4 Marcus Aurelius And His Times

4 Marcus Aurelius And His Times

MARCUS AURELIUS AND HIS TIMES

Her. No.

Ly. You are an honest man; now ask yourself whether yois are trapping a friend with false logic. We are trying to find out with whom philosophic truth lies; and you beg the question and make a present of that same truth to the Stoics; for you say (what is quite unproved) that they are the people who make twice two four; the Epicureans or Platonists would say that they bring out that result, whereas you get five or seven. Does it not amount to that, when your school reckons goodness the only end, and the Epicureans pleasure? or again when you say everything is material, and Plato recognizes an immaterial element also in all that exists? As I said, you lay hold of the thing in dispute, as though it were the admitted property of the Stoics, and put it into their hands, though the others claim it and maintain that it is theirs; why, it is the very point at issue. If it is once established that Stoics have the monopoly of making four out of twice two, it is time for the rest to hold their tongues; but as long as they refuse to yield that point, we must hear all alike, or be prepared for people's calling us partial judges.

Her.

It seems to me, Lycinus, you do not understand what I mean.

Ly. Very well, put it plainer, if it is something different from that.

Her. You will see in a minute. Let us suppose two people have gone into the temple of Aesculapius or Dionysus, and subsequently one of the sacred cups is missing. Both of them will have to be searched, to see which has it about him.

Ly. Clearly.

Her. Of course one of them has it.

Ly. Necessarily, if it is missing.

Her. Then, if you find it on the first, you will not strip the other; it is clear he has not got it.

Ly. Quite.

Her. And if we fail to find it on the first, the other cer*

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tainly has it; it is unnecessary to search him that way either.

Ly. Yes, he has it.

Her. So with us; if we find the cup in the possession of the Stoics, we shall not care to go on and search the others; we have what we were looking for; why trouble further?

Ly. There is no why, if you really find it, and can be certain it is the missing article, the sacred object being unmistakable. But there are some differences in this case, friend; the temple-visitors are not two, so that if one has not got the booty the other has, but many; and the identity of the missing object is also uncertain; it may be cup, or bowl, or garland; every priest gives a different description of it; they do not agree even about the material; bronze, say these, silver, say those—anything from gold to tin. So there is nothing for it but to strip the visitors, if you want to find it; even if you discover a gold cup on the first man, you must go on to the others.

Her. What for?

Ly. Because it is not certain that the thing was a cup. And even if that is generally admitted, they do not all agree that it was gold; and if it is well known that a gold cup is missing, and you find a gold cup on your first man, even so you are not quit of searching the others; it is not clear that this is the sacred cup; do you suppose there is only one gold cup in the world?

Her. No, indeed.

Ly. So you will have to go the round, and then collect all your finds together and decide which of them is most likely to be divine property.

For the source of all the difficulty is this: everyone who is stripped has something or other on him, one a bowl, one a cup, one a garland, which again may be bronze, gold, or silver; bu£ whether the one he has is the sacred one, is not yet clear. It is absolutely impossible to know which man to accuse of sacrilege; even if all the objects were similar, it would be uncertain

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who had robbed the God; for such things may be private property too. Our perplexity, of course, is simply due to the fact that the missing cup—assume it to be a cup—has no inscription; if either the God's or the donor's name had been on it, we should not have had all this trouble; when we found the inscribed one, we should have stopped stripping and inconveniencing other visitors.

I suppose, Hermotimus, you have often been at athletic meetings?

Her. You suppose right; and in many places too.

Ly. Did you ever have a seat close by the judges?

Her. Dear me, yes; last Olympia, I was on the left of the stewards; Euandridas of Elis had got me a place in the Elean enclosure; I particularly wanted to have a near view of how things are done there.

Ly. So you know how they arrange ties for the wrestling or the pancratium?

Her. Yes.

Ly. Then you will describe it better than I, as you have seen it so close.

Her. In old days, when Heracles presided, bay leaves Ly. No old days, thank you; tell me what you saw with your own eyes.

Her. A consecrated silver urn is produced, and into it are thrown little lots about the size of a bean, with letters on them. Two are marked alpha,6 two beta, two more gamma, and so on, if the competitors run to more than that—two lots always to each letter. A competitor comes up, makes a prayer to Zeus, dips his hand into the urn, and pulls out one lot; then another does the same; there is a policeman to each drawer, who holds his hand so that he cannot see what letter he has drawn. When all have drawn, the chief police officer, I think it is, or one of the stewards themselves—I cannot quite remem6 The Greek alphabet runs: alpha, beta, gamma, delta, epsilon, zetaa eta, theta, iota, kappa, lambda, mu, nu, xi, omicron, pi, rho, sigma, tau» upsilon, phi, chi, psi, omega.

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ber this detail—goes round and examines the lots while they stand in a circle, and puts together the two alphas for the wrestling or pancratium, and so for the two betas, and the rest. That is the procedure when the number of competitors is even, as eight, four, or twelve. If it is five, seven, nine, or other odd number, an odd letter is marked on one lot, which is put in with the others, not having a duplicate. Whoever draws this is a bye, and waits till the rest have finished their ties; no duplicate turns up for him, you see; and it is a considerable advantage to an athlete, to know that he will come fresh against tired competitors.

Ly. Stop there; that is just what I wanted. There are nine of them, we will say, and they have all drawn, and the lots are in their hands. You go round—for I promote you from spectator to steward—examining the letters; and I suppose you will not know who is the bye till you have been to them all and paired them.

Her. How do you mean?

Ly.

It is impossible for you to hit straight upon the letter which indicates the bye; at least, you may hit upon the letter, but you will not know about the bye; it was not announced beforehand that kappa or mu or iota had the appointment in its gift; when you find alpha, you look for the holder of the other alpha, whom finding, you pair the two. Again finding beta, you inquire into the whereabouts of the second beta which matches it; and so all through, till there is no one left but the holder of the single unpaired letter.

Her. But suppose you come upon it first or second, what will you do then?

Ly. Never mind me; I want to know what you will do, Mr. Steward. Will you say at once, Here is the bye? or will you have to go round to all, and see whether there is a duplicate to be found, it being impossible to know the bye till you have seen all the lots?

Her. Why, Lycinus, I shall know quite easily; nine being

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the number, if I find the epsilon first or second, I know the holder of it for the bye.

Ly. But how?

Her. How? Why, two of them must have alpha, two beta, and of the next two pairs one has certainly drawn gammas and the other deltas, so that four letters have been used up over eight competitors.

Obviously, then, the next letter, which is epsilon, is the only one that can be odd, and the drawer of it is the bye.

Ly. Shall I extol your intelligence, or would you rather I explained to you my own poor idea, which differs?

Her. The latter, of course, though I cannot conceive how you can reasonably differ.

Ly. You have gone on the assumption that the letters are taken in alphabetical order, until at a particular one the number of competitors runs short; and I grant you it may be done so at Olympia. But suppose we were to pick out five letters at random, say chi, sigma, zeta, kappa, theta, and duplicate the other four on the lots for eight competitors, but put a single zeta on the ninth, which we meant to indicate the bye

—what then would you do if you came on the zeta first? How can you tell that its holder is the bye till you have been all round and found no counterpart to it? for you could not tell by the alphabetical order, as at Olympia.

Her. A difficult question.

Ly. Look at the same thing another way. Suppose we put no letters at all on the lots, but, instead of them, signs and marks such as the Egyptians use for letters, men with dogs' or lions' heads. Or no, those are rather too strange; let us avoid hybrids, and put down simple forms, as well as our draughtsmanship will allow—men on two lots, horses on two, a pair of cocks, a pair of dogs, and let a lion be the mark of the ninth.

Now, if you hit upon the lion at the first try, how can you tell that this is the bye-maker, until you have gone all round and geen whether any or>e else has a lion to match?

Lucian: Hermotimus

Her. Your question is too much for me.

Ly. No wonder; there is no plausible answer.

Consequently, if we mean to find either the man who has the sacred cup, or the bye, or our best guide to the famous city of Corinth, we must absolutely go to and examine them all, trying them carefully, stripping and comparing them; the truth will be hard enough to find, even so. If I am to take anyone's advice upon the right philosophy to choose, I insist upon his knowing what they all say; everyone else I disqualify; I will not trust him while there is one philosophy he is unacquainted with; that one may possibly be the best of all. If someone were to produce a handsome man, and state that he was the handsomest of mankind, we should not accept that, unless we knew he had seen all men; very likely his man is handsome, but whether the handsomest, he has no means of knowing without seeing all. Now we are looking not simply for beauty, but for the greatest beauty, and if we miss that, we shall account ourselves no further than we were; we shall not be content with chancing upon some sort of beauty; we are in search of a definite thing, the supreme beauty, which must necessarily be one.

Her. True.

Ly. Well then, can you name me a man who has tried every road in philosophy? one who, knowing the doctrine of Pythagoras, Plato, Aristotle, Chrysippus, Epicurus, and the rest, has ended by selecting one out of all these roads, because he has proved it genuine, and had found it by experience to be the only one that led straight to Happiness?

If we can meet with such a man, we are at the end of our troubles.

Her.

Alas, that is no easy matter.

Ly. What shall we do, then?

I do not think we ought to despair, in the momentary absence of such a guide. Perhaps the best and safest plan of all is to set to work oneself, go through every system, and carefully examine the various doctrines.

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Her. That is what seems to be indicated.

I am afraid* though, there is an obstacle in what you said just now: it is not easy, when you have committed yourself with a spread of canvas to the wind, to get home again. How can a man try all the roads, when, as you said, he will be unable to escape from the first of them?

Ly. My notion is to copy Theseus, get dame Ariadne to give us a skein, and go into one labyrinth after another, with the certainty of getting out by winding it up.

Her. Who is to be our Ariadne? Where shall we find the skein?

Ly. Never despair; I fancy I have found something to hold ©n to and escape.

Her. And what is that?

Ly. It is not original; I borrow it from one of the wise men; "Be sober and doubt all things," says he. If we do not believe everything we are told, but behave like jurymen who suspend judgment till they have heard the other side, we may have no difficulty in getting out of the labyrinths.

Her. A good plan; let us try it.

Ly. Very well, which shall we start with? However, that will make no difference; we may begin with whomsoever we fancy, Pythagoras, say; how long shall we allow for learning the whole of Pythagoreanism? and do not omit the five years of silence; including those, I suppose thirty altogether will do; or, if you do not like that, still we cannot put it lower than twenty.

Her. Put it at that.

Ly. Plato will come next with as many more, and then Aristotle cannot do with less.

Her. No.

Ly. As to Chrysippus, I need not ask you; you have told me already that forty is barely enough.

Her. That is so.

Ly. And we have still Epicurus and the others. I am not

Lucian: Hermotimus

taking high figures, either, as you will see if you reflect upon the number of octogenarian Stoics, Epicureans, and Platonists who confess that they have not yet completely mastered their own systems. Or, if they did not confess it, at any rate Chrysippus, Aristotle, and Plato would for them; still more Socrates, who is as good as they; he used to proclaim to all comers that, so far from knowing all, he knew nothing whatever, except the one fact of his own ignorance. Well, let us add up. Twenty years we g?ve Pythagoras, the same to Plato, and so to the others. What will the total come to, if we assume only ten schools?

Her. Over two hundred years.

Ly. Shall we deduct a quarter of that, and say a hundred and fifty will do? or can we halve it?

Her. You must decide about that; but I see that, at the best, it will be but few who will get through the course, though they begin philosophy and life together.

Ly. In that case, what are we to do? Must we withdraw our previous admission, that no one can choose the best out of many without trying all? We thought selection without experiment a method of inquiry savoring more of divination than of judgment, did we not?

Her.

Yes.

Ly. Without such longevity, then, it is absolutely impossible for us to complete the series—experiment, selection, philosophy, Happiness. Yet anything short of that is a mere game of blindman's-buff; whatever we knock against and get hold of we shall be taking for the thing we want, because the truth is hidden from us. Even if a mere piece of luck brings us straight to it, we shall have no grounded conviction of our success; there are so many similar objects, all claiming to be the real thing.

Her. Ah, Lycinus, your arguments seem to me more or less logical, but—but—to be frank with you—I hate to hear you going through them and wasting your acuteness. I sus-

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pect it was in an evil hour that I came out today and met you; my hopes were almost in my grasp; and now here are you plunging me into a slough of despond with your demonstrations; truth is undiscoverable, if the search needs so many years.

Ly . My dear friend, it would be much fairer to blame your parents, Menecrates and whatever your mother's name may have been—or indeed to go still further back to human nature.

Why did not they make you a Tithonus for years and durability? instead of which, they limited you like other men to a century at the outside. As for me, I have only been helping you to deduce results.

Her. No, no; it is just your way; you want to crow over me; you detest philosophy—I cannot tell why—and poke fun at philosophers.

Ly. Hermotimus, I cannot show what truth is, so well as wise people like you and your professor; but one thing I do know about it, and that is that it is not pleasant to the ear; falsehood is far more esteemed; it is prettier, and therefore pleasanter; while Truth, conscious of its purity, blurts out downright remarks, and offends people. Here is a case of it: even you are offended with me for having discovered (with your assistance) how this matter really stands, and shown that our common object is hard of attainment. Suppose you had been in love with a statue and hoped to win it, under the impression that it was human, and I had realized that it was only bronze or marble, and given you a friendly warning that your passion was hopeless—you might just as well have thought

I was your enemy then, because I would not leave you a prey to extravagant and impracticable delusions.

Her. Well, well; are we to give up philosophy, then, and idle our lives away like the common herd?

Ly. What have I said to justify that? My point is not that we are to give up philosophy, but this: whereas we are to pursue philosophy, and whereas there are many roads, each

Lucian: Hermotimus

professing to lead to philosophy and Virtue, and whereas it is uncertain which of these is the true road, therefore the selection shall be made with care. Now we resolved that it was impossible out of many offers to choose the best, unless a man should try all in turn; and then the process of trial was found to be long. What do you propose?—It is the old question again. To follow and join philosophic forces with whomsoever you first fall in with, and let him thank Fortune for his proselyte?

Her. What is the good of answering your questions? You say no one can judge for himself, unless he can devote the life of a phoenix to going round experimenting; and on the other hand you refuse to trust either previous experience or the multitude of favorable testimony.

Ly. Where is your multitude, with knowledge and experience of all? Never mind the multitude; one man who answers the description will do for me. But if you mean the people who do not know, their mere numbers will never persuade me, as long as they pronounce upon all from knowledge of, at the most, one.

Her. Are you the only man who has found the truth, and are all the people who go in for philosophy fools?

Ly. You wrong me, Hermotimus, when you imply that I put myself above other people, or rank myself at all with those who know. You forget what I said; I never claimed to know the truth better than others, only confessed that I was as ignorant of it as everyone else.

Her. Well, but, Lycinus, it may be all very well to insist on going the round, testing the various statements, and eschewing any other method of choice; but it is ridiculous to spend so many years on each experiment, as though there were no such thing as judging from samples. That device seems to me quite simple, and economical of time. There is a story that some sculptor, Phidias, I think, seeing a single claw, calculated from it the size of the lion, if it were modeled propor-

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tionally. So, if someone were to let you see a man's hand, keeping the rest of his body concealed, you would know at once that what was behind was a man, without seeing his whole body. Well, it is easy to find out in a few hours the essential points of the various doctrines, and, for selecting the best, these will suffice, without any of your scrupulous exacting investigation.

Ly. Upon my word, how confident you are in your faculty of divining the whole from the parts! and yet I remember being told just the opposite—that knowledge of the whole includes that of the parts, but not vice versa. Well, but tell me; when Phidias saw the claw, would he ever have known it for a lion's, if he had never seen a lion? Could you have said the hand was a man's, if you had never known or seen a man?

Why are you dumb? Let me make the only possible answer for you—that you could not; I am afraid Phidias has modeled his lion all for nothing; for it proves to be neither here nor there. What resemblance is there? What enabled you and Phidias to recognize the parts was just your knowledge of the wholes—the lion and the man. But in philosophy—the Stoic, for instance—how will the part reveal the other parts to you, or how can you conclude that they are beautiful? You do not know the whole to which the parts belong.

Then you say it is easy to hear in a few hours the essentials of all philosophy—meaning, I suppose, their principles and ends, their accounts of God and the soul, their views on the material and the immaterial, their respective identification of pleasure or goodness with the desirable and the Happy; well, it is easy—it is quite a trifle—to deliver an opinion after such a hearing; but really to know where the truth lies will be work, I suspect, not for a few hours, but for a good many days. If not, what can have induced them to enlarge on these rudiments to the tune of a hundred or a thousand volumes apiece?

I imagine they only wanted to establish the truth of those few points which you thought so easy and intelligible.

Luciam Hermotimus

If you refuse to spend your time on a conscientious selection, after personal examination of each and all, in sum and in detail, it seems to me you will still want your soothsayer to choose the best for you. It would be a fine short cut, with no meanderings or wastings of time, if you sent for him, listened to the summaries, and killed a victim at the end of each; by indicating in its liver which is the philosophy for you, the God would save you a pack of troubles.

Or, if you like, I can suggest a still simpler way. You need not shed all this blood in sacrifice to any God, nor employ an expensive priest; put into an urn a set of tablets, each marked with a philosopher's name, and tell a boy (he must be quite young, and his parents both be living) to go to the urn and pick out whichever tablet his hand first touches; and live a philosopher ever after, of the school which then comes out triumphant.

Her. This is buffoonery, Lycinus; I should not have expected it of you. Now tell me, did you ever buy wine? in person, I mean.

Ly. Many a time.

Her. Well, did you go to every wine vault in town, one after another, tasting and comparing?

Ly. Certainly not.

Her. No; as soon as you find good sound stuff, you have only to get it sent home.

Ly. To be sure.

Her. And from that little taste you could have answered for the quality of the whole?

Ly. Yes.

Her. Now suppose you had gone to all the wine-merchants and said: I want to buy a pint of wine; I must ask you, gentlemen, to let me drink the whole of the cask which each of you has on tap; after that exhaustive sampling, I shall know which of you keeps the best wine, and is the man for my money. If you had talked like that, they might have laughed at you, and,

MARCUS AURELIUS AND HIS TIMES

if you persisted in worrying them, have tried how you liked water.

Ly. Yes; it would be no more than my deserts.

Her. Apply this to philosophy. What need to drink the whole cask, when you can judge the quality of the whole from one little taste?

Ly. What an adept at evasion you are, Hermotimus! How you slip through one's fingers! However, it is all the better this time; you fancied yourself out, but you have flopped into the net again.

Her. What do you mean?

Ly. You take a thing whose nature is self-evident and universally admitted, like wine, and argue from it to perfectly unlike things, whose nature is obscure and generally debated.

In fact I cannot tell what analogy you find between philosophy and wine; there is just one, indeed: philosophers and wine-merchants both sell their wares, mostly resorting to adulteration, fraud, and false measures, in the process. But let us look into your real meaning. You say all the wine in a cask is of the same quality—which is perfectly reasonable; further, that anyone who draws and tastes quite a small quantity will know at once the quality of the whole—of which the same may be said; I should never have thought of objecting. But mark what comes now: do philosophy and its professors (your own, for instance) give you every day the same remarks on the same subjects, or do they vary them? They vary them a great deal, friend; you would never have stuck to your master through your twenty years' wandering—quite a philosophic Odyssey—if he had always said the same thing; one hearing would have been enough.

Her. So it would.

Ly. How could you have known the whole of his doctrines from the first taste, then? They were not homogeneous, like the wine; novelty today, and novelty tomorrow on the top of it. Consequently, dear friend, short of drinking the whole

Lucian: Hermotimus

cask, you might soak to no purpose; Providence seems to me to have hidden the philosophic Good right at the bottom, underneath the lees. So you will have to drain it dry, or you will never get to that nectar for which I know you have so long thirsted. According to your idea, it has such virtue that, could you once taste it and swallow the very least drop, you would straightway have perfect wisdom; so they say the Delphian prophetess is inspired by one draught of the sacred spring with answers for those who consult the oracle. But it seems not to be so; you have drunk more than half the cask; yet you told me you were only beginning yet.

Now see whether this is not a better analogy. You shall keep your merchant, and your cask; but the contents of the latter are not to be wine, but assorted seeds. On the top is wheat, next beans, then barley, below that lentils, then peas— and other kinds yet. You go to buy seeds, and he takes some wheat out of that layer, and puts it in your hand as a sample; now, could you tell by looking at that whether the peas were sound, the lentils tender, and the beans full?

Her. Impossible.

Ly. No more can you tell the quality of a philosophy from the first statements of its professor; it is not uniform, like the wine to which you compared it, claiming that it must resemble the sample glass; it is heterogeneous, and it had better not be cursorily tested. If you buy bad wine, the loss is limited to a few pence; but to rot with the common herd (in your own words) is not so light a loss. Moreover, your man who wants to drink up the cask as a preliminary to buying a pint will injure the merchant, with his dubious sampling; but philosophy knows no such danger; you may drink your fill, but this cask grows no emptier, and its owner suffers no loss.

It is cut and come again here; we have the converse of the Danaids' cask; that would not hold what was put into it; it ran straight through; but here, the more you take away, the more remains.

