Eusebius of Caesarea · a new plain-English translation from the Greek
praef.1| PREFACE. Such, then, is the shape of the Phoenician theology, as set out above. The saving Word brings the good news that we are to flee from it without turning back, and to seek out the cure for the derangement of the ancients.
praef.2| That these things are not myths, nor poets' fictions holding some meaning concealed beneath the surface, but true testimonies of wise and ancient theologians, as they themselves would put it, testimonies that contain matters older than all the poets and prose-writers, and that draw the credibility of their accounts from the names and histories of the gods which still prevail in the cities and villages of Phoenicia, as well as from the mysteries celebrated in each, should be plain from the agreement of the other writers, and indeed of those reckoned theologians. By that agreement they have borne witness that the ancients who first put together the accounts of the gods referred nothing to figurative explanations drawn from nature, and did not allegorize the myths about the gods, but kept the stories to their bare wording.
praef.3| For the passages of these authors quoted above made this clear, so that there is no longer any need to hunt out forced physical explanations of them, since the facts themselves carry a clear proof.
praef.4| That is the Phoenicians' theology. It is time to pass on and examine that of the Egyptians as well, so as to understand precisely and to see, by careful examination, whether our withdrawal from them has not proved well judged and reasonable, a withdrawal achieved in no other way than through the demonstration of the gospel alone, first of all by the Egyptians themselves, and then by those who share their views.
praef.5| Now the whole of Egyptian history, and in particular what concerns their theology, has been rendered at length into the Greek tongue by Manetho the Egyptian, in the Sacred Book he wrote as well as in other writings of his.
praef.6| Diodorus, however, whom we mentioned earlier, also compiled his histories from many sources and recorded as exactly as he could what belongs to each nation. He was a distinguished man who gained a considerable reputation for learning among every lover of letters; he gathered the whole of ancient history together, joining the earliest events to those that followed, and he began his entire work with the theology of the Egyptians. I think it better to draw my citation of the matters before us from him, since his writing is better known to the Greeks. His account, word for word, is this:
1.1| "The Egyptians say, then, that at the original generation of the universe the first human beings came into existence in Egypt, because of the mild climate of the land and the nature of the Nile. For the river, being prolific and supplying food that grows of itself, readily nourishes whatever has been brought to life. —
1.2| They say that the gods were originally mortal men, who won immortality through their intelligence and their benefactions to all mankind, and that some of them also became kings. When their names are translated, some turn out to bear the same names as the heavenly bodies, while others have had a name of their own: Helios and Cronus, and also Zeus, whom some call Ammon, and besides these Hera and Hephaestus, Hestia too, and lastly Hermes.
1.3| Helios was the first to reign over Egypt, bearing the same name as the star in the sky. Some of the priests, however, say that Hephaestus was the first king, since he discovered fire.
1.4| After him Cronus ruled. He married his sister Rhea and fathered, on some accounts, Osiris and Isis, but on most accounts, Zeus and Hera, who because of their virtue reigned over the whole world.
1.5| From these were born five gods: Osiris, Isis, Typhon, Apollo and Aphrodite. Osiris is Dionysus, while Isis is Demeter. Osiris married her, succeeded to the kingship, and did much for the benefit of the community.
1.6| In the Thebaid he founded a city with a hundred gates, which some called the City of Zeus and others Thebes. — He also built a temple for his parents, Zeus and Hera, as well as golden shrines to the other gods, assigning honors to each and appointing priests to take charge of them.
1.7| Osiris was the discoverer of the vine and the first to drink its wine unmixed, and he taught the rest of mankind how to work the land.
1.8| Above all the others he honored Hermes, who was furnished with a distinctive nature for devising what could benefit the common life. — For he became the discoverer of letters, set in order the sacrifices to the gods, discovered the lyre, and taught the Greeks the interpretation of these matters; from which he was named Hermes.
1.9| He also discovered the olive plant. Osiris, going over the whole inhabited world, set up Busiris over Phoenicia, and Antaeus over Ethiopia and Libya. He himself campaigned together with his brother Apollo, said to have discovered the laurel plant.
1.10| Two sons, Anubis and Macedon, campaigned with Osiris, and he took with him also Pan, held in exceptional honor by the Egyptians, after whom the city of Pan is named. While he was in the region of Taphosiris, the race of the Satyrs was brought to him.
1.11| Being fond of music, he took about a crowd of musicians, among them nine maidens able to sing and educated in other things as well, those called Muses among the Greeks, whom Apollo led.
1.12| Since every nation received Osiris as a god because of his benefactions, he left memorials of himself everywhere,
1.13| and founded not a few cities among the Indians.
1.14| He went over the other nations around Phrygia too, and crossed the Hellespont into Europe. He left his son Macedon as king of Macedonia, and entrusted to Triptolemus the farming in Attica.
1.15| After this, having passed from men to gods, he received from Isis and Hermes a shrine and the other most distinguished honors among the gods. They also established rites and introduced many things about him in the manner of mysteries.
1.16| He was killed by his brother Typhon, who was wicked and impious; Typhon cut the murdered man's body into twenty-six pieces and gave a portion to each of his fellow conspirators, wishing all to share in the pollution.
1.17| Isis, sister and wife of Osiris, took vengeance for the murder, her son Horus fighting beside her. She destroyed Typhon and his accomplices near the village now called Antaeus' village, and reigned over Egypt.
1.18| They say that she found all the parts of Osiris' body except the genitals, and around each part she molded a human-shaped figure, of aromatics and wax, of a size like Osiris, and gave them to the priests, to be honored throughout all Egypt. And she had each priest dedicate one of the animals native to them, whichever they wished.
1.19| The sacred bulls, the one called Apis and Mneuis, were dedicated to Osiris, and it was established for all the Egyptians in common that these be revered as gods. For these animals had helped the discoverers of the grain in the sowing and the common farming.
1.20| Isis swore never to accept the company of any man again; and when she too passed from among men she obtained immortal honors and was buried at Memphis.
1.21| The parts of Osiris that were found, they say, were thought worthy of burial in the way described; but the genitals, they say, were thrown into the river by Typhon, and Isis nonetheless gave them honors equal to a god's, like the others.
1.22| For having made an image of it in the temples, she established honors and rites, and made the sacrifices offered to this god most honored. For this reason the Greeks, having received from Egypt the orgiastic rites and Dionysiac festivals, honor this part in the mysteries and in the rites and sacrifices of this god, calling it the phallus.
1.23| Those who claim the god was born of Semele and Zeus in Boeotian Thebes are improvising. For Orpheus, having come to Egypt and shared in the rite and received the Dionysiac mysteries, being a friend of the Cadmeans and honored by them, transferred the god's birth to them as a favor; and the crowds, partly through ignorance, partly because they wanted the god to be named Greek, readily accepted the rites and the mysteries.
1.24| Orpheus had such grounds for the transfer of the god's birth and rite: Cadmus, who came from Egyptian Thebes, had begotten, with other children, also Semele; she, seduced by someone, became pregnant, and after seven months bore an infant such as the Egyptians believe Osiris was;
1.25| and Cadmus, when the infant died, gilded it and performed the sacrifices due to it, and attached its birth to Zeus, magnifying Osiris and removing the slander from the girl who had been corrupted. For this reason a story went out among the Greeks that Semele, Cadmus' daughter, bore Osiris to Zeus.
1.26| Then, when the writers of myths came forward, the story filled the theater, and for later generations it became a strong and unalterable belief. In general, they say, the Greeks appropriate for themselves the most distinguished heroes and gods of the Egyptians.
1.27| For Heracles too, they say, was an Egyptian by race, who because of his courage traveled over much of the inhabited world. The Greeks made him their own, though he was a different man from the son of Alcmene who was born among the Greeks at a later time.
