Protrepticus — Chapter 2

Clement of Alexandria · a new plain-English translation from the original language

So do not busy yourselves over godless inner shrines, nor over the mouths of pits filled with monstrous portents, nor the Thesprotian cauldron, nor the Cirrhaean tripod, nor the Dodonaean bronze bowl. Leave behind the ancient oak honored amid the lonely sands, and the oracle there, withered along with the very oak, together with its aged myths. Silenced now is the spring of Castalia, and that other spring at Colophon, and likewise the other prophetic streams have died, empty of imposture — late though it be, yet they have nonetheless been refuted, having run dry along with their own myths. List for us as well the futile prophecies coming from the rest of the mantic art — or rather the maniac art — the Clarian, the Pythian, the Didymean, that of Amphiaraus, that of Apollo, that of Amphilochus; and if you wish, deconsecrate along with them the readers of portents, the augurs, and the interpreters of dreams. Set up together beside the Pythian oracle the flour-diviners and barley-diviners you bring, and the belly-talkers still honored among the many. Yes indeed, let the Egyptian sanctuaries fall silent, and let the Tyrrhenian necromantic rites likewise be consigned to darkness. These are truly the maniac impostures of faithless men, and the gambling-dens of unmixed error; the fellow-traffickers in this sorcery are goats trained to divination, and ravens taught by men to prophesy to men.

But what if I were to recount the mysteries to you in detail? I will not dance them out, as they say Alcibiades did, but I will strip bare, very thoroughly, according to the account of truth, the sorcery hidden within them, and the very gods of yours so called, whose rites are the mystic initiations — I will wheel them out onto the stage of life, as it were, for the spectators of truth to see. The Bacchants hold their orgies for raving Dionysus, conducting their sacred madness through the eating of raw flesh, and they perform the dividing-up of the flesh of their slaughtered victims, crowned with snakes, shrieking out 'Euai, Euai' — that name because of which error has followed after them. And the sign of the Bacchic orgies is a consecrated serpent. Indeed, according to the precise Hebrew pronunciation, the name Hevia, aspirated, is interpreted as 'the female serpent.' And Deo and Kore have by now become a mystic drama, and Eleusis torches forth their wandering and their rape and their mourning.

And it seems to me that one ought to derive the etymology of the 'orgia' and 'mysteria' — the one from the 'orge' (wrath) of Deo that arose against Zeus, the other from the 'mysos' (pollution) that befell Dionysus. But if it is also from a certain Attic Myus, whom Apollodorus says perished while hunting, I bear no grudge — your mysteries have been glorified with the honor due a tomb. It is also possible to think of them otherwise as 'mytheria,' the letters being interchanged for 'mysteria'; for indeed such myths as these hunt down — as do certain other things too — even the crudest of the Thracian tribes, the silliest among the Phrygian peoples, and those Greeks given to superstition. May he perish, then, whoever it was who began this deception for mankind — whether Dardanus, who was first to bring forward the rites belonging to the Mother of the gods, or Eetion, founder of the frenzied observances and cult of the Samothracian people, or that Phrygian Midas, who learned them from Odrysus and then handed on the crafty deceit to his subjects. For never could the Cyprian islander Cinyras persuade me — he who dared to transfer the lascivious orgies of Aphrodite from night into day, being ambitious to deify a fellow-citizen harlot. Others say that Melampus son of Amythaon brought over from Egypt to Greece the festivals of Deo, a mourning that is hymned. These men, I would say, are the first authors of evil, fathers of godless myths and of ruinous superstition, who planted into human life, as its mysteries, the seed of wickedness and corruption.

