Preparation for the Gospel — Book XIII

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

praef.1| PREFACE. Since it has been shown in the books before this that Plato's philosophy for the most part contains an interpretation of Moses and of the sacred writings of the Hebrews, translated, as it were, into the Greek tongue, I come now both to supply what remains to the argument and to go through what has been said on these topics by those before us, and at the same time to clear myself of a plausible charge, should anyone accuse us and say: Why, if Moses and Plato have taught a philosophy in harmony, do we follow Moses and not Plato, when it ought to be the other way round, since, where the doctrines are equal, the Greek would be more fitting for us, who are Greeks, than the barbarian? Since I hesitate to answer this out of respect for the philosopher, I put that argument off until later, and shall first examine the points I mentioned first. Take up, then, and read what opinion Plato held of the Greek theologians and poets, how he set aside all the ancestral beliefs about the gods and exposed the absurdity in them:

1.1| "As for the other divinities, to speak of them and to know their origin is a task beyond us; we must trust those who have spoken before, who were, as they said, offspring of gods and no doubt knew their own ancestors well. It is impossible, then, to disbelieve the children of gods, even though they speak without probable or necessary proofs; since they profess to be reporting family matters, we must follow the law and believe them.

1.2| Let the origin of these gods, then, be held and told by us as they give it. Of Earth and Heaven were born Oceanus and Tethys; of these, Phorcys, Cronus, and Rhea [and all who came with them]; and of Cronus and Rhea, Zeus and Hera and all those we know who are called their brothers and sisters, and further the other offspring of these."

1.3| Here, while urging us to believe the myths about the gods, and the very poets of the myths, as being offspring of gods, he seems to me first of all to be mocking them when he says that the poets are offspring of the gods, as if the gods too had been men and were of the same nature as their offspring.

1.4| Next he openly discredits the theologians whom he called offspring of gods, both by going on to say "even though they speak without probable or necessary proofs" and by adding the words "as they said." He seems to be joking, too, when he says "and no doubt knew their own ancestors well," and "it is impossible to disbelieve the children of gods." And he states outright that he says these things against his own judgment, for the sake of the laws, since he admits that one must believe them by following the law.

1.5| That this was his meaning, listen to how, in plain and unveiled language, he discredits all the theologians, striking at them in the Epinomis in these words:

2.1| "Since those before us gave a bad likeness of the generation of the gods and of living creatures, it is necessary, it seems, for me first of all to give a better likeness of it, following my later account and taking up again the argument I undertook against the impious."

2.2| In the second book of the Republic he shows that he has good reason to reject the theology of the earliest writers. There it is worth attending to how much, and what sort of things, he relates about these same poets and theologians and about what has been handed down from antiquity concerning the Greek gods, speaking in these very words:

3.1| "In the greater stories," I said, "we shall see the lesser ones too. For the greater and the lesser must be of the same stamp and have the same effect. Or do you not think so?" "I do," he said. "But I do not understand which you mean by the greater ones either." "Those," I said, "that Hesiod and Homer told us, and the other poets. For it is they, I suppose, who composed false stories and told them to mankind, and still tell them."

3.2| "What sort of stories," he said, "and what do you find fault with in them?" "The thing," I said, "that one ought to fault first and foremost, especially when someone tells a lie that is not even a good one." "What is that?" "When someone in his account gives a bad likeness of the nature of gods and heroes, of what they are like, as a painter does who paints something that bears no resemblance to the things he meant to portray." "Yes," he said, "it is right to find fault with things like that. But what exactly do we mean, and what kind of things?"

3.3| "First," I said, "the greatest falsehood, and about the greatest matters, was not told well by the one who said that Uranus did what Hesiod says he did, and that Cronus in turn took vengeance on him. As for the deeds of Cronus and what he suffered at the hands of his son, even if they were true I would not think they should be told so lightly to the foolish and the young, but they should preferably be passed over in silence; and if there were some necessity to tell them, they should be heard in secret by as few as possible, after sacrificing not a pig but some great and hard-to-get victim, so that it might befall the fewest to hear them."

3.4| "Yes," he said, "for these stories are hard." "And they are not to be told, Adeimantus, in our city. Nor should a young listener be told that in committing the worst wrongs he would do nothing surprising, nor again that in punishing a wrongdoing father in every way he would only be doing what the greatest and first of the gods did." "No, by Zeus," he said, "I too think these things are unsuitable to tell."

3.5| "Nor," I said, "at all, that gods war against gods and plot and fight—for neither is it true—if those who are to guard our city must hold it a most shameful thing to be lightly hostile to one another. Far from it: the battles of the giants must not be told in myth, nor embroidered, nor the many other hatreds of every kind that gods and heroes bear toward their kinsmen and families; rather, if we are somehow to persuade them that no citizen ever hated another and that this is not holy, such things should be said to children right from the start, and to old men and women and as they grow older, and the poets must be compelled to compose their tales close to these.

3.6| The binding of Hera by her son, and the flinging of Hephaestus by his father when he was about to defend his mother being beaten, and all the battles of gods that Homer has made, are not to be admitted into the city, whether composed with hidden meanings or without them.

3.7| For the young person cannot judge what is hidden meaning and what is not, but whatever he takes into his opinions at that age tends to be hard to wash out and fixed beyond changing. For this reason, perhaps, we must make it our chief concern that the first things they hear are the most nobly told for the sake of virtue."

3.8| "That is reasonable," he said. "But if someone were to ask us again about these very things, what they are and which tales they are, which should we name?" And I said, "Adeimantus, you and I are not poets at present, but founders of a city. And it is proper for founders to know the patterns in which the poets must tell their tales, and not to permit them if they go beyond these, but not themselves to compose tales."

3.9| "Rightly," he said; "but what, precisely, would these patterns for theology be?" "Something like this," I said: "whatever God happens to be like, that he must always be rendered, whether someone writes of him in epic or in lyric or in tragedy." "Yes, we must." "Then God is truly good, and so he must be described."

3.10| "Of course." "But surely nothing good is harmful, is it?" "I think not." "Does what is not harmful, then, do harm?" "Not at all." "And what does no harm, does it do any evil?" "Not that either." "And what does no evil could not be a cause of any evil." "How could it?" "And what of this: is the good beneficial?" "Yes." "Then it is the cause of well-being?" "Yes."

3.11| "So the good is not the source of everything, but of things that are well it is the source, and of the bad it is not the source." "Quite so," he said. "Nor, then," I said, "could God, being good, be responsible for everything, as the many claim; he is responsible for few things among men, and for many he is not responsible. For our goods are far fewer than our evils. And for the goods we must hold nothing else responsible, but for the evils we must look for some other sources, and not God."