1.28| They say also that Perseus was born in Egypt, and that the birth of Isis is transferred by the Greeks to Argos, when they tell the myth that she is Io, who was changed into the form of a cow. The same goddess some consider Isis, some Demeter, some Thesmophoros, others Selene, and others Hera.
1.29| Some consider Osiris to be Sarapis, others Dionysus, others Pluto, others Ammon, others Zeus, and others Pan.
1.30| They say Isis was the discoverer of many drugs and of medical science; she also found the drug of immortality, by which she not only raised up her son Horus, who had been plotted against by the Titans and found dead in the water, by giving him back his soul, but made him share in immortality.
1.31| Horus, the last of the gods, reigned over Egypt. Translated, they say, he is Apollo; and having been taught medicine and divination by his mother Isis, he benefits mankind through oracles and cures.
1.32| It is agreed by most that in the time of Isis, against the gods around Zeus and Osiris, certain huge-bodied giants, decked out in monstrous fashion, stirred up a war. And the Egyptians made it a law to marry sisters, because Isis was married to Osiris, who was her brother."
1.33| So much they relate about these matters. About the animals consecrated in Egypt, such an account prevails among them: "Some say that the gods who came into being at the first, since they were few and were being mastered by the numbers and the impiety of men born of the earth, took on the likeness of certain brute animals and thus fled; then, repaying that rescue with thanks, they dedicated the natures of those same animals in whose likeness they had been made.
1.34| Others say that in their clashes with enemies, the commanders made images of the animals which they now honor, and wore them on their heads, and held this as a mark of command; and in the victories over the enemies, since the animals whose images they carried had been the cause, they deified them.
1.35| Others bring forward a third reason, claiming that the animals have been honored for the sake of their usefulness. For the cow gives birth and plows, sheep give birth and provide covering and nourishment through milk and cheese, and the dog hunts with men and guards; for which reason the god called Anubis among them has the head of a dog, signifying that he was the bodyguard of Osiris and Isis.
1.36| Some say that dogs led the way for Isis at the time she was seeking Osiris, and kept off wild beasts and those who met her.
1.37| The cat is useful against asps and other biting reptiles, and the ichneumon crushes the eggs of crocodiles and kills the crocodiles by rolling in mud and leaping on them as they gape, and, eating through their insides, kills them.
1.38| Among birds, the ibis is useful against snakes, locusts, and caterpillars, while the hawk is useful against scorpions and horned vipers and the small biting beasts, and because it contributes to divinations; the eagle because it is royal.
1.39| They say the goat has been deified, as Priapus was by the Greeks, on account of its generative organ: for this animal is the most prone to coupling, and the part of the body that is the cause of generation is fittingly honored as the first source of the nature of living creatures. In general, they say, not only the Egyptians but not a few others as well have consecrated the male organ in their rites, as the cause of the generation of living things;
1.40| and the priests in Egypt who receive their fathers' priesthoods are initiated into this god. They say that Pans and Satyrs are honored among men for the same reason; this is why most people set up their images in the temples in a state of arousal and resembling the nature of the goat, since this animal is held to be the most active in coupling.
1.41| The sacred bulls, Apis and Mneuis, are honored like gods, partly because of farming, and partly because people ascribe to them the discovery of the crops.
1.42| Wolves are honored because of their natural likeness to dogs, and because, they say, in ancient times, when Isis with her child Horus was about to contend against Typhon, Osiris came from Hades to help his son and his wife, having taken on the appearance of a wolf.
1.43| Others say that the Ethiopians who marched against Egypt were driven back by a multitude of wolves, and that this is why the land was called Lycopolis. The crocodile, they say, is revered because the robbers from Arabia and Libya do not dare to swim across the Nile because of the crocodiles.
1.44| They say that one of their kings, pursued by his own dogs, fled to the lake, and was then unexpectedly picked up by a crocodile and carried across to the other side.
1.45| Some also give other reasons for the honor paid to the irrational animals. In ancient times, they say, the people rose up against their kings and agreed to be ruled by kings no longer; so someone devised for them different objects of worship in the form of animals, so that, with each group revering what was honored among themselves and despising what was consecrated among the others, all the people throughout Egypt might never be able to agree with one another. —
1.46| Whenever one of the animals mentioned dies, they cover it with a linen cloth, beat their breasts with wailing, and bury it in sacred tombs. Whoever deliberately kills any of these animals falls under the penalty of death, except if he kills a cat or an ibis; for these, whether a man kills them deliberately or unwillingly, he is in every case put to death. —
1.47| Moreover, in whatever house a dog is found dead, everyone shaves his whole body and goes into mourning; and if wine or grain or anything else needed for life happens to be stored in the house, they would no longer endure to make use of it.
1.48| They keep Apis at Memphis, Mneuis at Heliopolis, the goat at Mendes, the crocodile in the lake of Moeris, and the remaining beasts in sacred enclosures, offering them fine wheat flour, or boiling groats in milk, kneading cakes of every kind with honey, and giving them goose meat, some boiled and some roasted.
1.49| To the flesh-eaters they throw many birds, and they raise together with each of the animals the most beautiful of the females, whom they call concubines.
1.50| When Apis dies and is buried with splendor, they look for another resembling him; and when he is found, the crowds are released from their mourning, and the calf is first brought to the city of Nile. And then the women alone see him, standing face to face with him and lifting their garments to show him their private parts; at all other times these women are forbidden to come into the sight of this god. They say that the soul of Osiris passed into him after death."
1.51| Such is the shameless godlessness of the Egyptians, rather than theology, which it is shameful even to engage with. It was right that we spat on it and departed, having found deliverance and freedom from so many evils in no other way than through the saving teaching of the gospel alone, which brought good news of recovered sight to the blind in mind.
1.52| We shall examine the more dignified speculations and natural explanations of these same matters a little later, once we have dealt with the Greek material as well. So it was that, with Egyptian and Phoenician mythology running together in a mixture, the superstition of the old error came to prevail, naturally enough, among most of the nations.
1.53| But now we must speak of the Greeks' matters as well. The dignified side of Egyptian mythology has been set out in the manner proposed; and that the Greek material consists of fragments and half-heard scraps taken from these very sources has been said many times before, by examining the writers set before us,
1.54| though it could also be made plain from Greek theology itself, since in their own writings about the gods they bring forward nothing of their own, only the myths of others that they came across.
1.55| For they are shown to use similar wooden images and the same mysteries, as one can learn from the history of these things which the man who gathered the libraries together into one place, whom I mentioned before, relates in the third and fourth of the books of the work I have named, having made the beginning of his history from the time of Cadmus.
1.56| Now the exact successions of the chronographies establish that Cadmus lived after Moses, as we shall show in due course. So Moses is proved to be earlier than the Greek gods as well, if indeed he came before Cadmus while the gods turn out to have been born after Cadmus' time. Listen, then, to the words of the writer:
2.1| "They say that Cadmus, son of Agenor, was sent by the king from Phoenicia to search for Europa, who had been snatched away by Zeus; that when he did not find her he came to Boeotia and founded Thebes there; and that, having married Harmonia, the daughter of Aphrodite, he fathered by her Semele and her sisters.
2.2| They say that Zeus lay with Semele, and that she urged him to make his embraces with her like those he had with Hera. When he came to her in a manner worthy of a god, with thunder and lightning, Semele, who was pregnant, could not bear it, miscarried the infant, and died by the fire.
2.3| Zeus took the child and gave it to Hermes, who sent it to the cave at Nysa, which lies between Phoenicia and the Nile. Raised in this way by the nymphs, Dionysus turned out to be the discoverer of wine, and he taught men to plant the vine.
2.4| He also discovered the drink prepared from barley, called zythos; he led about an army composed of women as well as of men, and punished the unjust and impious among men. He campaigned against India for a period of three years.