Now — for it is indeed the time — I will expose your very orgies as full of deceit and monstrous imposture. And should you already stand among the initiated, all the more will laughter overtake you at these cherished tales of yours. I will proclaim openly the things that are hidden, not ashamed to say what you are not ashamed to worship. The 'foam-born' and 'Cyprus-born' one, dear to Cinyras — I mean Aphrodite, the 'lover of the genitals, because she was made manifest from genitals,' those genitals of Uranus that were cut off, lustful members, from which, after the mutilation, the wave was made to labor — she becomes for you a fruit worthy of shameless members; in the rites of this pleasure of the sea, as a token of that begetting, a lump of salt and a phallus are handed to the initiates, imparting to them the art of adultery; and the initiates bring in a coin to her, as lovers to a courtesan. As for the mysteries of Deo, there is intercourse of Zeus with his mother Demeter of an amorous kind, and wrath (I no longer know what to call her henceforth, mother or wife) belonging to Deo, on whose account she is said to have been named Brimo, and supplications to Zeus, and a draught of gall, and heart-plucking, and unspeakable deeds; the Phrygians perform the same rites for Attis and Cybele and the Corybantes. They have made it common knowledge that Zeus, having torn the testicles from a ram, carried and threw them into the very lap of Deo, discharging a false penalty for his violent union, as though he had thereby castrated himself. The symbols of this initiation, set forth in full, I know will provoke laughter, even in those of you disinclined to laugh, because of the exposures involved: 'I ate from the drum; I drank from the cymbal; I carried the sacred vessel; I crept under the bridal canopy.' Are these symbols not an outrage? Are the mysteries not a mockery? And what if I should add what remains? Demeter conceives, Kore is reared, and this same Zeus who begot her mates again with Persephone, his own daughter, after her mother Deo, forgetting his former pollution — Zeus, father and violator of his own daughter — and he mates with her having become a serpent, betrayed for what he was. Indeed the symbol of the Sabazian mysteries for the initiates is the god passed through the lap; and this is a serpent, drawn through the lap of those being initiated, a proof of the incontinence of Zeus. Persephone too conceives a child in the form of a bull; hence, as some idolatrous poet says, 'bull the father of a serpent, and serpent the father of a bull, on the mountain the hidden thing, the herdsman' — the goad, the herdsman's goad, I think he means, calling the thyrsus-wand by that name, which indeed the Bacchants crown with wreaths. Would you have me relate to you also Persephone's flower-gathering, and the basket, and the rape by Aidoneus, and the chasm of the earth, and the pigs of Eubouleus that were swallowed down together with the two goddesses, on account of which, at the Thesmophoria, they observe the custom of throwing pigs into the pits? This mythology the women celebrate in various ways throughout the cities — Thesmophoria, Skirophoria, Arretophoria — dramatizing in many fashions the rape of Persephone. As for the mysteries of Dionysus, they are utterly inhuman: while he was still a child, the Curetes danced around him with an armed movement, and the Titans slipped in by stealth and, luring him with toys fit for a child, those same Titans rent him apart limb from limb while he yet remained an infant, as Orpheus the Thracian, poet of the Rite, says: 'the cone and the whirling top and limb-bending playthings, and the fair golden apples from the clear-voiced Hesperides.' And it is not useless, for the sake of condemnation, to set before you the worthless symbols of this rite as well: the knucklebone, the ball, the spinning top, apples, the whirling toy, the mirror, the fleece. Athena, having stolen away the heart of Dionysus, was surnamed Pallas from the throbbing (pallein) of the heart; and the Titans, they too having dismembered him, set a certain cauldron upon a tripod and, having cast in the limbs of Dionysus, boiled them first; then, spitting them on skewers, 'held them over the fire of Hephaestus.' And Zeus, appearing afterward — if indeed he was a god, having perhaps caught the savor of the roasting meat, that 'prerogative' which your gods, as they themselves admit, obtain as their honored share — tortures the Titans with his thunderbolt, and entrusts the limbs of Dionysus to his son Apollo for burial. And Apollo, since he would not disobey Zeus, carries the dismembered corpse to Parnassus and lays it to rest there.

And if you wish also to behold the secret rites of the Corybantes: having killed their third brother, these two covered the head of the corpse with a purple cloth, and having crowned it, buried it, carrying it upon a bronze shield to beneath the foothills of Olympus. And these are the mysteries, to put it briefly: murders and burials. And the priests of these rites, whom those concerned to name them call the Anaktoteleastai, add further monstrous embellishment to the calamity, forbidding celery to be placed on the table with its root intact; for they suppose that celery sprang up from the blood that flowed forth from the Corybantic slaying — just as, indeed, the women who celebrate the Thesmophoria are careful to eat the seeds of the pomegranate that have fallen to the ground, believing that pomegranates grew from the drops of Dionysus's blood. And calling the Corybantes Cabiri, they proclaim a Cabiric rite; for these two fratricides, having taken up the chest in which the private parts of Dionysus lay stored, carried it down into Tyrrhenia — noble merchants of their cargo! — and there they lingered, being fugitives, having handed over to the Tyrrhenians for worship that most precious teaching of piety: the private parts and the chest. For this reason some are not unreasonably willing to call Dionysus by the name Attis, since he has been deprived of his private parts.

