The Hymn of Cleanthes

by Cleanthes of Assos

For works with similar titles, see Hymn to Zeus.

[Front matter]

TEXTS FOR STUDENTS. No. 26

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THE

HYMN OF CLEANTHES

GREEK TEXT TRANSLATED INTO
ENGLISH

WITH BRIEF INTRODUCTION AND NOTES

BY

E. H. BLAKENEY, M.A.

TEXTS FOR STUDENTS. No. 26

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GENERAL EDITORS: Caroline A. J. Skeel, D.Lit.;
H. J. White, D.D.; J. P. Whitney, D.D., D.C.L.

THE

HYMN OF CLEANTHES

GREEK TEXT TRANSLATED INTO
ENGLISH

WITH BRIEF INTRODUCTION AND NOTES

BY

E. H. BLAKENEY, M.A.

 

LONDON

SOCIETY FOR PROMOTING
CHRISTIAN KNOWLEDGE

NEW YORK: THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

1921

“The Hymn to Zeus is a splendid attempt to bring into harmony the author of nature with the traditional Zeus, and divine providence with his will. There is no attempt to discredit orthodoxy, but rather to purify it and use its elements of truth for a higher purpose.”—Mahaffy.

THE HYMN OF CLEANTHES

NOTE ON CLEANTHES AND THE STOICS.

Cleanthes, the Stoic philosopher, was born at Assos, in the Troad, about the year 331 B.C. and died at an advanced age in 232 B.C. The successor to Zeno, the founder of Stoicism, he was president of the Stoa for over thirty years and was himself succeeded by Chrysippus. He was evidently a man of profound earnestness and masterful energy, combining strong intellectual convictions with deep religious feeling.

Like all the great teachers of his school, he must be reckoned as a pantheist, though (as Taylor notes, Ancient Ideals, i. 376) Stoic emotions about the divine are diverse, often vague, springing from a deep-seated reverence for all-ruling “law” (call it what we will—Destiny, Nature, Zeus, Providence, or the Universal Reason). In Stoicism, though in some respects Cleanthes revolutionized the study of physics, which he regarded as giving the surest rule for human conduct generally, the main interest of the creed lies in its moral postulates. Physics is to be regarded as the scaffolding of ethics.

Among the great prophets of ancient Israel religion became at once “universal and individual, centred in the inner life of the subject” (Caird, Evolution of Religion, ii. 119); and a not dissimilar process of development may be traced in the philosophy of Stoicism. From the first it was a religious philosophy, and it is here that it makes its supreme appeal.

Stoicism, as Grant has shown (Ethics of Aristotle), was less a genuine product of Hellenic thought than an importation from the East. It represented a synthesis between Hellenism and Oriental speculation. Not one of the greater Stoic teachers was a native of Greece proper. It is worth remembering that the Apostle Paul’s birthplace, Tarsus, was a stronghold of the creed of the Stoics; and there is no reason to suppose that Paul was a stranger to their tenets.^[1] Lactantius (Institutes, iv. 9) admits that Zeno had anticipated certain features of Christian teaching: “Zeno rerum naturæ dispositorem atque opificem universitatis λόγον prædicat”; and the words in Heb. ii. 10 have a distinctly Stoic flavour: δι᾽ ὃν τὰ πάντα καὶ δι᾽ οὗ τὰ πάντα (God is the final and efficient cause of all things).^[2] Certainly the Stoic system foreshadowed the doctrine of a true brotherhood of man.

What was peculiar to Stoicism was its constant insistence on Morality, and its “grim earnestness and devout submission to the divine will.” Virtue, in that system, is alone good; vice bad; all other things are ἀδιάφορα (indifferent). It was in a strictly practical spirit that Stoic ethics was developed by the Romans, as we see in Seneca; but the later Stoicism, confronted with the facts of life, had in some points to soften the rigid outlines of earlier theory, just because the idealism and the pessimism of that earlier theory were fatal to any effort of moral reform; “the cold, flawless perfection of triumphant reason was an impossible model, which could only discourage and repel aspirants to the higher life” (Dill, Roman Society, bk. iii., chap. i.). There was no room in such an austere doctrine for the Christian virtue of humility or of pity; there the system broke down.

