Since on a former day we had a conversation, my most excellent Autolycus, when you inquired who my God is, and after you had for a little while lent your ears to my discourse, I set before you an account of my religion; and then, having taken leave of one another with the greatest cordiality, we each went home, though at first you bore yourself rather harshly toward me. For you know and remember that you supposed our doctrine to be folly. Since, then, you afterward urged me on, although I am unskilled in eloquence, nevertheless I wish even now, by means of this present treatise, to demonstrate to you more exactly the vain labor and empty worship in which you are held fast; and at the same time, by means of a few of the very histories which you read, and which perhaps you do not yet understand, I wish to make the truth plain to you.
For it seems to me ridiculous that stonemasons and modellers, or painters, or casters, should fashion and draw and carve and cast, and manufacture gods, which, when they have been made by the craftsmen, are reckoned by them as nothing; but when they have been bought by certain people and set up in what is called a temple, or in some house, then not only do those who purchased them sacrifice to them, but even those who made and sold them come with eager zeal and an array of sacrifices and libations to worship them, and they regard them as gods, not knowing that they are just such things as they were when they were made by the craftsmen, that is, stone, or bronze, or wood, or paint, or some other material. And this same thing has happened to you who read the histories and genealogies of the so-called gods; for whenever you come upon the accounts of their births, you understand them to be men, yet afterward you call them gods and worship them, neither stopping to consider nor understanding that they were begotten just such as you read them to have been.
And of the gods of that time, if indeed they were begotten, many a generation used to be found; but where now is any generation of gods shown? For if they then begot and were begotten, it is clear that gods ought to be begotten down to the present day; otherwise such a notion will be reckoned feeble. For either they grew old, and therefore beget no more, or they died, and exist no longer. For if gods were begotten, they ought to be begotten down to the present day, just as men also are begotten. Nay rather, the gods ought even to be more numerous than men, as the Sibyl says: 'But if gods beget and yet remain immortal, the gods would be more in number than men have come to be, and there would be no room left for mortals to stand.' For if the children begotten by mortal and short-lived men are seen down to the present day, and the begetting of men has not ceased, so that cities and villages are filled, and moreover whole regions are inhabited, how much more ought not gods, who according to the poets do not die, to beget and be begotten, just as you say the generation of gods came about? And why was the mountain called Olympus then inhabited by gods, but is now deserted? Or why did Zeus once dwell on Ida, and was known to dwell there according to Homer and the rest of the poets, but is now unknown? And why was he not everywhere, but was found only in one part of the earth? For either he neglected the rest, or he was unable to be everywhere and to provide for all things. For if he were, say, in an eastern place, he was not in a western place; and if again he were in the western parts, he was not in the eastern. But of God the Most High and Almighty, and the One who truly is God, this is the property: not only to be everywhere, but also to behold all things and to hear all things, and yet not to be contained in any place; otherwise the place that contains Him would be found greater than Himself, for that which contains is greater than that which is contained. For God is not contained, but is Himself the place of all things. And why did Zeus leave Ida? Was it because he died, or because that mountain no longer pleased him? And where did he go? To the heavens? No. But you will say, to Crete? Yes, where his tomb is shown down to this very day. And again you will say, to Pisa, which to this day glories in the hands of Pheidias. Let us come, then, to the writings of the philosophers and poets.
Some of the Stoa deny even that God exists at all; or, if He does, they say that God cares for nothing except Himself; and these things the senselessness of Epicurus and Chrysippus declared outright. Others said that all things came about by spontaneous chance, and that the world is unbegotten and nature eternal; and on the whole they dared to assert that there is no providence of God, but they say that the conscience of each individual is the only god. And still others lay it down that the spirit which pervades all things is god. But Plato and those of his school confess that God is unbegotten, and the Father and Maker of all things; yet then they posit God and matter as both unbegotten, and they say that matter has coexisted with God. But if God is unbegotten and matter unbegotten, then God is no longer the Maker of all things according to the Platonists, nor is the sole sovereignty of God demonstrated, so far as concerns their view. Moreover, just as God, being unbegotten, is also unchangeable, so likewise if matter too were unbegotten, it would also be unchangeable and equal to God; for that which is begotten is mutable and changeable, but the unbegotten is immutable and unchangeable. And what great thing is it if God made the world out of pre-existent matter? For even a human craftsman, when he gets material from someone, makes out of it whatever he pleases. But the power of God is manifested in this: that He makes whatever He pleases out of things that are not; just as the giving of soul and motion belongs to none other than God alone. For a man indeed makes an image, but he cannot give reason and breath or sensation to the thing made by him. But God has more than this: the power to make a thing rational, breathing, and capable of sensation. Therefore, just as in all these respects God is more powerful than man, so also is He in this: that out of things that are not He makes, and has made, the things that are, and whatsoever He pleases, even as He pleases.
