Preparation for the Gospel — Book IV

Eusebius of Caesarea · a new plain-English translation from the Greek

1.1| PREFACE. The third kind of polytheistic error, from which we have been set free by the power and the beneficence of our Redeemer and Savior, is the one that the occasion now calls on us to refute in this fourth treatise of the Preparation for the Gospel.

1.2| They divide the whole form of their theology, broadly speaking, into three kinds: the mythical, given tragic grandeur by the poets; the natural, which was discovered by the philosophers; and the kind that is upheld by the laws and kept in each city and country. Two parts of these have already been unfolded by us in the preceding books: the historical, which they call mythical, and the one that rises above the myths, which they like to call natural or contemplative or whatever else they please. It would therefore be time now to go through the third. This is the kind established in cities and countries, which they call civic; it is the one most especially upheld by the laws, as being at once ancient and ancestral, and as displaying immediately the excellence of the power of the beings they worship as gods.

1.3| They make much talk, at any rate, of oracular shrines and oracles, of treatments and cures for every kind of ailment, and of punishments sent upon the impious. Claiming to have learned these things by experience, they have quite persuaded themselves that in honoring the divine they do what is right, while we commit the greatest impiety: we hold powers so manifest and so beneficent of no account and openly break the law, when each man ought to revere his ancestral customs, not disturb what should stay undisturbed, but keep in line with and follow the piety of his forefathers, and not meddle out of a love of innovation. That is why, they say, the laws have fittingly appointed even death as the penalty for those who offend.

1.4| The first kind of theology, then, the historical and mythical, let anyone assign to the poets as he pleases, just as the second may be assigned to the philosophers, since it is set out through the more natural allegory of the myths. But the third, which the rulers have enacted must be honored and guarded as at once ancient and civic, let no one, they say, whether poet or philosopher, disturb; let everyone, in the country and in the cities alike, abide by the ordinances that have prevailed from of old and obey the ancestral laws.

1.5| Against these claims, then, it is time to give our own account, and to offer a defense of the gospel work of our Savior, which proclaims the opposite of all that has been said and lays down laws in opposition to the laws of all the nations.

1.6| Now, that the lifeless statues are not gods is plain even to them; that the contents of their mythical theology bring with them no account that is august and worthy of God was shown in the first book; and in the second and third it was likewise shown that the more natural and philosophical interpretation of the myths gives them no explanation that is free of force.

1.7| Come, then, let us consider the third question: what we are to think of the powers that lurk in the statues, whether they are noble in character, good, and truly divine, or the opposite of all these things.

1.8| Someone else, perhaps, in working through the argument on these matters, might have concluded that the whole thing is deception, the tricks and knavery of sorcerers, and dismissed the belief altogether, holding that what is noised abroad about these powers belongs not merely not to a god, but not even to an evil demon. The verses, he would say, and the composition of the oracles are the fabrications of men not without talent, but thoroughly practiced in deceit; they are framed in a noncommittal and ambiguous manner, and cleverly made to fit either of the outcomes that might be expected; and the wonders that deceive the multitude by certain marvels depend on natural causes.

1.9| For there are many species of roots, herbs, plants, fruits and stones, and of other things, dry and moist, with powers of every kind of matter in the nature of the universe: some able to repel and drive away certain things, others by nature to draw together and attract, others to separate and scatter, to thicken and to contract, others to relax and moisten and loosen; some in turn to preserve and others to kill, to alter things wholly and change what is present, now transforming it in one way, now in another, some doing this over a longer time, some over a short one, and again some having effect on a multitude, others only on a few; some leading, others following, some running together with others, increasing together and perishing together. Indeed some produce health, not far from the science of medicine, while others cause disease and are poisonous. Some effects, again, come by natural necessity, waxing and waning with the moon; there are countless antipathies among animals, plants, and roots, and many kinds of incense that stupefy and induce sleep, and others that produce visions. Not least, the sites and places in which the rites are performed contribute; the instruments and equipment have been prepared long beforehand, suitably for the craft; many accomplices in the sorcery are also drawn in from outside, who busily inquire of visitors about each one’s needs and what he has come to ask for; many inner sanctuaries and recesses of the temples, which are inaccessible to the many, hide things within; and the darkness helps no little to their scheme; and not least the opinion formed in advance and the dread of the divine felt by those who come to them as to gods, and the belief that has long been held among them from their forefathers.

1.10| Add also the simple-mindedness of the many, the weakness and untested state of the crowd’s reasoning, and on the other side the cleverness and malice of those who busy themselves with this wicked craft, the deceit and cunning of the enchanters’ manner, who at one time promise each person what pleases him and tend the present with good hopes, at another guess at the future and prophesy into the unknown, and cloud the sense of the oracles with ambiguities and obscurities of words, so that no one can understand what has been said, and by the uncertainty of what was said they escape refutation.

1.11| Many things also happen through other deceptions and marvel-mongering, with incantations taken along in the proceedings, accompanied by some meaningless and barbarous utterance, so that results which these words in no way bring about may seem to be achieved by them. Most of all, the poems of the oracles themselves astound the many, even of those reputed to be educated, being well embellished in the composition of their words, well puffed up with the weight of grand speech, much shaped by the swagger of their elevated tone and the feigned pomp of divine inspiration, and with their ambiguous voice deceiving nearly the whole people.

2.1| At any rate, of those oracles that escaped ambiguity for them, and were uttered not by foreknowledge of the future but by some guesswork, countless ones, or rather nearly all, have often been caught falling short of the prediction, since the end of the matter turned out contrary to what was told, unless perhaps rarely one in ten thousand happened, by some chance coincidence or according to the guessed expectation of the future, and was thought to make the oracle true.

2.2| You may see them especially talking of this and engraving it on stelae and crying it out everywhere on earth: they are unwilling ever to mention that they failed, say, so many times, but that for one man out of ten thousand something of what was told came about, this they carry about up and down; as if someone, when two draw lots from ten thousand, if it happened once that they hit on the same number, were to wonder that by divination and foreknowledge one and the same number turned up for both.

2.3| For so it is with the one thing that, out of tens of thousands upon tens of thousands of oracles given, once happened by chance; and the man who has no firm foundation in the depth of his soul, seeing this, is overly astonished at the oracle. It would have been far better for him not to be foolish, but to reckon for how many others the beings named have been the cause of death, of faction, and of wars, and to examine the histories of the ancients and see that not even at that time did they show forth any divine work of excellence, when Greek affairs flourished and the oracles then so loudly proclaimed were in their prime; and now they are oracles no longer, though the natives had deemed them deserving of every care and eagerness, who revered and tended them with ancestral laws and mysteries.

2.4| And at that time most of all they were proved to be able to do nothing, in the calamities of wars, in which the noble prophets, unable to help, were caught deceiving those who fled to them with the ambiguity of their oracles, as we shall show in the proper season, setting out how they also incited those who consulted them to war against one another, and how they did not even give answers about matters of importance, and how they led astray by their oracles those who asked, playing with them, and how they hid their own ignorance in the darkness of obscurity.

2.5| Look for yourself, once you have learned it, how they often promised the sick strength and life and safety, and then, having been believed as gods and having collected great fees for this divine commerce, were not long afterward found out for what they were, enchanters, proved not gods, with no happy end overtaking the deceived.

2.6| Why should I say that these wonderful seers did not offer their help even to their own housemates, those living in the same city, but you may see countless sick there, and maimed, and with their whole body disfigured? Why then did they hold out good hopes to those who came from outside and from afar, from foreign lands, but not to those living with them in the same place, to whom above all, as to kin and fellow citizens, they ought to have given the benefit of the gods’ presence? The reason is that they could more easily deceive strangers who were unacquainted with the trickery, but not the familiar, who were not unversed in the art and were privy to the game played in the rites.

2.7| So the whole thing was not divine, nor beyond human invention; so that even in the greatest calamities hanging over the impious from above from God the universal King, the very dedications and statues and their temples suffered utter destruction and wholesale collapse.

2.8| Where for you is the temple at Delphi, long ago made famous among every Greek? And where is the Pythian? the Clarian? Where the Dodonaean? The Delphic oracle, the story holds, was burned a third time by the Thracians, the seat of prophecy being able to do nothing toward knowledge of the future, nor even to guard the Pythian’s own possessions. The same is recorded to have happened to the Capitol at Rome in the times of the Ptolemies, in which the temple of Vesta at Rome too is said to have gone up in flames; around Julius Caesar they record that the great and Olympian statue of the Greeks, the one at Olympia itself, was struck by a thunderbolt from the god; and at another time they say the temple of Capitoline Zeus was burned; and that the Pantheon was destroyed by lightning, and likewise the one at Alexandria was burned.

2.9| Of these things there are written testimonies among the Greeks themselves. It would be a long account to number each in detail, trying to show that the marvelous oracle-givers were found unable even to defend their own temples; and those who in calamities were of no use even to themselves would hardly be likely ever to help others.