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And I have another similar remark to make about these specimen drops of philosophy. Do not fancy I am libeling it, if I say it is like hemlock, aconite, or other deadly poison.

Those too, though they have death in them, will not kill if a man scrapes off the tiniest particle with the edge of his nail and tastes it; if they are not taken in the right quantity, the right manner, and the right vehicle, the taker will not die; you were wrong in claiming that the least possible quantity is enough to base a generalization on.

Her. Oh, have it your own way, Lycinus. Well then, we have got to live a hundred years, and go through all this trouble? There is no other road to philosophy?

Ly. No, none; and we need not complain; as you very truly said, ars longa, vita brevis. But I do not know what has come over you; you now make a grievance of it, if you cannot before set of sun develop into a Chrysippus, a Plato, a Pythagoras.

Her. You trap me, and drive me into a corner, Lycinus; yet I never provoked you. It is all envy, I know, because I have made some progress in my studies, whereas you have neglected yourself, when you were old enough to know better.

Ly. Seest, then, thy true course? Never mind me, but leave me as a lunatic to my follies, and you go on your way and accomplish what you have intended all this time.

Her. But you are so masterful, you will not let me make a choice, till I have proved all.

Ly. Why, I confess, you will never get me to budge from that. But when you call me masterful, it seems to me you blame the blameless, as the poet says; for I am myself being dragged along by reason, until you bring up some other reason to release me from durance. And here is reason about to talk more masterfully still, you will see; but I suppose you will exonerate it, and blame me.

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Her, What can it be?

I am surprised to hear it still has anything in reserve.

Ly.

It says that seeing and going through all philosophies will not suffice, if you want to choose the best of them; the most important qualification is still missing.

Her. Indeed? Which?

Ly. Why (bear with me), a critical investigating faculty, mental acumen, intellectual precision and independence equal to the occasion; without this, the completest inspection will be useless. Reason insists that the owner of it must further be allowed ample time; he will collect the rival candidates together, and make his choice with long, lingering, repeated deliberation; he will give no heed to the candidate's age, appearance, or repute for wisdom, but perform his functions like the Areopagites, 7 who judge in the darkness of night, so that they must regard not the pleaders, but the pleadings.

Then and not till then will you be able to make a sound choice and live a philosopher.

Her. Live? an after life, then. No mortal span will meet your demands; let me see: go the whole round, examine each with care, on that examination form a judgment, on that judgment make a choice, on that choice be a philosopher; so and no otherwise you say the truth may be found.

Ly.

I hardly dare tell you—even that is not exhaustive.

I am afraid, after all, the solid basis we thought we had found was imaginary. You know how fishermen often let down theil nets, feel a weight, and pull them up expecting a great haul; when they have got them up with much toil, behold, a stone, or an old pot full of sand. I fear our catch is one of those.

Her.

I don't know what this particular net may be; your nets are all round me, anyhow.

Ly. Well, try and get through; providentially, you are as good a swimmer as can be. Now, this is it: granted that we

7 Ancient Athenian councilors and judges.

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go all round experimenting, and get it done at last, too, I do not believe we shall have solved the elementary question, whether any of them has the much-desired; perhaps they are all wrong together.

Her. Oh, come now! not one of them right either?

Ly.

I cannot tell. Do you think it impossible they may all be deluded, and the truth be something which none of them has yet found?

Her. How can it possibly be?

Ly. This way: take a correct number, twenty; suppose, I mean, a man has twenty beans in his closed hand, and asks ten different persons to guess the number; they guess seven, five, thirty, ten, fifteen—various numbers, in short. It is possible, I suppose, that one may be right?

Her. Yes.

Ly.

It is not impossible, however, that they may all guess different incorrect numbers, and not one of them suggest twenty beans. What say you?

Her.

It is not impossible.

Ly. In the same way, all philosophers are investigating the nature of Happiness; they get different answers, one Pleasure, another Goodness, and so through the list. It is probable that Happiness is one of these; but it is also not improbable that it is something else altogether. We seem to have reversed the proper procedure, and hurried on to the end before we had found the beginning. I suppose we ought first to have ascertained that the truth has actually been discovered, and that some philosopher or other has it, and only then to have gone on to the next question, which of them is to be believed.

Her. So that, even if we go all through all philosophy, we shall have no certainty of finding the truth even then; that is what you say.

Ly. Please, please do not ask me; once more, apply to reason itself. Its answer will perhaps be that there can be no cer-

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tainty yet—as long as we cannot be sure that it is one or other of the things they say it is.

Her. Then, according to you, we shall never finish out quest nor be philosophers, but have to give it up and live the life of laymen. What you say amounts to that: philosophy is impossible and inaccessible to a mere mortal; for you expect the aspirant first to choose the best philosophy; and you considered that the only guarantee of such choice's being correct was to go through all philosophy before choosing the truest. Then in reckoning the number of years required by each you spurned all limits, extended the thing to several generations, and made out the quest of truth too long for the individual life; and now you crown all by proving success doubtful even apart from all that; you say it is uncertain whether the philosophers have ever found truth at all.

Ly. Could you state on oath that they have?

Her. Not on oath, no.

Ly. And yet there is much that I have intentionally spared you, though it merits careful examination too.

Her. For instance?

Ly.

Is it not said that, among the professed Stoics, Platonists, and Epicureans, some do know their respective doctrines, and some do not (without prejudice to their general respectability)?

Her. That is true.

Ly. Well, don't you think it will be a troublesome business to distinguish the first, and know them from the ignorant professors?

Her. Very.

Ly. So, if you are to recognize the best of the Stoics, you will have to go to most, if not all, of them, make trial, and appoint the best your teacher, first going through a course of training to provide you with the appropriate critical faculty; otherwise you might mistakenly prefer the wrong one. Now reflect on the additional time this will mean; I purposely left

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it out of account, because I was afraid you might be angry; all the same, it is the most important and necessary thing of all in questions like this—so uncertain and dubious, I mean. For the discovery of truth, your one and only sure or wellfounded hope is the possession of this power: you must be able to judge and sift truth from falsehood; you must have the assayer's sense for sound and true or forged coin; if you could have come to your examination of doctrines equipped with a technical skill like that, I should have nothing to say; but without it there is nothing to prevent their severally leading you by the nose; you will follow a dangled bunch of carrots like a donkey; or, better still, you will be water spilt on a table, trained whichever way one chooses with a finger-tip; or again, a reed growing on a river's bank, bending to every breath, however gentle the breeze that shakes it in its passage.

If you could find a teacher, now, who understood demonstration and controversial method, and would impart his knowledge to you, you would be quit of your troubles; the best and the true would straightway be revealed to you, at the bidding of this art of demonstration, while falsehood would stand convicted; you would make your choice with confidence; judgment would be followed by philosophy; you would reach your long-desired Happiness, and live in its company, which sums up all good things.

Her. Thank you, Lycinus; that is a much better hearing; there is more than a glimpse of hope in that. We must surely look for a man of that sort, to give us discernment, judgment, and, above all, the power of demonstration; then all will be easy and clear, and not too long. I am grateful to you already for thinking of this short and excellent plan.

Ly. Ah, no, I cannot fairly claim gratitude yet. I have not discovered or revealed anything that will bring you nearer your hope. On the contrary, we are further off than ever; it is a case of much cry and little wool.

Her. Bird of ill omen, pessimist, explain yourself.

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Ly. Why, my friend, even if we find someone who claims to know this art of demonstration, and is willing to impart it, we shall surely not take his word for it straight off; we shall look about for another man to resolve us whether the first is telling the truth. Finding number two, we shall still be uncertain whether our guarantor really knows the difference between a good judge and a bad, and shall need a number three to guarantee number two; for how can we possibly know ourselves how to select the best judge? You see how far this must go; the thing is unending; its nature does not allow us to draw the line and put a stop to it; for you will observe that all the demonstrations that can possibly be thought of are themselves unfounded and open to dispute; most of them struggle to establish their certainty by appealing to facts as questionable as themselves; and the rest produce certain truisms with which they compare, quite illegitimately, the most speculative theories, and then say they have demonstrated the latter: our eyes tell us there are altars to the Gods; therefore there must be Gods; that is the sort of thing.

Her. How unkindly you treat me, Lycinus, turning my treasure into ashes; I suppose all these years are to have been lost labor.

Ly. At least your chagrin will be considerably lessened by the thought that you are not alone in your disappointment; practically all who pursue philosophy do no more than disquiet themselves in vain. Who could conceivably go through all the stages I have rehearsed? You admit the impossibility yourself. As to your present mood, it is that of the man who cries and curses his luck because he cannot climb the sky, or plunge into the depths of the sea at Sicily and come up at Cyprus, or soar on wings and fly within the day from Greece to India; what is responsible for his discontent is his basing of hopes on a dream-vision or his own wild fancy, without ever asking whether his aspirations were realizable or consistent with humanity. You too, my friend, have been having a long

MARCUS AURELIUS AND HIS TIMES

and marvelous dream; and now reason has stuck a pin into you and startled you out of your sleep; your eyes are only half open yet, you are reluctant to shake off a sleep which has shown you such fair visions, and so you scold. It is just the condition of the day-dreamer; he is rolling in gold, digging up treasure, sitting on his throne, or somehow at the summit of bliss; for dame How-I-wish is a lavish facile Goddess, that will never turn a deaf ear to her votary, though he have a mind to fly, or change statures with Colossus, or strike a goldreef; well, in the middle of all this, in comes his servant with some every-day question, wanting to know where he is to get bread, or what he shall say to the landlord, tired of waiting for his rent; and then he flies into a temper, as though the intrusive questioner had robbed him of all his bliss, and is ready to bite the poor fellow's nose off.

As you love me, do not treat me like that. I see you digging up treasure, spreading your wings, nursing extravagant ideas, indulging impossible hopes; and I love you too well to leave you to the company of a lifelong dream—a pleasant one, if you will, but yet a dream. I beseech you to get up and take to some every-day business, such as may direct the rest of your life's course by common sense. Your acts and your thoughts up to now have been no more than Centaurs, Chimeras, Gorgons, or what else is figured by dreams and poets and painters, chartered libertines all, who reck not of what has been or may be. Yet the common folk believe them, bewitched by tale and picture just because they are strange and monstrous.

I fancy you hearing from some teller of tales how there is a certain lady of perfect beauty, beyond the Graces themselves or the Heavenly Aphrodite, and then, without ever an inquiry whether his tale is true, and such a person to be found on earth, falling straight in love with her, like Medea in the story enamoured of a dream-Jason. And what most drew you on to love, you and the others who worship the same phantom, was, if I am not mistaken, the consistent way in which

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the inventor of the lady added to his picture, when once he had got your ear. That was the only thing you all looked to, with that he turned you about as he would, having got his first hold upon you, averring that he was leading you the straight way to your beloved. After the first step, you see, all was easy; none of you ever looked round when he came to the entrance, and inquired whether it was the right one, or whether he had accidentally taken the wrong; no, you all followed in your predecessors' footsteps, like sheep after the bell-wether, whereas the right thing was to decide at the entrance whether you should go in.

Perhaps an illustration will make my meaning clearer: when one of those audacious poets affirms that there was once a three-headed and six-handed man, if you accept that quietly without questioning its possibility, he will proceed to fill in the picture consistently—six eyes and ears, three voices talking at once, three mouths eating, and thirty fingers instead of our poor ten all told; if he has to fight, three of his hands will have a buckler, wicker targe, or shield apiece, while of the other three one swings an axe, another hurls a spear, and the third wields a sword. It is too late to carp at these details, when they come; they are consistent with the beginning; it was about that that the question ought to have been raised whether it was to be accepted and passed as true. Once grant that, and the rest comes flooding in, irresistible, hardly now susceptible of doubt, because it is consistent and accordant with your initial admissions. That is just your case; your love-yearning would not allow you to look into the facts at each entrance, and so you are dragged on by consistency; it never occurs to you that a thing may be self-consistent and yet false; if a man says twice five is seven, and you take his word for it without checking the sum, he will naturally deduce that four times five is fourteen, and so on ad libitum. This is the way that weird geometry proceeds: it sets before beginners certain strange assumptions, and insists on their granting the existence

MARCUS AURELIUS AND HIS TIMES

of inconceivable things, such as points having no parts, lines without breadth, and so on, builds on these rotten foundations a superstructure equally rotten, and pretends to go on to a demonstration which is true, though it starts from premises which are false.

Just so you, when you have granted the principles of any school, believe in the deductions from them, and take their consistency, false as it is, for a guarantee of truth. Then with some of you, hope travels through, and you die before you have seen the truth and detected your deceivers, while the rest, disillusioned too late, will not turn back for shame: what, confess at their years that they have been abused with toys all this time? So they hold on desperately, putting the best face upon it and making all the converts they can, to have the consolation of good company in their deception; they are well aware that to speak out is to sacrifice the respect and superiority and honor they are accustomed to; so they will not do it if it may be helped, knowing the height from which they will fall to the common level. Just a few are found with the courage to say they were deluded, and warn other aspirants. Meeting such a one, call him a good man, a true and an honest; nay, call him philosopher, if you will; to my mind, the name is his or no one's; the rest either have no knowledge of the truth, though they think they have, or else have knowledge and hide it, shamefaced cowards clinging to reputation.

But now for goodness' sake let us drop all this, cover it up with an amnesty, and let it be as if it had not been said; let us assume that the Stoic philosophy, and no other, is correct; then we can examine whether it is practicable and possible, or its disciples wasting their pains; it makes wonderful promises,

I am told, about the Happiness in store for those who reach the summit; for none but they shall enter into full possession of the true Good. The next point you must help me with— whether you have ever met such a Stoic, such a pattern of Stoicism, as to be unconscious of pain, untempted by pleasure,

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free from wrath, superior to envy, contemptuous of wealth, and, in one word, Happy; such should the example and model of the Virtuous life be; for anyone who falls short in the slightest degree, even though he is better than other men at all points, is not complete, and in that case not yet Happy.

Her.

I never saw such a man.

Ly.

I am glad you do not palter with the truth. But what are your hopes in pursuing philosophy, then? You see that neither your own teacher, nor his, nor his again, and so on to the tenth generation, has been absolutely wise and so attained

Happiness. It will not serve you to say that it is enough to get near Happiness; that is no good; a person on the doorstep is just as much outside and in the air as another a long way off, though with the difference that the former is tantalized by a nearer view. So it is to get into the neighborhood of Happiness—I will grant you so much—that you toil like this, wearing yourself away, letting this great portion of your life slip from you, while you are sunk in dullness and wakeful weariness; and you are to go on with it for twenty more years at the least, you tell me, to take your place when you are eighty—always assuming someone to assure you that length of days—in the ranks of the not yet Happy. Or perhaps you reckon on being the exception; you are to crown your pursuit by attaining what many a good man before you, swifter far, has pursued and never overtaken.

Well, overtake it, if that is your plan, grasp it and have it whole, this something, mysterious to me, of which the possession is sufficient reward for such toils; this something which I wonder how long you will have the enjoyment of, old man that you will be, past all pleasure, with one foot in the grave; ah, but perhaps, like a brave soul, you are getting ready for another life, that you may spend it the better when you come to it, having learned how to live: as though one should take so long preparing and elaborating a superlative dinner that he fainted with hunger and exhaustion!

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However, there is another thing I do not think you have observed: Virtue is manifested, of course, in action, in doing what is just and wise and manly; but you—and when I say you, I mean the most advanced philosophers—you do not seek these things and ensue them, but spend the greater part of your life conning over miserable sentences and demonstrations and problems; it is the man who does best at these that you hail a glorious victor. And I believe that is why you admire this experienced old professor of yours: he nonplusses his associates, knows how to put crafty questions and inveigle you into pitfalls; so you pay no attention to the fruit—which consists in action—but are extremely busy with the husks, and smother each other with the leaves in your debates; come now, Hermotimus, what else are you about from morning to night?

Her. Nothing; that is what it comes to.

Ly. Is it wronging you to say that you hunt the shadow or the snake's dead slough, and neglect the solid body or the creeping thing itself? You are no better than a man pouring water into a mortar and braying it with an iron pestle; he thinks he is doing a necessary useful job, whereas, let him bray till all's blue (excuse the slang), the water is as much water as ever it was.

And here let me ask you whether, putting aside his discourse, you would choose to resemble your master, and be as passionate, as sordid, as quarrelsome, ay, and as addicted to pleasure (though that trait of his is not generally known).

Why no answer, Hermotimus?

Shall I tell you a plea for philosophy which I lately heard?

It was from the mouth of an old, old man, who has quite a company of young disciples.

He was angrily demanding his fees from one of these; they were long overdue, he said; the day stated in the agreement was the first of the month, and it was now the fifteenth.

The youth's uncle was there, a rustic person without any notion of your refinements; and by way of stilling the storm,

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"Come, come, sir," says he, "you need not make such a fuss because we have bought words of you and not yet settled the bill. As to what you have sold us, you have got it still; your stock of learning is none the less; and in what I really sent the boy to you for, you have not improved him a bit; he has carried off and seduced neighbor Echecrates' daughter, and there would have been an action for assault, only Echecrates is a poor man; but the prank cost me a couple of hundred. And the other day he struck his mother; she had tried to stop him when he was smuggling wine out of the house, for one of his club-dinners, I suppose. As to temper and conceit and impudence and brass and lying, he was not half so bad twelve months ago as he is now. That is where I should have liked him to profit by your teaching; and we could have done without his knowing the stuff he reels off at table every day:

'a crocodile seized hold of a baby,' says he, 'and promised to give it back if its father could answer'—the Lord knows what; or how, 'day being, night cannot be'; and sometimes his worship twists round what we say somehow or other, till there we are with horns on our heads! We just laugh at it—most of all when he stuffs up his ears and repeats to himself what he calls temperaments and conditions and conceptions and impressions, and a lot more like that. And he tells us God is not in heaven, but goes about in everything, wood and stone and animals—the meanest of them, too; and if his mother asks him why he talks such stuff, he laughs at her and says if once he gets the 'stuff' pat off, there will be nothing to prevent him from being the only rich man, the only king, and counting everyone else slaves and offscourings."

When he had finished, mark the reverend philosopher's answer. "You should consider," he said, "that if he had never come to me, he would have behaved far worse—very possibly have come to the gallows. As it is, philosophy and the respect he has for it have been a check upon him, so that you find he keeps within bounds and is not quite unbearable; the philo-

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sophic system and name tutor him with their presence, and the thought of disgracing them shames him. I should be quite justified in taking your money, if not for any positive improvement I have effected, yet for the abstentions due to his respect for philosophy; the very nurses will tell you as much: children should go to school, because, even if they are not old enough to learn, they will at least be out of mischief there.

My conscience is quite easy about him; if you like to select any of your friends who are acquainted with Stoicism and bring him here tomorrow you shall see how the boy can question and answer, how much he has learnt, how many books he has read on axioms, syllogisms, conceptions, duty, and all sorts of subjects. As for his hitting his mother or seducing girls, what have I to do with that? Am I his keeper?"

A dignified defense of philosophy for an old man! Perhaps you will say too that it is a good enough reason for pursuing it, if it will keep us from worse employments. Were our original expectations from philosophy at all of a different nature, by the way? did they contemplate anything beyond a more decent behavior than the average? Why this obstinate silence?

Her. Oh, why but that I could cry like a baby? It cuts me to the heart, it is all so true; it is too much for me, when I think of my wretched, wasted years—paying all that money for my own labor, too!

I am sober again after a debauch, I see what the object of my maudlin affection is like, and what it has brought upon me.

Ly. No need for tears, dear fellow; that is a very sensible fable of Aesop's. A man sat on the shore and counted the waves breaking; missing count, he was excessively annoyed.

But the fox came up and said to him: "Why vex yourself, good sir, over the past ones? You should let them go, and begin counting afresh." So you, since this is your mind, had better reconcile yourself now to living like an ordinary man; vou will give up your extravagant haughty hopes and put yourself on a level with the commonalty; if you are sensible,

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you will not be ashamed to unlearn in your old age, and change your course for a better.

Now I beg you not to fancy that I have said all this as an anti-Stoic, moved by any special dislike of your school; my arguments hold against all schools. I should have said just the same if you had chosen Plato or Aristotle, and condemned the others unheard. But, as Stoicism was your choice, the argument has seemed to be aimed at that, though it had no such special application.

Her. You are quite right. And now I will be off to metamorphose myself. When we next meet, there will be no long, shaggy beard, no artificial composure; I shall be natural, as a gentleman should. I may go as far as a fashionable coat, by way of publishing my renunciation of nonsense. I only wish there were an emetic that would purge out every doctrine they have instilled into me; I assure you, if I could reverse Chrysippus' plan with the hellebore, 8 and drink forgetfulness, not of the world but of Stoicism, I would not think twice about it. Well, Lycinus, I owe you a debt indeed; I was being swept along in a rough turbid torrent, unresisting, drifting with the stream; when lo, you stood there and fished me out, a true deus ex machina? I have good enough reason, I think, to shave my head like the people who get clear off from a wreck; for I am to make votive offerings today for the dispersion of that thick cloud which was over my eyes. Henceforth, if I meet a philosopher on my walks (and it will not be with my will), I shall turn aside and avoid him as I would a mad dog.