And what wonder is it if the barbarian Tyrrhenians are initiated by such shameful experiences, when among the Athenians and the rest of Greece — I am ashamed even to say it — the mythology concerning Deo is full of shame? For Deo, wandering in search of her daughter Kore around Eleusis (this district belongs to Attica), grows weary and sits down upon a well, grieving. This is forbidden to the initiates even now, lest those who have been consecrated seem to imitate the mourning goddess. At that time the earth-born inhabitants dwelt in Eleusis; their names were Baubo and Dysaules and Triptolemus, and also Eumolpus and Eubouleus. Triptolemus tended cattle, Eumolpus tended sheep, and Eubouleus tended swine, and from this trio descended the families of the Eumolpidae and the Kerykes, that hierophantic clan that flourished at Athens. And indeed — for I will not refrain from telling it — Baubo, having entertained Deo as a guest, offers her a kykeon to drink; but Deo, refusing, unwilling to take it and drink (for she was in mourning), Baubo, being deeply pained, as though she had been slighted, uncovers her private parts and displays them to the goddess; and Deo is delighted at the sight, and at last accepts the drink, pleased by the spectacle. These are the hidden mysteries of the Athenians. This too Orpheus records. I will set before you Orpheus's own verses, so that you may have as witness of the shamelessness the very mystagogue himself: 'So speaking, she drew up her robes, and showed the whole shape of her body, unseemly as it was; and the child Iacchus was there, and laughingly he tossed his hand beneath Baubo's lap; then, when the goddess smiled, she smiled within her heart, and accepted the gleaming vessel in which the kykeon lay.' And this is the password of the Eleusinian mysteries: 'I fasted; I drank the kykeon; I took from the chest; having done my work, I put it back into the basket, and from the basket into the chest.' Fine spectacles indeed, and fitting for a goddess! Worthy of night, then, are these rites, and of fire, and of the 'great-hearted' — or rather, empty-minded — people of the Erechtheidae, and of the rest of the Greeks besides, for whom 'there awaits after death what they do not even hope for.' To whom does Heraclitus of Ephesus prophesy? 'To night-wanderers, magicians, bacchants, maenads, initiates' — to these he threatens what comes after death, to these he prophesies the fire; 'for the mysteries customary among men are celebrated in an unholy manner.' Custom, then, and empty supposition are what the mysteries are, and a certain deception of the serpent, being religiously observed, as men turn with counterfeit piety toward initiations that are truly uninitiated and rites that are truly without sanctity. And what sort of things are the mystic chests! For one must strip bare their sacred things and speak out their unspeakable contents. Are not these very objects sesame cakes, pyramid-shaped cakes, balls of wool, cakes bearing many navels, chunks of salt, and a snake — that emblem of frenzy belonging to Dionysus Bassareus? And besides these, are there not pomegranates, and fig-branches, and wands, and ivy-leaves, and also round cakes and poppies? These are their sacred things. And further, the unspeakable symbols of Ge Themis are marjoram, a lamp, a sword, and a woman's comb, which is — to speak in a decent and mystic way — a woman's private part. Oh, the sheer shamelessness on open display! In old times, for people of sound mind, night, kept silent, was a covering for pleasure; but now, for the initiates, night that is talked about is a trial of their incontinence, and the fire, held aloft in torches, exposes their passions. Quench the fire, O hierophant! Be ashamed, torch-bearer, of your torches! The light exposes your Iacchus! Allow the night to hide the mysteries away; let the orgies be honored in darkness; the fire does not play a hypocrite's part — it is bidden to expose and to punish.

These are the mysteries of the godless. And I rightly call these people godless, who have failed to know the God who truly exists, and who worship, truly shamelessly out of shame, a child torn apart by Titans, and a grieving little woman, and unspeakable private parts — caught in a double atheism: the first, by which they are ignorant of God, not recognizing the God who truly exists; the other, a second error, by which they suppose things that do not exist to exist, and call by the name of gods things that are not truly existent — or rather, do not exist at all, having attained only the name. For this reason the apostle also reproves us, saying, 'and you were strangers to the covenants of the promise, having no hope, and godless in the world.'

Many good things be granted to the king of the Scythians, whoever he was [Anacharsis]. This man shot down with arrows his own fellow-countryman, who was imitating among the Scythians the rite of the Mother of the gods practiced by the Cyzicenes — beating a drum, clashing a cymbal, and having some begging-priest's image hung around his neck — because the man had, among the Greeks, become unmanned, and was teaching the other Scythians the womanish disease. On account of these things (for it must in no way be concealed) it occurs to me to wonder in what manner they have called Euhemerus of Acragas, and Nicanor of Cyprus, and Diagoras, and Hippo of Melos, and along with these that Cyrenaic (Theodorus was his name), and a good many others besides — men who lived soberly and had perceived, more sharply perhaps than the rest of mankind, the error surrounding these gods — godless, even though they had not grasped the truth itself, but had at least suspected the error, which is no small spark of understanding germinating toward the truth. Of these, one gives the Egyptians this advice: 'If you consider them gods, do not lament them or beat your breasts for them; but if you mourn them, no longer regard these as gods.' And another, having taken a Heracles made of wood — he happened to be boiling something at home, as one might — said, 'Come now, O Heracles! Now is the time for you, as it was for Eurystheus, and indeed for us too, to perform this thirteenth labor, and to prepare the dish for Diagoras' — 'and then he threw him into the fire, like a piece of wood.'