2.10| Adding one thing to what has been said, he would have seen the greatest point of all: that already many even of the most god-possessed, the very hierophants and theologians and prophets of theirs, not only long ago but also recently in our own time, who were celebrated for this divine wisdom, have, under the pain of tortures in the Roman courts, revealed that the whole error comes about by the deceptions of men, confessing that the whole thing is contrived sorcery; and they set down in writing, in records made from their own utterances, the entire manner of the preparation and the methods of the evil craft.

2.11| For this reason, having paid the penalty deserved by their destructive error, they uncovered the whole account, confirming by their very deeds the proof of what is being shown. And what sort of men were they? Do not suppose they were any of the cast-off and obscure. Some of them came from that wonderful and noble philosophy, of those in the philosopher’s cloak, with the raised brow and all; others were seized from the ranks of the magistrates of Antioch, men who had especially distinguished themselves in the insults against us in the persecution of our time; and we know too of the man who was at once philosopher and prophet, who suffered things like those mentioned at Miletus.

2.12| Anyone collecting these and still more such cases would say that the causes of the oracles in the cities are not gods, nor even demons, but the error and deceit of sorcerers.

2.13| And among the Greeks themselves there were whole schools, distinguished through philosophy, that stood at the head of this opinion, such as the followers of Aristotle and all the Peripatetics in succession, and Cynics and Epicureans, whom I especially admired, because, though raised in Greek customs from the swaddling clothes, and having received from their fathers, as children, that the beings in question are gods, they were not easily taken in, but decisively exposed the famed oracles and the divinations pursued by all as bringing nothing true, and declared them useless and rather harmful.

2.14| Though there are countless such, and many have overturned the practice of divination at greater length, I think it is enough for me for the present, by way of testimony, to set out a single passage from one of these, which answers what was constructed by Chrysippus on fate from the foretelling of the oracles. The writer, then, writes against him, proving that he wrongly derives fate from divinations, and that the oracles of the Greeks prove false in most cases, and that only rarely do some of them come true by coincidence, and that their foretelling is useless and harmful. Hear what he says, in his own words:

3.1| “In the book mentioned he offers yet another proof, of this kind. He says that the seers' predictions would not be true unless all things were contained by fate; and this too is full of great simple-mindedness. For he speaks as if it were evident that all that the so-called seers predict comes true, or as though anyone would grant this more readily than that all things happen according to fate, and as though it too would not just as well be called false; since evidence shows the opposite, I mean that not all that has been foretold comes about, but rather most of it does not.

3.2| In this way Chrysippus has brought us his demonstration, establishing each by means of the other. He wishes to show that all things happen according to fate from the existence of divination, but he could not prove that there is divination unless he first assumed that all things happen according to fate.

3.3| What could be a more wretched manner of proof than this? For that some of what seers foretell comes about, according to the evidence, would not be a sign that divination is a science, but that the outcomes coincide with the predictions by chance; and this shows us no science at all.

3.4| For we would not call a man a skilled archer who hit the mark once yet missed many times, nor a physician who destroys most of his patients, though he was once able to save one; nor do we call anything a science that fails to succeed in all, or at least most, of its own works.

3.5| And that the so-called seers fail in most things, the whole of human life would be witness, and these very men who profess the art of divination do not help themselves with it in the needs of life, but at times use their own judgment and the counsel and assistance of those thought to have experience in each particular matter.

3.6| But as to the claim that what we have called divination has no real existence, we will give a fuller account elsewhere, setting out what Epicurus held on this subject as well. For now we will add only this to what has been said. First, that the so-called seers should sometimes speak truly in their predictions would be the work of chance, not of knowledge. For what we, who have distinguished the clear notions ranked under each name, have agreed to call the work of chance is not never hitting the mark at all, but hitting it now and then, neither always nor for the most part, nor from knowledge. Second, even if it were true, as a supposition, that divination is able to observe and foretell all future events, this would indeed establish that everything happens by fate, but its usefulness and benefit for life would never be demonstrated. This is why Chrysippus seems above all to sing the praises of divination.

3.7| For what use would it be for us to learn in advance about hardships that are certain to come, when it would not even be possible to protect ourselves against them? For how could anyone guard against what happens by fate? So divination is of no use to us; rather it would even be harmful, since it causes people to grieve in advance, to no purpose, over troubles that have been announced and that must come by necessity.

3.8| Nor, again, will anyone claim that the announcement of coming goods gives equal delight, since a human being is not so made as to rejoice over expected goods as he is to be pained over evils. Besides, we do not at all expect that these evils will fall upon us before we hear of them, whereas all of us, one might say, expect good things rather, through our natural affinity for them; most people have hoped for even greater things than are possible.

3.9| The result is that the announcement of good things does not heighten our joy very much, because each person, of his own accord, expects the better outcome even without the announcement, or else heightens it only slightly by the apparent certainty; and often it even lessens the joy, when what is heard turns out smaller than what was hoped. The announcement of evils, on the other hand, because of our natural aversion to them, and because they are sometimes foretold contrary to our hopes, greatly disturbs us.

3.10| But even if this did not happen, the uselessness of the prediction would be plain to everyone. For if someone says that the usefulness of divination is preserved because the certain hardship is foretold so that we may guard against it, he will no longer show that everything comes about by fate, since guarding or not guarding would then be up to us.

3.11| For if he says that even this is compelled, so that fate extends to everything that exists, then again the usefulness of divination is removed. For we shall guard against it if it has been fated, and we shall plainly not guard against it if it has not been fated that we guard, even if all the seers foretell to us what is to come.

3.12| Indeed, Chrysippus himself says that Oedipus and Alexander the son of Priam, though their parents contrived many things to kill them so as to guard against the evil foretold to them from these children, were unable to do it.

3.13| So, he says, the foretelling of evils is no use even to them, because of the cause that comes from fate. Let this be said, then, out of abundance, to show that divination is not only without substance but also useless.”

3.14| That is what the philosopher says. But consider for yourself how men who were Greeks and had acquired from youth the education native to the Greeks, and who knew better than anyone the ancestral teachings about all the gods, all the Aristotelians, Cynics and Epicureans, and all who thought along similar lines, laughed at the oracles that were so loudly proclaimed among the Greeks themselves.

3.15| And yet, if the stories told about the marvels of the oracles were true, it is likely that these men too, being Greeks and exactly versed in their ancestral customs, would have been struck with amazement and would not have put anything worth knowing in second place.

3.16| There was, then, a great abundance of these arguments and others like them to gather for the overthrow of the hypothesis about the oracles. But it does not seem to me right to conduct the present discourse in that way. Instead, following the plan with which we began, let us grant that the champions of the oracles speak the truth, and, on the basis of what they themselves admit, since they assert that the oracles are true and that the pronouncements are divine responses given by Pythian inspiration, let us learn the exact disclosure of what is being declared.

4.1| I think it is plain to everyone that the examination of the matters before us will cover no small part of the subject of the gospel, but the greatest and the most necessary. For if all who lived everywhere before the coming of our Savior Jesus Christ, Greeks and barbarians alike, are shown not to have known the true God, but either to have honored things that do not exist as though they existed, or, like blind men, to have been led here and there by certain wicked and God-fighting spirits and by evil, unclean demons, and dragged down by them into a pit of wickedness (for what else is that but being possessed by demons?), then how much more clearly will the great mystery of the gospel dispensation be seen: that all people, from every quarter, have been called back by the voice of our Savior from the error handed down from their fathers and the tyranny of the demons, and that men dwelling to the ends of the earth have been ransomed from the deception that held their whole life from the beginning of the age. As a result, from that time until now the ancient establishments of the error of all the nations have been dissolved and torn down, temples and carved images together, while shrines truly venerable, schools of piety, have been raised up to the universal King and Maker of the whole, in the midst of cities and villages throughout the whole world, by the power and virtue of our Savior. And sacrifices worthy of God, in the prayers of the holy, in a disposition cleansed of all wickedness, in freedom from passion of the soul and the taking up of every virtue, according to the divine and saving teachings, are offered daily and without interruption from all the nations, the only sacrifices that are pleasing and acceptable to the God over all.

4.2| This being so, have we not at the same time shown that it was with sober reasoning, and not by surrendering ourselves to irrationality, that we became deserters from the superstition handed down by our fathers, loving the better thing by a just and true judgment and becoming lovers of divinely inspired and true piety? But enough of this; we must now take up the matters before us.

5.1| Those who have examined Greek theology exactly, by a method different from those we mentioned earlier, divide the whole account into four classes. First of all they set apart the first god, and say they know him to be the one above all, the first and father and king of all the gods. After him comes the class of the gods, second; next that of the demons; fourth, that of the heroes. All of these, they say, share in the form of the better, in part leading and in part being led, and every such being is called light through a share in light. They say further that evil presides over the lower essence, and that this is the class of wicked demons, which has no friendly dealings at all with the good but possesses first power in the nature of opposites, just as God does among the better beings. Everything of this kind is called darkness.