Some of the paradoxes of the “Porch” (notably the crowning paradox of the “Sapiens,” the ideal wise man—an impossible figure) are keenly ridiculed by Horace (Sat. I. iii. 124 sq., II. iii. passim, vii. 83 sq. “The Christian’s Ideal Figure could never be accepted by the Stoic as an example of his typical Wise Man” [E. R. Bevan, Stoics and Sceptics, p. 70]); but, in his later years, it is probable that Horace learnt to appreciate better the doctrine of the Stoics and to view their system with more sympathy.^[3]

The pantheism^[4] of the later Stoics tended, it is clear, more and more towards theism; God had become to these philosophers (Epicurus is a case in point) less of an abstraction, more and more of a “living presence”; we may do well to remember the famous motto which Seneca lays down as a rule of life in his tenth letter.^[5] And closely bound up with its doctrine of God is the Stoic doctrine of immortality. True, the older Stoics permitted themselves little more than the hope of a limited immortality; but their thought of Death was far from that of a mere extinction (as we find it set forth in Eastern speculation); rather death was the resolution of man’s earthly nature into its original elements—a dissolution of the body—while the animating principle, the soul, returns to its native birthplace “in the heavenlies.” We may compare Virgil’s line (Æn. vi. 730), “igneus est ollis vigor et cælestis origo,” with the solemn words of Eccles. xii. 7,

What the position of Cleanthes really was, in the sphere of religion, we can never fully ascertain; we possess his teaching only in fragments, and we cannot properly judge a thinker by the disjecta membra of his philosophy. But we seem to discover in Cleanthes, when we read his hymn^[6] (was it written in early, middle, or later life?), a genuinely religious man, “bent on giving a theological interpretation of the world, and breathing a pions submission to the world-order which it is refreshing to feel and come in contact with” (Davidson, The Stoic Creed, p. 27). Notwithstanding the materialism apparent in his physical speculations, “he can yet infuse into his submission to the cosmic order such an amount of willing acquiescence as to give the impression of the deepest religious feeling” (ib., p. 229).^[7] Lightfoot was justified in calling his hymn the noblest expression of heathen devotion which Greek literature has preserved to us. Nothing quite so impressive, of its kind, was ever again to appear in pagan history till, nearly half a millennium later, Stoicism was destined to produce its final and exquisite fruit in the Meditations of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius.

GREEK TEXT OF THE HYMN.

