signs prophets utter their voice, the Lord Himself speaking in Isaiah, the Lord Himself in Elijah, the Lord Himself in the mouth of the prophets. As for you, however, if you do not trust the prophets, and if you suppose both the fire and having the men who saw it to be a legend, the Lord Himself shall speak to you, He “who being in the form of God did not count His equality with God as an opportunity for gain, but emptied Himself,”³¹ the God of compassion who is eager to save man. And the Word Himself now speaks to you plainly, putting to shame your unbelief, yes, I say, the Word of God speaks, having become man, in order that such as you may learn from man how it is even possible for man to become a god.

Then is it not monstrous, my friends, that, while God is ever exhorting us to virtue, we on our part shrink from accepting the benefit and put off our salvation? Do you not know that John also invites us to salvation and becomes wholly a voice of exhortation? Let us then inquire of him. “Who and whence art thou?”³² He will say he is not Elijah; he will deny that he is Christ; but he will confess, “a voice crying in the desert.”³³ Who then is John? Allow us to say, in a figure, that he is a voice of the Word, raising his cry of exhortation in the desert. What dost thou cry, O voice? “Tell us also.”³⁴ “Make straight the ways of the Lord.”³⁵ John is a forerunner, and the voice is a forerunner of the Word. It is a voice of encouragement that makes ready for the coming salvation, a voice that exhorts to a heavenly inheritance; and by reason of this voice, the barren and desolate is fruitless no longer.

It was this fruitfulness, I think, which the angel’s voice foretold. That voice was also a forerunner of the Lord, inasmuch as it brought good tidings to a barren woman,³⁶ as John did to the desert. This voice of the Word is therefore the cause of the barren woman being blest with child and of the desert bearing fruit. The two forerunning voices of the Lord, that of the angel and that of John, seem to me to speak darkly of the salvation laid up in store for us, namely that, after the manifestation of this Word, we should reap the fruit of productiveness, which is eternal life. Certainly the Scripture makes the whole matter plain by bringing together the two voices. For it says, “Let her hear that brings not forth; let her that is not in travail utter her voice; for more are the children of the desolate than of her that hath an husband.”³⁷ We are they to whom the angel brought the good tidings; we are they whom John exhorted to recognize the husbandman and to seek the husband. For He is one and the same, the husband of the barren woman and the husbandman of the desert. He who has filled both the barren woman and the desert with divine power. For since the woman of noble birth had many children, but was afterwards childless through unbelief,—that is, the Hebrew woman who had many children to begin with,—the barren woman³⁸ receives her husband and the desert its husbandman. So then by reason of the Word both become mothers, the desert of fruits and the woman of believing children; yet even now the words “barren” and “desert” remain for unbelievers.

In some such way as this John, the herald of the Word, summoned men to prepare for the presence of God, that is, of the Christ. And this was the hidden meaning of the dumbness of Zacharias, which lasted until the coming of the fruit which was forerunner of the Christ,³⁹—that the light of truth, the Word, should break the mystic silence of the dark prophetic sayings, by becoming good tidings. But as for you, if you long to see God truly, take part in purifications meet for Him, not of laurel leaves and fillets embellished with wool and purple, but yourself with righteousness, let your wreath be woven from the leaves of self-control, and seek diligently after Christ. “For I am the door,”⁴⁰ He says somewhere; which we who wish to perceive God must search out, in order that He may throw open wide for us the gates of heaven. For the gates of the Word are gates of reason,⁴¹ opened by the key of faith. “No man knoweth God, save the Son, and him to whom the Son revealeth Him.”⁴² And I know well that He who opens this door, hitherto shut, afterwards unveils what is within, and shows what could not have been discerned before, except we had entered through Christ, through whom alone comes the vision of God.

II

Do not therefore seek diligently after godless sanctuaries, nor after mouths of caverns full of jugglery,⁴³ nor the Thesprotian caldron, nor the Cirrhaean tripod, nor the Dodonian copper. As for the old stump honoured by the desert sands,⁴⁴ and the oracular shrine there gone to decay with the oak itself, abandon them both to the region of legends now grown old. The Castalian spring, at least, is all silent. So is the spring of Colophon; and the rest of the prophetic streams are likewise dead. Stripped of their absurd pretensions, though none too soon, they are at last thoroughly exposed; the waters have run dry together with the legends attached to them. Relate to me the utterly vain utterances⁴⁵ of that other form of divination,—I should rather say hallucination,⁴⁵—the oracles of Apollo, Clarian, Pythian and Didymean, and those of Amphiaraus and Amphilochus; and, if you will, devote to destruction along with them the soothsayers, augurs and interpreters of dreams. At the same time, take and place by the side of Pythian Apollo those who divine by flour, and by barley,⁴⁶ and the ventriloquists’⁴⁷ still held in honour among the multitude. Yes, and let the sanctuaries of Egypt and the Tuscan oracles of the dead be delivered over to darkness. Homes of hallucination in very truth they are, these schools of sophistry for unbelieving men, these gambling-dens of sheer delusion. Partners in this business of trickery are goats, trained for divination; and ravens, taught by men to give oracular responses to men.

But what if I were to recount the mysteries for you? I will not burlesque them, as Alcibiades is said to have done, but will thoroughly lay bare, in accordance with the principle of truth, the trickery they conceal; and as for your so-called gods themselves, to whom the mystic rites belong, I will display them on the stage of life, as it were, for the spectators of truth. The raving Dionysus is worshipped by Bacchants with orgies, in which they celebrate their sacred frenzy by a feast of raw flesh. Wreathed with snakes, they perform the distribution of portions of their victims, shouting the name of Eva,⁴⁸ that Eva through whom error entered into the world; and a consecrated snake is the emblem of the Bacchic orgies. At any rate, according to the correct Hebrew speech, the word “hevia” with an aspirate means the female snake.⁴⁹ Demeter and Persephone have come to be the subject of a mystic drama, and DemeterEleusis celebrates with torches the rape of the daughter and the sorrowful wandering of the mother.

Now it seems to me that the terms “orgy” and “mystery” must be derived, the former from wrath (orgē) of Demeter against Zeus,⁵⁰ and the “mystery” latter from the pollution (mysos) that took place in connexion with Dionysus.⁵¹ But even if they are named after a certain Myus of Attica, who according to Apollodorus was killed in hunting, I make no objection. Your mysteries have received the glory of funeral honours! You may also, in another way, suppose them to be hunting-stories (mytheria), since the letters correspond; for as surely as there are men who hunt wild beasts, so do legends like these hunt the rudest among Thracians, the silliest among Phrygians, and the daemon-fearers among Greeks. A curse then upon the man who started this deception for mankind, whether it be Dardanus, who introduced the mysteries of the Mother of the Gods; or Eëtion, who founded the Samothracian orgies and rites; or that Phrygian Midas, who learnt the artful deceit from Odrysus and then passed it on to his subjects. For I could never be beguiled by the claims of the islander Cinyras, of Cyprus, who had the audacity to transfer the lascivious orgies of Aphrodite from night to day, in his ambition to deify a harlot of his own country. Others say that it was Melampus the son of Amythaon who brought into Greece from Egypt the festivals of Demeter, that is, the story of her grief celebrated in hymns. These men I for my part would call originators of mischief, parents of godless legends and deadly daemon-worship, seeing that they implanted the mysteries in human life to be a seed of evil and corruption.

But now, (and high time too,) I will convict your orgies themselves of being full of deception and mysteries jugglery, and if you have been initiated you will smile the more at these legends you are wont to honour. I will tell openly the secret things, and will not shrink from speaking of what you are not ashamed to worship. There is, then, the “foam-born” “Cyprus-born” goddess, the darling of Cinyras. I mean Aphrodite, who received the name Philomēdes because she was born from the mēdea,⁵² those lustful members that were cut off from Uranus and after the separation did violence to the wave. See how lewd are the members from which so worthy an offspring is born! And in the rites which celebrate this pleasure of the sea, as a symbol of her birth, the gift of a cake of salt and a phallos is made to those who are initiated in the art of fornication; and the initiated bring their tribute of a coin to the goddess, as lovers do to a mistress.

The mysteries of Demeter commemorate the amorous embraces of Zeus with his mother Demeter, and the wrath of Demeter (I do not know what to call her for the future, mother or wife) on account of which she is said to have received the name Brimo⁵³; also the supplications of Zeus, the drink of bile, the tearing out the heart of the victims, and unspeakable obscenities. The same rites are performed in honour of Attis and Cybele and the Corybantes by the Phrygians, who have spread it abroad how that Zeus tore off the testicles of a ram, and then brought and flung them into the midst of Demeter’s lap, thus paying a sham penalty for his violent embrace by pretending that he had mutilated himself. If I go on further to quote the symbols of initiation into this mystery they will, I know, move you to laughter, even though you are in no laughing humour when your rites are being exposed. “I ate from the drum; I drank from the cymbal; I carried the sacred dish; I stole into the bridal chamber.”⁵⁴ Are not these symbols an outrage? Are not the mysteries a mockery? But what if I were to add the rest of the story? Demeter becomes pregnant; the Maiden grows up; and this Zeus who begat her has further intercourse, this time with Persephone herself, his own daughter, after his union with her mother Demeter. Totally forgetful of his former pollution Zeus becomes the ravisher as well as father of the maiden, meeting her under the form of a serpent, his true nature being thus revealed. At any rate, in the Sabazian mysteries the sign given to those who are initiated is “the god over the breast”; this is a serpent drawn over the breast of the votaries, a proof of the licentiousness of Zeus. Persephone also bears a child, which has the form of a bull. To be sure, we are told by a certain mythological poet that

The bull begets a snake, the snake a bull;
On hills the herdsman bears his mystic goad,—

the herdsman’s goad being, I think, a name for the wand which the Bacchants wreathe. Would you have me also tell you the story of Persephone gathering flowers, of her basket, and how she was seized by Hades, of the chasm that opened in the earth, and of the swine of Eubouleus that were swallowed up along with the two deities,⁵⁵ which is the reason given for the custom of casting swine into the sacred caverns at the festival of the Thesmophoria? This is the tale which the women celebrate at their various feasts in the city, Thesmophoria, Scirophoria, Arretophoria, where in different ways they work up into tragedy the rape of Persephone.

The mysteries of Dionysus are of a perfectly savage character. He was yet a child, and the Curetes were dancing around him with warlike movement, when the Titans stealthily drew near. First they beguiled him with childish toys, and then,—these very Titans —tore him to pieces, though he was but an infant. Orpheus of Thrace, the poet of the Initiation, speaks of the

Top, wheel and jointed dolls, with beauteous fruit
Of gold from the clear-voiced Hesperides.

And it is worth while to quote the worthless⁵⁶ symbols ot this rite of yours in order to excite condemnation: the knuckle-bone, the ball, the spinning-top, apples, wheel, mirror, fleece! Now Athena made off with the heart of Dionysus, and received the name Pallas from its palpitating.⁵⁷ But the Titans, they who tore him to pieces, placed a caldron upon a tripod, and casting the limbs of Dionysus into it first boiled them down; then, piercing them with spits, they “held them over Hephaestus.”⁵⁸ Later on Zeus appeared; perhaps, since he was a god, because he smelt the steam of the flesh that was cooking, which your gods admit they “receive as their portion.”⁵⁹ He plagues the Titans with thunder, and entrusts the limbs of Dionysus to his son Apollo for burial. In obedience to Zeus, Apollo carries the mutilated corpse to Parnassus and lays it to rest.

If you would like a vision of the Corybantic orgies also, this is the story. Two of the Corybantes slew a third one, who was their brother, covered the head of the corpse with a purple cloak, and then wreathed and buried it, bearing it upon a brazen shield to the skirts of Mount Olympus. Here we see what the mysteries are, in one word, murders and burials! The priests of these mysteries, whom such as are interested in them call “Presidents of the Princes’ rites,”⁶⁰ add a portent to the dismal tale. They forbid wild celery, root and all, to be placed on the table, for they actually believe that wild celery grows out of the blood that flowed from the murdered brother.⁶¹ It is a similar custom, of course, that is observed by the women who celebrate the Thesmophoria. They are careful not to eat any pomegranate seeds which fall to the ground, being of opinion that pomegranates spring from the drops of Dionysus’ blood. The Corybantes are also called by the name Cabeiri, which proclaims the rite of the Cabeiri. For this very pair of fratricides got possession of the chest in which the virilia of Dionysus were deposited, and brought it to Tuscany, traders in glorious wares! There they sojourned, being exiles, and communicated their precious teaching of piety, the virilia and the chest, to Tuscans for purposes of worship. For this reason not unnaturally some wish to call Dionysus Attis, because he was mutilated.

Yet how can we wonder if Tuscans, who are barbarians, are thus consecrated to base passions, when Athenians and the rest of Greece—I blush even to speak of it—possess that shameful tale about Demeter? It tells how Demeter, wandering through Eleusis, which is a part of Attica, in search of her daughter the Maiden,⁶² becomes exhausted and sits down at a well in deep distress. This display of grief is forbidden, up to the present day, to those who are initiated, lest the worshippers should seem to imitate the goddess in her sorrow. At that time Eleusis was inhabited by aborigines, whose names were Baubo, Dysaules, Triptolemus, and also Eumolpus and Eubouleus. Triptolemus was a herdsman, Eumolpus a shepherd, and Eubouieus a swineherd. These were progenitors of the Eumolpidae and of the Heralds, who form the priestly clan⁶³ at Athens. But to continue; for I will not forbear to tell the rest of the story. Baubo, having received Demeter as a guest, offers her a draught of wine and meal.⁶⁴ She declines to take it, being unwilling to drink on account of her mourning. Baubo is deeply hurt, thinking she has been slighted, and thereupon uncovers her secret parts and exhibits them to the goddess. Demeter is pleased at the sight, and now at last receives the draught,—delighted with the spectacle! These are the secret mysteries of the Athenians! These are also the subjects of Orpheus’ poems. I will quote you the very lines of Orpheus, in order that you may have the originator of the mysteries as witness of their shamelessness:

This said, she drew aside her robes, and showed
A sight of shame; child Iacchus was there,
And laughing, plunged his hand below her breasts.
Then smiled the goddess, in her heart she smiled,
And drank the draught from out the glancing cup.

And the formula of the Eleusinian mysteries is as follows: “I fasted; I drank the draught; I took from the chest; having done my task,⁶⁵ I placed in the basket, and from the basket into the chest.” Beautiful sights indeed, and fit for a goddess! Yes, such rites are meet for night and torch fires, and for the “great-hearted”—I should rather say empty-headed—people of the Erechtheidae,⁶⁶ with the rest of the Greeks as well, “whom after death there await such things as they little expect.” Against whom does Heracleitus of Ephesus utter this prophecy? Against “night-roamers, magicians, Bacchants, Lenaean revellers and devotees of the mysteries.” These are the people whom he threatens with the penalties that follow death; for these he prophesies the fire. “For in unholy fashion are they initiated into the mysteries customary among men.”

The mysteries, then, are mere custom and vain and it is a deceit of the serpent that men worship when, with spurious piety, they turn towards these sacred initiations that are really profanities, and solemn rites that are without sanctity. Consider, too, the contents of the mystic chests⁶⁷; for I must strip bare their holy things and utter the unspeakable. Are they not sesame cakes, pyramid and spherical cakes, cakes with many navels, also balls of salt and a serpent, the mystic sign of Dionysus Bassareus? Are they not also pomegranates, fig branches, fennel stalks, ivy leaves, round cakes and poppies? These are their holy things! In addition, there are the unutterable symbols of Gē Themis,⁶⁸ marjoram, a lamp, a sword, and a woman’s comb, which is a euphemistic expression used in the mysteries for a woman’s secret parts. What manifest shamelessness! Formerly night, which drew a veil over the pleasures of temperate men, was a time for silence. But now, when night is for those who are being initiated a temptation to licentiousness, talk abounds, and the torch-fires convict unbridled passions. Quench the fire, thou priest. Shrink from the flaming brands, torchbearer. The light convicts your Iacchus. Suffer night to hide the mysteries. Let the orgies be honoured by darkness. The fire is not acting a part; to convict and to punish is its duty.⁶⁹

These are the mysteries of the atheists.⁷⁰ And I am right in branding as atheists men who are ignorant of the true God, but shamelessly worship a child being torn to pieces by Titans, a poor grief-stricken woman, and parts of the body which, from a sense of shame, are truly too sacred to speak of. It is a twofold atheism in which they are entangled; first, the atheism of being ignorant of God (since they do not recognize the true God); and then this second error, of believing in the existence of beings that have no existence, and calling by the name of gods those who are not really gods,—nay more, who do not even exist, but have only got the name. No doubt this is also the reason why the Apostle convicts us, when he says, “And ye were strangers from the covenants of the promise, being without hope and atheists in the world.”⁷¹

Blessings be upon the Scythian king, whoever he was. When a countryman of his own was imitating among the Scythians the rite of the Mother of the Gods as practised at Cyzicus, by beating a drum and clanging a cymbal, and by having images of the goddess suspended from his neck after the manner of a priest of Cybele,⁷² this king slew him with an arrow,⁷³ on the ground that the man, having been deprived of his own virility in Greece, was now communicating the effeminate disease to his fellow Scythians. All this—for I must not in the least conceal what I think—makes me amazed how the term atheist has been applied to Euhemerus of Acragas, Nicanor of Cyprus, Diagoras and Hippo of Melps, with that Cyrenian named Theodorus and a good many others besides, men who lived sensible lives and discerned more acutely, I imagine, than the rest of mankind the error connected with these gods. Even if they did not perceive the truth itself, they at least suspected the error; and this suspicion is a living spark of wisdom, and no small one, which grows up like a seed into truth. One of them thus directs the Egyptians: “If you believe they are gods, do not lament them, nor beat the breast; but if you mourn for them, no longer consider these beings to be gods.”⁷⁴ Another, having taken hold of a Heracles made from a log of wood—he happened, likely enough, to be cooking something at home—said; “Come, Heracles, now is your time to undertake this thirteenth labour for me, as you did the twelve for Eurystheus, and prepare Diagoras his dish!” Then he put him into the fire like a log.

It appears then that atheism and daemon-worship are the extreme points of stupidity, from which we must earnestly endeavour to keep ourselves apart. Do you not see Moses, the sacred interpreter⁷⁵ of the truth, ordering that no eunuch or mutilated man shall enter the assembly, nor the son of a harlot?⁷⁶ By the first two expressions he refers in a figure to the atheistic manner of life, which has been deprived of divine power and fruitfulness; by the third and last, to the man who lays claim to many gods, falsely so called, in place of the only real God; just as the son of a harlot lays claim to many fathers, through ignorance of his true father. But there was of old implanted in man a certain fellowship with heaven, which, though darkened through ignorance, yet at times leaps suddenly out of the darkness and shines forth. Take for instance the well-known lines in which someone has said,

Seest thou this boundless firmament on high,
Whose arms enfold the earth in soft embrace?⁷⁷

and these,

O stay of earth, that hast thy seat above,
Whoe’er thou art, by guessing scarce discerned;⁷⁸

and all the other similar things which the sons of the poets sing.

But opinions that are mistaken and deviate from the right—deadly opinions, in very truth—turned aside man, the heavenly plant,⁷⁹ from a heavenly manner of life, and stretched him upon earth, by inducing him to give heed to things formed out of earth. Some men were deceived from the first about the spectacle of the heavens. Trusting solely to sight, they gazed at the movements of the heavenly bodies, and in wonder deified them, giving them the name of gods from their running motion.⁸⁰ Hence they worshipped the sun, as Indians do, and the moon, as Phrygians do. Others, when gathering the fruits of plants that spring from the earth, called the corn Demeter, as the Athenians, and the vine Dionysus, as the Thebans. Others, after reflecting upon the punishments of evil-doing, make gods out of their experiences of retribution, worshipping the very calamities. This is the source from which the Erinyes and Eumenides, goddesses of expiation and vengeance, as well as the Alastors,⁸¹ have been fashioned by the poets of the stage. Even certain of the philosophers themselves, following the men of poetry, came to represent as deities the types of your emotions, such as Fear, Love, Joy, Hope; just as, of course, Epimenides did of old, when he set up altars in Athens to Insolence and Shamelessness. Some gods arise from the mere circumstances of life deified in men’s eyes and fashioned in bodily form; such are the Athenian deities. Right, the Spinner, the Giver of lots, the Inflexible One, Destiny, Growth and Abundance. There is a sixth way of introducing deception and of procuring gods, according to which men reckon them to be twelve in number, of whose genealogy Hesiod sings his own story, and Homer, too, has much to say about them. Finally (for these ways of error are seven in all), remains that which arises from the divine beneficence shown towards men; for, since men did not understand that it was God who benefited them, they invented certain saviours, the Twin Brothers, Heracles averter of evils, and Asclepius the doctor.

These then are the slippery and harmful paths which lead away from the truth, dragging man down from heaven and overturning him into the pit. But I wish to display to you at close quarters the gods themselves, showing what their characters are, and whether they really exist; in order that at last you may cease from error and run back again to heaven. “For we too were once children of wrath, as also the rest; but God being rich in mercy, through His great love wherewith He loved us, when we were already dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ.”⁸² For the Word is living, and he who has been buried with Christ is exalted together with God. They who are still unbelieving are called “children of wrath,” since they are being reared for wrath. We, on the contrary, are no longer creatures of wrath, for we have been torn away from error and are hastening towards the truth. Thus we who were once sons of lawlessness have now become sons of God thanks to the love of the Word for man. But you are they whom even your own poet, Empedocles of Acragas, points to in these lines:

So then, by grievous miseries distraught.
Ye ne’er shall rest your mind from woeful pains.⁸³

Now the most part of the stories about your gods are legends and fictions. But as many as are held to be real events are the records of base men who led dissolute lives:

But ye in pride and madness walk; ye left

The true, straight path, and chose the way through thorns

And stakes. Why err, ye mortals? Cease, vain men!

Forsake dark night, and cleave unto the light.⁸⁴

This is what the prophetic and poetic Sibyl⁸⁵ enjoins on us. And truth, too, does the same, when she strips these dreadful and terrifying masks from the crowd of gods, and adduces certain similarities of name to prove the absurdity of your rash opinions.

For example, there are some who record three gods of the name of Zeus⁸⁶: one in Arcadia, the son of Aether, the other two being sons of Cronus, the one in Crete, the other again in Arcadia. Some assume five Athenas: the daughter of Hephaestus, who is the Athenian; the daughter of Neilus, who is the Egyptian⁸⁷; a third, the daughter of Cronus, who is the discoverer of war; a fourth, the daughter of Zeus, to whom Messenians give the title Coryphasia after her mother. Above all, there is the child of Pallas and Titanis daughter of Oceanus. This is the one who impiously slaughtered her father and is arrayed in the paternal skin, as though it were a fleece.⁸⁸ Further, with regard to Apollo, Aristotle enumerates, first, the son of Hephaestus and Athena (which puts an end to Athena’s virginity); secondly, the son of Cyrbas in Crete; thirdly, the son of Zeus; and fourthly, the Arcadian, the son of Silenus, called among the Arcadians Nomius.⁸⁹ In addition to these he reckons the Libyan, the son of Ammon; and Didymus the grammarian adds a sixth, the son of Magnes. And how many Apollos are there at the present time? A countless host, all mortal and perishable men, who have been called by similar names to the deities we have just mentioned. And what if I were to tell you of the many gods named Asclepius, or of every Hermes that is enumerated, or of every Hephaestus that occurs in your mythology? Shall I not seem to be needlessly drowning your ears by the number of their names? But the lands they dwelt in, the arts they practised, the records of their lives, yes, and their very tombs, prove conclusively that they were men.

There is for example Ares, who is honoured, so far as that is possible, in the poets—

Ares, thou plague of men, bloodguilty one, stormer of cities;⁹⁰

this fickle and implacable god was, according to Epicharmus, a Spartan. But Sophocles knows him for a Thracian, others for an Arcadian. This is the god of whom Homer says that he was bound in chains for a space of thirteen months:

Such was the lot of Ares, when Otus and strong Ephialtes,

Sons of Aloeus, seized him, and chained his limbs in strong fetters;

And in a dungeon of brass for thirteen months he lay captive.⁹¹

Blessings be upon the Carians, who sacrifice dogs to him! May Scythians never cease offering asses, as Apollodorus says they do, and Callimachus too, in the following verse:

In northern lands ass-sacrifices rise
When Phoebus first appears.⁹²

Elsewhere the same writer says:

Rich sacrifice of asses Phoebus loves,⁹³

Hephaestus, whom Zeus cast out of Olympus, “from the threshold of heaven,”⁹⁴ fell to earth in Lemnos and worked as a smith. He was lame in both feet, “but his slender legs moved quickly under him.”⁹⁵ You have not only a smith among the gods, but a doctor as well. The doctor was fond of money, and his name was Asclepius. I will quote your own poet, Pindar the Boeotian:

Gold was his ruin; it shone in his hands,
Splendid reward for a deed of skill;
Lo! from the arm of Zeus on high
Darted the gleaming bolt for ill;
Snatched from the man his new-found breath.
Whelmed the god in a mortal’s death.⁹⁶

And Euripides says:

’Twas due to Zeus; he slew Asclepius,
My son,—with lightning flame that pierced his heart.⁹⁷

This god, then, killed by the thunderbolt, lies on the frontier of Cynosuris. But Philochorus says that in Tenos Poseidon was honoured as a doctor. He adds that Sicily was placed upon Cronus, and there he lies buried. Both Patrocles of Thurium and the younger Sophocles relate the story of the Twin Brothers in some of their tragedies. These Brothers were simply two men, subject to death, if Homer’s authority is sufficient for the statement,

they ere now by life-giving earth were enfolded.