3.12| "What you say seems to me perfectly true," he said. "Then," I said, "we must not accept from Homer or any other poet this error about the gods, committed so senselessly, when he says that two jars lie on the floor of Zeus filled with fates, the one of good things, the other of evil ones: '

3.13| and to whomever Zeus gives a mixture of both, he meets now with evil, now with good; but to whomever he gives not the mixture but the unmixed one of the two, him evil famine drives over the bright earth.'

3.14| Nor that Zeus has been made for us a dispenser of good things and of evil. And the confusion of oaths and treaties that Pandarus brought about, if anyone says it came through Athena and Zeus, we shall not praise it; nor the strife and judgment of the gods through Themis and Zeus; nor again, as Aeschylus says, should the young be allowed to hear that 'God plants guilt in mortals when he wishes utterly to ruin a house.'

3.15| But if anyone composes a work in which these iambics occur, the sufferings of Niobe or of the house of Pelops or the Trojan matters or anything else of the kind, either he must not be allowed to call them the works of God, or if he does say they are God's, he must discover for them nearly the account we are now seeking, and say that God worked justly and well, and that they were benefited by being punished. But that those who pay the penalty are wretched, and that the one doing this was God, the poet must not be permitted to say.

3.16| But if they say that the wicked, being in need of chastisement, were wretched, and that in paying the penalty they were benefited by God, that may be allowed.

3.17| But to say that God, who is good, becomes the cause of evils for anyone must be fought in every way: no one should say this in the city that is his own, if it is to be well governed, and no one, young or old, should hear it told in tale, in verse or out of verse, since such things, if said, would be neither holy, nor profitable to us, nor consistent with themselves.

3.18| "I vote with you for this law," he said, "and it pleases me." "This, then," I said, "would be one of the laws and patterns concerning God, by which speakers must speak and makers must make: that God is the cause not of all things, but of good things." "And that is quite enough," he said.

3.19| "And what of this second one? Do you think God is a sorcerer, who as if by design appears at one time in one form and at another in another, now himself becoming so and changing his own shape into many forms, now deceiving us and making us believe such things about him—or that he is simple, and of all beings least likely to depart from his own form?" "I cannot say so on the spur of the moment," he said.

3.20| "And what of this: if anything departs from its own form, is it not necessary that it be shifted out of it, either by itself or by something else?" "Necessarily." "Now things that are in the best condition are least altered and moved by another, as the body by food and drink and toils, and every plant by the heat of the sun, by winds, and by such affections—is not what is healthiest and finest altered least?" "Of course."

3.21| "And would not the soul that is bravest and most intelligent be least disturbed […] by any affection from without?" "Yes." "And indeed all composite things—implements and buildings and garments—by the same reasoning, those well made and in good condition are least altered by time and other effects." "That is so."

3.22| "Everything, then, that is in good condition, whether by nature or by art or by both, admits of the least change by another." "So it seems." "But God, and all that belongs to God, is in the best condition in every way." "Of course." "In this respect, then, God would least of all have many forms." "Least of all, indeed." "Might he, then, change and alter himself?" "Plainly," he said, "if he is altered at all."

3.23| "Does he then change himself to something better and more beautiful, or to something worse and uglier than himself?" "Necessarily to something worse than himself," he said, "if he is altered; for we shall surely not say that God is lacking in beauty or virtue." "You speak most rightly," I said. "That being so, Adeimantus, does it seem to you that any god or any man would be willing to make himself worse in any respect?"

3.24| "Impossible," he said. "Impossible, then," I said, "for a god too to wish to alter himself; but, as it seems, being the most beautiful and best possible, each of them remains always simply in his own form." "That seems to me entirely necessary," he said. "Let none of the poets, then, my good friend," I said, "tell us that 'the gods, like strangers from foreign lands, taking on every shape, go about the cities.'

3.25| Let no one tell lies about Proteus and Thetis, nor bring on in tragedies or in other poems a Hera transformed, as a priestess begging 'for the life-giving children of Inachus, the Argive river.'

3.26| And let them not tell us many other such falsehoods. Nor let mothers, persuaded by them, frighten their children with badly told tales, saying that certain gods go about by night appearing in the likeness of many strangers of all sorts, so that they may not, in one breath, blaspheme against the gods and render their children more cowardly." "Let them not," he said.

3.27| "But are the gods themselves," I said, "such as not to change, and yet make us think they appear in all sorts of shapes, deceiving and bewitching us?" "Perhaps," he said. "And what of this? Would God be willing to lie, whether in word or in deed, by putting forth a phantom?" "I do not know," he said.

3.28| "Do you not know," I said, "that the truly false thing, if one may say so, all gods and men hate?" "How do you mean?" he said. "You know, I suppose," I said, "that no one willingly lies in the most sovereign part of himself and about the most sovereign matters, but of all things fears most to have the lie lodged there." "I still do not understand," he said.

3.29| "You think I am saying something solemn," I said; "but what I say is that to be deceived in the soul about realities, and to have been deceived, and to be ignorant, and there to hold and possess the falsehood, is what all would least accept, and they hate it most in such a place."

3.30| "Very much so," he said. "But the most correct name for what I was just describing as truly a lie would be the ignorance in the soul of the one deceived; for the falsehood in words is a certain imitation of the affection in the soul, a later image of it, not an altogether unmixed falsehood. Is it not so?" "Quite so."

3.31| "The lie in reality, then, is hated, not by gods only, but by men also." "So it seems to me." "And what of this: the lie in words—when and for whom is it useful, so as not to deserve hatred? Is it not against enemies, and against so-called friends, when through madness or some folly they attempt to do something bad, that it becomes useful as a remedy for averting it?"

3.32| "And in the tales we were speaking of just now, because we do not know where the truth lies about ancient matters, by making the falsehood as like the truth as we can, do we not make it useful?" "Very much," he said, "that is so." "In which of these ways, then, is a lie useful to God? Would he lie by making likenesses because he does not know ancient matters?" "That would be ridiculous," he said.

3.33| "There is no lying poet in God, then?" "I think not." "But would he lie out of fear of enemies?" "Far from it." "Or because of the folly or madness of his kin?" "But none of the foolish and mad," he said, "is dear to God." "There is no reason, then, for which God would lie?" "There is none." "In every way, then, the divine and the godlike is free from falsehood." "Altogether so," he said.

3.34| "God, then, is utterly simple and true in deed and word; he neither changes himself nor deceives others, neither by appearances, nor by sending signs, nor in waking vision nor in dream." "So it appears to me too," he said, "as I hear you." "Do you agree, then," I said, "that this is the second pattern in which one must speak and write about the gods: that they are neither sorcerers who change themselves, nor lead us astray with falsehoods in word or deed?" "I agree."