Godlessness and superstition, then, are the two extremes of ignorance, and one must strive to remain clear of both. Do you not see that Moses, the hierophant of truth, commands that the man with crushed testicles, and the one who has been mutilated, not enter the assembly, and moreover the son of a harlot? By the first two he hints darkly at the godless manner of life, deprived of the divine and generative power; and by the remaining third he hints at the man who ascribes to himself many falsely-named gods in place of the one who alone truly is God — just as the son of a harlot ascribes to himself many fathers, in ignorance of his true father. There was once, in men, a certain innate and ancient fellowship with heaven, darkened indeed by ignorance, yet now and then leaping suddenly out of the darkness and flashing forth again — as, indeed, has been said by someone: 'Do you see this boundless ether on high, and the earth held round about in its moist embrace?' and, 'O vehicle of the earth, and having your seat upon the earth, whoever you are, hard to guess at and see,' and all the other such things that the children of the poets sing. But false notions, drawn away from the straight path, truly ruinous, have turned the heavenly plant, man, from his heavenly way of life, and stretched him out flat upon the earth, persuading him to cling to earthly figments. For some, straightway deceived in their view of heaven, and trusting sight alone, gazing upon the motions of the stars, marveled at them and deified them, naming the stars 'gods' from their 'running' (thein), and worshipped the sun, as do the Indians, and the moon, as do the Phrygians; others, gathering the cultivated fruits of the things that grow from the earth, called the grain Deo, as the Athenians do, and the vine Dionysus, as the Thebans do. Others, observing the requitals of wickedness, deify these acts of retribution, worshipping even misfortunes themselves. From this the poets around the tragic stage have fashioned the Erinyes and the Eumenides, and the Palamnaioi and Prostropaioi, and further the Alastores. And some among the philosophers too, following after the poets, fashion into idol-forms the passions found among you — Fear and Love and Joy and Hope — just as, indeed, old Epimenides set up at Athens altars to Hybris and Anaideia. Others, starting from the very facts themselves, deify these for men and mold them into bodily shapes: a certain Justice, and Clotho and Lachesis and Atropos and Fate, and Auxo and Thallo, the Attic goddesses. There is a sixth introductory mode of the deception concerning the gods, by which they invent and multiply them, in accordance with which they number twelve gods, of whom Hesiod sings his own theogony, and concerning whom Homer theologizes as much as he does. And there remains a final mode (for these are seven modes in all) which proceeds from the divine beneficence bestowed upon mankind. For, not understanding the God who does good, they have fashioned certain saviors — the Dioscuri, and Heracles, who wards off evil, and Asclepius, who heals the sick. These, then, are the slippery and harmful deviations from the truth, dragging man down from heaven and overturning him into a pit. But I wish to show you these gods themselves, up close, of what sort they are, and whether they are anything at all, so that you may at last cease from your error, and run back again to heaven. 'For we too were once children of wrath, as were the rest; but God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, made us alive together with Christ, even when we were dead in our trespasses.' For the Word lives, and he who was buried together with Christ is exalted together with God. Those still lacking faith bear the name 'sons of wrath,' fed upon that very wrath; but we are no longer creatures of wrath, we who have been torn away from error and now hasten toward the truth. Thus we, the sons of lawlessness once, have now, through the loving-kindness of the Word, become sons of God. But to you your own poet, Empedocles of Acragas, also gives voice: 'Therefore, raving in your grievous evils, you shall never be relieved in your heart of your wretched sorrows.' Most of what is said about the gods among you has been made into myth and fabricated; but whatever is supposed to have actually happened has been recorded concerning shameful men who lived licentiously. In delusion and madness you walk, and having abandoned the straight and level path, you have gone off along the way through thorns and briars. Why do you wander, mortals? Cease, foolish ones; leave behind the darkness of night, and lay hold of the light. This the prophetic and poetic Sibyl enjoins upon us; and truth too enjoins it, stripping bare, from these astonishing and awe-inspiring masks, the whole crowd of gods, refuting their claims to glory by certain telltale identities of name.

