Praeparatio Evangelica 4 part 3/4

These things, then, took place in this manner. Fittingly, then, the admirable Clement, in his Exhortation to the Greeks, censuring these very same things, likewise laments the error of men in these words: 'Come, then, let us add this too: that your gods are inhuman and man-hating demons, who not only rejoice at men's derangement, but moreover delight in manslaughter; procuring for themselves occasions of pleasure now from the armed contests in the stadiums, now from the countless rivalries of ambition in wars, so that they might have the fullest possible enjoyment of gorging themselves unrestrainedly on human blood. Already, descending upon cities and nations like pestilences, they have demanded savage libations. Aristomenes the Messenian, at any rate, slaughtered three hundred men to Zeus Ithometes, thinking that so great and so noble a number offered together would render favorable hecatombs; among these was even Theopompus, king of the Lacedaemonians, a noble victim. And the Taurians, the people dwelling around the Taurian Chersonese, sacrifice at once to Taurian Artemis whatever strangers they capture among them who have been shipwrecked at sea. These sacrifices of yours Euripides has dramatized upon the stage. Monimus, in his Collection of Marvels, records that in Pella of Thessaly an Achaean man was sacrificed to Peleus and Chiron. For Antikleides, in his Returns, declares that the Lyctians—a Cretan people—slaughter men to Zeus, and Dosidas says that the Lesbians offer a like sacrifice to Dionysus. Nor will I pass over the Phocians: Pythocles, in the third book of On Concord, records that these burn a man whole to Artemis Tauropolos. Erechtheus the Athenian and Marius the Roman each sacrificed their own daughters—the one to Persephone, as Demaratus records in the first book of his Tragedies; the other, Marius, to the averting deities, as Dorotheus records in the fourth book of his Italian History. From all this, indeed, the demons show themselves to be philanthropic! And how are the superstitious not correspondingly unholy—some being hailed as saviors, others begging for salvation from those who plot against their very salvation? Supposing, at any rate, that they are winning favorable omens, they fail to notice that they are murdering men. For murder does not become a sacrificial offering because of the place; nor if one should slaughter a man to Artemis or to Zeus in some ostensibly sacred precinct—rather than in anger and love of money, to other, similar demons, upon altars or in the streets—calling it a sacred victim, does that change anything. Such a sacrifice is murder and manslaughter.'

Why then, O men, wisest of the other living creatures, do we flee from savage wild beasts, and if we happen to meet a bear or a lion, do we turn aside, as the poet says: 'as when a man, at sight of a serpent, starts back again in the glens of the mountain, and trembling seizes his limbs, and he withdraws backward'—yet the destructive and accursed demons, treacherous and man-hating and pernicious as they are, though you perceive and understand this beforehand, you do not shrink from them nor turn away?

So much, then, says Clement. But I can also present to you another witness of the bloodguiltiness of the godless and inhuman demons: Dionysius of Halicarnassus, a man who set forth the whole accurate record of Roman history. He too writes that Zeus and Apollo once demanded human sacrifices, and that those who were asked, having offered to the gods a portion of all fruits and cattle, were, because they did not also sacrifice men, beset by every kind of calamity. There is nothing like hearing the historian himself relate it, somewhat as follows:

He remained a short while in Italy, by the providence of the Aborigines. First, then, it seemed that the ruin of households in the cities began when the land was afflicted with drought—when no ripe fruit remained upon the trees, but fell unripe, nor did such seed as sent up shoots and came into bloom fulfill its lawful season, as at the ripening of the ear, nor did sufficient grass grow for the herds, and of the springs, some were no longer fit for serious drinking, others ran dry in summer, while others were extinguished altogether. Kindred calamities befell the offspring of flocks and of women: for either the unborn were miscarried, or perished in the very act of birth—sometimes destroying, along with themselves, the mothers who bore them. And if anything escaped the peril of birth, it was crippled, or incomplete, or damaged by some other misfortune, and was not fit to be reared; and besides this, the rest of the population, especially those in their prime, were afflicted beyond what was reasonable by frequent sicknesses and deaths. When they consulted the oracle, asking against which of the gods or demons they had transgressed to suffer these things, and what they should do to have hope of relief from their sufferings, the god answered that, having obtained what they had asked, they had not repaid what they had vowed, but still owed the things of greatest worth. For the Pelasgians, when a failure of all crops had come upon them in the land, had vowed to Zeus and Apollo and the Cabeiri that they would sacrifice a tenth part of all that should thereafter be produced; but when the vow had been fulfilled, having set apart a portion of all fruits and cattle, they sacrificed only that to the gods, as though they had vowed concerning these alone. These things Myrsilus of Lesbos has recorded, writing almost in the same words as I now use, except that he does not call the people Pelasgians, but Tyrrhenians; the reason for this I shall state a little later, but...