8 An herb from which a poisonous drink was distilled.

9 Literally, a god from the machine, an allusion to the practice in classical tragedies of bringing a god on stage by machinery to solve a difficulty.

ICAROMENIPPUS, AN

AERIAL EXPEDITION

Menippus and a Friend Me. Let me see, now. First stage, Earth to Moon, 350 miles.

Second stage, up to the Sun, 500 leagues. Then the third, to the actual Heaven and Zeus' citadel, might be put at a day's journey for an eagle in light marching order.

Fr. In the name of goodness, Menippus, what are these astronomical sums you are doing under your breath?

I have been dogging you for some time, listening to your suns and moons, queerly mixed up with common earthly stages and leagues.

Me. Ah, you must not be surprised if my talk is rather exalted and ethereal; I was making out the mileage of my journey.

Fr. Oh, I see; using stars to steer by, like the Phoenicians?

Me. Oh no, traveling among them.

Fr. Well, to be sure, it must have been a longish dream, if you lost yourself in it for whole leagues.

Me. Dream, my good man?

I am just come straight from Zeus. Dream, indeed!

Fr. How? What? Our Menippus a literal godsend from Heaven?

Me.

'Tis even so; from very Zeus I come this day, eyes and ears yet full of wonders. Oh, doubt, if you will. That my fortune should pass belief makes it only the more gratifying.

Fr. Nay, my worshipful Olympian, how should I, "a man begotten, treading this poor earth," doubt him who trans-

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cends the clouds, a "denizen of Heaven," as Homer says? But vouchsafe to tell me how you were uplifted, and where you got your mighty tall ladder. There is hardly enough of Ganymede in your looks to suggest that you were carried off by the eagle for a cupbearer.

Me.

I see you are bent on making a jest of it. Well, it is extraordinary; you could not be expected to see that it is not a romance. The fact is, I needed neither ladder nor amorous eagle; I had wings of my own.

Fr. Stranger and stranger! This beats Daedalus. What, you turned into a hawk or a crow on the sly?

Me. Now that is not a bad shot; it was Daedalus' wing trick that I tried.

Fr. Well, talk of foolhardiness! Did you like the idea of falling into the sea, and giving us a Mare Menippeum after the precedent of the Icarium?

Me. No fear. Icarus' feathers were fastened with wax, and of course, directly the sun warmed this, he molted and fell.

No wax for me, thank you.

Fr. How did you manage, then? I declare I shall be believing you soon, if you go on like this.

Me. Well, I caught a fine eagle, and also a particularly powerful vulture, and cut off their wings above the shoulderjoint.

. But no; if you are not in a hurry, I may as well give you the enterprise from the beginning.

Fr. Do, do; I am rapt aloft by your words already, my mouth open for your bonne bouche; x as you love me, leave me not in those upper regions hung up by the ears!

Me. Listen, then; it would be a sorry sight, a friend deserted, with his mouth open, and sus. per aures.2—Well, a very short survey of life had convinced me of the absurdity and meanness and insecurity that pervade all human objects, such

1 Good mouthful, French slang.

2 Suspended by the ears.

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as wealth, office, power. I was filled with contempt for them, realized that to care for them was to lose all chance of what deserved care, and determined to grovel no more, but fix my gaze upon the great All. Here I found my first problem in what wise men call the universal order; I could not tell how it came into being, who made it, what was its beginning, or what its end. But my next step, which was the examination of details, landed me in yet worse perplexity. I found the stars dotted quite casually about the sky, and I wanted to know what the sun was. Especially the phenomena of the moon struck me as extraordinary, and quite passed my comprehension; there must be some mystery to account for those many phases, I conjectured. Nor could I feel any greater certainty about such things as the passage of lightning, the roll of thunder, the descent of rain and snow and hail.

In this state of mind, the best I could think of was to get at the truth of it all from the people called philosophers; they of course would be able to give it me. So I selected the best of them, if solemnity of visage, pallor of complexion and length of beard are any criterion—for there could not be a moment's doubt of their soaring words and heaven-high thoughts—and in their hands I placed myself. For a considerable sum down, and more to be paid when they should have perfected me in wisdom, I was to be made an airy metaphysician and instructed in the order of the universe. Unfortunately, so far from dispelling my previous ignorance, they perplexed me more and more, with their daily drenches of beginnings and ends, atoms and voids, matters and forms. My greatest difficulty was that, though they differed among themselves, and all they said was full of inconsistency and contradiction, they expected me to believe them, each pulling me in his own direction.

Fr. How absurd that wise men should quarrel about facts, and hold different opinions on the same things!

Me. Ah, but keep your laughter till you have heard some-

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thing of their pretentious mystifications. To begin with, their feet are on the ground; they are no taller than the rest of us

"men that walk the earth"; they are no sharper-sighted than their neighbors, some of them purblind, indeed, with age or indolence; and yet they say they can distinguish the limits of the sky, they measure the sun's circumference, take their walks in the supra-lunar regions, and specify the sizes and shapes of the stars as though they had fallen from them; often one of them could not tell you correctly the number of miles from Megara to Athens, but has no hesitation about the distance in feet from the sun to the moon. How high the atmosphere is, how deep the sea, how far it is round the earth

—they have the figures for all that; and moreover, they have only to draw some circles, arrange a few triangles and squares, add certain complicated spheres, and lo, they have the cubic contents of Heaven.

Then, how reasonable and modest of them, dealing with subjects so debatable, to issue their views without a hint of uncertainty; thus it must be and it shall be; contra gentes 3 they will have it so; they will tell you on oath the sun is a molten mass, the moon inhabited, and the stars water-drinkers, moisture being drawn up by the sun's rope and bucket and equitably distributed among them.

How their theories conflict is soon apparent; next-door neighbors? No, they are miles apart. In the first place, their views of the world differ. Some say it had no beginning, and cannot end; others boldly talk of its creator and his procedure; what particularly entertained me was that these latter set up a contriver of the universe, but fail to mention where he came from, or what he stood on while about his elaborate task, though it is by no means obvious how there could be place or time before the universe came into being.

3 Contrary to or against the people.

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Fr. You really do make them out very audacious conjurers.

Mr.. My dear fellow, I wish I could give you their lucubrations on ideas and incorporeals, on finite and infinite. Over that point, now, there is fierce battle; some circumscribe the All, others will have it unlimited. At the same time they declare for a plurality of worlds, and speak scornfully of others who make only one. And there is a bellicose person who maintains that war is the father of the universe.4

As to Gods, I need hardly deal with that question. For some of them God is a number; some swear by dogs and geese and plane trees.5 Some again banish all other Gods, and attribute the control of the universe to a single one; I got rather depressed on learning how small the supply of divinity was.

But I was comforted by the lavish souls who not only make many, but classify; there was a First God, and second and third classes of divinity. Yet again, some regard the divine nature as unsubstantial and without form, while others conceive it as a substance. Then they were not all disposed to recognize a Providence; some relieve the Gods of all care, as we relieve the superannuated of their civic duties; in fact;, they treat them exactly like supernumeraries on the stage.

The last step is also taken, of saying that Gods do not exist at all, and leaving the world to drift along without a master or a guiding hand.

Well, when I heard all this, I dared not disbelieve people whose voices and beards were equally suggestive of Zeus. But I knew not where to turn for a theory that was not open to exception, nor combated by one as soon as propounded by another.

I found myself in the state Homer has described; 4 Variously attributed to Heraclitus, who denies the possibility of repose, and insists that all things are in a state of flux; and to Empedocles, who makes all change and becoming depend on the interaction of the two principles, attraction and repulsion.

5 Socrates made a practice of substituting these for the names of Gods ui his oaths.

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many a time I would vigorously start believing one of these gentlemen; But then came second thoughts.

So in my distress I began to despair of ever getting any knowledge about these things on earth; the only possible escape from perplexity would be to take to myself wings and go up to Heaven. Partly the wish was father to the thought; but it was confirmed by Aesop's Fables, from which it appears that Heaven is accessible to eagles, beetles, and sometimes camels.

It was pretty clear that I could not possibly develop feathers of my own. But if I were to wear vulture's or eagle's wings— the only kinds equal to a man's weight—I might perhaps succeed. I caught the birds, and effectually amputated the eagle's right, and the vulture's left wing. These I fastened together, attached them to my shoulders with broad thick straps, and provided grips for my hands near the end of the quill-feathers.

Then I made experiments, first jumping up and helping the jump by flapping my hands, or imitating the way a goose raises itself without leaving the ground and combines running with flight. Finding the machine obedient, I next made a bolder venture, went up the Acropolis, and launched myself from the cliff right over the theater.

Getting safely to the bottom that time, my aspirations shot up aloft. I took to starting from Parnes or Hymettus, flying to Geranea, thence to the top of the Acrocorinthus, and over Pholoe and Erymanthus to Taygetus. The training for my venture was now complete; my powers were developed, and equal to a lofty flight; no more fledgling essays for me. I went up Olympus, provisioning myself as lightly as possible. The moment was come; I soared skywards, giddy at first with that great void below, but soon conquering this difficulty. When

I approached the Moon, long after parting from the clouds, I was conscious of fatigue, especially in the left or vulture's

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wing. So I alighted and sat down to rest, having a bird's-eye view of the Earth, like the Homeric Zeus,

Surveying now the Thracian horsemen's land, Now Mysia, and again, as the fancy took me, Greece or Persia or India.

From all which I drew a manifold delight.

Fr. Oh well, Menippus, tell me all about it. I do not want to miss a single one of your travel experiences; if you picked up any stray information, let me have that too.

I promise myself a great many facts about the shape of the Earth, and how everything on it looked to you from your point of vantage.

Me. And you will not be disappointed there, friend. So do your best to get up to the Moon, with my story for traveling companion and showman of the terrestrial scene.

Imagine yourself first descrying a tiny Earth, far smaller than the Moon looks; on turning my eyes down, I could not think for some time what had become of our mighty mountains and vast sea. If I had not caught sight of the Colossus of Rhodes and the Pharus 6 tower, I assure you I should never have made out the Earth at all. But their height and projection, with the faint shimmer of Ocean in the sun, showed me it must be the Earth I was looking at. Then, when once I had got my sight properly focused, the whole human race was clear to me, not merely in the shape of nations and cities, but the individuals, sailing, fighting, plowing, going to law; the women, the beasts, and in short every breed "that feedeth on earth's foison."

Fr. Most unconvincing and contradictory. Just now you were searching for the Earth, it was so diminished by distance, and if the Colossus had not betrayed it, you would have taken it for something else; and now you develop sud- * An island off the coast of Egypt, on which was a famous lighthouse.

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denly into a Lynceus, and distinguish everything upon it, the men, the beasts, one might almost say the gnat-swarms. Explain, please.

Me. Why, to be sure! how did I come to leave out so essential a particular? I had made out the Earth, you see, but could not distinguish any details; the distance was so great, quite beyond the scope of my vision; so I was much chagrined and baffled. At this moment of depression—I was very near tears

—who should come up behind me but Empedocles the physicist?

His complexion was like charcoal variegated with ashes, as if he had been baked. I will not deny that I felt some tremors at the sight of him, taking him for some lunar spirit.

But he said: "Do not be afraid, Menippus; A mortal I, no God; how vain thy dreams.

I am Empedocles the physicist. When I threw myself into the crater in such a hurry, the smoke of Etna whirled me off up here; and now I live in the Moon, doing a good deal of high thinking on a diet of dew. So I have come to help you out of your difficulty; you are distressed, I take it, at not being able to see everything on the Earth." "Thank you so much, you good Empedocles," I said; "as soon as my wings have brought me back to Greece, I will remember to pour libations to you up the chimney, and salute you on the first of every month with three moonward yawns." "Endymion be my witness," he replied, "I had no thought of such a bargain;

I was touched by the sight of your distress. Now, what do you think is the way to sharpen your sight?

"I have no idea, unless you were to remove the mist from my eyes for me; the sight seems quite bleared." "Oh, you can do without me; the thing that gives sharp sight you have brought with you from Earth." "Unconsciously, then; what is it?" "Why, you know that you have on an eagle's right wing?" "Of course I do; but what have wings and eyes to

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do with one another?" "Only this," he said; "the eagle is far the strongest-eyed of all living things, the only one that can look straight at the sun; the test of the true royal eagle is, his meeting its rays without blinking." "So I have heard; I wish

I had taken out my own eyes when I was starting, and substituted the eagle's.

I am an imperfect specimen now I am here, not up to the royal standard at all, but like the rejected bastards." "Well, you can very soon acquire one royal eye.

If you will stand up for a minute, keep the vulture wing still, and work the other, your right eye, corresponding to that wing, will gain strength. As for the other, its dimness cannot possibly be obviated, as it belongs to the inferior member." "Oh,

I shall be quite content with aquiline vision for the right eye only," I said; "I have often observed that carpenters in ruling their wood find one better than two." So saying, I proceeded to carry out my instructions at once.

Empedocles began gradually to disappear, and at last vanished in smoke.

I had no sooner flapped the wing than a flood of light enveloped me, and things that before I had not even been aware of became perfectly clear. I turned my eyes down earthwards, and with ease discerned cities, men, and all that was going on, not merely in the open, but in the fancied security of houses.

There was Ptolemy in his sister's arms, the son of Lysimachus plotting against his father, Seleucus' son Antiochus making signs to his step-mother Stratonice, Alexander of Pherae being murdered by his wife, Antigonus corrupting his daughterin-law, the son of Attalus putting the poison in his cup; Arsaces was in the act of slaying his mistress, while the eunuch

Arbaces drew his sword upon him; the guards were dragging Spatinus the Mede out from the banquet by foot, with the lump on his brow from the golden cup. Similar sights were to be seen in the palaces of Libya and Scythia and Thraceadulteries, murders, treasons, robberies, perjuries, suspicions, and monstrous betrayals.

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Such was the entertainment afforded me by royalty; private life was much more amusing; for I could make that out too.

I saw Hermodorus the Epicurean perjuring himself for ,£40, Agathocles the Stoic suing a pupil for his fees, lawyer Clinias stealing a bowl from the temple of Aesculapius, and Herophilus the Cynic sleeping in a brothel. Not to mention the multitude of burglars, litigants, usurers, duns; oh, it was a fine representative show!

Fr.

I must say, Menippus, I should have liked the details here too; it all seems to have been very much to your taste.

Me.

I could not go through the whole of it, even to please you; to take it in with the eyes kept one busy. But the main divisions were very much what Homer gives from the shield of Achilles: here junketings and marriages, there courts and councils, in another compartment a sacrifice, and hard by a mourning. If I glanced at Getica, I would see the Getae at war; at Scythia, there were the Scythians wandering about on their wagons; half a turn in another direction gave me

Egyptians at the plow, or Phoenicians chaffering, Cilician pirates, Spartan flagellants, Athenians at law.

All this was simultaneous, you understand; and you must try to conceive what a queer jumble it all made. It was as if a man were to collect a number of choristers, or rather of choruses,7 and then tell each individual to disregard the others and start a strain of his own; if each did his best, went his own way, and tried to drown his neighbor, can you imagine what the musical effect would be?

Fr. A very ridiculous confusion.

Me. Well, friend, such are the earthly dancers; the life of man is just such a discordant performance; not only are the voices jangled, but the steps are not uniform, the motions not concerted, the objects not agreed upon—until the impresario dismisses them one by one from the stage, with a "not 7 The Greek chopjs combined singing with dancing.

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wanted." Then they are all alike, and quiet enough, confounding no longer their undisciplined rival strains. But as long as the show lasts in its marvelous diversity, there is plenty of food for laughter in its vagaries.

The people who most amused me, however, were those who dispute about boundaries, or pride themselves on cultivating the plain of Sicyon, or holding the Oenoe side of Marathon, or a thousand acres at Acharnae. The whole of Greece, as I then saw it, might measure some four inches; how much smaller Athens on the same scale. So I realized what sort of sized basis for their pride remains to our rich men. The widestacred of them all, methought, was the proud cultivator of an Epicurean atom. Then I looked at the Peloponnese, my eyes fell on the Cynurian district, and the thought occurred that it was for this little plot, no broader than an Egyptian lentil, that all those Argives and Spartans fell in a single day.

Or if I saw a man puffed up by the possession of seven or eight gold rings and half as many gold cups, again my lungs would begin to crow; why, Pangaeus with all its mines was about the size of a grain of millet.

Fr. You lucky man! what a rare sight you had! And how big, now, did the towns and the people look from there?

Me. You must often have seen a community of ants, some of them a seething mass, some going abroad, others coming back to town. One is a scavenger, another a bustling porter loaded with a bit of bean-pod or half a wheat grain. They no doubt have, on their modest myrmecic scale, their architects and politicians, their magistrates and composers and philosophers. At any rate, what men and cities suggested to me was just so many ant-hills. If you think the similitude too disparaging, look into the Thessalian legends, and you will find that the most warlike tribe there was the Myrmidons, or ants turned men. Well, when I had had enough of contemplation and laughter, I roused myself and soared

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To join the Gods, inhere dwells the Lord of storms.

I had only flown a couple of hundred yards, when Selene's 8 feminine voice reached me: "Menippus, do me an errand to Zeus, and I will wish you a pleasant journey." "You have only to name it,"

I said, "provided it is not something to carry."

"It is a simple message of entreaty to Zeus. I am tired to death, you must know, of being slandered by these philosophers; they have no better occupation than impertinent curiosity about me—What am I? how big am I? why am I halved? why am I gibbous?

I am inhabited; I am just a mirror hung over the sea; I am—whatever their latest fancy suggests. It is the last straw when they say my light is stolen, sham, imported from the sun, and keep on doing their best to get up jealousy and ill feeling between brother and sister. They might have been contented with making him out a stone or a red-hot lump.

"These gentry who in the day look so stern and manly, dress so gravely, and are so revered by common men, would be surprised to learn how much I know of their vile nightly abominations. I see them all, though I never tell; it would be too indecent to make revelations, and show up the contrast between their nightly doings and their public performances; so, if I catch one of them in adultery or theft or other nocturnal adventure, I pull my cloud veil over me; I do not want the vulgar to see old men disgracing their long beards and their virtuous calling. But they go on giving tongue and worrying me all the same, and, so help me Night, I have thought many a time of going a long, long way off, out of reach of their impertinent tongues. Will you remember to tell Zeus all this? and you may add that I cannot remain at my post unless he will pulverize the physicists, muzzle the logicians, raze the Porch, burn the Academy, and put an end to strolling

8 Selene was goddess of the moon.

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in the Lyceum. That might secure me a little peace from these daily mensurations."

"I will remember," said I, and resumed my upward flight to Heaven, through A region where nor ox nor man had wrought.

For the Moon was soon but a small object, with the Earth entirely hidden behind it. Three days' flight through the stars, with the Sun on my right hand, brought me close to Heaven; and my first idea was to go straight in as I was; I should easily pass unobserved in virtue of my half-eagleship; for of course the eagle was Zeus' familiar; on second thoughts, though, my vulture wing would very soon betray me. So, thinking it better not to run any risks, I went up to the door and knocked.

Hermes opened, took my name, and hurried off to inform Zeus. After a brief wait I was asked to step in; I was now trembling with apprehension, and I found that the Gods, who were all seated together, were not quite easy themselves.

The unexpected nature of the visit was slightly disturbing to them, and they had visions of all mankind arriving at my heels by the same conveyance.

But Zeus bent upon me a Titanic glance, awful, penetrating, and spoke:

Who art thou? where thy city? who thy kin?

At the sound, I nearly died of fear, but remained upright, though mute and paralyzed by that thunderous voice. I gradually recovered, began at the beginning, and gave a clear account of myself—how

I had been possessed with curiosity about the heavens, had gone to the philosophers, found their accounts conflicting, and grown tired of being logically rent in twain; so I came to my great idea, my wings, and ultimately to Heaven; I added Selene's message. Zeus smiled and slightly unbent his brow. "What of Otus and Ephialtes now?" he said; "here is Menippus scaling Heaven! Well, well, for today

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consider yourself our guest. Tomorrow we will treat with you of your business, and send you on your way." And therewith he rose and walked to the acoustic center of Heaven, it being prayer time.

As he went, he put questions to me about earthly affairs, beginning with, What was wheat a quarter in Greece? had we suffered much from cold last winter, and did the vegetables want more rain? Then he wished to know whether any of Phidias' kin were alive, why there had been no Diasia 9 at Athens all these years, whether his Olympeum 10 was ever going to be completed, and had the robbers of his temple at Dodona been caught?

I answered all these questions, and he proceeded: "Tell me, Menippus, what are men's feelings towards me? " "What should they be, Lord, but those of absolute reverence, as to the King of all Gods?" "Now, now, charring as usual," he said; "I know their fickleness very well, for all your dissimulation. There was a time when I was their prophet, their healer, and their all, And Zeus filled every street and gathering-place.

In those days Dodona n and Pisa 12 were glorious and farfamed, and I could not get a view for the clouds of sacrificial steam. But now Apollo has set up his oracle at Delphi, Aesculapius his temple of health at Pergamum, Bendis and Anubis and Artemis their shrines in Thrace, Egypt, Ephesus; and to these all run; theirs the festal gatherings and the hecatombs.