5.2| Having drawn these distinctions in this way, they say that heaven and the ether as far as the moon are subject to the gods; the region around the moon and the air to the demons; and the regions around the earth and under it to souls. Having made this division, they say that one must first of all serve the heavenly and ethereal gods; second, the good demons; third, the souls of the heroes; fourth, one must appease the base and wicked demons.

5.3| But while they divide these things in word, in deed they confound them all, serving, in place of all those mentioned, only the evil powers, and enslaving themselves wholly to them, as the argument will prove as it proceeds. You can, at any rate, judge from the evidence to be set before you what kind of powers those must be declared to be that work through the carved images, whether gods or demons, and whether base or good.

5.4| Our divine oracles name no demon at all as good, but say that all who have received this lot and this title are wicked, just as they allow that there is no other God, truly and properly, except the one Cause of all. The refined and good powers, since they are generated in nature and fall far short of the unbegotten God who is their own Maker, and are moreover distinct from the wicked race of the demons, the oracles think fit to call neither gods nor demons. Being intermediate between God and the demons, they are accustomed to name them with a fitting, intermediate title, angels of God and ministering spirits, divine powers and archangels, and by other names suited to their activities. As for the demons, if we must also explain their etymology, the name is not, as the Greeks think, from their being skilled and knowledgeable, but certain beings are aptly called demons from deimainein, which means to fear and to frighten.

5.5| The divine and good powers, then, are as foreign to the title of demon as they are to the character. For it would be the most unreasonable thing of all to think beings unlike in purpose and in the nature that comes from character worthy of one and the same name.

6.1| Come then, let us examine what the manner of their oracles is, in order that we may find out what sort of power they must be declared to be, and whether we were right to withdraw from them or not. If I were to bring forward the refutations of these matters from myself, I know well that I would not make my argument free from the charge of those who love to find fault. Therefore I shall say nothing of my own, but shall again rely on the testimonies of outsiders.

6.2| Although the Greeks have countless historians and philosophers, I judge the most suitable of all for our purpose to be that very friend of demons who lived in our own time and who preens himself on his falsehoods against us. For this man, of the philosophers of our day, seems most of all to have consorted with demons and with the beings he calls gods, to have acted as envoy on their behalf, and to have investigated the facts about them far more exactly.

6.3| Now in the work he entitled On Philosophy from Oracles he made a collection of oracles of Apollo and of the other gods and good demons, which he chose out as being, in his judgment, sufficient both to demonstrate the excellence of what is taught about the divine and to encourage what he is pleased to call theosophy.

6.4| From these, then, the oracles he selected and thought worthy of record, it is good to distinguish the oracle-givers and to consider what kind of power they really are. But first let us see how the man, at the start of his work, swears to us that he speaks the truth, saying as follows:

7.1| “Sure and steadfast is the man who draws from this source his hopes of being saved, as from the only sure one; and to such men you shall impart these things, keeping nothing back. For I for my part summon the gods as witnesses that I have added nothing and taken nothing away from the meanings of the oracles delivered, except that I have perhaps corrected a faulty word, or changed something for greater clarity, or filled out a missing measure of the verse, or struck out something that did not bear on my purpose, while preserving the sense of what was spoken unadulterated, since I guard against the impiety of tampering with them even more than against the avenging justice that follows sacrilege.

7.2| The collection before us will contain a record of many philosophical doctrines, as the gods have declared the truth to be. We shall also touch briefly on the practice of oracles, which will be of use both for contemplation and for the whole purification of life. What benefit the collection has will be known best by those who, in travail with the truth, once prayed to obtain relief from perplexity by a manifestation from the gods, through the trustworthy teaching of those who speak.” Having used such a preface, he calls witnesses and gives advance warning not to make what is to be said known to many, saying as follows:

8.1| “And you, if you have any regard for this, try not to publish these things, nor to cast them before the profane for glory's sake or for profit or some other unholy flattery. For the danger is not yours alone for transgressing these commands, but also mine, who readily trusted one unable to keep to himself the benefits received. They are to be given to those who have set their life toward the salvation of the soul.”

8.2| And after other things he adds: “Keep these things hidden for me, as more unspeakable than the unspeakable; for the gods did not give their oracles openly about themselves, but through riddles.”

8.3| Since, then, his discourse has made such lofty claims, let us next consider, from the inspired oracles delivered at Pytho, what kind of beings we ought to think the invisible powers that are spoken of as divine; for a man too may be convicted out of his own words and practices.

8.4| The man mentioned above, then, in the work he entitled On Philosophy from Oracles, sets down oracles of Apollo that command the performance of sacrifices of animals, and bid men sacrifice living creatures not only to demons and the powers around the earth, but also to the ethereal and heavenly powers.

8.5| In another work, however, the same man, admitting that all those to whom the Greeks offered sacrifices of blood and the slaughter of irrational animals are demons and not gods, says that it is neither right nor holy to sacrifice animals to gods.

8.6| Hear, then, his first utterances, in which, collecting the material on philosophy from oracles, he shows in what way Apollo teaches that the gods must be served. He sets it down, writing as follows:

9.1| “Following what has been said about piety, we shall next record what they have declared about their service, some of which we have already set out in part in the work on piety. The oracle of Apollo, which also contains a division of the order of the gods, runs:

9.2| Do this work, friend, having come upon this path given by god, and do not forget the blessed ones, slaying sacrifices now to the gods of earth, now to those of heaven, and at times to the kings of the bright upper air and of the moist-moving air, and to all the gods of the sea and of the underworld; for all things are bound fast within the fullnesses of this nature. I shall sing the offerings of living creatures, how it is right to complete them, and do you engrave my oracle on tablets: some for the gods of earth, some for the gods of heaven; bright for the heavenly, but for the earthly of like color. Of the earthly gods, distinguish three kinds of sacrifice as you slay; bury the offerings of the nether gods, and let the blood flow into a pit, and pour on it honey and the nymphs' and Dionysus' gifts. For all that fly about the earth forever, fill the altar full of fire with slaughter, and throw on the fire the body of a winged creature you have sacrificed; mix honey with Demeter's barley meal and put it on, and cast on the vapors of frankincense and the whole barley grains. When you come to the sands, pour the grey sea down over its head and sacrifice, and send the whole animal into the deep wave of the sea. When you have finished all this, go to the broad dance of the Uranians of the air. Then for all the gods of the stars and the ether, let blood from the throats pool in streams around the altars, and let the limbs be prepared for the gods in a feast. Give the extremities to Hephaestus, and eat the rest, filling the whole flowing air with sweet vapors; and send up prayers to the gods.”

9.3| And a little further on he explains the oracle, interpreting it thus: “The sacrifices take this form, laid down according to the division of the gods stated above. For since there are gods under the earth and gods on the earth, the former being called subterranean and nether, the latter terrestrial and earthly, the oracle commands that black four-footed victims be sacrificed to both in common, but it varies the manner of sacrifice. For to the gods on the earth it commands that the victims be slaughtered upon altars, but to those under the earth in pits; and moreover that those who sacrifice to them bury the bodies.

9.4| That the four-footed victims are common to both he himself said when asked: ‘Common to the earthly and the underworld gods alone are these: four-footed victims, the freshly formed limbs of lambs for the earthly ones.’ To the gods of the air it commands that winged creatures be sacrificed, burned whole, and the blood carried around the altars; but to the gods of the sea, winged creatures too, black in color, which are to be let go alive into the waves. For it says: ‘To the gods the winged, to the sea gods the black,’

9.5| meaning winged creatures for all the gods except the earthly, and black ones only for the sea gods; the others, then, receive white. To the heavenly and ethereal gods one is to dedicate the extremities of the victims, which are white, and eat the remaining portions; for you are to eat from these alone, and not from the others. Those he called heavenly in the division are the ones he here calls gods of the stars.

9.6| Must I now explain the symbols of the sacrifices, which are plain to the intelligent? Four-footed and land creatures go to the earthly gods, for like delights in like. The sheep is earthly, and for this reason dear to Demeter, and in heaven it brings forth the appearance of the fruits from the earth along with the sun. Black, because the earth is such, by nature dark. Three, because three is the symbol of what is bodily and earthy.

9.7| The earthly gods, then, are to be sacrificed to above, on altars, for they move about on the earth; the underworld gods in a pit and in burial, where they dwell. Winged creatures go to the others, because everything runs. For the water of the sea is ever in motion, and it is dark; therefore such victims are fitting. To the gods of the air go white ones, for the air too is lit, being of a transparent nature. To the heavenly and ethereal gods go the lighter parts of the animals, which are the extremities; for with these gods one must share the sacrifice. For these are the givers of good things, and the others are those who hold back evils.” Such are the words from On Philosophy from Oracles of the admirable theosopher.

10.1| Now let us compare with these the contrary statements of the same man, set down in the work he entitled On Abstinence from Animate Beings. There, driven by right reasoning, he admits first of all that one ought not at all to burn incense or sacrifice anything to the God over all, nor even to the divine and heavenly powers that come after him.