There in far Lacedaemon, the well-loved land of their fathers.⁹⁸

Let the author of the Cyprian verses⁹⁹ also come forward:

Castor is mortal man, and death as his fate is appointed;

But immortal is great Polydeuces, offspring of Ares.

This last line is a poetic falsehood. But Homer is more worthy of credence than this poet in what he said about both the Brothers. In addition, he has proved Heracles to be a shade. For to him “Heracles, privy to great deeds,” is simply “a man.”¹⁰⁰ Heracles, then, is known to be mortal man even by Homer. Hieronymus the philosopher sketches his bodily characteristics also,—small stature, bristling hair, great strength. Dicaearchus adds that he was slim, sinewy, dark, with hooked nose, bright gleaming eyes and long, straight hair. This Heracles, after a life of fifty-two years, ended his days, and his obsequies were celebrated in the pyre on Mount Oeta.

As for the Muses, Alcman derives their origin from Zeus and Mnemosyne, and the rest of the poets and prose-writers deify and worship them; to such an extent that whole cities dedicate “temples of the Muses” in their honour. But these were Mysian serving-maids purchased by Megaclo, the daughter of Macar. Now Macar, who was king over the Lesbians, was constantly quarrelling with his wife, and Megaclo was grieved for her mother’s sake. How could she be otherwise? So she bought these Mysian serving-maids, to the correct number, and pronounced their names Moisai, according to the Aeolic dialect. She had them taught to sing of ancient deeds, and to play the lyre in melodious accompaniment; and they, by their continual playing and the spell of their beautiful singing, were wont to soothe Macar and rid him of his anger. As a thank-offering for these services Megaclo erected, on her mother’s behalf, bronze statues of the maids, and commanded that they should be honoured in all the temples. Such is the origin of the Muses. The account of them is found in Myrsilus of Lesbos.

Now listen to the loves of these gods of yours; to extraordinary tales of their incontinence; to their wounds, imprisonments, fits of laughter, conflicts, and periods of servitude. Listen, too, to their revels, their embraces, their tears, passions and dissolute pleasures. Call Poseidon, and the band of maidens corrupted by him, Amphitrite, Amymone, Alope, Melanippe, Alcyone, Hippothoe, Chione and the thousands of others. Yet in spite of this great number, the passions of your Poseidon were still unsatisfied. Call Apollo, too. He is Phoebus, a holy prophet and good counsellor! But this is not the opinion of Sterope, or Aethusa, or Arsinoe, or Zeuxippe, or Prothoe, or Marpessa, or Hypsipyle. For Daphne was the only one who escaped the prophet and his corruption. Above all, let Zeus come too, he who is, according to your account, “father of gods and men.”¹⁰¹ So completely was he given over to lust, that every woman not only excited his desire, but became a victim of it. Why, he would take his fill of women no less than the buck of the Thmuitans¹⁰² does of she-goats. I am astonished at these verses of yours, Homer:

Thus spake the son of Cronus, and nodded assent with his eyebrows;

Lo! the ambrosial locks of the king flowed waving around him

Down from his deathless head; and great Olympus was shaken.¹⁰³

It is a majestic Zeus that you portray. Homer; and you invest him with a nod that is held in honour. Yet, my good sir, if you but let him catch a glimpse of a woman’s girdle, even Zeus is exposed and his locks are put to shame. What a pitch of licentiousness did this great Zeus reach when he spent so many nights in pleasure with Alcmene! Nay, not even the nine nights¹⁰⁴ were a long period for this debauchee,—indeed, a whole lifetime was short for his incontinence,—especially when the purpose was that he might beget for us the god whose work it is to avert evils. Heracles is the son of Zeus, begotten in this long night. And a true son he is; for long and weary as the time was in which he accomplished his twelve labours, yet in a single night he corrupted the fifty daughters of Thestius, becoming at once bridegroom and adulterer to all these maidens. Not without reason, then, do the poets dub him “abandoned” and “doer of evil deeds.”¹⁰⁵ It would be a long story to relate his varied adulteries and his corruptions of boys. For your gods did not abstain even from boys. One loved Hylas, another Hyacinthus, another Pelops, another Chrysippus, another Ganymedes. These are the gods your wives are to worship! Such they must pray for their own husbands to be, similar models of virtue,—that they may be like the gods by aspiring after equally high ideals! Let these be they whom your boys are trained to reverence, in order that they may grow to manhood with the gods ever before them as a manifest pattern of fornication!

But perhaps in the case of the gods, it is the males only who rush eagerly after sexual delights, while

Each in her home for shame the lady goddesses rested,¹⁰⁶

as Homer says, because as goddesses they modestly shrank from the sight of Aphrodite taken in adultery. Yet these are more passionately given to licentiousness, being fast bound in adultery; as, for instance, Eos with Tithonus, Selene with Endymion, Nereis with Aeacus, Thetis with Peleus, Demeter with Iasion and Persephone with Adonis. Aphrodite, after having been put to shame for her love of Ares, courted Cinyras, married Anchises, entrapped Phaethon and loved Adonis. She, too, entered into a rivalry with the “goddess of the large eyes,”¹⁰⁷ in which, for the sake of an apple, the goddesses stripped and presented themselves naked to the shepherd,¹⁰⁸ to see whether he would pronounce one of them beautiful.

Let us now proceed briefly to review the contests. and let us put an end to these solemn assemblages at tombs, the Isthmian, Nemean, Pythian, and, above all, the Olympian games. At Pytho worship is paid to the Pythian serpent,¹⁰⁹ and the assembly held in honour of this snake is entitled Pythian. At the Isthmus the sea cast up a miserable carcass, and the Isthmian games are lamentations for Melicertes. At Nemea another, a child Archemorus, lies buried, and it is the celebrations held at the grave of this child that are called by the name Nemean. And Pisa,—mark it, ye Panhellenic peoples!—your Pisa is the tomb of a Phrygian charioteer, and the libations poured out for Pelops, which constitute the Olympian festivities, are appropriated by the Zeus of Pheidias. So it seems that the contests, being held in honour of the dead, were of the nature of mysteries, just as also the oracles were; and both have become public institutions. But the mysteries at Agra and those in Halimus of Attica¹¹⁰ have been confined to Athens; on the other hand, the contests are now a world-wide disgrace, as are also the phalloi consecrated to Dionysus, from the infection of evil which they have spread over human life.

This is the origin of these phalloi. Dionysus was anxious to descend into Hades, but did not know the way. Thereupon a certain man, Prosymnus by name, promises to tell him; though not without reward. The reward was not a seemly one, though to Dionysus it was seemly enough. It was a favour of lust, this reward which Dionysus was asked for. The god is willing to grant the request; and so he promises, in the event of his return, to fulfil the wish of Prosymnus, confirming the promise with an oath. Having learnt the way he set out, and came back again. He does not find Prosymnus, for he was dead. In fulfilment of the vow to his lover Dionysus hastens to the tomb and indulges his unnatural lust. Cutting off a branch from a fig-tree which was at hand, he shaped it into the likeness of a phallos, and then made a show of fulfilling his promise to the dead man. As a mystic memorial of this passion phalloi are set up to Dionysus in cities. “For if it were not to Dionysus that they held solemn procession and sang the phallic hymn, they would be acting most shamefully,” says Heracleitus; “and Hades is the same as Dionysus, in whose honour they go mad and keep the Lenaean feast,”¹¹¹ not so much, I think, for the sake of bodily intoxication as for the shameful display of licentiousness.

It would seem natural, therefore, for gods like these of yours to be slaves, since they have become slaves of their passions. What is more, even before the time of the Helots, as they were called, among the Lacedaemonians, Apollo bowed beneath the yoke of slavery to Admetus in Pherae, and Heracles to Omphale in Sardis. Poseidon and Apollo were serfs to Laomedon, Apollo, like a worthless servant, not having been able, I suppose, to obtain the gift of freedom from his former master. It was then that these two gods built the walls of Ilium for their Phrygian lord. Homer is not ashamed to speak of Athena lighting the way for Odysseus, “holding a golden lamp”¹¹² in her hands. We read of Aphrodite, how, like a wanton hussy, she brought the stool for Helen, and placed it in front of her paramour, in order that Helen might entice him to her arms.¹¹³ Panyasis, too, relates in addition very many other instances of gods becoming servants to men. He writes in this way;—

Demeter bore the yoke; Hephaestus too;
Poseidon; and Apollo, silver-bowed,
One year endured to serve with mortal man;
Likewise strong Ares, by his sire constrained,¹¹⁴

—and so on.

As a natural consequence, these amorous and passionate gods of yours are brought before us as subject to every sort of human emotion. “For truly mortal flesh is theirs.”¹¹⁵ Homer gives evidence of this, when in precise terms he introduces Aphrodite uttering a loud and shrill cry over her wound;¹¹⁶ and when he tells how the arch-warrior himself, Ares, was pierced in the flank by Diomedes.¹¹⁷ Polemon says that Athena too was wounded by Ornytus¹¹⁸; yes, and even Hades was struck with an arrow by Heracles, according to Homer;¹¹⁹ and Panyasis relates the same of Helius, This same Panyasis further relates that Hera, the goddess of marriage, was wounded by the same Heracles, “in sandy Pylos.”¹²⁰ Sosibius says that Heracles himself was struck in the hand by the sons of Hippocoon.¹²¹ If there are wounds there is also blood; for the “ichor” of the poets is a more disgusting thing even than blood, the word ichor meaning putrefaction of the blood.¹²² It is necessary, therefore, to supply the gods with attendance and nourishment, of which they are in need; so they have feasts, carousings, bursts of bodily laughter and acts of sexual intercourse, whereas if they were immortal, and in need of nothing, and untouched by age, they would not partake of the pleasures of human love, nor beget children, nor even go to sleep. Zeus himself shared a human table among the Ethiopians,¹²³ and an inhuman and unlawful table when feasting with Lycaon the Arcadian; at least, he glutted himself with human flesh. Not wilfully, however, for the god was unaware that, as it appears, his host Lycaon the Arcadian set before him, as a dainty dish, his own child, Nyctimus by name, whom he had slaughtered.¹²⁴ What a fine Zeus he is, the diviner, the protector of guests, the hearer of suppliants, the gracious, the author of all oracles, the avenger of crime! Rather he ought to be called the unjust, the unrestrained, the lawless, the unholy, the inhuman, the violent, the seducer, the adulterer, the wanton lover. Still, there was life about him in those days, when he was all this, when he was a man; but by this time even your legends appear to me to have grown old. Zeus is no longer a snake, nor a swan, nor an eagle, nor an amorous man. He is not a god who flies, or corrupts boys, or kisses, or ravishes; and yet there are still many beautiful women left, fairer even than Leda and nearer their prime than Semele, and lads more blooming and more refined than the Phrygian herdsman.¹²⁵ Where is now that famous eagle? Where is the swan? Where is Zeus himself? He has grown old, wings and all. For you may be sure he is not repentant because of his love affairs, nor is he training himself to live a sober life. See, the legend is laid bare. Leda is dead; the swan is dead; the eagle is dead. Search for your Zeug> Scour not heaven, but earth. Callimachus the Cretan, in whose land he lies buried, will tell you in his hymns:

for a tomb, O Prince, did the Cretans
Fashion for thee.¹²⁶

Yes, Zeus is dead (take it not to heart), like Leda, like the swan, Hke the eagle, like the amorous man, like the snake.

But it is clear that even the daemon-worshippers themselves are coming to understand, though against their will, the error about the gods; for

Not from the ancient oak nor rock do they take their their own beginning.¹²⁷

No; they are of the race of men, though very shortly they will be found to be nothing but oaks and rocks.¹²⁸ There is a Zeus Agamemnon¹²⁹ honoured at Sparta, according to Staphylus¹³⁰; and Phanocles, in his book entitled Loves, or Fair Youths, says that Agamemnon the king of the Greeks set up a temple to Aphrodite Argynnus, in honour of Argynnus whom he loved.¹³¹ Arcadians worship an Artemis called “the goddess who is hanged,” as Callimachus says in his Causes¹³²; and at Methymna another, an Artemis Condylitis, is honoured.¹³³ There is also another, a “gouty” Artemis, with a shrine in Laconia, as Sosibius says.¹³⁴ Polemon knows a statue of “yawning” Apollo; and another, too, of Apollo “the epicure,” honoured in Elis.¹³⁵ These Eleans sacrifice to Zeus “averter of flies,”¹³⁶ and the Romans to Heracles of the same title, as well as to “Fever” and “Fear” which they even enroll among the companions of Heracles. I pass by the Argives; Aphrodite the “grave-robber” is worshipped by them, as well as by the Laconians. Furthermore, Spartans venerate Artemis Chelytis or the “coughing” Artemis, since the verb corresponding to Chelytis is their word for “to cough.”

Do you think that the examples which I am adducing are brought to you from some improper source? Why, it seems as if you do not recognize writers your own authors, whom I call as witnesses against your unbelief. Alas for you! They have filled your whole life with godless foolery, until life has become truly intolerable. Tell me, is there not a “bald” Zeus honoured in Argos, and another, an “avenger,” in Cyprus? Do not Argives sacrifice to Aphrodite divaricatiix, Athenians to her as “courtesan,” and Syracusans to her “of the beautiful buttocks,” whom the poet Nicander¹³⁷ has somewhere called “of the beautiful rump”? I will be silent about Dionysus choiropsalas. The Sicyonians worship this Dionysus as the god who presides over the woman’s secret parts; thus they reverence the originator of licentiousness, as overseer of what is shameful. Such, then, is the character of the Greek gods; such, too, are the worshippers, who make a mockery of the divine, or rather, who mock and insult themselves. How much better are Egyptians, when in cities and villages they hold in great honour the irrational animals, than Greeks who worship such gods as these? For though the Egyptian gods are beasts, still they are not adulterous, they are not lewd, and not one of them seeks for pleasure contrary to its own nature. But as for the character of the Greek gods, what need is there to say more? They have been sufficiently exposed.

Egyptians, however, whom I mentioned just now, are divided in the matter of their religious cults. The people of Syene worship the fish phagrus; the inhabitants of Elephantine another fish, the maeotes; the people of Oxyrhynchus also worship a fish, that which bears the name of their land. Further, the people of Heracleopolis worship the ichneumon; of Sais and Thebes, the sheep; of Lycopolis, the wolf; of Cynopolis, the dog; of Memphis, the bull Apis¹³⁸; of Mendes, the goat.¹³⁹ But as for you, who are in every way better than Egyptians,—I shrink from calling you worse—you who never let a day pass without laughing at the Egyptians, what is your attitude with regard to the irrational animals? The Thessalians among you give honour to storks by reason of old custom; Thebans to weasels on account of the birth of Heracles.¹⁴⁰ What else of Thessalians? They are reported to worship ants, because they have been taught that Zeus, in the likeness of an ant, had intercourse with Eurymedusa the daughter of Cletor and begat Myrmidon.¹⁴¹ Polemon relates that the dwellers in the Troad worship the local mice (which they call sminthoi), because these used to gnaw through their enemies’ bowstrings¹⁴²; and they named Apollo ‘Smintheus’ after these mice.¹⁴³ Heracleides, in his work on The Foimding of Temples in Acarnania, says that on the promontory of Actium, where stands the temple of Apollo of Actium, a preliminary sacrifice of an ox is made to the flies.¹⁴⁴ Nor shall I forget the Samians, who, as Euphorion says, worship the sheep;¹⁴⁵ no, nor yet the Syrian inhabitants of Phoenicia, some of whom worship doves, and others fishes,¹⁴⁶ as extravagantly as the Eleans worship Zeus.

Very well! since they whom you serve are not gods, I am resolved to make a fresh examination to see whether it is true that they are daemons, and should be enrolled, as you say, in this second rank of divinities. For if they really are daemons, they are greedy and foul ones. We can discover perfectly clear examples of daemons of local origin who glean Examples of honour in cities, as Menedemus among the Cythnians, daemons or Callistagoras among the Tenians, Anius among heroes the Delians and Astrabacus among the Laconians.¹⁴⁷ Honour is paid also at Phalerum to a certain hero “at the stern,”¹⁴⁸ and the Pythian prophetess prescribed that the Plataeans should sacrifice to Androcrates, Democrates, Cyclaeus and Leucon when the struggles with the Medes were at their height.¹⁴⁹ And the man who is able to make even a slight investigation can get a view of very many other daemons;

For thrice ten thousand dwell on mother earth.
Immortal daemons, guards of mortal men.¹⁵⁰

Who are these guardians, thou Boeotian bard? Do not refuse to tell us. Or is it clear that they are these whom I have just mentioned, and others more honoured than they, namely the great daemons, Apollo, Artemis, Leto, Demeter, the Maiden, Pluto, Heracles, and Zeus himself? But it is not to prevent us from running away that they guard us, poet of Ascra! Perhaps it is to prevent us from sinning, seeing that they, to be sure, have had no experience of sins. Here indeed we may fitly utter the proverbial line,

The father warns his child but not himself.¹⁵¹

Yet if, after all, they really are guardians, they are not moved by feelings of good will towards us; but, being intent upon your destruction, they beset human life after the manner of flatterers, allured by the sacrificial smoke. In one place the daemons themselves admit this gluttony of theirs, when they say,

Wine and odorous steam; for that we receive as our portion.¹⁵²

If Egyptian gods, such as cats and weasels, were to be endowed with speech, what other cry are they likely to give forth than this from Homer’s poems, proclaiming a love for savoury odours and cookery? Be that as it may, such is the character of the daemons and gods you worship, and of the demigods too, if you have any called by this name, on the analogy of mules, or demi-asses; for you have no poverty—not even of words to form into the compounds needed for your impiety.¹⁵³

III

Come then, let us add this, that your gods are inhuman and man-hating daemons, who not only exult over the insanity of men, but go so far as to enjoy human slaughter. They provide for themselves sources of pleasure, at one time in the armed contests of the stadium, at another in the innumerable rivalries of war, in order to secure every possible opportunity of glutting themselves to the full with human blood. Before now, too, they have fallen like plagues on whole cities and nations, and have demanded drink-offerings of a savage character. For instance, Aristomenes the Messenian slaughtered three hundred men to Zeus of Ithome, in the belief that favourable omens are secured by sacrifices of such magnitude and quality. Among the victims was even Theopompus, the Lacedaemonian king, a noble offering. The Taurian race, who dwell along the Taurian peninsula, whenever they capture strangers in their territory, that is to say, men who have been shipwrecked, sacrifice them on the spot to Tauric Artemis. These are your sacrifices which Euripides represents in tragedy upon the stage.¹⁵⁴ Monimus, in his collection of Wonderful Events, relates that in Pella of Thessaly human sacrifice is offered to Peleus and Cheiron, the victim being an Achaean.¹⁵⁵ Thus too, Anticleides in his Homecomings, declares that the Lyctians, a race of Cretans, slaughter men to Zeus;¹⁵⁶ and Dosidas says that Lesbians offer a similar sacrifice to Dionysus.¹⁵⁷ As for Phocaeans,—for I shall not pass them over either—these people are reported by Pythocles in his third book On Concord to offer a burnt sacrifice of a man to Taurian Artemis.¹⁵⁸ Erechtheus the Athenian and Marius the Roman sacrificed their own daughters, the former to Persephone, as Demaratus relates in the first book of his Subjects of Tragedy;¹⁵⁹ the latter, Marius, to the “Averters of evil,” as Dorotheas relates in the fourth book of his Italian History.¹⁶⁰

Kindly beings to be sure the daemons are, as these instances plainly show! And how can the daemon-worshippers help being holy in a corresponding way? The former are hailed as saviours; the latter beg for safety from those who plot to destroy safety. Certainly while they suppose that they are offering acceptable sacrifices to the daemons, they quite forget that they are slaughtering human beings. For murder does not become a sacred offering because of the place in which it is committed, not even if you solemnly dedicate the man and then slaughter him in a so-called sacred spot for Artemis or Zeus, rather than for anger or covetousness, other daemons of the same sort, or upon altars rather than in roads. On the contrary, such sacrifice is murder and human butchery. Why then is it, O men, wisest of all living creatures, that we fly from savage wild beasts and turn aside if perchance we meet a bear or a lion, and beasts?

As in a mountain glade when the wayfarer spieth a serpent,

Swiftly turning his steps, his weak limbs trembling beneath him.

Backward he maketh his way;¹⁶¹

yet when faced by deadly and accursed daemons, you do not turn aside nor avoid them, although you have already perceived and know quite well that they are plotters and man-haters and destroyers? What possible truth could evil beings utter, or whom could they benefit? At any rate, I can at once prove to you that man is better than these gods of yours, the daemons; that Cyrus and Solon are better than Apollo the prophet. Your Phoebus is a lover of gifts but not of men. He betrayed his friend Croesus, and, forgetful of the reward he had received (such was his love of honour), led the king across the river Halys to his funeral pyre. This is how the daemons love; they guide men to the fire! But do thou, O man of kinder heart and truer speech than Apollo, pity him who lies bound upon the pyre. Do thou, Solon, utter an oracle of truth. Do thou, Cyrus, bid the flaming pyre be quenched. Come to thy senses at the eleventh hour, Croesus, when suffering has taught thee better. Ungrateful is he whom thou dost worship. He takes the reward of gold, and then deceives thee once again. Mark! it is not the daemon, but the man who tells thee the issue of life. Unlike Apollo, Solon utters no double-meaning prophecies. This oracle alone shalt thou find true, barbarian. This shalt thou prove upon the pyre.;¹⁶²

I cannot help wondering, therefore, what delusive fancies could have led astray those who were the first to be themselves deceived, and the first also, by the laws they established for the worship of accursed daemons, to proclaim their superstition to mankind. I mean such men as the well-known Phoroneus, or Merops, or others like them, who set up temples and altars to the daemons, and are also said in legend to have been the first to offer sacrifices. There can be no doubt that in succeeding ages men used to invent gods whom they might worship. This Eros, for instance, who is said to be amongst the oldest of the gods,—why, not a single person honoured him before Charmus carried off” a young lad and erected an altar in Academia, as a thank-offering for the satisfaction of his lust; and this disease of debauchery is what men call Eros, making unbridled lust into a god!;¹⁶³ Nor did Athenians know who even Pan was, before Philippides told them.;¹⁶⁴

We must not then be surprised that, once daemon-worship had somewhere taken a beginning, it became a fountain of insensate wickedness. Then, not being checked, but ever increasing and flowing in full stream, it establishes itself as creator of a multitude of daemons. It offers great public sacrifices; it holds solemn festivals; it sets up statues and builds temples. These temples—for I will not keep silence even about them, but will expose them also—are called by a fair-sounding name, but in reality they are tombs. But I appeal to you, even at this late hour forget daemon-worship, feeling ashamed to honour tombs. In the temple of Athena in the Acropolis tombs, as at Larissa there is the tomb of Acrisius; and in the Acropolis at Athens the tomb of Cecrops, as Antiochus says in his ninth book of Histories.¹⁶⁵ And what of Erichthonius? Does not he lie in the temple of Athena Polias? And does not Immaradus, the son of Eumolpus and Daeira, lie in the enclosure of the Eleusinium which is under the Acropolis? Are not the daughters of Celeus buried in Eleusis? Why recount to you the Hyperborean women? They are called Hyperoche and Laodice, and they lie in the Artemisium at Delos; this is in the temple precincts of Delian Apollo. Leandrius says that Cleochus is buried in the Didymaeum at Miletus.¹⁶⁶ Here, following Zeno of Myndus, we must not omit the sepulchre of Leucophryne, who lies in the temple of Artemis in Magnesia; nor yet the altar of Apollo at Telmessus, which is reported to be a monument to the prophet Tehnessus. Ptolemaeus the son of Agesarchus in the first volume of his work About Philopator says that in the temple of Aphrodite at Paphos both Cinyras and his descendants lie buried.¹⁶⁷ But really, if I were to go through all the tombs held sacred in your eyes,

The whole of time would not suffice my need.¹⁶⁸

As for you, unless a touch of shame steals over you for these audacities, then you are going about utterly dead, like the dead in whom you have put your trust.

Oh! most wretched of men, what evil is this that ye suffer?

Darkness hath shrouded your heads.¹⁶⁹

IV

If, in addition to this, I bring the statues themselves and place them by your side for inspection, you will find on going through them that custom¹⁷⁰ is truly nonsense, when it leads you to adore senseless things, “the works of men’s hands.”¹⁷¹ In ancient times, then, the Scythians used to worship the dagger, the Arabians their sacred stone,¹⁷² the Persians their river. Other peoples still more ancient erected conspicuous wooden poles and set up pillars of stones, to which they gave the name xoana, meaning scraped objects, because the rough surface of the material had been scraped off. Certainly the statue of Artemis in Icarus was a piece of unwrought timber, and that of Cithaeronian Hera in Thespiae was a felled tree-trunk. The statue of Samian Hera, as Aethlius says, was at first a wooden beam, but afterwards, when Procles was ruler, it was made into human form.¹⁷³ When these rude images began to be shaped to the likeness of men, they acquired the additional name bretē, from brotoi meaning mortals. In Rome, of old time, according to Varro the prose-writer, the object that represented Ares was a spear,¹⁷⁴ since craftsmen had not yet entered upon the fair-seeming but mischievous art of sculpture. But the moment art flourished, error increased.