Κύδιστ᾽ ἀθανάτων, πολυώνυμε, παγκρατὲς ἀεὶ
Ζεῦ, φύσεως ἀρχηγέ, νόμου μέτα πάντα κυβερνῶν,
χαῖρε· σὲ γὰρ πάντεσσι θέμις θνητοῖσι προσαυδᾶν.
ἐκ σοῦ γὰρ γένος ἐσμέν, ἑνὸς^[8] μίμημα λαχόντες
5 μοῦνον, ὅσα ζώει τε καὶ ἕρπει θνήτ᾽ ἐπὶ γαῖαν.
τῷ σε καθυμνήσω, καὶ σὺν κράτος αἰὲν ἀείσω.
σοὶ δὴ πᾶς ὅδε κόσμος ἑλισσόμενος περὶ γαῖαν
πείθεται, ᾗ κεν ἄγῃς, καὶ ἑκὼν ὑπὸ σεῖο κρατεῖται·
τοῖον ἔχεις ὑποεργὸν ἀνικήτοις ἐνὶ χερσὶν
10 ἀμφήκη, πυρόεντα, ἀειζώοντα κεραυνόν.
τοῦ γὰρ ὑπὸ πληγῆς φύσεως πάντ᾽ ἐρρίγασιν,
ᾧ σὺ κατευθύνεις κοινὸν λόγον ὃς διὰ πάντων
φοιτᾷ, μιγνύμενος μεγάλους μικροῖς τε φάεσσιν,
ὡς τόσσος γεγαὼς, ὕπατος βασιλεὺς διὰ παντός.
15 οὐδέ τι γίγνεται ἔργον ἐπὶ χθανὶ σοῦ δίχα, δαῖμον,
οὔτε κατ' αἰθέριον θεῖον πόλον οὔτ᾽ ἐνὶ πόντῳ,
πλὴν ὁπόσα ῥέζουσι κακοὶ σφετέρῃσιν ἀνοίαις.
ἀλλὰ σὺ καὶ τὰ περισσὰ ἐπίστασαι ἄρτια θεῖναι,
καὶ κοσμεῖν τὰ ἄκοσμα, καὶ οὐ φίλα σοὶ φίλα ἐστίν.
20 ὧδε γὰρ εἰς ἕν ἅπαντα συνήρμοκας ἐσθλὰ κακοῖσιν,
ὥσθ᾽ ἕνα γίγνεσθαι πάντων λόγον αἰὲν ἐόντα,
ὃν φεύγοντες ἐῶσιν ὅσοι θνητῶν κακοί εἰσι
δύσμοροι, οἵ τ᾽ ἀγαθῶν μὲν ἀεὶ κτῆσιν ποθέοντες
οὔτ᾽ ἐσορῶσι θεοῦ κοινὸν νόμον, οὔτε κλύουσιν,
25 ᾧ κεν πειθόμενοι σὺν νῷ βίον ἐσθλὸν ἔχοιεν,
αὐτοὶ δ᾽ αὖθ᾽ ὁρμῶσιν ἄνευ καλοῦ ἄλλος ἐπ᾽ ἄλλα.
οἱ μὲν ὑπὲρ δόξης σπουδὴν δυσέριστον ἔχοντες,
οἱ δ᾽ ἐπὶ κερδοσύνας τετραμμένοι οὐδενὶ κόσμῳ,
ἄλλοι δ᾽ εἰς ἄνεσιν καὶ σώματος ἡδέα ἔργα,
30 σπεύδοντες μάλα πάμπαν ἐναντία τῶνδε γενέσθαι,
ἀλλὰ Ζεῦ πάνδωρε, κελαινεφές, ἀρχικέραυνε,
ἀνθρώπους ῥύσιο ἀπειροσύνης ἀπὸ λυγρῆς,
ἣν σύ, πάτερ, σκέδασον ψυχῆς ἀπο, δὸς δὲ κυρῆσαι
γνώμης, ᾗ πίσυνος σὺ δίκης μέτα πάντα κυβερνᾷς,
35 ὄφρ᾽ ἂν τιμηθέντες ἀμειβώμεσθά σε τιμῇ
ὑμνοῦντες τὰ σὰ ἔργα διηνεκές, ὡς ἐπέοικε
θνητὸν ἐόντ᾽, ἐπεὶ οὔτε βροτοῖς γέρας ἄλλο τι μεῖζον,
οὔτε θεοῖς, ἢ κοινὸν ἀεὶ νόμον ἐν δίκῃ ὑμνεῖν.

TRANSLATION OF THE GREEK TEXT.

Most glorious of Immortals, mighty God,
Invoked by many a name, O sovran King
Of universal Nature, piloting
This world in harmony with Law,—all hail!
Thee it is meet that mortals should invoke,
For we Thine offspring are, and sole of all
⁵Created things that live and move on earth
Receive from Thee the image of the One.
Therefore I praise Thee, and shall hymn Thy power
Unceasingly. Thee the wide world obeys,
As onward ever in its course it rolls
Where'er Thou guidest, and rejoices still
Beneath Thy sway so strong a minister
Is held by Thine unconquerable hands,—
¹⁰That two-edged thunderbolt of living fire
That never fails. Under its dreadful blow
All Nature reels; therewith Thou dost direct
The Universal Reason which, commixt
With all the greater and the lesser lights,
Moves thro' the Universe. How great Thou art,
The Lord supreme for ever and for aye!
¹⁵No work is wrought apart from Thee, O God,
Or in the world, or in the heaven above,
Or on the deep, save only what is done
By sinners in their folly. Nay, Thou canst
Make the rough smooth, bring wondrous order forth
From chaos; in Thy sight unloveliness
Seems beautiful; for so Thou hast fitted things
²⁰Together, good and evil, that there reigns
One everlasting Reason in them all.
The wicked heed not this, but suffer it
To slip, to their undoing; these are they
Who, yearning ever to secure the good,
Mark not nor hear the law of God, by wise
²⁵Obedience unto which they might attain
A nobler life, with Reason harmonized.
But now, unbid, they pass on divers paths
Each his own way, yet knowing not the truth,—
Some in unlovely striving for renown,
Some bent on lawless gains, on pleasure some,
³⁰Working their own undoings self-deceived.
O Thou most bounteous God that sittest throned
In clouds, the Lord of lightning, save mankind
From grievous ignorance! Oh, scatter it
Far from their souls, and grant them to achieve
True knowledge, on whose might Thou dost rely
To govern all the world in righteousness;
³⁵That so, being honoured, we may Thee requite
With honour, chanting without pause Thy deeds,
As all men should: since greater guerdon ne'er
Befalls or man or god than evermore
Duly to praise the Universal Law.

