Of Greek theology, then — I mean the popular and more mythical kind, and much earlier still that of the Phoenicians and Egyptians and the others, whose record the preceding books have covered — such is the character that has been shown, as demonstrated beforehand through the very testimonies of the Greek writers themselves; which we have fittingly set forth at the very outset of the present Preparation for the Gospel, for the discernment and judgment of our readers, so that we ourselves, and those still unacquainted with these matters, might learn who we once were long ago, and from what sort of fathers we sprang, and by what great evils we were formerly fettered, and in what depth of impiety and drunken ignorance of God our souls lay buried — before we were deemed worthy of rousing from all these things and of freedom, through the evangelic teaching alone, which was administered to us in no other way than through the appearing of our Savior Jesus Christ, who is God.
He who, not in one part of the earth, nor in a corner of the land of a single nation, but throughout the whole inhabited world — in which the most superstitious error had gained the upper hand — like a sun of intelligent and rational souls, having spread abroad the rays of his own light, transferred all of us together, the whole race of men, barbarians and Greeks alike, out of, as it were, a dread and most gloomy and shapeless night of superstitious error, into the bright and most radiant day of the true piety of God, the King of all.
The testimonies quoted above have plainly taught that all who, throughout cities and villages, were carried away, all of them together, in the error of polytheism, served and attended the idols of the dead and the images of men long since departed — of men of old who, through the exceeding bestiality of the life of that time, took no account whatever of God, the maker of all things, nor gave heed to divine justice, which punishes wrongdoing, but plunged themselves into every kind of unholy deed.
For as yet, at that time, no laws had been established according to which one ought to live, nor was a civilized manner of life yet ordered among men; life was unrestrained and nomadic and in a bestial condition. Some cared for nothing more than the filling of their bellies, after the fashion of irrational beasts — and in these the first form of atheism lurks; while others, stirred a little by natural notions, conceived that God, and the power of God, was something saving and good, and, wishing to find him, stretched their souls upward toward heaven, and there halted in their thinking; and, struck with amazement at the beauty of the luminaries appearing and shining in heaven, declared these to be gods.
A third group, yet others, cast themselves down upon the earth, and proclaimed as gods — both while still living and after death — those reputed to surpass their contemporaries in understanding, or those who, by bodily strength and might of power, had overcome the majority: certain giants, or tyrants, or even sorcerers and dealers in drugs, men who, through some fall from more divine things, had contrived their wicked sorceries; or again, others who had first initiated some common and life-benefiting service.
Hence it is on record even among them that the houses of the gods are the tombs of the dead, as Clement relates in his Exhortation to the Greeks, bringing forward the Greeks themselves as witnesses to his account. And if you please, hear again the manner in which he too writes of this.
Reasonably, then, superstition, having taken its rise from some source, became a fountain of senseless evil; and then, not being checked, but proceeding to increase and flowing abundantly, established itself as the maker of many demons, offering up hecatombs and celebrating festal assemblies and setting up images and building temples. These — for I will not pass over this in silence either, but will expose this very thing too — being euphemistically called temples (neoi), were in fact tombs; that is, the tombs were called temples. But you — even now forget your superstition, forget it, being ashamed to honor tombs.
In the temple of Athena at Larissa, on the acropolis, is the tomb of Acrisius; and at Athens, on the acropolis, that of Cecrops, as Antiochus says in the ninth book of his Histories.
And what of Erichthonius? Is he not buried in the temple of Polias? And is not Immarus, son of Eumolpus and Daeira, buried within the precinct of the Eleusinion below the acropolis? And the daughters of Celeus are buried at Eleusis.
Why should I list for you the women who came from the Hyperboreans? Hyperoche and Laodice are their names; they are buried in the Artemision at Delos, and this lies within the sanctuary of Delian Apollo.
Leander says that Cleochus is buried at Miletus, in the Didymaion. Here it is not right to pass over the tomb of Leucophryne — following Zenon of Myndos — who is buried in the temple of Artemis at Magnesia; nor indeed the altar of Apollo at Telmessus: they relate that this too is the tomb of Telmesseus the seer.
Ptolemy, son of Agesarchus, in the first book of his history concerning Philopator, says that at Paphos, in the temple of Aphrodite, Cinyras and the descendants of Cinyras are buried.
But indeed, were I to go over all the tombs worshiped by you, not even the whole of time would suffice me. As for you, if some sense of shame at your rash presumption does not steal over you, then, being utterly dead, you go about having put your trust in dead men! Ah, wretches, why do you suffer such an evil as this?
And a little further on he says: And another new god, in Egypt — and almost also among the Greeks — the king of the Romans has solemnly deified: his beloved, who had become surpassingly beautiful, Antinous, he consecrated, just as Zeus did Ganymede.