2.5| From this, they say, the Greeks established triennial sacrifices for Dionysus, and they believe that the god appears among men at this time; and all men revere him for the gift of wine, just as they revere Demeter for the discovery of the nurture of grain."
2.6| "They say there was also another Dionysus, far earlier than this one in time, called Sabazius by some, born of Zeus and Persephone; his birth, sacrifices, and honors they introduce as nocturnal and secret, because of the shame that follows from the union.
2.7| He was the first, they say, to attempt to yoke oxen, which is why they portray him with horns. The younger one, born of Semele, they say was delicate in body, outstanding in beauty, and much inclined to the pleasures of love; and on his campaigns a crowd of women armed with spears traveled with him.
2.8| They say that the Muses, too, who were maidens and exceptionally well educated, traveled with him, charming the god with song and dance; and that Silenus, as his tutor, contributed greatly to his virtue. To relieve the headaches that come from too much wine, he bound his head with a headband.
2.9| They call him 'twice-mothered' because the two Dionysuses had one father but two mothers. They give him a fennel staff because the men of old, drinking the wine unmixed, became frenzied and struck one another with their staves, so that some were killed; hence he showed them how to use fennel stalks instead of wood.
2.10| He is called Bacchius from the Bacchae, Lenaeus from the grapes being trodden in the winepresses, and Bromius from the roar that occurred at his birth.
2.11| They also say that he took Satyrs about with him, who gave him delight and pleasure in the dances and tragedies, and that he established the theater and a body of musical performances. Such are the stories about Dionysus."
2.12| "They say that Priapus is the child of Dionysus and Aphrodite, since men who are drunk with wine are stretched tight toward the pleasures of love. Some say that the men of old called the male organ Priapus in a mystic way.
2.13| Some say that the generative organ is the cause of the begetting of men, and that for this reason it has received immortal honor for all time; just as the Egyptians said that Isis, searching for the limbs of Osiris and unable to find his male organ, established the custom of honoring it as a god, and placed it in the temple in an erect state.
2.14| Among the Greeks too, not only in the rites of Dionysus but in all the others, this god receives some honor, being brought in with laughter and play in the sacrifices; and so too Hermaphroditus, who, born of Hermes and Aphrodite, received his name from them.
2.15| They say that this god appears among men at certain times and is born with a body whose nature is a mixture of man and woman; but some say that such things are portents, born rarely, and that they come to signify sometimes evils and sometimes goods."
2.16| "Daughters of Zeus and Mnemosyne are the Muses, though some say of Uranus and Earth. Most tell the story that they are maidens, and that they received their name from the initiating of men, that is, from teaching them what is noble."
2.17| "Concerning Heracles the Greeks say the following: from Danae, daughter of Acrisius, and Zeus was born Perseus; from Perseus and Andromeda, Electryon; from him was born Alcmene, and Zeus, lying with her, fathered Heracles. When Zeus lay with her he made the night three times as long; and this was the only union of Zeus that came not from amorous desire, as with the other women, but chiefly in order to beget children.
2.18| Hera, jealous, held back Alcmene's labor pains and brought Eurystheus to the light before the proper time, since Zeus had declared that the one born on that day would rule the race of the descendants of Perseus.
2.19| Alcmene bore her child and, they say, exposed the infant for fear of Hera. Athena, admiring the baby, persuaded Hera to offer it her breast. When the child pulled at the breast more violently than his age warranted, Hera, pained, threw the infant away; and Athena brought him and urged his mother to rear him."
2.20| "Afterward Hera sent two serpents to kill the infant, but the child, undismayed, squeezed the neck of each with his hands and strangled the serpents. When Heracles had become a man, Eurystheus, who held the kingdom of Argos, ordered him to carry out twelve labors.
2.21| When he fell into great perplexity, Hera sent madness upon him, and, distressed in soul, he fell into frenzy; and as his affliction grew, being out of his senses, he set about killing his companion and nephew Iolaus, and when Iolaus fled, he shot down with arrows his own children, borne to him by Megara, the daughter of King Creon, as though they were enemies.
2.22| Afterward, when he had gradually come to himself, he performed the twelve labors for Eurystheus. He also killed the Centaurs, and with them Chiron, who was famed for his medical skill."
2.23| "They say that something peculiar happened in the birth of this god. Zeus first lay with a mortal woman, Niobe, daughter of Phoroneus, and last with Alcmene, the mother of Heracles. They count her as sixteenth in descent from Niobe. With her he ended his intercourse with mortal women."
2.24| "But when Heracles had finished his labors, he gave his wife Megara in marriage to his nephew Iolaus, because of the calamity concerning the children; and he himself sought the hand of Iole, daughter of Eurytus; when her father would not give her, he fell ill, and got an oracle that he would be freed from the disease if he were first sold and served as a slave.
2.25| So he sailed to Phrygia, was sold by one of his friends, and became the slave of Omphale, who then ruled the Maeonians, now called Lydians. During the time of his slavery a son, Cleolaus, was born to him by a slave woman. He married Omphale and had a child by her too."
2.26| "On his return to Arcadia he lodged with King Aleus; he secretly lay with the king's daughter, made her pregnant, and went on his way."
2.27| "After this he married again, Deianeira, daughter of Oeneus, Meleager having already died. Taking the daughter of Phyleus captive, he lay with her and fathered Tlepolemus. While dining with Oeneus, he struck a servant who had made some mistake with his fist and killed him.
2.28| As he journeyed he came to the river Evenus and found the Centaur Nessus ferrying people across for a fee. Nessus carried Deianeira over first, and, falling in love with her for her beauty, tried to force her; when she called out for her husband, Heracles shot the Centaur with an arrow, and Nessus, caught in the very act of violating her and dying at once from the sharpness of the wound, said he would give Deianeira a love charm so that Heracles would never wish to approach any other woman.
2.29| He therefore instructed her to take the seed that had fallen from him, mix with it oil and the blood dripping from the arrowhead, and smear the tunic of Heracles with it. Deianeira did this and kept the drug by her."
2.30| "Again, Heracles took the daughter of Phylas captive, lay with her, and fathered a son, Antiochus; and again he made Astyaneira captive, King Armenius' daughter, lay with her, and fathered a son, Ctesippus."
2.31| "Thespius the Athenian, son of Erechtheus, who had fifty daughters by different women, was ambitious to get children from Heracles by them; so he invited Heracles to a sacrifice, entertained him splendidly, and sent him his daughters one at a time. In a single night he ruined them all, and became the father of those called the Thespiads."
2.32| "Taking Iole captive as well, and while performing a sacrifice, he sent to Deianeira, his wife, asking for a cloak and tunic of the kind he was accustomed to use for sacrifices; and she smeared the tunic with the charm given her by the Centaur and sent it.
2.33| Heracles put on the tunic and fell into the greatest misfortune. For the arrowhead had taken up the venom of the Echidna, and so the tunic, through its heat, ravaged the flesh of his body; in extreme pain he killed the man who had brought it, and then, in accordance with an oracle, he gave himself to the fire, and thus his life came to an end. That is the story of Heracles."
2.34| "Concerning Asclepius, they say he was born to Apollo and Coronis, that he pursued the science of medicine, and that his reputation advanced so far that he cured many sick people who had been given up as hopeless, to everyone's astonishment; so that Zeus, provoked, struck him with a thunderbolt and destroyed him. Apollo, angered at the killing of his son, slew the Cyclopes that had made the thunderbolt for Zeus; and Zeus, enraged at their death, ordered Apollo to serve Admetus, and in this way exacted from him the penalty for his offenses."
2.35| These things, then, Diodorus sets down in his fourth book of the Libraries. And he says that the Greeks took over the rest of their theology as well from other nations, writing in the third book of his history as follows:
2.36| "The Atlantians say, then, that the first king among them was Uranus, and that he had children by many women, forty-five in all, of whom eighteen, they say, were by one woman, Tepaea; she was virtuous and the cause of many good things, and after her death was deified and renamed Earth.