As for me, I am superannuated; they think themselves very generous if they offer me a victim at Olympia at four-year intervals. My altars are cold as Plato's Laws or Chrysippus

Syllogisms."

9 Festival of Zeus.

10 A temple of Zeus at Athens, begun in the time of Pisistratus and finished 600 years later, in the reign of Hadrian.

11 Oracle of Zeus in Epirus.

12 A town in Elis, near which the Olympic games were held.

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So talking, we reached the spot where he was to sit and listen to the prayers. There was a row of openings with lids like well-covers, and a chair of gold by each. Zeus took his seat at the first, lifted off the lid and inclined his ear. From every quarter of Earth were coming the most various and contradictory petitions; for I too bent down my head and listened. Here are specimens. "O Zeus, that I might be king!"

"O Zeus, that my onions and garlic might thrive!" "Ye Gods, a speedy death for my father!" Or again, "Would that I might succeed to my wife's property!" "Grant that my plot against my brother be not detected." "Let me win my suit."

"Give me an Olympic garland." Of those at sea, one prayed for a north, another for a south wind; the farmer asked for rain, the fuller for sun. Zeus listened, and gave each prayer careful consideration, but without promising to grant them all; Our Father this bestowed, and that withheld.

Righteous prayers he allowed to come up through the hole, received and laid them down at his right, while he sent the unholy ones packing with a downward puff of breath, that Heaven might not be defiled by their entrance. In one case I saw him puzzled; two men praying for opposite things and promising the same sacrifices, he could not tell which of them to favor, and experienced a truly Academic suspense of judgment, showing a reserve and equilibrium worthy of Pyrrho 13 himself.

The prayers disposed of, he went on to the next chair and opening, and attended to oaths and their takers. These done with, and Hermodorus the Epicurean annihilated, he proceeded to the next chair to deal with omens, prophetic voices, and auguries. Then came the turn of the sacrifice aperture, through which the smoke came up and communicated to Zeus the name of the devotee it represented. After that, he was free

13 Pyrrho was founder of the Skeptics.

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to give his wind and weather orders: Rain for Scythia today, a thunderstorm for Libya, snow for Greece. The north wind he instructed to blow in Lydia, the west to raise a storm in the Adriatic, the south to take a rest; a thousand bushels of hail to be distributed over Cappadocia.

His work was now pretty well completed, and as it was just dinner time, we went to the banquet hall. Hermes received me, and gave me my place next to a group of Gods whose alien origin left them in a rather doubtful position—Pan, the Corybants, Attis, and Sabazius. I was supplied with bread by Demeter, wine by Dionysus, meat by Heracles, myrtle-blossoms by Aphrodite, and sprats by Poseidon. But I also got a sly taste of ambrosia and nectar; good-natured Ganymede, as often as he saw that Zeus' attention was engaged elsewhere, brought round the nectar and indulged me with a half-pint or so. The Gods, as Homer (who I think must have had the same opportunities of observation as myself) somewhere says, neither eat bread nor drink the ruddy wine; they heap their plates with ambrosia, and are nectar-bibbers; but their choicest dainties are the smoke of sacrifice ascending with rich fumes, and the blood of victims poured by their worshipers round the altars. During dinner, Apollo harped, Silenus danced his wild measures, the Muses uprose and sang to us from Hesiod's Birth of Gods, and the first of Pindar's odes. When we had our fill and had well drunken, we slumbered, each where he was.

Slept all the Gods, and men with plumed helms, That livelong night; but me kind sleep forsook; for I had much upon my mind; most of all, how came it that Apollo, in all that time, had never grown a beard? And how was night possible in Heaven, with the sun always there taking his share of the good cheer? So I had but a short nap of it.

And in the morning Zeus arose, and bade summon an assembly.

When all were gathered, he thus commenced: "The immediate occasion of my summoning you is the arrival of this

Z}6

MARCUS AURELIUS AND HIS TIMES

stranger yesterday. But I have long intended to take counsel with you regarding the philosophers, and now, urged by Selene and her complaints, I have determined to defer the consideration of the question no longer. There is a class which has recently become conspicuous among men; they are idle, quarrelsome, vain, irritable, lickerish, silly, puffed up, arrogant, and, in Homeric phrase, vain cumberers of the earth.

These men have divided themselves into bands, each dwelling in a separate word-maze of its own construction, and call themselves Stoics, Epicureans, Peripatetics, and more farcical names yet. Then they take to themselves the holy name of Virtue, and with uplifted brows and flowing beards exhibit the deceitful semblance that hides immoral lives; their model is the tragic actor, from whom if you strip off the mask and the gold-spangled robe, there is nothing left but a paltry fellow hired for a few shillings to play a part.

"Nevertheless, quite undeterred by their own characters, they scorn the human and travesty the divine; they gather a company of guileless youths, and feed them with solemn chatter upon Virtue and quibbling verbal puzzles; in their pupils' presence they are all for fortitude and temperance, and have no words bad enough for wealth and pleasure: when they are by themselves, there is no limit to their gluttony, their lechery, their licking of dirty pence. But the head and front of their offending is this: they neither work themselves nor help others' work; they are useless drones,

Of no avail in council nor in war; which notwithstanding, they censure others; they store up poisoned words, they con invectives, they heap their neighbors with reproaches; their highest honors are for him who shall be loudest and most overbearing and boldest in abuse.

"Ask one of these brawling bawling censors, And what do you do? in God's name, what shall we call your contribution to progress? and he would reply, if conscience and truth were

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anything to him:

I consider it superfluous to sail the sea 01 till the earth or fight for my country or follow a trade; but I have a loud voice and a dirty body; I eschew warm water and go barefoot through the winter; I am a Momus who can always pick holes in other people's coats; if a rich man keeps a costly table or a mistress, I make it my business to be properly horrified; but if my familiar friend is lying sick, in need of help and care, I am not aware of it. Such, your Godheads, is the nature of this vermin.

"There is a special insolence in those who call themselves Epicureans; these go so far as to lay their hands on our character; we take no interest in human affairs, they say, and in fact have nothing to do with the course of events. And this is a serious question for you; if once they infect their generation with this view, you will learn what hunger means. Who will sacrifice to you, if he does not expect to profit by it? As to Selene's complaints, you all heard them yesterday from this stranger's lips. And now decide upon such measures as shall advantage mankind and secure your own safety."

Zeus had no sooner closed his speech than clamor prevailed, all crying at once:

"Blast! burn! annihilate! to the pit with them! to Tartarus! to the Giants!" Zeus ordered silence again, and then, "Your wishes," he said, "shall be executed; they shall all be annihilated, and their logic with them. But just at present chastisement is not lawful; you are aware that we are now in the four months of the long vacation; the formal notice has lately been issued. In the spring of next year, the baleful levin-bolt shall give them the fate they deserve."

He spake, and sealed his word ivith lowering brows.

"As to Menippus," he added, "my pleasure is this. He shall be deprived of his wings, and so incapacitated for repeating his visit, but shall today be conveyed back to Earth by Hermes." So saying, he dismissed the assembly. The Cyllenian accordingly lifted me up by the right ear, and yesterday eve-

MARCUS AURELIUS AND HIS TIMES

ning deposited me in the Ceramicus. And now, friend, you have all the latest from Heaven. I must be off to the Poecile, 14 to let the philosophers loitering there know the luck they are in.

14 The Poecile was another name for the painted porch in which die Stoics held their school.

PART III Justin Martyr, Christian

INTRODUCTION

In the time of Marcus Aurelius Rome had become a great cosmopolitan capital, where men of many races, languages and customs jostled one another in the streets and the circus.

Many of these foreigners had brought their religions with them and the shrines and mysteries of the Egyptian goddess

Isis and the Persian god Mithras drew worshipers from every rank of Roman society. As a rule, these religions, being polytheistic, like the old religion of Rome, were tolerant of one another. There was room in their heavens for as many gods as one chose to believe in. But to this rule two monotheistic sects from the East, Judaism and Christianity, were exceptions. In particular, the Christians aggressively and openly denounced all pagan divinities as devils and refused to offer the customary sacrifices before the images of the deified Caesars, which represented the majesty of the Roman state. To many pagans, therefore, they seemed to be dangerous enemies not only to all the familiar ancestral faiths but also to the whole established peaceable order of things and even to the Roman government itself.

How long before Marcus' time Christianity had been legally a forbidden religion there are no records extant to tell us. In Trajan's reign (98-117 a.d.) there was a law of some kind against it, though apparently not often enforced. Under Hadrian (1 17-138 a.d.) the resentment of the pagan populace against the disloyal "atheists" in their midst was beginning to show itself and rumors of Christian secret orgies and black conspiracies against the community were spreading fast. In a few places popular clamor compelled the authorities to arrest and punish persons guilty of the proscribed faith. Hadrian's letter to the proconsul of Asia, appended to Justin's

MARCUS AURELIUS AND HIS TIMES

"First Apology," reveals the Emperors' concern to have the law applied justly and with moderation.

Under Hadrian appeared the first of the Christian apologies or defenses against the pagan accusations. Educated converts took up their pens to protest that the lurid slanders against them were totally false. It was true that they called the immoral gods of the old mythologies demons, who masqueraded as divine in order deliberately to corrupt the human race, and that they themselves worshiped only the one Father, the God of goodness and truth. But that was their sole offense. As citizens, they lived dutiful, obedient, and peaceful lives. They were charitable and chaste, and patient under persecution and injustice. To any unprejudiced mind, they said, they could prove the truth of their faith by its fulfillment of prophecies uttered long since by inspired men of old. At certain points also it resembled the teachings of the noblest Greek philosophers, and through its doctrine of eternal rewards and punishments it offered the strongest possible incentives to goodness in everyday living now.

Under Antoninus Pius ( 1 38-161 a.d.) there was a lull in the persecutions, a "peace of the church," but by the time of Marcus Aurelius (161-180 a.d.) the Christians had so increased in numbers, especially in the cities of the Empire, that popular feeling against these enemies of the gods was growing more violent than ever and officials in many places were forced by mob excitement to act with vigor. We hear of Christians executed in Asia Minor, in Africa, and on the Rhone, as well as in Rome itself. How far Marcus, the humane philosopher, approved these persecutions we cannot be sure. In his Meditations, he refers once to the Christians, with evident distaste for their fanatical behavior, but he was not by nature a persecutor. He may not even have known what was going on. He had things far more important to think of than an occasional, small-scale religious fuss, which his officials were quite competent to handle. He probably read none

Introduction to Justin Martyr

of the Christian apologies, not even those addressed to himself. They may never have reached his hands.

Lucian, the sharp-eyed cynical observer of the human scene, knew considerably more about the Christians than the Emperor did. The hero of one of his dialogues, "The Death of Peregrinus," was a professional villain and cheat from Armenia known as Peregrinus, who lived by exploiting the credulity of simple-minded folk and found some of his easiest victims among the guileless, tender-hearted Christians of Syria. From their teachers he picked up, Lucian says, enough of their queer notions to be accepted by them as a prophet and president of their assemblies. "He expounded their books, commented on them and wrote some himself.

. The Christians, you know, worship to this day that enchanter who was crucified in Palestine for founding their weird sect."

Peregrinus eventually got himself arrested as a Christian and thrown into prison, whereupon his fellow believers near and far sent food, money, and friends to comfort him. "These deluded creatures, you see, have persuaded themselves that they are immortal and will live forever, which explains the contempt of death and willing self-sacrifice so common among them.

It was impressed on them too by their lawgiver that from the moment they are converted, deny the gods of Greece, worship the crucified sage, and live after his laws, they are all brothers. They take his instructions completely on faith, with the result that they despise all worldly goods and hold them in common ownership. So any adroit, unscrupulous fellow, who knows the world, has only to get among these simple souls and his fortune is quickly made; he plays with them." Peregrinus, however, ran no danger of death.

The Roman governor himself cut short any dream he might have had of playing the glorious martyr by setting him tamely free.

To Marcus, the ruler, then, the Christians seem to have appeared chiefly as irritating petty nuisances in the path of

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smooth administration, and to Lucian, the Skeptic, as a joke.

A contemporary of theirs, however, called Justin, a Syrian philosopher of Greek descent, was converted to Christianity, wrote several defenses and explanations of his faith, and was put to death for it at last in Rome under Marcus. From him we get some idea of the appeal Christianity had for another type of thoughtful man and why, when the test came, he preferred to die rather than forsake it. Authors disagree as to the date of Justin's birth, some placing it at the end of the first and others at the beginning of the second century after Christ.

The place was Neapolis, a city of Samaria, in northern Palestine, then of course a province of Rome. Justin's family was of Greek origin, descendants, it is thought of a colony of Greeks which had settled there some time earlier. As a Greek,

Justin must have grown up quite outside the native culture of Samaria, unfamiliar with the Hebrew language, religion, and law. He had, however, an unusually thorough education under excellent tutors and traveled considerably as a young man. Like many another in this period of intellectual ferment, he decided to investigate for himself the various schools of philosophy. He studied with the Stoics, the Aristotelians, the Pythagoreans, and, finally, with an eminent Platonist.

To Plato and his ideas he became strongly attached, but his attachment was not strong enough to resist the moral and intellectual appeal of Christianity, as presented to him, first,— according to Justin's own account—by a venerable teacher whom he met on a solitary walk. There is reason to suppose that he had previously witnessed the martyrdom of several

Christians and been impressed by their courage and fortitude.

He now saw in the Hebrew prophets of the Old Testament the inspired precursors of the Christ. Far back in the dim beginnings of human history, long before Plato, they had "glorified the Creator, the God and Father of all things and proclaimed his son the Christ. Straightway," he writes, "a flame was kindled in my soul, and a love of the prophets and

Introduction to Justin Martyr

of those who are the friends of Christ. I found this philosophyalone to be safe and profitable." In another place he writes,

"Think not, O ye Greeks, that I have rashly and without judgment and deliberation departed from the rites of your religion. But I could find in it nothing really sacred and worthy of divine acceptance."

The influence of Plato, however, and of Justin's Greek philosophic training shows in all his writing as a Christian, and he is eager to point out the concepts they have in common, such as the creation of the world by God, and the immortality of the soul. Socrates too taught the moral dignity of man and his obligation to stand under all circumstances true to what he believed to be right. The Stoic doctrine of the freedom and importance of the human will also finds an important place in Justin's Christianity. As a matter of fact, he insists, every noble Greek principle of knowledge and conduct, whether contained in Homer, in the Greek dramatists, or in the philosophers, may be found stated earlier in the Christian Scriptures. "Whatever all men have uttered aright, then, belongs to us Christians." The Logos or Divine Word is everywhere among all men and always at work. But now with Christ has come fullness of light and the assurance of eternal life that the philosophers never had. For in Christ, the teacher,

Justin sees the supreme Reason incarnate of God, whereas in the poets and philosophers there was only the seed of reason which is the natural endowment of all men. Christianity is thus to Justin "the oldest, the truest, the most divine of philosophies."

Justin's conversion took place about 132, not long after a Jewish uprising in Palestine against Roman rule, led by the rabbi Simon Bar Hochba, who claimed to be the true, expected Messiah. The Roman legion in Jerusalem was driven from its camp, and the rebellion was with some difficulty put down. Perhaps because of the disturbed conditions in Palestine, Justin soon after his conversion traveled to Rome. He

MARCUS AURELIUS AND HIS TIMES

still wore the traditional coarse cloak of the philosopher, whether to give him a philosopher's immunity from inter-' ference or because he regarded himself still as a true philosopher, we cannot know. Antoninus Pius had then become emperor. It was a time of expansion for the new sect, and temporary rest from the sporadic outbursts against it. At the moment, it was the Jews who were regarded as the chief troublemakers in the Empire.

In Rome, although Justin received no regular ordination as a preacher, he became a prominent figure in at least one of the groups that met weekly on the Day of the Sun. With tireless zeal he argued and wrote, winning souls to the faith, disputing with learned pagans and Jews, teaching the ignorant, fighting heretics inside the church as well as enemies outside. He called himself a "disciple of the apostles," a modest claim, for he was a leader of conspicuous talent. The faith had need of just such skilled speakers and writers if it was to make itself heard through the welter of older, more sophisticated religions and philosophies. Justin, so far as is known, was the first trained philosopher to desert his philosophy for Christianity. His appeals, accordingly, were addressed not so much to simple, childlike minds as to persons of education in the upper levels of society. His "First Apology," the ablest and most systematic of the early defenses of the faith, was written especially to interest two other philosophers—the emperor

Antoninus Pius and the emperor-to-be, Marcus Aurelius.

This work is of interest not only as an example of the way a cultivated Christian, a little over a hundred years after Christ's death, could prove by reasoning the truth of his beliefs but also as a picture of life among the group of Christians at Rome in that early time and of the growth of the church and its services. To themselves they still seemed to be living in the afterglow of the ardor of the apostles' day, united closely with one another and sharing wealth and resources as children of their common Lord. Already the liturgy of their

Introduction to Justin Martyr

worship was taking form. In the Sunday assemblies, held wherever a place could be found, after the reading of the Scripture lesson, there followed in order the sermon by the presiding bishop or priest, then the general prayer for all men, the offertory, the presiding member's prayer of thanksgiving, the consecration of the bread and wine, and the communion.

The rites of baptism and the eucharist had already taken on the character of sacraments. By the water of baptism the soul was purified from all past and inherited sin and born anew.

The elements blessed by the consecrating prayer became the blood and flesh of that Jesus who was made flesh, and a food of immortality for the soul.

Later, Justin returned to Asia Minor for a time and established a school of Christian teaching at Ephesus. It was here, presumably, that he wrote his "Dialogue with Trypho the Jew," which contains the account of his own conversion, as well as a long argument based on the Old Testament, to persuade Jewish readers that Christ was their long-anticipated

Messiah. Whether Trypho was a literary creation or an actual Jew with whom Justin held a debate, we do not know. But the dialogue shows his skill in handling an adversary of no mean parts.

When at length, under Marcus Aurelius, Justin returned to Rome things were not going so well for the Christians. The imperial interdict against them was being enforced more stringently. When not put to death they were frequently despoiled of their property. The brief, anonymous account of the trial and death of Justin and several companions, which in this book follows his "Apology," is probably contemporary and authentic.

The version of Justin's writings used here, and the account of his martyrdom, is based on the translation from the Greek in The Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol.

1, which has been revised ill the interests of clarity and readability.

DIALOGUE OF JUSTIN,

THE PHILOSOPHER

AND MARTYR, WITH

TRYPHO, A JEW

/. As I was strolling one morning in the walks of the Xystus, 1 a man in a group with others met me, and said, "Hail, O philosopher!" And so saying, he turned around and walked along with me; his friends likewise followed him. And I in turn said to him, "What is on your mind?"

And he replied, "I was taught by Corinthus of the school of Socrates in Argos that I ought not to despise or look with indifference on those who wear your dress,2 but show them all friendliness, and associate with them, as perhaps some advantage would spring from our intercourse either to them or to myself. It is good for both if either one be benefited. So on this account, whenever I see anyone in your costume, I gladly approach him. And now, for this same reason, I have eagerly accosted you; and these my friends accompany me, in the expectation of hearing something profitable from you."

"But who are you, most excellent of mortal men?" I answered in jest.3

Then he told me frankly both his name and race. "Trypho," said he, "I am called; and I am a Hebrew of the circumcision, and having escaped the recent war there,4 I am spending my days in Greece, chiefly at Corinth."

1 Probably at Ephesus.

2 Justin wore the traditional mantle of trie philosophers.

3 In jest, no doubt, because quoting a line from Homer's Iliad, VI, 123.

4 The Jews of Palestine under the rabbi, Simon Bar Hochba, had attempted another unsuccessful revolt against the Roman rule.

Justin: Dialogue with Trypho a Jew

"And how," said 1, "would you be profited by philosophy so much as by your own lawgiver and your prophets?"

"Why not?" he replied. "Do not the philosophers discourse always on God? Are they not continually discussing questions of his unity and providence? Is not this the duty of philosophy—to investigate the Deity?

"Assuredly," said I, "so we too have believed. But most of them 5 do not consider whether there be one or more gods, and whether they have a regard for each of us or no, as if this knowledge contributed nothing to our happiness; nay, they even attempt to persuade us that God takes care of the universe with its genera and species, but not of me and you and every individual, since otherwise we would surely be praying to Him night and day. And it is not difficult to understand the effect of this attitude; for rash and reckless speaking result from maintaining these opinions; men do and say whatever they choose, neither dreading punishment nor hoping for any benefit from God. For how could they? They say that things will always be the same; and further that you and I will live again as now, having become neither better nor worse. And there are others,6 who do take the soul to be immortal and immaterial, but believe that even though they do evil, they will not suffer punishment, for anything immaterial is insensible to pain, and the soul, because it is immortal, needs nothing from God."

Then he, smiling slightly, said, "Tell us your opinion of these matters, and what is your idea of God, and what your philosophy."

"I will tell you," said I, "how it seems to me. For philos-f ophy is, in fact, a very great possession, and most honorable in the sight of God, to whom it alone leads us and commends us; and those are truly holy men who have given themselves to 5 The Stoics are apparently described here.