When they learned of the oracle that had been brought back, they could not interpret what was said. While they were at a loss, one of the elders tells them, having interpreted the utterance, that they had erred completely if they supposed the gods were accusing them unjustly; for as regards goods, they had rightly and justly repaid all the first-fruits, but as regards the portion of human offspring—a thing most precious of all to the gods—it was still owed; and if they should also render the just portion of these, the oracle would then be fulfilled for them. To some it seemed that this was rightly said, but to others the speech seemed to be put together out of malice. But when someone proposed the idea of inquiring of the god again, whether it was pleasing to him to receive tithes of men, they sent oracle-seekers a second time, and the god answered that they should do so.

From this, factional strife seized them concerning the manner of the tithing; and the leaders of the cities were then, for the first time, thrown into turmoil among themselves, and afterward the rest of the populace also began to regard the officials with suspicion. The uprisings occurred with no order at all, but, as is likely when men are driven by frenzy and divine affliction, and many entire households were wiped out when a portion of their members emigrated; for their kinsfolk did not think it right to be left behind, separated from those dearest to them, and to remain among their bitterest enemies. First, then, these, having departed from Italy, wandered into Greece and much of the barbarian lands. After the first group, others suffered the same fate, and this went on happening for years. For those who held power in the cities did not relax, continually removing the first-fruits of the youth as they came of age, both because they deemed it right to render to the gods their due, and because they feared factional uprising from those who had escaped the selection. And much of this expulsion was also carried out under a specious pretext, motivated by private hostility on the part of rivals; so that the uprisings were many, and over a very great extent of the earth the Pelasgian race was scattered.

And shortly afterward he says: 'They say also that the ancients used to perform sacrifices to Cronus, just as was done in Carthage while that city still stood, and as still happens among the Celts to this day, and as men commit manslaughter in certain other of the western nations; but Heracles, wishing to abolish the law of this sacrifice, both established the altar upon the Saturnian hill and instituted the offering of pure victims consecrated upon a clean fire; and so that there might remain no fear in men's hearts as though they had neglected their ancestral sacrifices, he taught the natives, in propitiating the wrath of the god, to make, instead of men—whom they used to bind hand and foot, rendering their hands powerless, and cast into the stream of the Tiber—man-shaped images, adorned in the same manner as those men, and to throw these into the river, so that whatever dread of ill-omen still remained lodged in the souls of all might be removed, while the likenesses of the ancient rite were nevertheless still preserved. And this the Romans continued doing even down to my own time, a little after the vernal equinox, in the month of May, on the days called the Ides, wishing this to be the day of the full moon, on which, after the pontiffs—the most distinguished of the priests—according to the laws had first offered the prescribed victims, they, together with the virgins who guard the undying fire, and the praetors, and such of the other citizens as it is lawful to be present at the sacred rites, cast images fashioned in the likeness of men, thirty in number, from the sacred bridge into the current of the Tiber, calling them Argei.'

So much, then, for these things. Diodorus also records similar events in the twentieth book of his Historical Library, writing concerning the Carthaginians, after the death of Alexander of Macedon, in the time of the first Ptolemy, when they were being besieged by Agathocles the tyrant of Sicily, writing word for word as follows: 'They blamed Cronus also for opposing them, inasmuch as in former times, while sacrificing to this god the best of their sons, they later took to secretly purchasing children, rearing them, and sending them to the sacrifice; and when an inquiry was made, some of those who had been consecrated were found to have been substituted. Taking note of this, and seeing the enemy encamped before their walls, they became superstitiously afraid, believing they had dissolved the ancestral honors due to the gods. Hastening to correct their oversight, they selected two hundred of the most distinguished children and sacrificed them publicly, while others under suspicion gave themselves up voluntarily, no fewer than three hundred in number. They had among them a bronze statue of Cronus, its hands outstretched, palms upward, extended over the ground, so that the child placed upon them would be tipped off and fall into a certain pit full of fire.'

Such things, then, this author too has handed down through his own history. Fittingly, then, the Scripture among the Hebrews also censures those of the circumcision who emulated such practices, saying: 'And they sacrificed their sons and their daughters to demons, and the land was polluted with blood, and defiled by their deeds.' But indeed, I think that through all these things it has been clearly demonstrated that the most ancient and first establishment of carved images came about through some demonic agency, and that the whole idolatrous deification of the nations belongs to demons that are not good, but altogether most wicked and base; so that the oracle in the prophecies which says, 'All the gods of the nations are demons,' is confirmed as true, as is also the apostolic word, in which he says that what they sacrifice, they sacrifice to demons and not to God.

