Clement of Alexandria · a new plain-English translation from the original language
Let us also run over, if you wish, the opinions of the philosophers, however proudly they boast of them concerning the gods, to see whether we can somehow discover philosophy itself, for vainglory's sake, fashioning matter into idols, or whether, in passing, we may be able to show that even in deifying certain daemonic things it is only dreaming of the truth. Some, then, left the elements as first principles, extolling them: Thales the Milesian, water; and Anaximenes, likewise a Milesian, air, whom Diogenes of Apollonia later followed. Parmenides the Eleatean introduced fire and earth as gods; and one of these two alone, fire, was supposed to be god by Hippasus of Metapontum and Heraclitus of Ephesus. Empedocles of Acragas, falling into plurality, in addition to these four elements reckons strife and love as well.
These men too, then, are atheists, having worshipped matter by a wisdom that is no wisdom, and though they did not honor stones or wood, they deified earth, the mother of these, and while not fashioning an image of Poseidon, they turned in worship to water itself. For what after all is Poseidon but some liquid substance, named from drinking (posis)? Just as, no doubt, warlike Ares is named from raising up (arsis) and destruction (anairesis) — wherefore many seem to me to plant a bare blade in the earth and offer it sacrifice as though it were Ares; this is a custom of the Scythians, as Eudoxus says in the second book of his Circuit of the Earth, and among the Scythians the Sauromatae, as Hicesius says in his work On Mysteries, worship a short sword. This too is what befell the followers of Heraclitus, who worship fire as the first-begotten; for this fire others have named Hephaestus. The Magi of the Persians have honored fire, and many of those who dwell in Asia, and moreover the Macedonians, as Diogenes says in the first book of his Persian History. Why should I list the Sauromatae, whom Nymphodorus in his Barbarian Customs records as worshipping fire, or the Persians and the Medes and the Magi? These sacrifice in the open air, Dinon says, holding fire and water alone to be images of the gods. I have not concealed their ignorance either. For even if they suppose that they are escaping error to the greatest degree, still they slip into another deceit; they have not supposed the images of the gods to be wood and stone, as the Greeks do, nor indeed ibises and ichneumons, as the Egyptians do, but fire and water, as philosophers. Yet after many later cycles of years, Berossus, in the third book of his Chaldean History, shows that they came to worship man-shaped images, this having been introduced by Artaxerxes the son of Darius Ochus, who was the first to set up the image of the Aphrodite Anaitis and to show the Persians, Bactrians, and the people of Babylon, Susa, Ecbatana, Damascus, and Sardis how to worship it. Since, then, the philosophers themselves acknowledge that it was from the Magi, or the Sauromatae, or the Persians that their teachers derived it, learning from them the godlessness underlying their venerated first principles, being ignorant of the Ruler who is the Maker of all things and the Craftsman of these very first principles, the God without beginning, and instead turning in worship to these 'poor' and 'weak,' as the apostle says, 'elements' made for the service of men.
As for the rest of the philosophers, all who went beyond the elements and busied themselves with something loftier and more elaborate — some of them sang the praises of the infinite, as did Anaximander (he was a Milesian) and Anaxagoras of Clazomenae and Archelaus the Athenian. These latter two both set mind (nous) in charge over infinity, while Leucippus the Milesian and Metrodorus of Chios, it seems, likewise left two first principles, the full and the void; and Democritus of Abdera, taking these two, added to them the images (idols). For Alcmaeon of Croton supposed the stars to be gods, since they are ensouled. I will not pass over in silence the shamelessness of these men: Xenocrates (this one was of Chalcedon) darkly hints at seven gods, the planets, and an eighth, the universe composed of all the fixed stars. Nor indeed shall I pass by those of the Stoa, who say that the divine pervades all matter, even the most dishonorable, and who thereby simply bring shame upon philosophy. And I think it no hard thing, now that I have come to this point, to mention also those of the Peripatos; and indeed the father of that sect, not having understood the Father of all things, supposes that the so-called 'uppermost' realm amounts to the world's animating soul; in other words, holding the cosmic soul to be divine, he impales himself on his own reasoning. For he who marks off providence as extending only as far as the moon, and then holds the cosmos to be god, is overturned, laying down as a doctrine a god who has no share in God. And that Theophrastus of Eresus, the disciple of Aristotle, at one point conjectures the heaven to be god, at another the breath (pneuma). As for Epicurus alone, I will willingly pass over him in silence, who thinks that god cares for nothing at all, being impious through and through. And what of Heraclides of Pontus? Is he not too in some respects dragged down to the same 'images' as Democritus?
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