Take, for instance, those who record that three separate Zeuses existed: one, born of Aether, dwelling in Arcadia, and then a pair of sons of Cronus, one settled in Crete, the other likewise in Arcadia. And there are those who count up five Athenas: the daughter of Hephaestus, the Athenian one; the daughter of Nilus, the Egyptian one; a third, the daughter of Cronus, credited with inventing war; a fourth, born to Zeus, given by the Messenians the surname Coryphasia after her mother; and beyond all these, the daughter of Pallas and the Titaness, daughter of Oceanus, who impiously slaughtered her own father and now is adorned with her father's hide as though it were a fleece. And indeed as for Apollo, Aristotle names first the son of Hephaestus and Athena (here, then, Athena is no longer a virgin), second the Cretan son of Corybas, third the son of Zeus, and fourth the Arcadian son of Silenus, called Nomius among the Arcadians; to these he adds the Libyan son of Ammon; and Didymus the grammarian adds to these a sixth, the son of Magnes. And how many Apollos are there even now — countless mortal and perishable men who have been called by names resembling those just mentioned? What if I should tell you of the many Asclepiuses, or the Hermeses that are counted up, or the Hephaestuses told of in myth? Shall I seem excessive, flooding your ears with all these many names? Well, their native countries, their crafts, their manner of life, and further their tombs, convict them of having been men. Ares, for instance, honored among the poets as much as may be — 'Ares, Ares, bane of mortals, blood-stained, stormer of walls' — this fickle and hostile one was, as Epicharmus says, a Spartan; Sophocles knows him as a Thracian; others as an Arcadian. Homer says he was bound for thirteen months: 'Ares endured it, when Otus and mighty Ephialtes, sons of Aloeus, bound him in a mighty bond; in a brazen jar he lay bound thirteen months.' Much good may it do the Carians, who offer dogs to him in sacrifice. Let the Scythians, too, not cease slaughtering donkeys, as Apollodorus and Callimachus say: 'Phoebus enjoins donkeys upon the Hyperboreans for their sacred rites.' The same poet says elsewhere, 'rich donkey-slaughters delight Phoebus.' As for Hephaestus, whom Zeus flung 'from the divine threshold' out of Olympus, he fell in Lemnos and there worked at his forge, his two feet crippled, 'and beneath him his thin shanks wobbled.' You have too, among the gods, a physician and not only a smith — but this physician was fond of money; his name was Asclepius. And I will set beside him your own poet, Pindar the Boeotian: 'gold appearing in his hands turned even him aside for a princely fee; and with his hands the son of Cronus, hurling his bolt, swiftly took the breath from both their breasts, and the flashing thunderbolt struck down his doom.' And Euripides too: 'for Zeus, having slain my son Asclepius, is to blame, hurling flame into his breast.' So he lies there, thunderstruck, within the borders of Cynosuris. And Philochorus says that in Tenos Poseidon is honored as a physician, and that Sicily is set over Cronus and that he is buried there. And Patrocles of Thurii and Sophocles the Younger, in certain tragedies, tell the story of the Dioscuri: these two Dioscuri were mortal men who came to a perishable end, if Homer is sufficient to confirm what has been said: 'but the life-giving earth already held them fast, there in Lacedaemon, in the dear land of their fathers.' Let there come forward too the author of the Cypria poems, Castor: 'Castor was mortal, and the lot of death was fated for him; but Polydeuces, scion of Ares, was immortal.' This he falsified poetically; but Homer, more trustworthy than he, speaking of both the Dioscuri together, and further exposing Heracles too as a phantom — for he speaks of 'the shade of Heracles, knower of great deeds.' Homer himself, then, knows Heracles too as a mortal man; and Hieronymus the philosopher even describes his bodily build — short, bristly-haired, sturdy; while Dicaearchus describes him as spare, sinewy, dark, hook-nosed, with somewhat gleaming eyes, and straight hair. This Heracles, then, having lived fifty-two years, ended his life, given funeral rites through the pyre on Oeta.

As for the Muses, whom Alcman traces in genealogy to Zeus and Mnemosyne, and whom the rest of the poets and prose-writers deify and revere — indeed whole cities now consecrate shrines to them — these were in fact Mysian servant-girls, bought by Megaclo, the daughter of Macar. Now Macar ruled the Lesbians, but was forever quarreling with his wife, and Megaclo was indignant on her mother's behalf — and how could she not be? So she bought these Mysian servant-girls, so many in number, and called them Moisai in the Aeolic dialect. She trained them to sing and play the lyre, tunefully, of the deeds of old. And they, continually playing the lyre and singing their charms so beautifully, would soothe Macar and check his anger. For this reason Megaclo, in gratitude, dedicated bronze statues of them on her mother's behalf, and commanded that they be honored in all the temples. Such, then, is the story of the Muses; the account comes from Myrsilus of Lesbos.