ARGUMENT OF THE HYMN.^[9]

(1) Cleanthes feels himself akin to the divine, and therefore worthy to hold communion with it; (2) he expresses his admiration for, and submission to, the divine order of the world; (3) he recognizes that the moral evil in the world is the result not of fate but of man’s freewill; (4) he prays God to free human souls from ignorance; and (5) closes with an apostrophe in praise of God's law.

COMMENTARY.

1. πολυώνυμε: most of the “di majores” are called πολυώνυμοι by the poets (e.g., Dionysus, with his sixty titles: he was distinctly πολυειδὴς καὶ πολύμορφος, Plut. Moralia, 389ᶜ). Cf. Theocr. xv. 109 (Aphrodite), πολυώνυμε καὶ πολύναε. So Artemis is designated in Aristophanes by the titles Dictynna, Agrotera, Pandrosus, Phosphorus, Tauropolis: Rogers on Wasps, 368, Ellis on Catull. xxxiv. 21, sis quocunque tibi placet | sancta nomine. In Babylonian mythology the god of Babylon received the names, attributes, and powers of the older deities (Merodach or Mardük=Ea=Hadad=Sîn: cf. Sayce, Gifford Lectures, 1902, p. 329); similarly Egyptian theology saw in the various gods mere forms of one divinity (for example, Nu=Temu=Rā. As Rā was the father of the gods, every god in the Egyptian pantheon represents some phase of him, and he represents every god: Budge, Egyptian Religion, chap. iii). In the Rig-Veda (i. 164, 46) one poet says: “That which is One the sages name in various ways—Agni, Yama, Mâtarisvan.” The thoughtful Hindu of to-day looks through the maze of his mythology to the philosophical background of the One eternal self-existent Being in whose unity all visible symbols are gathered (Monier-Williams, Indian Wisdom, chap. i.). For a note on πολυώνυμος see Sykes and Allen on Homeric Hymn to Demeter, 18. The word appears to have possessed a special significance from the Stoic standpoint, as Diogenes Laertius indicates. The concept implied in ll. 1, 2 is criticized by St. Basil, Hexæm. Hom. i. On ἀρχηγός, cf. Clem. Alex., Strom. vii. 840,

2. νόμου: cf. Cic. de Nat. Deor. i. 36, Zeno naturalem legem divinam esse putat eamque vim obtinere (=ἐνεργεῖ) recta imperantem prohibentemque contraria. Heraclitus was the first to identify the law of nature with the will of God: frag. 91, τρέφονται πάντες οἱ ἀνθρώπινοι νόμοι ὑπὸ ἑνὸς τοῦ θείου. This view was adopted by the Roman jurists (cf. Cic. de Legg. ii. 8, “law is no device of man”); and Wordsworth in his Ode to Duty has made the thought current coin—“stern daughter of the voice of God, O Duty!” Cleanthes is several times referred to in Cic. de Nat. Deor.—e.g. ii. § 13, iii. § 16 (see J. B. Mayor’s notes): cf. also Minucius, 19, § 10.

κυβερνῶν: cf. 1. 29, Parmenides, frag. 12, (in the midst of these circles is the) δαίμων ἢ πάντα κυβερνᾷ, viz. the dea genetrix (Aphrodite, acc. to Plut. Amator. 13; but cf. Burnet, Early Greek Philosophy, 2nd ed., § 94). For κυβερνᾶν in metaph. sense, see n. in Lightfoot, Ignat.² (Polyc. ii.).