3.35| "Though we praise much in Homer, then, this we shall not praise: the dream that Zeus sent to Agamemnon; nor in Aeschylus, when Thetis says that Apollo, singing at her wedding, foretold her blessed childbearing: 'free from sickness and long-lived […] fortunes, Paean sang in triumph, cheering me; and I hoped the divine mouth of Phoebus free of falsehood, rich in prophetic art. But he who sang, who was himself present at the feast, who himself said all this—he is the very one who has killed my son.'

3.36| When anyone says such things about the gods, we shall be angry and shall not grant him a chorus, nor shall we let teachers use them in educating the young, if our guardians are to be god-fearing and godlike, as far as a human can be." "Entirely," he said, "I agree to these patterns, and I would use them as laws."

3.37| So far Plato. But you will find that the writing of the Hebrews contains in no way shameful tales concerning the God of the universe, nor even about the divine angels around him, nor about the God-beloved men, as the Greek theologies do; and it contains the pattern set out by Plato, that God is good and that everything that has come from him is of the same kind.

3.38| Over each of the works of creation the marvelous Moses appends: "And God saw that it was good." Then, summing up the account concerning all of them he says: "And God saw all that he had made, and behold, it was very good." The Hebrews also teach that God is in no way the cause of evils, since God did not make death, nor does he delight in the ruin of those who live; for he created all things to have being, and the generations of the world are wholesome; "but through the devil's envy death entered into the world."

3.39| Hence in the prophet God is introduced as saying to the one who had become evil by his own choice: "I planted you a fruitful vine, wholly true; how have you turned back, a strange vine?" And if anywhere it is said that evils come from God to the wicked, this must be understood as a name shared by two things, since punishments are so called, which God, being good, is said to bring not to harm those punished but for their benefit and advantage; just as a physician would be thought to bring evils when for the healing of the sick he applies painful and bitter treatments.

3.40| Therefore in the divine scripture too, wherever evils are said to be brought upon men by God, what is in Plato must be said: that God did things just and good, and that when he brought the grim things, thought evils by men, on those who deserved them, they were benefited by being punished—not only on the philosopher's account but also according to the writing of the Hebrews, which says: "For whom the Lord loves he disciplines, and he scourges every son whom he receives."

3.41| "But that those who pay the penalty are wretched, and that the one doing this was God, the poet must not be permitted to say; but if they say that the wicked, being in need of chastisement, were wretched, and that in paying the penalty they were benefited by God, that may be allowed; but to say that God, who is good, becomes the cause of evils for anyone must be fought in every way."

3.42| And as to God's not being altered, the prophecy of the Hebrews teaches this in the person of God, saying somewhere as follows: "Because I am the Lord your God, and have not been altered." And in the theologies David cries out: "All of them will grow old like a garment, and like a cloak you will roll them up, and they will be changed; but you are the same, and your years will not fail."

3.43| And if anywhere they introduce the Word of God appearing in human form and shape, it must be said that the writings of the Hebrews introduce the Word of God as appearing to men not in the way of the Greek myths, like Proteus and Thetis and Hera, nor like the gods who go about by night appearing in the likeness of many creatures of all sorts; rather, as Plato himself says that it is sometimes necessary, for the sake of friends, when through madness or some folly they attempt to do something bad, so then, to avert it, the coming of God among men became useful as a remedy.

3.44| Since, then, of the living creatures on earth no kind was more beloved of God than the human, being akin and familiar to the Word of God, from whom its rational soul had been fashioned, it is reasonable, they say, that the heavenly Word, caring for a creature dear to him, came to heal the whole race, which had endured an extraordinary sickness and madness, so that it knew neither God as Father, nor the proper essence of its intellectual nature, nor the providence of God, the preserver of the universe, but had been all but perverted into the state of an irrational animal.

3.45| This is why they say that the Savior and physician came among us—not departing from his own nature, nor deceiving those who saw him, but preserving both truths, the unseen and the seen. For in one respect he was seen as a true man, and in another he was truly the Word of God, not working sorcery, nor deluding those who beheld him, since to Plato too it seemed right that the divine is free of falsehood.

3.46| "God the Word, then, being utterly simple and true in deed and word, neither changed himself nor deceived others, neither by appearances, nor by words, nor by sending signs, nor […] in dream." For all such things he accomplished as physician of rational souls, for the salvation of the entire human race, truly and not in seeming, through the man he had assumed, granting to all of us friendship with his Father and a return to him by means of the knowledge of God and true piety that he proclaimed.

3.47| Such are our teachings. As for those who speak otherwise, we shall be angry with them and shall not grant them a chorus, nor shall we let teachers use such things in educating the young, if our guardians are to be god-fearing and godlike—as seemed best to the philosopher too.

4.1| "For men themselves happen to believe that Zeus is the best and most just of the gods, and they admit that he bound his own father because he swallowed his sons unjustly, and that that father in turn mutilated his own father for other such reasons; yet they are angry at me for proceeding against my father for wrongdoing, and so they contradict themselves about the gods and about me.

4.2| Is this, then, Euthyphro, the reason why I am being prosecuted: that when anyone says such things about the gods, I somehow accept them with difficulty, and for this, it seems, someone will say that I am in error? Now if these things seem right to you too, who know well about such matters, it is necessary, it seems, for us to agree as well. For what shall we say, who admit that we know nothing about them? But tell me, by the god of friendship, do you truly believe these things happened so? Yes, and things even more wonderful than these, Socrates, which the many do not know.

4.3| And do you believe that there really is war among the gods against one another, and terrible enmities and battles and many other things of the sort, such as the poets tell, and with which the good painters have adorned our other sacred places, and especially the robe, full of such embroideries, that is carried up to the Acropolis at the great Panathenaea? Are we to say that these things are true, Euthyphro?

4.4| Not these alone, Socrates, but, as I said a moment ago, I will tell you, if you wish, many other things about the gods, which I know well you will be astonished to hear." So Plato in the Euthyphro. Numenius makes the meaning clear in his work On the Secret Teachings in Plato, saying somewhere as follows:

5.1| "If Plato had undertaken to write concerning the theology of the Athenians, and then had been vexed at it and denounced it for holding conflicts of the gods with one another, the unions of some with their children, the devouring of children by others, and in return for these the vengeance of sons upon fathers and of brothers upon brothers, and other such things—if Plato had taken up these matters and denounced them openly, he would, it seems to me, have given the Athenians cause to do wrong again by killing him too, as they did Socrates. But since he would not have chosen to live rather than tell the truth, and saw that he could live and tell the truth safely, he set in the guise of the Athenians Euthyphro, a boastful and foolish man who does theology as badly as anyone, and he set Socrates himself before him, in his own form, in which he was accustomed to cross-examine each person he conversed with."