Thus the opinion among the philosophers and writers is discordant. For while these have made these declarations, we find the poet Homer, under another hypothesis, introducing a generation not only of the world but also of the gods; for he says somewhere: 'Ocean, the begetting of the gods, and mother Tethys, from whom all rivers and the whole sea proceed.' In saying which he no longer establishes God. For who does not know that the ocean is water? And if it is water, it is surely not God. But God, if He is the Maker of all things, as indeed He is, is then also the Creator of the water and of the seas. And Hesiod too himself proclaimed not only a generation of the gods, but also of the world itself; and having said that the world was begotten, he was at a loss to say by whom it came into being. Moreover, he said that the gods were Cronus and Zeus his offspring, and Poseidon and Pluto, and we find these later in origin than the world. Furthermore he relates that Cronus was warred upon by Zeus his own son. For so he says: 'Having conquered his father Cronus by might; and he well distributed each thing among the immortals alike, and assigned them their honors.' Then he goes on to speak of the daughters of Zeus, whom he also names the Muses, of whom he becomes a suppliant, desiring to learn from them in what manner all things came into being; for he says: 'Hail, children of Zeus! Grant me lovely song; celebrate the sacred race of the immortals who exist forever, who were born of Earth and of starry Heaven and of gloomy Night, and whom the briny Sea nourished. Tell how at the first the gods and the earth came into being, and the rivers, and the boundless sea raging with its swell, and the shining stars, and the wide heaven above; and who of these were born gods, givers of good things, and how they divided their wealth and apportioned their honors, and how at the first they took possession of many-folded Olympus. These things tell me, O Muses who have your dwelling on Olympus, from the beginning, and say which of them came first.' But how did the Muses know these things, since they were later in origin than the world? Or how could they recount them to Hesiod, when their own father had not yet come into being?
And in a way he assumes matter and a making of the world, when he says: 'Verily first of all Chaos came into being; but next broad-bosomed Earth, the ever-sure foundation of all the immortals who hold the peaks of snowy Olympus, and dim Tartarus in the depth of the wide-pathed earth, and Eros, who is fairest among the immortal gods, the loosener of limbs, who overcomes in the breasts of all gods and of all men their mind and prudent counsel. Out of Chaos came Erebus and black Night; and of Night again were born Aether and Day, whom she conceived and bore after mingling in love with Erebus. And Earth first of all brought forth starry Heaven, equal to herself, to cover her all about, that there might be for the blessed gods an ever-sure dwelling place; and she brought forth the long mountains, the graceful haunts of the Nymphs who dwell among the wooded mountains; and she also bore the barren deep with its raging swell, the Sea, without delightful love; but afterward, having lain with Heaven, she bore deep-eddying Ocean.' And though he said this, not even thus did he make clear by whom they came into being. For if in the beginning there was Chaos, and some matter pre-existed, being unbegotten, who then was it that altered and re-shaped and transformed it? Did matter itself re-fashion and adorn itself? (For Zeus came into being long afterward, not only later than matter, but also later than the world and the multitude of men; and indeed later still than his father Cronus.) Or rather, was there some sovereign power that made it -- I mean God, who also set it in order? Moreover, he is found in every way to be talking nonsense, and contradicting himself; for having spoken of earth and heaven and sea, he wishes the gods to have come into being from them, and from these he announces certain most terrible men, kindred of the gods, the race of the Titans and the Cyclopes, and the multitude of the Giants, and the demons of Egypt, or rather vain men, as Apollonides, also surnamed Horapius, mentions in the book entitled Semenuthi, and in the rest of his histories concerning the religion of the Egyptians and their kings, and the vain labor that prevails among them.