10.2| Then, going on, he overturns the opinions of the many, saying that one must not suppose that those who delight in sacrifices of animals are gods. For he says that sacrificing animals is the most unjust of all things, and unholy and abominable and harmful, and for this reason not even dear to the gods. In saying this he plainly refutes his own god; for he said just now that the oracle commands sacrifice of animals not only to gods under the earth and on the earth, but likewise to those of the air, the heavens and the ether.

10.3| Such are Apollo's words. But the man who calls Theophrastus as witness says that sacrifice of animals is not fitting for gods, but for demons alone. So by his own argument and Theophrastus', Apollo is a demon and not a god; and so are all those held to be gods among all the nations, to whom all alike, rulers and ruled, in cities and in the countryside, offer sacrifices of animals. According to what has been said, these can be nothing other than demons.

10.4| But if they say that these are good, how, if sacrifice by blood were unholy and abominable and harmful, could those who delight in such things be good? And if they should be discovered delighting not only in such sacrifices but, in the extremity of cruelty and inhumanity, in the slaying of men and human sacrifices, would they not be plainly murderous, at home in every cruelty and inhumanity, and nothing other than wicked demons?

10.5| Now that we have received the proof of this, I think the reasonableness of our withdrawal from these beings has been shown. For it is neither holy nor pious even to bestow the royal dignity worn by a ruler among men on robbers and housebreakers, let alone to cast the venerable title of God and the highest honor upon evil spirits.

10.6| Hence we, having been taught to worship only the God over all, and to honor as is fitting the blessed powers beloved of God who surround him, bring nothing earthly or dead, no gore or blood, nothing of corruptible, material essence. With a mind cleansed of all wickedness, and a body clothed in the adornment of purity and self-control, brighter than any robe, with right doctrines worthy of God, and above all with a genuine disposition, we pray to keep, even to death, the piety handed down by our Savior.

10.7| But now that these points have been set out beforehand, it is time to proceed to the proofs of what has been said. It is reasonable first of all to go through the passages in which the writer mentioned, in the work he entitled On Abstinence from Animate Beings, says that one must offer as incense or sacrifice nothing earthly either to the God over all or to the divine powers after him; for such things are foreign to fitting piety.

11.1| “To the God over all, as a wise man once put it, we are to offer nothing perceptible by the senses, neither burning incense nor naming him by any such thing; for nothing material is not at once unclean to the immaterial. For this reason even spoken word is not proper to him, nor yet the word within, when it is defiled by a passion of the soul; but by pure silence and pure thoughts about him we worship him. We must therefore, joined and made like to him, offer our own ascent as a holy sacrifice to God, which is also a hymn and our salvation. So this sacrifice is completed in freedom from passion of the soul and in contemplation of God.”

12.1| “To his offspring, the intelligible gods, we must also add the hymn of speech. For the sacrifice offered to each is a firstfruit of what he has given, and of the things by which he nourishes us and holds our essence together in being. As a farmer offers firstfruits of sheaves and tree fruits, so let us offer them firstfruits of our fair thoughts about them, giving thanks that they have given us the contemplation of themselves, and that through the sight of them they truly nourish us, being with us and appearing and shining upon our salvation.” So says this man. Kindred statements and akin to his, about the first and great God, are reported to have been written in the work On Sacrifices by that same Apollonius of Tyana who is so celebrated among the many, as follows:

13.1| “In this way, then, I think, a man would best pay the fitting care to the divine, and would obtain for himself the favor and goodwill of the god, as no other man would, if to God, whom we named first, who is one and separate from all, and after whom the rest must be known, he did not sacrifice anything at all, nor kindle fire, nor name him by anything perceptible. (For he needs nothing even from beings stronger than we are; and there is nothing that earth sends up as a plant, or feeds as an animal, or air, that is not tainted by some defilement.) Rather he should use toward him always only the nobler word, I mean the one that does not pass through the mouth, and ask blessings from the most beautiful of beings through the most beautiful thing in us; and this is the mind, which has no need of an instrument. So one must in no way sacrifice to the great God over all.” This being so, see next what the former writer relates about the sacrificing of animals, calling Theophrastus as witness for his argument:

14.1| “As men's offerings of firstfruits in sacrifice advanced far into lawlessness, the adoption of the most terrible victims, full of cruelty, came in, so that the curses spoken before against us seem now to have been fulfilled, since men slaughtered and bloodied the altars, from the time when, having experienced famines and wars, they laid hands on blood. Accordingly the divine power, as Theophrastus says, being angered at each of these, seems to have inflicted the fitting punishment: so that some men became atheists, while others might justly be called ill-minded rather than ill-godded, because they held the gods to be base and no better than ourselves in nature. Thus some appear to have become men who offered no sacrifices, others men who sacrificed ill and laid hands on lawless victims.”

14.2| Again the same writer adds this: “This being so, Theophrastus reasonably forbids those who truly wish to be pious to sacrifice living creatures, using also other reasons of this kind.”

14.3| And he goes on: “Moreover, one must sacrifice only those things by sacrificing which we shall harm no one; for nothing ought to be so harmless to all as the offering. If someone were to say that God has given animals to us for our use, no less than fruits, yet when animals are sacrificed it does bring some harm to them, since their soul is taken away. They must therefore not be sacrificed; for sacrifice is something holy, as the very name shows, and no one is holy who renders thanks out of what belongs to others, whether he takes fruits or plants, if the owner is unwilling. For how can it be holy when those from whom the offering is taken are wronged? And if one who touches the fruits of others does not sacrifice in holiness, then to take from anyone what is more precious than these and sacrifice it is altogether unholy; for the wrong becomes greater in this way, and the soul is much more precious than what grows from the earth, and it is not fitting to take it away by sacrificing animals.”

14.4| And he adds: “One must therefore abstain from animals in sacrifices.” And again he says: “What, then, is neither holy nor easily afforded is not to be sacrificed.” And next: […]

14.5| “So that if offerings are to be made even from animals, they must be sacrificed to the gods for the sake of one of these ends; for whatever we sacrifice, we sacrifice for the sake of one of these. Would a god, then, think he receives honor from us when we are seen to do wrong straightway in the very offering of the firstfruit, or would he rather think it dishonor to do such a thing? Yet in sacrificing, by destroying animals that do no wrong, we admit that we do wrong. So we are not to sacrifice any of the other animals for the sake of honor; nor yet by way of thanks for benefits. For the man who renders just recompense for a benefit and kindness, the equal return, ought not to supply it out of doing harm to others. He would seem to repay no more than if someone seized his neighbor's goods and crowned certain persons with them, as though giving thanks and honor.

14.6| But neither is it for the sake of any good thing. For the man who hunts to receive good by an unjust act is suspected of not being grateful even when he has received good. So we are not to sacrifice animals to the gods even in hope of a benefit. For among men, perhaps, one might escape notice doing this, but it is impossible to escape the notice of God. If, then, one must sacrifice for the sake of one of these ends, yet it must not be done on account of any one of them, it is clear that animals are not to be sacrificed to the gods at all.”

14.7| And again he adds: “For nature and the whole perception of the human soul was well pleased with these rites; the altar was not wet with unmixed bloodshed of bulls, but this was the greatest abomination among men, to tear out the life and eat the noble limbs.” And after other things:

14.8| “When a young man learns that the gods delight in costly offerings, and, as they say, in banquets of oxen and other animals, when will he ever willingly be temperate? And how, thinking that he offers gifts the gods like, will he not suppose that he may do wrong, since he intends to buy off his sin by sacrifices? But if he is convinced that the gods are in need of none of these things, and look instead to the character of those who approach, receiving as the greatest sacrifice the right understanding of themselves and of the nature of things, how will he not be temperate, just and holy?

14.9| The best firstfruit for the gods is a pure mind, together with a soul free from passion; and it is also proper to offer firstfruits of other things in moderate amounts, not carelessly, but with all eagerness. For the honors we pay must resemble the honors we pay good men, seats of honor, rising when they come, giving them a place at table, not the paying of assessed contributions.”

14.10| Plainly, then, from these words it was agreed, by the Greeks and their philosophers, that no animate creature could reasonably be sacrificed to the gods; for the thing is unholy, unjust and harmful, and not foreign to pollution. Therefore he was no god, nor any truthful and good demon, the oracle-giver who a little earlier was exacting libations of blood and the savor of fat, nor were any of those to whom the oracle commanded that animals be sacrificed. One must say outright that the liar who named as gods those who are not, and commanded sacrifice of animals not only to the gods of the earth and under the earth but also to those of the heavens, the ether and the stars, is a deceiving, cheating and wicked demon. What, if not gods, we should take all those named to be, the writer himself will tell us again in these words:

15.1| “He who takes thought for piety knows that nothing animate is sacrificed to gods, but to demons, whether good or even base; and whose part it is to sacrifice to these, namely those who have some need of them.”