6.1| "My dear Crito, your eagerness is worth much, if it were accompanied by some rightness; if not, the greater it is, the harder to bear. We must therefore consider whether we should do this or not, since I am the kind of man, not only now but always, who obeys nothing of mine except the argument that appears best to me on reflection.

6.2| The arguments which I made earlier I cannot now throw out merely because this misfortune has come to me; they appear to me much the same, and I revere and honor the same ones as before. And unless we can say something better in the present case, be sure that I will not yield to you, not even though the power of the many should frighten us like children with still more bogeys than now, sending upon us chains and deaths and the seizure of property.

6.3| How, then, could we examine the matter most reasonably? If first we take up this argument of yours about opinions: whether it was rightly said each time that one should pay attention to some opinions but not to others; or whether it was rightly said before I had to die, but now it has become plain that it was said idly, for the sake of talk, and was really child's play and nonsense.

6.4| I desire to examine it with you, Crito, in common, to see whether it will appear any different to me now that I am in this state, or the same, and whether we shall let it go or obey it. It was said, I think, each time by those who supposed they were saying something sensible, just as I was saying a moment ago, that among the opinions which men hold some must be highly valued and others not.

6.5| By the gods, Crito, does this not seem to you rightly said? For you, as far as human affairs go, are not about to die tomorrow, and the present misfortune would not lead your judgment astray. Consider then: does it not seem to you sufficiently said that one should not honor all the opinions of men, but some and not others? Nor those of all men, but of some and not of others? What do you say? Is that not rightly said? Rightly.

6.6| Then we should honor the good ones and not the bad? Yes. And the good are those of the wise, the bad those of the foolish? Of course. Come then, how was this sort of thing said? Does a man in training, who is doing this, pay attention to the opinion, the praise and the blame of every man, or of one only, the man who happens to be a physician or trainer? Of one only.

6.7| Then he should fear the blame and welcome the praise of that one man, and not of the many. Clearly. So he must act and train, and eat and drink, in the way that seems good to that one, the overseer who understands, rather than to all the others together. That is so. Very well. And if he disobeys the one and dishonors his opinion and praises, and honors those of the many who understand nothing, will he not suffer some harm? How could he not? And what is this harm, and where does it tend, and to which part of the disobedient man? Clearly to the body, for this it destroys.

6.8| You speak well. Is it not so also with the rest, Crito, that we may not go through them all? And so also with the just and unjust, the shameful and the noble, the good and the evil, about which our deliberation now is: must we go along with the opinion of the many, and be afraid of it, or with that of the single man, if there is one who understands, whom we ought to be ashamed before and fear more than all the others together? If we do not follow him, we shall corrupt and maim that which became better by the just and was destroyed by the unjust. Or is that nothing? I think it is something, Socrates.

6.9| Come then, if we destroy that which is made better by what is healthy and corrupted by what is diseased, by obeying not the opinion of those who understand, is life worth living for us once that is corrupted? And this is, I suppose, the body, or not? Yes. Is life, then, worth living for us with a wretched and corrupted body? By no means.

6.10| But is life worth living with that part corrupted which injustice maims and justice benefits? Or do we consider that part of us, whatever it is, with which injustice and justice are concerned, to be less than the body? By no means. But more honorable? Far more.

6.11| Then, my best friend, we must not be so concerned about what the many will say about us, but about what the one who understands about just and unjust things will say, the one, and truth itself. So in the first place you are not right in proposing that we should care for the opinion of the many about just and noble and good things and their opposites."

6.12| And the saving Word says: "You seek the glory that comes from men, and the glory that comes from the only One you do not seek." Therefore we too act rightly in the contests for piety when we pay no heed to what the many will say about us, but to what the one Word of God wishes; and having once chosen him by judgment, we ought to honor him then just as before, and not change, even if the power of the many frightens us like children. Such also were those of old among the Hebrews who shone in martyrdom.

7.1| "Do we say that in no way must we willingly do wrong, or that in some way we must and in some way we must not? Or is doing wrong in no way noble or good, as we often agreed also in earlier times? This was just said a moment ago. Or have all those earlier agreements of ours been poured out in these few days, and, Crito, have we old men, so serious in our conversations with one another, long failed to notice that we are no different from children? Or is it entirely as we said then, whether the many agree or not, and whether we must suffer still harsher things than these or milder, that doing wrong is in every way evil and shameful for the wrongdoer? Do we say so, or not? We say so.

7.2| In no way, then, must one do wrong. Certainly not. Nor, when wronged, repay wrong with wrong, as the many think, since one must in no way do wrong? Apparently not. And what of this: must one do harm, Crito, or not? Surely not, Socrates. And what of this: to repay evil when treated badly, as the many say, is it just or not just? Not at all. For doing evil to men is no different from doing wrong. You speak well.

7.3| One must not, then, repay wrong with wrong, nor do evil to any man, whatever one may suffer from them. But see, Crito, that in agreeing to this you do not agree contrary to your opinion. For I know that to few does this seem so, or will seem so. For those to whom it seems so and those to whom it does not, there is no common counsel, but they must despise one another when they see each other's plans. Consider well, then, whether you share this view and agree, and let us begin our deliberation from here: that it is never right to do wrong, nor to repay wrong, nor, when ill treated, to defend oneself by doing harm in return; or do you stand apart and not share the starting point? For to me it has seemed so for a long time and still does now.

7.4| And if it has seemed otherwise to you in any way, say so and teach me; but if you hold to the earlier view, hear what comes next. I do hold to it, and it seems so to me; so speak. I will say what comes next, then—or rather I ask: when someone has agreed with another to things that are just, must he do them, or deceive him? He must do them."

7.5| Set beside these the words: "Repaying no one evil for evil," and: "Bless those who curse you; pray for those who abuse and persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven, who makes his sun rise on the evil and the good and sends rain upon the just and upon the unjust." And further: "When reviled we bless; when persecuted we endure; when slandered we exhort"—words that are carried in the sacred writings among us. And the prophet among the Hebrews says: "If I have repaid those who repaid me with evil." And again: "With those who hated peace I was peaceable."

8.1| "But you then used to pride yourself that you were not vexed if you had to die, and chose, as you said, death rather than exile; yet now you are neither ashamed of those words nor do you respect us, the laws, as you try to destroy us; and you do what the worst slave would do, trying to run away contrary to the compacts and agreements by which you covenanted with us to live as a citizen.