It is now, therefore, self-evident that out of stones and blocks of wood, and, in one word, out of matter, men fashioned statues resembling the human form, to which you offer a semblance of piety, calumniating the truth. Still, since the point calls for a certain amount of argument, we must not decline to furnish it. Now everyone, I suppose, will admit that the statues of Zeus at Olympia and Athena Polias at Athens were wrought of gold and ivory by Pheidias; and Olympichus in his Samian History relates that the image of Hera in Samos was made by Smilis the son of Eucleides.¹⁷⁵ Do not doubt, then, that of the goddesses at Athens called “venerable”¹⁷⁶ two were made by Scopas out ef the stone called lychneus,¹⁷⁷ and the middle one by Calos; I can point out to you the account given by Polemon in the fourth volume of his work Against Timaeus.>¹⁷⁸ Neither doubt that the statues of Zeus and Apollo in Lycian Patara were also wrought by the great Pheidias, just as were the lions that are dedicated along with them. But if, as some say, the art is that of Bryaxis, I do not contradict. He also is one of your sculptors; put down which of the two you like. Further, the nine-cubit statues of Poseidon and Amphitrite worshipped in Tenos are the work of the Athenian Telesius, as Philochorus tells us.¹⁷⁹ Demetrius in his second book of Argolic History, speaking of the image of Hera in Tiryns, records its material, pear-tree wood, as well as its maker, Argus.¹⁸⁰ Many would perhaps be astonished to learn that the image of Pallas called “heaven-sent” (because it fell from heaven),¹⁸¹ which Diomedes and Odysseus are related to have stolen away from Troy, and to have entrusted to the keeping of Demophon, is made out of the bones of Pelops, just as the Olympian Zeus is also made out of bones,—those of an Indian beast.¹⁸² I give you, too, my authority for this, namely Dionysius, who relates the story in the fifth section of his Cycle.¹⁸³ Apellas in his Delphic History says that there are two such images of Pallas, and that both are of human workmanship.¹⁸⁴ I will also mention the statue of Morychian Dionysus at Athens,—in order that no one may suppose me to have omitted these facts through ignorance,—that it is made out of the stone called phellatas,¹⁸⁵ and is the work of Sicon the son of Eupalamus, as Polemon says in a certain letter.¹⁸⁶ There were also two other sculptors, Cretans I believe, whose names were Scyllis and Dipoenus. This pair made the statues of the Twin Brothers at Argos, the figure of Heracles at Tiryns and the image of Munychian Artemis at Sicyon.¹⁸⁷

But why do I linger over these, when I can show you the origin of the arch-daemon himself, the one who, we are told, is pre-eminently worthy of veneration by all men, whom they have dared to say is made without hands, the Egyptian Sarapis?¹⁸⁸ Some relate that he was sent by the people of Sinope as a thank-offering to Ptolemy Philadelphus king of Egypt,¹⁸⁹ who had earned their gratitude at a time when they were worn out with hunger and had sent for corn from Egypt; and that this image was a statue of Pluto. On receiving the figure, the king set it up upon the promontory which they now call Rhacotis,, where stands the honoured temple of Sarapis; and the spot is close to the burial-places. And they say that Ptolemy had his mistress Blistiche, who had died in Canobus, brought here and buried under the before mentioned shrine. Others say that Sarapis was an image from Pontus, and that it was conveyed to Alexandria with the honour of a solemn festival. Isidorus alone states that the statue was brought from the people of Seleucia near to Antioch, when they too had been suffering from dearth of corn and had been sustained by Ptolemy. But Athenodorus¹⁹⁰ the son of Sandon, while intending to establish the antiquity of Sarapis, stumbled in some unaccountable way, for he has proved him to be a statue made by man. He says that Sesostris the Egyptian king, having subdued most of the nations of Greece, brought back on his return to Egypt a number of skilful craftsmen. He gave personal orders, therefore, that a statue of Osiris his own ancestor should be elaborately wrought at great expense; and the statue was made by the artist Bryaxis,—not the famous Athenian, but another of the same name,—who has used a mixture of various materials in its construction. He had filings of gold, silver, bronze, iron, lead, and even tin; and not a single Egyptian stone was lacking, there being pieces of sapphire, hematite, emerald, and topaz also. Having reduced them all to powder and mixed them, he stained the mixture dark blue (on account of which the colour of the statue is nearly black), and, mingling the whole with the pigment left over from the funeral rites of Osiris and Apis,¹⁹¹ he moulded Sarapis; whose very name implies this connexion with the funeral rites, and the construction out of material for burial, Osirapis being a compound formed from Osiris and Apis.

Another fresh divinity was created in Egypt,—and very nearly among Greeks too,—when the Roman king¹⁹² solemnly elevated to the rank of god his favourite whose beauty was unequalled. He consecrated Antinous in the same way that Zeus consecrated Ganymedes. For lust is not easily restrained, when it has no fear; and today men observe the sacred nights of Antinous, which were really shameful, as the lover who kept them with him well knew. Why, I ask, do you reckon as a god one who is honoured by fornication? Why did you order that he should be mourned for as a son? Why, too, do you tell the story of his beauty? Beauty is a shameful thing when it has been blighted by outrage. Be not a tyrant, O man, over beauty, neither outrage him who is in the flower of his youth. Guard it in purity, that it may remain beautiful. Become a king over beauty, not a tyrant. Let it remain free. When you have kept its image pure, then I will acknowledge your beauty. Then I will worship beauty, when it is the true archetype of things beautiful. But now we have a tomb of the boy who was loved, a temple and a city of Antinous; and it seems to me that tombs are objects of reverence in just the same way as temples are; in fact, pyramids, mausoleums and labyrinths are as it were temples of dead men, just as temples are tombs of the gods. As your instructor I will quote the prophetic Sibyl,

Whose words divine come not from Phoebus’ lips,
That prophet false, by foolish men called god.
But from great God, whom no man’s hands have made.
Like speechless idols framed from polished stone.¹⁹³

She, however, calls the temples ruins. That of Ephesian Artemis she predicts will be swallowed up by “yawning gulfs and earthquakes,” thus:

Prostrate shall Ephesus groan, when, deep in tears.
She seeks along her banks a vanished shrine.¹⁹⁴

That of Isis and Sarapis in Egypt she says will be overthrown and burnt up:

Thrice wretched Isis, by Nile’s streams thou stayst
Lone, dumb with frenzy on dark Acheron’s sands.¹⁹⁵

Then lower down:

And thou, Sarapis, piled with useless stones,
In wretched Egypt liest, a ruin great.¹⁹⁶

If, however, you refuse to listen to the prophetess, hear at least your own philosopher, Heracleitus of Ephesus, when he taunts the statues for their want of feeling: “and they pray to these statues just as if one were to chatter to his house.”¹⁹⁷ Are they not amazing, these men who make supplication to stones, and yet set them up before their gates as if alive and active, worshipping the image of Hermes as a god, and setting up the “god of the Ways” as door-keeper? For if they treat them with contumely as being without feeling, why do they worship them as gods? But if they believe them to partake of feeling, why do they set them up as door-keepers? The Romans, although they ascribe their greatest successes to Fortuna, and believe her to be the greatest deity, carry her statue to the privy and erect it there, thus assigning to her a fit temple.¹⁹⁸

But indeed the senseless wood and stone and precious gold pay not the smallest regard to the steam, the blood, and the smoke. They are blackened by the cloud of smoke which is meant to honour them, but they heed neither the honour nor the insult. There is not a single living creature that is not more worthy of honour than these statues; and how it comes to pass that senseless things have been deified I am at a loss to know, and I deeply pity for their lack of understanding the men who are thus miserably wandering in error. For even though there are some living creatures which do not possess all the senses, as worms and caterpillars, and all those that appear to be imperfect from the first through the conditions of their birth, such as moles and the field-mouse, which Nicander calls “blind and terrible”¹⁹⁹; yet these are better than those images and statues which are enth’ely dumb. For they have at any rate some one sense, that of hearing, let us say, or of touch, or something corresponding to smell or taste; but these statues do not even partake of one sense. There are also many kinds of living creatures, such as the oyster family, which possess neither sight nor hearing nor yet speech; nevertheless they live and grow and are even affected by the moon.²⁰⁰ But the statues are motionless things incapable of action or sensation; they are bound and nailed and fastened, melted, filed, sawn, polished, carved. The dumb earth is dishonoured²⁰¹ when sculptors pervert its peculiar nature and by their art entice men to worship it; while the god-makers, if there is any sense in me, worship not gods and daemons, but earth and art, which is all the statues are. For a statue is really lifeless matter shaped by a craftsman’s hand; but in our view the image of God is not an object of sense made from matter perceived by the senses, but a mental object. God, that is, the only true God, is perceived not by the senses but by the mind.

On the other hand, whenever a crisis arises, the daemon-worshippers, the adorers of stones, learn by experience not to revere senseless matter; for they succumb to the needs of the moment, and this fear of daemons is their ruin.²⁰² And if while at heart despising the statues they are unwilling to show themselves utterly contemptuous of them, their folly is exposed by the impotence of the very gods the to whom the statues are dedicated. For instance, the tyrant Dionysius the younger stripped the statue of Zeus in Sicily of its golden cloak and ordered it to be clothed with a woollen one, with the witty remark that this was better than the golden one, being both lighter in summer and warmer in winter.²⁰³ Antiochus of Cyzicus, when he was in want of money, ordered the golden statue of Zeus, fifteen cubits high, to be melted down, and a similar statue of cheaper material covered with gold leaf to be set up in its place. Swallows also and most other birds settle on these very statues and defile them, paying no heed to Olympian Zeus or Epidaurian Asclepius, no, nor yet to Athena Polias or Egyptian Sarapis; and even their example does not bring home to you how destitute of feeling the statues are. But there are certain evil-doers or enemies at war who from base love of gain ravaged the temples, plundering the votive offerings and even melting down the statues. Now if Cambyses or Darius or some other put his hands to such deeds in a fit of madness; and if one of them²⁰⁴ slew the Egyptian god Apis, while I laugh at the thought of his slaying their god, I am indignant when gain is the motive of the offence. I will therefore willingly forget these evil deeds, holding them to be works of covetousness and not an exposure of the helplessness of the idols. But fire and earthquakes are in no way intent on gain; yet they are not frightened or awed either by the daemons or by their statues, any more than are the waves by the pebbles strewn in heaps along the seashore. I know that fire can expose and cure your fear of daemons; if you wish to cease from folly, the fire shall be your guiding light. This fire it was that burnt up the temple in Argos together with its priestess Chrysis,²⁰⁵ and also that of Artemis in Ephesus (the second after the time of the Amazons); and it has often devoured the Capitol at Rome, nor did it spare even the temple of Sarapis in the city of Alexandria. The temple of Dionysus Eleuthereus²⁰⁶ at Athens was brought to ruin in the same way, and that of Apollo at Delphi was first caught by a storm and then utterly destroyed by the “discerning fire.”²⁰⁷ Here you see a kind of prelude to what the fire promises to do hereafter.

Take next the makers of the statues; do not they shame the sensible among you into a contempt for mere matter? The Athenian Pheidias inscribed on the finger of Olympian Zeus, “Pantarces is beautiful,” though it was not Zeus Pantarces whom he thought beautiful, but his own favourite of that name.²⁰⁸ Praxiteles, as Poseidippus shows clearly in his book on Cnidus,²⁰⁹ when fashioning the statue of Cnidian Aphrodite,²¹⁰ made the goddess resemble the form of his mistress Cratina, that the miserable people might have the sculptor’s mistress to worship. When Phryne the Thespian courtesan was in her flower^ the painters used all to imitate her beauty in their pictures of Aphrodite, just as the marble-masons copied Alcibiades in the busts of Hermes at Athens. It remains to bring your own judgment into play, and decide whether you wish to extend your worship to courtesans.

Such were the facts, I think, that moved the kings of old, in their contempt for these legends, to proclaim themselves gods; which they did without hesitation, since there was no danger from men. In this way they teach us that the other gods were also men, made immortal for their renown. Ceyx the son of Aeolus was addressed as Zeus by his wife Alcyone, while she in turn was addressed as Hera by her husband. Ptolemy the fourth was called Dionysus, as was also Mithridates of Pontus. Alexander wished to be thought the son of Ammon, and to be depicted with horns by the sculptors, so eager was he to outrage the beautiful face of man by a horn.²¹¹ Aye, and not kings only, but private persons too used to exalt themselves with divine titles, as Menecrates the doctor, who was styled Zeus.²¹² Why need I reckon Alexarchus? As Aristus of Salamis relates, he was a scholar in virtue of his knowledge, but he transformed himself into the Sun-god.²¹³ And why mention Nicagoras, a man of Zeleia by race, living in the time of Alexander^ who was addressed as Hermes and wore the garb of Hermes, according to his own evidence?²¹⁴ For indeed whole nations and cities with all their inhabitants, putting on the mask of flattery, belittle the legends about the gods, mere men, puffed up with vain-glory, transforming men like themselves into the equals of the gods and voting them extravagant honours. At one time they establish by law at Cynosarges the worship of Philip the son of Amyntas, the Macedonian from Pella, him of the “broken collar-bone and lame leg,” with one eye knocked out.²¹⁵ At another, they proclaim Demetrius to be god in his turn; and the spot where he dismounted on entering Athens is now a temple of Demetrius the Alighter,²¹⁶ while his altars are everywhere. Arrangements were being made by the Athenians for his marriage with Athena, but he disdained the goddess, not being able to marry her statue. He went up to the Acropolis, however, in company with the courtesan Lamia, and lay with her in Athena’s bridal chamber, exhibiting to the old virgin the postures of the young courtesan.²¹⁷ We must not be angry, therefore, even with Hippo,²¹⁸ who represented his death as a deification of himself. This Hippo ordered the following couplet to be inscribed on his monument:

Behold the tomb of Hippo, whom in death
Fate made an equal of the immortal gods.

Well done, Hippo, you point out for us the error of men! For though they have not believed you when you could speak, let them become disciples now you are a corpse. This is the oracle of Hippo; let us understand its meaning. Those whom you worship were once men, who afterwards died. Legend and the lapse of time have given them their honours. For somehow the present is wont to be despised men through our familiarity with it, whereas the past, being cut off from immediate exposure by the obscurity which time brings, is invested with a fictitious honour; and while events of the present are distrusted, those of the past are regarded with reverent wonder. As an example, the dead men of old, being exalted by the long period of error, are believed to be gods by those who come after. You have proof of all this in your mysteries themselves, in the solemn festivals, in fetters, wounds and weeping gods:

Woe, yea, woe be to me! that Sarpedon, dearest of mortals,

Doomed is to fall by the spear of Patroclus son of Menoetius.²¹⁹

The will of Zeus has been overcome, and your supreme god, defeated, is lamenting for Sarpedon’s sake.

You are right then in having yourselves called the gods “shadows”²²⁰ and “daemons.” For Homer spoke of Athena herself and her fellow-deities as “daemons,” paying them a malicious compliment.²²¹

But she was gone to Olympus,

Home of shield-bearing Zeus, to join the rest of the daemons.²²²

How then can the shadows and daemons any longer be gods, when they are in reality unclean and loathsome spirits, admitted by all to be earthy and foul, weighed down to the ground, and “prowling round graves and tombs,”²²³ where also they dimly appear spirits, as “ghostly apparitions²²³”? These are your gods, these shadows and ghosts; and along with them go those “lame and wrinkled cross-eyed deities,” the Prayers,²²⁴ daughters of Zeus, though they are more like daughters of Thersites²²⁵; so that I think Bion made a witty remark when he asked how men could rightly ask Zeus for goodly children, when he had not even been able to provide them for himself.²²⁶ Alas for such atheism! You sink in the earth, so far as you are able, the incorruptible existence, and that which is stainless and holy you have buried in the tombs. Thus you have robbed the divine of its real and true being. Why, I ask, did you assign to those who are no gods the honours due to God alone? Why have you forsaken heaven to pay honour to earth? For what else is gold, or silver, or steel, or iron, or bronze, or ivory, or precious stones? Are they not earth, and made from earth? Are not all these things that you see the offspring of one mother, the earth? Why then, vain and foolish men,—once again I will ask the question,—did you blaspheme highest heaven²²⁷ and drag down piety to the ground by fashioning for yourselves gods of earth? Why have you fallen into deeper darkness by going after these created things instead of the uncreated God? The Parian marble is beautiful, but it is not yet a Poseidon. The ivory is beautiful, but it is not yet an Olympian Zeus. Matter will ever be in need of art, but God has no such need. Art develops, matter is invested with shape; and the costliness of the substance makes it worth carrying off for gain, but it is the shape alone which makes it an object of veneration. Your statue is gold; it is wood; it is stone; or if in thought you trace it to its origin, it is earth, which has received form at the artist’s hands. But my practice is to walk upon earth, not to worship it. For I hold it sin ever to entrust the hopes of the soul to soulless things.

We must, then, approach the statues as closely as we possibly can in order to prove from their very appearance that they are inseparably associated with error. For their forms are unmistakably stamped with the characteristic marks of the daemons. At least, if one were to go round inspecting the paintings and statues, he would immediately recognize your gods from their undignified figures; Dionysus from his dress, Hephaestus from his handicraft, Demeter from her woe, Ino from her veil, Poseidon from his trident, Zeus from his swan. The pyre indicates Heracles, and if one sees a woman represented naked, he understands it is “golden”²²⁸ Aphrodite. So the well-known Pygmalion of Cyprus fell in love with an ivory statue; it was of Aphrodite and was naked. The man of Cyprus is captivated by its shapeliness and embraces the statue. This is related by Philostephanus.²²⁹ There was also an Aphrodite in Cnidus, made of marble and beautiful. Another man fell in love with this and has intercourse with the marble, as Poseidippus relates.²³⁰ The account of the first author is in his book on Cyprus; that of the second in his book on Cnidus. Such strength had art to beguile that it became for amorous men a guide²³¹ to the pit of destruction. Now craftsmanship is powerful, but it cannot beguile a rational being, nor yet those who have lived according to reason. It is true that, through lifelike portraiture, pigeons have been known to fly towards painted doves, and horses to neigh at well-drawn mares. They say that a maiden once fell in love with an image, and a beautiful youth with a Cnidian statue²³²; but it was their sight that was beguiled by the art. For no man in his senses would have embraced the statue of a goddess, or have been buried with a lifeless paramour, or have fallen in love with a daemon and a stone. But in your case art has another illusion with which to beguile; for it leads you on, though not to be in love with the statues and paintings, yet to honour and worship them. The painting, you say, is lifelike. Let the art be praised, but let it not beguile man by pretending to be truth. The horse stands motionless; the dove flutters not; its wings are at rest. Yet the cow of Daedalus, made of wood, infatuated a wild bull; and the beast, led astray by the art, was constrained to approach a lovesick woman.²³³ Such insane passion did the arts, by their vicious artifices, implant in creatures without sense. Even monkeys know better than this. They astonish their rearers and keepers, because no manner of waxen or clay figures or girls’ toys can deceive them. But you, strange to say, will prove yourselves inferior even to monkeys through the heed you pay to statues of stone and wood, gold and ivory, and to paintings. Such are the pernicious playthings made for you by marble-masons, sculptors, painters, carpenters and poets, who introduce this great multitude of gods, Satyrs and Pans in the fields, mountain and tree Nymphs in the woods, as well as Naiads about the lakes, rivers and springs, and Nereids by the sea. Magicians go so far as to boast that daemons are assistants in their impious deeds; they have enrolled them as their own servants, having made them slaves perforce by means of their incantations.

Further, the marriages of gods, their acts of child-begetting and child-bearing which are on men’s lips, their adulteries which are sung by bards, their feastings which are a theme of comedy, and the bursts of laughter which occur over their cups, these exhort me to cry aloud, even if I would fain keep silence,—Alas for such atheism! You have turned heaven into a stage. You look upon the divine nature as a subject for drama. Under the masks of daemons you have made comedy of that which is holy. For the true worship of God you have substituted a travesty, the fear of daemons.

Then to the harp’s sweet strains a beautiful song he opened;²³⁴

Sing us that beautiful strain, Homer,

Telling the love of Ares and Aphrodite fair-girdled,

How at the first they met in the halls of Hephaestus in witness secret;

Many the gifts he gave, and the bed and couch of Hephaestus

Sullied with shame.²³⁵

Cease the song, Homer. There is no beauty in that; it teaches adultery. We have declined to lend even our ears to fornication. For we, yes we, are they who, in this living and moving statue, man, bear about the image of God, an image which dwells with us, is our counsellor, companion, the sharer of our hearth, which feels with us, feels for us. We have been made a consecrated offering to God for Christ’s sake. “We are the elect race, the royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, who in time past were not a people, but now are the people of God.”²³⁶ We are they who, according to John, are not “from below,”²³⁷ but have learnt the whole truth from Him who came from above,²³⁸ who have apprehended the dispensation of God, who have studied “to walk in newness of life.”²³⁹

But most men are not of this mind. Casting off shame and fear, they have their homes decorated with pictures representing the unnatural lust of the daemons. In the lewdness to which their thoughts are given, they adorn their chambers with painted tablets hung on high like votive offerings, regarding licentiousness as piety; and, when lying upon the bed, while still in the midst of their own embraces, they fix their gaze upon that naked Aphrodite, who lies bound in her adultery.²⁴⁰ Also, to show they approve the representation of effeminacy, they engrave in the hoops of their rings the amorous bird hovering over Leda, using a seal which reflects the licentiousness of Zeus. These are the patterns for your voluptuousness; these are the stories that give divine sanction for wanton living; these are the lessons taught by gods who are fornicators like yourselves. “For what a man desires, that he also imagines to be true,” says the Athenian orator.²⁴¹ Look, too, at other of your images,—little figures of Pan, naked girls, drunken satyrs; and obscene emblems, plainly exhibited in pictures, and self-condemned by their indecency. More than that, you behold without a blush the postures of the whole art of licentiousness openly pictured in public. But when they are hung on high²⁴² you treasure them still more, just as if they were actually the images of your gods; for you dedicate these monuments of shamelessness in your homes, and are as eager to procure paintings of the postures of Philaenis as of the labours of Heracles. We declare that not only the use, but also the sight and the very hearing of these things should be forgotten. Your ears have committed fornication; your eyes have prostituted themselves;²⁴³ and, stranger still, before the embrace you have committed adultery by your looks.²⁴⁴ You who have done violence to man, and erased by dishonour the divine image in which he was created, you are utter unbelievers in order that you may give way to your passions. You believe in the idols because you crave after their incontinence; you disbelieve in God because you cannot bear self-control. You have hated the better, and honoured the worse. You have shown yourselves onlookers with regard to virtue, but active champions of vice.

The only men, therefore, who can with one consent, so to speak, be called “blessed,” are all those whom the Sibyl describes,

Who, seeing the temples, will reject them all,
And altars, useless shrines of senseless stones;
Stone idols too, and statues made by hand
Defiled with blood yet warm, and sacrifice
Of quadruped and biped, bird and beast.²⁴⁵

What is more, we are expressly forbidden to practise a deceitful art. For the prophet says, “Thou shalt not make a likeness of anything that is in heaven above or in the earth beneath.”²⁴⁶ Is it possible that we can still suppose the Demeter and Persephone and the mystic Iacchus of Praxiteles to be gods? Or are we to regard as gods the masterpieces of Lysippus or the works of Apelles, since it is these which have bestowed upon matter the fashion of the divine glory? But as for you, while you take great pains to discover how a statue may be shaped to the highest possible pitch of beauty, you never give a thought to prevent yourselves turning out like statues owing to want of sense. Any way, with the utmost plainness and brevity the prophetic word refutes the custom of idolatry, when it says, “All the gods of the nations are images of daemons; but God made the heavens,”²⁴⁷ and the things in heaven. Some, it is true, starting from this point, go astray,—I know not how,—and worship not God but His handiwork, the sun, moon, and the host of stars besides, absurdly supposing these to be gods, though they are but instruments for measuring time;²⁴⁸ for “by His word were they firmly established; and all their power by the breath of His mouth.”²⁴⁹ But while human handiwork fashions houses, ships, cities, paintings, how can I speak of all that God creates? See the whole universe; that is His work. Heaven, the sun, angels and men are ‘‘the works of His fingers.”²⁵⁰ How great is the power of God! His mere will is creation; for God alone created, since He alone is truly God. By a bare wish His work is done, and the world’s existence follows upon a single act of His will. Here the host of philosophers turn aside, when they admit that man is beautifully made for the contemplation of heaven,²⁵¹ and yet worship the things which appear in heaven and are apprehended by sight. For although the heavenly bodies are not the works of man, at least they have been created for man. Let none of you worship the sun; rather let him yearn for the maker of the sun. Let no one deify the universe; rather let him seek after the creator of the universe. It seems, then, that but one refuge remains for the man who is to reach the gates of salvation, and that is divine wisdom. From thence, as from a holy inviolate temple, no longer can any daemon carry him off, as he presses onward to salvation.

V

Let us now, if you like, run through the opinions which the philosophers, on their part, assert confidently about the gods. Perchance we may find philosophy herself, through vanity, forming her conceptions of the godhead out of matter; or else we may be able to show in passing that, when deifying certain divine powers, she sees the truth in a dream.²⁵² Some philosophers, then, left us the elements as first principles of all things. Water was selected praise by Thales of Miletus; air by Anaximenes of the same city, who was followed afterwards by Diogenes of Apollonia. Fire and earth were introduced as gods by Parmenides of Elea; but only one of this pair, namely fire, is god according to the supposition of both Hippasus of Metapontum and Heracleitus of Ephesus. As to Empedocles of Acragas, he chooses plurality, and reckons “love” and “strife” in his list of gods, in addition to these four elements.