6 The PlatonistS:

25O

MARCUS AURELIUS AND HIS TIMES

philosophy. What philosophy is, however, and why it was sent down to men, few have understood; otherwise, there would be neither Platonists, nor Stoics, nor Peripatetics, 7 nor Theoretics,8 nor Pythagoreans, since this knowledge is one.9

"But I will tell you how it became many-headed. It happened that those who first handled it, and who were therefore revered as illustrious, were succeeded by others who themselves made no investigations into truth, but only admired the steadfastness and self-discipline of the older men, as well as the novelty of their doctrines; and each one thought that whatever he learned from his teacher was true. Then these later ones handed down their notions to their successors, and others similar to them; and their system was called by the name of him who they said was the father of their doctrine.

"I at first was eager to talk with one of these men and surrendered myself to a certain Stoic; but after spending considerable time with him, when I had not acquired any further knowledge of God (for he did not know himself, and said such instruction was unnecessary), I left him and betook myself to another, who was called a Peripatetic, and, in his own opinion, a shrewd fellow. After entertaining me for a few days, he proposed to me to settle on a fee, that our intercourse might not be unprofitable. For this reason I abandoned him too, convinced he was no philosopher at all. But since my soul was still eagerly desirous to learn the peculiar excellence of philosophy, I went to a Pythagorean, very celebrated, a man who thought much of his own wisdom. But when, anxious to become his hearer and disciple, I interviewed him, he said, 'How now? Do you know music, astronomy, and geometry? Do you expect to apprehend any of the principles

7 Aristotelians.

8 A name, perhaps, for the Skeptics.

& Julian, Oration, VI, says: "Let no one divide our philosophy into many parts, or cut it into many parts, and especially let him not make many out of one: for as truth is one, so also is philosophy."

Justin: Dialogue with Trypho a Jew

that conduce to a happy life without first being taught those subjects which wean the soul from objects of sense and render it fit for the intellectual, so that it can contemplate that which is honorable and that which is good in their essence?' He then commended to me these branches of learning, and told me they were necessary, but dismissed me when I confessed my ignorance. This disappointment I took rather to heart, as was to be expected, the more because I thought the man had some knowledge; but reflecting again on the time

I would have to spend over those other branches of learning, I could not endure to wait so long. In my desperation it occurred to me to try the Platonists, for their fame stood high. I thereupon spent as much of my time as possible with one who had lately settled in our city, a sagacious man and distinguished among the Platonists, and I progressed and made great improvement daily. I was thrilled by the perception of immaterial things, and the contemplation of ideas lent wings to my mind, so that before long I supposed I had become wise, and in my stupidity, expected forthwith to be seeing God; for this is the aim of Plato's philosophy.

5. "While in this state of mind I wished to steep myself in quietness, and shun the paths of men, and I used to frequent a certain place not far from the sea. But one day when I was near the spot at which I purposed to be alone, an old man of venerable appearance and gentle and serious manner, followed me at a little distance. Then I turned round to him, and halted, fixing my eyes sharply on him.

"And he said, 'Do you know me?'

"I replied that I did not.

" 'Why, then, do you look so at me?'

" 'I am surprised,' I said, 'that you happen to be with me in this place, for I had not expected to see anyone here.'

" 'I am concerned,' he said, 'about some members of my household. They have gone away from me; so I have come

MARCUS AURELIUS AND HIS TIMES

to search for them, on the chance of their appearing somewhere. But why are you here?

" 'I am fond,' I said, 'of walks where my attention is not distracted, and I can converse with myself uninterruptedly.

Such places are best suited for rational thought.'

" 'Are you, then, a student of reason,' said he, 'and not a lover of action or of truth? And do you aim at being not a practical man so much as a sophist?

" 'What greater thing,' said I, 'could one accomplish than disclose the reason which governs all, and having laid hold of it, and being lifted up by it, look down upon the errors and occupations of others? And without philosophy and right reason, no man can possess practical judgment. Wherefore it is necessary for every man to philosophize, and to esteem it the greatest and most honorable occupation, and other things of only second-rate or third-rate importance. If, indeed, they are made to accord with philosophy, they are of some value, and worth our while; but if deprived of it, and unaccompanied by it, they are vulgar and coarsening to those who pursue them.'

"'Does philosophy, then, give happiness?' said he, 'and what is happiness? Do tell me unless you have some reason for not saying.'

" 'Philosophy,' said I, 'is the knowledge of reality and the perception of truth; and happiness is the reward of such knowledge and wisdom.'

" 'And what do you call God?' said he.

" 'That which is always the same in being and in manner of being, and which is the cause of all other things—that, indeed, is God.' So I answered him; and he listened to me with pleasure, and then asked me another question:

" 'Is not wisdom a name applied alike to different things?

For in arts of all kinds, he who has skill in any one of them is called wise—in the art of warfare, or of navigation, or of medicine. But this wisdom does not apply to the divine and the

Justin: Dialogue with Trypho a Jeiv

human. Is there a knowledge which brings understanding of the human and the divine, and then acquaintance with God and his righteousness?

" 'Certainly,' I replied.

" 'What then? Do we know man and God in the same way as we know music, arithmetic, astronomy, or any other science of the sort?

"'Not at all,' I replied.

" 'You have not answered me correctly, then,' he said; 'for knowledge of these latter subjects comes to us from instruction or practice, while of the former we get knowledge by sight. If one were to tell you there exists in India an animal of a nature unlike all others, of such and such a species, varied in form and color, you would not know it without seeing it; neither could you give any account of it, unless you had heard from one who had seen it.'

" 'Certainly not,' I said.

" 'How then,' he said, 'can the philosophers think or say anything true of God, when they have no knowledge of him, having neither seen him at any time, nor heard from anyone who has?

" 'But, father,' said I, 'the Deity cannot be seen merely by the eyes, as other living beings can. He is visible to the mind alone, as Plato says; and I believe him.'

" 'Has then,' said he, 'the mind so keen and so great a power? Or could a man perceive him by the senses sooner?

And can the mind ever see God, if it is not instructed by the Holy Spirit?'

" 'Plato says,' I replied, 'that the mind's eye is of such a nature, and that it has been given us for the end that by that pure eye we may see the very Being who is the cause of all, discerned by the understanding, but having himself no color, no shape, no size—nothing, indeed, which the bodily eye can see. But this very Being, he goes on to say, that is beyond all essence, ineffable and indescribable and alone honorable and

MARCUS AURELIUS AND HIS TIMES

good, comes suddenly into souls ennobled by their kinship with him and longing to see him.'

" 'But what kinship,' replied he, 'have we with God? Is the soul, too, divine and immortal, and a part of that royal mind of which you speak? And even as it sees God, so can we attain to grasp the divine in our minds, and thenceforth become happy?'

" 'Surely,' I said.

" 'And are all the souls of all living things able to comprehend him?' he asked; 'or are the souls of men one kind and the souls of horses and of asses another?'

" 'No; the same souls are in us all,' I answered.

" 'Then,' said he, 'even horses and asses will see God, or have seen him at one time or another?'

" 'No,' I said; 'nor even the majority of mankind, but only such as live justly, purified by righteousness, and every other virtue.'

" 'So it is not,' said he, 'through his kinship that a man sees God, nor because he has mind, but because he is temperate and righteous?'

" 'Yes,' said I; 'and because he has that whereby he can perceive God.'

" 'What then? Do goats or sheep injure anyone?'

" 'No one at all,' I said.

" 'Then by your reasoning these animals will see God,' said he.

" 'No; for the nature of their body is an obstacle to them.'

" 'If these animals could speak,' he retorted, 'you may be sure they would with greater reason ridicule our bodies. But let us now drop this subject, and grant you your point. Yet tell me this. Does the soul see God while it is in the body, or only after it has been liberated from it?'

" 'Even while it is in human form it can,' I said, 'attain that sight through the mind; but above all when it is freed from the

Justin: Dialogue with Trypho a Jew

body and separate by itself does it possess that for which it has always passionately and wholly longed.'

" 'Does it remember this, its vision of God, when it is again in a man?

" 'I do not think so,' I said.

" 'Then what advantage have those who have seen God?

Or what has one who has seen more than one who has not seen, if he remembers not even the fact that he has seen?'

" 'I cannot tell,' I answered.

" 'And what do the souls suffer who are judged unworthy of this vision? ' said he.

" 'They are imprisoned in the bodies of certain wild beasts, and this is their punishment.'

" 'Do they know, then, that is why they are in these bodies, and that they have committed some sin?'

" 'I do not think so.'

" 'Then, apparently, they gain no benefit from their punishment. I should even say that they are not punished if they are not conscious of being punished.'

" 'Indeed, no.'

" 'Then such souls neither see God nor migrate into other bodies; else they would know they were being punished thereby, and would be afraid to commit the most trivial sin afterwards. But that even they can perceive that God exists, and that righteousness and piety are good, I too agree,' said he.

" 'You are right,' I replied.

5. " 'These philosophers, then, know nothing about these matters; for they cannot tell what kind of thing the soul is.'

" 'Evidently not.'

" 'Certainly it ought not to be called immortal; for if it is immortal, it is plainly unbegotten.'

10 The old man proceeds to criticize the Platonic doctrine of the 'transmigration of souls.

MARCUS AURELIUS AND HIS TIMES

" 'It is both unbegotten and immortal, according to some so-called Platonists.'

" 'Do you then say the world too is unbegotten?'

" 'Some say so. I do not myself agree with them.'

" 'You are right. For how can anyone imagine that a body so solid, resistant, composite, changeable, decaying and renewing itself every day, did not start from some cause? But if the world is begotten, it follows inevitably that souls too had a beginning, and perhaps may some time cease to be. For they were made for the sake of men and other living creatures, if you believe they were framed separately and not as parts of their respective bodies.'

" 'I think you are right.'

" 'They are not then immortal?'

" 'No; as long as we call the world begotten.* " 'I do not say, however, that all souls die; for that would be truly a piece of good luck for the bad. What then? The souls of the righteous inhabit a better place, while those of the unjust and wicked are in a worse, awaiting the time of judgment. Thus those who have shown themselves worthy of God die no more; but the others are punished just as long as God wills them to continue existing and being punished.'

" 'Is what you say, then,' said I, 'something like what Plato in the Timaeus suggests about the world, when he calls it mortal, inasmuch as it was once created, but says that through the will of God it will neither be dissolved nor meet the fate of death? Do you think the very same can be said of the soul, and in general of all things? Or is it that the things which came into being after God, or ever will be, have a nature of decay, and as such may be blotted out and cease to be; for God alone is unbegotten and incorruptible. Therefore he is

God, and all other things after him are created and corruptible. Hence it is possible that souls may both die and be punished. But, if they were unbegotten, they would neither sin nor steep themselves in follv, nor be one instant cowardly

Justin: Dialogue with Trypho a Jew

and the next valorous; nor would they of their own will change into swine, and snakes, and dogs. Nor would it be right to put compulsion on them, if they were unbegotten. For whatever is unbegotten is like to, equal to, and the same with the unbegotten; neither in power nor in dignity should one be preferred to the other. So not many things are unbegotten.

And if there were any difference between them, you could not, though you searched for it, discover the cause of the difference; but after sending your mind forever traveling into infinity, you would at length, wearied out, take your stand on the one Unbegotten, and declare it the Cause of all.

But was all this unknown to Plato and Pythagoras, those wise men,' I asked, 'who have been as a wall and fortress of philosophy to us?'

" 'It is nothing to me,' said he, 'whether Plato or Pythagoras or, in fact, any other man held those opinions. For the Truth says this; and you may learn from it. The soul either is or it has life. If it is life, it would make something else, not itself, live, even as motion moves something else besides itself.

Now that the soul lives, no one would deny. But though it lives, it lives not as being itself life, but as a partaker in life; and that which partakes of anything is different from that of which it partakes. Now the soul partakes of life, when God wills it to live. In the same way, it will not partake of life whenever God does not will it to live. For life is not its attribute, as it is God's. A man does not live forever, and as the soul is not forever joined to the body, but when their harmony must be broken, the soul leaves the body and the man is no more; even so, when the soul must cease to be, the spirit of life leaves it, and there is no more soul, but it goes back to the place whence it was taken.'

7. '"But to whom should one go as a teacher?' I asked, 'or where may one find help, if even in the philosophers there is no truth?'

MARCUS AURELIUS AND HIS TIMES

" 'Long ago,' he replied, 'there lived men more ancient than all the so-called philosophers, men righteous and beloved of God, who spoke by the Divine Spirit and foretold things to come, that even now are taking place. These men were called prophets. They alone both saw the truth and proclaimed it to men, without awe or fear of anyone, moved by no desire for glory, but speaking only those things which they saw and heard when filled with the Holy Spirit. Their writings are still with us, and whoever will may read them and, if he believes them, gain much knowledge of the beginning and end of things, and all else a philosopher ought to know. For they did not employ logic to prove their statements, seeing they were witnesses to the truth, and above all proof by logic, and worthy of trust. The things that took place, and that still are taking place, compel us to believe their words. Because, also, of the miracles they performed they are entitled to our belief. They glorified the Creator of all things, as God and Father, and proclaimed the Christ sent by him as his Son, a thing which false prophets, filled with a lying and unclean spirit, never have done nor do yet. Their aim is to work wonders that will astonish men, and glorify the spirits and demons of error. But pray that, before all else, the gates of light may be opened to you. For not everyone can see or understand these things, but only he to whom God and his Christ have granted wisdom.'

8. "After saying this and much more, which there is not time to repeat at present, he went away, bidding me follow his advice; and I saw him no more. But straightway a flame was kindled in my soul, and a desire came over me to know the prophets, and the men who were friends of Christ.

And as I revolved his words in my mind, I decided that this was the only philosophy safe and serviceable. Thus, and for these reasons, I am a philosopher. Furthermore, I wish that everyone would make a resolution like my own, and not keep himself a stranger to the words of the Saviour. For they have

Justin: First Apology

in themselves something of dread majesty, sufficient to inspire with fear those who turn aside from the right way; while the sweetest peace comes to those who diligently observe them.

If then you have any care for yourself and are seriously searching for salvation and believe in God, you may—since you are earnest in the matter—learn to know the Christ of God, be initiated, 11 and live a life of happiness."

THE FIRST APOLOGY

1. To the Emperor, Titus Aelius Hadrian Antoninus Pius Augustus Caesar, and to his son Verissimus the philosopher, and to Lucius the philosopher, natural son of a Caesar and adopted son of Pius, 1 lover of learning, and to the sacred

Senate, and all the Roman people, I, Justin, son of Priscus and grandson of Baccheius, natives of Flavia Neapolis 2 in Palestine, present this address and petition on behalf of persons of every nation who are unjustly hated and wantonly abused, myself being one of them.

2. Men truly pious and philosophical are led by their reasons to honor and love only what is true, and refuse to follow traditional opinions, when they are false. Nor does sound 11 Literally: become perfect. Some scholars take the words to refer to perfection of character, others to initiation by baptism. The term was used of initiation into the pagan mysteries.

1 Justin's First Apology was addressed to the Emperor Antoninus Pius, whose reign extended from 138 to

a.d., and his two adopted sons. The first, called here simply "Verissimus the philosopher," was to succeed Antoninus as the Emperor Marcus Aurelius The young man's family name was Verus, a Latin word meaning "true," The old emperor, Hadrian, seems to have nicknamed him affectionately Verissimus, that is, "most true."

2 This town is also known as Shechem in Samaria.

2<So

MARCUS AURELIUS AND HIS TIMES

reason call on us merely to reject the guidance of those who have done or taught anything wrong, but the lover of truth himself must always, even under threat of death, and regardless of his own life, choose to do and say what is right. I ask you then, who are called pious and philosophers, guardians of justice and lovers of learning, to give good heed and attention to my address. If you are such indeed, it will be made manifest. For we have come, not to flatter you by our words nor to entertain you by our speech, but to beg that after accurate and thorough investigation you pass judgment, refusing to be swayed by prejudice or by desire to please the superstitious, or to be influenced by irrational fears, or the evil rumors that have long been circulated, to give a decision that will prove to be an injury to yourselves. As for us, we are sure no harm can be done us, unless we are proved evildoers or wicked men. For you can kill us, but you cannot harm us.

5. Now lest anyone think this statement unreasonable and rash, we demand that the charges against the Christians be investigated, and, if they are substantiated, that the Christians be punished as they deserve; or rather, we ourselves will punish them. But if no one can prove anything against us, true reason forbids you for the sake of a malicious rumor to wrong blameless men, and yourselves as well, who are willing to govern not by judgment but by passion. Any right-minded person would pronounce this the only fair and just method, namely, that subjects render an honest account of their lives and doctrine; and that rulers, in their turn, give their decision not with violence tyrannically, but piously, by the dictates of philosophy. For thus both rulers and ruled will prosper. One of the ancients somewhere said, "Unless both rulers and ruled are philosophers, states cannot be happy.3 It is our duty, accordingly, to allow everyone an opportunity to inspect our

3 Plato. Republic, V. See Classics Club edition, p. 362.

Justin: First Apology

life and teachings, lest, by keeping people ignorant of our ways, we share the penalty due them for mental blindness. It is your duty, when you hear us, to be, as reason demands, just judges. For if, after learning the truth, you fail to do what is just, you will be without excuse before God.

4. By mere use of a name nothing is decided, either good or evil, unless some action is implied in the name. But so far as one may judge from the name applied to us we are most excellent people.4 But as we think it unfair to ask for acquittal on the ground of our name, if we are proved evil-doers, so, on the other hand, if we are found guiltless of offense in the matter either of the name we bear or of our conduct as citizens, it is for you to take care to preserve yourselves from the punishment justly due to those who unjustly punish innocent men. For a name could not be cause for either praise or punishment, unless it were proof of some excellent or some base act. And among yourselves you do not punish accused persons before they are convicted; but in our case you treat our name alone as proof against us, although, so far as the name goes, you ought rather to punish our accusers. For we are accused of being Christians, yet to hate what is excellent [chrestian] is unjust. Further, if any of those you accuse deny the name and say he is not a Christian, you acquit him, as if you had lost your evidence against him as a wrong-doer; but if anyone confess he is a Christian, you punish him for this confession. Justice requires that you inquire into the life both of the man who confesses and of him who denies, that by his deeds it may be clear what kind of man he is. For as some, taught by our Master Christ not to deny Him, give encouragement to others when they face their trial, so in all probability some who lead wicked lives give excuse to those who 4 Justin avails himself here of the similarity in sound of the Greek words "Christos"

(Christ) and "chrestos"

(good, worthy, excellent).

The play upon these words is kept up throughout this paragraph and cannot always be represented to the English reader.

MARCUS AURELIUS AND HIS TIMES

accuse all Christians indiscriminately of impiety and wickedness. Yet this is not right. For in philosophy too there are men who assume the name and the garb who are all unworthy of their profession. You are well aware that ancients whose opinions and teachings were quite diverse are still all called by the one name of philosophers. Some of these taught atheism; and poets who are famous among you raised a laugh out of the uncleanness of Jupiter with his own children.

Those who now repeat their stories are not restrained by you. On the contrary, you bestow prizes and honors on men who elegantly insult the gods.

5. Why, then, should this be?

In our case, who pledge ourselves not to do evil or to hold these godless beliefs, you do not examine the charges against us, but yield to unreasonable passion and the instigation of evil demons 5 and punish

11s without consideration or judgment. For I shall tell you the truth. Of old time these evil demons, showing themselves in apparitions, defiled women, corrupted boys, and presented such fearful sights to men that all who did not use their reasons to judge those events were struck with terror; and overcome by their fear, not knowing that they were devils, they called them gods, and gave to each one the name he chose for himself.6 And when Socrates endeavored, by true reason and inquiry, to bring these facts to light and deliver men from the rule of demons, then the demons, through the agency of men who loved iniquity, compassed his death as an atheist and profane person, on the charge that "he was introducing new divinities." In our case they are showing themselves equally active. But both among the Greeks did reason prevail to con5 The word daemon means in Greek a divinity, but the Christians used the word to signify an evil spirit. Justin uses the same word here for god and demon. The connection which Justin and other Christian writers supposed to exist between evil spirits and the gods of the heathens will be apparent from Justin's own statements.

6 Milton has a similar idea of the origin of pagan mythology. See Paradise Lost, I, 378. Classics Club edition, p. 103.

Justin: First Apology

demn these things through Socrates, and again, among the barbarians were they condemned by Reason itself, the Word, who took shape and became man and was called Jesus Christ.

In obedience to Him, we deny that the doers of such evil things are gods, and pronounce them wicked and impious demons, whose acts will not bear comparison with those of virtuous men.

6. Hence we are called atheists. And we confess we are atheists so far as gods of this sort are concerned, but not with regard to the most true God, the Father of righteousness and temperance and the other virtues, who is free of all impurity.

But both Him, and the Son who came forth from Him and taught these things to us and to the host of good angels who follow and are made like to Him, and the prophetic Spirit we worship and adore, knowing them in reason and in truth, and declaring what we have been taught, without grudging, to everyone who wishes to learn.