15.2| And next again he says: “That it was to demons and not to gods that those who had learned the powers in the universe offered sacrifices of blood is attested by the theologians themselves; and that of these some are doers of harm and some good, they will not dispute with us.”

15.3| So says the man mentioned. But since he said that among demons alone some are good and some base, come, let us see how all those they hold to be gods are shown to be not even good demons, but base ones. You may take the proof of this as follows.

15.4| The good benefits, and its opposite harms. But if those proclaimed in every place, whether gods or demons, should appear to be the very ones who are loudly acclaimed among all these people and worshiped by all the nations, Cronus and Zeus, Hera and Athena and the like, the invisible powers and the demons who work through the carved images, delighting not only in the slaughter and sacrifice of irrational animals but also in the killing of men and human sacrifices, and in this way corrupting the souls of wretched men, what worse harm could you imagine than this?

15.5| For if sacrifice by means of irrational animals was called accursed and ill-sacrificed by the philosophers, abominable, unjust, unholy, and not without harm to those who sacrifice, and for all these reasons unworthy of gods, what are we to think of sacrifice by the slaughter of men? Would it not be the most impious and unholy of all? In what way, then, could it reasonably be said to be dear to good demons, and not to wholly polluted and utterly destructive spirits?

15.6| Come now, let us examine and test how great a ruin the error of many gods wrought on the life of men before the gospel teaching of our Savior. For it was dissolved and torn down at no other time than in the days of Hadrian, when the teaching of Christ was already shining forth like light in every place.

15.7| To this not we but the very voices of men who do not share our views will bear plain witness, accusing the times before this of such wickedness that the superstitious were already going beyond the very limits of nature, driven mad by destructive spirits and plainly possessed by demons, so that they thought to propitiate the bloodthirsty powers with the blood of their dearest and countless other human sacrifices.

15.8| A father sacrificed his only child, and a mother her beloved daughter, to the demon, and the nearest and dearest slaughtered their kin as if they were irrational and foreign cattle; and in cities and countries men sacrificed to the so-called gods their fellow householders and fellow citizens, whetting their humane and sympathetic nature to pitilessness and inhumanity, and displaying a manner truly frenzied and demonic.

15.9| You would find, examining all Greek and barbarian history, how some consecrated their sons, some their daughters, some even themselves, in sacrifices to the demons. I shall present to you as witness for these things the same man as before, in the very work in which he forbade the sacrifice of irrational animals as unholy and most unjust, saying these things word for word:

16.1| “And that we say these things not casually, but because history is full of them, it is enough to show also the following. A man was sacrificed in Rhodes to Cronus in the month Metageitnion, on the sixth day of the month. This custom, which prevailed for a long time, was changed; for they kept one of those publicly condemned to death until the festival of Cronus, and when the festival came they led the man out of the gates, opposite the shrine of Aristobule, gave him wine to drink, and cut his throat.

16.2| In what is now Salamis, formerly called Coronea, in the month called Aphrodisios by the Cypriots, a man was sacrificed to Agraulos, daughter of Cecrops and the nymph Agraulis. The custom lasted until Diomedes' time; then it changed, so that the sacrifice of the man was made to Diomedes; the temple of Athena, and those of Agraulos and Diomedes, are within one enclosure. The victim, led by the young men, ran three times around the altar; then the priest struck him with a spear in the stomach, and so they burned him whole on the heaped pyre.

16.3| This ordinance was ended by Diphilus, the king of Cyprus, who lived in the time of Seleucus the theologian, and he changed the custom to the sacrifice of an ox. The demon accepted the ox in place of the man.

16.4| So equivalent is the act. Amosis also abolished the law of human killing in Heliopolis in Egypt, as Manetho attests in his work On Antiquity and Piety. They were sacrificed to Hera, and were examined like the pure calves that are sought out and marked with a seal. Three were sacrificed a day; in their place Amosis commanded that an equal number of wax figures be offered instead.

16.5| They sacrificed also in Chios to Dionysus Omadios, tearing a man to pieces, and in Tenedos, as Euelpis of Carystus says; and Apollodorus says that the Lacedaemonians sacrifice a man to Ares.

16.6| The Phoenicians, in great calamities of war, plague or drought, would sacrifice one of their dearest, voting him to Cronus; and Phoenician history is full of such sacrificers, a history that Sanchuniathon wrote in the Phoenician tongue and Philo of Byblos translated into the Greek language in eight books.

16.7| Istrus says in his Collection of Cretan Sacrifices that the Curetes in ancient times sacrificed children to Cronus. Pallas, who collected the mysteries of Mithras most excellently in the time of the emperor Hadrian, says that human sacrifices were abolished almost everywhere. At Laodicea in Syria a maiden used to be sacrificed to Athena every year, but now a deer.

16.8| The Carthaginians in Libya also performed the sacrifice, until Iphicrates put a stop to it. And the people of Dumatha in Arabia sacrificed a boy every year, whom they buried under an altar, which they use as a carved image.

16.9| Phylarchus reports that all the Greeks in common used to kill a man before going out against enemies. I pass over the Thracians and the Scythians, and how the Athenians put to death the daughter of Erechtheus and Praxithea. But even now who does not know that a man is slaughtered in the Great City at the festival of Zeus Latiaris?

16.10| And again he says: “From that time to the present, not only in Arcadia at the Lycaea and at Carthage to Cronus do they all sacrifice men in common, but in a regular cycle, for the memory of the custom, they always sprinkle kindred blood at the altars.”

16.11| Let this, then, stand from the writing mentioned. And I shall set down this passage from Philo's Phoenician History, from its first book: “It was the custom among the ancients, in great calamities of peril, for the rulers of a city or of a nation, to avert the destruction of all, to give the most beloved of their children for slaughter as a ransom to the avenging demons; and those given were slain with secret rites. Cronus, then, whom the Phoenicians call El, being king of the land, and afterward, after the end of his life, consecrated to the star of Cronus, had by a native nymph named Anobret an only son, whom for that reason they called Ieoud, since among the Phoenicians the only-begotten is still called by that name. When the greatest dangers from war had overtaken the country, he adorned his son with royal dress, built an altar, and sacrificed him.”

16.12| So these things stood. Reasonably, then, the admirable Clement, in the Exhortation addressed to the Greeks, blaming these very things, himself laments the error of men in these words: “Let us add this too, then, that your gods are inhuman and man-hating demons, who not only rejoice in the madness of men but also enjoy the killing of men: now taking from armed contests in the stadia, now from the countless ambitions of wars, occasions of pleasure for themselves, so that they may glut themselves without restraint on human slaughter. Already in cities and nations, descending like plagues, they have demanded savage libations. Aristomenes the Messenian, for instance, slaughtered three hundred to Zeus of Ithome, thinking to offer so many and such hecatombs with good omens; among them was Theopompus, the Lacedaemonian king, a noble victim. The Taurians, the nation dwelling around the Tauric Chersonese, whatever strangers they seize among them, those who have been shipwrecked at sea, they at once sacrifice to the Tauric Artemis. These sacrifices of yours Euripides puts on the stage in tragedy. Monimus reports in his Collection of Marvels that at Pella in Thessaly an Achaean man is sacrificed to Peleus and Chiron. For the Lyctians (they are a people of the Cretans), Anticleides declares in his Returns, slaughter men to Zeus, and Dosidas says the Lesbians offer a similar sacrifice to Dionysus. The Phocaeans (for I shall not pass them by either), Pythocles reports in the third book of his work On Concord, burn a man whole to Artemis Tauropolos. The Attic Erechtheus and the Roman Marius sacrificed daughters of their own: the first to Pherephatta, as Demaratus says in the first book of his Subjects of Tragedy, the other, Marius, to the averting powers, as Dorotheus reports in the fourth book of his Italian History. Fond of mankind these demons plainly appear from these accounts; and how are the superstitious not equally unholy, some being hailed as saviors, and others asking salvation from those who plot against salvation? Supposing that they offer sacrifices with good omens to them, they fail to notice that they are slaughtering men. For the killing does not become a sacrifice by reason of the place; nor, if someone cuts a man's throat to Artemis and Zeus in a supposedly sacred spot rather than to Anger and Greed, other demons of the same kind, on altars rather than on the roads, and calls him a sacred victim, does it change: such a sacrifice is murder and manslaughter.

16.13| Why then, O men, wisest of all other living creatures, do we flee the savage beasts, and if we chance upon a bear or a lion we turn aside, as when a man who has seen a snake in the glens of a mountain springs back, and trembling seizes his limbs, and he draws back; yet when we perceive and understand that destructive and accursed demons, plotters and haters of men and corrupters, are there, you are not abashed, nor do you turn away?”

