駁尤利安（第4講） 第 1 章 第 5/5 段

since I have observed that in many places they zealously pursue solemnity, and being above the common man — as though the ordinary and pedestrian carries contemptibility, while the swollen and unattainable carries credibility.

Or will they, even here, descend to our level, deeming — as we do — that what befits them is not loftiness in outward form but in character? For with us, brief is the concern given to what is outwardly seen and depicted;

but our greater endeavor is directed toward the inner man, and toward drawing the beholder over to what is grasped by the mind, by which we chiefly instruct the multitude.

And what follows from this? You will furnish them, no doubt, with interpreters of god-inspired oracles — as you yourselves would call them — and unroll for them books both theological and moral.

Which books, tell me, and by whom? It would be a fine thing to have Hesiod's Theogony sung to them, with its wars and tumults, its Titans, its Giants, together with their fearsome names and deeds: Cottus, Briareus, Gyges, Enceladus, your dragon-footed ones, the thunderbolt-bearing gods, the islands hurled against them — missile and tomb at once for those they struck;

and their bitter offspring and progeny — Hydras, Chimaeras, Cerberuses, Gorgons — a rivalry in every kind of evil.

Let these be set before their ears as the 'fine things' of Hesiod.

'Zeus most glorious, greatest of the gods, wrapped in dung — as much as sheep's, as much as horses', as much as mules'' — so that from this, I suppose, the life-generating and life-sustaining power of the god may be demonstrated;

and let him not even spare the rest of such grandiloquent bombast.

'So speaking, the goddess drew up her two thighs,' to satisfy her lovers — things which even now she still accomplishes in ritual forms.

And above all, Phanes and Ericepaeus, and the one who swallows down all the other gods, then disgorges them again, so that he might become 'father of men and of gods.'

Let these things be wheeled in before the wondrous hearers of theology, and then let allegories and monstrous inventions be devised for them;

and let the discourse, falling away from the matters at hand, wander off into abysses and precipices of a speculation that has no stable footing.

But where will you place Homer, the great comic playwright of your gods — or rather, tragedian? For you will find both in his marvelous poems:

some things worthy of calamity, others worthy of laughter.

For indeed it is truly no small matter to behold how Oceanus will be reconciled with Tethys through Hera, who adorns herself like a harlot;

since there is danger to the whole universe should they remain chaste for any length of time;

or rather, whether the dry nature and the wet must be reconciled, lest by the excess of the one, the whole be thrown into confusion;

or whatever else even more absurd you may devise concerning these matters —

something above the clouds, and beyond the measure of our comprehension? And yet, if these things are true, let them not be ashamed, but rather take pride in them; or else, let them persuade us that they are not shameful;

and why must they take refuge in myth, as a covering for their shame? For myth belongs not to those who are confident, but to those who are retreating.

But if they are false, let them first show us their theologians speaking plainly, so that our argument may be directed against them;

and then let them explain how it is not foolish to take pride, as in strong and solid things, in the very matters they are ashamed of as mythical;

and why they publish before the eyes of all, in images and forms, matters that could have remained hidden from the multitude — for not everyone has been educated — and, most terrible of all, at so great a cost of money, in temples and altars, foundations, votive offerings, and sacrifices worth many talents; why, when it is possible to be pious without expense, do they choose to be impious at great cost? [§118]

But if they will say that these are the fabrications and follies of the poets, who employ two devices for the delight of their poetry — meter and myth — sweetening, as it were, the ear with them, while for them the philosophers the sense stored up within is more secret and deeper, accessible only to a few of the wiser sort, then consider how simply and justly I shall discourse concerning these matters.

First, how is it that they praise those who insult the very beings they worship, and deem them worthy of honors well-nigh equal to the gods themselves — men for whom it would have been reward enough simply not to be punished for their impiety? For if for those who blaspheme even one of their gods, privately and in a small matter, the laws prescribe death or a penalty, what ought to be suffered by those who let loose their poetry against them all together and publicly, on the most shameful matters, and have handed down the comedy of it through a long age? Then this too is worth reckoning:

among us too there are certain sayings expressed under a veil — this I will not deny — but what is the manner of their twofold sense, and what is its force? The surface is not unseemly, and the hidden meaning is wondrous and exceedingly bright to those led into the depths; and, like some beautiful and inviolable body, it is not wrapped in a shabby garment;

for it is necessary, at least as it seems to me, that not even the indications and intimations of divine things be unseemly and unworthy of what they signify, nor such as even men would be offended to have said of themselves;

but rather that it possess either what is altogether most beautiful, or at least what is not most shameful, so that the one may delight the wiser, and the other not harm the many.

But for you, neither is the hidden meaning credible, nor is what is openly displayed anything but destructive.