7. But someone will say: "Some Christians have already been arrested and convicted of wrong-doing." Yet usually when you are trying a group, you investigate the life of each of the accused separately; but you do not so treat those of whom we are speaking. And this is our contention, that even as among the Greeks the teachers of every sort of theory are called by the one name "philosopher," though their doctrines are widely different, so also among the barbarians this name which is the object of accusation is given both to those who are and those who only seem to be enlightened. For they are all called Christians. Wherefore we demand that the deeds of every one who is accused be judged, so that whoever is convicted of crime may be punished as a criminal, but not as a Christian; and whoever is clearly blameless may be acquitted, since by the mere act of being a Christian he does no harm.

We will not ask you to punish our accusers, they being sufficiently punished by their present wickedness and ignorance of the good.

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8. Believe that it is for your sakes we say these things; for it is in our power, when questioned, to deny we are Christians; but we would not live by telling a lie. For impelled by love of the eternal and pure life, we seek the abode that is with God, the Father and Creator of all, and are eager to confess our faith, persuaded and sure as we are that all who prove to God by their works that they follow Him and long to abide with Him, where there is no more sin to trouble them, can obtain it. This, in brief, is what we expect and have learned from Christ and do teach. Plato likewise said that Rhadamanthus and Minos would punish the wicked who came before them.7 We say that Christ will do the same to the wicked, who will wear the same bodies as now, reunited to their spirits; and that they will then undergo everlasting punishment, not only, as Plato said, for a period of a thousand years. And if anyone call this an incredible or impossible belief, our error is one which concerns ourselves only and no one else, so long as you cannot convict us of any harmful act. p. We do not honor with sacrifices and garlands of flowers the deities men have framed and set in shrines and called gods, for we see they are soulless and dead, and have not the form of God; and we do not consider God has a form such as they say they imitate in His honor. These have the names and the forms of the wicked demons which in the past appeared to men. Why need we tell you, who know already, in what forms the craftsmen carve and cut, cast and hammer and fashion their materials? They often take vessels of dishonor, and by merely changing the form and making an image of the requisite shape, make out of them what they call a god; which we consider not only senseless, but actually insulting to the God of ineffable glory and form, whose name is thus attached to things corruptible, in need of constant care. The makers of 7 See Plato's Apology, and Republic, X, Classics Club edition, pp. 59,

488.

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these objects are intemperate men, practiced generally m every vice, as you well know; they even corrupt their own girls, who work along with them. What folly, that dissolute men should be set to fashion and make gods for your worship, and that you should appoint such men the guardians of the temples where they are enshrined, not realizing that it is sin to think or say that men are guardians of gods.

10. But we have heard from of old that God does not need the material offerings which men can give, since He Himself is the provider of all things. And we have been taught, and are convinced, and do believe, that He accepts only those who imitate the excellences that reside in Him, His temperance, justice, and loving kindness, and all the virtues that belong to a God who is called by no given name. We have also been taught that He in the beginning did of His goodness, for man's sake, create all things out of formless matter. And if men by their works show themselves worthy of His purpose, He accepts them, we are told, as worthy of reigning with Him, delivered from corruption and pain. For as in the beginning

He created us when we were not, so also, we believe, He holds those who choose what is pleasing to Him, on account of their choice, worthy of incorruption and fellowship with Him Our coming into being at first was not in our own power; and in order that we may follow the things that please

Him, He does Himself endow us with rational faculties to choose, and persuades and leads us to faith. We think it to all men's advantage not to be hindered from learning these things, but rather to be urged thereto. And the hindrance which human laws might effect, the Word, who is divine, would have prevented, had not the wicked demons, taking as their ally the lust of wickedness which is in every man and leads him variously to all manner of vice, spread many false and profane and irrelevant accusations against us.

//. When you hear that we look for a kingdom, you assume without further inquiry, that we speak of a human

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kingdom; whereas we speak of one that is divine. This is shown by the confession of faith made by persons charged with being Christians, when they know death is the punishment inflicted on one who confesses. For if we were looking for a human kingdom, we would deny our Christ, to keep from being slain, and would strive to escape detection, to win what we expect. But our thoughts are not fixed on the present, and therefore it matters not when men put us to death, since death is a debt which we must in any case pay.

12. More than all other men indeed we are your helpers and allies in promoting peace, seeing we hold it impossible for either the wicked or the covetous or the conspirator or the virtuous man to escape the notice of God, and are sure that each man goes to everlasting punishment or to salvation according to the merit of his deeds. And if all men knew this, no one would choose wickedness even in little things, knowing he would go to an everlasting punishment of fire; but he would do his utmost to govern himself and adorn himself with virtue, that he might obtain the good gifts of God and escape punishment. For those persons who, in fear of your laws and punishments, try when they have offended to escape detection, offend in the belief that they can escape detection, since you are but men; but if they had been taught and were convinced that no crime, whether actually committed or only intended, could escape the knowledge of God, they would then live uprightly for fear of his threatened penalties, as you yourselves will admit. But you seem to fear that if all men become righteous, you will no longer have anyone to punish.

Such might be the anxiety of public executioners, but not of benevolent princes. As we said before, we are persuaded that our persecution is prompted by evil spirits, who extort sacrifices and service from the unreasoning. But you who strive for piety and philosophy will, we trust, do nothing against reason.

However, if, like the foolish, you prefer popular notions to truth, do what you have power to do. But the power of rulers

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who value common opinion more than truth is like that of robbers in the desert. That you will not really succeed is declared by the Word, who of all rulers after God who begat

Him we know is most kingly and just. And even as all men, following their fathers' advice, seek to avoid poverty and suffering and obscurity, so no good man will choose what the Word forbids us. That all these things should come to pass, our teacher, I say, foretold, He who is both Son and messenger of God, the all Father, and our King, Jesus Christ, from whom we take our name of Christians. For this reason too we grow more and more assured of the truth of the things He taught us, since all that He foretold beforehand should come to pass, is actually coming to pass. And this is the work of a god, to tell of a thing before it happens, and to show it happening as it was foretold. We might stop here and add no more, convinced that we are asking of you only what is just and true. But we know it is not easy suddenly to change a mind possessed by ignorance. We propose therefore to continue a little further, in hope of persuading those who love truth, for we believe it possible to dispel ignorance by presenting the truth.

13. What fair-minded man, then, will not admit that we are no atheists, worshiping as we do the Maker of this universe, and declaring, as we have been taught, that He is beyond need of blood and libations and incense. To the utmost of our power we praise Him by services of prayer and thanksgiving for all things wherewith we are supplied. For we are taught that the way to honor Him worthily is not to destroy by fire what He has framed for our sustenance, but to use it for ourselves and those who need, and to offer Him thankful prayers and hymns in gratitude 8 for our creation, and for all the means of health, and for the varied qualities of the dif8 The hymns of this period were either psalms of David, or the psalms and songs composed by primitive Christians, which are mentioned by early writers.

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ferent species of things, and the changes of the seasons, and to present to Him our petitions for a second and incorruptible life through faith in Him. Our teacher in these matters is Jesus Christ, who was born for this end, and was crucified under Pontius Pilate, procurator of Judaea, in the time of Tiberius Caesar. That we do right to worship Him, accepting

Him as the Son of the true God, and holding Him in the second place, and the prophetic Spirit in the third, we will now prove. For our accusers call us mad in that we give to a crucified man a place second to the unchangeable and eternal God, the Creator of all. They fail to perceive the mystery hidden in Him, to which, as we explain it to you, we pray you pay heed.

14. We warn you first to be on your guard, lest the demons whom we have been accusing deceive you and divert you from reading and understanding what we say. For they strive to keep you their slaves and servants; and sometimes by apparitions in dreams, or again by cheating magic, they prevail over those who make no great struggle for their own salvation. So we, since our conversion by the Word, keep away from demons, and follow the only unbegotten God through His Son. We who once enjoyed the pleasures of lust now embrace chastity. We who once resorted to magical arts, now dedicate ourselves to the good and unbegotten God. We who prized above all else the acquisition of wealth and possessions, now bring what we have into the common stock, and share with everyone in need.9 We who hated and destroyed one another, and, because their manners were strange, would not live with men of a different race, now since Christ has come, live familiarly with them and pray for our enemies. And our endeavor is to persuade those who hate us unjustly to live themselves by the good precepts of Christ, that they too may become partakers with us of the same joyful hope of reward

9 The church was still practicing the primitive communism of the days of the apostles.

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from God, the ruler of us all. But we would not seem to be arguing as the sophists do. We wish, instead, before giving you the promised explanation, to cite a few of the precepts of Christ Himself. It is for you, powerful rulers, to inquire whether we truly are taught and do teach these things. Brief and concise were the utterances of his lips, for He was no sophist; but his word was the power of God.

;j, 16.

{Justin quotes from Christ's teachings on the duty of chastity, brotherly love, trust in God, patience, honesty.)

. And let those who are found not living as He taught be recognized as no Christians, even though they profess with their lips the precepts of Christ; for not those who make a profession, but those who do the works, shall be saved, according to His word: "Not everyone who saith to me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven, but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven." 10

77. Everywhere we are more ready than anyone else to pay your collectors the taxes both ordinary and extraordinary,11 as we are taught by him to do. For men once came to him and asked if they ought to pay tribute to Caesar; and he answered, "Tell me, whose image does the coin bear?" And they said, "Caesar's." And He replied, "Render therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's." 12 Wherefore to God alone we render worship, but in other things we gladly serve you, acknowledging you as kings and rulers of men, and praying that with your kingly power you may possess also sound judgment. But if you ignore our prayers and sincere explanations, the loss will not be ours, since we believe (or, rather, are persuaded) that everyone will suffer punishment in eternal fire according as his deeds deserve it, and will render account of the power he once

10 Matthew, vii, 21.

11 The former is the annual tribute; the latter, any occasional assessment.

12 Matthew, xxii, 17, 20, 21.

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received from God; as Christ implied when He said, "To whom God has given more, of him shall more be required."

1Si 18. Reflect on the end of the kings who came before you, how they died the death common to all men. If that meant only a cessation of consciousness, it would be a boon to the wicked. But since consciousness survives in all who have ever lived, and for some an eternal punishment is laid up, see that you refuse not to be convinced, and believe that what we say here is true. Even your necromancy, and the divinations you practice with immaculate children,14 and your evokings of departed souls,15 and of those whom the magi call Dreamsenders and Familiars, 16 and other performances of experts in such matters show you that after death souls are in a state of sensation. There are men seized and wrenched about by spirits of the dead, whom we call demoniacs or madmen; 17 there are what you consider the oracles of Amphilochus, Dodona, and Pytho, and others. There are the opinions of your authors,

Empedocles, Pythagoras, Plato and Socrates, and the pit of Homer, 18 and the descent of Odysseus to inspect the world

13 Luke, xii, 48. Justin quotes his Scripture mostly, apparently, from memory, so that his wording of a passage often differs from that recorded in our Bible text.

14 In some of the obscurer pagan sects, it was said, boys and girls, and even children prematurely taken from the womb, were slaughtered, and their entrails inspected, in the belief that the souls of the victims, being still conscious, would reveal things hidden and future.

15 A form of spirit-rapping was familiar to the ancients.

16 The so-called magi had a kind of familiar spirit who was sent to inspire men with dreams which might give them intimations of the future.

17 Justin is not the only author in ancient or recent times who classed demoniacs and madmen together; neither does he stand alone among the ancients in the opinion that demoniacs were possessed by the spirits of the departed.

18 The philosophers Empedocles and Pythagoras had taught the transmigration of souls. For references to Plato's doctrine of the after-life, see above, p. 264, n.

7. Homer's Odyssey, Book XI, tells of Odysseus' visit to the house of Hades.

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of the dead, and whatever else has been written of the sort.

The approval you bestow on these authors, bestow also on us, who believe in God not less but even more firmly than they; for we expect to receive our own bodies again though they be dead and cast into the earth, for we declare that with God nothing is impossible.

19. Would anything appear more incredible to any thoughtful mind than if, before we were ever given bodies, someone were to say that from a small drop of human seed bones and sinews and flesh would be formed into the shapes we now see? Let us now suppose this situation: that you yourselves were not what you now are, born of your parents, and that someone showed you human seed and a picture of a man, and asserted positively that from such a substance such a being could be produced. Would you believe without witnessing the actual production? No one will deny that such a statement would have seemed unbelievable. In the same way, you are now incredulous because you have never seen a dead man rise again. But as in the previous instance, you would not have believed it possible that creatures of such size could be produced from a small drop, yet you now see they are thus produced, so also admit it is not impossible that the bodies of men, after being dissolved and like seeds turned again into earth, should in God's appointed time rise again and put on incorruption. What conception they have of divine power who say that everything returns to its source, and that not even God Himself can do anything differently we cannot imagine. This much we see plainly, that they would not have believed they could become what they are out of the materials from which they now see they and the whole world are derived. And we have learned it is better to believe even what is beyond the power of our natures and of any man than to be unbelieving like the rest of the world. For we know what our Master Jesus Christ said, that "what is impossible with

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men is possible with God," 19 and "Fear not them that kill you, and after that can do no more; but fear Him who after death is able to cast both soul and body into hell." 20 Hell is the place where those are punished who have lived wickedly, and who do not believe in the certainty of the things which God has taught us by Christ.

20. Both the Sibyl and Hystaspes 21 say there will come a destruction by God of things corruptible. And the philosophers called Stoics teach that even God Himself shall be dissolved in fire. They say too that the world will be remade after this revolution. But we know that God, the Creator of all things, is superior to the things that change. Since, however, on some points we teach the same things as do the poets and philosophers whom you honor, and on other points are fuller and more divine in our teaching, and since we alone can prove our assertions, why are we unjustly hated more than the rest? When we say that all things were formed and arranged in a world by God, we are repeating the doctrine of Plato; and when we say that all will end in fire, we are repeating the doctrine of the Stoics. And when we say that the souls of the wicked after death are punished, and those of the good are delivered from punishment and live in blessedness, we are saying the same things as the poets and philosophers. And when we declare that men should not worship the works of their own hands, we are saying the very things that were said by the comic poet Menander and other writers like him, for they too insisted that the workman was greater than his work.

21. When we say also that the Word, who is the first-born of God, was produced without sexual union, and that He,

Jesus Christ, orx teacher, was crucified, died, rose again, and 19 Matthew, xix, 26.

20 Matthew, x, 28.

21 The so-called Sibylline oracles and the prophecies of Hystaspes were collections of veiled and mysterious predictions of the future that were taken seriously at this time by many Christians as well as pagans.

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ascended into heaven, we are propounding nothing different from what you believe regarding those you call sons of Zeus.

You know how many sons your esteemed writers ascribe to Zeus: Hermes, the interpreting word and teacher of all; Aesculapius, the great physician, who was struck by a thunderbolt, and so ascended to heaven; Bacchus, who did the same on being torn limb from limb; Hercules, who threw himself into the flames to escape his sufferings; the sons of Leda, the Dioscuri; Perseus, son of Danae; and Bellerophon, who, though sprung from mortals, soared to heaven on the horse

Pegasus. What too is to be said of Ariadne and those other mere mortals, who you declare are elevated to the stars? And what of the emperors who die among you, whom you deem worthy of deification, and in whose behalf you produce some fellow who swears he saw the burning Caesar rise to heaven from his funeral pyre? As to what kind of deeds are recorded of these reputed sons of Zeus, it is needless to inform you who already know. This only we shall say, that they are recorded for the corruption and pollution of young scholars, who all reckon it honorable to imitate the gods. Far be it from every decent soul to have such ideas of the gods as to fancy that Zeus, the governor and creator of all things, was himself a parricide and the son of a parricide, and that overcome by love of base and shameful pleasures, he went to Ganymede and the many women whom he violated, and that his sons committed like acts. As we said above, wicked devils perpetrated these things. We know that only those who have lived near to God in holiness and virtue are deified; and we believe that those who live wickedly and do not repent are punished in everlasting fire.

22. Now the Son of God called Jesus, even if only a man of ordinary generation, yet on account of His wisdom is worthy to be called a Son of God; and all writers call God the Father of men and gods. And if we maintain that as Word of God he was born of God in a peculiar manner, different

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from ordinary generation, let this, as we said above, seem no strange thing to you, who call Hermes the angelic word of God. And if anyone objects to His crucifixion, in this also He is on a par with your reputed sons of Zeus, who suffered as we have just described. Their sufferings at death were by the records not all alike, but different; so that not by any peculiarity of His sufferings is He inferior to them. On the contrary, we will prove Him superior, as we promised earlier in our discourse. Indeed, we have already proved Him so, for the superior is revealed by His acts. And if we declare Him born of a virgin, accept this along with what you accept of Perseus. And even when we say He healed the lame, the paralytic, and men born blind, we are attributing to Him deeds very similar to those said to have been performed by Aesculapius.

25. So, to make our doctrine all plain to you, we shall now proceed to show, first, that what we tell you has been taught us by Christ and the prophets who preceded Him as the only truth, that it is older than all the writers who ever were, and that we claim your sanction not because we say the things your writers said, but because we say what is true; secondly, that Jesus Christ is the only genuine Son begotten by God, being His Word first-begotten, and His power, and that He became man according to God's will, and taught us these things for the conversion and salvation of the human race; thirdly, that before He became a man among men, there were persons taught by the demons before mentioned, who described in forms of poetry the events of His coming as if they had already happened. And having fictitiously devised them, they narrated them in the same style in which they are now fabricating the scandalous reports against us of infamous and sacrilegious deeds of which they have neither witness nor proof.

24. In the first place, then, observe that although we say things like what the Greeks say, we alone are hated for the

Justin: First Apology

name of Christ, and though we do no wrong, we are put to death as sinners. But other men in other places worship trees and rivers, mice, cats and crocodiles, and other irrational animals. Nor are the same animals reverenced everywhere, but in one place one is worshiped, and in another another, so that all are profane in someone's judgment, because they do not worship the same creatures. Yet this is the sole accusation you bring against us, that we do not reverence the same gods as you do, nor offer libations and the odor of fat to the dead, and crowns for their statues, and sacrifices. But you very well know that the same animals that are treated as gods by some are treated by others as wild beasts and by others as sacrificial victims.

2$. But we, who, gathered as we are out of every race of men, used once to worship Bacchus, son of Semele, and Apollo, son of Latona (who in their loves with men did things shameful even to mention), and Proserpine and Aphrodite

(who went mad with love of Adonis, and whose mysteries also you celebrate), and Aesculapius, and many another of those you call gods—have now, through Jesus Christ, learned to despise them, even though threatened with death for it, and have dedicated ourselves to the unbegotten and untouchable

God. Of Him we knew that never was He goaded by lust for Antiope and other women like her, or for Ganymede, nor was He ever rescued by that hundred-handed giant whose aid was obtained through Thetis, nor did He on that account consent that her son Achilles should destroy a host of Greeks for the sake of his concubine Briseis.22 We pity all who believe such things, and those who invented them we know to be devils.

26.

Lately, since Christ's ascension into heaven, the devils have put forward certain men who said they were gods; and 22 For the story of Zeus' debt to Thetis and his approval of Achilles' anger against the Greeks, see Homer, Iliad,

I. Classics Club edition, pp. 18-19.

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they were not only not persecuted by you, but even rewarded with honors. There was a Samaritan, Simon, a native of the village called Gitto, who in the reign of Claudius Caesar, and in your royal city of Rome, did mighty acts of magic, by virtue of the art of the devils working in him. He was accepted as a god, and as a god honored by you with a statue erected on the river Tiber, between the two bridges.

It bears this inscription in the Roman tongue:

Simoni Deo Sancto 23 (To Simon, the holy god) Almost all the Samaritans and a few even of other nations worship and revere him as first god; and a woman, Helena, who went about with him at that time and had formerly been a prostitute, they say was the first idea generated by him. A man, Meander, also a Samaritan, of the town Capparetaea, a disciple of Simon and inspired by the devils, deceived many, we know, in Antioch by his magical art. He persuaded his disciples that they would never die; even now there are some living who believe this. There is Marcion,24 too, a man of Pontus, who is still alive, and teaching his disciples to believe in some other god greater than the Creator. With the devils' aid he has caused many from every nation to speak blasphemies, and to deny that God is the maker of this universe, and to assert that some other being, greater than He, has done more marvelous works. All who take their beliefs from these

23 In the year 1574 a marble fragment was dug up on the island of the Tiber, bearing the inscription "Semoni Sanco Deo."

It was probably part of the base of a statue erected to an ancient Sabine deity, Semo

Sancus. Justin seems to have taken this dedication to an old, provincial Latin god for one to a certain notorious Simon of Samaria who had appeared in Rome in the previous century. Later Christians identified Justin's Simon with the sorcerer Simon whom the apostles encountered in Samaria, as related in Acts, viii, 9-24. Thus grew up the famous legend of Simon Magus at Rome.

24 Marcion was a leader of a so-called heretical sect that attracted a good many followers in the second century.

Justin: First Apology 2jj men, are, as we said earlier, called Christians; just as those who teach doctrines different from those of the philosophers are yet called like them by the name of philosophers. Whether they do indeed perpetrate those rumored, shameless deeds— the upsetting of the lamp, promiscuous intercourse, eating human flesh—we know not; but we do know that they are neither persecuted nor put to death by you, not, at least, for their opinions.

I have written a treatise 25 against all the heresies that have so far arisen, which if you wish to read, I will give it you.