2.37| Uranus had daughters Basileia and Rhea, who is also called Pandora. Basileia, who reared her brothers and showed them a mother's kindness, was called Mother.
2.38| Later, after the death of Uranus, she married her brother Hyperion and bore two children, whom she named Helios and Selene.
2.39| Rhea's brothers, in fear, slaughtered Hyperion and drowned Helios in the Eridanus river; Selene, learning of this, threw herself from the roof, and their mother, driven mad, wandered over the land with her hair loose, in ecstasy to the beat of drum and cymbals, and in the end vanished herself.
2.40| The crowds, marveling at the turn of events, moved Helios and Selene up among the stars of heaven, and their mother they considered a goddess, built altars for her, and honored her with the performances of drums and cymbals."
2.41| "The Phrygians say that Maeon, king of Phrygia, had a daughter, Cybele, who was the first to invent the panpipe and was called Mountain Mother. Marsyas the Phrygian, who was a friend of hers, was the first to put together pipes, and he remained to the end of his life untouched by the pleasures of love.
2.42| Cybele, having come together with Attis, became pregnant. When this was discovered, her father killed Attis and her nurses; and Cybele, driven mad, leaped out into the country and continued there wailing and beating her drum."
2.43| Marsyas was with her; he entered a contest of music with Apollo, was defeated, and was flayed alive by Apollo.
2.44| Apollo, falling in love with Cybele, was joined with her as far as the land of the Hyperboreans, and ordered that the body of Attis be buried and that Cybele be honored as a goddess. This is why even to this day the Phrygians do this, lamenting the death of the youth, and having set up altars they honor Attis and Cybele with sacrifices.
2.45| Later, at Pessinus in Phrygia, a costly temple was built, and honors and sacrifices were established of the greatest magnificence."
2.46| "After the death of Hyperion the children of Uranus divided the kingdom, of whom the most famous were Atlas and Cronus. Of these Atlas received the regions along the Ocean, and became an excellent astronomer; he had seven daughters, called the Atlantides. These, joining with the best-endowed gods, became the founders of the greater part of the race, bearing gods and heroes of excellence; of them the eldest, Maia, lay with Zeus and bore Hermes."
2.47| "Cronus, who was outstanding in greed and wantonness, married his sister Rhea, and by her fathered Zeus. There was also another Zeus, brother of Uranus, who ruled Crete and was far inferior in reputation to the later one.
2.48| The latter, they say, was king of the whole world, while the Cretan one fathered ten children, who were called Curetes. They say that his tomb is shown even now in Crete.
2.49| Cronus held power in Sicily, Libya, and Italy. His son Zeus emulated a life opposed to his father's. Some say that he took over the kingdom with his father willingly yielding it, others that he was chosen by the crowds because of their hatred of his father.
2.50| When Cronus marched against him with the Titans, Zeus won the battle and traversed the entire inhabited world. He surpassed others in bodily strength and in his other virtues, and made every effort for the punishment of the impious and the benefaction of the good; and for this reason, when he had passed away from among men, he was named Zen, because he was thought to have been the cause of good living for men."
2.51| "These, then, are the main points of what the Atlantians say about the gods. The Greeks, they say, make use of these same things as well."
2.52| Diodorus gives this in the third book of his histories. And in the sixth book too, drawing on the writing of Euhemerus of Messene, he confirms the same theology, saying word for word:
2.53| "Concerning the gods, then, the men of old handed down to later generations two conceptions. Some gods, they say, are eternal and imperishable, such as the sun, the moon, and the other stars in heaven, and in addition the winds and the others that share a similar nature; for each of these has an everlasting origin and continuance. Others, they say, were earthly gods, who because of their benefactions to men gained immortal honor and glory, such as Heracles, Dionysus, Aristaeus, and others like them.
2.54| About the earthly gods many and varied accounts have been handed down by the historians and the myth-writers. Among the historians, Euhemerus, who composed the Sacred Record, has written in his own way; among the myth-tellers, Homer, Hesiod, Orpheus, and others of that sort have woven more marvelous fables about the gods. We shall try to run briefly over what is recorded in both, aiming at due proportion."
2.55| "Euhemerus, then, who was a friend of King Cassander and was compelled by him to carry out certain royal services and long journeys, says that he was carried far away toward the south, to the Ocean; that he sailed out from Arabia the Blest and made a voyage through the ocean of many days, and was brought to islands in the open sea; that one of these was called Panchaea, where he saw the Panchaeans who dwelt there, outstanding in piety, honoring the gods with sumptuous sacrifices and remarkable votive gifts of silver and of gold.
2.56| The island, he says, is sacred to the gods, and there are many other things to wonder at, both for their antiquity and for the artistry of their construction, of which we have recorded the particulars in the books before this one.
2.57| On it, on a very high hill, is a temple of Triphylian Zeus, established by him at the time when he was king of the whole inhabited world, while still a man living among mortals. In that temple stands a golden stele on which, in Panchaean letters, the deeds of Uranus, Cronus, and Zeus are written in summary.
2.58| After this he says that the first king was Uranus, a gentle man, a benefactor, and skilled in the movement of the stars; he was the first to honor the heavenly gods with sacrifices, and for this reason was called Uranus.
2.59| He had sons by his wife Hestia, Titan and Cronus, and daughters Rhea and Demeter. Cronus reigned after Uranus, and marrying Rhea, fathered Zeus, Hera, and Poseidon.
2.60| Zeus, succeeding to the kingdom of Cronus, married Hera, Demeter, and Themis; and by them he had children: the Curetes by the first, Persephone by the second, and Athena by the third.
2.61| On reaching Babylon he was received as a guest by Belus, and afterward, arriving at the island of Panchaea, which lies by the Ocean, he set up an altar to Uranus, his own forefather; from there he went through Syria to Casius, who was then the ruler, from whom Mount Casius takes its name; and going to Cilicia he defeated in war Cilix, the local ruler. Going on to very many other nations, he was honored by all and proclaimed a god."
2.62| After going through these and similar things about the gods as though they were mortal men, he adds: "Concerning Euhemerus, who composed the Sacred Record, we shall be content with what has been said; and as for what is told in myth among the Greeks about the gods, in accordance with Hesiod, Homer, and Orpheus, we shall try to run over it briefly." Then he goes on to attach the myths of the poets.
2.63| But let that much, which is enough for us, be cut off from the theology of the Greeks. It is reasonable to attach to it the rites of these same gods in their inner sanctuaries and their secret mysteries, and to consider whether they offer any sign worthy of a god, as though from a truly divine theology, or whether they spring from somewhere below, from a long error inspired by demons, matters worthy of laughter, or rather of shame, or rather still of pity even for those who are still blind.
2.64| The admirable Clement openly lays these bare in his Exhortation to the Greeks; he was a man who had passed through all these things by experience, but who quickly turned back from the error, as one delivered from evils by the saving Word and by means of evangelical teaching. Listen, then, to these things too, in brief:
3.1| "Do not busy yourselves, then, with godless inner sanctuaries, or with chasms whose mouths are full of marvel-mongering, or with the Thesprotian cauldron, the Cirrhaean tripod, or the bronze of Dodona; leave the aged oak, honored in the desert sands, and the oracle there along with the oak itself, withered by stories grown old.
3.2| Indeed the spring of Castalia has fallen silent, and another spring, at Colophon, and the other prophetic waters are likewise dead. Empty of pretension, though late, they have at last been exposed, flowing away together with their own fables.
3.3| Describe for us also the rest of divination, or rather of madness, the useless oracles: the Clarian, the Pythian, the Didymaean, that of Amphiaraus, of Apollo, of Amphilochus;
3.4| and if you like, add to them the interpreters of omens and of birds, and the judges of dreams, all unholy; and bring and set beside the Pythian the readers of flour and the readers of barley, and the ventriloquists, who are still honored by the many. Let the inner shrines of the Egyptians, together with the Etruscans' necromancies, be handed over to darkness. These are truly mad places, schools of unbelieving men and gaming-houses of unmixed error.