4. ἐκ σοῦ γὰρ γένος ἐσμέν: see Acts xvii. 28, where the words are given τοῦ γὰρ καὶ γένος ἐσμέν. St. Paul way have derived them directly from the Φαινόμενα of Aratus of Soli (in Cilicia), flor. 270 b.c.; but probably they were almost proverbial in the Apostle’s day. The human reason, according to Aratus, is a “fragment” of the divine; it is the doctrine of divine immanence. Man's moral sense is an “efflux of God,” “a particle (ἀπόσπασμα) of Zeus,” and so far is one with the moral movement of the universe (cf. G. H. Rendall, Marcus Aurelius Antoninus to Himself, Introd., p, cxxix): cf. Eurip. frag. 1007, ὁ νοῦς γὰρ ἡμῶν ἐστιν ἐν ἑκάστῳ θεός, There is a curious parallel to be found in the so-called ΛΟΓΙΑ ΙΗϹΟΥ (from an early Greek papyrus discovered nearly twenty-five years ago): [Jesus said] ἔγειρον τὸν λίθον κἀκεῖ εὑρήσεις με, σχίσαν τὸ ξύλον κἀγὼ ἐκεῖ εἰμί (cf. Matt. xviii, 20, John xiv. 20, and other passages quoted in Lock and Sanday’s ed., 1897). Compare William Watson, The Unknown God:

“The God I know of I shall ne’er
⁠Know, though he dwells exceeding nigh:
Raise thou the stone and find me there,
⁠Cleave thou the wood, and there am I.”

We may recall here the Orphic lines:

Ζεὺς πρῶτος γένετο,
Ζεὺς ὕστατος ἀρχικέραυνος,
Ζεὺς κεφαλὴ, Ζεὺς μέσσα
Διὸς δ᾽ ἐκ πάντα τέτυκται.

The pantheistic sense of the word Ζεύς (v. 2) ought not to be overlooked. God, in the Stoic creed, was not personal (in the Christian sense), but an unknown living Power immanent in Nature—natura naturans, εἱμαρμένῃ, νοῦς.

ἑνὸς μίμημα: see Driver on Gen. i. 3. Philo describes the spirit (the essence of man's rational part) as a “figure and impress of divine power,” and goes on to say μίμημα καὶ ἀπεικόνισμα ἄνθρωπος (i.e. φύσεως λογικῆς of which God is the ἄρχέτυπον); cf. Musonius ap. Stob. καθόλου δὲ ἄνθρωπος μίμημα μὲν θεοῦ μόνον τῶν ἐπιγείων ἐστίν. Clem. Rom. speaks of man as an impress of the divine image (ad Cor. i. 33; cf. Heb. i. 3); so in Wisd. ii. 23 we read, “God created man to be immortal and made him to be an image of His own eternity” (proper being, R. V.). Plat. Tim. 37ᶜ develops this thought. For the sense cf. Hom. Il. xvii. 447, Odyss. xviii. 131.

6. Cf. Ps. cxlv. 1. Aratus, Phænom. I, ἐκ Διὸς ἀρχώμεσθα τὸν οὐδέποτ᾽ ἄνδρες ἐῶμεν | ἄρρητον.

7. Cleanthes seems here to be endeavouring to interpret the Cynic formula, “live agreeably to nature” (ὁμολογουμένως τῇ φύσει ζῆν). But in his hands it gets an added meaning, for in nature (φύσις)—whether the nature of things or man's inward nature—the Stoic doctor finds a common reason (λόγος) and a common law (νόμος). See James Seth’s Study of Ethical Principles (chapter on “Rigorism”); Bevan, Stoics and Sceptics, lect. i.

We may illustrate the religious attitude of Cleanthes still further by the lines reproduced by Epictetus (Enchirid. 53):

ἄγου δ᾽ μ᾽, ὦ Ζεῦ, καὶ σύ γ᾽ ἡ Πεπρωμένη
ὅποι ποθ' ὑμῖν εἰμι διατεταγμένος·
ὡς ἕψομαί γ᾽ ἄοκνος· ἦν δὲ μὴ θέλω
κακὸς γενόμενος οὐδὲν ἧττον ἔψομαι.

Thus rendered by Seneca (Ep. 107, § 10):

duc, O parens celsique dominator poli,
quocumque placuit: nulla parendi mora est.
Adsum impiger. fac nolle: comitabor gemens
malusque patiar facere quod licuit bono.
ducunt volentem fata, nolentem trahunt.

The lines are by way of answer to the objection that πρόνοια cannot exist with the doctrine of freewill.

9. ἀνικήτοις: Hom. Il. viii. 30; Soph. O.C. 1515; Job xlii. 2.