Hear, then, the love affairs of your gods, the extraordinary myths of their incontinence, their wounds and bonds and bouts of laughter, their battles, their spells of slavery too, their banquets, their embraces again and their tears, their sufferings and their lustful pleasures. Summon before me Poseidon and the chorus of women he corrupted — Amphitrite, Amymone, Alope, Melanippe, Alcyone, Hippothoe, Chione, and countless others besides; and even with so many of them, your Poseidon's passions were still cramped for room. Summon me also Apollo — this is Phoebus, the pure prophet and good counselor; but Sterope does not say this, nor Aethusa, nor Arsinoe, nor Zeuxippe, nor Prothoe, nor Marpessa, nor Hypsipyle; for Daphne alone escaped both the prophet and her own ruin. Let Zeus himself, above all, come forward, the one you call 'father of men and gods'; he was so given over to sexual indulgence that he desired every woman and fulfilled his desire upon every one. He filled himself up with women no less than the he-goat of Thmuis fills himself with she-goats. And you, Homer — I have marveled at your poems: 'He spoke, and nodded with his dark brows; and the ambrosial locks of the lord waved down from his immortal head; and he made great Olympus shake.' You fashion Zeus as august, Homer, and you attach to him a nod held in honor. But if you would only show, man, the girdle, Zeus stands exposed, and his hair is put to shame. To what a pitch of licentiousness that Zeus went, who with Alcmene spent so many nights of pleasure that not even the nine nights were long enough for the incontinent one (though his whole life, on the contrary, was short through his intemperance), so that he might sow for us the averter of evil, that god! Heracles, son of Zeus, truly son of Zeus, begotten from that long night, after his long labor at the twelve labors, corrupted the fifty daughters of Thestius in a single night, becoming at once adulterer and bridegroom to so many virgins. Not unreasonably, then, do the poets call him 'reckless' and 'a worker of ruin.' It would take long to recount his manifold adulteries and his violations of boys. Nor did your gods themselves stay clear of such boys — one loving Hylas, another Hyacinthus, another Pelops, another Chrysippus, another Ganymede. Let your women worship these as gods, and pray that their own husbands be like them, so temperate that they might resemble the gods, having emulated the very same things! Let your sons be accustomed to revere these, so that they too may grow into men, taking the gods as a manifest image of fornication. But perhaps only the male gods among them rush headlong into these erotic affairs; the female gods, Homer says, 'each remained modestly at home,' ashamed for their dignity's sake to see Aphrodite caught in adultery. But those goddesses who do misbehave are bound the more passionately in adultery: Eos with Tithonus, Selene with Endymion, the Nereid with Aeacus and Thetis with Peleus, Demeter with Iasion, and Persephone with Adonis. And Aphrodite, disgraced over Ares, went after Cinyras, married Anchises, conceived by Phaethon, and loved Adonis; and she vied with the ox-eyed goddess, and the goddesses stripped bare over an apple and presented themselves naked to the shepherd, to see which would seem beautiful to him.

Come now, let us make a brief circuit of the games as well, and put an end to these funeral festivals — the Isthmian, the Nemean, the Pythian, and, along with these, the Olympian. At Pytho, then, the Pythian serpent is worshipped, and the festival of the snake is proclaimed as the Pythian games; at the Isthmus, the sea spat out a pitiable piece of refuse, and the Isthmian games mourn Melicertes; at Nemea another child, Archemorus, has been given funeral rites, and the child's funeral games are called the Nemean games; and Pisa, O Panhellenes, is the tomb of a Phrygian charioteer, and it is the Olympic games — the libations for Pelops — that the Zeus of Phidias appropriates for himself. It seems, then, that these games contested over the dead were mysteries, just like your sacred oracles, and both have been made common property. But the mysteries at Agra and at Halimus in Attica are confined to Athens; whereas the games and the phalluses celebrated for Dionysus are already a disgrace shared by the whole world, badly spread abroad throughout life. For Dionysus, wishing to descend into Hades, did not know the way, and someone promised to tell him — Prosymnus by name — not without a fee; and the fee was not a decent one, but it was decent to Dionysus: the favor he asked for was an erotic one — that was the fee. The god, willing, granted the request, and swore an oath that he would grant it upon his return. Once shown the route, off he went; back he came; but Prosymnus was nowhere to be found, having already died; so, to settle what he owed his lover, Dionysus hurries to the grave and indulges his craving there. Cutting, as chance had it, a branch from a fig tree, he shapes it into the likeness of a male organ and sits himself down upon it, thereby paying in full what he had vowed to the departed man. In commemoration of this ordeal, as a sacred token, phalluses are erected for Dionysus throughout the cities. 'For if it were not for Dionysus that they held the procession and sang the hymn to the shameful parts, it would be the most shameless act,' says Heraclitus; 'but Hades and Dionysus are the same, in whose honor they rave and celebrate the Lenaea' — not, as I think, on account of bodily drunkenness so much as on account of the disgraceful hierophancy of their licentiousness.