But why should I recount the myths of the Greeks -- of Pluto reigning over darkness, and Poseidon diving beneath the sea, and embracing Melanippe and begetting a man-eating son; or all that the writers have dramatized concerning the children of Zeus? And that these were born men and not gods, they themselves recount their lineage. And Aristophanes the comic poet, in the play entitled The Birds, undertaking to treat of the making of the world, said that at the first the constitution of the world was an egg, saying: 'First of all black-winged Night brought forth a wind-egg.' But Satyrus too, recording the demes of the Alexandrians, beginning from Philopator who was also called Ptolemy, declares that of him Dionysus was the founding ancestor. Wherefore Ptolemy also established the Dionysian tribe as the first. Satyrus then says thus: that of Dionysus and Althaea the daughter of Thestius was born Deianeira, and of her and Heracles the son of Zeus, I suppose, Hyllus, and of him Cleodemus, and of him Aristomachus, and of him Temenus, and of him Ceisus, and of him Maron, and of him Thestius, and of him Acous, and of him Aristomidas, and of him Caranus, and of him Coenus, and of him Tyrimmas, and of him Perdiccas, and of him Philip, and of him Aeropus, and of him Alcetas, and of him Amyntas, and of him Bocrus, and of him Meleager, and of him Arsinoe, and of her and Lagus, Ptolemy also called Soter, and of him and Berenice, Ptolemy Philadelphus, and of him and Arsinoe, Ptolemy Euergetes, and of him and Berenice the daughter of Magas who reigned in Cyrene, Ptolemy Philopator. The kinship, then, of those who reigned in Alexandria with Dionysus is contained thus. Whence also in the Dionysian tribe demes have been registered: the Altheis from Althaea who became the wife of Dionysus, daughter of Thestius; the Deianeiris from Deianeira, daughter of Dionysus and Althaea, and wife of Heracles. Whence also the demes among them have their appellations: the Ariadnis from Ariadne the daughter of Minos, wife of Dionysus, a father-loving daughter, who united with Dionysus in the form of a ship's stern; the Thestis from Thestius the father of Althaea; the Thoantis from Thoas son of Dionysus; the Staphylis from Staphylus son of Dionysus; the Euaenis from Eunoos son of Dionysus; the Maronis from Maron son of Ariadne and Dionysus; for all these were sons of Dionysus. And there are many other appellations as well, which exist down to this day: those called Heracleidae from Heracles, and Apollonidae and Apollonii from Apollo, and Poseidonii from Poseidon; and from Zeus, the Dioi and Diogenae.
And why should I go on to recount the rest of the multitude of such appellations and genealogies? So that in every way the writers are made sport of -- all of them, both the so-called poets and philosophers, and moreover those who give heed to them. For they have composed myths and follies rather than truth concerning their gods. For they did not prove them to be gods, but men -- some of them drunkards, others fornicators and murderers. But also concerning the origin of the world they uttered things discordant with one another and worthless. First, that some declared the world to be unbegotten, as we have shown above; and those who asserted it to be unbegotten and of eternal nature said things not consistent with those who held it to be begotten. For they uttered these things by conjecture and human reasoning, and not according to truth. Others again said that there is providence, and they overthrew the doctrines of the former. Aratus, then, says: 'Let us begin from Zeus, whom men never leave unspoken; full of Zeus are all the streets, and all the gatherings of men, full too is the sea and the harbors; everywhere we all have need of Zeus. For we are also his offspring; and kindly to men he gives favorable signs, and rouses the peoples to work, reminding them of their livelihood; and he tells when the soil is best for oxen and for mattocks, and he tells when the seasons are right both to dig in the plants and to cast all the seeds.' In whom, then, shall we believe -- in this Aratus, or in Sophocles, who says: 'Of nothing is providence clear; it is best to live at random however one can'? But Homer again does not agree with him; for he says: 'Zeus both increases and diminishes virtue in men.' And Simonides: 'No one without the gods has taken virtue, neither city nor mortal man; God is the all-contriving. There is nothing unscathed among them.' Likewise Euripides: 'There is nothing for men apart from God.' And Menander: 'No one cares for us, save God alone.' And again Euripides: 'For when it seems good to God to save, He gives many occasions for salvation.' And Thestius: 'If God wills, even though you sail on a wicker mat, you are saved.' And having said innumerable such things, they uttered things discordant with themselves. Sophocles at least, speaking of the absence of providence, says in another place: 'But the mortal does not overleap the stroke of God.' Furthermore, they introduced a multitude of gods, yet spoke of a single sovereignty; and they spoke against those who said there is no providence, declaring that providence exists. Whence Euripides confesses, saying: 'We toil at many things in vain through hopes, having labors, yet knowing nothing.' And even unwillingly they confess that they do not know the truth; but being inspired by demons and puffed up by them, what they said, they said through them. For either the poets -- Homer indeed and Hesiod -- being inspired, as they say, by the Muses, spoke from imagination and error, and not by a pure spirit but by a deceitful one. And from this it is plainly shown, since even those possessed by demons are sometimes, down to the present day, exorcised in the name of the One who truly is God, and the deceiving spirits themselves confess that they are demons -- the same who then also worked in those men. Yet sometimes some of them, sobering up in soul, spoke things consistent with the prophets, so that it might be a testimony both to themselves and to all men concerning the sole sovereignty of God and the judgment, and the other things which they declared.