Or if there were indeed something good in them, such that on this account they should share the title of 'good ones,' such a being would have been beneficent and salvific to all, a friend of justice and a guardian of mankind. Being of such a nature, how could it delight in the slaughter of men? And how would it not, through oracles, have restrained the human race from doing such things? Surely such beings were worse and baser than men themselves, who indeed, by the punishments of their laws, rendered their lands free of murderers. For it was no god, but a man, who dissolved the chronic and long-standing disease of human sacrifice.

That these were the works of base and wicked demons would become even more evident to you, if you should consider the deeds of their notorious and licentious fornication, still even now performed in Heliopolis of Phoenicia, and among very many other peoples as well. Adulteries, at any rate, and seductions, and other unlawful unions, they say must be carried out in honor of the gods, as though it were some debt owed; and they say that people must offer the deeds of adultery and prostitution to the gods as first-fruits, dedicating to them, as though some gracious thank-offering, the profits of this inglorious and shameless trade. For these things are like unto human sacrifices.

If, then, it is not even fitting for a temperate man to delight in murders, and in shameful speech, and in unlawful unions with women who sell their beauty for hire, it is far from the truth to say that it belongs to good gods or demons to accept such things. But if someone should say that these are admittedly the deeds of base demons, yet that there are other, good ones, whom they especially worship as saviors, one must ask where, then, were their good saviors, if indeed they worshiped these as well, that they did not keep the wicked ones, who do such things, away from their suppliants; and where were the good demons, that they did not drive away the harmful ones and fight alongside those who serve them? And why did they look on with contempt, disregarding the rational and god-beloved race of men as it was being consumed by the cruelty of the base demons, instead of openly proclaiming to all to flee without turning back and to shun every so-called god, as being not a god at all, but a base demon, to whom cruel and inhuman and unlawful and shameful things happen to be dear?

And whether there was, formerly, in Rhodes, a god believed in, who delighted in human sacrifices—this being the true God, if indeed it was he who put a stop to the practice, proclaimed to all not to be a god, but to be considered a base demon; or whether it was in Salamis, formerly called Coroneia, in which, in the month the Cyprians call Aphrodisios, a man used to be sacrificed—this one too the true God would have declared to be an accursed demon, having put a stop, as impious and unholy, to what was being done.

But if even in Heliopolis of Egypt Amasis abolished the law of human sacrifice, the true God would thereby have shown that man had become far better than that god; for that one too was no god, but again a demon who instigated the human sacrifice. Nor would the true God have failed to ordain that the demon of Hera likewise must be reckoned abominable, to whom, as history records, three men were sacrificed every day.

What indeed could truly be more demonic than the god called Dionysus Omadius, to whom, they say, in Chios men sacrifice a human being by tearing him limb from limb, or the one likewise in Tenedos, whom too they propitiated by human sacrifice? The true God would have forbidden the sacrifice of a man also to Ares, that death-dealing and war-loving demon; he would have ordained that neither one's own kin nor strangers—those dearest to us—be slaughtered to him.

But if also to Athena a virgin, as they say, was sacrificed every year in Laodicea of Syria, the true God would not have refrained from calling her too an evil demon—as also the one in Libya who delights in the like, and the one in Arabia, to whom likewise every year they used to sacrifice a child, whom they then buried beneath the altar.

All these—together with those who delight in shameful speech, in the unlawful corruption of women, and in the other madness already enumerated—the true and good, whether god or demon, would have proclaimed beforehand that they must in no way be reckoned as gods. But this no one among all who ever existed is remembered to have done, except only the one honored among the Hebrews, as being alone the true God.

For he alone, through the prophet and theologian Moses, proclaimed beforehand to all that they should not worship the base spirits as though good demons, but on the contrary should turn away from them and drive them off, as being in truth wicked spirits; and moreover he ordained that their temples and their unholy, unconsecrated cults be torn down, and that the very memory of them as gods, together with the honor paid them, be utterly effaced from among men. For it was not holy for those devoted to the good to seek to appease the base.

Whether it be Phylarchus or indeed anyone else who records that all the Greeks, before going out to war, used to slay a man, do not hesitate to take even this writer as a witness to the demonic seizure of the Greeks; and do not overlook those in Africa either, nor the Thracians and Scythians who did the like, in declaring that they too were led captive by the same madness of the demons—as also the Athenians and those of Megalopolis, if indeed they too, at the festivals of the Great Zeus, used to slaughter men.