These men also were really atheists,²⁵³ since with a foolish show of wisdom they worshipped matter. They did not, it is true, honour stocks or stones, but they made a god out of earth, which is the mother of these. They do not fashion a Poseidon, but they adore water itself. For what in the world is Poseidon, except a kind of liquid substance named from posis, drink? Just as, without a doubt, warlike Ares is so called from arsis and anairesis,²⁵⁴ abolition and destruction; which is the chief reason, I think, why many tribes simply fix their sword in the ground and then offer sacrifice to it as if to Ares. Such is the custom of Scythians, as Eudoxus says in his second book of Geography,²⁵⁵ while the Sauromatians, a Scythian tribe, worship a dagger, according to Hicesius in his book on Mysteries.²⁵⁶ This too is the case with the followers of Heracleitus when they worship fire as the source of all; for this fire is what others named Hephaestus. The Persian Magi and many of the inhabitants of Asia have assigned honour to fire; so have the Macedonians, as Diogenes says in the first volume of his Persian History.²⁵⁷ Why need I instance Sauromatians, whom Nymphodorus in Barbarian Customs²⁵⁸ reports as worshipping fire; or the Persians, Medes and Magi? Dinon says that these Magi sacrifice under the open sky, believing that fire and water are the sole emblems of divinity.²⁵⁹ Even their ignorance I do not conceal; for although they are quite convinced that they are escaping the error of idolatry, yet they slip into another delusion. They do not suppose, like Greeks, that stocks and stones are emblems of divinity, nor ibises and ichneumons, after the manner of Egyptians; but they admit fire and water, as philosophers do. It was not, however, till many ages had passed that they began to worship statues in human form, as Berosus shows in his third book of Chaldaean History;²⁶⁰ for this custom was introduced by Artaxerxes the son of Darius and father of Ochus, who was the first to set up the statue of Aphrodite Anaitis in Babylon, Susa and Ecbatana, and to enjoin this worship upon Persians and Bactrians, upon Damascus and Sardis. Let the philosophers therefore confess that Persians, Saurmatians, and Magi are their teachers, from whom this they have learnt the atheistic doctrine of their venerated “first principles.” The great original, the maker of all things, and creator of the “first principles” themselves, God without beginning, they know not, but offer adoration to these “weak and beggarly elements,”²⁶¹ as the apostle calls them, made for the service of men.

Other philosophers went beyond the elements and sought diligently for a more sublime and excellent principle. Some of them celebrated the praises of the Infinite, as Anaximander of Miletus, Anaxagoras of Clazomenae, and Archelaus of Athens. The two latter agreed in placing Mind above the Infinite; while on the other hand Leucippus of Miletus and Metrodorus of Chios also left, as it seems, a pair of first principles, “fulness” and “void.” Democritus of Abdera took these two and added to them the “images.”²⁶² Nor was this all; Alcmaeon of Croton thought that the stars were endowed with life, and therefore gods. 1 will not refrain from mentioning as the audacity of these others. Xenocrates of Chalcedon intimates that the planets are seven gods and that the ordered arrangement of the fixed stars is an eighth. Nor will I omit the Stoics, who say that the divine nature permeates all matter, even in its lowest forms; these men simply cover philosophy with shame. At this point there is, I think, nothing to hinder me from mentioning the Peripatetics also. The father of this sect,²⁶³ because he did not perceive the Father of all things, thinks that he who is called the “Highest” is the soul of the universe; that is to say, he supposes the soul of the world to be God, and so is pierced with his own sword. For he first declares that providence extends only as far as the moon; then by holding the opinion that the universe is God he contradicts himself, asserting that that which has no share in God is God.²⁶⁴ Aristotle’s disciple, the celebrated Theophrastus of Eresus, suspects in one place that God is heaven, and elsewhere that God is spirit. Epicurus alone I will banish from memory, and that willingly, for he, pre-eminent in impiety, thinks that God has no care world for the world. What of Heracleides of Pontus? Is there a single place where he too is not drawn away to the “images” of Democritus?

VI

And a vast crowd of the same description swarms upon me, bringing in their train, like a nightmare, an absurd picture of strange daemons, and romancing with all an old wife’s extravagance. Far indeed are we from allowing grown men to listen to such tales. Even to our own children, when they are crying their heart out, as the saying goes, we are not in the habit of telling fabulous stories to soothe them; for we shrink from fostering in the children the atheism proclaimed by these men, who, though wise in their own conceit, have no more knowledge of the truth than infants. Why, in the name of truth, do you show those who have put their trust in you that they are under the dominion of “flux” and “motion” and “fortuitous vortices”?²⁶⁵ Why, pray, do you infect life with idols, imagining winds, air, fire, earth, stocks, stones, iron, this world itself to be gods? Why babble in high-flown language about the divinity of the wandering stars to those men who have become real wanderers through this much-vaunted,—I will not call it astronomy, but—astrology? I long for the Lord of the winds, the Lord of fire, the Creator of the world. He who gives light to the sun. I seek for God Himself, not for the works of God. Whom am I to take from you as fellow worker in the search? For we do not altogether despair of you. “Plato,” if you like. How, then, Plato, must we trace out God? “It is a hard task to find the Father and Maker of this universe, and when you have found Him, it is impossible to declare Him to all.”²⁶⁶ Why, pray, in God’s name, why? “Because He can in no way be described.”²⁶⁷ Well done, Plato, you have hit the truth. But do not give up. Join me in the search for the good. For there is a certain divine effluence instilled into all men without exception, but especially into those who spend their lives in thought; wherefore they admit, even though against their will, that God is One, that He is unbegotten and indestructible, and that somewhere on high in the outermost spaces²⁶⁸ of the heavens, in His own private watch-tower. He truly exists for ever.

What nature, say, must man ascribe to God?
He seeth all; yet ne’er Himself is seen,

says Euripides.²⁶⁹ Certainly Menander seems to me to be in error where he says,

O Sun, thee must we worship, first of gods,
Through whom our eyes can see the other gods.²⁷⁰

For not even the sun could ever show us the true God. The healthful Word or Reason, who is the Sun of the soul, alone can do that; through Him alone, when He has risen within in the depth of the mind, the soul’s eye is illuminated. Whence Democritus not unreasonably says that “a few men of reason²⁷¹ stretch out their hands towards that which we Greeks now call air and speak of it in legend as Zeus; for Zeus knows all, he gives and takes away all, and he is king of all things.”²⁷² Plato also has a similar thought, when he says darkly about God: “All things are around the king of all things, and that is the cause of everything good.”²⁷³ Who, then, is the king of all things? It is God, the measure of the truth of all existence. As therefore things measured are comprehended by the measure, so also by the perception of God the truth is measured and comprehended. The truly sacred Moses says, “There shall not be in thy bag divers weights, a great and a small, neither shall there be in thy house a great measure and a small, but thou measures, shalt have a weight true and just.”²⁷⁴ Here he is assuming God to be the weight and measure and number of the universe. For the unjust and unfair idols find a home hidden in the depths of the bag, or, as we may say, the polluted soul. But the one true God, who is the only just measure, because He is always uniformly and unchangeably impartial,²⁷⁵ measures and weighs all things, encircling and sustaining in equilibrium the nature of the universe by His justice as by a balance. “Now God, as the ancient saying has it, holding the beginning and end and middle of all existence, keeps an unswerving path, revolving according to nature; but ever there follows along with him Right, to take vengeance on those who forsake the divine law.”²⁷⁶ “Whence, Plato, do you hint at the truth? Whence comes it that this abundant supply of words proclaims as in an oracle the fear of God?” “The barbarian races,” he answers, “are wiser than the Greeks.”²⁷⁷ I know your teachers, even if you would fain conceal them. You learn geometry from the Egyptians, astronomy from the Babylonians, healing incantations you obtain from the Thracians, and the Assyrians have taught you much; but as to your laws (in so far as they are true) and your belief about God, you have been helped by the Hebrews themselves:

Who honour not with vain deceit man’s works
Of gold and silver, bronze and ivory.
And dead men’s statues carved from wood and stone.
Which mortals in their foolish hearts revere;
But holy hands to heaven each morn they raise
From sleep arising, and their flesh they cleanse
With water pure; and honour Him alone
Who guards them alway, the immortal God.²⁷⁸

And now, O philosophy, hasten to set before me not only this one man Plato, but many others also, who declare the one only true God to be God, by His own inspiration, if so be they have laid hold of the truth. Antisthenes, for instance, had perceived this, not as a Cynic doctrine, but as a result of his intimacy with Socrates; for he says, “God is like none else, wherefore none can know him thoroughly from a likeness.”²⁷⁹ And Xenophon the Athenian would himself have written explicitly concerning the truth, bearing his share of witness as Socrates did, had he not feared the poison which Socrates received; none the less he hints at it. At least, he says: “He who moves all things and brings them to rest again is plainly some great and mighty One; but what His form is we cannot see. Even the sun, which appears to shine upon all, even he seems not to allow himself to be seen; but if a man impudently gazes at him, he is deprived of sight.”²⁸⁰ From what source, pray, does the son of Gryllus draw his wisdom? Is it not clearly from the Hebrew prophetess, who utters her oracle in the following words?

What eyes of flesh can see immortal God,
Who dwells above the heavenly firmament?
Not e’en against the sun’s descending rays
Can men of mortal birth endure to stand.²⁸¹

Cleanthes of Pedasis,²⁸² the Stoic philosopher, sets forth no genealogy of the gods, after the manner of poets, but a true theology. He did not conceal what thoughts he had about God.

Thou ask’st me what the good is like? Then hear!
The good is ordered, holy, pious, just,
Self-ruhng, useful, beautiful, and right,
Severe, without pretence, expedient ever,
Fearless and griefless, helpful, soothing pain,
Well-pleasing, advantageous, steadfast, loved,
Esteemed, consistent…
Renowned, not puffed up, careful, gentle, strong,
Enduring, blameless, lives from age to age.²⁸³

Slavish the man who vain opinion heeds.
In hope to light on any good from that.²⁸⁴

In these passages he teaches clearly, I think, what is the nature of God, and how common opinion and custom make slaves of those who follow them instead of searching after God. Nor must we conceal the doctrine of the Pythagoreans, who say that “God is One; and He is not, as some suspect, outside the universal order, but within it, being wholly present in the whole circle, the supervisor of all creation, the blending of all the ages, the wielder of His own powers, the light of all His works in heaven and the Father of all things, mind and living principle of the whole circle, movement of all things.” These sayings have been recorded by their authors through God’s inspiration, and we have selected them. As a guide to the full knowledge of God they are sufficient for every man who is able, even in small measure, to investigate the truth.

VII

But we will not rest content with philosophy alone. Let poetry also approach,—poetry, which is occupied entirely with what is false,—to bear witness now at last to truth, or rather to confess before God its deviation into legend. Let whichever poet wishes come forward first. Aratus, then, perceives that the power of God permeates the universe:

Wherefore, that all things fresh and firm may grow.
To Him our vows both first and last shall rise:
Hail, Father, wonder great, great aid to men.²⁸⁵

In the same spirit Hesiod of Ascra also speaks darkly about God:

For He is king and master over all;
No other god hath vied with Thee in strength.²⁸⁶

Further, even upon the stage they unveil the truth. One of them, Euripides, after gazing at the upper air and heaven, says, “Consider this to be God.”²⁸⁷ Another, Sophocles the son of Sophillus, says:

One only, one in very truth is God,
Who made high heaven and the spreading earth.
The ocean’s gleaming wave, the mighty winds.
But we, vain mortals, erring much in heart.
Seek solace for our woes by setting up
The images of gods made out of stones,
Or forms of bronze, or gold, or ivory.
Then sacrifice and empty festival
To these we pay, and think it piety.²⁸⁸

This poet, in a most venturesome manner, introduced the truth on the stage for his audience to hear. And the Thracian interpreter of the mysteries, who was a poet too, Orpheus the son of Oeagrus, after his exposition of the orgies and account of the idols, brings in a recantation consisting of truth. Now at the very last he sings of the really sacred Word:

My words shall reach the pure; put bars to ears
All ye profane together. But hear thou.
Child of the Moon, Musaeus, words of truth;
Nor let past errors rob thee now of life.
Behold the word divine, to this attend,
Directing mind and heart aright; tread well
The narrow path of life, and gaze on Him,
The world’s great ruler, our immortal king.²⁸⁹

Then, lower down, he adds explicitly:

One, self-begotten, lives; all things proceed
From One; and in His works He ever moves:
No mortal sees Him, yet Himself sees all.²⁸⁹

Thus wrote Orpheus; in the end, at least, he understood that he had gone astray:

Inconstant mortal, make no more delay,
But turn again, and supplicate thy God.²⁹⁰

It may be freely granted that the Greeks received some glimmerings of the divine word, and gave utterance to a few scraps of truth. Thus they bear their witness to its power, which has not been hidden. On the other hand, they convict themselves of weakness, since they failed to reach the end. For by this time, I think, it has become plain to everybody that those who do anything or utter anything without the word of truth are like men struggling to walk without a foothold.

The comic poets also, owing to the compelling power of truth, bring into their plays convincing arguments against your gods. Let these shame you into salvation. For instance, the comic poet Menander, in his play The Charioteer, says:

No god for me is he who walks the streets
With some old dame, and into houses steals
Upon the sacred tray.²⁹¹

For this is what the priests of Cybele²⁹² do. It was a proper answer, then, that Antisthenes used to give them when they asked alms of him: “I do not support the mother of the gods; that is the gods’ business.”²⁹³ Again, the same writer of comedy, in his play The Priestess, being angry with prevailing custom, tries to expose the godless folly of idolatry by uttering these words of wisdom:

For if a man
By cymbals brings the God where’er he will.
Then is the man more powerful than God.
But these are shameless means of livelihood
Devised by men.²⁹⁴

And not only Menander, but also Homer, Euripides and many other poets expose your gods, and do not shrink from abusing them to any extent whatever. For instance, they call Athena” dog-fly,”²⁹⁵ and Hephaestus “lame in both feet”²⁹⁶; and to Aphrodite Helen says:

Never again may thy feet turn back to the halls of Olympus.²⁹⁷

Of Dionysus Homer writes openly:

He, on a day, gave chase to the nurses of mad Dionysus

Over the sacred hill of Nysa; but they, in a body,

Flung their torches to earth at the word of the savage Lycurgus.²⁹⁸

Euripides is indeed a worthy disciple of the Socratic school, in that he regarded only the truth and disregarded the audience. On one occasion, referring to Apollo,

Who, dwelling in the central spot of earth,
Deals out unerring oracles to men,²⁹⁹

he thus exposes him:

His word it was I trusted when I slew
My mother; him consider stained with crime.
Him slay; the sin was his concern, not mine.
Since he knew less of good and right than I.³⁰⁰

At another time he introduces Heracles in a state of madness,³⁰¹ and elsewhere drunk and gluttonous.³⁰² What else could be said of a god who, while being feasted with flesh,

Did eat green figs, and howl discordant songs,
Fit for barbarian ears to understand?³⁰³

And again, in his play the Ion, he displays the gods to the spectators without any reserve³⁰⁴:

How is it right that ye who made men’s laws
Yourselves are authors of unrighteous deeds?
But if—I say it, though it shall not be—
Ye pay men penalties for violent rapes,
Phoebus, Poseidon, Zeus the king of heaven.
The price of crime shall strip your temples bare.³⁰⁵

VIII

Now that we have dealt with the other matters in due order, it is time to turn to the writings of the prophets. For these are the oracles which, by exhibiting to us in the clearest light the grounds of piety, lay a firm foundation for the truth. The sacred writings are also models of virtuous living, and short roads to salvation.³⁰⁶ They are bare of embellishment, of outward beauty of language, of idle talk and flattery, yet they raise up man when fast bound in the grip of evil. Despising the snare of this life,³⁰⁷ with one and the same voice they provide a cure for many ills, turning us aside from delusion that works harm, and urging us onward with clear guidance to salvation set before our eyes. To begin with, let the prophetess, the Sibyl, first sing to us the song of salvation:

Lo, plain to all, from error free He stands;

Come, seek not gloom and darkness evermore;

Behold, the sun’s sweet light shines brightly forth.

But mark, and lay up wisdom in your hearts.

One God there is, from whom come rains and winds,

Earthquakes and lightnings, dearths, plagues, grievous cares,

Snowstorms and all besides,—why name each one?

He from of old rules heaven, He sways the earth.³⁰⁸

With true inspiration she likens delusion to darkness, and the knowledge of God to the sun and light; and by putting them side by side in her comparison she teaches what our choice should be. For the false is not dissipated by merely placing the true beside it; it is driven out and banished by the practice of truth. Now Jeremiah, the all-wise prophet, or rather the Holy Spirit in Jeremiah, shows what God is. “I am,” he says, “a God who is near, and not a God afar off. Shall a man do anything in secret, and I not see him? Do not I fill the heavens and the earth, saith the Lord?”³⁰⁹ Once again, the same Spirit says through Isaiah: “Who shall measure the heaven with a span, and the whole earth with a hand-breadth?”³¹⁰ See the greatness of God and be amazed! Him let us worship, about whom the prophet says: “The hills shall melt from before thy face, as wax melteth from before the face of the fire.”³¹¹ He is God, the prophet says again, “whose throne is heaven, and the earth His footstool”³¹²; before whom “if He open heaven, trembling shall seize thee.”³¹³ Would you hear too, what this prophet says about idol-worshippers?³¹⁴ “They shall be made a spectacle before the sun; and their dead bodies shall be meat for the fowls of the heaven and the beasts of the earth, and shall be rotted by the sun and the moon, things which they themselves loved and served; and their city shall be burnt up.”³¹⁵ He says also that the elements and the world shall be destroyed with them. “The earth shall grow old, and the heaven shall pass away;” but “the word of the Lord abideth for ever.”³¹⁶ What does God say when at another time He wishes to reveal Himself through Moses? “Behold, behold, I am He, and there is no other god beside Me. I will kill and I will make alive; I will smite and I will heal, and there is none that shall deliver out of my hands.”³¹⁷

But will you listen to yet another giver of oracles? You have the whole company of the prophets, who are joined with Moses in this sacred fellowship. What says the Holy Spirit to them through Hosea? I will not hesitate to tell you. “Behold, I am He that giveth might to the thunder, and createth the wind,”³¹⁸ whose hands established the host of heaven.³¹⁹ And again through Isaiah (this utterance too I will remind you of): “I, even I,” he says, “am the Lord that speaketh righteousness and declareth truth. Assemble yourselves and come. Take counsel together, ye that are being saved out of the nations. They have no knowledge, who set up their carved image of wood, and pray to gods who shall not save them.”³²⁰ Then, lower down, he says: “I am God and there is none righteous except Me, there is no Saviour beside Me. Turn ye unto Me and ye shall be saved, ye who come from the end of the earth. I am God, and there is no other. By Myself do I swear.”³²¹ But He is displeased with idol-worshippers and says: “To whom did ye liken the Lord? Or to what likeness did ye liken Him? Did the carpenter make an image? Did the goldsmith smelt gold and gild it?”—and what follows.³²² Are you then still idol-worshippers? Yet even now of God’s threats. For the carved images made by hand shall cry out,³²³ or rather they who trust in them; for the material is incapable of feeling. Further he says: “The Lord shall shake the inhabited cities, and in His hand shall grasp the whole world as it were a nest.”³²³ Why tell you of mysteries of wisdom, and of sayings that come from a Hebrew child who was endowed with wisdom?³²⁴ “The Lord created me in the beginning of His ways, for His works”³²⁵: and, “the Lord giveth wisdom, and from His face are knowledge and understanding.”³²⁶ “How long dost thou lie at rest, thou sluggard; when wilt thou awake from sleep? If thou art diligent, there shall come to thee as a fountain thy harvest,”³²⁷ that is, the Word of the Father, the good lamp,³²⁸ the Lord who brings light, faith and salvation to all. For “the Lord, who made the earth in His strength,” as Jeremiah says, “restored the world in His wisdom,”³²⁹ since, when we have fallen away to idols, wisdom, which is His Word, restores us to the truth. This is the first resurrection,³³⁰ the resurrection from transgression; wherefore the inspired Moses, turning us away from all idolatry, utters this truly noble cry: “Hear O Israel, the Lord is thy God; the Lord is one”³³¹: and “thou is one shalt worship the Lord thy God and Him only shalt thou serve.”³³² Now therefore, learn, ye men, in the words of that blessed psalmist David: “Lay hold of instruction, lest at any time the Lord be angry; and ye shall perish from the right way, if ever His wrath be hastily kindled. Blessed are all they that trust in Him.”³³³ And, in His exceeding great pity for us, the Lord raises high the strain of salvation, like a marching song. “Sons of men, how long will ye be heavy-hearted? Why do ye love vanity and seek after falsehood?”³³⁴ What, then, is this vanity, and this falsehood? The holy apostle of the Lord will explain to you, when he accuses the Greeks: “because, knowing God, they glorified Him not as God, neither gave thanks, but became vain in their reasonings, and changed the glory of God into the likeness of an image of corruptible man, and served the creature rather than the creator.”³³⁵ Of a truth God is He who ‘‘in the beginning made the heaven and the earth.”³³⁶ Yet you do not perceive God, but worship the heaven. How can you escape the charge of impiety? Hear once more the words of a prophet: “The sun shall fail and the heaven be darkened, but the Almighty shall shine for ever; and the powers of the heavens shall be shaken, and the heavens shall be folded up, being spread out and drawn together like a curtain”—these are the prophetic utterances—“and the earth shall flee from the face of the Lord.”³³⁷

IX

And I could bring before you ten thousand passages of Scripture, of which not even “one tittle shall pass away” without being fulfilled³³⁸; for the mouth of the Lord, that is, the Holy Spirit, hath spoken it. “No longer, then, my son,” it says, “regard lightly the chastening of the Lord, nor faint when thou art reproved of Him.”³³⁹ O surpassing love for man! He speaks not as a teacher to disciples, nor as a master to servants, nor as God to men, but as a “tender father”³⁴⁰ admonishing his sons. Again, Moses confesses that he “exceedingly fears and quakes,”³⁴¹ when hearing about the Word; do you not fear when you listen to the divine Word Himself? Are you not troubled? Are you not careful and at the same time eager to learn; that is to say, are you not eager for salvation, fearing God’s wrath, loving His grace, striving after the hope, in order that you may escape the judgment? Come ye, come ye, my little ones! For “except ye become once more as little children and be born again,” as the Scripture says, ye shall not receive the true Father, “nor shall ye ever enter into the kingdom of heaven.”³⁴² For how is the stranger allowed to enter? Why, in this way, I think; when he is enrolled, and made a citizen, and receives the Father, then he will be found “in the Father’s courts,”³⁴³ then he will be counted worthy to enter into the inheritance, then he will share the Father’s kingdom with the true Son, “the beloved.”³⁴⁴ For this is the “church of the first-born,” which is composed of many good children. These are “the first-born that are enrolled in heaven ” who join in solemn assembly with all those “innumerable hosts of angels.”³⁴⁵ And we are these first-born sons, we who are God’s nurslings, we who are the true friends of the “first-born,”³⁴⁶ who have been the first of all mankind to know God, the first to be torn away from our sins, the first to be separated from the devil.

Yet the truth is, that the more God loves them the more do some men depart from Him. For He wishes that we should become sons instead of slaves, but they have disdained even to become sons. What depth of folly! It is the Lord of whom you are ashamed. He promises freedom, but you run away into—slavery! He bestows salvation, but you sink down into death. He offers eternal life, but you await His punishment; and you prefer “the fire, which the Lord has prepared for the devil and his angels”!³⁴⁷ Wherefore the blessed apostle says: “I testify in the Lord, that ye no longer walk as the Gentiles also walk, in the vanity of their mind, being darkened in their understanding and alienated from the life of God, because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the hardening of their heart, who being past feeling gave themselves up to lasciviousness, to work all uncleanness and greediness.”³⁴⁸ When such a witness reproves the folly of men and calls upon God to hear, what else remains for unbelievers but judgment and condemnation? Yet the Lord does not wear}’ of admonishing, of terrifying, of exhorting, of arousing, of warning; no indeed, He awakes men from sleep, and those that have gone astray He causes to rise from out the darkness itself. “Awake, thou that sleepest,” He cries, “and arise from the dead, and there shall shine upon thee Christ the Lord,”³⁴⁹ the sun of the resurrection. He that is begotten “before the morning star,”³⁵⁰ He that dispenses life by His own rays.

Let no one then think lightly of the Word, lest he be despising himself unawares. For the Scripture says somewhere,

Today if ye shall hear His voice,
Harden not your hearts as in the provocation,
Like as in the day of the temptation in the wilderness.
Where your fathers tempted Me by proving Me.³⁵¹

If you wish to learn what this “proving” is, the Holy Spirit shall explain to you.

And they saw My works forty years.
Wherefore I was displeased with this generation.
And said, They do always err in their heart:
But they did not know My ways;
As I sware in My wrath,
They shall not enter into My rest.³⁵²

See the threat! See the exhortation! See the penalty! Why then do we still exchange grace for wrath? Why do we not receive the Word with open ears and entertain God as guest in souls free from stain? For great is the grace of His promise, “if today we hear His voice”; and this “today” is extended day by day, so long as the word “today” exists.³⁵³ Both the “today” and the teaching continue until the consummation of all things; and then the true “today,” the unending day of God, reaches on throughout the ages.

Let us, then, ever listen to the voice of the divine Word. For “today” is an image of the everlasting age, and the day is a symbol of light, and the light of men is the Word, through whom we gaze upon God. Naturally, then, grace will abound exceedingly towards those who have believed and listen; but as for those who have disbelieved and are erring in heart, who know not the ways of the Lord, which John commanded us to make straight and prepare, with them God is displeased, and them He threatens. Moreover the ancient Hebrews received in a figure the fulfilment of the threat when they wandered in the desert. For, owing to their unbelief, they are said not to have entered into the rest,” until they followed the successor of Moses and learnt, though late, by experience, that they could not be saved in any other way but by believing, as Joshua believed.