For desire, when it has no fear, is not easily restrained; and men now worship as sacred the nights of Antinous, which the lover who kept vigil with him knew to be shameful. And he adds: Already the tomb of the beloved is a temple, and a city, of Antinous; for just as, I suppose, temples are marveled at, so too are tombs — pyramids and mausoleums and labyrinths: other [buildings are] temples of the dead, just as those [tombs] are the tombs of the gods.
And again, a little further on: Come now, let us also briefly go the round of the games, and put an end to these funeral festivals — the Isthmian, the Nemean, the Pythian, and, along with these, the Olympian. At Pytho, then, the Pythian serpent is worshiped, and the festal assembly of the serpent is proclaimed the Pythia; at the Isthmus, the sea has spat out a pitiable piece of wreckage, and the Isthmian games lament Melicertes; at Nemea, another child, Archemorus, is buried, and the funeral rite for the child is called the Nemea. Pisa, O Panhellenes, is among you the tomb of a Phrygian charioteer, and the Olympic games — the libations for Pelops — the Zeus of Phidias appropriates to himself.
So much for this author. But do you, taking up the argument once more from the beginning, examine the collapse of superstitious error. By nature, then, and by self-taught notions — or rather, by God-taught ones — it turns out to be a fine and beneficial thing, that which signifies the appellation and essence of God; for all men had, by common processes of reasoning, anticipated this, since the maker of all things had sown it, by natural conceptions, in every rational and intelligent soul.
Yet they did not make use of this in accordance with rational choice. For perhaps one man, or maybe a second, or a very few others besides — whose memory the oracles of the Hebrews preserve — applied their conception of God to none of the things that are seen, but, with unperverted reasoning, having been led up from the things that are seen to the maker of the whole world and the great creator of all things, understood with the purified eyes of the mind that he alone is God, the savior of all, and alone the giver of good things; while the rest, overturned by every manner of darkening of the soul, were swept down into the depths of impiety, so as, after the fashion of wild beasts, to fix the good and the profitable and the noble no higher than the body and the pleasure of the flesh.
In this way, according to what has been said before, [it came about] that the discoverers of what were reckoned bodily goods and useful things, or certain rulers and tyrants, or sorcerers and dealers in drugs — men mortal by nature and subject to human misfortunes — should be proclaimed as providers of good things, as saviors and gods, having transferred to those whom they supposed to be their benefactors that reverent notion which was naturally implanted within them [toward the true God].
So great, then, was the derangement of mind that possessed them, that they took no account whatever of the wrongdoings of those they deified, nor blushed at the shameful things reported concerning them, but in every respect admired these men on account of the benefits provided by them, or on account of the dominations and tyrannies then for the first time being established.
For since, as I said before, laws were not yet at that time established among men, nor was punishment yet hanging over those who sinned, adulteries and the corruption of boys/men, illicit and unlawful marriages, bloodshed and parricides, the slaughter of children and of brothers — yes, and wars and civil strifes truly carried out by their own rulers, whom they considered and called gods — these they recorded, as it were, among their achievements and manly deeds, leaving to their descendants the memory of these as though they were venerable and courageous things.
Such, then, were the doctrines of the ancient theology; and certain younger men, having sprung up as though but yesterday and the day before, and priding themselves on philosophizing in a more rational manner, changed it, and introduced the more physical [naturalistic] opinion concerning the history of the gods, devising more dignified-sounding pretexts to add to the myths, neither entirely escaping the fault of their forefathers' impiety, nor again enduring the depravity of the deified beings that was self-evident on its face.
Eager, nonetheless, to remedy the ancestral fault, these men refashioned the myths into natural narratives and theories, boasting, as it were more esoterically, that what was signified by the myths was the nourishing and increasing powers within the nature of bodies.
Proceeding from this, these men too proclaimed the elements of the cosmos as gods — not only the sun and moon and stars themselves, but also earth and water, air and fire, and the compounds and products arising from these; yes, and also the ripe fruits of the earth, and the rest of the produce of dry and moist nourishment — which things too, as being causes of the life of bodies, they addressed by the names Demeter and Kore and Dionysus and whatever else is akin to these, and deified, introducing an embellishment of the myths that was forced and untrue.
But these men only quite belatedly, as though ashamed of the theologies of their forebears, devised — each from his own resources — dignified-sounding interpretations to append to the myths about the gods, no one daring to disturb ancestral tradition, but honoring greatly antiquity and the customary upbringing familiar and inbred from childhood.
Those older than these, indeed, ordained, on an equal footing with the deification of men, also the deification of irrational animals, because of the usefulness derived from them too, according to the causes given before, and dedicated to the irrational beasts forms of worship equal [to those of the gods] — libations, sacrifices, mystic rites, hymns and songs — raising their honors to the level of those given to the deified men. And to such a pitch of evil did they drive matters, that, through excess of unbridled self-indulgence, they even deified with divine honors the parts of the body inclined to shameful conduct, and the unchaste passions among men — though their own theologians had declared that in these matters nothing at all ought to be spoken of solemnly.