But indeed, if one gathers together the whole catalogue of what has been said, one might find—one may almost say—that the entire deification practiced by the nations was devoted to these very man-slaying spirits and wicked demons. For if in Rhodes and in Salamis and the other islands, in Heliopolis of Egypt, in Chios and Tenedos and Lacedaemon and Arcadia, in Phoenicia and Libya, and besides all these in Syria and Arabia, and among the Panhellenes, and further among the most eminent of these, the Athenians, in Carthage and Africa, and among the Thracians and Scythians, it has been shown that the deeds of demonic human sacrifice were carried out in ancient times and extended even down to the time of our Savior—how could one not reasonably say that all peoples were at that time enslaved to the wicked demons, and that there was no cessation of such vast evils in human life until the teaching of our Savior shone forth? For indeed the record of history has shown that these practices persisted until the times of Hadrian, and were abolished from that time onward. And this was above all the very time in which the saving teaching flourished among all men.

Moreover, it is not even possible to say that these were offered to the wicked demons alone; for history has shown that human sacrifices were performed to none other than the greatest gods themselves. For it recorded that sacrifice was made to Hera and to Athena, to Cronus and to Ares and to Dionysus, and to Zeus himself, ruler over all, and to Phoebus—that is, to Apollo, the most venerable and wisest of all—and it is these, and no others, whom they proclaim to be the greatest gods, good and saviors.

They themselves, then, must be the wicked demons. For if these delighted in such human sacrifices and human slaughters, how could you not rightly reckon them among the bloodguilty company of the wicked spirits—whether they themselves are said to delight in such things, or to permit and overlook such things being done by others?

For why should men be permitted at all to propitiate evil spirits? Why should they be so far led astray as to court and flatter the wicked? Why should they be enslaved to the evil, when, being good and gods, they ought rather to drive away, by a superior and more divine power, everything base and evil far from the dwelling-place of men?

A good father, surely, would not look on while his own child was being corrupted by base men; nor would a prudent master overlook his servant being led away by enemies; nor would a general in war, when it was possible to save his own men, hand them over as captives to the enemy; nor would a shepherd abandon his flock to wolves. Shall gods, then, and good daemons abandon the human race to the wicked and the base?

And shall the thirty thousand guardians of speech-endowed men -- those very shepherds and saviors, kings and fathers and lords -- hand over the things most dear to them to be plundered and carried off so pitilessly and savagely by enemies, foes, and wild beasts, without fighting in their defense and shielding those who take refuge with them? Shall they not drive far off, like certain fierce and flesh-devouring beasts, the hostile and evil daemons from the flock of men, and teach every man to take courage, being made intimate with a multitude of countless good gods and daemons, and, being consecrated not only to superior but also to more numerous and greatest gods, to have little or rather no concern at all for the weakness of the evil daemons?

But since they did not do this, but rather themselves cooperated with the wicked, sending forth through their oracles the aforementioned human sacrifices, and delighting in all manner of shameful speech and in the practices that follow from it, it is clear, they say, by the very deed that they themselves differed in no way in nature from base daemons, but rather were of one and the same purpose and mind; and one may say still further that there was no god at all, nor any good daemon, among those formerly worshiped by all the nations, city by city and country by country.

For how could the base ever become friend to the good, unless one should say that light and darkness too could be mingled into one? How much better, then, is the reasoning found among men than that of the so-called gods, which counsels that one need not sacrifice even to base daemons! The author previously mentioned, then, in the passage where he said that one ought not to sacrifice living creatures, speaks in this way concerning the fact that one ought not to sacrifice even to base daemons:

Wherefore the intelligent and prudent man will be wary of using such sacrifices as would draw such beings to himself, and will rather be zealous to purify his soul in every way; for they do not attack a pure soul, because of its unlikeness to them. But if it is necessary for cities to propitiate these beings also, that is nothing to us; for among cities wealth and external and bodily goods are reckoned as goods, and their opposites as evils, and but a small part in them is given to the care of the soul. To this he next adds, saying:

But we, as far as we are able, shall have no need of what these beings provide, but shall exert every effort, both from the soul and from external things, to become like God and those about Him -- which comes about through freedom from passion and a clearly articulated understanding concerning the things that truly are, and a life directed toward them and in accordance with them -- but to become unlike wicked men and daemons and, in general, everything that delights in what is mortal and material.