But the Lord, being a lover of man, encourages all men to come “to a full knowledge of the truth”³⁵⁴; for to this end He sends the Comforter.³⁵⁵ What then is this full knowledge? It is godliness; and “godliness,” according to Paul, “is profitable for all things, having promise of the life which now is, and of that which is to come.”³⁵⁶ If eternal salvation were for sale, at what price would you, brother men, have agreed to buy it? Not even if one were to measure out the whole of Pactolus, the legendary river of gold, would he count a price equivalent to salvation. But do not despair. It is in your power, if you will, to buy up this highly precious salvation with a treasure of your own, namely, love and faith, which is a fitting payment for eternal life. This price God is pleased to accept. For “we have our hope set on the living God, who is the Saviour of all men, especially of them that believe.”³⁵⁷ The rest, clinging to the world, as certain sea-weeds cling to the rocks of the sea,³⁵⁸ hold immortality of little account. They are like the old man of Ithaca, yearning not for truth and their fatherland in heaven, nor yet for the Light that truly exists, but for the smoke from the hearth.³⁵⁹

Now when godliness sets out to make man as far as possible resemble God, it claims God as a suitable teacher; for He alone has the power worthily to conform man to His own likeness. This teaching the apostle recognizes as truly divine, when he says, ’’^And thou, Timothy, from a babe hast known the sacred letters, which have power to make thee wise unto salvation, through faith in Christ.”³⁶⁰ For the letters which make us sacred and divine are indeed themselves sacred, and the writings composed from these sacred letters and syllables, namely, the collected Scriptures, are consequently called by the same apostle “inspired of God, being profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for instruction which is in righteousness; that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly furnished unto every good work.”³⁶¹ No one could be so deeply moved at the exhortations of other holy men as at those of the Lord Himself, the lover of men; for this, and nothing else, is His only work, that man may be saved. In His own person He cries out, urging men on to salvation: “The kingdom of heaven is at hand.”³⁶² He converts men when they draw nigh to Him through fear. On this point the Lord’s apostle becomes an interpreter of the divine voice when in appealing to the Macedonians he says, “The Lord is at hand; take care lest we be found empty.”³⁶³

But you have so little fear, or rather faith, that you obey neither the Lord Himself, nor Paul, though Paul was a prisoner for the sake of Christ. “O taste and see that God is good.”’³⁶⁴ Faith shall lead you, experience shall teach you, the Scripture shall train you. “Come, ye children,” it says, “hearken unto me; I will teach you the fear of the Lord.”³⁶⁵ Then, as if speaking to those who have already believed, it adds briefly, “What man is there that desireth life, and loveth to see good days?”³⁶⁶ We are they, we shall answer, we, the worshippers of the good, we who are zealous for good things. Hear then, “ye that are afar off”; hear, ” ye that are nigh.”³⁶⁷ The Word was not hidden from any; He is a universal light; He shines upon all men.³⁶⁸ No one is a Cimmerian³⁶⁹ in respect of the Word. Let us hasten to salvation, to the new birth. Let us, who are many, hasten to be gathered together into one love³⁷⁰ corresponding to the union of the One Being. Similarly, let us follow after unity by the practice of good works, seeking the good Monad.³⁷¹ And the union of many into one, bringing a divine harmony out of many scattered sounds, becomes one symphony, following one leader and teacher, the Word, and never ceasing till it reaches the truth itself, with the cry, “Abba Father.”³⁷² This is the true speech which God welcomes from His children. This is the first-fruits of God’s harvest.

X

But, you say, it is not reasonable to overthrow a way of life handed down to us from our forefathers. Why then do we not continue to use our first food, milk, to which, as you will admit, our nurses accustomed us from birth? Why do we increase or diminish our family property, and not keep it for ever at the same value as when we received it? Why do we no longer sputter into our parents’ bosoms, nor still behave in other respects as we did when infants in our mothers’ arms, making ourselves objects of laughter? Did we not rather correct ourselves, even if we did not happen to have good attendants for this purpose? Again, in voyages by sea, deviations from the usual course may bring loss and danger, but yet they are attended by a certain charm. So, in Hfe itself, shall we not abandon the old way, which is wicked, full of passion, and without God? And shall we not, even at the risk of displeasing our fathers, bend our course towards the truth and seek after Him who is our real Father, thrusting away custom as some deadly drug? This is assuredly the noblest of all the tasks we have in hand, namely, to prove to you that it was from madness and from this thrice miserable custom that hatred of godliness sprang. For such a boon, the greatest that God has ever bestowed upon the race of men, could never have been hated or rejected, had you not been clean carried away by custom, and so had stopped your ears against us. Like stubborn horses that refuse to obey the reins, and take the bit between their teeth, you fled from our arguments. You yearned to shake yourselves free from us, the charioteers of your life; yet all the while you were being carried along by your folly towards the precipices of destruction, and supposed the holy Word of God to be accursed.³⁷³ Accordingly the recompense of your choice attends upon you, in the words of Sophocles,

Lost senses, useless ears, and fruitless thoughts;³⁷⁴

and you do not know that this is true above all else, that the good and god-fearing, since they have honoured that which is good, shall meet with a reward that is good; while the wicked, on the other hand, shall meet with punishment corresponding to their deeds: and torment ever hangs over the head of the prince of evil. At least, the prophet Zechariah threatens him: “He that hath chosen Jerusalem take vengeance upon thee! Behold, is not this a brand plucked out of the fire?”³⁷⁵ What a strange longing, then, is this for a self-chosen death which still presses upon men? Why have they fled to this death-bearing brand, with which they shall be burnt up, when they might live a noble life according to God, not according to custom³⁷⁶? For God grants life; but wicked custom inflicts unavailing repentance together with punishment after we depart from this world. And “by suffering even a fool will learn”³⁷⁷ that daemon-worship leads to destruction, and the fear of God to salvation.

Let any of you look at those who minister in the idol temples. He will find them ruffians with filthy hair, in squalid and tattered garments, complete strangers to baths, with claws for nails like wild beasts; many are also deprived of their virility. They are an actual proof that the precincts of the idols are so many tombs or prisons. These men seem to me to mourn for the gods, not to worship them, and their condition provokes pity rather than piety. When you see sights like this, do you still remain blind and refuse to look up to the Master of all and Lord of the universe? Will you should lead not fly from the prisons on earth, and escape to the pity which comes from heaven? For God of His great love still keeps hold of man; just as, when a nestling falls from the nest, the mother bird flutters above, and if perchance a serpent gapes for it.

Flitting around with cries, the mother mourns for her offspring.³⁷⁸

Now God is a Father, and seeks His creature. He remedies the falling away, drives off the reptile, restores the nestling to strength again, and urges it to fly back to the nest. Once more, dogs who have lost their way discover their master’s tracks by the sense of smell, and horses who have thrown their rider obey a single whistle from their own master; “the ox,” it is written, “knoweth his owner, and the ass his master’s crib, but Israel doth not know Me.”³⁷⁹ What then does the Lord do? He bears no grudge; He still pities, still requires repentance of us. I would ask you, whether you do not think instead it absurd that you men who are God’s last creation, who have received your soul from Him, and are entirely His, should serve another master; aye, and more than that, should pay homage to the tyrant instead of to the rightful king, to the wicked one instead of to the good? For, in the name of truth, what man in his senses forsakes that which is good to keep company with evil? Who is there that flees from God to live with daemons? Who is pleased with slavery, when he might be a son of God? Or who hastens to a region of darkness, when he might be a citizen of heaven; when it is in his power to till the fields of paradise, and traverse the spaces of heaven, when he can partake of the pure and life-giving spring, treading the air in the track of that bright cloud, like Elijah, with his eyes fixed on the rain that brings salvation?³⁸⁰ But there are some who, after the manner of worms, wallow in marshes and mud, which are the streams of pleasure, and feed on profitless and senseless delights. These are swinish men; for swine, says one, “take pleasure in mud”³⁸¹ more than in pure water; and they “are greedy for offal,” according to Democritus.³⁸² Let us not then, let us not be made slaves, nor become swinish, but as true “children of the light,”³⁸³ direct our gaze steadily upward towards the light, lest the Lord prove us bastards as the sun does the eagles.

Let us therefore repent, and pass from ignorance to knowledge, from senselessness to sense, from intemperance to temperance, from unrighteousness to righteousness, from godlessness to God. It is a glorious venture to desert to God’s side. Many are the good things which we may enjoy who are lovers of righteousness, who follow after eternal salvation; but the best of all are those to which God Himself alludes when He says through Isaiah, “there is an inheritance to those who serve the Lord.”³⁸⁴ Aye, and a glorious and lovely inheritance it is, not of gold, not of silver, not of raiment, things of earth, into which perchance moth and robber may find a way,³⁸⁵ casting longing eyes at the earthly riches; but that treasure of salvation, towards which we must press forward by becoming lovers of the Word. Noble deeds set out from hence in our company, and are borne along with us on the wing of truth.

This inheritance is entrusted to us by the eternal covenant of God, which supplies the eternal gift. And this dearly loving Father, our true Father, never ceases to exhort, to warn, to chasten, to love; for He never ceases to save, but counsels what is best. “Become righteous, saith the Lord. Ye that are thirsty, come to the water; and as many as have no money, go ye, and buy and drink without money.”³⁸⁶ It is to the font, to salvation, to enlightenment that He invites us, almost crying out and saying: Earth and sea I give thee, my child; heaven too, and all things living in earth and heaven are freely thine. Only, my child, do thou thirst for the Father; without cost shall God be revealed to thee. The truth is not sold as merchandise; He gives thee the fowls of the air and the fishes of the sea and all that is upon the earth. These things the Father hath created for thy pleasant delights. The bastard, who is a child of destruction, who has chosen to “serve mammon,”³⁸⁷ shall buy them with money; but to thee, that is, to the true son, He commits what is thine own,—to the true son, who loves the Father, for whose sake the Father works until now,³⁸⁸ and to whom alone He makes the promise, “and the land shall not be sold in perpetuity”³⁸⁹; for it is not delivered over to corruption.³⁹⁰ “For the whole land is mine,”³⁹¹ He says; and it is thine also, if thou receive God, Whence the Scripture rightly proclaims to believers this good news: “The saints of the Lord shall inherit God’s glory and His power.” What kind of glory, thou Blessed One? Tell me. A glory “which eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, nor hath it entered into the heart of man. And they shall rejoice in the kingdom of their Lord for ever. Amen.”³⁹² You have, my fellow-men, the divine promise of grace; you have heard, on the other hand, the threat of punishment. Through these the Lord saves, training man by fear and grace. Why do we hesitate? Why do we not shun the punishment? Why do we not accept the gift? Why do we not choose the better things, that is, God instead of the evil one, and prefer wisdom to idolatry and take life in exchange for death.? “Behold, I have set before your face,” He says, “death and life.”³⁹³ The Lord solicits you to choose life; He counsels you, as a father, to obey God. “For if ye hearken to Me,” He says, “and are willing, ye shall eat the good of the land,”—the grace follows upon obedience. “But if ye hearken not to Me, and are unwilling, a sword and fire shall devour you,”—the judgment follows upon disobedience. “For the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it;”³⁹⁴ and a word of the Lord is a law of truth.

Would you have me become a good counsellor to you? Then do you hearken; and I, if it be possible, will show myself one. When reflecting upon the good itself, you ought, my fellow-men, to have called to your aid faith, implanted in man, which is a trustworthy witness from within ourselves, with the utmost clearness choosing what is best,³⁹⁵ You ought not to have toiled to discover whether or no the best is to be followed. Let me give you an illustration: you ought to doubt whether it is right for a man to get drunk; but your practice is to get drunk before considering the question. Or in the case of riotous indulgence, you do not make careful examination, but indulge yourselves with all speed. Only, it would seem, when godliness is in question, do you first inquire; and when it is a question of following this wise God and the Christ, this you think calls for deliberation and reflection, when you have no idea what it is that befits God. Put faith in us, even as you do in drunkenness, that you may become sober. Put faith in us, even as you do in riotous indulgence, that you may live. And if, after having contemplated this clear faith in the virtues,³⁹⁶ you desire to be obedient, come then, I will lay before you in abundance persuasive arguments concerning the Word. On your part (for it is no longer the case that the ancestral customs, in which you have formerly been instructed, prevent you from attending to the truth), listen now, I pray you, to the nature of the words that follow. Moreover, let no feeling of shame for the name of Christian deter you; for shame “does great hurt to men,”³⁹⁷ when it turns them aside from salvation.

Having then stripped before the eyes of all, let us join in the real contest in the arena of truth, where the holy Word is umpire, and the Master of the universe is president. For the prize set before us is no small one, immortality. Cease then to pay any further heed, even the slightest, to the speeches made to you by the rabble of the marketplace, godless devotees of daemon-worship, men who are on the very verge of the pit through their folly and insanity, makers of idols and worshippers of stones. For these are they who have dared to deify men, describing Alexander of Macedon as the thirteenth god, though “Babylon proved him mortal.”³⁹⁸ Hence I admire the Chian sage, Theocritus by name, who in ridicule of the vain opinions which men held about gods, said to his fellow-citizens after the death of Alexander, “Keep a cheerful heart, comrades, so long as you see gods dying before men.”³⁹⁹ But indeed, as for gods that can be seen, and the motley multitude of these created things, the man who worships and consorts with them is far more wretched than the very daemons themselves. For God is in no way unrighteous as the daemons are, but righteous in the highest possible degree, and there is nothing more like Him than any one of us who becomes as righteous as possible.⁴⁰⁰

Go forth into the way, ye craftsmen all,
Who supplicate, with winnowing fans aloft.
The goddess Industry, stern child of Zeus,⁴⁰¹

—stupid fashioners and worshippers of stones! Let your Pheidias and Polycleitus come hither, Praxiteles and Apelles, and all the others who pursue the mechanical arts, mere earthly workers in earth. For a certain prophecy says that misfortune shall overtake this world of ours, on the day when men put their trust in statues.⁴⁰² Let them come then, I say again,—for I will not cease to call,—puny artists that they are. Not one of them has ever fashioned a breathing image, or made tender flesh out of earth. Who gave its softness to the marrow? Who fixed the bones? Who stretched out the sinews.? Who inflated the arteries? Who poured blood into them and drew the skin around? How could any of these men make eyes that see? Who breathed life into man? Who gave him the sense of right? Who has promised immortality? None but the Creator of the universe, the “Father, the supreme artist,”⁴⁰³ formed such a living statue as man; but your Olympian Zeus, an image of an image, far removed from the truth,⁴⁰⁴ is a dumb lifeless work of Attic hands. For “the image of God” is His Word (and the divine Word, the light who is the archetype of light, is a genuine son of Mind⁴⁰⁵); and an image of the Word is the true man, that is, the mind in man, who on this account is said to have been created “in the image” of God, and “in His likeness,”⁴⁰⁶ because through his understanding heart he is made like the divine Word or Reason, and so reasonable. But statues in human form, being an earthen image of visible, earthborn man, and far away from the truth, plainly show themselves to be but a temporary impression upon matter. In my opinion, then, nothing else but madness has taken possession of life, when it spends itself with so much earnestness upon matter.

Now custom, in having given you a taste of slavery and of irrational attention to trifles, has been fostered by idle opinion. But lawless rites and deceptive ceremonies have for their cause ignorance; for it is ignorance that brought to mankind the apparatus of fateful destruction and detestable idolatry, when it devised many forms for the daemons, and stamped the mark of a lasting death upon those who followed its guidance. Receive then the water of reason. Be washed, ye that are defiled. Sprinkle yourselves from the stain of custom by the drops that truly cleanse. We must be pure to ascend to heaven. In common with others, thou art a man; seek after Him who created thee. In thine own self thou art a son; recognize thy Father. But thou, dost thou still abide by thy sins, engrossed in pleasures? To whom shall the Lord say, “Yours is the kingdom of heaven?”⁴⁰⁷ It is yours, if you wish, for it belongs to those who have their will set upon God. It is yours, if you are willing simply to trust and to follow the short way of our preaching.⁴⁰⁸ This it is which the Ninevites obediently heard; and by sincere repentance they received, in place of the threatened destruction, that glorious salvation.⁴⁰⁹

“How then,” you may say, “am I to go up into heaven?” The Lord is “the Way”⁴¹⁰; a “narrow” way, but coming “from heaven”; a “narrow” way, but leading back to heaven.⁴¹¹ It is narrow, being despised upon earth; and yet broad, being adored in heaven. Accordingly he who has never heard the Word can plead ignorance as an excuse for his error; whereas he whose ears ring with the message only deliberately nurses his disobedience in the soul itself; and, the wiser he may seem to be, his intelligence ever proves a source of evil, because he finds wisdom an accuser, once he has failed to choose what is best. For it is his nature, as man, to be in close fellowship with God. As, then, we do not force the horse to plough, nor the bull to hunt, but lead each animal to its natural work; for the very same reason we call upon man, who was made for the contemplation of heaven, and is in truth a heavenly plant, to come to the knowledge of God. Having laid hold of what is personal, special and peculiar in his nature, that wherein he surpasses the other animals, we counsel him to equip himself with godliness, as a sufficient provision for his journey through eternity. Till the ground, we say, if you are a husbandman; but recognize God in your husbandry. Sail the sea, you who love sea-faring; but ever call upon the heavenly pilot. Were you a soldier on campaign when the knowledge of God laid hold of you? Then listen to the commander who signals righteousness.

Ye men that are weighed down as Avith torpor and drink, awake to soberness. Look about you and consider a little what is the meaning of your worship of stones, and of all that you squander with useless zeal upon mere matter. You are wasting both money and livelihood upon ignorance, just as you are wasting your very life upon death. For nothing but death have you gained as the end of your vain hope. You cannot pity yourselves, —nay, you are not even in a fit state to be persuaded by those who have compassion upon you for your error. Enslaved to pernicious custom, you cling to it of your own free will until the latest breath, and sink down into destruction. ‘‘For the light has come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the light,”⁴¹² though they might sweep away the hindrances to salvation, absurd folly and riches and fear, by repeating this verse of the poet:

Whither this wealth do I bear; my journey, where doth it lead me?⁴¹³

Do you not then wish to fling away these vain fancies, and bid good-bye to custom itself, saying these last words to vain opinion?—

Farewell, deceitful dreams; for ye were nought.⁴¹⁴

Why, my fellow-men, do you believe in Hermes Tycho and in the Hermes of Andocides and the one called Amyetus?⁴¹⁵ Surely it is plain to everyone that they are stonesJust as Hermes himself. And as the halo is not a god, nor the rainbow either, but conditions of the atmosphere and clouds; and precisely as day is not a god, nor month, nor year, nor time which is made up of these; so also neither is the sun or moon, by which each of the before-mentioned periods is marked off. Who then in his right mind would imagine such things as audit, punishment, right and retribution to be gods? No, nor even the Avengers, nor the Fates, nor destiny are gods; for neither is the State, nor glory, nor wealth, the last of which painters represent as blind. If you deify modesty, desire and love, you must add to them shame, impulse, beauty and sexual intercourse. No longer, then, can sleep and death be reasonably held among you to be twin gods, since these are conditions which naturally affect all animals; nor indeed will you rightly say that doom, destiny, or the Fates are goddesses. And if strife and battle are not gods, neither are Ares and Enyo. Further, if flashes of lightning, thunderbolts and showers of rain are not gods, how can fire and water be such? How, too, can shooting stars and comets, which come about owing to some condition of the atmosphere? Let him who calls fortune a god, call action a god also. If then we do not believe even one of these to be a god, nor yet one of those figures made by hand and devoid of feeling, but there is manifest round about us a certain providence of divine power, then nothing remains save to confess that, after all, the sole truly existing God is the only one who really is and subsists.

But verily, you who do not understand are like men that have drunk of mandrake or some other drug. God grant that one day you may recover from this slumber and perceive God, and that neither gold nor stone nor tree nor action nor suffering nor disease nor fear may appear to you as God. For it is quite true that “there are thrice ten thousand daemons upon all-nourishing earth,” but they are not “immortal” as the poet says.⁴¹⁶ No, nor yet mortal,—for they do not partake of feeling, and therefore cannot partake of death,—but they are stone and wooden masters of mankind, who insult and violate human life through custom. It is written, “The earth is the Lord’s, and the fulness thereof.”⁴¹⁷ Then how do you dare, while enjoying the delights of the Lord’s possessions, to ignore their Master? Leave My earth, the Lord will say to you; touch not the water I send forth; partake not of the fruits My husbandry produces. Give back, O man, to God the recompense for your nurture. Acknowledge your Master. You are God’s own handiwork; and how could that which is His peculiar possession rightly become another’s.?’ For that which is alienated, being deprived of its connexion with Him, is deprived of the truth. Are you not turned into a state of insensibility after the manner of Niobe, or rather—to address you in more mystical language—like the Hebrew woman whom the ancient people called stones Lot’s wife? This woman, tradition tells us, was turned into stone on account of her love of Sodom;⁴¹⁸ and by Sodomites we understand the atheists and those who are devoted to impiety, w^ho are both hard of heart and without sense. Believe that these utterances are being spoken to you from heaven. Do not believe that stones and stocks and birds and snakes are sacred things, while men are not. Far rather regard men as really sacred, and take beasts and stones for what they are. For indeed \the timid and wretched among men believe that God cries out through a raven or a jackdaw, but is silent through man; and they have given honour to the raven as a messenger⁴¹⁹ of God, while they persecute the man of God, who neither caws, nor croaks, but speaks. Yes, alas! they set to work with inhuman hatred to slaughter him when he instructs them with reason and human love, and calls them to righteousness, while they neither look for the grace that comes from above, nor do they seek to avoid the punishment. For they do not trust in God, nor do they fully understand His power.

But He whose love for man is unspeakably great, has also an unbounded hatred for sin. His wrath breeds the punishment to follow upon sin; on the other hand. His love for man brings blessings upon repentance. It is a most pitiable thing to be deprived of the help that comes from God. Now the blinding of the eyes and deafening of the ears are more grievous than all the other encroachments of the evil one: for by the first of these we are robbed of the sight of heaven, and by the second we are deprived of the divine teaching. But you, though maimed in respect of the truth, darkened in mind and deaf in understanding, still are not grieved, are not pained, have felt no longing to see heaven and its maker, nor have you sought diligently to hear and to know the Creator and Father of the universe, by fixing your choice on salvation. For nothing stands in the way of him who earnestly desires to come to the knowledge of God, not want of instruction, not penury, not obscurity, not poverty. And when a man has ‘‘conquered by brass,”⁴²⁰ or by iron either, the really true wisdom, he does not seek to change it. Indeed no finer word has ever been said than this:

In every act the good man seeks to save.⁴²¹

For he who is zealous for the right, as one would expect from a lover of Him who is in need of nothing, is himself in need of but little, because he has stored up his blessedness with none other than God Himself, where is no moth, no robber, no pirate,⁴²² but only the eternal giver of good things. With good reason, therefore, have you been likened to those serpents whose ears are closed to the enchanters. ‘‘For their heart,” the Scripture says, “is after the likeness of persuasion the serpent, even like an adder that is deaf and stoppeth her ears, who will not give heed to the voice of charmers.”⁴²³ But as for you, let your wildness be charmed away, and receive the gentle Word we preach, and spit out the deadly poison, in order that as fully as possible it may be given you to cast off corruption, as serpents cast their old skin.

Listen to me, and do not stop up your ears or shut off your hearing, but consider my words. Splendid is the medicine of immortality; stay at length your serpent-like windings. For it is written: “the enemies of the Lord shall lick the dust.”⁴²⁴ Lift up your head from earth to the sky, look up to heaven and wonder, cease watching for the heel⁴²⁵ of the just and hindering “the way of truth.”⁴²⁶ Become wise and yet harmless;⁴²⁷ perchance the Lord will grant you wings of simplicity (for it is His purpose to supply earth-born creatures with wings)⁴²⁸ in order that, forsaking the holes of the earth, you may dwell in the heavens. Only let us repent with our whole heart, that with our whole heart we may be able to receive God. “Hope in Him,” the Scripture says, “all ye congregations of people; pour out all your hearts before Him.”⁴²⁹ He speaks to those who are empty of wickedness; He pities them and fills them with righteousness. Trust, O man, in Him who is man and God; trust, O man, in Him who suffered and is adored. Trust, ye slaves, in the living God who was dead. Trust, all men, in Him who alone is God of all men. Trust, and take salvation for reward. “Seek after God, and your soul shall live.”⁴³⁰ He who seeks after God is busy about his own salvation. Have you found God? you have life. Let us seek then^ that we may also live. The reward of finding is life with God. “Let all who seek Thee be joyful and glad in Thee, and let them say always, God be exalted.”⁴³¹ A beautiful hymn to God is an immortal man who is being built up in righteousness, and upon whom the oracles of truth have been engraved. For where else but in a temperate soul should righteousness be inscribed? or love, or modesty, or gentleness? We ought, I think, by having these divine writings stamped deeply into the soul, to regard wisdom as a noble starting-point, to whatever lot in life men turn, and to believe that the same wisdom is a calm haven of salvation. For it is because of wisdom that they whose course has led them to the Father are good fathers of their children; that they who have come to know the Son are good sons to their parents; that they who have been mindful of the Bridegroom are good husbands of their wives; that they who have been ransomed from the deepest slavery are good masters of their servants.