27. As for us, we are taught that even to expose newlyborn children is a wicked act.26 We are taught this because we must do no one an injury, and also because we must not sin against God, for we see that almost all so exposed, not only the girls, but also the boys, are brought up to prostitution. And as the ancients are said to have reared herds of oxen, or goats, or sheep, or grazing horses, so now we see you rear children for this shameful use. A multitude of women and hermaphrodites and unmentionable perverts exists for this vile purpose in every nation. And you receive the price of their hire and dues and taxes from them, whom you ought to exterminate from your realm.

28. But among us the prince of the wicked spirits is called the serpent, Satan, and the Devil, as you may learn by looking into our writings. And Christ has foretold that he will be sent into the fire with his host and the men who follow him, and they will all be punished forever. The reason why God has delayed to do this is His regard for the human race. For He foreknows that some will yet be saved by repentance, even some perhaps not yet born. He made the human race in 25 This treatise has been lost.

26 By ancient Roman law any father had the right to order the exposure of any child of his born sickly or weak or whom he did not wish to bring up. Children so exposed might be left to die or be picked up and raised by anyone who happened to come across them.

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the beginning with the power of thought and of choosing truth and doing right, so that men are all without excuse before God; for they are born rational and capable of seeing.

Whoever doubts that God cares for such things does thereby imply either that God does not exist, or that though He exists

He is pleased with vice, or else is as unfeeling as a stone, and that neither virtue nor vice are anything in themselves, but only in the opinions of men are reckoned as good or evil. But this is the greatest blasphemy and wickedness.

29.

{Justin says more of the continence of Christians.) 30. Someone may now raise the question: Why is not He whom we call Christ a man born of men, who performed what we call His mighty works by magical art, and thus made

Himself the Son of God? Accordingly, we will now present our proofs; for we rely not on mere assertions, but are ourselves compelled to believe by the prophecies of those who foretold these things before they came to pass. And with our own eyes we behold the things that have happened and are now happening just as they were predicted. This will, we think, appear even to you as strong and convincing evidence.

5/. There were then among the Jews certain men who were prophets of God, through whom the prophetic Spirit announced beforehand things that would come to pass, ere ever they happened. Their prophecies, as they were spoken and at the time they were uttered, were carefully preserved and kept by the kings who happened then to be reigning among the Jews, after the prophets themselves had arranged them in books in their own Hebrew language. Then when

Ptolemy, king of Egypt, was collecting his library and endeavoring to include every man's writings in it, he heard of these prophets and sent to Herod, who was at that time king of the Jews,27 requesting that the books of the prophets be

27 This is a bad blunder in chronology. The translation of the Old Testament books into Greek, commonly known as the Septuagint, was made, according to the commonly accepted story, at the request of

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sent him. And Herod the king sent them, written as they were in the aforesaid Hebrew language. And when their contents proved to be unintelligible to the Egyptians, Ptolemy sent again and requested that men be commissioned to translate them into the Greek language. When this was done, the books remained with the Egyptians, where they are to this day. All the Jews also throughout the world have them; but they, though they read, do not understand what is said, but count us their foes and enemies. Like yourselves, they kill and torment us whenever they have the power, as you can well believe. In the late Jewish war Bar Hochba, the leader of the Jewish rebels, gave orders that Christians should be singled out and cruelly punished, unless they would deny and blaspheme Jesus Christ. But in the books of their prophets we find Jesus our Christ foretold as coming, born of a virgin, growing up to man's estate, healing every disease and every sickness, raising the dead, being hated, unrecognized, crucified, dying, rising again, and ascending into heaven, being and being called the Son of God. We find it also predicted that apostles would be sent by Him into every nation to proclaim these tidings, and that among the Gentiles more than among the Jews men would believe on Him. He was predicted first 5,000 years before He appeared and again 3,000 years before, then 2,000, then 1,000, and again 800; for as the generations succeeded one another, prophet after prophet arose.

32-38.

{Justin quotes at length passages from the Psalms and the prophets of the Old Testament that seem to predict

Christ's coming, his birth , and his sufferings.) 39. When the Spirit of prophecy speaks predicting things that are to come to pass, He speaks in this way: "For out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Ptolemy Philadelphus, king of Egypt from 284 to 247 b.c. Herod was king of Judea at the time of Christ's birth. It was Eleazar, the Jewish high priest, to whom Ptolemy applied.

28o

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Jerusalem. And He shall judge among the nations, and shall rebuke many people; and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning-hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more." 28 And we can show you that it did so come to pass. For from Jerusalem there went out into the world men, twelve in number, without education, of no ability in speaking; but in the power of God they proclaimed to every race of men that they were sent by Christ to teach them all God's word. So now we who formerly used to murder one another refrain from war even against our enemies, and, to avoid lying or deceiving our examiners, are willing to die confessing Christ. For we too might quote the saying, "The tongue has sworn, but the mind is unsworn." M But if the soldiers enrolled by you, who have taken the military oath, prefer faithfulness to their oath to life, parents, country, and all their kindred, even though you can offer them nothing incorruptible, it would be truly absurd if we, who long earnestly for incorruption, should not endure all things to obtain our desire from Him who is able to grant it.

40-42.

{Prophecies in the Psalms of Christ's coming, deathy and ultimate triumph.) 43. But some may infer from what we say that we teach that whatever happens, happens by fixed necessity, because it is known beforehand and foretold. This too then we must explain. We have learned from the prophets and hold it true, that punishments, chastisements, and rewards, are rendered to each man according to the merit of his acts. But if this is wrong, and all things happen by fate, then nothing at all lief in our own power. For if it is fated that this man, for instance, will be good, and this other evil, neither is the former meritorious nor the latter blameworthy. Hence, unless mankind has the power of avoiding evil and choosing good by free choice,

28 Isaiah, ii, 3, 4.

29 Euripides, Hippolytus, 608.

Justin: First Apology

it is not accountable for its acts, of whatever sort thev be.

But we can show that it is by their free choice that men both walk uprightly and stumble. We see the same man changing from one course of life to its opposite. Now, if it had been fated that he would be either good or bad, he could never have been capable of both opposites nor of his various transitions. There would not even be good men and bad men, since we would be making fate the cause of evil, and have her too acting in opposition to herself. Or else what we said before would be true, that neither virtue nor vice is really anything, but things are only reckoned good or evil by our opinions; which, as the true Word shows, is the worst blasphemy and wickedness. But this we do say is inevitable fate, that those who choose goodness receive a worthy reward, and those who choose the opposite get what they deserve. For God did not make man like other things, such as trees and four-footed beasts, which cannot act by choice; nor would man be worthy of reward or praise, if he did not of himself choose the good but were forced to do it. Nor, if he were evil, would he deserve punishment, if he were not evil of his own will but only able to do what he was made to do.

44. The holy Spirit of prophecy taught us this, telling us by Moses that God spoke thus to the man first created: "Behold, before thy face are good and evil: choose the good." 30

. So Plato, when he says, "The blame is his who chooses, and God is blameless," 31 took this from the prophet

Moses and uttered it. For Moses is older than all the Greek writers. And whenever their philosophers and poets spoke of the immortality of the soul, or punishment after death, or contemplation of things heavenly, or other doctrines of the kind, they had taken suggestions from the prophets to enable them to understand and interpret these things. Thus the seeds of truth are found among all men; but they are blameable f01

30 Deuteronomy, xxx, 19.

31 Plato, Republic, X

MARCUS AURELIUS AND HIS TIMES

misrepresentation of the truth when they assert contradictories. When too we say that future events are foretold, we do not mean that they came about by fatal necessity. But God, who foreknows all that everyone will do, and by whose decree the future actions of men will be recompensed according to their deserts, foretells by the Spirit of prophecy that He will bestow these meet rewards according to the merit of the act done, always urging mankind to effort and remembrance, and showing that He cares and provides for men.

4$.

{Other prophecies from the Psalms of Christ's final triumph.) 46. Now some, without reason and for the perversion of what we teach, may repeat what we say, that Christ was born one hundred and fifty years ago under Cyrenius, and subsequently, in the time of Pontius Pilate, taught what He taught.

They then may accuse us of imagining that all persons born before Him must have been irresponsible. Let us therefore anticipate and solve the difficulty. We are taught that Christ is the first-born of God, and we have told you already that He is the Word of whom every race of men partakes; and that those who lived by their reasons were Christians, even though they might be called atheists. Such men among the Greeks were Socrates and Heraclitus, and others like them; and among the barbarians, Abraham, Ananias, Azarius, Misael,

Elias,32 and many others whose actions and names we refuse to recount, because we know it would be tedious. In the same way, those who lived before Christ without reason were wicked and hostile to Christ, and they slew those who lived by reason. Then who He was, who through the power of 32 These five last are all heroes of the Old Testament. The first, Abraham, left his father's house for a strange land where he could worship the true God. Genesis, xii. The next three were the companions of the young prophet Daniel, who for refusing to worship the God of the king of Babylon were cast into a fiery furnace. Daniel, i, 6, 7; iii. The great deeds of the prophet Elias or Elijah, are told in I Kings, xvii-xxi and II Kings, i, ii.

Justin: First Apology

the Word, by the will of God the Father and Lord of all, was born as a man of a virgin, was named Jesus, was crucified, died and rose again, and ascended into heaven, any person of intelligence will understand from what we have already said at length. And since more proof of this point is not needed now, we will pass for the present to the proof of other things urgent.

47-51.

{Justin cites passages from the prophets Isaiah and Daniel that foretell the work and death of Christ, his rejection by the Jews, and the desolation of their land by the Romans.)

52. Since then we can show that all that has already happened was predicted by the prophets before it occurred, we must believe too that the other things they predicted, that have not yet come to pass, will certainly happen. And as the things already past took place as foretold without anyone realizing it, so shall future things, even though unrecognized and disbelieved, still come to pass. Now the prophets have proclaimed two advents of His; the first, which is already past, when He came as a dishonored and suffering man; the second, when, according to their prophecy, He shall come from heaven with glory, accompanied by His angelic host, when also He shall raise the bodies of all who have ever lived, and clothe those of the worthy with immortality, and send those of the wicked, endued with eternal consciousness, into everlasting fire with the wicked devils.

55. We could cite many other prophecies, but we forbear, judging these sufficient for the persuasion of those who have ears to hear and understand; considering also that they can now see we do not make assertions for which we cannot offer proof, like the fables that are told of the so-called sons of Zeus. For why should we believe that a crucified man is the first-born of the unbegotten God and that He will pass judgment on the whole human race, unless we had testimonies concerning Him, published before He came and was born as a man, and unless we saw other things happening as pre-

MARCUS AURELIUS AND HIS TIMES

dieted—the land of the Jews laid waste, and men of every race persuaded by His teaching through the apostles, and casting off their old habits, in which they had lived in blindness?

Yea, we see ourselves as well, and know that Christians from the Gentiles are both more numerous and more faithful than those from the Jews and Samaritans. All other races of men are called Gentiles by the Spirit of prophecy; but the Jewish and Samaritan races are called the tribe of Israel, and the house of Jacob. And we can quote the prophecy in which it was predicted that there should be more believers from the Gentiles than from the Jews and Samaritans. It runs thus: "Rejoice, O barren, thou that does not bear; break forth and shout, thou that dost not travail, because many more are the children of the desolate than of her that hath an husband." 33

And the Gentiles were "desolate" of the true God and served the works of their hands; but the Jews and Samaritans, who had the word of God delivered to them by the prophets and were always expecting the Christ, did not recognize Him when He came, except for a few, of whom the Spirit of prophecy by Isaiah had predicted that they should be saved.

$4. {The devils tried to delude the Gentiles by ascribing wonderful deeds to the sons of Zeus.) jj. But never, not with any of the so-called sons of Zeus, did they imitate the crucifixion; for it was not understood by them, all the prophetic references to it having been made symbolically. But the cross, as the prophet foretold, is the greatest symbol of His power and rule; as is proved even by things within our own observation. For consider everything in the world, whether without this shape they could be utilized or even hold together. Men do not cross the sea until that which they call a sail is supported secure in the ship; the earth is not plowed without it, and laborers and mechanics cannot

33 Isaiah, liv, 1.

Justin: First Apology

work, except with tools that have this shape. The human form differs from that of irrational animals only in standing erect, with outstretched hands. It has also on the face, extending from the forehead, what we call the nose, through which breath comes to the living creature; and the form it makes is that of a cross. So the prophet said, "The breath before our face is the Lord Christ." 34 The power of this form you show by the symbols on your banners and trophies, with which all your state possessions are marked. You use these as the insignia of power and government, even though you do so unwittingly. And with this form you consecrate the images of your emperors when they die and you name them gods by inscriptions. Since then we have tried to convince you to the utmost of our ability, both by our reasoning and by the evidence of a form, we know we are blameless, even though you disbelieve; our part is done and accomplished.

56-58.

(Justine refers again to the heresies instigated by the devils).

. For they who are called devils labor continually to entice men away from the God who made them, and from Christ His first-begotten. They have riveted those who cannot raise themselves above the earth, and do still rivet them to the things of earth and the works of their own hands; and they secretly pull back those who are striving earnestly to contemplate things divine. If these men are wise and soberminded, and pure and passionless in life, they drive them into godlessness.

59. That you may know it was from our teachers—we mean the prophets—that Plato borrowed his statement that God took formless matter to make the world, hear the words spoken through Moses, who, as we said above, was the first prophet, and older than any Greek writers. Through him the Spirit of Prophecy, revealing how and from what materials

God first formed the world, spake thus: "In the beginning 84 Lamentations, iv. 20.

MARCUS AURELIUS AND HIS TIMES

God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was invisible and empty, and darkness was upon the face of the deep; and the Spirit of God moved over the waters. And God said, Let there be light; and it was so." 35 From this both Plato and those who follow him and we ourselves have learned, and you also can be assured, that by the word of God the world was made out of the substance named by Moses. The place too which the poets call Erebus, we know was mentioned by Moses.36

60.

. Among us these things can be heard and learned from persons who do not know their letters and are uneducated and barbarous in speech, though wise and believing in mind; from some even who are maimed and blind. Hence you may understand that such knowledge comes not from human wisdom, but is given us through the power of God.

61.

I will next describe the manner in which we who have been made new through Christ dedicate ourselves to God; lest, by omitting it, I seem to be giving you an imperfect account of us. As many as are persuaded and believe that what we teach and say is true and undertake to live accordingly are instructed to pray and entreat with fasting God's forgiveness of their past sins, while we pray and fast with them. Then they are brought by us where there is water, and are born again in the same manner in which we ourselves were reborn.

In the name of God, the Father and Lord of all, and of our Saviour Jesus Christ, and of the Holy Spirit, they then receive the washing with water. For Christ said, "Except ye be born again, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven." 37 Now, it is obviously impossible for those who have once been born to reenter their mother's wombs. But Isaiah the prophet, as I said once before, tells how those who have sinned and repent may escape their sins when he 35 Genesis, i, 1-3.

86 See Deuteronomy, xxxii, 22.

87 John, iii, 5.

Justin: First Apology

says: "Wash you, make you clean; put away the evil of your doings from your souls; learn to do well; judge the fatherless, and plead for the widow: and come and let us reason together, saith the Lord. And though your sins be as scarlet, I will make them white like wool; and though they be as crimson, I will make them white as snow. But if ye refuse and rebel, the sword shall devour you: for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it." 38

The reason for this our rite we have learned from the apostles. At our birth we were born without our knowledge or consent, through the union of our parents, and were brought up in bad habits with wrong training. So in order that we may not remain the children of necessity and ignorance, but may become the children of free choice and knowledge, and may obtain in the water forgiveness for the sins we have already committed, the name of God the Father and Lord of all is pronounced over those who desire to be born again, and have repented of their sins. He who brings to the font a person to be washed names God, but in this way only.

For no one can speak the true name of the ineffable God; and whoever dares even to say there is such a name is utterly crazed and astray. Our washing is called "enlightenment," because those who learn these things have their understandings enlightened. In the name of Jesus Christ also, who was crucified under Pontius Pilate, and in the name of the Holy

Spirit, who by the prophets foretold all things of Jesus, the enlightened one receives his washing.

62-64.

{Justin describes other efforts of the devils to imitate Christian truth and to blind the Jews to the meaning of their own Scriptures.) .

. And so much is written to prove that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and his messenger. Of old

He was the Word that appeared sometimes in the form of fire and sometimes in the likeness of angels. But now, by the will

88 Isaiah, i, 16-20.

MARCUS AURELIUS AND HIS TIMES

of God, He has become man for the human race and endured all the sufferings which the devils induced the foolish Jews to inflict on Him. Though the Jews have it plainly stated in. the writings of Moses, "And the angel of God spake to Moses in a flame of fire in a bush, and said, 'I am that I am, the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob,' 39 they still maintain that He who said this was Himself the Father and Creator of the universe. Wherefore the Spirit of prophecy rebukes them, saying:

"Israel doth not know me, my people have not understood me." 40 Also Jesus, as we have already told you, while he was with them, said: "No one knoweth the Father but the Son; nor the Son but the Father, and those to whom the Son will reveal Him." 41 So the Jews, who throughout insist that it was the Father of the universe who spoke to Moses, though the speaker was indeed the Son of God, who is called both angel and messenger, are justly accused by the Spirit of prophecy and by Christ Himself of knowing neither the Father nor the Son.

For those who declare that the Son is the Father prove thereby that they have no knowledge of the Father and are unaware that the Father of the universe has a Son, who, being the first-begotten Word of God, is also God. Of old He appeared in the shape of fire and in the likeness of an angel to Moses and the other prophets. But now, in the times of your empire, He has, as we said before, become man by a virgin, according to the Father's design, for the salvation of those who believe on Him. And He endured both to be set at naught and to suffer, that by dying and rising again He might conquer death. And the words He spake out of the bush to Moses, "I am that I am, the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, and the God of your fathers," these signify that those men, though dead, are still living and 38 Exodus, iii, 6.

40 Isaiah, i, 3.

41 Matthew, xi, 27.

Justin: First Apology

belong to Christ Himself. For they were the first of mankind to labor in the search after God. Abraham was the father of Isaac, and Isaac of Jacob, as Moses wrote.

6j. Then after we have washed the one who has been converted and has accepted our teaching, we bring him to the place where those whom we call the brethren are assembled, to offer our earnest prayers together for ourselves and for the enlightened one and for all men everywhere, that we, who have learned the truth, may be counted worthy by our works also to be found well-doers and keepers of the commandments, that we may be saved with an everlasting salvation. On ending our prayers, we salute one another with a kiss.42 Then to the president of the brethren are brought bread and a cup of wine mixed with water. He takes them and offers praise and glory to the Father of all in the name of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and gives thanks at length that we are counted worthy to receive these things at His hands.

And when he has concluded the prayers and the thanksgivings, the whole people present assent, saying Amen. The word

Amen in the Hebrew language means "So be it." Then after the president has given thanks and all the people have assented, the men we call deacons give to each of those present a portion of the bread and wine mixed with water over which the thanksgiving was pronounced, and carry away a portion to those who are absent.

66. This food is called among us the Eucharist. No one is allowed to eat of it but he who believes that the things we teach are true, and who has been washed with the washing which is for the remission of sins and unto a new birth, and who is living as Christ commanded. For not as common bread

42 The kiss of charity or the kiss of peace was enjoined by the Apostle Paul in his Epistles to the Corinthians, Thessalonians, and Romans, and thence passed into common Christian usage.

It was continued in the Western Church, under regulations to prevent its abuse, until the thirteenth century.

29O

MARCUS AURELIUS AND HIS TIMES

and common drink do we receive them; but even as Jesus Christ our Saviour, being made flesh by the word of God, took on flesh and blood for our salvation, so likewise we are taught that the food which is blessed by the prayer of His word, and from which by transmutation our blood and flesh are nourished, is the flesh and blood of that Jesus who was made flesh. For the apostles, in the memoirs composed by them, which are called Gospels, have delivered unto us what was imparted unto them; that Jesus took bread, and when

He had given thanks said: "This do in remembrance of Me, this is My Body"; 43 and that after the same manner He took the cup, and giving thanks He said: "This is My blood"; and that He gave it to them alone. This rite the wicked devils have imitated in the mysteries of Mithras, commanding the same thing to be done. For they set forth bread and a cup of water with certain incantations in their ceremonies of initiation, as you either know or can learn.44

67. Afterwards we continually remind one another of these things. The wealthy among us help the needy; and we stay always together. And for all the things with which we are supplied, we bless the Maker of all through His Son Jesus Christ and through the Holy Spirit. On the day called the Day of the Sun, all of us who live either in cities or in the country gather in one place, and the memoirs of the apostles or the writings of the prophets are read, as long as time permits. Then, when the reader has finished, the president by word of mouth instructs and exhorts us to imitate these excellent things. Afterwards we all rise together and offer prayers and, as I said before, when our prayer is ended, the bread and wine and water are brought. Then the president likewise offers his prayers and thanksgivings, as he has ability,

43 Luke, xxii, 19.

44 The Persian cult of the sun-god Mithras had as one of its rites a sacred meal not unlike the Christian Eucharist. Its greatest festival was held on December 25-

Justin: First Apology

and the people assent, saying "Amen." Then comes the distribution and partaking of that for which thanks was given, and a portion is sent to the absent by the hands of the deacons.