8.2| First, then, answer us this very question: are we speaking truly when we say that you agreed, in deed and not in word, to live as a citizen under us, or not truly? What shall we say to this, Crito? Anything but agree? Necessarily, Socrates. Then what are you doing, they would say, but breaking your compacts and agreements with us, though you made them neither under compulsion nor deceived, nor forced to decide in a short time, but over seventy years, during which you were free to leave, if we did not please you or the agreements did not seem to you just?

8.3| Yet you preferred neither Lacedaemon nor Crete, which you claim on each occasion are well governed, nor any other of the Greek cities or the barbarian ones, but you went abroad from it less often than the lame, the blind, and the rest of the disabled. So exceedingly did the city please you above the other Athenians, and we the laws clearly—for whom would a city please without laws? And now do you not abide by what was agreed? You will, if you obey us, Socrates."

9.1| "For anyone who corrupts laws would surely seem to be a corrupter of the young and thoughtless. Will you then flee from well-governed cities and the most orderly of men? And in doing so, will it be worth your while to live? Or will you go to them and shamelessly converse—with what words, Socrates?—the same as you did here, that virtue and justice are of the greatest worth to men, and customs and laws? And do you not think that the conduct of Socrates will look unseemly? You must think so.

9.2| But you will leave these places and come to Thessaly, to Crito's friends; for there is the greatest disorder and license, and perhaps they would gladly hear how comically you ran away from the prison, wrapped in some costume, or having put on a leather jerkin or the other things runaways usually dress themselves in, having changed your own appearance.

9.3| But that you, an old man with, in all likelihood, a short time of life left, dared so greedily to desire to live, transgressing the greatest laws—will no one say so? Perhaps, if you do not annoy anyone; if you do, you will hear, Socrates, many things unworthy of you. You will live fawning on all men and slaving for them—doing what, if not banqueting in Thessaly, as though you had journeyed abroad to Thessaly for a banquet? And where will those discussions about justice and the rest of virtue be for us? Or do you want to live for your children's sake, so as to rear and educate them?

9.4| And what of this? Will you bring them to Thessaly and rear and educate them, making them foreigners, so that they may have that benefit from you too? Or not that, but, brought up here, will they be better reared and educated while you live, though you are not with them? For those close to you will look after them.

9.5| Will they take care of them if you go away to Thessaly, but not take care of them if you go away to Hades—if indeed there is any use in those who say they are your friends? You must think so.

9.6| But, Socrates, obey us who reared you, and do not value children or life or anything else more than justice, so that when you come to Hades you may have all this to say in your defense to the rulers there. For neither here does it appear better for you or more just or more holy to do these things, nor for any of your friends, nor will things be better for you once you arrive there.

9.7| But as it is, you depart, if you depart, wronged, not by us the laws, but by men; whereas if you leave in so shameful a way, repaying wrong with wrong and evil with evil, breaking your own agreements and compacts with us, and doing harm to those to whom it is least fitting—yourself, your friends, your country, and ourselves—we shall be hostile to you as long as you live, and there our brothers, the laws in Hades, will not receive you kindly, knowing that you tried, so far as in you lay, to destroy us too."

10.1| "Perhaps, then, someone might say: are you not ashamed, Socrates, to have pursued such a way of life that you now run the risk of dying for it? To him I would reply with a just answer: you do not speak well, my good man, if you think that a man who is of any use at all, even a little, should reckon the risk of living or dying, rather than look only at this when he acts: whether what he does is just or unjust, the deeds of a good man or a bad.

10.2| For by your argument all the demigods who died at Troy would be worthless, among them the son of Thetis, who thought so little of danger, set beside suffering anything shameful, that when his mother, a goddess, said to him as he was eager to kill Hector—something like this, I think: 'My child, if you avenge the murder of your comrade Patroclus and kill Hector, you yourself will die; for straightway after Hector,' she says, 'your fate is ready'—he, on hearing this, made light of death and danger, and fearing far more to go on living as a base man who had not avenged his friends, said: 'Straightway may I die, after I have punished the wrongdoer, that I may not stay here a laughingstock beside the curved ships, a burden on the earth.'

10.3| Do you think he gave any thought to death and danger? For this is the truth, men of Athens: wherever a man has stationed himself, thinking it best, or been stationed by a commander, there he must, as it seems to me, remain and face danger, reckoning neither death nor anything else before disgrace.

10.4| I would then have done a terrible thing, men of Athens, if, when the commanders whom you chose to command me stationed me at Potidaea and Amphipolis and Delium, and elsewhere, I stayed where they stationed me, like anyone else, and risked death, but when the god stationed me, as I thought and understood, to live philosophizing and examining myself and others, then through fear of death or any other thing I were to desert my post.

10.5| That would be terrible, and then truly someone might justly bring me into court, charging that I do not believe in gods, since I disobeyed the oracle, feared death, and thought myself wise when I was not. For to fear death, gentlemen, is nothing other than to think oneself wise without being so; it is to imagine one has knowledge of things one lacks. Nobody, after all, knows whether death happens to be the greatest of all goods for man, yet they fear it as though they were quite sure it is the worst of evils. And is this not that blameworthy ignorance, the belief that one knows what in fact one does not?

10.6| I, gentlemen, differ from the many perhaps in this and here too; and if I were to say that I am wiser than anyone in anything, it would be in this: that since I do not know enough about the things in Hades, I do not think I know. But that to do wrong and disobey one's better, whether god or man, is evil and shameful, I do know. Therefore, rather than evils which I know to be evils, I shall never fear or flee things which I do not know may even turn out to be goods.

10.7| So even if you now let me go, disbelieving Anytus, who said that either I should not have come here at all, or, since I did come, it was impossible not to put me to death, telling you that if I escaped, your sons, practicing what Socrates teaches, would all be utterly corrupted—if you were to say to me in reply to this: Socrates, we shall not now obey Anytus, but we let you go, on this condition, however, that you no longer spend your time in this inquiry or philosophize; and if you are caught still doing this, you shall die—

10.8| if, as I said, you were to release me on these terms, I would say to you: Men of Athens, I welcome you and hold you dear, yet it is the god I shall obey, not you; and so long as I draw breath and am able, I shall not cease from philosophizing, exhorting you and showing it to whichever of you I happen to meet, saying the kind of things I usually say." And after a little he adds:

10.9| "Let us consider this too, how great a hope there is that it is good. For being dead is one of two possibilities: either it resembles nothing at all and the dead man has no perception of anything, or, as the saying goes, it is a change and a migration of the soul from the place here to another place. And if there is no perception, but it is like sleep, when a sleeper sees not even a dream, then death would be a wonderful gain.

10.10| For I think that if someone had to pick out that night when he slept so soundly that he saw no dream, and set the other nights and days of his own life beside it, and, after consideration, say how many days and nights he had lived better and more pleasantly than this one, I think that not a private man, but the Great King himself, would find them easy to count compared with the other days and nights. If death is such, I call it a gain; for all time then appears to be no more than a single night.

