376 Plea Of Athenagoras
PLEA OF ATHENAGORAS
Nor for Alemena fair ; No, nor for Ceres, golden-tressed queen ; Nor for Latona bright ; nor for thyself," +
He is created, he is perishable, with no trace of a god in him.
Nay, they are even the hired servants of men :
"* Admetus' halls, in which I have endured To praise the menial table, though a god."
And they tend cattle :
'¢ And coming to this land, I cattle fed, For him that was my host, and kept this house."
Admetus, therefore, was superior to the god.
O prophet and wise one, and who canst foresee for others the things that shall be, thou didst not divine the slaughter of thy beloved, but didst even kill him with thine own hand, dear as he was:
'"¢ And I believed Apollo's mouth divine Was full of truth, as well as prophet's art,
(Aischylus is reproaching Apollo for being a false prophet :) The very one who sings while at the feast,
The one who said these things, alas! is he Who slew my son.''# Cuar. xxi1.—Pretended symbolical explanations.
But perhaps these things are poetic vagary, and there is some natural explanation of them, such as this by Empedocles:
"Tet Jove be fire, and Juno source of life, With Pluto and Néstis, who bathes with tears
The human founts."
If, then, Zeus is fire, and Hera the earth, and Aidoneus the air, and Néstis water, and these are elements—fire, water, air—none of them is a god, neither Zeus, nor Hera, nor 1 Hom. JI. xiv. 315 sqq.
2 Hurip. Alcesé. 1 sq.
3 Ibid. 8 sq.
* From an unknown play of Aischylus.
FOR THE CHRISTIANS.
é Aidoneus; for from matter separated into parts by God is their constitution and origin :
'Fire, water, earth, and the air's gentile height, And harmony with these."
Here are things which without harmony cannot abide; which would be brought to ruin by strife: how then can any one say that they are gods?
Friendship, according to Empedocles, has an aptitude to govern, things that are compounded are governed, and that which is apt to govern has the dominion ; so that if we make the power of the governed and the governing one and the same, we shall be, unawares to ourselves, putting perishable and fluctuating and changeable matter on an equality with the uncreated, and eternal, and ever self-accordant God.
Zeus is, according to the Stoics, the fervid part of nature; Hera is the air (anp)—the very name, if it be joined to itself, signifying this ;' Poseidon is what is drunk (water, moovs).
But these things are by different persons explained of natural objects in different ways.
Some call Zeus twofold masculine-feminine air ; others the season which brings about mild weather, on which account it was that he alone escaped from Kronos.
But to the Stoics it may be said, If you acknowledge one God, the supreme and uncreated and eternal One, and as many compound bodies as there are changes of matter, and say that the Spirit of God, which pervades matter, obtains according to its variations a diversity of names, the forms of matter will become the body of God; but when the elements are destroyed in the conflagration, the names will necessarily perish along with the forms, the Spirit of God alone remaining.
Who, then, can believe that those bodies, of which the variation according to matter is allied to corruption, are gods?
But to those who say that Kronos is time, and Rhea the earth, and that she becomes pregnant by Kronos, and brings forth, whence she is regarded as the mother of all; and that he begets and devours his offspring ; and that the castration is the intercourse of the male with the female, which cuts off
1 Perhaps "p(cnp)c.
VOL. Ii.
PLEA OF ATHENAGORAS
the seed and casts it into the womb, and generates a human being, who has in himself the sexual desire, which is Aphrodité; and that the madness of Kronos is the turn of season, which destroys animate and inanimate things ; and that the bonds and Tartarus are time, which is changed by seasons and disappears ;—to such persons we say, If Kronos is time, he changes; if a season, he turns about; if darkness, or frost, or the moist part of nature, none of these is abiding ; but the Deity is immortal, and immoveable, and unalterable : so that neither is Kronos nor his image God.
As regards Zeus again: If he is air, born of Kronos, of which the male part is called Zeus and the female Hera (whence both sister and wife), he is subject to change; if a season, he turns about: but the Deity neither changes nor shifts about.
But why should I trespass on your patience by saying more, when you know so well what has been said by each of those who have resolved these things into nature, or what various writers have thought concerning nature, or what they say concerning
Athéna, whom they affirm to be the wisdom (fpovnots) pervading all things ; and concerning Isis, whom they call the birth of all time (vows aidvos), from whom all have sprung, and by whom all exist; or concerning Osiris, on whose murder by Typhon his brother Isis with her son Orus sought after his limbs, and finding them honoured them with a sepulchre, which sepulchre is to this day called the tomb of Osiris? For whilst they wander up and down about the forms of matter, they miss to find the God who can only be beheld by the reason, while they deify the elements and their several parts, applying different names to them at different times: calling the sowing of the corn, for instance, Osiris (hence they say, that in the mysteries, on the finding of the members of his body, or the fruits, Isis is thus addressed: We have found, we wish thee joy), the fruit of the vine Dionysus, the vine itself Semelé, the heat of the sun the thunderbolt.
And yet, in fact, they who refer the fables to actual gods, do anything rather than add to their divine character; for they do not perceive, that by the very defence they make for the gods, they confirm the things which are alleged concerning them.
LOR THE CHRISTIANS.
What have Europa, and the bull, and the swan, and Leda, to do with the earth and air, that the abominable intercourse of Zeus with them should be taken for the intercourse of the earth and air?
But missing to discover the greatness of God, and not being able to rise on high with their reason
(for they have no affinity for the heavenly place), they pine away among the forms of matter, and rooted to the earth, deify the changes of the elements: just as if any one should put the ship he sailed in in the place of the steersman.
But as the ship, although equipped with everything, is of no use if it have not a steersman, so neither are the elements, though arranged in perfect order, of any service apart from the providence of God.
For the ship will not sail of itself ; and the elements without their Framer will not move.
Cuap. xxi11.— Opinions of Thales and Plato.
You may say, however, since you excel all men in understanding, How comes it to pass, then, that some of the idols manifest power, if those to whom we erect the statues are not gods?
For it is not likely that images destitute of life and motion can of themselves do anything without a mover.
That in various places, cities, and nations, certain effects are brought about in the name of idols, we are far from denying.
- None the more, however, if some have received benefit, and others, on the contrary, suffered harm, shall we deem those to be gods who have produced the effects in either case.
But T have made careful inquiry, both why it is that you think the idols to have this power, and who they are that, usurping their names, produce the effects.
It is necessary for me, however, in attempting to show who they are that produce the effects ascribed to the idols, and that they are not gods, to have recourse to some witnesses from among the philosophers. First Thales, as those who have accurately examined his opinions report, divides [superior beings] into God, demons, and heroes. God he recognises as the Intelligence (vois) of the world; by demons he understands beings possessed of soul
(yruytxai); and by heroes the separated souls of men, the good being the good souls, and the bad the worthless.
Plato