It stands to reason, then, that gods such as these are slaves — having become slaves of their passions. But even before the so-called Helots among the Lacedaemonians, the yoke of slavery came upon Apollo, in the service of Admetus at Pherae, and upon Heracles, in the service of Omphale at Sardis; and Poseidon and Apollo served as hired laborers for Laomedon, like a worthless household servant, unable, it seems, to obtain even his freedom from his former master; it was then that the two of them built up the walls of Ilium for the Phrygian. Homer is not ashamed to show Athena holding a 'golden lamp' in her hands for Odysseus; and we have read that Aphrodite, like some wanton little servant-girl, carried and set the seducer's chair opposite Helen, so as to lead her into intercourse with him. For Panyassis relates that, besides these, a great many other gods too served men as hired laborers, writing something like this: 'Demeter endured it, and the glorious god of the two crooked legs endured it, and Poseidon endured it, and silver-bowed Apollo endured it, to serve a mortal man as hired laborer for a year; and mighty-hearted Ares too endured it, under compulsion from his father' — and so on.

It follows reasonably, then, from all this, that these erotic and passion-ridden gods of yours should be represented throughout as subject to human suffering. 'For indeed their flesh too is mortal.' Homer bears this out, quite precisely bringing in Aphrodite at the moment of her wound, crying out sharply and loudly, and describing how the most warlike Ares himself was struck in the flank by Diomedes. Polemon says that Athena too was wounded by Ornytus; and indeed Homer says that Hades was shot with an arrow by Heracles, and Panyassis relates that Helios [Augeas] was too. And this same Panyassis further relates that Hera, goddess of marriage, was wounded by this same Heracles 'in sandy Pylos.' And Sosibius says that Heracles, likewise, took a hand wound at the hands of the sons of Hippocoon. But if there are wounds, there is also blood; for the poetic 'ichor' is even more repellent than blood, since ichor is understood to be the corruption of blood. It follows, then, of necessity, that they must be represented as requiring care and nourishment, of which they stand in need. Hence their tables, their drunkenness, their laughter, their sexual unions — for they would not indulge in human intercourse, nor beget children, nor indeed sleep, if they were immortal, free from need, and ageless. Zeus even partook of a human meal among the Ethiopians, and of an inhuman and lawless one at the table of Lycaon the Arcadian; for he unwittingly gorged himself on human flesh. Unbeknownst to the god, his host Lycaon of Arcadia had butchered his own son — Nyctimus by name — and set him before Zeus as a course to eat. What a fine Zeus this is — the god of prophecy, of hospitality, of suppliants, the gracious one, the giver of all oracles, the averter of wrath! Or rather, the unjust, the lawless, the criminal, the impious, the inhuman, the violent, the corrupter, the adulterer, the lustful one. But that was then, when he was such as that, when he was a man; now, however, even the myths about him seem to me to have grown old. Zeus is no longer a serpent, he is not a swan, not an eagle, not an amorous man; the god does not fly, does not lust after boys, does not love, does not ravish — and yet there are still today many beautiful women, more comely than Leda and more full-blossomed than Semele, and youths more graceful and more civilized than the Phrygian herdsman. Where now is that eagle? Where the swan? Where is Zeus himself? He has grown old along with his wing; for surely he does not repent of his love affairs, nor is he being schooled into temperance. The myth lies stripped bare before you now: dead is Leda, gone is the swan, perished is the eagle. Seek out your Zeus; do not go inquiring in heaven, but busy yourself with the earth. The Cretan will tell you the story, among whom he is even buried — Callimachus, in his hymns: 'for a tomb too, O lord, the Cretans built for you.' For Zeus is dead (do not take it hard) — dead as Leda, as swan, as eagle, as amorous man, as serpent.