3.5| Fellow-traders in this sorcery are the goats trained for divination and the ravens taught by men to give oracles to men."
3.6| "What if I were to list for you the mysteries? I shall not mock them with dances, as they say Alcibiades did, but I shall strip bare, by the word of truth, the sorcery hidden in them, and I shall bring round to the spectators of the truth, as on the stage of life, your so-called gods themselves, whose rites are mystic.
3.7| The Bacchants celebrate the mad Dionysus in revel, keeping the holy month with the eating of raw flesh, and they complete the distributions of slaughtered meat, wreathed with serpents, crying out 'Eva, Eva', that Eve through whom error followed and death came after; and the sign of Bacchic orgies is a consecrated serpent.
3.8| Indeed, in the exact speech of the Hebrews the name Eua, with the rough breathing, is interpreted as "the female serpent." Deo and Kore have by now become a mystic drama, and Eleusis carries the torch for their wandering, their abduction, and their mourning."
3.9| "And it seems to me that the orgia and the mysteria should be given their etymologies: the one from the wrath (orge) of Deo against Zeus, the other from the pollution (musos) that befell Dionysus; and if it is rather from some Attic Myus, who Apollodorus says was killed on a hunt, I do not begrudge you that the mysteries should be glorified by an honor paid at a tomb.
3.10| You can also take the mysteries otherwise, as little tales, by matching up the letters; for such tales hunt out, if anyone does, the Thracians who are most barbarous, the Phrygians who are most senseless, and the Greeks who are most superstitious.
3.11| Let him perish, then, whoever began this deceit among men, whether Dardanus, who set forth the mysteries as myths of the gods, or Eetion, who established the rites and initiations of the Samothracians, or that Phrygian Midas, who learned from Odrysus and then passed on to his subjects an artful deception.
3.12| For Cinyras the islander from Cyprus will never persuade me, who dared to hand over to the day the lewd rites of Aphrodite that belonged to the night, ambitious to deify a harlot who was a fellow citizen.
3.13| Other writers say that Melampus, the son of Amythaon, brought the festivals of Deo from Egypt to Greece, a lament sung in hymns. These men I would call the authors of evil, the begetters of godless myths and fathers of deadly superstition, who planted in life, as a seed of wickedness and corruption, the mysteries."
3.14| "And now, for it is time, I shall convict your orgia themselves of being full of deceit and marvel-mongering. If you have been initiated yourselves, you will laugh the more at these honored myths of yours. I shall speak openly what is hidden, not ashamed to say what you are not ashamed to worship.
3.15| First, then, the foam-born, the Cyprus-born, the friend of Cinyras, Aphrodite I mean, the "genital-loving" one, because she appeared from the genitals, those severed genitals of Uranus, lustful organs that violated the wave after the cutting: so that for you Aphrodite becomes a fruit worthy of lewd members. In the rites of this sea-born pleasure, as a token of her birth, a grain of salt and a phallus are handed to the initiates, for the adulterous art; and the initiates bring her a coin, as lovers do to a courtesan."
3.16| "The mysteries of Deo are the amorous embraces of Zeus with his mother Demeter, and her wrath: I do not know what else to call Deo, mother or wife. For this she is said to have been called Brimo; there are Zeus's supplications, the drink of gall, the tearing out of hearts, and unspeakable deeds.
3.17| These the Phrygians perform for Attis, Cybele, and the Corybants. They have babbled that Zeus tore the testicles from a ram and, carrying them, cast them into Deo's lap, paying a false penalty for his violent embrace, as though he had castrated himself.
3.18| I know that the tokens of this initiation, set out in abundance, will raise laughter even in you, who are not inclined to laugh by reason of the exposures. "I ate from the drum, I drank from the cymbal, I carried the kernos, I slipped under the bridal chamber." Are these tokens not an outrage? Are these mysteries not a mockery?"
3.19| "What if I should add the rest? Demeter is with child, the maiden is reared, and then Zeus, who begot her, unites again with Pherephatta, his own daughter, after her mother Deo, forgetting the former pollution; and he unites with her having become a serpent, which was the proof against him.
3.20| Indeed, the token of the Sabazian mysteries for the initiates is "the god through the lap"; this is a serpent drawn through the lap of the initiated, a proof of Zeus's incontinence. Pherephatta also conceives a child in the form of a bull.
3.21| Accordingly some idol-making poet says: "The bull is the serpent's father and the serpent the bull's father; on the mountain the hidden goad of the herdsman." By "goad of the herdsman" he means, I think, the fennel staff, which the Bacchants brandish.
3.22| Do you want me to tell you also of Pherephatta's flower-gathering, the basket, the abduction by Aidoneus, the opening of the earth, and Eubuleus's swine that were swallowed up together with the two goddesses, which is why at the Thesmophoria they throw pigs into the megara?
3.23| This mythology the women celebrate in various ways city by city, in the Thesmophoria, the Skirophoria, the Arrhetophoria, acting out in many manners the tragedy of Pherephatta's abduction. As for the mysteries of Dionysus, they are utterly inhuman: while he was still a boy, and the Curetes were dancing around him in armed motion, the Titans slipped in by guile, deceived him with childish toys, and tore him apart while still an infant, as Orpheus the Thracian, the poet of the rite, says: "a cone, and a spinning top, and limb-bending playthings, and fair golden apples from the clear-voiced Hesperides."
3.24| It is not useless to set out the useless tokens of this rite for the purpose of condemning it: a knucklebone, a ball, a pine cone, apples, a spinning top, a mirror, a tuft of wool.
3.25| Athena, having carried off the heart of Dionysus, was named Pallas from the throbbing (pallein) of the heart; and the Titans who tore him apart set a cauldron on a tripod, threw in the limbs of Dionysus, boiled them first, then pierced them with spits and held them over the fire of Hephaestus.
3.26| Zeus then appeared, and, if he was a god, perhaps he partook of the savor of the roasting meat, a privilege your gods admit they have obtained; he struck the Titans with his thunderbolt and entrusted to his son Apollo the limbs of Dionysus for burial. Apollo, for he did not disobey Zeus, carried the torn corpse to Parnassus and laid it there.
3.27| If you wish also to look on the orgia of the Corybantes: these two, having killed their third brother, covered the head of the corpse with a purple cloth, crowned it, and buried it, carrying it on a bronze shield to the foot of Olympus.
3.28| And these, to put it briefly, are the mysteries: murders and burials. Their priests, whom those concerned call "masters of the rites," add further marvel-mongering to the calamity by forbidding celery, root and all, to be placed on the table; for they think that celery sprang from the blood that flowed from the Corybant. In just the same way the women celebrating the Thesmophoria take care not to eat pomegranate seeds; for they believe that pomegranates sprang up from the drops of Dionysus' blood that fell to the ground.
3.29| They call the Corybantes Cabeiri and proclaim a Cabeiric rite. For these two fratricides took up the chest in which the male organ of Dionysus was laid away and brought it to Etruria, merchants of a glorious cargo; and there, living as fugitives, they handed over to the Etruscans, as a most precious teaching of piety, the worship of the organ and the chest. For this reason some wish, not unreasonably, that Dionysus be called Attis, since he was deprived of his organ."
3.30| "And what wonder if the barbarian Etruscans are initiated into such shameful experiences, when among the Athenians and the rest of Greece the mythology about Deo, I am ashamed even to say it, is full of shame?
3.31| For Deo, wandering around Eleusis (this is a place in Attica) in search of her daughter Kore, grows weary, and sits down by a well in grief. This is forbidden to the initiates even now, lest those who have been initiated seem to imitate the woman in mourning.