But the men of God, bearers of the Holy Spirit and become prophets, being inspired and made wise by God Himself, became taught of God and holy and righteous. Wherefore they were also counted worthy to receive this reward, becoming instruments of God and containing the wisdom that is from Him -- through which wisdom they spoke both concerning the creation of the world and concerning all the rest. For they foretold also concerning pestilences and famines and wars. And not one or two, but many, arose at various times and seasons among the Hebrews, and among the Greeks too the Sibyl; and all spoke things harmonious and consistent with one another -- both the things that had come to pass before them, and the things that occurred in their own time, and the things now being fulfilled in our day. Wherefore we are also persuaded concerning the things to come that they will be so, just as the first things have been accomplished.
And first they taught us with one accord that God made all things out of things that were not. For nothing coexisted with God; but He, being His own place, and lacking nothing, and existing before the ages, willed to make man by whom He might be known; for this man, therefore, He prepared the world beforehand. For that which is begotten is also in need, but the unbegotten lacks nothing. Having, then, His own Word indwelling within His own bowels, God begot Him together with His own Wisdom, uttering Him forth before all things. This Word He had as the minister of the things made by Him, and through Him He made all things. He is called Beginning, because He rules and is lord over all things fashioned through Him. This Word, then, being Spirit of God, and Beginning and Wisdom and Power of the Most High, came down upon the prophets, and through them spoke the things concerning the making of the world and all the rest. For the prophets did not exist when the world came into being; but the Wisdom of God which was in Him, and His holy Word who was always present with Him, did. Therefore He speaks thus through Solomon the prophet: 'When He prepared the heaven, I was present with Him; and when He made strong the foundations of the earth, I was beside Him, fitting them together.' But Moses, who lived many years before Solomon -- or rather the Word of God speaking through him as through an instrument -- says: 'In the beginning God made the heaven and the earth.' First he named Beginning and creation, then thus he set forth God. For one ought not to name God idly and in vain. For the divine Wisdom foreknew that certain ones would talk nonsense and name a multitude of gods that do not exist. In order, then, that the One who truly is God might be understood through His works, and that God made the heaven and the earth and the things in them by His Word, he said: 'In the beginning God made the heaven and the earth'; then, having mentioned their making, he shows us: 'But the earth was invisible and unformed, and darkness was upon the deep, and the Spirit of God was borne upon the water.' These things the divine Scripture teaches at the first -- a kind of begotten matter, made by God, out of which God made and fashioned the world.