Those who are prosperous and willing, give each one what he thinks fit; and what is collected is deposited with the president, who relieves orphans and widows and whoever through sickness or any other cause is in want, and prisoners and strangers sojourning among us. In short, he takes care of all who are in need. We hold our common assembly on the Day of the Sun, because it is the first day on which God, having transformed darkness and matter, created the world; and on the same day, Jesus Christ our Saviour rose from the dead.

For He was crucified on the day before Saturn's; and on the day after Saturn's, which is the Day of the Sun, he appeared to His apostles and disciples and taught them the things which we have submitted to you for your consideration.

68.

If these things seem to you reasonable and true, honor them, and if they seem foolish, despise them as folly; but do not condemn to death, as you would your enemies, those who have done no wrong. For we warn you, that if you persist in your injustice, you will not escape the coming judgment of God. By the rescript of the great and illustrious Emperor

Hadrian, your father, we have a right to demand that you order judgment to be given as we desire. Yet we make our appeal and explanation, not on the ground of Hadrian's order, but because we know that we ask only what is just. We append a copy of Hadrian's rescript, that you may see we are speaking the truth. The following is a copy.

"Rescript of Hadrian ninth regard to the Christians: 45

"I have received the letter addressed to me by your predecessor, the most illustrious Serenius Granianus, and will not leave the communication unanswered; for innocent per45 Addressed to Mirmcius Fundanus, proconsul of Asia.

MARCUS AURELIUS AND HIS TIMES

sons must not be disturbed, nor opportunity given to false informers to practice villainy. If the inhabitants of your province will so far sustain this petition of theirs as to accuse the Christians regularly in some court of law,

I do not forbid their doing so. But I will not permit resort to mere clamor and excitement. If anyone desires to bring a formal charge, it is right for you to give judgment upon it. If, then, anyone brings a charge and furnishes proof that the said men are violating the laws, you shall fix the punishment in proportion to the offense. Above all, by Hercules, you shall see to it that if any man, through mere spite, brings an accusation against any of these persons, you punish him as severely as his malice deserves."

THE MARTYRDOM OF

THE HOLY MARTYRS

Justin, Chariton, Charito, Paeon, and Liberanus, who suffered at Rome i. In the time of the lawless followers of idolatry, wicked decrees were passed against the godly Christians in town and country, to force them to offer libations to vain idols. Accordingly these holy men were arrested and brought before the prefect of Rome, Rusticus by name. And when they had been led before his judgment-seat, the prefect Rusticus said to Justin, "Obey the gods at once, and submit to the emperors." Justin said, "To obey the commandments of our Saviour Jesus Christ deserves neither blame nor condemnation." Rusticus said, "What kind of doctrine do you profess?"

Justin said, "I have studied to learn all doctrines, but have accepted at last the true doctrines of the Christians, even though they offend the believers in falsehood." Rusticus said,

"Are those the doctrines that satisfy you, poor wretch?"

Justin said, "Yes, for I support them with the right creed."

Rusticus said, "What is your creed?" Justin said, "That we worship the God of the Christians, whom we hold to be one from the beginning, the Maker and Fashioner of all creation, visible and invisible; also the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who was promised beforehand by the prophets as coming to the race of men, the herald of salvation and teacher of good disciples.

I, being but a man, think that what I can say is insignificant in comparison with His boundless divinity.

But I believe in the power of prophecy, since there were

MARCUS AURELIUS AND HIS TIMES

prophecies of Him whom now I call the Son of God. And 1 know that of old the prophets foretold His appearance among men."

2. Rusticus the prefect said, "Where do you meet?" Justin said, "Wherever anyone chooses and can. Do you imagine we all meet in the same place? No; the God of the Christians is not fixed in any set place, but being invisible He fills heaven and earth, and is worshiped and glorified everywhere by the faithful." The prefect said, "Tell me where you hold your meetings, in what place you collect your followers? " Justin said, "I live over the Bath of one Martin, son of Timiotinus.

In the whole time of my residence in Rome (and I am now living here for the second time) I know of no other meeting than his. But whoever has chosen to come to me, I have imparted to him the doctrines of truth." Rusticus said, "Are you, then, a Christian?" Justin said, "Yes, I am a Christian."

5. Then Rusticus said to Chariton, "Come on then, Chariton, are you too a Christian?" Chariton said, "I am a Christian by command of God." Rusticus asked the woman

Charito, "What do you say, Charito?" Charito said, "I am a Christian by the grace of God." Rusticus said to Euelpistus,

"And what are you?" Euelpistus, a servant of Caesar, said, "I too am a Christian, freed by Christ; and by the grace of Christ I share in the same hope." Rusticus said to Hierax,

"And you, are you a Christian?" Hierax said, "Yes, I am a Christian, for I revere and worship the same God." Rusticus said, "Did Justin make you Christians?" Hierax said, "I was a Christian and will always be a Christian." And Paeon stood up and said, "I too am a Christian." Rusticus said, "Who taught you?" Paeon said, "From our parents we received this good confession." Euelpistus said, "I listened gladly to the words of Justin; but from my parents also I learned to be a Christian." Rusticus said, "Where are your parents?" Euelpistus said, "In Cappadocia." Rusticus asked Hierax, "Where

Martyrdom of the Holy Martyrs

are your parents? " And he answered and said, "Christ is our true father, and faith in Him is our mother. My earthly parents are dead. I was expelled from Iconium in Phrygia, and so came here." Rusticus said to Liberianus, "And what do you say? Are you too a Christian, refusing to worship the gods?"

Liberianus said, "I too am a Christian, and worship and reverence the only true God."

4. The prefect said to Justin, "Listen, you who are called learned, and think you know true doctrines; if you are scourged and beheaded, do you believe you will ascend into heaven?" Justin said, "I hope that if I endure these things I shall receive His gifts. For I know that for all who have lived by this faith there abides God's mercy unto the end of the world." The prefect said, "Do you imagine, then, you will rise up to heaven and receive a reward?" Justin said, "I do not imagine it, but I know and am fully convinced of it."

The prefect said, "Let us come to the business in hand; time presses. Before this assembly, offer a sacrifice together to the gods." Justin said, "No honest person gives up a true religion for a false." Rusticus said, "Unless you obey, you will be mercilessly punished."

Justin said, "By prayer we can be saved through our Lord Jesus Christ even after punishment, for that will become to us salvation and confidence at the more terrible and universal judgment-seat of our Lord and Saviour." The other martyrs said also, "Do what you will; we are Christians and do not sacrifice to idols."

$. The prefect then pronounced sentence, saying, "These persons who have refused to sacrifice to the gods and to comply with the command of the Emperor shall be scourged,1 and then taken out to punishment by decapitation, as the law prescribes." The holy martyrs having thus glorified God, and gone forth to the regular place, were beheaded and com1 This wholesale sentence implies a great indifference to the probable

Roman citizenship of some of the condemned, if not of Justin himself.

MARCUS AURELIUS AND HIS TIMES

pleted their witness in confession of the Saviour. And some of the faithful secretly removed their bodies and laid them in a suitable spot, the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ having wrought along with them. To Him be glory for ever and ever. Amen.

MARIUS THE

EPICUREAN

XXIII Divine Service "Wisdom hath builded herself a house: she hath mingled her wine: she hath also prepared for herself a table."

The more highly favored ages of imaginative art present instances of the summing up of an entire world of complex associations under some single form, like the Zeus of Olympia, or the series of frescoes which commemorate The Acts of Saint Francis, at Assisi, or like the play of Hamlet or Faust.

It was not in an image, or series of images, yet still in a sort of dramatic action, and with the unity of a single appeal to eye and ear, that Marius about this time found all his new impressions set forth, regarding what he had already recognized, intellectually, as for him at least the most beautiful thing in the world.

To understand the influence upon him of what follows the reader must remember that it was an experience which came amid a deep sense of vacuity in life. The fairest products of the earth seemed to be dropping to pieces, as if in men's very hands, around him. How real was their sorrow, and his! "His observation of life" had come to be like the constant telling

1 This chapter from Walter Pater's novel, Marius the Epicurean, presents an account of a second-century Christian service.

MARCUS AURELIUS AND HIS TIMES

of a sorrowful rosary, day after day; till, as if taking infection from the cloudy sorrow of the mind, the eye also, the very senses, were grown faint and sick. And now it happened as with the actual morning on which he found himself a spectator of this new thing. The long winter had been a season of unvarying sullenness. At last, on this day he awoke with a sharp flash of lightning in the earliest twilight: in a little while the heavy rain had filtered the air: the clear light was abroad; and, as though the spring had set in with a sudden leap in the heart of things, the whole scene around him lay like some untarnished picture beneath a sky of delicate blue.

Under the spell of his late depression, Marius had suddenly determined to leave Rome for a while. But desiring first to advertise Cornelius x of his movements, and failing to find him in his lodgings, he had ventured, still early in the day, to seek him in the Cecilian villa. Passing through its silent and empty courtyard he loitered for a moment, to admire. Under the clear but immature light of winter morning after a storm, all the details of form and color in the old marbles were distinctly visible, and with a kind of severity or sadness—so it struck him

—amid their beauty: in them, and in all other details of the scene—the cypresses, the bunches of pale daffodils in the grass, the curves of the purple hills of Tusculum, with the drifts of virgin snow still lying in their hollows.

The little open door, through which he passed from the courtyard, admitted him into what was plainly the vast Lararium, or domestic sanctuary, of the Cecilian family, transformed in many particulars, but still richly decorated, and retaining much of its ancient furniture in metal-work and costly stone. The peculiar half-light of dawn seemed to be lingering beyond its hour upon the solemn marble walls; and 1 Cornelius was an officer in the emperor's service and a Christian, with whom Marius had made friends.

Pater: Marius the Epicurean {Chap. XXIII)

here, though at that moment in absolute silence, a great company of people was assembled. In that brief period of peace, during which the church emerged for awhile from her jealously-guarded subterranean life, the rigor of an earlier rule of exclusion had been relaxed. And so it came to pass that on this morning Marius saw for the first time the wonderful spectacle—wonderful, especially, in its evidential power over himself, over his own thoughts—of those who believe.

There were noticeable, among these present, great varieties of rank, of age, of personal type. The Roman ingenuus, with the white toga and gold ring, stood side by side with his slave; and the air of the whole company was, above all, a grave one, an air of recollection. Coming thus unexpectedly upon this large assembly, so entirely united, in a silence so profound, for purposes unknown to him, Marius felt for a moment as if he had stumbled by chance upon some great conspiracy. Yet that could scarcely be, for the people here collected might have figured as the earliest handsel, or pattern, of a new world, from the very face of which discontent had passed away. Corresponding to the variety of human type there present, was the various expression of every form of human sorrow assuaged. What desire, what fulfillment of desire, had wrought so pathetically on the features of these ranks of aged men and women of humble condition? Those young men, bent down so discreetly on the details of their sacred service, had faced life and were glad, by some science, or light of knowledge they had, to which there had certainly been no parallel in the older world. Was some credible message from beyond "the flaming rampart of the world"—a message of hope, regarding the place of men's souls and their interest in the sum of things—already molding anew their very bodies, and looks, and voices, now and here? At least, there was a cleansing and kindling flame at work in them, which seemed to make everything else Marius had ever known look

MARCUS AURELIUS AND HIS TIMES

comparatively vulgar and mean. There were the children, above all—troops of children—reminding him of those pathetic children's graves, like cradles or garden-beds, he had noticed in his first visit to these places; and they more than satisfied the odd curiosity he had then conceived about them, wondering in what quaintly expressive forms they might come forth into the daylight, if awakened from sleep.

Children of the Catacombs, some but "a span long," with features not so much beautiful as heroic (that world of new, refining sentiment having set its seal even on childhood), they retained certainly no stain or trace of anything subterranean this morning, in the alacrity of their worship—as ready as if they had been at play—stretching forth their hands, crying, chanting in a resonant voice, and with boldly upturned faces, Christe Eleisonf

For the silence—silence, amid those lights of early morning to which Marius had always been constitutionally impressible, as having in them a certain reproachful austerity—was broken suddenly by resounding cries of Kyrie Eleisonf Christe Eleison! repeated alternately, again and again, until the bishop, rising from his chair, made sign that this prayer should cease.

But the voices burst out once more presently, in richer and more varied melody, though still of an antiphonal character; the men, the women and children, the deacons, the people, answering one another, somewhat after the manner of a Greek chorus. But again with what a novelty of poetic accent; what a genuine expansion of heart; what profound intimations for the intellect, as the meaning of the words grew upon him!

Cum grandi affectu et compunctione dicatur—szys an ancient eucharistic order; and certainly, the mystic tone of this praying and singing was one with the expression of deliverance, of grateful assurance and sincerity, upon the faces of those assembled. As if some searching correction, a regeneration of the body by the spirit, had begun, and was already gone

Pater: Marius the Epicurean (Chap. XXIII)

a great way, the countenances of men, women, and children alike had a brightness on them which he could fancy reflected upon himself—an amenity, a mystic amiability and unction, which found its way most readily of all to the hearts of children themselves. The religious poetry of those Hebrew psalms—Benedixisti Domine terram tuam:

Dixit Dominus Domino meo, sede a dextris ram—was certainly in marvelous accord with the lyrical instinct of his own character. Those august hymns, he thought, must thereafter ever remain by him as among the well-tested powers in things to soothe and fortify the soul. One could never grow tired of them!

In the old pagan worship there had been little to call the understanding into play. Here, on the other hand, the utterance, the eloquence, the music of worship conveyed, as Marius readily understood, a fact or series of facts, for intellectual reception. That became evident, more especially, in those lessons, or sacred readings, which, like the singing, in broken vernacular Latin, occurred at certain intervals, amid the silence of the assembly. There were readings, again with bursts of chanted invocation between for fuller light on a difficult path, in which many a vagrant voice of human philosophy, haunting men's minds from of old, recurred with clearer accent than had ever belonged to it before, as if lifted, above its first intention, into the harmonies of some supreme system of knowledge or doctrine, at length complete. And last of all came a narrative which, with a thousand tender memories, everyone appeared to know by heart, displaying, in all the vividness of a picture for the eye, the mournful figure of him towards whom this whole act of worship still consistently turned—a figure which seemed to have absorbed, like some rich tincture in his garment, all that was deep-felt and impassioned in the experiences of the past.

It was the anniversary of his birth as a little child they celebrated today. Astiterunt reges terrae: so the Gradual, the

MARCUS AURELIUS AND HIS TIMES

"Song of Degrees," proceeded, the young men on the steps of the altar responding in deep, clear, antiphon or chorus—

Astiterunt reges terrae— Adversus sanctum puerum tuum, Jesum:

Nunc, Domine, da servis tuis loqui verbum tuum— Et signia fieri, per nomen sancti pueri Jesu.

And the proper action of the rite itself, like a half-opened book to be read by the duly initiated mind took up those suggestions, and carried them forward into the present, as having reference to a power still efficacious, still after some mystic sense even now in action among the people there assembled. The entire office, indeed, with its interchange of lessons, hymns, prayer, silence, was itself like a single piece of highly composite, dramatic music; a "song of degrees," rising steadily to a climax. Notwithstanding the absence of any central image visible to the eye, the entire ceremonial process, like the place in which it was enacted, was weighty with symbolic significance, seemed to express a single leading motive. The mystery, if such in fact it was, centered indeed in the actions of one visible person, distinguished among the assistants, who stood ranged in semicircle around him, by the extreme fineness of his white vestments, and the pointed cap with the golden ornaments upon his head.

Nor had Marius ever seen the pontifical character, as he conceived it—sicut unguentum in caphe, descendens in oram vestimenti—so fully realized, as in the expression, the manner and voice, of this novel pontiff, as he took his seat on the white chair placed for him by the young men, and received his long staff into his hand, or moved his hands—hands which seemed endowed in very deed with some mysterious power— at the Lavabo, or at the various benedictions, or to bless certain objects on the table before him, chanting in cadence of a grave sweetness the leading parts of the rite. What profound unction and mysticity! The solemn character of the singing

Pater: Marius the Epicurean (Chap. XXIII)

was at its height when he opened his lips. Like some new sort of rhapsodos, it was for the moment as if he alone possessed the words of the office, and they flowed anew from some permanent source of inspiration within him. The table or altar at which he presided, below a canopy on delicate spiral columns, was in fact the tomb of a youthful "witness," of the family of the Cecilii, who had shed his blood not many years before, and whose relics were still in this place. It was for his sake the bishop put his lips so often to the surface before him; the regretful memory of that death entwining itself, though not without certain notes of triumph, as a matter of special inward significance, throughout a service, which was, before all else, from first to last, a commemoration of the dead.

A sacrifice also—a sacrifice, it might seem, like the most primitive, the most natural and enduringly significant of old pagan sacrifices, of the simplest fruits of the earth.

And in connection with this circumstance again, as in the actual stones of the building so in the rite itself, what Marius observed was not so much new matter as a new spirit, molding, informing, with a new intention, many observances not witnessed for the first time today.

Men and women came to the altar successively, in perfect order, and deposited below the lattice-work of pierced white marble, their baskets of wheat and grapes, incense, oil for the sanctuary lamps; bread and wine especially—pure wheaten bread, the pure white wine of the Tusculan vineyards. There was here a veritable consecration, hopeful and animating, of the earth's gifts, of old dead and dark matter itself, now in some way redeemed at last, of all that we can touch or see, in the midst of a jaded world that had lost the true sense of such things, and in strong contrast to the wise emperor's renunciant and impassive attitude towards them. Certain portions of that bread and wine were taken into the bishop's hands; and thereafter, with an increasing mysticity and effusion the rite proceeded. Still in a strain of inspired supplication, the antiphonal

MARCUS AURELIUS AND HIS TIMES

singing developed, from this point, into a kind of dialogue between the chief minister and the whole assisting company— sursum corda! habemus ad dominum. gratias agamus domino deo nostro!— It might have been thought the business, the duty or service of young men more particularly, as they stood there in long ranks, and in severe and simple vesture of the purest white— a service in which they would seem to be flying for refuge, as with their precious, their treacherous and critical youth in their hands, to one—Yes! one like themselves, who yet claimed their worship, a worship, above all, in the way of Aurelius, in the way of imitation. Adoramus te Christe, quia per crucem tuam redemisti munduml—xhey cry together. So deep is the emotion that at moments it seems to Marius as if some there present apprehend that prayer prevails, that the very object of this pathetic crying himself draws near. From the first there had been the sense, an increasing assurance, of one coming: actually with them now, according to the oft-repeated affirmation or petition, Dominus vobiscum! Some at least were quite sure of it; and the confidence of this remnant fired the hearts, and gave meaning to the bold, ecstatic worship, of all the rest about them.

Prompted especially by the suggestion of that mysterious old Jewish psalmody, so new to him—lesson and hymn—and catching therewith a portion of the enthusiasm of those beside him, Marius could discern dimly, behind the solemn recitation which now followed, at once a narrative and a prayer, the most touching image truly that had ever come within the scope of his mental or physical gaze. It was the image of a young man giving up voluntarily, one by one, for the greatest of ends, the greatest gifts; actually parting with himself, above all, with the serenity, the divine serenity, of his own soul; yet from the midst of his desolation crying out upon the

Pater: Marius the Epicurean (Chap. XXIII)

greatness of his success, as if foreseeing this very worship.2

As center of the supposed facts which for these people were become so constraining a motive of hopefulness, of activity, that image seemed to display itself with an overwhelming claim on human gratitude. What Saint Louis of France discerned, and found so irresistibly touching, across the dimness of many centuries, as a painful thing done for love of him by one he had never seen, was to them almost as a thing of yesterday; and their hearts were whole with it. It had the force, among their interests, of an almost recent event in the career of one whom their fathers' fathers might have known.

From memories so sublime, yet so close at hand, had the narrative descended in which these acts of worship centered; though again the names of some more recently dead were mingled in it. And it seemed as if the very dead were aware; to be stirring beneath the slabs of the sepulchers which lay so near, that they might associate themselves to this enthusiasm—to this exalted worship of Jesus.

One by one, at last, the faithful approach to receive from the chief minister morsels of the great, white, wheaten cake, he had taken into his hands—Perducat vos ad vitam aeternam! he prays, half-silently, as they depart again, after discreet embraces. The Eucharist of those early days was, even more entirely than at any later or happier time, an act of thanksgiving; and while the remnants of the feast are borne away for the reception of the sick, the sustained gladness of the rite reaches its highest point in the singing of a hymn: a hymn like the spontaneous product of two opposed militant companies, contending accordantly together, heightening, accumulating, their witness, provoking one another's worship, in a kind of sacred rivalry. he! Missa est!—cried the young deacons: and Marius de* parted from that strange scene along with the rest. What was

8 Psalm xxii. 22-31.

MARCUS AURELIUS AND HIS TIMES

it? Was it this made the way of Cornelius so pleasant through the world? As for Marius himself, the natural soul of worship in him had at last been satisfied as never before. He felt, as he left that place, that he must hereafter experience often a longing memory, a kind of thirst, for all this, over again. And it seemed moreover to define what he must require of the powers, whatsoever they might be, that had brought him into rhe world at all, to make him not unhappy in it.

The End

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