3.32| At that time the earth-born people lived in Eleusis; their names were Baubo, Dysaules, Triptolemus, and besides them Eumolpus and Eubuleus. Triptolemus was a cowherd, Eumolpus a shepherd, and Eubuleus a swineherd; from them sprang the family of the Eumolpidae and the heralds, the hierophantic family at Athens.
3.33| And now, for I shall not refrain from saying it, Baubo received Deo as a guest and offered her the barley drink. When Deo refused it and would not take and drink, for she was in mourning, Baubo, deeply pained, as if she had been slighted, pulled up her garments and displayed her private parts to the goddess; and Deo was delighted with the sight, and at last accepted the drink, pleased by the spectacle."
3.34| Such are the secret mysteries of the Athenians; Orpheus too records them. I shall set before you the very verses of Orpheus, so that you may have the mystagogue as witness of the shamelessness: "So saying, she drew up her robes and showed all that body's unseemly form; and the child Iacchus was there, and laughing he tossed her by hand beneath Baubo's lap. And when the goddess smiled, she smiled in her heart, and took the gleaming vessel in which the barley drink was set."
3.35| And the password of the Eleusinian mysteries is: "I fasted; I drank the barley drink; I took from the chest, and having done my work, I put it in the basket, and out of the basket into the chest." Fine spectacles, indeed, and befitting a goddess.
3.36| Fitting indeed for night and fire are such rites, and for the high-minded, or rather vain-minded, people of the Erechtheidae, and for the rest of the Greeks as well, for whom, once they have died, there awaits what they do not even hope for.
3.37| For whom does Heraclitus of Ephesus prophesy? "Night-walkers, magi, Bacchants, Lenaeans, initiates": these he threatens with what comes after death, to these he prophesies fire; for the mysteries customary among men they are initiated into in an unholy manner.
3.38| Custom, then, and empty supposition, and the serpent's mysteries, are a kind of deception that is made an object of worship, urging men toward initiations that are in truth uninitiated and rites that are without true orgia, in a bastard piety.
3.39| And what are the mystic chests like? For one must strip bare their holy things and speak out their unspeakable matters. Are they not sesame cakes, pyramid cakes, balls of wool, many-bossed cakes, grains of salt, and the serpent, the sacred emblem of Dionysus Bassareus? And are they not pomegranates, and with them hearts, fennel staffs and ivy, and besides these cakes and poppies? These are their holy things.
3.40| And besides, there are the unspeakable tokens of Themis: marjoram, a lamp, a sword, and a woman's comb, which in euphemistic and mystic speech is the female organ. O the open shamelessness! Once, for sober men, silent night was a covering for pleasure; but now, for the initiates, the holy night of incontinence is talked about, and the fire, carried as a torch, convicts their passions.
3.41| Put out the fire, hierophant; have respect for the torches, torchbearer; the light convicts your Iacchus. Allow the night to hide the mysteries; let the orgia be honored with darkness. The fire does not play a part; it is commanded to convict and to punish."
3.42| "These are the mysteries of the godless. And I call them godless with good reason, since they are ignorant of the God who truly is, while they shamelessly revere a child torn to pieces by Titans, a woman in mourning, and organs truly unspeakable for shame; they are held fast in a twofold godlessness: the first, by which they do not know God, not recognizing the God who truly is; the other, a second, this error by which they take things that are not for things that are, and give the name of gods to those who in truth are not, or rather are not at all, and have gained only the name." So much he too says.
4.1| With good reason, then, we acknowledge that we have become free from all these things, delivered from the long, aged error as from some dreadful and most grievous disease: first, by the grace and benefaction of the almighty God; second, by the ineffable power of the gospel teaching of our Savior; and third, because we judged with sober reasoning that it is unholy and impious to honor with the venerable name of God mortal men who long ago lay among the dead, who have not even left the memory of sober men, but have handed down to those after them tokens of the extremity of incontinence, licentiousness, cruelty, and madness.
4.2| For how is it not the most foolish of all things for lovers of self-control to yield first place to the shameful and licentious, for the prudent and sensible to give venerable honor to those who have lost their wits, and for those who practice justice and kindness to men to pay it to men entangled, from excess of cruelty and inhumanity, in the pollutions of child-murder and father-murder?
4.3| What excess of impiety has it not outdone, to cast the solemn and all-holy name of God down onto the unspeakable organs of men and women and onto the irrational and bestial nature, and to give a theology of such shameful and inhuman things as, in the case of evildoers among men, if they were convicted, would bring on them the inexorable penalties of the laws?
4.4| And why must I go on at length, we who bring to every barbarian and Greek alike the good news of freedom from the evils mentioned and of the departure from the falsely named gods, bringing the reasonableness of it into the light, when even most of the very superstitious, as if waking from a deep stupor and opening the eye of the soul from its old mist, have seen the deep folly of their fathers' error, and, standing on reason, have chosen the other road, having withdrawn from the old one?
4.5| Of these, some have come to grips with the matter, spat on the whole mythology, and openly laughed at their own ancestors; others, avoiding the reputation of godlessness, neither stood by their former beliefs nor withdrew from them altogether, but, setting out to flatter and tend their own reputation, proclaimed that the stories of the gods noised abroad among them were true myths fashioned by poets, concealing natural speculations within them.
4.6| Even if these accounts bring no sign of truth at all, still their exposition would be necessary for us, so that we may consider what is held dignified among these people too, and so that our withdrawal from them may be seen to have been brought about in no other way than by the gospel teaching of our Savior establishing its reasonableness. Come, then, let us take up the account of these things from the beginning and examine them.
5.1| The manner of the Greek theology, then, I mean the popular and more mythical sort, and that far older one among the Phoenicians, Egyptians, and the others whose memory the earlier discourses have preserved, has been shown to be such as was made plain through the passages quoted above from the Greek writers themselves. This we rightly set forth at the outset of the present Preparation for the Gospel, for the examination and judgment of those who will read it, so that we ourselves, and those who are still without experience of these matters, may learn who we once were, from what kind of fathers we sprang, in what great evils we were formerly bound, and with how much impiety and drunkenness of ignorance of God our souls lay buried, and that we were thought worthy of turning back from all this and of freedom through the gospel teaching alone, which was granted us in no other way than through the appearing of our Savior Jesus, the Christ of God.
5.2| He, not in a part of the earth or in a corner of the territory of one nation, but over the whole inhabited world, where the error of the most superstitious kind had prevailed, like a sun for intelligent and rational souls, spreading the rays of his own light, brought the whole race of men together, barbarians and Greeks alike, as from a dreadful, murky, and unseen night of superstitious error to the bright and clearest day of the true piety of God, the King of all.
5.3| The passages quoted above plainly taught, at any rate, that all the people, in city and village alike, who were swept up in the error of many gods, served and tended the images of the dead and likenesses of men long departed. The men of old, through the excessive savagery of life at that time, took no account of God, the Maker of all, and gave no heed to the divine justice that punishes wrongdoings, but sank into every kind of unholy deed.
5.4| For at that time no laws by which one ought to live had yet been established, nor had a civilized way of public life been set in order among men; life was loose and nomadic and beast-like. Some, like irrational cattle, cared for nothing more than the filling of the belly, and in these the first form of godlessness lodges. Others, stirred a little by natural conceptions, thought that God and the power of God was something saving and good; and wishing to find him, they stretched their souls upward to heaven, and, stopping there in thought and struck by the beauty of the luminaries that shine and appear in heaven, declared these to be gods.
5.5| A third group, casting themselves down on the earth, proclaimed as gods, both while living and after death, men who were thought to excel their neighbors in understanding, or who through bodily strength and the force of power had mastered the many, whether giants or tyrants, or sorcerers and poisoners who had put together their evil-crafted enchantments from some fall from the divine, or others who had been the first to provide some common benefit useful for life.