10. κεραυνόν: from Homer onward the weapon of Zeus (κερουνοφόρος, κεραυνοῦχος, tonans, tonitrualis). Heracl. frag. 20 with Bywator's reff., ib. 28, τὰ δὲ πάντα οἱακίζει κεραυνός: Ritter-Preller, 28. κεραυνός was a semi-oracular word for fire: “The peculiar kind of matter forming, as it were, the body of the Logos, Her. believes to be fire” (Adam, Religious Teachers of Greece, p. 223). According to Cleanthes the “Logos” was eternal, and so it was conceived by Heraclitus himself; “it” was without beginning or end, piloting (οἱακίζει) all things through all, like a wary steersman.

For ll. 9-13 cf. Heb. iv. 12 (Westcott).

12. κοινὸν λόγον: Ritter-Preller (ed. 7, 1888), 398 (c). In Plotinus the word λόγος has several shades of meaning—Reason, Creative power (or activity), etc., Inge, Phil. of Plotinus, i, 156. In Philo we find the λόγος separated from the supreme God, and it is frequently personified (as in N.T., John i. 14), becoming the immanent reality of the world (not unlike the Socratean conception of God as ἡ ἐν τῷ παντὶ φρόνησις, Wordsworth's “Wisdom and Spirit of the Universe”: Adam, loc. cit., p. 371). In Cleanthes' hymn, as generally in Stoicism, the world is permeated by Reason, which is ethical, not merely intellectual. The emphasis on κοινός should not be overlooked. The great masters of Stoicism were cosmopolitan in their outlook, as they were in origin. The κοινωνία of the Universe is a familiar thought with them; all men share in the universal reason of God (the world-soul), subject to a common law and a common citizenship. In the Meditations of M. Aurelius it is not without significance that the word κοινός (and its compounds) occurs more than eighty times: Dill, Roman Society, pp. 324 sq.; G. H. Rendall, op. cit., Introd., p. cxxxvii. Observe how the author of 4 Maccabees would enlist the Stoic doctrine in the service of Jewish philosophy.

13. διὰ πάντων φοιτᾷ: Wordsworth's Tintern Abbey, (a Presence) “that rolls thro' all things.”

14. ὕπατος: often in Homer as an epithet of Zeus.

15. Cf. John i. 3. For δαῖμον cf. Bacchyl. iii. 37, ὑπέρβιε δαῖμον (of Zeus).

16-18. Nature is here put under the immediate government of the deity.

17-20. Evil is not directly due to God, but a necessary accompaniment of the process by which He created the world out of Himself. Cleanthes appears to argue somewhat as Browning would do: cf. Plat. Rep. ii. 379ᶜ, οὐδ᾽ ἄρα ὁ θεός κ.τ.λ.; Eccles. vii. 13 foll. (and Tyler's Introd. to his ed. of Eccles., p. 73, ed. 2). The hymn is throughout inspired by the consciousness that it is one spiritual power which penetrates and controls the Universe, and is the source of every work done under the sun, “except what evil men do in their folly.” Caird, Evol. of Relig. in Greek Philosophers, ii. 76; E. R. Bevan, Stoics and Sceptics, p. 54.

18. περισσὰ> <αρτια, odd )( even (i.e. the reconciliation of opposites): cf. Plat. Gorg. 451ᶜ; Ritter-Preller, 53, 55.

19. Cf. Heracl. frag. 61, τῷ μὲν θεῷ καλὸ πάντα καὶ ἀγαθὰ καὶ δίκαια, ἄνθρωποι δὲ ἃ μὲν ἄδικα ὑπειλήφασιν, ἃ δὲ δίκαια.

21. The everlastingness of the Logos: cf. Heracl. frag. 2. Similarly M. Antoninus. Cf. Butler, Sermon xv.

24. Cf. Heracl. frag. 101, quoted in n. on l. 2.

28. οὐδενὶ κόσμῳ = ἀτάκτως, recklessly.

29. ἀνεσιν = indulgence. Cf. Plat. Rep. 561ᵃ.

30. The text is very uncertain here, and I am not sure that I have grasped the sense. Perhaps = “bringing about the opposite of what they wish.”

31. πάνδωρε: epithet of Earth, Fate (Bacchyl. frag. 20). Cf. the (hexameter) line in Jas. i. 17, πᾶσα δόσες κ.τ.λ., with which we may quote the words in Plat. Euthyp. 18, οὐδὲν γὰρ ἡμῖν ἐστιν ἀγαθὸν ὅ τι ἂν μὴ ἐκεῖνοι (i.e. the gods) δῶσιν.