And what wisdom is there in leading someone to the city through mire, or hastening toward the harbor through reefs and hidden shoals? For what will come of this? and what is the outcome of such arguments?

You will babble on, and allegorize your own misfortunes or fantasies;

but there will be no one left to be persuaded;

for what is seen is more persuasive.

So then, you have not benefited the hearer, and you have ruined the onlooker, who became one with the spectacle he beheld.

Such, then, is their speculative domain, and it stands so far removed from its own premises, that it would be easier to reconcile all things with one another, and to bring into one what lies far apart, than to compose and fit these things together, and to affirm that the myths, I mean, and their veils, belong to the same author.

And what could you say about their moral part? From what starting-point, setting out from what, and using what arguments, will they be able to mold men toward virtue, and make them worthy of the highest regard through their exhortations? 'Concord is best' — that cities, peoples, households, and individuals should be of one mind with one another, following the law and order of nature, which has both divided and bound together all things, and has made this whole universe one out of many;

would they, by such examples, produce men warlike and deranged instead of wise, or, on the contrary, moderate and self-controlled instead of rash and untutored?

For those whom it is difficult to turn away from vice even apart from things that drag them toward the worse, and to remove from the worse to the better lot — who could persuade these to be gentle and self-restrained, when they take gods as guides and patrons of their passions?

Where evil itself is also held in honor, as though some god presided over it, whose passion is honored with altars and sacrifices, and has received lawful license? For this is the most terrible thing: that the very things which the laws punish, these are venerated as divine;

so great, it seems, is your abundance of injustice.

let this be what reasoning introduces, and what theology persuades us of!

And how will Cronus not persuade us — he who castrated Uranus, so that he might be barren of gods, and gave to the waves his member to bring forth a goddess, offspring of foam?

and Zeus rising up against Cronus, in imitation of his father — that stone, sweet in the swallowing yet a bitter slayer of the tyrant;

or whatever else of the kind their books relate, to the honor of their begetters.

Let their third [virtue] be contempt for wealth: not to profit from every quarter, nor to take dishonest gain as a pledge of misfortune to come.

How then shall Hermes the Profiteer stand firm as their god, and the money-bag be put forward, and the thieving power of the deity be honored, and [the saying that]:

"Without bronze, Phoebus gives no oracle," and nothing is more precious than the obol? For these are their solemn and venerable things.

What more? Let them teach temperance, let them commend self-control —

as does Heracles, the Child of Three Nights, laboring with the fifty daughters of Thestius in a single night, and accomplishing this as a thirteenth labor — one which, I know not how, is not reckoned among the rest.

— gluttony: Zeus running off to a sumptuous feast among the blameless Ethiopians, together with the rest of the deities;

the Ox-eater [Heracles], who played the tyrant over the farmer, devoured his plough-ox, and took his very title from the deed; and all of them running eagerly after the savor of roasting flesh and the libations.

And yet how near do these things come to what is ours, for whom each man is himself the measure of friendship, and to wish for one's neighbor the same things one wishes for oneself;

and it is a fault not only to have done wrong, but even to have come near to intending it, and anger is chastened as though it were the deed itself;

for whom chastity is so zealously pursued that even the eye is held in check;

and the murderous hand is warded off so utterly that even wrath itself is disciplined;

and to swear falsely is so dreadful and monstrous a thing that for us alone even the oath itself is renounced? As for wealth, for many it never came to be at all;

and for many, they would gladly have had even more, for this reason alone — that they might have the more to despise — holding as their philosophy that to possess nothing is worth more than all riches;

and having, as many of them have done, cast off the belly as a bitter and detestable mistress, and mother of all evils;

it is no great thing to say that they even strive not to be flesh at all, consuming the mortal by means of the immortal;

and for them there is a single law of virtue: not to be overcome even in the smallest matters, even though such things pass unnoticed by all.

For this is the finest thing: while others, according to their laws, punish only the completed acts, we chasten even their beginnings, checking from afar, as it were, some evil and unruly torrent —

rather than to stand upon strict justice: when pursued, to yield; when stripped, to strip off even more; when cursed, to pray all the more abundantly for those who curse [us];

in a word, to conquer insolence by kindness, and to make wrongdoers better by our steadfast endurance of what we suffer? And yet, even granting that they chastise vice by the exhortations of their fable, how far short this falls of attaining the measure of our virtue and discipline — for us it is accounted vice even not to advance in goodness, not forever to be renewed in place of growing old, but to remain in the same state. Theirs is the condition of spinning-tops, running in circles, not going forward, and moving while standing still, if I may so put it, driven by the force of the lash.

And for us it is necessary both to have accomplished some of the good, and to hold fast to more, and to reach still further, until the end and the deification for which we came to be and toward which we press on — we whose minds are ever advancing, and who hope for something worthy of the magnanimity of God.