5.6| Hence the houses of their gods are recorded as being the tombs of the dead, as Clement reports in his Exhortation to the Greeks, where he brings forward the Greeks themselves as witnesses to the statement. If you like, listen again to him writing on this in the following way:
6.1| "Naturally, then, superstition, taking its start from somewhere, became a source of senseless wickedness; then, not being checked but increasing and flowing abundantly, it makes itself the maker of many demons, performing hecatombs, holding festivals, setting up statues, and building temples. These, for I shall not keep silent on this either, but shall expose it, are called temples with a fair-sounding name, though they are in fact tombs: that is, the tombs are called temples. But even now forget your superstition; forget it, ashamed to honor tombs."
6.2| "In the temple of Athena at Larissa, on the acropolis, lies the tomb of Acrisius; and at Athens, on the acropolis, that of Cecrops, according to Antiochus in book nine of his histories.
6.3| And what of Erichthonius? Does he not lie buried in the temple of Athena Polias? And Immarus, the son of Eumolpus and Daeira: has he not been buried within the precinct of the Eleusinion below the acropolis? And are the daughters of Celeus not buried at Eleusis?
6.4| Why should I list for you the women from the Hyperboreans? Hyperoche and Laodice, as they are called, are buried in the Artemision at Delos, and this is in the sanctuary of Apollo of Delos.
6.5| According to Leander, Cleomachus lies buried at Miletus, in the Didymaion. Here the tomb of Leucophryne must not be passed over, following Zeno of Myndus: she is buried in the sanctuary of Artemis in Magnesia; nor must the altar of Apollo at Telmessus, which they report is also the tomb of Telmessus the seer.
6.6| Ptolemy, son of Agesarchus, states in the first book of his work on Philopator that Cinyras, together with Cinyras’ descendants, lies buried at Paphos in the sanctuary of Aphrodite.
6.7| But if I were to go through the tombs that are worshiped among you, not even all of time would suffice for me; and as for you, unless some shame at what you dare comes over you, you go about as dead men utterly, believing dead men. O wretches, why do you suffer this evil?"
6.8| And a little later he says: "Another new god, in Egypt and almost among the Greeks as well, the emperor of the Romans has reverently made divine: his beloved, who had become exceedingly beautiful, Antinous, he consecrated, as Zeus did Ganymede;
6.9| for desire that has no fear is not easily hindered; and now men worship the holy nights of Antinous, which the lover who kept the vigil with him knew to be shameful." And he adds: "Already the tomb of the beloved is a temple of Antinous, and a city; for just as, I think, temples are wondered at, so are tombs: pyramids, mausolea, and labyrinths. Those are other temples of the dead, as these are tombs of the gods."
6.10| And again, a little later: "Come, let us also go briefly around the games, and put an end to these funeral festivals: the Isthmia, the Nemea, the Pythia, and the Olympia besides. At Pytho the Pythian serpent is worshiped, and the festival of the snake is announced under the name Pythia; at the Isthmus the sea spat out a pitiable carcass, and the Isthmia lament Melicertes; at Nemea another little child, Archemorus, is buried, and the funeral rite of the child is called the Nemea. And Pisa among you, O Greeks all, is the tomb of a Phrygian charioteer, and Phidias' Zeus appropriates the libations of Pelops as the Olympia."
6.11| So he says. But do you, taking up the account from the beginning, consider the collapse of superstitious error. By nature, and through self-taught conceptions, or rather conceptions taught by God, men understood that what the name and essence of God signify is something noble and beneficial; for all men had it beforehand in common reasonings, the Maker of the universe having sown this by natural conceptions in every rational and intelligent soul.
6.12| But they did not use it with a reasoned choice. For perhaps one man, and a second, or a few others, very few indeed, whose memory the oracles of the Hebrews contain, did not apply their notion of God to anything visible, but with undistorted reasonings led themselves up from the things seen to the Maker of the whole world and the great Creator of all, and with purified eyes of the mind understood that he alone is God, the Savior of all, and the only giver of good things. But the rest, overturned by every kind of dimming of the soul, were carried down into a depth of impiety, so that, after the manner of wild beasts, they confined the noble, the advantageous, and the good to bodies and the pleasure of the flesh.
6.13| In this way, as said before, they proclaimed as saviors and gods the discoverers of what were thought to be good and useful things of the body, or else certain rulers and tyrants, or sorcerers and poisoners, mortal by nature and subject to human misfortunes, as dispensers of goods, transferring the reverent notion that was naturally in them to those they considered benefactors.
6.14| Such a stupor of mind held them that they took no account of any wrongdoing among those they called gods, and did not blush at the shameful things said about them, but admired the men in everything, on account of the benefits supplied by them, or on account of the dominions and tyrannies that were then first being established.
6.15| Since, as I said before, no laws were yet governing life among men, and no punishment hung over wrongdoing, they recalled as if among their successes and acts of manliness adulteries and the corruption of males, unlawful and illegal marriages, murders, the killing of fathers, the slaughter of children and brothers, and even wars and civil strife actually waged by their own patrons, whom they considered and called gods, leaving the memory of these things to later generations as if they were noble and brave.
6.16| Such was the old theology. Some newcomers, sprung up only yesterday or the day before, who boast of philosophizing more rationally, changed it and introduced a more natural-scientific view of the history of the gods, devising for the myths a more dignified manner of invention; they neither escaped altogether the offence of impiety in their forefathers nor, on the other hand, could put up with the wickedness of what was said about the gods that plainly appeared on the surface.
6.17| Yet, eager to heal the fault of their fathers, these men refashioned the myths into natural explanations and speculations, boasting, as though more mystically, that what the myths signify are the nourishing and growth-producing aspects of the nature of bodies.
6.18| Going up from there, these men too proclaimed the elements of the world to be gods: not only the sun and moon and stars themselves, but also earth and water, air and fire, and the compounds and products made from them, and even the seasonal fruits of the earth and the other growths of dry and moist nourishment. These too, as causes of the life of bodies, they called Demeter, Kore, Dionysus, and whatever others are like them, and made gods of them, introducing a forced and untrue embellishment of the myths.
6.19| But these men, late in the day, feeling shame, as it were, at the theologies of their forebears, added to the myths about the gods the solemn explanations each had devised on his own; no one dared to disturb ancestral things, since they held in great honor antiquity and the customary upbringing in which they had been raised from childhood.
6.20| Those older than these, for their part, ordained the deification of irrational animals on an equal footing with the making of gods of men, because of their usefulness as well, for the reasons given earlier, and they consecrated equal worship to the irrational beasts, with libations and sacrifices and mystic rites, hymns and songs, raising their honors in the same way as those of the deified men. They were driven to such a depth of evil that, from an excess of unrestrained self-indulgence, they deified with godlike honors the parts of the body that draw men to shameful acts and the licentious passions among men, their own theologians declaring that in these things there was no need at all to speak with solemnity.
6.21| It must be observed, then, that the most ancient are attested above all as knowing nothing beyond the narrative and giving heed only to the myths. But since we have once set out to survey the dignified and secret teachings of the noble philosophers, come, let us consider these too, lest we appear unaware even of their wonderful natural philosophies.
6.22| Before making an exposition of these, it seems to me that I should first point out the contradiction of these admirable philosophers with one another in these very matters. For some tell their tales at random, and each declares his own view as it occurs to him, for they do not even agree with one another in their natural philosophy; others, with more good sense, do away with the whole thing, and drive out of their own commonwealth not merely the unseemly tales told of the gods but their interpretations as well; and at times, from fear of the punishment prescribed by the laws, they speak softly of the myths.