16.14| So much Clement says. But I can set before you another witness to the bloodthirstiness of these godless and inhuman demons, Dionysius of Halicarnassus, a man who set out the whole of Roman history in an exact account. This writer likewise says that Zeus and Apollo at one time demanded human sacrifices, and that those who were asked offered to the gods the tithe of all fruits and flocks, but because they did not also sacrifice men, they were beset with calamities of every kind. Nothing is like hearing the historian himself, who goes through it somewhat as follows:

16.15| “Only a small part of them remained in Italy, through the foresight of the Aborigines. First, the land, ravaged by drought, seemed to begin the ruin of the cities: no timely fruit stayed on the trees, but they fell unripe; the seeds that put up shoots did not complete the lawful times with the full ear of grain; no sufficient grass grew for the cattle; and some of the springs were no longer fit to drink, some failed in summer, and some were quenched altogether. Similar things happened in the births of flocks and women: the embryos were either miscarried, or destroyed in the birth, and some also destroyed the mothers who bore them. And if any escaped the danger of the birth-pangs maimed, or imperfect, or injured by some other mischance, it was not good to rear it. Then also the rest of the population, especially those in their prime, were afflicted by diseases and by deaths, frequent beyond what was likely. When they consulted the oracle as to which of the gods or demons they had transgressed to suffer these things, and what they might do to hope for relief from the evils, the god answered that although they had obtained what they desired, they had not rendered what they had vowed, but still owed what was most valuable. For the Pelasgians, when there was a dearth of everything in their land, vowed to Zeus and Apollo and the Cabeiri to sacrifice tithes of all that should be added; and when the vow was fulfilled, they set aside the tithe of all fruits and flocks and offered it in sacrifice to the gods, as if they had vowed concerning these alone. This is told by Myrsilus of Lesbos, writing in nearly the same words as I do now, except that he calls the people not Pelasgians but Tyrrhenians; and the reason, a little later. But […]”

16.16| “When they learned of the oracle brought back, they could not grasp what was said. As they were at a loss, one of the elders, interpreting the saying, says that they had missed the whole thing if they supposed the gods were making an unjust charge against them; for the firstfruits of all their possessions had been given rightly and justly, but the tithe of human offspring, the thing most precious of all to the gods, was owed; and if they were to give from these too the due share, the oracle would be fulfilled. Some thought this was said rightly, others that the speech had been framed from some plot. When someone proposed that they ask the god whether he was pleased to receive tithes of men, they sent envoys a second time, and the god answered that they should do so.

16.17| From this, civil strife seized them over the manner of the tithing; the leaders of the cities were first thrown into confusion among themselves, and then the rest of the multitude too regarded those in office with suspicion. The uprisings took place with no order, but, as was likely, among people driven by frenzy and divine infatuation, and many households were wholly wiped out when part of them emigrated; for the kin of those who departed did not think it right to be left behind by their dearest and remain among their bitterest enemies. First these emigrated from Italy and wandered over Greece and much of barbarian land. After the first, others suffered the same, and this went on for years. For those in power in the cities did not stop taking the firstfruits of the youth as it grew to manhood, thinking it right to render the gods what was due and fearing uprisings from those who had escaped notice. Many, too, were driven out through enmity under a plausible pretext by their rivals; so there were many uprisings, and the Pelasgian race was scattered over a very large part of the earth.”

16.18| And a little further on he says: “They say too that the ancients performed the sacrifices to Cronus, just as at Carthage, as long as the city lasted, and among the Celts to this day it is done, and among some other western nations they kill men; but Heracles, wishing to end the law of sacrifice, established the altar on the Saturnian hill and began the offering of pure victims sanctified on clean fire. So that men should have no fear in mind, as if they had neglected ancestral sacrifices, he taught the natives to appease the wrath of the god with figures in place of men: those they used to bind hand and foot and cast into the stream of the Tiber, he taught them to make images in the shape of men, dressed in the same way as the victims, and throw them into the river, so that whatever the dread of the omen was, lodged within the souls of all, might be taken away, while the images of the old suffering were still kept. And the Romans continued to do this down to my own time, a little after the spring equinox, in the month of May, on the days called Ides, wanting this to be the day of the full moon. On it the pontifices, as they are called, the most distinguished of the priests, having first offered the victims prescribed by law, and with them the virgins who keep the undying fire, along with the praetors and those of the rest of the citizens whom it is lawful to attend the rites, throw into the stream of the Tiber from the sacred bridge thirty images fashioned in the forms of men, calling them Argives.”

16.19| So much for this. Diodorus too relates similar things in the twentieth book of his Historical Library, after the death of Alexander the Macedonian, in the time of the first Ptolemy, about the Carthaginians when they were besieged by Agathocles, tyrant of Sicily, writing as follows word for word: “They also blamed Cronus for opposing them, in that in earlier times they had sacrificed to this god the best of their sons, but afterward, buying children in secret and rearing them, they sent them to the sacrifice; and when an inquiry was made, some of those who had been consecrated were found to be substitutes. Taking this to heart, and seeing the enemy encamped by the walls, they fell into superstitious fear that they had overthrown the ancestral honors of the gods. Hastening to correct their error, they picked out two hundred of the most distinguished children and sacrificed them publicly, and others, who were under accusation, gave themselves voluntarily, no fewer than three hundred. There was among them a bronze statue of Cronus, with its hands stretched out palms up toward the ground, so that the child placed on them rolled off and dropped into a pit full of fire.”

16.20| Such is what this writer too has handed down in his own history. Reasonably, then, the Scripture of the Hebrews also blames those of the circumcision who emulated such things, saying: “And they sacrificed their sons and their daughters to the demons; and the land was polluted with blood, and was defiled by their works.” But I think it has clearly been proven by these accounts that the oldest and first setting up of carved images was demonic, and the whole idolatrous deification of the nations the work of demons not good, but altogether wicked and base; so that the saying in the prophecies proves true, “All the nations' gods are demons,” and also the apostolic word, in which he says that “what they sacrifice, they sacrifice to demons and not to God.”

16.21| Or if there were anything good in them, so that on this account they shared the title of the good, they would be benefactors and saviors of all, lovers of justice and caretakers of men. Being such, how could one rejoice in the slaughter of men? How did he not, through oracles, restrain the human race from doing such things? He was surely worse and baser than men, who by the penalties of the laws made murderers pay. For not a god but a man put an end to the long, lingering disease of human sacrifice.

16.22| That these were the practices of base and wicked demons would be still more evident to you if you consider the unspeakable and licentious prostitution carried on among them to this day at Heliopolis in Phoenicia and among very many other peoples. Adulteries, seductions and other lawless unions they say must be performed in honor of the gods as a debt owed, and that firstfruits of adulterous and harlot acts must be offered to the gods, dedicating to them the proceeds of this inglorious and indecent traffic as though it were a fine thank offering. For these things are like human sacrifices.

16.23| If, then, it is not the mark of a temperate man to rejoice in murders, in shameful speech, and in lawless unions of women who sell their beauty for pay, it is far from the part of good gods or demons to approve of such things. But if someone says that these are admittedly the doings of base demons, but that there are other, good ones, whom they especially worship as saviors, we must ask where these good saviors were, if they did worship them, that they did not keep the wicked ones from doing such things to those who fled to them; and where were the good demons, that they did not drive off the harmful ones and fight on the side of their worshipers? Why did they so disdainfully overlook the rational and God-loving race of men being worn down by the cruelty of the base demons, and not at once proclaim to all to flee and turn away without looking back from every one named god as not a god but a base demon, to whom the cruel and inhuman and lawless and shameful are dear?

16.24| And if there was once in Rhodes a so-called god who delighted in human sacrifices, the true God, if there was one, would have stopped the practice and proclaimed to all that he must be held no god but a base demon; and likewise in Salamis, formerly called Coronea, where a man was sacrificed in the month the Cypriots call Aphrodisios, the true God would have shown that one too to be an accursed demon, by putting an end to the deed as impious and unholy.

16.25| And if in Heliopolis of Egypt Amosis put an end to the law of human killing, then the true God would have taught that the man had proved far better than the god; for the one who began the human killing was no god, but again a demon. And the true God would surely have decreed that the demon of Hera, to whom history shows three men were sacrificed each day, must be counted polluted.

16.26| And what could be more truly demonic than the so-called Omadios Dionysus, to whom they say in Chios they sacrifice a man, tearing him limb from limb, or the one in Tenedos likewise, whom they also propitiated by human sacrifice? The true God would have forbidden sacrificing a man also to Ares, the man-destroying demon who loves war, and would have laid down that neither their own nor others' dearest be slaughtered to him.

16.27| And if a maiden, as they say, was sacrificed every year to Athena in Laodicea in Syria, the true God would not have refrained from calling her too a wicked demon; as also the one in Libya who delights in like things, and the one in Arabia, to whom they used to sacrifice a boy every year, whom they buried under an altar.

17.1| All these, and those who delight in shameful speech and the lawless corruption of women and in the rest of the madness listed above, the true and good being, whether god or demon, would have proclaimed not to be thought gods at all. No one in all time is recorded to have done this except the one honored among the Hebrews as the only true God.