One must observe, then, that the most ancient men, knowing nothing further than mere legend, but clinging only to myths, are attested [to have done so]. But nevertheless, since we have once set out to examine also the solemn and secret doctrines of the noble philosophers, come, let us look into these too, that we may not seem to be ignorant even of their marvelous theories of nature.
Before making the exposition of these matters, it seems to me right first to point out the disagreement of these very marvelous philosophers among themselves even on these points. For some give their accounts in a random fashion, and each declares his own view individually as it happens to occur to him — for their accounts of nature are not even consistent with one another; while others, more reasonably, do away with the whole matter, and banish from their own commonwealth not only the unseemly stories about the gods, but also the interpretations given of them; and sometimes, out of fear of the punishment of the laws, they disguise the myths under a euphemistic name.
Hear, then, the Greeks themselves, through one who is the best of them all, at one time expelling the myths, at another again readmitting them. Their admirable Plato, then — when he lays bare his own personal view, more boldly forbids altogether holding or saying such things about the gods as have been said by the ancients, whether they should contain some hidden meaning veiled in undertones, or be spoken outside of any such hidden meaning at all; but when he flatters the Laws [i.e., speaks as legislator, in the persona of the Laws], he says that one must believe the myths about the gods, as though they contained nothing at all signified by way of hidden meaning.
But already at one point, having set apart his own theology from the ancient myths, and having given, distinctly, a natural account concerning heaven and sun and moon and stars, and further concerning the universe as a whole and its several parts, he again, separately and distinctly, discourses concerning the gods anciently set forth in genealogy, in these very words, somewhat as follows, in the Timaeus.
But concerning the other divinities, to speak and to know their origin is a task too great for us; one must trust those who have spoken of it before — men who were, as they themselves said, offspring of gods, and who surely knew clearly their own ancestors. It is impossible, then, to disbelieve the children of gods, even though they speak without probable or necessary proofs; but since they profess to report their own family matters, one must, in accordance with custom, believe them.
Thus, then, according to them, let the genealogy concerning these gods be for us, and let it be stated as follows: Of Earth and Heaven were born Oceanus and Tethys; and of these, Phorcys and Cronos and Rhea, and all those [born] together with them; and of Cronos and Rhea, Zeus and Hera and all those whom we know to be called their siblings, and yet others, offspring of these.
These things Plato says must be believed, in accordance with custom, though he has acknowledged that they were spoken without probable or necessary proofs; and one must observe that he thereby shows that the appellations and genealogies of the gods, as set forth in these accounts of nature, contain nothing secret at all.
And again, elsewhere, the same man, laying bare his own personal view, uses these words: 'First,' said I, 'the greatest falsehood concerning the greatest matters was not well told by the one who said that Uranus did what Hesiod says he did, and that Cronos in turn took vengeance on him. But as for the deeds of Cronos, and what he suffered at his son's hands — even if they were true — I should not think they ought to be told so readily to the thoughtless and to the young, but rather that they should above all be kept silent; and if there were some necessity to tell them, that they should be heard by as few as possible, in secret, after sacrificing not a pig but some great and hard-to-procure victim, so that it might happen that the fewest possible should hear them.'
'For indeed,' he said, 'these are harsh accounts, and are not to be told, Adeimantus, in our city; nor should it be granted to a young listener [to hear] that, were he to do the utmost injustice, he would be doing nothing to marvel at, nor again that, in punishing an unjust father by every means, he would be doing only what the first and greatest of the gods did. Nor does it seem fitting to me even to say such things at all.'
'Nor at all,' said I, 'that gods war against gods, and plot against one another, and fight — for indeed this is not even true — if indeed those who are to guard the city must consider it the most shameful thing to fall out with one another readily. Far be it that battles of the giants should be made into myths for them, and elaborately embroidered, along with other enmities of every sort, of gods and heroes against their own kinsmen and relations; but if we are somehow to persuade them that no citizen has ever been at enmity with another, and that this is not even a holy thing, such things rather must be told to the children from the very start, and to old men and old women, and to those who have grown elderly, and the poets must be compelled to compose speeches close to these.'
'The bindings of Hera by her son, and the hurlings of Hephaestus by his father, when he was about to defend his mother who was being beaten, and all the battles of the gods that Homer has composed — these are not to be admitted into the city, whether they have been composed with hidden meanings or without hidden meanings.'
Clearly, then, through these words the philosopher teaches that both the myths of the ancients concerning the gods, and the natural theories supposed to be spoken by way of hidden meaning within the myths, are to be rejected altogether — so that it is no longer unreasonable for us to proclaim as good news to men the withdrawal from these things, taught by our Savior's teaching, seeing that it has been cast out even by its own [adherents].