Surely the beasts are happier than men who live in error! They dwell in ignorance, like you, but they do not falsely pretend to truth. Among them are no tribes of flatterers. Fishes do not fear daemons; birds do not worship idols. One heaven alone they marvel at, since God they cannot come to know, having been deemed unworthy of reason. When you think of this, are you not ashamed to have made yourselves less reasonable than even the creatures without reason, you who have wasted so many stages of life in atheism? You have been boys, then lads, then youths, then men, but good you have never been. Have respect to your old age; become sober now you have reached the sunset of life; even at the end of life acknowledge God, so that the end of your life may regain a beginning of salvation. Grow old to daemon-worship; return as young men to the fear of God; God will enroll you as guileless children. Let the Athenian, then, follow the laws of Solon, the Argive those of Phoroneus, and the Spartan those of Lycurgus, but if you record yourself among God’s people, then heaven is your fatherland and God your lawgiver. And what are His laws? “Thou shalt not kill; thou shalt not commit adultery; thou shalt not corrupt a boy; thou shalt not steal; thou shalt not bear false witness; thou shalt love the Lord thy God.”⁴³² There are also the complements of these, wise laws and holy sayings inscribed in the very hearts of men; “Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself,”⁴³³ and, “to him that smiteth thee on the one cheek, offer also the other,”⁴³⁴ and, “thou shalt not lust, for lust by itself is an act of adultery.”⁴³⁵ How much better is it for men not to have the least wish to lust after forbidden things, rather than to obtain the object of their lusts?

But you do not patiently endure the severity of the way of salvation. Nevertheless, just as we take delight in sweet foods, preferring them because they are smooth and pleasant, and yet it is the bitter medicines, rough to the taste, which cure and restore us to health, the severity of the remedies strengthening those whose stomachs are weak; so custom pleases and tickles us, but thrusts us into the pit, whereas truth, which is “rough” at first, but a “goodly rearer of youth,”⁴³⁶ leads us up to heaven. And in this home of truth, the chamber of the women is the abode of sanctity; while the assembly of the old men is prudent.⁴³⁷ Nor is truth hard of approach, nor impossible to grasp, but it is our innermost neighbour, dwelling, as the all-wise Moses darkly says, in the three parts of our being, “hands and mouth and heart.”⁴³⁸ This is a genuine symbol of truth, which is made complete by three things in all, by purpose and action and speech. And be not afraid of this, that the many delights of the imagination may draw you away from wisdom; of your own accord you will willingly pass beyond the childishness of custom, just as boys throw away their playthings on reaching manhood. With a swiftness beyond parallel and a goodwill that is easy of approach, the divine power has shone forth upon the earth and filled the whole world with the seed of salvation. For not without divine care could so great a work have been accomplished, as it has been in so short a time by the Lord, who to outward seeming is despised,⁴³⁹ but in very deed is adored; who is the real Purifier, Saviour and Gracious One,⁴⁴⁰ the Divine Word, the truly most manifest God, who is made equal to the Master of the universe, because He was His Son and “the Word was in God.”⁴⁴¹ When at the first His coming was proclaimed the message was not disbelieved; nor was He unrecognized when, having assumed the mask of manhood and received fleshly form, He began to act the drama of salvation for humanity. For He was a true champion, and a fellow-champion with His creatures; and, having been most speedily published abroad to all men,—for swifter than the sun He rose from the very will of the Father—He readily lighted up God for us. Through His teachings and signs He showed whence He came and who He was, namely, the Word our herald, mediator and Saviour, a spring of life and peace flooding the whole face of the earth, thanks to whom the universe has now become, so to speak, a sea of blessings.

XI

Now consider briefly, if you will, the beneficence of God from the beginning. The first man played in Paradise with childlike freedom, since he was a child of God. But when he fell a victim to pleasure (for the serpent, that creeps upon the belly, an earthy⁴⁴² evil, reared to return to matter, is an allegory for pleasure), and was led astray by lusts, the child, coming to manhood through disobedience and refusing to listen to the Father, was ashamed to meet God. See how pleasure prevailed! The man who by reason of innocence had been free was discovered to be bound by sins. The Lord purposed once again to loose him from his bonds. Clothing Himself with bonds of flesh (which is a divine mystery). He subdued the serpent and enslaved the tyrant death; and, most wonderful of all, the very man who had erred through pleasure, and was bound by corruption, was shown to be free again, through His outstretched hands.⁴⁴³ O amazing mystery! The Lord has sunk down, but man rose up; and he who was driven from Paradise gains a greater prize, heaven, on becoming obedient. Wherefore it seems to me, that since the Word Himself came to us from heaven, we ought no longer to go to human teaching, to Athens and the rest of Greece, or to Ionia, in our curiosity. If our teacher is He who has filled the universe with holy powers, creation, salvation, beneficence, lawgiving, prophecy, teaching, this teacher now instructs us in all things, and the whole world has by this time become an Athens and a Greece through the Word. For surely, after believing in a poetic legend which records that Minos the Cretan was “a familiar friend of Zeus,”⁴⁴⁴ you will not disbelieve that we, who have become disciples of God, have entered into the really true wisdom which leaders of philosophy only hinted at, but which the disciples of the Christ have both comprehended and proclaimed abroad. Moreover, the whole Christ, so to speak, is not divided; there is neither barbarian nor Jew nor Greek, neither male nor female, but a new man transformed by the Holy Spirit of God.⁴⁴⁵

Further, all other counsels and precepts, as, for instance, whether a man should marry, or take part in politics, or beget children, are of small account and of special application. The exhortation that alone would seem to be universal, and concerned plainly with the whole of existence, reaching out in every season and every circumstance towards the supreme end, life, is piety towards God. And it is only necessary to live according to piety, in order to obtain eternal life; whereas philosophy, as the elders say, is a lengthy deliberation, that pursues wisdom with a never-ending love.⁴⁴⁶ But “the commandment of the Lord shines afar, giving light to the eyes.”⁴⁴⁷ Receive the Christ; receive power to see; receive thy light;

Thus shalt thou well discern who is God and who is but mortal.⁴⁴⁸

The Word who has given us light is “to be desired above gold and precious stone; He is sweet above honey and the honeycomb.”⁴⁴⁹ How can we help desiring Him who has made clear the mind that lay buried in darkness, and sharpened the “light-bearing eyes”⁴⁵⁰ of the soul? For just as “if the sun were not, the world would have been in perpetual night, should have for all the other heavenly bodies could do”⁴⁵¹; so been in unless we had come to know the Word, and had been enlightened by His rays, Ave should have been in no way different from birds who are being crammed with food, fattening in darkness⁴⁵² and reared for death. Let us admit the light, that we may admit God. Let us admit the light, and become disciples of the Lord. This is the promise He has made to the Father; “I will declare Thy name to my brethren; in the midst of the congregation will I sing praises to Thee.”⁴⁵³ Sing praises, and declare unto me God Thy Father. Thy story shall save. Thy song shall instruct me. Until now I was erring in my search for God, but since Thou, Lord, dost become my guiding light I find God through Thee, I receive the Father at Thy hands, I become joint-heir⁴⁵⁴ with Thee, since Thou wert not ashamed of Thy brother.⁴⁵⁵

Away then, away with our forgetfulness of the truth! Let us remove the ignorance and darkness that spreads like a mist over our sight; and let us get a vision of the true God, first raising to Him this voice of praise, “Hail, O Light.” Upon us who lay buried in darkness and shut up in the shadow of death⁴⁵⁶ a light shone forth from heaven, purer than the sun and sweeter than the life of earth. That light is life eternal, and whatsoever things partake of it, live. But night shrinks back from the light, and setting through fear, gives place to the day of the Lord. The universe has become sleepless light and the setting has turned into a rising. This is what was meant by “the new creation.”⁴⁵⁷ For He who rides over the universe, “the sun of righteousness,”⁴⁵⁸ visits mankind impartially, imitating His Father, who “causes His sun to rise upon all men,”⁴⁵⁹ and sprinkles them all with the dew of truth. He it was who changed the setting into a rising, and crucified death into life; who having snatched man out of the jaws of destruction raised him to the sky, transplanting corruption to the soil of incorruption, and transforming earth into heaven. He is God’s husbandman, “who gives favourable omens, and rouses the people to a work” that is good, “reminding us of the true livelihood,”⁴⁶⁰ and granting to us the Father’s truly great, divine and inalienable portion, making men divine by heavenly doctrine, “putting laws into their minds and writing them upon the heart.”⁴⁶¹ To what laws does He allude? “That all shall know God from the small to the great; and,” God says, “I will be gracious to them and not remember their sins.”⁴⁶¹ for all Let us receive the laws of life; let us obey God when He exhorts us; let us learn about Him, that He may be gracious; let us render Him (though He is in need of nothing) a recompense of gratitude for His blessings, as a kind of rent paid to God for our dwelling here below.

Gold in exchange for brass, a hundred oxen for nine’s worth.⁴⁶²

At the price of a little faith He gives thee this great earth to till, water to drink, other water to sail on, air to breathe, fire to do service, and a world to dwell in. From hence He has granted thee power to send forth a colony into heaven. All these great works of creation and gracious gifts He has let out to thee in return for a little faith. Again, men who believe in wizards receive amulets and charms which are supposed to bring safety. Do you not rather desire to put on the heavenly amulet,⁴⁶³ the Word who truly saves, and, by trusting to God s enchantment, to be freed from passions, which are diseases of the soul, and to be torn away from sin? For sin is eternal death. Surely you are altogether bereft of sense⁴⁶⁴ and sight, spending your lives, like moles, in darkness, doing nothing but eat, and falling to pieces through corruption. But it is the truth, I say, which cries, ” Light shall shine out of darkness.”⁴⁶⁵ Let the light then shine in the hidden part of man, in his heart; and let the rays of knowledge rise, revealing and illuminating the hidden man within, the disciple of the light, friend of Christ and joint-heir with Him; more especially since there has come to our knowledge the name, worthy of all honour and reverence, of one who is a good Father to a good and dutiful child, whose precepts are kindly, and whose commands are for His child’s salvation. He who obeys Him gains in all things. He follows God, he obeys the Father; when erring he came to know Him; he loved God; he loved his neighbour; he fulfilled God’s commandment; he seeks after the prize; he claims the promise.

It is ever God’s purpose to save the flock of mankind. For this cause also the good God sent the good Shepherd.⁴⁶⁶ And the Word, having spread abroad the truth, showed to men the grandeur of salvation, in order that they may either be saved if they repent, or be judged if they neglect to obey. This is the preaching of righteousness; to those obey, good news; to those who disobey, a means of judgment. But when the shrilling trumpet blows, it assembles the soldiers and proclaims war; and shall not Christy think you, having breathed to the ends of the earth a song of peace, assemble the soldiers of peace that are His? Yes, and He did assemble, O man, by blood and by word His bloodless army, and to them He entrusted the kingdom of heaven. The trumpet of Christ is His gospel. He sounded it, and we heard. Let us gird ourselves with the armour of peace, “putting on the breast-plate of righteousness,” and taking up the shield of faith, and placing on our head the helmet of salvation; and let us sharpen “the sword of the spirit, which is the word of God.”⁴⁶⁷ Thus does the apostle marshal us in the ranks of peace. These are our invulnerable arms; equipped with these let us stand in array against the evil one. Let us quench the fiery darts of the evil one⁴⁶⁸ with the moistened sword-points, those that have been dipped in water by the Word,⁴⁶⁹ returning thankful praises to God for His benefits and honouring Him through the divine Word. “For while thou art yet speaking,” it says, “He will answer, behold, I am with thee.”⁴⁷⁰

O sacred and blessed power, through which God we must becomes a fellow-citizen with men! It is then and imitate better and more profitable for man to become at the God same time both imitator and servant of the highest of all beings; for he will not be able to imitate God except by serving Him holily, nor yet to serve and worship except by imitating Him. Now the heavenly and truly divine love comes to men in this way, whenever somewhere in the soul itself the spark of true nobility, kindled afresh by the divine Word, is able to shine out; and, greatest thing of all, salvation itself runs side by side with the sincere desire for it, will and life being, as we may say, yoked together. Wherefore this exhortation to the truth, and this alone, is like the most faithful of our friends; for it remains with us until our latest breath, and proves a good escort for the whole and perfect spirit of the soul to those who are setting out for heaven. What then is my exhortation? I urge thee to be saved. This is the wish of Christ; in one word. He freely grants thee life. And who is He? Understand briefly: the Word of truth; the Word of incorruption; He who regenerates man by bringing him back to the truth; the goad of salvation; He who banishes corruption and expels death; He who has built His temple in men, that in men He may set up the shrine of God. Purify the temple, and abandon pleasures and careless ways, like the flower of a day, to the wind and fire; but labour in wisdom the harvest of self-control, and present yourself as first-fruits to God, in order that you may be not only His work, but also His delight. Both things are necessary for the friend of Christ: he must show himself worthy of a kingdom, and be counted worthy of a kingdom.

XII

Let us then shun custom; let us shun it as some dangerous headland, or threatening Charybdis, or the Sirens of legend. Custom strangles man; it turns him away from truth; it leads him away from life; it is a snare, an abyss, a pit, a devouring evil.

Wide of that smoke and wave direct, O helmsman, thy vessel.⁴⁷¹

Let us flee, comrades, let us flee from this wave. It belches forth fire; it is an island of wickedness heaped with bones and corpses,⁴⁷² and she who sings therein is pleasure, a harlot in the bloom of youth, delighting in her vulgar music.

Hither, renowned Odysseus, great glory of all the Achaeans:

Bring thy ship to the land, that a song divine may entrance thee.⁴⁷³

She praises thee, sailor, she calls thee renowned in song; the harlot would make the glory of the Greeks her own. Leave her to roam among the corpses; a heavenly wind comes to thine aid. Pass by pleasure; she beguiles.

Let not thy heart be deceived by a woman with trailing garment.

Coaxing with wily words to find the place of thy dwelling.⁴⁷⁴

Sail past the song; it works death. Only resolve, and thou hast vanquished destruction; bound to the wood of the cross⁴⁷⁵ thou shalt live freed from all corruption. The Word of God shall be thy pilot and the Holy Spirit shall bring thee to anchor in the harbours of heaven. Then thou shalt have the vision of my God, and shalt be initiated in those holy mysteries, and shalt taste the joys that are hidden away in heaven, preserved for me, “which neither ear hath heard nor have they entered into the heart”⁴⁷⁶ of any man.

And lo! methinks I see a pair of suns
And a double Thebes,⁴⁷⁷

said one who was revelling in frenzy through idols, drunk with sheer ignorance. I would pity him in his drunkenness, and would appeal to him to return from this madness to sober salvation, seeing that the Lord also welcomes the repentance, and not the death, of a sinner. Come, thou frenzy-stricken one, not resting on thy wand, not wreathed with ivy! Cast off thy headdress; cast off thy fawnskin;⁴⁷⁸ return to soberness! I will show thee the Word, and the Word’s mysteries, describing them according to thine own semblance of them. This is the mountain beloved of God, not a subject for tragedies, like Cithaeron, but one devoted to the dramas of truth, a wineless mountain, shaded by hallowed groves. Therein revel no Maenads, sisters of “thunder-smitten”⁴⁷⁹ Semele, who are initiated in the loathsome distribution of raw flesh, but the daughters of God, the beautiful lambs,⁴⁸⁰ who declare the solemn rites of the Word, assembling a sober company. The righteous form this company, and their song is a hymn in praise of the King of all. The maidens play the harp, angels give glory, prophets speak, a noise of music rises; swiftly they pursue the sacred band,⁴⁸¹ those who have been called hasting with eager longing to receive the Father. Come to me, old man, come thou too! Quit Thebes; fling away thy prophecy and Bacchic revelry and be led by the hand to truth. Behold, I give thee the wood of the cross to lean upon.⁴⁸² Hasten, Teiresias, believe! Thou shalt have sight. Christ, by whom the eyes of the blind see again, shineth upon thee more brightly than the sun. Night shall flee from thee; fire shall fear thee; death shall depart from thee. Thou shalt see heaven, old man, though thou canst not see Thebes.

O truly sacred mysteries! O pure light! In the blaze of the torches I have a vision of heaven and of God. I become holy by initiation. The Lord reveals the mysteries; He marks the worshipper with His seal, gives light to guide his way, and commends him, when he has believed, to the Father’s care, where he is guarded for ages to come. These are the revels of my mysteries! If thou wilt, be thyself also initiated, and thou shalt dance with angels around the unbegotten and imperishable and only true God, the Word of God joining with us in our hymn of praise. This Jesus being eternal, one great high priest of one God who is also Father, prays for men and encourages men: “‘Give ear, ye myriad peoples,’⁴⁸³ or rather, so many of mankind as are governed by reason, both barbarians and Greeks; the whole race of men I call, I who was their Creator by the Father’s will. Come to me, that ye may be marshalled under one God and the one Word of God; and do not surpass the irrational creatures in reason only, for to you alone of all mortal beings I offer the fruit of immortality. I desire, yea, I desire to impart to you even this gracious favour, supplying in its fulness the good gift of incorruption. And I freely give you divine reason, the knowledge of God; I give you Myself in perfection. For this is Myself, this is God’s desire, this is the concord, this the harmony of the Father: this is the Son, this is Christ, this is the Word of God, the arm of the Lord, the might of the universe, the Father’s will. O ye who of old were images, but do not all resemble your model. I desire to conform you to the archetype, that you may become even as I am. I will anoint you with the ointment of faith, whereby you cast away corruption; and I will display unveiled the figure of righteousness, whereby you ascend to God. ‘Come unto Me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn of Me; for I am meek and lowly in heart, and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.’”⁴⁸⁴ Let us hasten, let us run, we who are images of the Word, beloved of God and made in His likeness. Let us hasten, let us run; let us take up His yoke; let us take upon ourselves incorruption; let us love Christ, the noble charioteer of men. He led the foal and its parent under the same yoke,⁴⁸⁵ and now having yoked together the team of mankind. He shapes the course of His chariot for the goal of immortality. He hastens to God that He may fulfil clearly what before He darkly hinted at; for He drove at the first into Jerusalem, but now into heaven, a most noble spectacle for the Father, the eternal Son bringing victory! Let us be zealous, therefore, for what is noble, and become men beloved of God; and let us get possession of the greatest of good things, God and life. The Word is our helper; let us have confidence in Him, and let no longing after silver and gold, or after glory, ever come upon us so strongly as the longing after the Word of truth Himself. For surely it cannot be pleasing to God Himself if we hold in least esteem those things which are of the greatest moment, while we choose as of higher worth the manifest excesses and the utter impiety of ignorance, stupidity, indifference and idolatry.

The sons of the philosophers not inaptly consider all the works of foolish men are unholy and impious, and by describing ignorance itself as a form of madness they acknowledge that the mass of men are nothing else but mad.⁴⁸⁶ Now reason does not allow us to doubt which of the two is better, to be sane or to be mad. Holding fast the truth with all our might we must follow God in soundness of mind, and consider all things to be His, as indeed they are; and further we must recognize that we are the noblest of His possessions and entrust ourselves to Him, loving the Lord God, and looking upon that as our work throughout the whole of life. And if “the goods of friends are common,”⁴⁸⁷ and man is beloved of (for he is indeed dear to God through the mediation of the Word), then all things become man’s, because all things belong to God and are common to both friends, God and man. It is time then for us to affirm that only the God-fearing man is rich and of sound mind and well-born,⁴⁸⁸ and therefore the image, together with the likeness,⁴⁸⁹ of God; and to say and believe that when he has been made by Christ Jesus “just and holy with understanding,”⁴⁹⁰ he also becomes in the same degree already like to God. So the prophet openly reveals this gracious favour when he says, “I said, ye are gods, and ye are all sons of the Most High.”⁴⁹¹ Now we, I say, we are they whom God has adopted, and of us alone He is willing to be called Father, not of the disobedient. For indeed this is the position of us who are Christ’s attendants⁴⁹²: as are the counsels, so are the words; as are the words, so are the actions; and as are the deeds, such is the life. The entire life of men who have come to know Christ is good.

Enough, I think, of words. It may be that, moved by love of man, I have run on too long in pouring out what I have received from God, as is natural when one is inviting men to the greatest of good things—salvation. For of a truth, the very words are unwilling ever to cease revealing the mysteries of that life which knows no manner of ending. But with you still rests the final act, namely this, to choose which is the more profitable, judgment or grace. For my own part, I claim that there is no shadow of doubt which of the two is better; nay, it is sinful even to compare life with destruction.

---

¹ Arion was returning from Sicily to Greece laden with prizes and presents. The sailors thought to kill him for his wealth, but after playing his lyre he jumped into the sea. Dolphins, charmed by the music, gathered round him, and one of them took the bard on its back to Corinth.

² The stones were said to have moved into their proper places at the sound of Amphion’s music.

³ i.e., Orpheus. Cp. Euripides, Rhesus 924, δεινῳ σοφιστῃ Θρῃκί.

⁴ Strictly cicala, here and elsewhere.

⁵ i.e., Delphi. According to the Greek legend, the serpent was the ancient guardian of the Delphic shrine, and was slain by Apollo.

⁶ Mt. Cithaeron was sacred to Zeus; Mt. Helicon to the Muses; and the Thracian mountains were the home of Dionysus-worship. For the meaning of these mountain-cults in Greek religion see A. B. Cook, Zeus, i. pp. 100-163.

⁷ Clement is not referring to the works of the great dramatists, but to the contests at the Lenaea, a festival held annually at Athens in honour of Dionysus. In Clement’s day the competitors would be for the most part poets of a very minor order.

⁸ Isaiah ii. 3.

⁹ The modes (ἁρμονίαι, see p. 12. n. a) were the scales in which Greek music was written. Phrygian, Lydian and Dorian were the chief modes, others being, it would seem, formed from them by modification or combination. The Dorian mode was of a solemn character, answering to our minor scale; the Phrygian and Lydian were brighter.

¹⁰ Homer, Odyssey iv. 221.

¹¹ A slight change in the Greek, suggested by Reinkens, would give the meaning “remedy against grief.”

¹² For examples see pp. 35-43.

¹³ St. Matthew iii. 9; St. Luke iii. 8.

¹⁴ St. Matthew iii. 7; St. Luke iii. 7.

¹⁵ 1 Tim. vi. 11.

¹⁶ St. Matthew vli. 15.

¹⁷ Titus iii. 3-5.

¹⁸ See p. 6, n. c.

¹⁹ See Genesis iv. 21.

²⁰ The source of this quotation is unknown. It may be a fragment of an early Christian hymn, the metaphors being suggested by such passages as Psalm lvii. 8; 1 Corinthians vi. 19.

²¹ See 1 Samuel xvi. 23.

²² Psalm cix. 3 (Septuagint).

²³ St. John i. 1.

²⁴ See the story in Herodotus ii. 2. Psammetichus, king of Egypt, being desirous of discovering which was the most ancient people, put two children in charge of a herdsman. Goats were to be brought to them for giving milk, but no human speech was to be uttered in their presence. The first articulate sound they made was taken to be the Phrygian word for bread; hence the king assumed that Phrygians were the primitive race.

²⁵ St. John i. 1.

²⁶ Titus ii. 11-13.

²⁷ Literally, “He who exists in Him who exists.”

²⁸ St. John i. 1.

²⁹ Ephesians ii. 2.

³⁰ Or, “to reason.” The Greek Logos means either “Word” (personal), or “rational word,” “reason” (impersonal). All through his writings Clement plays upon this double meaning of Logos. Other instances occur on pp. 27, 275, 277.

³¹ Philippians ii, 6-7.

³² Homer, Odyssey i. 170, etc.

³³ See St. John i. 20-23.

³⁴ Odyssey i. 10.

³⁵ Isaiah xl. 8, quoted in St. Matthew iii. 3; St. Mark i. 3; St. Luke iii. 4; St. John 1. 23.

³⁶ i.e., Elizabeth; St. Luke i. 7-13.

³⁷ Isaiah liv. 1. When Clement says that Scripture brings together the two voices, he is interpreting the first clause of this quotation as referring to the desert, and the second as referring to the woman.

³⁸ i.e., the Gentiles; cp. Stromateis ii. 29. 1.

³⁹ See St. Luke i. 20, 64.

⁴⁰ St. John X. 9.

⁴¹ See p. 20, n. a.

⁴²St. Matthew xi. 27.

⁴³ e.g., the cave of Trophonius at Lebadeia in Boeotia.

⁴⁴ Clement refers to the Libyan oracle of Zeus Ammon. There was a close connexion between this and the oracle of Zeus at Dodona. For the existence of a sacred oak in Libya see A. B. Cook, Zeus, vol. i. pp. 361-366. Strabo (54 B.C.-A.D. 24) says that in his day the oracle was “almost entirely deserted ” (Strabo 813).

⁴⁵ An attempt has been made here to reproduce the striking word-play which is a constant feature of Clement’s writing. For other examples see pp. 37, 191 (n. b), 199 (n. a), 255 (n. d), 299 (n. a).

⁴⁶ Flour and barley were used in the sacrifices, and omens were obtained by watching the movements of the flames.

⁴⁷ The Greek word is used in the Septuagint to denote those who have “familiar spirits,” such as the witch of Endor (1 Samuel xxviii. 7). Their ventriloquism was employed to simulate the voices of the spirits; see Isaiah viii. 19 (“that chirp and that mutter”). Also Leviticus xix. 31, etc.

⁴⁸ “Eva” (εὐα, εὐάν) is one form of the cry “evoe” or “evae” (εὐοι, εὐαί) uttered by worshippers in the orgiastic rites of Dionysus.

⁴⁹ Clement catches at a slight verbal resemblance as affording some support for his idea that there is a connexion between Eve and the Bacchic serpent. Elsewhere (Stromateis iii. 80. 2) he gives the Hebrew derivation, Eve = Life (see Genesis iii. 20).

⁵⁰ See p. 35.

⁵¹ See p. 73.

⁵² This phrase is quoted from Hesiod, Theogony 200. See also Liddell and Scott under (1) φιλομμηδής and (2) φιλομμειδής.

⁵³ i.e. the Grim or Terrible One.

⁵⁴ Compare this formula of the Phrygian with that of the Eleusinian mysteries, quoted on p. 43. See also the Appendix on the Mysteries, p. 388.

⁵⁵ The Greek reads, “the two goddesses”; but Clement can hardly have meant this.

⁵⁶ For the word-play see p. 28, n. a.