Even now, moreover, the superstitious themselves are seen — unwillingly, but seen nonetheless — to grasp the error concerning their gods; for 'they are not born of ancient oak or of rock,' but are a race of men, though a little later on they will be found to be oaks and rocks after all. Staphylus, for instance, relates that a certain 'Zeus Agamemnon' is honored in Sparta; and Phanocles, in his Loves, or Fair Youths, relates that Agamemnon, king of the Greeks, set up a temple of Aphrodite of Argynnus, in honor of his beloved Argynnus. The Arcadians pay their devotions to an Artemis called 'the Strangled One,' as Callimachus says in his Aetia. And another Artemis, called Condylitis, is honored at Methymna. There is also, in Laconia, a shrine of yet another Artemis, 'the Gouty One,' as Sosibius says. Polemon knows of a statue of Apollo 'the Gaper,' and again of another Apollo, 'the Glutton,' honored at Elis. There the Eleans sacrifice to Zeus 'Averter of Flies'; the Romans sacrifice to Heracles as 'Averter of Flies,' and likewise to Fever, and to Fear, both of which they even count among Heracles's attendants. I pass over the Argives and Laconians: the Argives worship Aphrodite 'the Grave-Robber,' and the Spartans revere an Artemis 'Chelytis' — since they call coughing 'chelyttein.' Do you suppose these things I am citing to you are being fetched from some marginal, spurious source? You do not even seem to know your own authors, and it is on them that I rely to testify against your unbelief — you wretched people, godless mockers, who have filled the whole of your life with things truly unlivable. Is it not true that a bald Zeus is honored in Argos, and, in Cyprus, another called 'Avenger'? Is it not the Argives who offer sacrifice to Aphrodite 'the Straddler,' the Athenians to her as 'the Courtesan,' and the Syracusans to her as 'the Fair-Rumped,' whom the poet Nicander somewhere called 'the Fair-Buttocked'? Of Dionysus 'the Pig-Fondler' I say nothing further; the Sicyonians worship him, having assigned Dionysus a place over the female parts, revering as guardian of shame the very author of outrage. Such, then, are their gods, and such are they themselves — sporting among the gods, or rather mocking and insulting themselves. And how much better are the Egyptians, who by villages and by cities have honored the irrational animals, than are the Greeks, who bow down to gods of this sort? For those creatures, even if they are beasts, are not adulterous, not lustful; not one of them hunts after unnatural pleasure. But as for these gods — what more need be said, when they stand sufficiently convicted already? The Egyptians, whom I have just mentioned, are divided according to their forms of worship: the people of Syene worship the fish called the phagrus; the inhabitants of Elephantine, the maeotes (another fish); the Oxyrhynchites, likewise, the fish that shares the name of their district; the people of Heracleopolis, the ichneumon; the Saites and Thebans, the sheep; the Lycopolites, the wolf; the Cynopolites, the dog; the Memphites, the Apis bull; the Mendesians, the goat. But you, who are in every way better than the Egyptians (I hesitate to say worse), you who never cease day after day laughing at the Egyptians — what sort of people are you yourselves concerning irrational animals? Some of you, the Thessalians, have honored storks because of their familiar habits; the Thebans, weasels, because of the birth of Heracles. And again, what of the Thessalians? They are reported to venerate ants, on the grounds that Zeus once took an ant's shape and coupled with Eurymedusa, Cletor's daughter, fathering Myrmidon by her. And Polemon relates that the inhabitants around the Troad worship the local mice, which they call 'sminthoi,' because they gnawed through the bowstrings of their enemies; and from those mice they surnamed Apollo 'Smintheus.' And Heraclides, in his Foundations of Temples, says that in the Acarnanian region, near the Actium headland and its shrine to Apollo Actius, an ox is offered beforehand as a sacrifice to the flies. Nor will I forget the Samians (the Samians worship a sheep, as Euphorion says), nor the Syrians who inhabit Phoenicia, some of whom worship doves, others fish, quite as extravagantly as the Eleans worship Zeus.

Very well then; since it seems to me that these are not gods whom you worship, I must again consider whether they are truly daemons, being enrolled, as you yourselves say, in this second rank. For if indeed they are daemons, they are greedy and polluted ones. It is possible even to discover, openly, that in various cities local daemons are reaping honor: the Cythnians hold Menedemus in honor; the Tenians, Callistagoras; the Delians revere Anius; and the Laconians, Astrabacus. A certain hero, too, receives honor at Phalerum beside a ship's stern; and the Pythia decreed that the Plataeans offer sacrifice to Androcrates, Democrates, Cyclaeus, and Leucon, during the season when the wars against the Persians raged fiercest. One can perceive countless other daemons too, if one is able to look even a little closely; for there are thrice ten thousand immortal daemons upon the bounteous earth, guardians of mortal men. Who are these guardians, O Boeotian? Do not begrudge telling. Or is it plain that these are the same as, or lesser than, those more honored ones, the great daemons — Apollo, Artemis, Leto, Demeter, Kore, Pluto, Heracles, Zeus himself? But surely they do not guard us so that we may not run away, O Ascraean, but perhaps so that we may not sin — they who themselves have surely had no experience of sins! Here indeed it is fitting to utter the proverbial saying: "a father who has never been admonished admonishes his child." But if indeed these are guardians, they are not so passionately devoted to us out of goodwill, but rather, clinging to your ruin, they press close upon your life after the fashion of flatterers, lured by smoke. The daemons themselves, it seems, confess their own gluttony, of libation and of the savor of fat; for they say, "this is the prize we have obtained." And what other cry would they utter, if the gods of the Egyptians — such as cats and weasels — should receive a voice, than the Homeric and poetic one, dear to the savor of roasting meat and to the art of the cook? Such, then, are your daemons and your gods among you, and whatever demigods, like mules, are so called; for you are not lacking even in a poverty of names for your compositions of impiety.

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