17.2| For he alone, through the prophet and theologian Moses, proclaimed to all not to worship the base demons as good ones, but on the contrary to turn away from them and drive them off as evil spirits; and he laid down by law that their temples and their unholy, uninitiated cults be torn down, that the memory of them as gods be wholly erased from among men, and that the honor paid to them be abolished. For it was not holy for those devoted to the good to appease the base.

17.3| Whether it is Phylarchus or anyone else who reports that all the Greeks kill a man before going out to war, do not hesitate to take him as witness of the demonic seizure of the Greeks; do not overlook, either, that the peoples of Africa, the Thracians and the Scythians, who do like things, are shown to have been led by the same frenzies of the demons, as were the Athenians and those in the Great City, if indeed these too slaughtered men at the festivals of Great Zeus.

17.4| But if you gather together the whole list of all that has been said, you will find that nearly the whole deification practiced by the nations was dedicated to these very man-killing spirits and wicked demons. For if in Rhodes and Salamis and the other islands, in Egyptian Heliopolis, in Chios and Tenedos and Lacedaemon and Arcadia, in Phoenicia and Libya, and in addition to all these in Syria and Arabia, among the Greeks at large and even among the foremost of them, the Athenians, at Carthage and in Africa and among the Thracians and Scythians, it has been demonstrated that the practices of demonic man-killing were carried out in ancient times and continued down to our Savior, how could you not reasonably say that all were then enslaved to the wicked demons, and that no end came to so many evils in life until the teaching of our Savior shone forth? That these things lasted until the time of Hadrian and were abolished from then on, the account of history has shown. And this was above all the time in which the saving teaching flourished among all men.

17.5| Nor is it possible for them to say that these were done to the wicked demons; for history has shown that human sacrifices were performed precisely to the greatest gods themselves. It said that they were sacrificed to Hera and Athena, to Cronus and Ares and Dionysus, and to Zeus himself, the one over all, and to Phoebus, Apollo, the most revered and wisest of all; and these, and no others, the greatest gods, they proclaim as good and saviors.

17.6| They themselves, then, would be the wicked demons. For if they took delight in such human sacrifices and killings, how could you not reasonably number them among the bloodthirsty wicked spirits, whether they are said to delight in such things themselves or to permit and overlook them when done by others?

17.7| For why should they have allowed men at all to propitiate wicked spirits? Why did they stray so far as to serve and flatter the base? Why enslave themselves to the wicked, when it was the part of good beings and gods to drive away from the haunts of men, by a stronger and more divine power, everything base and wicked?

17.8| A good father would not look on while his child was being ruined by base men, nor would a sensible master look on while his servant was led off by enemies, nor would a general in war, when he could save his own men, give them up as captives to the enemy, nor a shepherd his flock to the wolves; but will gods and good demons surrender the human race to the vicious and base?

17.9| And will the thirty thousand guardians of mortal men, who are shepherds and saviors, kings and fathers and lords, hand over what is dearest to hostile enemies and wild beasts, to be driven and carried off so pitilessly and cruelly, and not fight in the front rank in defense of those who flee to them? Will they not drive far from the herd of men the hostile and wicked demons, like wild, flesh-eating beasts, and teach every man, encouraged by the multitude of countless good gods and demons who are close to him, and devoted to gods who are not only stronger but more numerous and greater, to pay little regard, or rather none at all, to the weakness of the wicked demons?

17.10| But since they did not do this, and on the contrary worked with the wicked, themselves giving out through oracles the human sacrifices described above, and delighting in all shameful speech and the actions that go with it, it is plain in fact, as they say, that they did not differ in nature from base demons at all, but rather shared one and the same purpose and mind; and one may say still more that he was not a god in any way, nor any good demon, who of old was worshiped by all the nations in city and country.

17.11| For how could the base ever be dear to the good, unless one were to say that light and darkness can make one mixture? And how much better is the reasoning among men than that of the supposed gods, which enjoins that one should not sacrifice even to base demons! The writer mentioned before, in the passage where he said one must not sacrifice animals, says that one must not sacrifice even to base demons, in this way:

18.1| “Therefore a prudent and temperate man will beware of using such sacrifices as will draw such beings to himself, and will be eager to purify his soul by every means; for they do not attack a soul that is pure, since it is unlike them. If it is necessary for cities to appease these too, that is nothing to us; for cities think that wealth and external and bodily things are goods, and their opposites evils, and few among them care for the soul.” Next after this he adds:

19.1| “We, as far as we can, shall not need what these supply, but with soul and with outward things alike we make every effort to become like God and those around him (which comes about through freedom from passion and a clearly articulated grasp of the things that truly are, and a life directed to them and in accord with them), and to become unlike wicked men and demons and in general everything that delights in the mortal and material.

19.2| “The philosopher whom we sketch, standing apart from outward things, we reasonably say will not trouble demons, nor need seers or the entrails of animals. For the things for which divinations exist, he has trained himself to stand aloof from. He does not enter into marriage, so as to trouble a seer about marriage; nor to trade; nor about a slave; nor about theft and the other popularity-seeking among men. On the matters he does inquire about, no seer and no entrails of animals will reveal the clear truth; he himself, by himself, as we say, approaches God, who is enthroned in his true entrails, and receives counsels about eternal life, having gathered himself wholly there.”

19.3| This passage has made it perfectly plain to whom the oracles and the inquiries by sacrifice should be attributed, and also the foreknowledge about hidden matters that the many admire. For by calling all these “popularity-seeking” he rejects them as worked by wicked demons.

19.4| At any rate, in going through the account of base demons, and saying that the prudent and temperate man will never give himself up to them or draw such beings to himself through sacrifices, he next adds that the philosopher will need neither oracles nor the entrails of animals nor the like, as being the evil art of demons.

19.5| If, then, according to this, the prudent and temperate man must beware of using such sacrifices as will draw demons to himself (and these were the ones by shedding of blood and slaughter of irrational animals), no one of those who anciently sacrificed animals to the demons could justly be called temperate and prudent, and still less those who sacrificed men.

19.6| But nearly all the nations everywhere, before our Savior appeared among men, were found to be propitiating the base demons by human sacrifices performed in every place. None of these, then, was prudent and temperate.

19.7| The common human reasoning, then, following right reason, proclaims plainly to every prudent and temperate man not to use sacrifices to serve the wicked demons, but to be eager to purify the soul in every way; for they do not attack a soul that is pure, since it is unlike them.

19.8| But Apollo, their god (for once more he must be compared with men, and it must be shown how much he lacks of right reasoning), commands them to sacrifice to the wicked demon, clearly because he is a friend to him; and like is dear to like in evil. Witness to this is the man who wrote the passage before, in the work he entitled On Philosophy from Oracles, who reports it in these words:

20.1| “When the prophet was eager to behold the divine with his own eyes and pressing for it, Apollo declared it impossible, until he gave ransom to the wicked demon. He speaks thus: Give ransom to the revered inhabitant of the fatherland: first libations, then the pyre and the black blood of wine all-dark and the white streams of sheep together. And more plainly he said about the same things: Throw in wine and milk and the bright form of water, and wood that bears the fruit of Zeus-sprung acorns; and having laid out the entrails, pour libations with rich streams. Asked with what prayer this should be done, he began it but did not complete it, saying thus: Demon, who have obtained the crown of the souls of sinners, beneath the hidden places of the air and above those of the earth.”

20.2| Such are the words of the admirable god, or rather of the many-deceiving demon; while those of reasoning according to nature are the opposite, urging that the soul be purified and not that wicked demons be drawn in by sacrifices; for they do not attack a soul that is pure, since it is unlike them. And if the cautious man who does not sacrifice to demons has been rightly judged prudent and temperate, who, and of what sort, the one who advises through an oracle to sacrifice to the wicked should reasonably be thought, I leave you to consider.

20.3| From this, going back, it will be plain what sort of character those had who delighted in human sacrifices, or who of old had enslaved the whole human race to them. And if anyone should say that the manner of human sacrifice is not base, and was performed most rightly by the ancients, it is time for him to blame all men now, because no one is pious as the fathers were.

21.1| But if men of our time turned away sensibly from savage and wild cruelty, none of the ancients was wise who appeased the wicked demons with human slaughter. And indeed, as the saying goes, even a blind man can see that those whom all the nations of old called gods were neither gods nor good demons, but had been banished far from the good.

21.2| Therefore they might justly be called God-fighters and impious, having ruined the whole life of men; and from them no one in all the ages but our Savior and Lord, the Christ of God, procured escape for all men, proclaiming at once to all, Greeks and barbarians, the cure of the ancestral disease and freedom from a bitter and most ancient slavery. To hasten toward it the argument of the gospel demonstration urges, crying in a loud voice to all to be heard: “Upon me is the Spirit of the Lord; for this reason he anointed me, and sent me to bring good news to the poor, to proclaim release to captives and sight to the blind, to heal the brokenhearted.” And again: “To bring out the fettered from their bonds, and those sitting in darkness from the prison house.”