κελαινεφές: Homeric epithet. Cf. Ps. xcvii. 2-4.

32. ἀπειροσύνης = ἀγνοίας (the condition of the φαῦλοι).

33. σκέδασον: in the Platonic philosophy ignorance is the source of evil. With this and the next line cf. Heracl. frag. 19, ἐν τὸ σοφόν, ἐπίστασθαι γνώμην ἢ κυβερνῶται πάντα διὰ πάντων. Plutarch’s κυβερνήσις θεοῦ.

37, 38. Cf. the celebrated words with which Hooker concludes the first book of his Ecclesiastical Polity. The Stoics seem to have been the first to introduce into morals the concept of Law—“which is law for man because it is the law of the universe”: Acton, Hist. of Freedom in Antiquity, pp. 24, 25. In many respects the Stoic teaching is the nearest approach to Christianity. Warde Fowler, Social Life at Rome, p. 117; Gwatkin, Church Hist. i. pp. 22, 23. Similarly among the Jews the law (Torah) was the revelation in time of what is timeless and eternal.

The reader should carefully compare the lines in Soph. O.T. 863 sqq. (of the immutable order of law): cf. El. 1093 sq., Ajax, 1130 sqq., 1343 sqq. The whole argument of the Antigone turns on the conflict between divine law and human ordinance; and, as we know, these rival principles often come into sharp conflict: August. Conff. iii. 8 (an important chapter); Thomas Aquinas, Summa c. Gentiles, chaps. cxvi, cxxvii,, who points out, however, that the terminus ad quem of all divine law is the love of God. Cf. the noble words of Dante (Paradiso):

E la sua voluntate è nostra pace.

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ADDED NOTE.

The passage in Eusebius runs thus:

Τἀγαθὸν ἐρωτᾷς μ᾽ οἷον ἐστ᾽; ἄκουε δή.
Τεταγμένον, δίκαιον, ὅσιον, εὐσεβές,
κρατοῦν ἑαντοῦ, χρήσιμον, καλόν, δέον,
αὐστηρόν, αὐθέκαστον, ἀεισύμφεραν,
ἄφοβον, ἄλυπον, λυσιτελές, ἀνώδυνον,
ὠφέλιμον, εὐάρεστον, ἀσφαλές, φίλον,
ἔντιμον, ὁμολογούμενον, . . .
εὐκλεές, ἄτυφον, ἐπιμελές, πρᾷον, σφοδρόν,
χρονιζόμενον, ἄμεμπτον, ἀεὶ διαμένον.

 

 

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Footnotes

1. Hastings, Dictionary of the Bible, iv. 616. Hicks, Greek Phil. in N.T., p. 94.
2. For traces of Stoicism in the Pauline Epistles, see the illuminating discussion by Lightfoot, “St. Paul and Seneca,” in his edition of the Philippians. We might instance two thoughts, at least, which show that Paul did owe something to Stoicism: (1) αὐτάρκεια (2 Cor. vi. 10), (2) the worldwide city of God (Eph. ii, 19, Col. iii, 11).
3. See D’Alton, Horace and his Age, pp. 84 sqq., 133 sqq., for proofs of this changed attitude.
4. The Stoic conception that God is in all things is balanced by that of the Neo-Platonists, whose root principle is that all things are in God. For the attitude of Plotinus towards Stoicism consult Inge, The Philosophy of Plotinus, vol. i. There is a brief, but valuable, discussion of Stoicism in its connexion with Christian ethics and theology in Lake and Foakes-Jackson’s The Beginnings of Christianity, part i., pp. 246 sqq. (1920).
5. “So live with men as if God saw you; so speak with God as if men heard you” (Lightf., Essay on “St. Paul and Seneca,” Philipp.,⁶ pp. 279 sqq.).
6. Which may be regarded as a summary of his whole theology.
7. An ethical fervour of a high order is shown in the lines of Cleanthes (frag. 45) quoted by Eusebius, Præparatio Evangelica, 679ᶜ (ed. Gifford, 1903). [See “Added Note,” p. 16.]
8. The MS. has ἤχου, which gives no sense. Bergk conjectures ὅλου. W. L. Newman conjectures ἀγοῦ (from ἀγός=a leader).
9. [Note.—The editor is indebted to various writers for valuable suggestions embodied in his introduction and notes; but a general acknowledgement must here suffice.—February, 1921.]