⁵⁷ Pallas from pallein.

⁵⁸ Homer, Iliad ii. 426. Over Hephaestus, i.e. the fire.

⁵⁹ Iliad iv. 49.

⁶⁰ The “Princes” are the Corybantes or Cabeiri. See Pausanias x. 38. 7.

⁶¹ For this legend of the Corybantes see A, B. Cook, Zeus, i. 107-108.

⁶² i.e. Persephone.

⁶³ Literally, “the hierophantic clan.” The hierophant (see Appendix on the Mysteries, p. 385) was chosen from the Eumolpidae, the dadouchos or torch-bearer from the Heralds.

⁶⁴ The Greek word represents a mixed drink composed of barley-meal, grated cheese and Pramnian wine. The same word is used for the draught mentioned in the formula of the Eleusinian mysteries.

⁶⁵ Lobeck suggested “having tasted,” which meaning can be obtained by a slight change in the Greek; see note on text. This would bring the passage more into line with the Phrygian formula quoted on p. 35. I have translated the reading of the MSS., leaving the English as vague as is the Greek. It seems fairly clear, however, that some of the worshippers’ acts are symbolic imitations of what the goddess is supposed to have done. See Appendix, p. 384, n. 3.

⁶⁶ The great-hearted people of Erechtheus are mentioned in Homer, Iliad ii. 547. Erechtheus, a legendary king of Athens, had a temple, the Erechtheum, on the Acropolis.

⁶⁷ See the mention of the chest in the Cabeiric rite, p. 41, and in the Eleusinian formula, p. 43.

⁶⁸ Gē Themis is the result of an emendation of Wilamowitz, accepted by Stählin. It necessitates only a minute change in the Greek. The deity referred to is then the earth-goddess, of whom Demeter and Cybele are other forms.

⁶⁹ Clement means that fire is God’s instrument for judgment (cp. 1 Corinthians iii. 13) and punishment (St. Matthew xviii. 8, etc.). The torch-fires of Eleusis are at once a revelation of misdoings and a premonition of the retribution to come; hence they are fulfilling the fire’s appointed task, and not merely playing a spectacular part.

⁷⁰ The Greek ἄθεος means something more than “godless,” and yet less than the positive English word “atheist.” It was applied (see next paragraph) to philosophers who denied the existence of the gods; also to Christians, partly on the same ground, partly because they could show no image of their own God. As used here, the word conveys a theological rather than a moral imputation, so that “atheist” is the nearest rendering. Clement continually retorts that his adversaries were the true atheists. See p. 145.

⁷¹ Ephesians ii. 12. “Without God” is the rendering in both the Authorized and the Revised Versions; but “atheist” is necessary here to bring out the point.

⁷² Literally a “menagyrtes” or “metragyrtes,” that is, a wandering priest of Cybele, the Mother of the Gods. See p. 168, n. a, for a further description of these priests.

⁷³ Herodotus iv. 76.

⁷⁴ The philosopher referred to is Xenophanes. See Plutarch, Amatorius 763D and De Is. et Osir. 379B. Mourning for dead gods was a conspicuous feature of some ancient religions. In Egypt Osiris was mourned for (see the reference to his funeral rites on pp. 109-] 1); in Asia Minor, Attis; and Adonis in Syria. The “weeping for Tammuz” of Ezekiel viii. 14 is an example of Adonis-worship.

⁷⁵ “Hierophant” is the literal rendering. For the hierophant’s office see p. 40, n. b, and Appendix p. 385.

⁷⁶ See Deuteronomy xxiii. 1, 2.

⁷⁷ Euripides, Frag. 935.

⁷⁸ Euripides, Trojan Women 884-5.

⁷⁹ Plato, Timaeus 90A; cp. p. 217.

⁸⁰ This fanciful derivation comes from Plato, Cratylus 397 C-D, where Socrates is made to say that the first Greeks had only the earth and the heavenly bodies for gods. Since these were in perpetual movement (thein, to run) they called them gods (theoi). On learning about other gods they extended the name to them.

⁸¹ i.e. avenging deities.

⁸² Ephesians ii. 3-5.

⁸³ Empedocles, Frag. 145 Diels.

⁸⁴ Sibylline Oracles, Preface, 23-25, 27.

⁸⁵ The word Sibyl was applied to prophetesses who delivered oracles at certain shrines, such as Cumae or Erythrae. It was appropriated by the authors of that long series of pseudo-prophetic verses which has come down to us under the title of the Sibylline Oracles. These date from various periods between the second century B.C. and the seventh century A.D. The earliest oracle is a Jewish work, written in Egypt. Many of the subsequent ones are of Christian, or Jewish-Christian, authorship. Their chief object was to denounce the folly of polytheism and image-worship, and they are frequently quoted by the early Christian Fathers. Clement would seem to have believed in the antiquity of those known to him, for he asserts (see p. 161) that Xenophon borrowed from them.

⁸⁶ With this paragraph compare Cicero, De natura deorum iii. 53-59. Both Cicero and Clement are using the work of the “theologians” (theologoi), who tried to reduce to some system the mass of Greek legend. On the reasons for this multiplication of gods see Gardner and Jevons, Manual of Greek Antiquities, pp. 95-96.

⁸⁷ A goddess worshipped at Sais in Egypt, whom the Greeks identified with Athena. See Herodotus ii. 59, etc.

⁸⁸ The skin usually worn by Athena is the aegis, a goatskin ornamented with the head of the Gorgon, whom she had slain. Clement’s story is evidently another explanation of the aegis. See Cicero, De natura deorum iii. 59.

⁸⁹ i.e. the “pastoral” god, from nomeus a shepherd.

⁹⁰ Homer, Iliad v. 31 and 455.

⁹¹ Homer, Iliad v. 385-387.

⁹² Phoebus is of course Apollo. The thought of dogs being offered to Ares leads Clement on to describe, in a characteristic digression, an even more absurd sacrifice.

⁹³ Callimachus, Fragments 187-8 Schneider.

⁹⁴ Homer, Iliad i. 591.

⁹⁵ Iliad xwiii. 411.

⁹⁶ Pindar, Pythian Odes iii. 97, 100-105.

⁹⁷ Euripides, Alcestis 3-4.

⁹⁸ Homer, Iliad iii. 243-244.

⁹⁹ i.e. an epic poem bearing the name of Cypris, or Aphrodite. The extant fragments are printed at the end of D. B. Monro’s Homeri opera et reliquiae (Oxford 1891), the above lines being on p. 1015.

¹⁰⁰ Homer, Odyssey xxi. 6.

¹⁰¹ Homer, Iliad i. 544 and elsewhere.

¹⁰² This was probably a sacred goat kept at Thmuis, and treated as the incarnate manifestation of some god. At the neighbouring town of Mendes such an animal was worshipped, as we learn from Herodotus ii. 46; see also Clement, on p. 85 of this volume. Thmuis is mentioned in Herodotus ii. 166 as the name of a town and district in Egypt. The goat, like the bull, would be chosen for veneration on account of its procreative force. Clement regards it (ii. Stromateis 118. 5) as a type of the sensual man.

¹⁰³ Homer, Iliad i. 528-530. Strabo says (354) that Pheidias had this passage in mind when he carved the famous statue of Zeus at Olympia.

¹⁰⁴ According to the usual story Heracles was begotten in three nights (Lucian, Dialogi deorum 10), whence he was called πριέσπερος (Justin Martyr, Oratio ad Graecos 3). It is possible that Clement has confused this with the “nine nights” of Zeus and Mnemosyne which preceded the birth of the Muses (Hesiod, Theogonia 56).

¹⁰⁵ Homer, Iliad v. 403.

¹⁰⁶ Odyssey viii. 324.

¹⁰⁷ i.e. Hera. The epithet means, literally, “cow-eyed”; but it is frequently applied to Hera in the Iliad (e.g. i. 551) in the sense of “with large, bright eyes.” For the connexion between Hera and the cow see A. B. Cook, Zeus, i. pp. 444-457.

¹⁰⁸ i.e. Paris, son of Priara of Troy. He judged Aphrodite more beautiful than Hera or Athena, and so roused the anger of these two goddesses against Troy.

¹⁰⁹ See p. 3, n. e.

¹¹⁰ See Appendix on the Mysteries, p. 382.

¹¹¹ Heracleitus, Frag. 127 Bywater, 15 Dials. Dionysus is originally a vegetation god, and is thus but another form of Hades or Pluto, the “wealth-giver.”

¹¹² Homer, Odyssey xix. 34.

¹¹³ See Iliad iii. 424 and following lines. The paramour was Paris, whose abduction of Helen from Sparta brought about the Trojan war.

¹¹⁴ Panyasis, Heracleia, Frag. 16 Kinkel.

¹¹⁵ Iliad xxi. 568.

¹¹⁶ Iliad v. 343.

¹¹⁷ Iliad v. 855 and following lines.

¹¹⁸ Poleraon, Frag. 24 Frag. hist. Graec. iii. p. 122.

¹¹⁹ Iliad v. 395-397.

¹²⁰ Panyasis, Heracleia, Frag. 6. 20 Kinkel.

¹²¹ Sosibius, Frag. 15 Frag. hist. Graec. ii. p. 628.

¹²² “Ichor” is the blood that flows in the veins of the gods; cp. Iliad v. 340. But the word is also used of matter, or corrupt discharges from the body. See references in Liddell and Scott, s.v.

¹²³ Iliad i. 423-424.

¹²⁴ See Pausanias viii. 3. 3. The story of Lycaon is discussed in A. B. Cook, Zeus, vol. i. pp. 63-81.

¹²⁵ i.e. Ganymedes; see pp. 69 and 111.

¹²⁶ Callimachus, Hymn to Zeus 8-9. This claim of the Cretans to possess the tomb of Zeus is said to have earned for them their traditional reputation as liars. The two lines of Callimachus, when read in full, distinctly assert this. They run as follows:

Cretans ever do lie; for a tomb, O Prince, did they fashion

Even for thee; but thou art not dead, for thy life is unending.

Cp. Titus i. 12, and, for a discussion on the burial-place of Zeus, A. B. Cook, Zeus, i. 157-163.

¹²⁷ Homer, Odyssey xix. 163. The gods were not, according to Clement, primeval beings, but simply men with a human history.

¹²⁸ Clement seems to allude to his passage about the statues p. 101 and onwards.

¹²⁹ A local cult of Agamemnon (such as the one which existed at Clazomenae—Pausanias vii. 5. 11) had evidently been combined with the worship of Zeus. See Athenagoras, Apology i.

¹³⁰ Staphylus, Frag. 10 Fraq. hist. Graec. iv. p. 506.

¹³¹ Phanocles, Frag. 5 Bach. Cp. Athenaeus, p. 603.

¹³² Artemis seems to have been “hanged” annually at Condylea in Arcadia. See Pausanias viii. 23. 6, where the children are probably imitating some ancient ritual. Full discussion in Frazer, Adonis, Attis, Osiris, i. pp. 288-397. See also Callimachus, Frag. 3 Schneider.

¹³³ Condylitis may mean ‘‘striking,” from κονδυλίζειν. But possibly this is another form of “Artemis of Condylea,” called Artemis Condyleatis in Pausanias viii. 23. 6.

¹³⁴ Sosibius, Frag. 14 Fraq. hist. Graec. ii. p. 628.

¹³⁵ Polemon, Frag. 71 Fraq. hist. Graec. iii. p. 135. See Athenaeus, p. 316.

¹³⁶ See Frazer, Golden Bough, part 5, vol. ii. p. 283 (3rd ed.).

¹³⁷ Nicander, Frag. 23 Schneider.

¹³⁸ The Apis bull was regarded as an incarnation of the god Ptah, or Osiris. Certain peculiar bodily marks distinguished him from other bulls, and when found he was tended with deep veneration in a shrine at Memphis. At his death there was great mourning, and a stately funeral. See Herodotus iii. 27-28.

¹³⁹ See Herodotus ii. 46.

¹⁴⁰ The story is given in Antoninus Liberalis, ch. 29. The birth of Heracles was retarded by the Fates to please Hera. But Alcraene’s companion Galinthias (cp. galē, a weasel) told them that the birth was by the will of Zeus, whereupon they ceased opposing it. They punished Galinthias, however, by turning her into a weasel. When Heracles grew up he remembered her good deed and built her a shrine. The Thebans thereafter used to offer her the first sacrifice at the feast of Heracles.

¹⁴¹ The legendary ancestor of the Myrmidons, a Thessalian tribe. The name may be connected with myrmex an ant.

¹⁴² Compare the story in Herodotus ii. 141, where Sennacherib’s army, invading Egypt, was rendered useless by the ravages of mice.

¹⁴³ Polemon, Frag. 31 Frag. hist. Graec. iii. p. 124.

¹⁴⁴ Heracleides Ponticus, Frag. hist. Graec. ii. p. 197, note 2. See also Farnell, Cults of the Greek States, i. p. 45.

¹⁴⁵ Euphorion, Frag. 6 Frag. hist. Graec. iii. p. 73.

¹⁴⁶ The Syrian goddess Derceto was represented with the body of a lish, and her daughter Semiramis took the form of a dove. See Diodorus ii.

¹⁴⁷ See Herodotus vi. 69.

¹⁴⁸ This hero is Androgeos, on account of whose death at Athens the annual tribute of seven youths and seven maidens was imposed by his father Minos upon the Athenians; from which they were delivered by Theseus. A scholiast, commenting on this passage, says that figures of Androgeos were set “at the stern of ships.” Phalerum was the ancient port of Attica, whence according to tradition Theseus embarked on his journey to Crete. See Pausanias i. 1. 2-4.

¹⁴⁹ See Plutarch, Aristeides xi.

¹⁵⁰ Hesiod, Works and Days 252-253. Hesiod was a native of Ascra in Boeotia, which explains the two appellations that follow this quotation.

¹⁵¹ Kock, Comic. Attic. Frag. pp. 616-7.

¹⁵² Homer, Iliad iv. 49.

¹⁵³ To understand the point of Clement’s onslaught against the “daemons” it must be remembered that the best Greek teachers of his age, such as Plutarch and Maximus of Tyre, used the doctrine of “secondary divinities” as a means of preserving their own monotheism without altogether breaking away from the popular mythology. According to them, the one Supreme God worked through many ministers, to whom worship could rightly be offered. Clement attacks this position from the moral standpoint; the legends and the animal sacrifices prove that all these divinities, whether called gods, demigods, or anything else, were evil in character; there was no distinction between Zeus and the humblest daemon. A clear and valuable account of the matter will be found in Dill, Roman Society from Nero, etc. pp. 423-134..

¹⁵⁴ That is, in his play Iphigeneia among the Tanrians. See also Herodotus iv. 103. The Taurian peninsula is the modern Crimea.

¹⁵⁵ Monimus, Frag. 1 Frag. hist. Graec. iv. p. 454.

¹⁵⁶ Anticleides, Frag. 9 Müller, Script. rerum Alex. Mag. p. 149.

¹⁵⁷ Dosidas (or Dosiades), Frag. 5 Frag. hist. Graec. iv. p. 400.

¹⁵⁸ Pythocles, Frag. 4 Frag. hist. Graec. iv. p. 489.

¹⁵⁹ Demaratus, Frag. 4 Frag. hist. Graec. iv. p. 379.

¹⁶⁰ Marius is said to have been warned in a dream to sacrifice his daughter Calpurnia, in order to obtain a victory over the Cimbri by whom he was hard pressed. Phitarch, Collect. parall. 20; Dorotheas, Frag. 3 Müller, Script. rerum Alex. Mag. p. 156.

¹⁶¹ Homer, Iliad iii. 33-35.

¹⁶² See the whole story in Herodotus i. 30-33 and 85-88.

¹⁶³ Cp. Pausanias i. 30. 1, Athenaeus xiii. p. 609D; and, for the antiquity of Eros, Plato, Symposium 178A-C, and Hesiod, Theogonia 120, with Paley’s note ad loc. The ancient Eros was probably an earth-deity, or god of fertility, and in reality quite different from the winged child who accompanies Aphrodite and is the personification of human love. See Farnell, Cults of the Greek States, ii. pp. 625-6.

¹⁶⁴ Herodotus vi. 105.

¹⁶⁵ Antiochus, Frag. 15 Frag. hist. Graec. i. p. 184.

¹⁶⁶ Leandrius (or Meandrius), Frag. 5 Frag. hist. Graec. ii. p. 336. The Didymaeum is the temple of Zeus and Apollo at Didyma near Miletus.

¹⁶⁷ Ptolemaeus of Megalopolis, Frag. 1 Frag. hist. Graec. iii. p. 66.

¹⁶⁸ This verse is not found in Nauck’s collection of Tragic Fragments. The sense may be compared with that of St. John xxi. 25.

¹⁶⁹ Homer, Odyssey xx. 351-352.

¹⁷⁰ Custom, i.e. inherited traditions about the gods and their worship, was pleaded by adherents of the old religions as a defence against Christian attack; see p. 197.

¹⁷¹ Psalm cxv. 4.

¹⁷² i.e. the Kaaba at Mecca.

¹⁷³ Aëthlius of Samos, Fr. 1 Frag. hist. Graec. iv. p. 287.

¹⁷⁴ Varro, Ant. rev. div. xvi. Fr. 34 Agahd (Jahrb. class. Phil. 1898, Suppl. Bd. p. 210), and cp. S. Augustine, Civ. Dei iv. 31.

¹⁷⁵ Olympichus, Fr. 1 Frag. hist. Graec. iv. p. 466.

¹⁷⁶ These are the same as the Erinyes, goddesses of vengeance, mentioned on p. 53. They were called Eumenides, the kindly ones, and at Athens Semnai, the venerable ones, these titles being euphemistic substitutes for their real and dreaded name.

¹⁷⁷ Lychneus is mentioned by Athenaeus (205F) as a stone from which images were made. It is probably the same as lychnites, which according to Pliny (Nat. Hist. xxxvi. 14) was a name given to Parian marble, because it was quarried in underground pits by lamplight (lychnos = lamp).

¹⁷⁸ Polemon, Fr. 41 Frag. hist. Graec. iii. p. 127.

¹⁷⁹ Philochorus, Fr. 185 Frag. hist. Graec. i. pp. 414-15.

¹⁸⁰ Demetrius of Troezen, Fr. 5 Diels (Frag. hist. Graec. iv. p. 383).

¹⁸¹ Compare this with the image of Artemis at Ephesus, mentioned in Acts xix. 35, which is also called diopetes, or “fallen from heaven” (R.V. margin).

¹⁸² i.e. the tusks of an elephant.

¹⁸³ Dionysius, Fr. 5 Frag. hist. Graec. ii. pp. 9-10.

¹⁸⁴ Apellas, Fr. 1 Frag. hist. Graec. iv. p. 307.

¹⁸⁵ The scholiast describes this as a rough stone quarried from Phelleus, a rocky district of Attica; cp. Aristoph. Clouds 71.

¹⁸⁶ Polemon, Fr. 73 Frag. hist. Graec. iii. p. 136.

¹⁸⁷ For Scyllis and Dipoenus see Pausanias ii, 22. 5, etc.

¹⁸⁸ An account of Sarapis-worship, showing its wide diffusion at this time, will be found in Dill, Roman Society from Nero, etc. pp. 560-584.

¹⁸⁹ A different version of this story is to be found in Plutarch, Isis and Osiris ch. xxviii.

¹⁹⁰ Athenodorus, Fr. 4 Frag. hist. Graec. iii. pp. 4.87-88.

¹⁹¹ For the burial of the Apis bull see p. 84, n. a, and A. B. Cook, Zeus, i. pp. 434-5.

¹⁹² i.e. Hadrian. When Antinous was drowned in the Nile, Hadrian gave way to extraordinary grief. He ordered him to be enrolled among the gods, and built Antinoopolis in his memory. See Pausanias viii. 9. 7-8.

¹⁹³ Sibylline Oracles iv. 4-7.

¹⁹⁴ Sib. Or. v. 295-296.

¹⁹⁵ Sib. Or. v. 483-84.

¹⁹⁶ Sib. Or. v. 486-487.

¹⁹⁷ Heracleitus, Fr. 126 Bywater, 5 Diels.

¹⁹⁸ Fortuna was originally an earth deity, a goddess of fertility, and only later became a personification of chance or luck. Mr. A. B. Cook (Zeus, i. 271-2) cites this passage as tending to establish her connexion with the earth.

¹⁹⁹ Nicander calls the field-mouse “terrible” in reference to its plague-bearing powers. The complete line (Theriaca 815) is τυφλήν τε σμερδνήν τε βροτοις ἐπὶ λοιγὸν ἄγουσαν μυγαλέην.

²⁰⁰ Cicero (De divinatione ii. 33) says of oysters and shellfish that they “grow bigger and smaller with the moon.”

²⁰¹ A verbal reminiscence of Homer, Iliad xxiv. 54.

²⁰² i.e. the gods cannot help them out of their difficulties.

²⁰³ The story is also told by Cicero (De natura deorum iii. 83) who places it in the Peloponnesus instead of in Sicily.

²⁰⁴ Cambyses. See Herodotus iii. 99.

²⁰⁵ See Thucydides iv. 133, where the fire is attributed to the carelessness of Chrysis, who placed a lighted lamp near the garlands and then fell asleep. According to Thucydides, however, Chrysis was not burnt with the temple. Fearing Argive vengeance she fled the same night to Phlius.

²⁰⁶ i.e. Dionysus of Eleutherae, a town in Attica from which the worship of Dionysus was introduced into Athens. See Pausanias i. 2. 5.

²⁰⁷ According to Stoic teaching, fire was the creative and sustaining principle diffused throughout the universe. But this was an ethereal fire, different from common fire (Cicero, De nat. deor. ii. 41), and the Stoics applied to it various epithets, such as τεχνικόν, “skilful,” and φρόνιμος, “prudent.” In this passage Clement plays with the two meanings. Other references to the “prudent fire” in Clement are iii. Paed. 44. 2, vii. Strom. 34. 4, Eclog. Prophet. 25. 4.

²⁰⁸ Pantarces means “all-powerful,” and so could be understood as a title of Zeus.

²⁰⁹ Poseidippus, Frag. 3 Frag. hist. Graec. iv. p. 482.

²¹⁰ Marble copies of this celebrated statue are to be seen at Munich and in the Vatican. For a photographic illustration of the latter see Cambridge Companion to Greek Studies (1906), p. 258.

²¹¹ Ammon was the Egyptian ram-headed god whom the Greeks identified with Zeus. In Greek art the horns are set on a human head. See illustrations of coins in A. B. Cook, Zeus, i. pp. 370-2.

²¹² Because (Athenaeus 289), through his healing art, he was the sole cause of life to men! He wrote to Pliilip: “You are king in Macedon, I in medicine.”

²¹³ Aristus, Frag. 2 Müller, Script. rerum Alex. Mag. p. 154.

²¹⁴ See Athenaeus 289C, where Baton is given as the authority for this story. Cp. Baton, Frag. 1 Frag. hist. Graec. iv. p. 348.

²¹⁵ Demosthenes, On the Crown 67.

²¹⁶ A title of Zeus, as descending or alighting in thunder and lightning; applied in flattery to Demetrius by the Athenians. See Plutarch, Demetrius 10.

²¹⁷ Cp. Plutarch, Demetrius 26.

²¹⁸ Hippo has been mentioned before, among those dubbed atheists by the Greeks; see p. 49. For the couplet see Bergk, Poet. lyr. Graec. ii. p. 259 (ed. 1915).

²¹⁹ Homer, Iliad xvi. 433-434.

²²⁰ The word is generally translated “idols” or “images,” but it also means “shades” or “phantoms,” which is the sense wanted here.

²²¹ Or perhaps, “honouring them for their wickedness.” Compare a similar construction, “honoured by reason of fornication,” or “whose honour comes from fornication,” on pp. 110-11.

²²² Homer, Iliad i. 221-232.

²²³ See Plato, Phaedo 81C D.

²²⁴ Iliad ix. 502-503.

²²⁵ Thersites is Homer’s ridiculous character, hump-backed, lame and bandy-legged, with an impudent tongue into the bargain. Iliad ii. 211-277.

²²⁶ Bion of Borysthenes, Frag. 44 Mullach, Frag. phil. Graec. ii. p. 427.

²²⁷ See Plato, Phaedrus 247C.

²²⁸ Homer, Odyssey iv. 14.

²²⁹ Philostephanus, Frag. 13 Frag. hist. Graec. iii. p. 31.

²³⁰ Poseidippus, Fr. 1 Frag. hist. Graec. iv. p. 482.

²³¹ Literally, “procuress.” Compare Tennyson’s “In Memoriam,” 53.

Hold thou the good: define it well:
For fear divine Philosophy
Should push beyond her mark, and be
    Procuress to the Lords of Hell.

Clement had no fear of “divine Philosophy,” but only of art.

²³² Compare Philostratus, Apollonius of Tyana vi. 40 (Loeb Classical Library ed. ii. pp. 134-9).

²³³ i.e. Pasiphaë. Daedalus had put her inside his wooden cow, that she might satisfy her passion for the bull. Apollodorus iii. 1.3; Philo Judaeus, De spec. leg. 8.

²³⁴ Homer, Odyssey viii. 266.

²³⁵ Odyssey viii. 267-270.

²³⁶ 1 St. Peter ii. 9-10.

²³⁷ St. John viii. 23.

²³⁸ See St. John iii. 31.

²³⁹ Romans vi. 1.

²⁴⁰ i.e. bound with the invisible chains which Hephaestus had made to entrap her, Odyssey viii. 270-299.

²⁴¹ Demosthenes, Olynthiacs iii. 19.

²⁴² i.e. in houses; see p. 137.

²⁴³ Cp. 2 St. Peter ii. 14.