10.11| But if death is, on the other hand, a kind of journey from here to another place, and if the saying is true, that all the dead are in that place, what could be a greater good than this, gentlemen of the jury? For if someone arriving in Hades, rid of these who claim to be judges, will find the true judges who, it is said, give judgment there—Minos, Rhadamanthus, Aeacus, Triptolemus, and as many other demigods as were just in their own lives—would that be a poor journey?

10.12| Or again, how much would any of you give to be with Orpheus and Musaeus and Hesiod and Homer? For I am willing to die many times, if this is true, since for me too the time spent there would be wonderful, when I met Palamedes and Ajax son of Telamon, or any other of the ancients who died through an unjust judgment; to compare my own sufferings with theirs would, I think, not be unpleasant. And, greatest of all, to pass my time examining and searching those there as I do those here, to see which of them is wise and which thinks he is but is not."

10.13| And among us it is said: "God must be obeyed rather than men." And: "Do not fear those who kill the body and are unable to kill the soul." And again: "We know that if our earthly house, the tent, is destroyed, we have a building from God, a dwelling not made by hands, eternal in the heavens; and that while we are absent from the body, we dwell at home with the Lord"—who has also promised those who hope in him that they will rest in the bosoms of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and will pass the long age in blessed life together with the other God-beloved prophets and righteous men among the Hebrews.

11.1| "Of those who die on campaign, whoever dies with distinction, shall we not say first that he is of the golden race? Most certainly. And shall we not obey Hesiod, when some of that kind die, that they become holy spirits upon the earth, good, averters of evil, guardians of mortal men? We shall obey. Having inquired of the god how we should bury those who are spirit-like and divine, and with what distinction, shall we bury them in whatever way he directs? Why not? And for the rest of time, as having become spirits, shall we so tend and venerate their tombs? And we shall hold the same for any who die of old age or in any other way, of such as were judged exceptionally good in life."

11.2| And these things fit the death of the God-beloved too, whom you would not err in saying are counted as soldiers of true piety. Hence it is our custom to visit their tombs, to make our prayers beside them, and to honor their blessed souls, since we do these things reasonably.

11.3| But I have gathered these things from Plato; another lover of the good might find even more in the same author in agreement with our doctrines, and perhaps in others as well. And since others too before us have taken up the same subject, it seems to me well to examine their labors as well. I shall set down first the words of Aristobulus, the philosopher from among the Hebrews, which run as follows:

12.1| "It is evident that Plato followed our legislation, and it is clear that he studied each of its details closely. For before Demetrius of Phalerum, before the dominion of Alexander and of the Persians, there had been translated by others the account of the departure of the Hebrews, our fellow citizens, from Egypt, the manifestation of all that happened to them, the conquest of the land, and the full exposition of the whole legislation, so that it is clear that the philosopher mentioned took many things from it; for he was a man of wide learning, just as Pythagoras too transferred many of our teachings into his own system of doctrine and put them in place.

12.2| But the complete translation of everything in the law was made under the king called Philadelphus, your ancestor, who brought a greater zeal to it, Demetrius of Phalerum managing the business concerning it."

12.3| Then, after saying some things in between, he continues: "For one must take the divine voice not as spoken word but as the establishment of works, just as Moses throughout the legislation has told us the whole origin of the world as God's words. For he says continually in each case: 'And God said, and it came to be.'

12.4| And it seems to me that Pythagoras and Socrates and Plato, having studied everything closely, followed this, saying that they heard the voice of God, as they observed that the structure of the universe was made precisely by God and is held together without interruption. Moreover Orpheus, in verses from what he says in the Sacred Discourse, sets out in this way that all things are held together by divine power and have come into being, and that God is over all. He speaks thus:

12.5| I shall speak to those for whom it is lawful; close the doors, you profane, who flee the ordinances of the righteous, laid down by divine law for all. But you, Musaeus, offspring of light-bearing Selene, listen; for I shall tell the truth, and let not what appeared to you before in your breast rob you of your dear life. Looking to the divine Word, attend to it, steering the mind-filled vessel of your heart; and tread well the path, and look only upon the immortal Maker of the world. An ancient account shines forth about this one: he is one, self-perfected, and by him all things are perfected; and among them he himself moves about, and no one of mortal souls sees him, but he is seen by mind. And he himself does not send evil from good things to mortal men; on him attend grace and hatred, and war and plague and tearful pains, and there is no other besides. You would see all things easily if you were to see him; before that, my child, I shall show you here upon the earth, when I discern his footprints and the strong hand of the mighty God. But him I do not see; for a cloud is fixed about him for me henceforth; and ten folds stand for men; for no one of mortal men could see him ruling, unless some only-begotten offshoot from the tribe of the Chaldeans from above—for he was skilled in the path of the star, and how the motion of the sphere revolves about the earth, circular and equal, around its own axis; and he drives the winds about the air and about the flowing stream of water; and he brings to light the gleam of fire born of strength. He himself is again fixed upon the great heaven on a golden throne; the earth lies under his feet; and his right hand he has stretched out to the limits of the ocean; the foundation of the mountains trembles within in their spirit, and cannot bear his mighty strength. He is altogether heavenly, and brings all things to their end upon the earth, himself holding beginning and middle and end, as the account of the ancients says, as the one born of matter ordained, having received it from God by his decisions, according to the twofold ordinance. Otherwise it is not lawful to speak; my limbs tremble in my mind. From on high he rules over all things in order. O child, draw near to these thoughts, mastering your tongue very well, and place the saying in your breast."

12.6| And Aratus too says about the same matters: "Let us begin from Zeus, whom men never leave unspoken; full of God are all the streets and all the markets of men; full is the sea and the harbors. In every way we all have need of God. For we are also his offspring; and he, kindly to men, gives favorable signs and rouses the people to work, reminding them of livelihood; he says when the clod is best for oxen and for mattocks, and he says when the seasons are favorable for digging round the plants and for sowing all the seeds."

12.7| It has been clearly shown, I think, that the power of God extends through all things. And as we have indicated, as is fitting, we have removed the 'Zeus' and 'Zen' that run through the poems; for the thought of those poets is referred to God, and this is why we have spoken as we have. It is therefore not unreasonably that we have brought forward these things for the points being sought.

12.8| For it is agreed by all the philosophers that one must hold holy conceptions about God, which our school especially and rightly urges. And the whole structure of our law is arranged for piety, justice, self-control and the other goods in accordance with truth."

12.9| After these things, following some others, he adds: "Closely connected with this is how God has constructed the whole world, and has given us rest, because life is full of suffering for all, on the seventh day, which might also be called naturally the first, the birth of light, in which all things are seen together.