The philosopher whom we are describing, being one who stands apart from external things, we naturally say will not trouble daemons, nor will he have need of diviners, nor of the entrails of animals. For he has trained himself to abstain from the very things for the sake of which acts of divination are practiced. He does not enter into marriage in such a way as to trouble the diviner about marriage; not into commerce, not about a servant, not about theft, nor the other kinds of vain ambition current among men. Concerning the things he seeks, no diviner, nor the entrails of animals, will disclose what is clear; but he himself, of himself, as we say, approaching the God who dwells in his true inward parts, will receive counsels concerning eternal life, having wholly poured himself out toward that end.

Most clearly, then, through these words the argument has made plain of what sort one must reckon the oracles to be, and the inquiries made through sacrificial rites, and the foreknowledges of hidden things admired by the many. For, calling all these things vain ambition, as being wrought by evil daemons, he rejects them.

Having thus set forth at length his argument concerning base daemons, and having declared that the intelligent and prudent man should never surrender himself to them, nor by sacrifices draw such beings to himself, he next appends, saying that the philosopher will have no need of divinations, nor of the entrails of animals, nor of similar things, since these belong to the evil craft of daemons.

If, then, according to this, the intelligent and prudent man must be wary of using such sacrifices as would draw the daemons to himself -- and these were the sacrifices offered by the pouring out of blood and by the slaughter of irrational animals -- none of those in ancient times who sacrificed living creatures to the daemons could justly be called prudent and intelligent, and much less those who sacrificed human beings.

But well-nigh all nations everywhere, before our Savior was manifested among men, were caught in the snare of propitiating base daemons through human sacrifices performed in every place. None of these, then, was prudent and intelligent.

The common and human reasoning, then, following right reason, expressly proclaims to every intelligent and prudent man that he must not use sacrifices for the service of evil daemons, but must be zealous to purify his soul in every way; for such daemons do not attack a pure soul, on account of its unlikeness to them.

But their god Apollo -- for he must again be set beside men, and it must be shown how far short he falls of right reason -- commands sacrifice to the evil daemon, evidently for no other reason than that he is a friend to him; for like is friend to like in evil. Witness to this is the same author mentioned before, in the work he entitled 'On the Philosophy from Oracles,' recounting the matter here, word for word:

When the prophet, then, was eager and pressing to see the deity face to face, Apollo said that such a thing was impossible before ransom was given to the evil daemon. And he speaks thus: 'Give a ransom to the venerable dweller of the ancestral earth: first libations, then a pyre, and the dark blood of coal-black wine, together with the white streams of sheep.' And he spoke still more clearly concerning the same things: 'Cast in wine and milk and the bright form of water, and wood bearing the fruit of the divinely-sprung acorn-oak; and having laid down the entrails, pour libation together with the rich streams.' And when asked with what prayer, he began but did not finish, speaking thus: 'O daemon who hast obtained by lot the diadem of guilty souls, beneath the misty recesses and above the earthly depths...'

Such, then, are the words of the wondrous god -- or rather, of the much-wandering demon; but the counsel of natural reason is the opposite, bidding one purify the soul rather than draw the evil daemons to oneself by sacrifices; for they do not attack a pure soul because of its unlikeness to them. If, then, the man who is reverent and does not sacrifice to daemons has rightly been judged intelligent and prudent, what sort of being, and how reasonably so regarded, is he who through his oracle exhorts men to sacrifice to the evil ones -- I leave it to you to consider.

Tracing the matter back from this point, it will be evident what sort of character, by nature, those beings had who delighted in human sacrifices, or those who long ago enslaved the whole human race to such beings. But if anyone should say that the practice of human sacrifice was not base, but was most rightly performed by the ancients, it is high time to blame all men now living, because none of them is pious as the fathers were.

But if we, on our part, have wisely turned away from that harsh and savage cruelty, then none of the ancients was wise, who propitiated evil daemons with human slaughter. Indeed, they say, it is clear even to a blind man that those anciently deified as gods by all the nations were neither gods nor good daemons, but were rather utterly banished far from the good.

Wherefore they might justly be called certain God-fighters and impious ones, having corrupted the whole of life -- of whom from all ages no one but our Savior and Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, alone procured escape for all men, proclaiming the good news together to all, Greeks and barbarians alike, of healing from the ancestral disease and freedom from the bitter and most ancient slavery. Toward this the argument of the evangelical proof urges us to hasten, crying out with great voice to all, for all to hear: 'The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, wherefore he has anointed me; he has sent me to preach good tidings to the poor, to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to heal the brokenhearted; and again, to bring out those bound from their fetters, and those sitting in darkness from the house of confinement.'