Clement of Alexandria · a new plain-English translation from the original language
Come, then, let us add this too: that your gods are inhuman and man-hating demons, who not only rejoice in men's derangement of mind but also delight in the slaughter of human beings — now furnishing themselves occasions of pleasure through the armed rivalries in the stadiums, now through the countless ambitions of war, so that they might have as much license as possible to glut themselves without restraint on human blood. Already, indeed, falling upon cities and nations like plagues, they have demanded savage libations. Aristomenes the Messenian, for instance, slaughtered three hundred men to Ithomean Zeus, thinking that by so many and such victims he would offer an auspicious hecatomb; among them was Theopompus, the king of the Lacedaemonians, a noble victim. And the Taurians, the nation dwelling about the Tauric Chersonese, sacrifice to the Tauric Artemis whatever strangers they capture among those shipwrecked on their coasts; these sacrifices of yours Euripides makes tragedy of upon the stage. Monimus, in his work gathering wonders, records that a native of Achaea was offered up to Peleus and Chiron at Pella, in the land of Thessaly; and Anticleides declares in his Returns that the Lyctians (these are a people of Crete) slaughter men to Zeus, and Dosidas says that the Lesbians offer a similar sacrifice to Dionysus. The Phocaeans too — for I will not pass them over either — Pythocles, in the third book of his On Concord, relates that they burn a man whole to Artemis Tauropolos. Erechtheus the Athenian and Marius the Roman each sacrificed his own daughter; the one to Persephone, as Demaratus says in the first book of his Tragic Themes, the other, Marius, to the Averting Deities, as Dorotheus relates in the fourth book of his Italian History. Truly humane do the demons show themselves from these deeds! And how are their god-fearing worshippers not correspondingly unholy? Some are hailed as saviors, while others beg for salvation from the very plotters against their salvation. Supposing that they are offering an auspicious sacrifice, they fail to notice that they are in fact slaughtering human beings. For murder does not become a sacrificial offering because of the place, nor if someone slaughters a man to Artemis and Zeus in a sacred precinct rather than out of wrath and love of money — the same demons under other names — whether upon altars or on the roads, calling it by the sacred name of victim; such a sacrifice is nonetheless murder and manslaughter. Why then, O men, wisest of the other living creatures, do we flee wild beasts, and if we chance upon a bear or a lion, turn aside — as when someone, catching sight of a serpent, starts back in the mountain glens, and trembling seizes his limbs, and he withdraws again — yet when we perceive and understand that these are destructive and baneful demons, plotters and man-haters and destroyers, do we not turn aside or avert ourselves from them? What truth could the wicked ever speak, or whom could they ever benefit? At once, indeed, I can show you a man better than these gods of yours, these demons — better than Apollo the prophet — namely Cyrus, and Solon. Your Phoebus is fond of gifts, but not fond of mankind. He betrayed his friend Croesus, and forgetting his fee (so fond of glory was he) led Croesus across the Halys to the pyre. Such is the love with which the demons lead men to the fire. But you, O man, more humane and more truthful than Apollo, pity him who lies bound upon the pyre; and you, Solon, prophesy the truth, and you, Cyrus, command that the fire be quenched. Come to your senses at last, Croesus, taught by your suffering; ungrateful is the one you worship — he takes his fee, and after the gold, lies again. So, in the final reckoning, truthfulness toward you belongs to the mortal, not the spirit. Solon does not prophesy crookedly; you will find this the only true oracle, O barbarian — you will test it upon the pyre.
From this it comes upon me to wonder by what sort of fancies the first men, having wandered astray, were led off to proclaim superstition to mankind, establishing by law the worship of baneful demons — whether it was that Phoroneus, or Merops, or someone else, who are storied to have first set up temples and altars for them, and moreover to have first instituted sacrifices to them. And indeed in later times as well men kept fashioning gods for themselves to worship. Take, for instance, this Eros, said to be among the eldest of the gods — no one honored him at all before Charmus won a certain boy and set up an altar in the Academy as a thank-offering for a desire fulfilled; and they have called the wantonness of that disease Eros, deifying an unbridled lust. The Athenians did not even know who Pan was, until Philippides told them. Fittingly, then, superstition, having taken its beginning from somewhere, has become a fountain of senseless evil; then, not being checked but going on to increase and flowing forth abundantly, it has become the maker of many demons, sacrificing hecatombs and celebrating festivals and setting up statues and building temples — those temples which (for I will not keep silent about these either, but shall expose them too) are called by the fair name of temples, but have in fact become tombs. But you — even now, forget your superstition, being ashamed to honor tombs. In the temple of Athena in Larissa, on the acropolis, there is the tomb of Acrisius; and at Athens, atop the citadel, lies that of Cecrops — so Antiochus reports, in book nine of his historical work. And what of Erichthonius? Is he not buried in the temple of the Polias? And is not Immaradus, son of Eumolpus and Daeira, buried within the precinct of the Eleusinion beneath the acropolis? And are not the daughters of Celeus buried at Eleusis? Why should I list for you the women from the Hyperboreans? Hyperoche and Laodice are their names; they are buried in the Artemisium at Delos, which is within the temple of Delian Apollo. And Leandrius says that Cleochus is buried at Miletus, in the Didymaeum. Here too the monument of Leucophryne is not to be passed over, following Zeno of Myndus, who is buried in the temple of Artemis at Magnesia; nor indeed the altar of Apollo at Telmessus — this too, they relate, is the tomb of Telmessus the seer. And Ptolemy, son of Agesarchus, in the first book of his history concerning Philopator, says that at Paphos, in the temple of Aphrodite, Cinyras and the descendants of Cinyras are buried. But truly, were I to go through all the tombs you worship, not even the whole of time would suffice me; and as for you — if no shame steals over you at these audacities — being utterly dead yourselves, you go about having put your faith, in truth, in the dead. Ah, wretched ones, what evil is this you suffer? By night your heads are shrouded.
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