²⁴⁴ Cp. St. Matthew v. 28.

²⁴⁵ Sibylline Oracles iv. 24, 27-30.

²⁴⁶ Exodus XX. 4; Deuteronomy v. 8.

²⁴⁷ Psalm xcvi. 5.

²⁴⁸ See Genesis i. 14.

²⁴⁹ Psalm xxxiii. 6.

²⁵⁰ Psalm viii. 3.

²⁵¹ Cp. Cicero, De natura deorum ii. 140 “Providence … made men upright and erect, that by contemplating the heavens they might gain a knowledge of the gods.” See also Ovid, Metamorph. i. 83-6.

²⁵² i.e. gets a feeble grasp of it. Cp. Plutarch, De Is. et Osir. 383F “The souls of men, while on earth and encumbered by bodies and passions, can have no companionship with God, except in so far as they get a dim dream of Him through the aid of philosophy.”

²⁵³ See p. 47 with note.

²⁵⁴ Cp. Plutarch, Amatorius 757B “Chrysippus says that Ares is anairesis” (so Petersen: MSS. have anairein = to destroy). The endeavour to find meanings in the names of the gods has its literary origin in Plato’s Cratylus (esp. pp. 395-413). The Stoics found in this method a support for their doctrine that the gods of mythology were merely personified natural forces or processes. See Cicero, De natura deorum ii. 63-72.

²⁵⁵ Eudoxus, Fr. 16 Brandes (Jahrb. class. Phil. 1847, Suppl. 13, p. 223).

²⁵⁶ Hicesius, Fr. 1 Frag. hist. Graec. iv. p. 429.

²⁵⁷ Diogenes of Cyzicus, Fr. 4 Frag. hist. Graec. iv, p. 392.

²⁵⁸ Nymphodorus, Fr. 14 Frag. hist. Graec. ii. p. 379.

²⁵⁹ Dinon, Fr. 9 Frag. hist. Graec. ii. p. 91.

²⁶⁰ Berosus, Fr. 16 Frag. hist. Graec. ii. p. 508.

²⁶¹ Galatians iv. 9.

²⁶² The theory of Democritus was that all natural objects gave oiF small particles of themselves, which he called “images.” These came into contact with the organs of sense and were the cause of perception.

²⁶³ i.e. Aristotle.

²⁶⁴ Aristotle sharply divided the celestial spheres, which were the divine part of the universe, from the sublunary world, in which alone birth, death, and change take place. The laws governing the upper world are necessarily different from those of the lower. Zeller (Aristotle, i. 308, n. 3, Eng. trans.) says: “Both Christian and heathen opponents have distorted this to mean that the Divine Providence reaches only as far as the moon and does not extend to the earth. How far this representation agrees with the true Aristotelian doctrine may be gathered from what has been already said, at pp. 403, 410, and 421.”

²⁶⁵ The doctrine of “flux” was taught by Heracleitus in his well-known phrase, “All things flow” (πάντα ῥει). “Motion” and “irregular vortices” refer to Anaxagoras, who supposed the primitive elements to have been set in rotatory motion by Mind (νους). This theory is ridiculed by Aristophanes, Clouds 828 “Vortex has ousted Zeus, and reigns as king.” Vortex motion was also a part of the “atomic theory” of Leucippus, Atoms of various size and shape constantly impinging upon cue another in empty space would give rise to countless vortices, each of which might be the beginning of a world.

²⁶⁶ Plato, Timaeus 28C.

²⁶⁷ Plato, Epistles vii. p, 341C.

²⁶⁸ Literally “the back” of the heavens. The phrase comes from Plato, Phaedrus 217C. Both Plato and Clement think of the heavens as a series of spheres revolving above the earth. The dwelling-place of God (or Plato’s “real existence”) is on the outer side of the topmost sphere. See the whole passage, Phaedrus 246D-249.

²⁶⁹ Euripides, Frag. 1129 Nauck.

²⁷⁰ Menander, Frag. 609 Kock, Comic. Attic. Frag. iii. p. 184.

²⁷¹ λόγιος means learned, but here it seems to refer back to λόγος.

²⁷² Democritus, Frag. 30 Diels, Vorsokratiker ii. pp. 70-1 (1912).

²⁷³ Plato, Epistles ii. p. 312E.

²⁷⁴ Deut. XXV. 13-15.

²⁷⁵ See Plato, Phaedo 78D.

²⁷⁶ Plato, Laws 715E, 716A.

²⁷⁷ Phaedo 78A.

²⁷⁸ Sibylline Oracles iii. 586-588, 590-594.

²⁷⁹ Antisthenes, Frag. 24 Mullach, Frag. phil. Graec. ii. p. 277.

²⁸⁰ Xenophon, Memorabilia iv. 3. 13-14.

²⁸¹ Sibylline Oracles, Preface 10-13. These pretended Hebrew prophecies were, of course, much later than the time of Xenophon, though plainly Clement believed in their antiquity. See p. 56, n. b.

²⁸² See note on text. Cleanthes is generally said to be a native of Assos in the Troad. See Strabo xiii. pp. 610-11.

²⁸³ Pearson, Fragments of Zeno and Cleanthes, p. 299 (Fr. 75). Pearson remarks: “Clement’s mistake in referring these lines to Cleanthes’ conception of the Deity, when they really refer to the ethical summum bonum, is obvious.”

²⁸⁴ Pearson, p. 320 (Fr. 101).

²⁸⁵ Aratus, Phaenomena 13-15.

²⁸⁶ Hesiod, Frag. 195 Rzach.

²⁸⁷ Euripides, Frag. 941 Nauck.

²⁸⁸ [Sophocles] Frag. 1025 Nauck. These lines are also quoted by Justin Martyr, Athenagoras, Eusebius, and other Christian writers. They are of Jewish or Christian origin, as their teaching proves; certainly not from Sophocles.

²⁸⁹ Orpheus, Frag. 5 Abel.

²⁹⁰ Sibylline Oracles iii, 624-625.

²⁹¹ For the fragment see Kock, Comic. Attic. Frag. iii. p. 58, The priest would seem to have carried on a tray an image of Attis; and the “old dame” personated Cybele, the mother of the gods. But ἐπί may mean “in charge of,” “presiding over,” in which case the priest personates Attis, and μητραγύρτης ought perhaps to be retained (see note on text). Grotius observes, however, that “the statement has to do with the god himself, whom the travelling priest carries, and not with the priest.” The quotation occurs in Justin Martyr (De mon. 5) with this addition: “the god ought to stay at home and take care of his worshippers.”

²⁹² i.e. Metragyrtae. See p. 48, n. a.

²⁹³ Antisthenes, Frag. 70 Mullach, Frag. phil. Graec. ii. p. 287.

²⁹⁴ Menander, Frag. 245 Kock, Comic. Attic. Frag. iii. p. 70.

²⁹⁵ Homer, Iliad xxi. 394, 421.

²⁹⁶ Iliad i. 607 etc.

²⁹⁷ Iliad iii. 407.

²⁹⁸ Iliad vi. 132-134.

²⁹⁹ Euripides, Orestes 591-592.

³⁰⁰ Orestes 594-596, 417.

³⁰¹ i.e. in the Hercules Furens.

³⁰² Alcestis 755-760.

³⁰³ Euripides, Frag. 907 Nauck.

³⁰⁴ Literally, “with head bare.”

³⁰⁵ Ion 442-447.

³⁰⁶ For other references to the “short road” to salvation see pp. 217, and 240, n. a. Clement means to say that Christian teaching puts truth in simple form so that the humblest may at once understand as much of it as is necessary to ensure his salvation. Some aspects of truth are reached through philosophy, but that is a long and difficult process, beyond the efforts of all but a few.

³⁰⁷ i.e. all the dangerous pleasures which this life offers. In the Paedagogus Clement uses the same word “snare” in reference to feasting (ii. 9. 4), wine (ii. 23. 1, 28. 2, 29. 2), and laughter (ii. 47. 3).

³⁰⁸ Sibylline Oracles, Preface 38-35.

³⁰⁹ Jeremiah xxiii. 23-24.

³¹⁰ Isaiah xl. 12.

³¹¹ See Isaiah Ixiv, 1-3.

³¹² Isaiah Ixvi, 1.

³¹³ See Isaiah Ixiv, 1 (Septuagint).

³¹⁴ The text gives “idols,” but the quotation refers to their worshippers. It is possible that there is a slight error in the text. See textual note.

³¹⁵ A collection of passages from Jeremiah, not Isaiah. See viii. 2; xxxiv, 20; iv. 26.

³¹⁶ Isaiah li. 6; also compare St. Matthew xxiv. 35 and Isaiah xl. 8.

³¹⁷ Deuteronomy xxxii. 39.

³¹⁸ Amos iv. 13; not Hosea.

³¹⁹ See Jeremiah xix. 13 and Psalm viii. 4 (Septuagint).

³²⁰ Isaiah xlv. 19-20.

³²¹ Isaiah xlv. 21-23.

³²² Isaiah xl. 18-19.

³²³ Isaiah x. 10-11, 14 (Septuagint).

³²⁴ i.e. Solomon; see 1 Kings iii. 7; iii. 12.

³²⁵ Proverbs viii. 22. “Wisdom” is, of course, the speaker. Clement’s quotation, here as everywhere else, is taken from the Septuagint. The Hebrew text of this verse gives a different meaning—“possessed” instead of “created”; but see R.V. margin.

³²⁶ Proverbs ii. 6.

³²⁷ Proverbs vi. 9, 11^a. (The latter verse is found only in the Septuagint.)

³²⁸ Possibly from Proverbs xx. 27 (see the Septuagint reading as quoted by Clement, vii. Strom. 37. 6 and by Clement of Rome i. 21. 2). Cp. also Psalm cxix. 105, where, however, the Septuagint (cxviii. 105) has “Thy law” instead of “Thy word.”

³²⁹ Jeremiah x. 12.

³³⁰ See Revelation xx. 5.

³³¹ Deuteronomy vi. 4.

³³² Deuteronomy vi. 13; x. 20; St. Matthew iv. 10; St. Luke iv. 8.

³³³ Psalm ii. 12 (Septuagint).

³³⁴ Psalm iv. 2.

³³⁵ Romans i. 21, 23, 25.

³³⁶ Genesis i. 1.

³³⁷ A collection of passages from Scripture; see Isaiah xiii. 10; Ezekiel xxxii. 7; St. Matthew xxiv. 29; Isaiah xxxiv. 4; Psalm civ. 2; Joel ii. 10. Stahhn thinks that the whole may possibly be taken from the Apocalypse of Peter, with which we know Clement to have been acquainted (Eusebius, H. E. vi. 14).

³³⁸ See St. Matthew v. 18; St. Luke xvi. 17.

³³⁹ Proverbs iii. 11.

³⁴⁰ Homer, Odyssey ii. 47.

³⁴¹ Hebrews xii. 21.

³⁴² St. Matthew xviii, 3; St. John iii. 3, 5.

³⁴³ St. Luke ii. 49.

³⁴⁴ St. Matthew iii. 17 etc.

³⁴⁵ See Hebrews xii. 22, 23.

³⁴⁶ Colossians i. 15, 18; Hebrews i. 6.

³⁴⁷ St. Matthew xxv. 41.

³⁴⁸ Ephesians iv. 17-19.

³⁴⁹ Ephesians v. 14.

³⁵⁰ Psalm cix. 3 (Septuagint).

³⁵¹ Hebrews iii. 7-11, from Psalm xcv. 8-11.

³⁵² Hebrews iii. 7-11, from Psalm xcv. 8-11.

³⁵³ See Hebrews iii. 13.

³⁵⁴ 1 Timothy ii. 4.

³⁵⁵ St. John XV. 26. There is a play on words in the Greek which it is hard to reproduce in English. The word parakletos, translated Comforter in the New Testament, is formed from parakalein, a verb which combines the meanings of summon, comfort (i.e. strengthen), and encourage; or, to put it in another way, of invitation coupled with assistance.

³⁵⁶ 1 Timothy iv. 8.

³⁵⁷ 1 Timothy iv. 10.

³⁵⁸ See Plato, Republic 611D.

³⁵⁹ Homer, Odyssey i. 57-58.

³⁶⁰ 2 Timothy iii. 15.

³⁶¹ 2 Timothy ui. 16, 17.

³⁶² St. Matthew iv. 17.

³⁶³ Philippians iv. 5; the latter half of the saying is not found in the New Testament.

³⁶⁴ Psalm xxxiv. 8.

³⁶⁵ Psalm xxxiv. 11.

³⁶⁶ Psalm xxxiv. 12.

³⁶⁷ Isaiah Ivii. 19; Ephesians ii. 17.

³⁶⁸ See St. John i. 9.

³⁶⁹ The Cimmerians were a mythical people who dwelt beyond the Ocean in a land of mist and cloud and total darkness. See Odyssey xi. 13-16.

³⁷⁰ Or, if Stählin’s suggestion is accepted (see note on text), “into one herd,” or “flock.” The word ἀγέλη is used for the “flock” of men on p. 34.7 of this volume, and in i. Strom. 156. 3, and 169. 2. Cp. St. John x. 16.

³⁷¹ The Monad, or unit, was a term used by the Pythagoreans, who regarded all things as in some way constituted out of number. Odd numbers were more perfect than even, and the Monad, from which the rest were derived, was conceived as the perfect first principle of the universe. Clement here makes it a name for God, but in another place (i. Paedagogus 71. 1) he says that God is “above the Monad itself.”

³⁷² See St. Mark xiv. 36; Romans viii. 15 and Galatians iv. 6.

³⁷³ Clement plays upon the similarity between hagios, holy, and enagēs, accursed.

³⁷⁴ Sophocles, Frag. 863 Nauck.\

³⁷⁵ Zechariah iii. 2.

³⁷⁶ A play upon the words theos (God) and ethos (custom).

³⁷⁷ Hesiod, Works and Days 218.

³⁷⁸ Homer, Iliad ii. 315.

³⁷⁹ Isaiah i. 3.

³⁸⁰ Clement has drawn together the Elijah of the Transfiguration (St. Matthew xvii. 5) and the Elijah of Mount Carmel (1 Kings xviii. 44).

³⁸¹ The words are from Heracleitus: Frag. 54 Bywater, 13 Diels.

³⁸² Democritus, Frag. 23 Natorp, 147 Diels.

³⁸³ Ephesians v. 8.

³⁸⁴ Isaiah liv. 17 (Septuagint).

³⁸⁵ See St. Matthew vi. 19, 20.

³⁸⁶ Isaiah liv. 17 (Septuagint); iv. 1.

³⁸⁷ St. Matthew vi. 24; St. Luke xvi. 13.

³⁸⁸ See St. John v. 17.

³⁸⁹ Leviticus xxv. 23.

³⁹⁰ Clement takes the Old Testament phrase in a spiritual sense. It is the “inheritance incorruptible … reserved in heaven” (1 St. Peter i. 4) which is not “delivered over to corruption.”

³⁹¹ Leviticus xxv. 23.

³⁹² The first part of this passage is from 1 Cor. ii. 9, where it is introduced by St. Paul as a quotation. Origen tells us, in his Commentary on St. Matthew (see Migne, Origen vol. iii. p. 1769), that St. Paul took it from the Apocalypse of Elijah. Doubtless the rest of the passage, as given by Clement, comes from the same source.

³⁹³ Deuteronomy xxx. 15.

³⁹⁴ Isaiah i. 19, 20.

³⁹⁵ Cp. Aristotle, Eth. Nicom. 1169 a 17 (p. 192 Bywater).

³⁹⁶ This seems to refer to the “implanted faith” mentioned at the beginning of this paragraph. It may, perhaps, refer only to the preceding sentence; in which case we should translate, “this clear proof of the virtues,” i.e. the proof derived from studying the lives of Christians.

³⁹⁷ Homer, Iliad xxiv. 45; Hesiod, Works and Days 318.

³⁹⁸ Sibylline Oracles v. 6, Alexander was called the “thirteenth god” because his name was added to the twelve deities of Olympus, to whom Clement alludes on p. 53 of this volume.

³⁹⁹ For this and other witty remarks attributed to Theocritus of Chios (quite a different person from the poet Theocritus) see Frag. hist. Graec. ii. p. 86.

⁴⁰⁰ Cp. Plato, Theaetetus 176B-C.

⁴⁰¹ Sophocles, Frag. 760 Nauck. The goddess “Industry,” whom the craftsmen worshipped in their processions, is Athena. See Plutarch, De Fortuna 99A.

⁴⁰² The source of this quotation is unknown.

⁴⁰³ See Pindar, Frag. 37 Schroeder.

⁴⁰⁴ A reminiscence of the Platonic theory of ideas, in which there are three stages of reality: first, the archetypal idea; secondly, the object, which is a visible expression and a particular instance of the idea; thirdly, the picture, which is but a representation of the object, nothing more than the image of an image, three stages removed from reality.

⁴⁰⁵ i.e. the Father. Cp. v. Strom. 8. 7.

⁴⁰⁶ Genesis i. 26.

⁴⁰⁷ St. Matthew v. 3, 10; St. Luke vi. 20.

⁴⁰⁸ Compare p. 172, n. d.

⁴⁰⁹ Jonah iii. 5, 10.

⁴¹⁰ St. John xiv. 6.

⁴¹¹ St. Matthew vii. 13, 14; St. John iii. 13, 31.

⁴¹² St. John iii. 19.

⁴¹³ Homer, Odyssey xiii. 203-4.

⁴¹⁴ Euripides, Iphigeneia among the Taurians 569.

⁴¹⁵ The Hermes was a stone pillar ending in a bust, which was set up in fields and roads as a landmark, and also before the doors of Athenian houses. An essential part of the figure was a phallus, which points to Hermes being originally a fertility god. He was, therefore, easily identified with Tycho, an Attic nature divinity of similar character to Priapus (Diodorus iv. 6; Strabo 588). For the identification see Hesychius s.v., and A. B. Cook, Zeus, i. pp. 175-6. In 415 B.C., just before the sailing of the expedition to Sicily, all the Hermae in Athens were mutilated except one, which stood in front of the house of Andocides and was called the “Hermes of Andocides” (Plutarch, Nicias xiii.). The account of the excitement caused by this outrage, and the accusation made against Andocides, is found in Thucydides vi. 27, and in Andocides, On the Mysteries. The Hermes Amyetus was, according to Hesychius, on the Acropolis at Athens.

⁴¹⁶ Hesiod: quoted above, p. 89.

⁴¹⁷ Psalm xxiv. 1.

⁴¹⁸ Genesis xix. 26.

⁴¹⁹ Or, an angel.

⁴²⁰ Homer, Iliad viii. 534. The phrase, well known, no doubt, to Clement’s first readers, is used metaphorically. Cp. the “sword of the Spirit” in Ephesians vi. 17. The earthly warrior is ever bent on fresh conquests and spoils: the spiritual warrior finds “the true wisdom” a sufficient prize, and seeks to save others rather than to destroy.

⁴²¹ Menander, Frag. 786 Kock, Comic. Att. Frag. iii. p. 217.

⁴²² See St. Matthew vi. 19, 20.

⁴²³ Psalm lviii. 4, 5.

⁴²⁴ Psalm lxxii. 9.

⁴²⁵ Genesis iii. 15: Psalm Iv. 7 (Septuagint).

⁴²⁶ 2 St. Peter 11. 2.

⁴²⁷ See St. Matthew x. 16.

⁴²⁸ See Plato, Phaedrus 248C, and elsewhere.

⁴²⁹ Psalm lxii. 8.

⁴³⁰ Psalm lxix. 32,

⁴³¹ Psalm lxx. iv.

⁴³² See Exodus xx. 13-16; Deuteronomy vi. 5. For the added commandment “Thou shalt not corrupt a boy” see the Teaching of the Twelve Apostles ii. 2; Epistle of Barnabas xix. 4. The prevalence of this vice in the early centuries of Christianity doubtless led to the insertion of the precept.

⁴³³ Leviticus xix. 18, and often in the New Testament.

⁴³⁴ St. Luke vi. 29.

⁴³⁵ See St. Matthew v. 28.

⁴³⁶ The epithets are applied by Homer to Ithaca. See Odyssey ix. 27.

⁴³⁷ Having compared truth to Ithaca, the home of Odysseus, Clement goes on to divide it into two parts, sanctity and prudence, one being represented by the women’s chamber, the other by the council of old men. Perhaps, too, there is an allusion to the chastity of Penelope and the prudence of Odysseus.

⁴³⁸ Deuteronomy xxx. 14.

⁴³⁹ See Isaiah liii. 3.

⁴⁴⁰ Titles of Zeus.

⁴⁴¹ St. John i. 1.

⁴⁴² Because it feeds on earth; cp. Genesis iii. 14.

⁴⁴³ It is possible that the Greek means only “with hands unloosened.” But the outstretching of Christ’s hands upon the cross was a familiar thought to the Christian Fathers, and is alluded to by Justin (I. Apol. 35) and by Irenaeus (v. 17. 4), though the word used in each of these passages is ἐκτείνω and not ἁπλόω. Basil uses ἁπλόω in this connexion; cp. In Psalm. xlv. p. 272, “having his hands outstretched (ἡπλωμένας) in the manner of the cross.” Perhaps Clement wishes to suggest both meanings.

⁴⁴⁴ Homer, Odyssey xix. 179.

⁴⁴⁵ See 1 Corinthians i. 13; Galatians iii. 28; Ephesians iv. 24; Colossians iii. 9-11.

⁴⁴⁶ Compare this with what Clement says about the “short way” of the gospel preaching, pp. 173 and 217.

⁴⁴⁷ Psalm xix. 8.

⁴⁴⁸ Homer, Iliad v. 128.

⁴⁴⁹ Psalm xix. 10.

⁴⁵⁰ Compare Plato, Timaeus 45B.

⁴⁵¹ Heracleitus, Frag. 31 (Bywater), 99 (Diels).

⁴⁵² The same simile occurs in Philostratus, Life of Apollonius iv. 3.

⁴⁵³ Psalm xxii. 23.

⁴⁵⁴ See Romans viii. 17.

⁴⁵⁵ See Hebrews ii. 11.

⁴⁵⁶ See Isaiah ix. 2 (St. Matthew iv. 16 and St. Luke i. 79).

⁴⁵⁷ Galatians vi. 15. (Revised Version margin.)

⁴⁵⁸ Malachi iv. 2.

⁴⁵⁹ St. Matthew v. 45.

⁴⁶⁰ These words are quoted from Aratus, Phaenomena, 6-7.

⁴⁶¹ Jeremiah xxxi. 33, 34 (quoted Hebrews viii. 10-12).

⁴⁶² Homer, Iliad vi. 236.

⁴⁶³ See Plato, Charmides 157A.

⁴⁶⁴ Νωδοί means literally “toothless,” as applied to the aged. Clement seems to use it metaphorically for senile decay.

⁴⁶⁵ 2 Corinthians iv. 6.

⁴⁶⁶ See St. John x. 11.

⁴⁶⁷ See Eph. vi. 14-17; 1 Thess. v. 8.

⁴⁶⁸ Eph. vi. 16.

⁴⁶⁹ The allusion is to Baptism.

⁴⁷⁰ Isa. Iviii. 9.

⁴⁷¹ Homer, Odyssey xii. 219-20.

⁴⁷² See Odyssey xii. 45-46.

⁴⁷³ Odyssey xii. 184-5.

⁴⁷⁴ Hesiod, Works and Days 373-4.

⁴⁷⁵ An allusion to Odysseus being bound to the mast of his vessel as it passed the land of the Sirens. Odyssey xil. 1 78.

⁴⁷⁶ 1 Corinthians ii. 9.

⁴⁷⁷ Euripides, Bacchants 918-9. The speaker is Pentheus, king of Thebes, who was stricken with madness for refusing to worship the god Dionysus. The legend, which tells how Dionysus took vengeance by visiting the Theban women with his frenzy and driving them out into the hills, and how the mad king, in trying to spy out their revels, was torn to pieces by his own mother and her companions, is the subject of Euripides’ play, the Bacchants. In the paragraph following this quotation, Clement has the Bacchants constantly in mind, and his allusions can only be understood by reading the play.

⁴⁷⁸ For the description see Euripides, Bacchants 833, 835.

⁴⁷⁹ Euripides, Bacchants 6, 26.

⁴⁸⁰ The Greek amuades, lambs, is meant as a play upon Mainades (Maenads, or women worshippers of Dionysus).

⁴⁸¹ Gr. thiasos, or band of Dionysus’ followers (cp. Bacchants 66). The word is here used of the company of maidens, angels and prophets, whom the Christian must follow to reach, not Dionysus, but the Father.

⁴⁸² i.e. instead of Teiresias’ staff; cp. Bacchants 363-4.

⁴⁸³ Homer, Iliad xvii. 220.

⁴⁸⁴ St. Matthew xi. 28-30.

⁴⁸⁵ See St. Matthew xxi. 1-7.

⁴⁸⁶ The philosophers referred to are the Stoics; cp. Cicero, Paradoxon iv. and Tusc. disp. iii. 5.

⁴⁸⁷ Greek proverb. See Plato, Phaedrus 279C.

⁴⁸⁸ The Stoics said all this of their “wise man,” as Clement tells us elsewhere (ii, Strom. 19. 4): “The Stoic philosophers hold this doctrine, that kingship, priesthood, prophecy, legislation, wealth, true beauty, noble birth and freedom belong to the wise man alone. But even they admit that he is exceedingly hard to find.”

⁴⁸⁹ See Genesis i, 26.

⁴⁹⁰ Plato, Theaetetus 176 B.

⁴⁹¹ Psalm lxxxii. 6.

⁴⁹² This phrase is an allusion to Plato, Phaedrus 252C: “the attendants of Zeus” (των Διὸς ὀπαδων).