And the beginning of the creation is light, since light makes manifest the things that are being set in order. Wherefore it says: 'And God said, Let there be light; and there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good' -- clearly good as having come into being for man. 'And He divided between the light and the darkness; and God called the light Day, and the darkness He called Night; and there was evening and there was morning, one day. And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the water, and let it divide between water and water. And it was so. And God made the firmament; and God divided between the water which was under the firmament, and the water which was above the firmament. And God called the firmament Heaven. And God saw that it was good; and there was evening and there was morning, a second day. And God said, Let the water under the heaven be gathered together into one gathering, and let the dry land appear. And it was so. And the water under the heaven was gathered into its gatherings, and the dry land appeared. And God called the dry land Earth, and the gatherings of the waters He called Seas; and God saw that it was good. And God said, Let the earth bring forth the herb of grass bearing seed according to its kind and according to its likeness, and the fruit tree bearing fruit whose seed is in it according to its kind upon the earth. And it was so. And the earth brought forth the herb of grass bearing seed according to its kind and according to its likeness, and the fruit tree bearing fruit whose seed is in it according to its kind upon the earth. And God saw that it was good; and there was evening and there was morning, a third day. And God said, Let there be luminaries in the firmament of the heaven, to give light upon the earth, so as to divide between the day and the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and for years; and let them be for light in the firmament of the heaven, so as to shine upon the earth. And it was so. And God made the two great luminaries, the greater luminary for the beginnings of the day, and the lesser luminary for the beginnings of the night, and the stars. And God set them in the firmament of the heaven, so as to shine upon the earth, and to rule the day and the night, and to divide between the light and the darkness. And God saw that it was good; and there was evening and there was morning, a fourth day. And God said, Let the waters bring forth creeping things of living souls, and birds flying over the earth across the firmament of the heaven. And it was so. And God made the great sea-monsters, and every living soul of creeping things which the waters brought forth according to their kinds, and every winged bird according to its kind. And God saw that they were good. And God blessed them, saying, Increase and multiply, and fill the waters of the sea; and let the birds multiply upon the earth. And there was evening and there was morning, a fifth day. And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living soul according to its kind, four-footed beasts and creeping things and wild beasts of the earth according to their kind. And it was so; and God made the wild beasts of the earth according to their kind, and the cattle according to their kind, and all the creeping things according to their kind. And God saw that they were good. And God said, Let us make man according to our image and according to our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the heaven, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over all the creeping things that creep upon the earth. And God made man; according to the image of God He made him; male and female He made them. And God blessed them, saying, Increase and multiply, and fill the earth, and have dominion over it, and rule over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the heaven, and over all the cattle, and over all the earth, and over all the creeping things that creep upon the earth. And God said, Behold, I have given to you every seed-bearing herb sowing seed, which is upon all the earth, and every tree which has in it the fruit of seed for sowing -- to you it shall be for food; and to all the wild beasts of the earth, and to all the birds of the heaven, and to every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth, which has in it the breath of life, every green herb for food. And it was so. And God saw all things, whatsoever He had made, and behold, they were very good. And there was evening and there was morning, a sixth day. And the heaven and the earth were finished, and all their order. And God finished on the sixth day His works which He had made; and He rested on the seventh day from all His works which He had made. And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it, because in it He rested from all His works which God had begun to make.'
Now of the Hexaemeron (the six days' work) no man is able to set forth worthily the full exposition and ordering, not even if he had ten thousand mouths and ten thousand tongues; nay, not even if anyone should live for ten thousand years, sojourning in this present life, not even so would he be sufficient to say anything worthily about these things, on account of the surpassing greatness and the riches of the wisdom of God which is in this aforewritten Hexaemeron. Many of the writers, indeed, have imitated and wished to give an account of these things, even though they took their starting points from here -- whether concerning the creation of the world, or concerning the nature of man -- and yet they did not utter even a chance spark worthy of the truth. The things said by the philosophers or writers and poets seem indeed to be trustworthy, on account of being adorned in their phrasing. But their discourse is shown to be foolish and empty, because there is a great multitude of their nonsense, while not even a chance bit of the truth is found in them. For even if anything seems to have been uttered as true through them, it has admixture with error. Just as some deadly drug, when mixed with honey, or wine, or some other thing, makes the whole harmful and useless, so also the much-speaking found in them is vain labor, and rather a harm to those who are persuaded by it. Moreover, concerning the seventh day, which all men name, yet most are ignorant that what among the Hebrews is called Sabbath is in Greek interpreted 'seventh'; this name is named throughout every race of men, but for what cause they call it so they do not understand. And as for the poet Hesiod's saying that from Chaos came Erebus and the earth and Eros, who lords it over both the gods and men of his account -- vain and frigid is his word, and shown to be alien to all truth. For God ought not to be overcome by pleasure, seeing that even temperate men abstain from all shameful pleasure and evil desire.