6.23| Listen to the Greeks themselves through one man, the best of them all, who at one time thrusts the myths out and at another again adopts them. Their admirable Plato, whenever he lays his own preference bare, forbids with considerable boldness thinking or saying such things about the gods in general as were said by the ancients, whether they contain something hidden, shown through undertones, or are told with no undertone at all; but when he speaks softly to the laws, he says that one must believe the myths about the gods, as though they had nothing shown through undertones.
6.24| And at one time, having set his own theology apart from the ancient myths, and having discussed separately the heaven, the sun, the moon, and the stars, and further the whole world and its parts, he then goes through, on its own and set apart, the matter of the gods of the old genealogies, in the following words in the Timaeus:
7.1| "To speak of the other divinities and to understand their birth lies beyond our powers; but we must trust those who have spoken before, who were, as they said, descendants of gods and presumably knew their own ancestors clearly. It is impossible, then, to disbelieve children of gods, even though they speak without likely and necessary proofs; but since they claim to report family matters, we must follow custom and believe them.
7.2| So, according to them, let the genealogy of these gods be held and told: of Earth and Heaven were born Oceanus and Tethys; of these, Phorcys, Cronus, Rhea, and all who go with them; and of Cronus and Rhea, Zeus and Hera and all those whom we know to be called their brothers, and still others, descendants of these."
7.3| This is what Plato says: that one must follow custom and believe them, although he admits these things were said without likely and necessary proofs; and note that he makes clear that the names and genealogies of the gods hold nothing secret signified in natural explanations.
7.4| But again, elsewhere, laying bare his own choice, the same man uses these words: "First, said I, the man who told the greatest falsehood about the greatest matters did not lie well, saying that Uranus did what Hesiod says he did, and that Cronus in turn took vengeance on him. As for the deeds of Cronus and what he suffered at the hands of his son, even if they were true I would not think they should be told so lightly to the foolish and the young, but best of all passed over in silence; and if there were some necessity to tell them, they should be heard in secret by as few as possible, after sacrificing not a pig but some great and hard-to-obtain offering, so that it should happen that very few would hear them.
7.5| For indeed, he said, these stories are hard. And they must not be told, Adeimantus, in our city; nor must a young listener be given the idea that one who does the worst wrongs would do nothing surprising, nor again that one who punishes a wrongdoing father in every way would be doing anything other than what the first and greatest among the gods did. Nor, for my part, do I think them fit to be told.
7.6| Nor, said I, at all, that gods war with gods and plot and fight against them; for it is not true, if those who are to guard our city must think it most shameful to fall lightly into enmity with one another. Far from it that we should tell them tales of battles of giants and embroider other enmities of every kind, of gods and heroes, against their kin and family; but if we are to persuade them that no citizen ever hated another, and that this is not holy, these are rather the things that old men and old women should tell the children from the first, and as they grow older, and the poets must be compelled to compose stories close to these.
7.7| Hera's being bound by her son, and Hephaestus being hurled down by his father when he was about to defend his mother who was being beaten, and all the battles among the gods which Homer has composed, are not to be admitted into the city, whether composed with undertones or without undertones."
7.8| Plainly, through these words, the philosopher teaches that both the myths of the ancients about the gods and the natural explanations of the myths, thought to be spoken in undertones, are to be rejected, so that it is no longer without reason that we proclaim the turning away from them in the teaching of our Savior, when they have been cast out even by their own.
7.9| Hence it comes to me to admire the ancient Romans, too, in how, having perceived that all the Greek natural explanations about the gods were out of place and useless, or rather forced and incoherent, they struck them, myths and all, out of their own theology. You can learn this from the Roman Antiquities of Dionysius of Halicarnassus; for in his second book, where he relates the history of Romulus, Rome's first founder, he goes through his other achievements and, writing also about these matters, says as follows:
8.1| "He knew, though, that good laws and zeal for noble pursuits make a city pious, temperate, practiced in justice, and good in war; for these he took great forethought, making his beginning with the reverence paid to divine and demonic things.
8.2| Temples, sacred precincts, altars, the setting up of wooden images, their forms, symbols, powers, and the gifts by which they have benefited our race, the festivals that it is proper to hold for each of the gods or divinities, the sacrifices in which they delight to be honored by men, truces, public assemblies, rests from labors, and everything of this kind he established in the same way, following the best of Greek customs.
8.3| But the myths handed down about them, in which there are some blasphemies or accusations against them, he judged to be wicked, useless, and unseemly, unworthy not merely of gods but of good men as well, he cast them all out, and trained the people to speak and think the fairest things about the gods, attributing to them nothing unworthy of the blessed nature.
8.4| For among the Romans it is not said that Uranus was castrated by his own children, nor that Cronus made away with his offspring through fear of an attack from them, nor that Zeus overthrew the rule of Cronus and shut his own father up in the prison of Tartarus; nor are there wars, wounds, bonds, and hired servitude of gods among men.
8.5| No festival is held among them in black garments or in mourning, with the beating of breasts and laments of women over gods who have vanished, such as are performed among the Greeks for the sufferings of Dionysus and the abduction of Persephone, and all the other things of that kind.
8.6| Nor, even though their customs are by now corrupted, would anyone see among them any divine possessions, Corybantic frenzies, Bacchic rites and secret initiations, all-night vigils of men with women in the temples of the gods, or any other of the marvel-mongering practices like these; rather everything concerning the gods is done and said with reverence, as it is neither among Greeks nor among barbarians.
8.7| And what I have marveled at most of all is that, although countless nations have come into the city, who are under strong compulsion to honor their ancestral gods by the customs of their homelands, the city has never publicly gone over to zeal for any of the foreign practices, as has already happened to many; and even if some sacred rites have been brought in by oracular direction, it has adapted them to its own customs, throwing out all the mythical hocus-pocus, as in the rites of the holy goddess.
8.8| For the praetors hold sacrifices and games for her every year according to Roman laws, but her priests are a Phrygian man and a Phrygian woman, and they go about the city begging for alms, as is their custom, with images hung on their breasts, while their followers play the Mother's tunes on the pipes and beat drums.
8.9| But no native-born Roman goes through the city begging for alms, or accompanied by pipes, wearing a many-colored robe, nor does any celebrate the goddess with Phrygian rites by law or decree of the senate. So wary is the city of foreign customs concerning the gods, and it regards as ill-omened every pretension in which there is nothing decent.
8.10| And let no one suppose that I am unaware that some of the Greek myths are useful to men: some displaying the works of nature through [….], others composed to console people in human misfortunes, others removing disturbances of the soul and fears and dispelling unhealthy opinions, and others invented for some other benefit.
8.11| But though I know these things as well as anyone, I am nonetheless cautious toward them, and I rather approve the Romans' theology, reflecting that the good that comes from the Greek myths is small and can benefit few, only those who have examined the purposes for which they are made.
8.12| Rare are those who have a share in this philosophy; the great, unphilosophical crowd is apt to take the accounts of them in the worse sense, and suffers one of two things: either it despises the gods as being tossed about in great misery, or it holds back from none of the most shameful and lawless deeds, seeing them attributed to the gods.
8.13| But let the inquiry into these matters be left to those who cultivate the contemplative part of philosophy alone; of the constitution that Romulus established, I judged these points, too, worthy of record." Such, then, were the conclusions about Greek theology reached by the best of the philosophers and by the ancient first rulers of the Roman state: they in no way admitted natural explanations in the myths about the gods, nor the solemn-seeming, sophistical quibbling. But since we have once set out to refute these as well, come, let us look at their interpretations and speculations and see what solemn and godworthy thing they bring forward. We will contribute nothing of our own, but use their own words throughout, so that we may learn their own doctrines once more from themselves.
Cite a passage by its number: every paragraph here has its own anchor (for example https://openscriptorium.com/read/eusebius/076-preparation-for-the-gospel-book-ii#p1), and the bracketed reference numbers link the same way.
← All of Eusebius of Caesarea: The Works of Eusebius of Caesarea