12.10| The same could be transferred to wisdom; for all light comes from it. And some of those belonging to the school of the Peripatos have said that it occupies the position of a lamp; for those who follow it continually will remain undisturbed throughout their whole life.

12.11| One of our ancestors, Solomon, said more clearly and more finely that it existed before heaven and earth. This agrees with what was said before. And as for what is made clear through the legislation, that God rested in it, this does not mean, as some suppose, that God no longer does anything, but that, having ceased, he arranged their order thus for all time.

12.12| For it signifies that in six days he made heaven and earth and everything in them, in order to show the times and to declare in advance which thing precedes which. For having ordered them, he so holds them together and does not change them. And he has made it plain to us as a day ordained by law, as a sign of the seventh principle established in us, in which we have knowledge of human and divine things.

12.13| And through sevens the whole world of all living and growing things revolves; and it is interpreted that it is called Sabbath because it means rest. Homer and Hesiod, having taken from our books, also make clear that it is holy. Hesiod thus: 'First, the first, the fourth and the seventh are a holy day'; and again he says: 'On the seventh, again, the bright light of the sun.'

12.14| And Homer says: 'Then on the seventh came the holy day'; and once more: 'The seventh day it was, and for him all things were completed'; and: 'On the seventh dawn we left the stream of Acheron.'

12.15| By this he signifies that from forgetfulness and vice in the soul, in the true seventh principle, the aforesaid things are left behind and we receive knowledge of the truth, as has been said before.

12.16| And Linus speaks thus: 'On the seventh dawn all things have been brought to completion'; and again: 'The seventh is among the good, and the seventh is the birth day'; and: 'The seventh is among the first, and the seventh is perfect'; and: 'In the starry heaven all things are made in sevens, appearing in the cycles of the revolving years.'" Such are the words of Aristobulus. What Clement too has said about this same theme, you can learn from the following.

13.1| "What follows must be added, and the Greek theft from the barbarian philosophy must now be set out more clearly. The Stoics say that God is a body and, in essence, a spirit, as indeed they say the soul is. All this you will find stated outright in the Scriptures. Do not, for now, think of their allegories as the gnostic truth hands them down, as though they showed one thing and signified another, like skilled wrestlers. But the Stoics say that God pervades the whole of substance, while we call him only Maker, and Maker by his Word.

13.2| What led them astray was the saying in Wisdom, 'It pervades and penetrates all things because of its purity,' not understanding that this is said of the first-created Wisdom of God. 'Yes,' they say; 'but the philosophers posit matter among the principles—the Stoics and Plato and Pythagoras, and Aristotle the Peripatetic too—and not a single principle.' Let them learn, then, that what is called matter they declare to be without quality and without shape; and that Plato went so far as to call it non-being; and perhaps it is because he knew, in a most mystical way, that the truly existing principle is one, that he says in the Timaeus in these very words:

13.3| "Now then, for our part let it be so: the account of the universe, whether it is a principle or principles, or however it seems about these, must not be given at present, for no other reason than that it is hard in the present manner of exposition to make our views clear."

13.4| "Besides, that prophetic saying, 'And the earth was unseen and unformed,' furnished them with starting points for a material substance. Epicurus indeed, who did not follow the text, got the intrusion of chance from here: 'Vanity of vanities, all is vanity.' And Aristotle came to bring providence down as far as the moon from this psalm: 'Lord, your mercy is in heaven and your truth reaches to the clouds.' For the disclosure of the prophetic mysteries was not yet revealed before the coming of the Lord.

13.5| Again, the punishments after death and fiery punishment were taken from the barbarian philosophy by the whole poetic Muse, and by Greek philosophy as well. Plato, for instance, says in the last book of the Republic in these very words: 'There savage men, fiery to look at, standing by and recognizing the sound, took some aside and led them away, but Ardiaeus and the others they bound hand and foot, threw them down head first, flayed them, and dragged them outside along the road, carding them upon thorns.' The fiery men, he means, are angels, who take the unjust and punish them. 'He who makes his angels spirits and his servants a flaming fire.'

13.6| It follows from this that the soul is immortal. For what is punished or disciplined, being in sensation, lives, even if it is said to suffer. And what of this? Does not Plato know of rivers of fire and the depth of the earth, called Gehenna by the barbarians, which he names poetically Tartarus, and Cocytus and Acheron and Pyriphlegethon, and introduces such places of chastisement for discipline? And of the small and least ones according to Scripture, whose angels behold God, and further of the oversight that comes to us by way of the angels placed over us, he does not shrink from writing, indicating it now: 'Since all the souls had chosen their lives, in the order of their lots they came before Lachesis, and she sent with each the spirit he had chosen as guardian of his life and fulfiller of what he had chosen.' Perhaps the divine sign of Socrates also hinted at something of this kind.

13.7| Indeed the philosophers, having received it, taught that the [world] is begotten. And Plato said it outright: 'Was it always, having no beginning of becoming, or has it come into being, beginning from some beginning? It is both visible and tangible, and possessed of a body.' And once more, when he says, 'To find the Maker and Father of this whole is hard work,' he showed not only that the world is begotten, but also that it came from him, as having come to be from him alone and subsisted out of what was not.

13.8| The Stoics too hold the world to be begotten. And the devil so much spoken of by the barbarian philosophy, the ruler of the demons, Plato says in the tenth book of the Laws is an evil-working soul, in these words: 'A soul which governs and dwells in all things that move in every way—must we not say that it governs heaven as well? Of course. One soul, or several? Several; I shall answer for you both. Let us posit no fewer than two, the one beneficent and the one capable of working the opposite.'

13.9| Similarly in the Phaedrus he writes: 'There are other evils, but some spirit has mixed pleasure for the moment with most of them.' And in the tenth book of the Laws he shows outright that apostolic saying, 'Our struggle is not against blood and flesh, but rather against the spiritual powers in the heavens,' writing somewhat as follows:

13.10| "Since we have agreed among ourselves that heaven is filled with many good things, and also with their opposites, but with more that are not, such a battle, we say, is deathless and needs wonderful guarding."

13.11| Again, the barbarian philosophy knows a world that is intelligible and a world that is perceptible: the one the archetype, the other the image of the beautiful model. The one it assigns to the monad, as being intelligible, and the perceptible to the hexad; for among the Pythagoreans the hexad is called marriage, as being a fruitful number. And in the monad it establishes an unseen heaven, a holy earth, and intelligible light; because 'in the beginning,' it says, 'God made heaven and earth; and the earth was unseen.'