21.3| For these things the truly divine oracles among the Hebrews foretold from of old, proclaiming the release of us who were blind in our souls and bound by the tangled chains of wicked demons. Hence, reasonably, having had the eyes of our understanding lit up by the saving Word, and having become temperate and cautious and prudent and free from all evils, we shall neither sacrifice to nor serve the gods held by the nations, who before tyrannized over us. Led and brought by the teaching of our Savior to the only and true God, who is Master and Nourisher, Savior and Benefactor, and also Maker and Creator and universal King of the whole, we shall hold him alone to be true God, and render due reverence to him alone, honoring him alone and showing piety to him alone, not in the way dear to demons, but in the way handed down by the Savior of all men sent by him, through his gospel teaching.

21.4| Worshiping God in this way we shall pursue and drive from ourselves the wicked demons; far from fearing them, we shall do so only through purity and a clean way of life and a temperate, all-virtuous living, as determined by our Savior. For it is agreed that they are unable to draw near to a soul that is pure, because they are unlike it. Nor shall we need divination and oracles, nor search the entrails of animals, nor busy ourselves with anything worked through demonic motion.

21.5| For the very things for which the many pursue these practices, the word of Christ has instructed us to train ourselves to stand aloof from, and it has urged us to aim only at those things about which, truly, no seer and no entrails of animals will reveal the clear truth, but only God's own Word, who dwells in the true entrails of those able, through the highest purity of soul, to receive him within themselves. Of these he says somewhere in the sacred writings: “I will make my home in them and walk about among them; I shall be God to them, and they shall be a people to me.”

21.6| So much, then, from the work On Sacrifices, refuting the wickedness of the demons. Hear now what the author of On Abstinence from Animate Beings relates again about the same matters, expressly admitting that the wicked demons, taking shape in many forms and stamping themselves in all kinds of figures, escape notice and deceive most men. For putting on the faces of good beings, he says, and attaching the multitudes to themselves by inflaming the desires of men, they wish to be proclaimed the highest gods. He says they were so strong that they deceived even the wisest of the Greek poets and philosophers, whom he also admits to have been responsible for the perversion of the multitude; that all sorcery arises from them, and that what pleases men is provided through them; that being base demons they want to be gods; and that the power that presides over them seems to be the greatest god. All this Porphyry relates in the following manner:

22.1| “All souls that do not master the continuous spirit, but are for the most part mastered by it, are for that reason led and carried about violently whenever the angers and desires of the spirit take their impulse; and these souls too are demons, and could reasonably be called evildoers.

22.2| And all these, together with those of the opposing power, are invisible and entirely imperceptible to human senses. For they are not clothed in a solid body, nor have they all a single form, but they appear in many shapes; and their forms, stamping and imprinting their spirit, are at one time seen and at another invisible; and sometimes the worse of them even change their forms.

22.3| The spirit, insofar as it is bodily, is subject to passion and perishable; and by being bound by the souls in such a way that their shape endures for a longer time, it is nevertheless not eternal; for it is likely that something of it is continually flowing away and altering.

22.4| The bodies of the good, then, like the bodies of the visible beings, are in due proportion; those of the evildoers are disproportionate, since they give more to the passible part and haunt the region around the earth, so that there is no evil they do not attempt to do. For having a character altogether violent and treacherous, and being deprived of the guard that comes from the better power, they make their assaults violent and sudden, like ambushes, now trying to escape notice, now using force.”

22.5| And next he adds: “They do these and similar things because they wish to turn us away from the right conception of the gods and to turn us toward themselves. For they delight in everything that happens so discordantly and unsuitably, and as though putting on the faces of the other gods they enjoy our folly, attaching the multitudes to themselves by inflaming men's desires with loves and longings for wealth, power and pleasures, and for vainglory, from which factions and wars grow, and what is akin to these.

22.6| And the most terrible thing of all: from these starting points they go on to persuade men of like things about the greatest gods, until they bring even the best god under these charges; and they say that because of him everything is thrown into confusion, upside down. This is the experience not of laymen alone, but of not a few of those who spend their time in philosophy.

22.7| The cause has come about through each acting on the other. For those of the philosophers who did not stand apart from the new trend came to the same views as the multitudes; and the multitudes in turn, hearing opinions in harmony with their own from men thought wise, were strengthened to think such things about the gods all the more.

22.8| The poetic art in particular inflamed men's beliefs still further, by using a diction made for astonishment and enchantment, able to produce a spell and conviction about the most impossible things, when they should have been firmly convinced that what is good never harms and the evil never benefits. For, as Plato says, it is not the part of heat to chill, but of its opposite, nor of cold to warm, but of its opposite; so it is not the part of the just to harm.

22.9| And the divine is by nature surely the most just of all things, since otherwise it would not be divine. This power and portion, then, must be cut off from the beneficent demons. For that which is by nature and will disposed to harm is opposed to the beneficent; and opposites can never come to be about the same thing.”

22.10| And again: “By means of the opposites, however, all sorcery is accomplished; for those who work evil by sorcery honor these beings most, and the one who presides over them.

22.11| For they are full of every illusion and able to deceive by working marvels. Through them wretched men prepare love charms and philters; for all licentiousness and hope of wealth and glory comes through them, and above all deceit.

22.12| For falsehood is their own; they wish to be gods, and for the power presiding over them to seem to be the greatest god. These are the ones who rejoice in ‘libation and savor of fat,’ by which their spiritual and bodily nature is fattened. For this lives on vapors and exhalations, variously through various things, and gains power from sacrifices of blood and flesh.”

22.13| By this we have heard it admitted that it was not only the Greek poets who inflamed men's beliefs about the base demons as about good gods, but also those among the philosophers who seemed zealous about the gods, who themselves, tending not gods but wicked demons, drove the multitudes and the peoples headlong into the same error.

22.14| The account has plainly admitted that the multitudes, hearing from those thought wise opinions about the gods in harmony with their own, were strengthened to think of the wicked demons all the more as gods. And this is charged not by us but by those who know their own affairs more exactly than we do.

22.15| The same writer, indeed, who was no casual associate of the superstition that escapes the many, says that the wicked demons wish to be gods and to have the reputation of good beings among men; and what the power presiding over them is, he will make clear again himself, saying that the rulers of the wicked demons are Serapis and Hecate; Divine Scripture says Beelzebul. Hear how he writes about this in On Philosophy from Oracles:

23.1| “That the wicked demons are subject to Serapis we suspect not at random, nor persuaded by the symbols alone, but because their propitiations and their averting rites are directed to Pluto, as we demonstrated in Book One. This god is himself Pluto, and for that reason chiefly the ruler of demons, and he gives signs for driving them out.

23.2| This god has indeed shown to suppliants that they approach men made like all kinds of animals. Hence among the Egyptians and the Phoenicians and in general among those wise in divine things, thongs are lashed in the shrines, and animals are dashed to the ground before the worship of the gods, the priests driving these beings out by giving breath, or the blood of animals, and by the stroke of the air, so that when they have gone the presence of the god may come.

23.3| Every house is full of them, and for this reason people purify and cast them out beforehand whenever they call upon a god. Bodies too are full of them; for they delight especially in certain foods. When we eat they approach and settle on the body, and for this reason there are purifications, not primarily on account of the gods, but so that these beings may depart. They delight most in blood and in uncleanness, and by slipping into those who indulge in them they get their enjoyment of these things.

23.4| For in general the intensity of desire for something and the impulse of the spirit's appetite are made violent from nowhere else than from their presence; they likewise compel men to lapse into inarticulate sounds and breathings through the shared enjoyment that takes place with them.

23.5| For wherever there is a drawing in of more spirit, whether because the belly has been filled through self-indulgence, or because desire, strained by pleasure, puffs itself out and draws in much from outside, there you may take it as evident that such spirits are present. So far does human nature dare to go in discovering the snares set all around it. Indeed, when a god too enters in, the spirit is multiplied.”

23.6| So much, then, about the wicked demons, whose ruler, he says, is Serapis. That Hecate also rules them the same writer teaches, saying: “Perhaps these are the ones whom Serapis rules, and their symbol is the three-headed dog, meaning the wicked demon in the three elements, water, earth and air; the god who holds them under his hand restrains them. Hecate also rules them, as the one who holds together the threefold element.” And again he says:

23.7| “After setting down one more oracle, which Hecate herself delivered, I shall end my discussion of her: Here I am, the maiden of many apparitions, heaven-roaming, bull-faced, three-headed, ruthless, golden-shafted, Phoebe who knows no marriage bed, Eileithyia bringing light to mortals, bearing the threefold tokens of a threefold nature. The ether I fill in the likeness of fiery forms; the air I sit enthroned about in white-gleaming courses; and the earth holds the reins of the dusky brood of my hounds.”

23.8| To these lines the writer adds, plainly, who the hounds are: namely, the wicked demons, about whom we have just finished speaking. So much, then, for this. But that the beings whom the many make gods are in truth wicked demons, who bring nothing good with them, let us establish still more firmly by further evidence.

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