Whence it also occurs to me to marvel at the ancient Romans, in what manner, having perceived that all the Greek natural theories concerning the gods were absurd and unprofitable — or rather, forced and inconsistent — they excluded these very myths from their own theology. And this too you may learn from the Roman Antiquities of Dionysius of Halicarnassus; for he, in the second book, relating the history of Romulus, the first founder of Rome, recounts, among his other achievements, also his measures concerning these matters, writing in this manner.
But he knew that zealous laws and emulation of good practices produce a city that is pious and temperate, that practices justice, and is good in war; of these he took much forethought, having made his beginning from reverence toward things divine and daemonic.
Sacred precincts, then, and sanctuaries, and altars, and the setting up of carved images, and their forms and symbols and powers and gifts, by which they have benefited our race, and festivals — of what kind it is fitting to hold for each of the gods or daimones — and sacrifices, in which they rejoice at being honored by men, and truces, and festal assemblies, and rests from labor, and all such things, he established in like manner, according to the best of the customs prevailing among the Greeks.
But the myths handed down concerning them, in which there are certain blasphemies or accusations against them, he judged to be wicked and unprofitable and unseemly, and worthy not even of good men, let alone of the gods, and cast them all out, and prepared his people to speak and think the noblest things concerning the gods, attributing to them no practice unworthy of their blessed nature.
For neither is Uranus said among the Romans to be mutilated by his own children, nor Cronos to make away with his own offspring for fear of the attack that might come from them, nor Zeus to overthrow the dominion of Cronos and shut up his own father in the prison of Tartarus; nor indeed [are there among them] wars, and wounds, and bonds, and servitudes of the gods among men.
Nor is any festival among them celebrated in mourning dress, or as a rite of grief, with the lamentations and dirges of women over gods that have vanished — such as are performed among the Greeks concerning the rape of Persephone and the sufferings of Dionysus, and whatever other such things there are.
Nor would one see among them — even though their customs are by now already corrupted — instances of divine possession, or Corybantic frenzy, or Bacchic revels and secret rites, or all-night vigils held in the temples of the gods by men together with women, or any other of the marvel-mongering practices akin to these; but rather, all things done and said concerning the gods with reverence, as is the case neither among the Greeks nor among the barbarians.
And what I myself have marveled at most of all is that, although countless nations have come into the city — nations under strong necessity to worship their ancestral gods according to their native customs — the city has never publicly come to emulate any of these foreign practices, a thing which has already befallen many other cities; but even where certain rites have been introduced in accordance with oracles, the city has adapted them to its own native customs, casting out all mythical nonsense — just as it did with the rites of the sacred goddess.
For sacrifices and games are held for her every year by the praetors, according to the laws of the Romans, and a Phrygian man and a Phrygian woman serve as her priests, and these go about the city as begging-priests, as is their custom, wearing images fastened upon their breasts, and being accompanied by flute-players who play the Mother's melodies for them, while they beat their tambourines.
But of the native-born Romans, no one goes through the city as a begging-priest, or accompanied by flute-playing, clad in a many-colored robe, nor does he perform the orgiastic rites of the goddess according to the Phrygian rites, by any law or decree of the senate. So reverently does the city hold itself with regard to non-native customs concerning the gods, and it regards with religious dread every kind of vain imposture, in which there is nothing seemly.
And let no one suppose that I am ignorant that some of the Greek myths are useful to men — some displaying the works of nature by means of allegory [lit. through grief/suffering], some composed for the consolation of human misfortunes, some for the removal of the soul's disturbances and fears and the destruction of unhealthy opinions, and some devised for the sake of some other benefit.
But although I understand these things as well as anyone, nevertheless I hold myself warily toward them, and I embrace rather the theology of the Romans, considering that the benefits arising from the Greek myths are small, and capable of profiting not many, but only those who have carefully examined the reasons for which they were made.
Rare are those who have partaken of this philosophy; but the great and unphilosophical crowd is inclined to take the accounts about the gods in the worse sense, and suffers one of two things: either it despises the gods, as wallowing in great wretchedness, or it abstains from none of the most shameful and most lawless deeds, seeing these very things attributed to the gods.
But concerning these matters, let it be left to those who practice only the theoretical part of philosophy to consider; while as for the polity established by Romulus, I have judged these things too worthy of record. Such, then, were the views held by the best of the philosophers, and by the ancient and earliest [founders] of the Roman dominion, concerning Greek theology — admitting in no way natural [allegorical] theories within the myths about the gods, nor indeed their solemn-seeming and sophistical impostures. We, then, since we have once set out also upon the refutation of these things, come, let us examine their interpretations and theories, to see what solemn and god-befitting thing they after all bring forward, contributing nothing of our own, but making use throughout of their very own words, so that we may again learn, from their own testimony, what properly belongs to them.