13.12| Then he adds: 'And God said: Let light come to be, and light came to be.' In the perceptible creation of the world he fashioned the heaven, the firm perceptible thing, and the visible earth and the light that can be seen. Does it not seem to you that Plato took from here the idea of leaving the forms of living creatures in the intelligible realm and fashioning the perceptible kinds after the intelligible ones?

13.13| It is reasonable, then, that Moses says the body is molded from earth—what Plato calls the earthly tent—and that the rational soul is breathed in from above by God into the face. For there, they say, the ruling faculty is established, interpreting the entry of the soul through the sense organs in the case of the man first formed; and so man was made in the image and according to the likeness.

13.14| The image of God is the Word, divine and royal, the impassible man, and the image of the image is the human mind. If you wish to take the assimilation under another name, you will find in Moses what is called divine following. Moses says: 'Go after the Lord your God, and observe his commandments.' And every virtuous man, I think, are followers and servants of God.

13.15| From this the Stoics said the end of philosophy is to live in accord with nature, and Plato said likeness to God, as we demonstrated in our second Miscellany. Zeno the Stoic, too, who took it from Plato, as Plato took it from the barbarian philosophy, says that all the good are friends of one another. For Socrates says in the Phaedrus that it is not fated for an evil man to be a friend to an evil man, nor for a good man not to be a friend to a good man.

13.16| This he also demonstrated sufficiently in the Lysis, that friendship could never be preserved in injustice and wickedness. And the Athenian Stranger likewise says: 'One kind of conduct is dear to God and follows him and has an ancient account, when like is a friend to like if it is measured; but the immeasurable is a friend neither to the immeasurable nor to the measured. And God would be for us the measure of all things.'

13.17| Then, descending, Plato adds: 'For every good man is like a good man, and, resembling God, is a friend to every good man and to God.' Having come to this point, I also recalled that other passage; for in the last part of the Timaeus he says that the one who understands must be made like the thing understood according to the ancient nature, and having made himself like it, he has the end of the best life set before men by the gods, for the present and the time to come.

13.18| And after a little he adds: 'That we are brothers, since we belong to one God and one teacher, Plato too, it seems, says well, somewhat as follows: "You in the city are all brothers (so we shall tell them as we tell the tale). But God, in fashioning, mixed gold into the birth of those of you who are able to rule, and therefore they are the most honorable; silver into the auxiliaries; and iron and bronze into the farmers and the other craftsmen."'

13.19| Hence, he says, it follows that these welcome and love the things in which there is knowledge, and those the things in which there is opinion. Perhaps he divines this chosen nature as aspiring to knowledge—unless, by positing three natures, he is outlining three polities, as some have supposed: the silver one that of the Jews, the third that of the Greeks, and that of the Christians, in whom the royal gold, the Holy Spirit, has been mixed.

13.20| And pointing to the life of the Christians he writes in the Theaetetus in these words: 'Let us speak of the foremost; for why speak of those who pass their time in philosophy poorly? These men, I suppose, know neither the way to the market place nor where a lawcourt stands, nor a council chamber, nor any other common assembly-place of the city; and laws and decrees, whether spoken or written, they neither see nor hear. Eagerness of political clubs, and gatherings, and revels with flute girls, do not occur to them even in a dream. Whether anything good or bad has happened in the city, or what evil has befallen someone from his ancestors, escapes them more than how many pitchers are in the sea. And they do not even know that they do not know; in truth only his body is situated and resides in the city, but he himself, as Pindar says, flies beneath the earth and above the heavens, studying the stars and searching out every nature in every way.'

13.21| "Again, with the saying of the Lord, 'Let your yes be yes and your no be no,' these words must be compared: 'But for me to concede a falsehood and to obscure the truth is in no way right.' And this saying in the Laws' tenth book accords with the prohibition of swearing: 'Let praise and oath be absent from everything.' And in sum, Pythagoras and Socrates and Plato, who say that they hear the voice of God, as they observe that the structure of the universe was made precisely by God and is held together without interruption, have heard Moses saying 'He spoke and it came to be,' describing the Word of God as a work.

13.22| And at the molding of man from dust, the philosophers on each occasion call the body earthly, and Homer does not hesitate to put among curses, 'But may you all become water and earth,' just as Isaiah says, 'and trample them down like clay.'

13.23| And Callimachus writes in plain words: 'That was the year in which the winged creature and what is in the sea and the four-footed spoke thus, as the clay of Prometheus.' And the same again: 'If Prometheus molded you, and you are made of no other clay.' And Hesiod says of Pandora: 'He bade renowned Hephaestus mix earth with water as quickly as possible, and put into it a human voice and mind.'

13.24| The Stoics, for their part, define nature as artistic fire proceeding by a way toward generation; and God and his Word are allegorized by Scripture as fire and light. And what of this: does not Homer also, paraphrasing the separation of water from the earth and the manifest uncovering of the dry land, say of Tethys and Oceanus, 'For now for a long time they have kept away from each other's bed and love'?

13.25| Again, the most learned among the Greeks attribute power over all things to God. Epicharmus, who was a Pythagorean, says: 'Nothing escapes the divine; you must know this: he himself is our overseer, and God is powerless in nothing.' And the lyric poet says it is possible for God 'to raise unpolluted light out of black night, and to cover with dark-clouded gloom the pure gleam of day.' He alone who can make night when day is present, he says, is God.

13.26| And in the work entitled Phenomena Aratus, having said, 'Let us begin from Zeus, whom we men never leave unspoken; full of Zeus are all the streets and all the markets of men; full is the sea and the harbors; in every way we all have need of Zeus,' adds, 'for we are also his offspring'—as it were, by creation […]—'and he, kindly to men, gives favorable signs; for he himself has fixed the signs in the heaven, distinguishing the stars; for the year he considered the stars which would best indicate to men the seasons, that all things may grow in due order; and him they propitiate always, first and last. Hail, Father, great wonder, great benefit to men.' And before this, Homer, making a world after Moses on the shield wrought by Hephaestus, says: 'On it he wrought the earth, on it the heaven, on it the sea; and on it all the constellations with which the heaven is crowned.' For the Zeus sung through the poems and the prose writings refers the thought to God.

13.27| Democritus too writes, almost in plain daylight, so to speak, that there are some few men who, lifting up their hands there, where we Greeks now call it the air, say: Zeus speaks all things, and he knows all, and gives and takes away, and is king of all. More mystically, Pindar of Boeotia, being a Pythagorean, says, 'One is the race of men, one that of gods, and from one mother we both draw breath,' where by the one mother he means matter; and he speaks of one Maker of these, the Father most skilled in craft, who also grants, according to merit, advancement toward divinity.

13.28| For I pass over Plato, who evidently, in his letter to Erastus and Coriscus, I know not how, indicates a Father and a Son from the Hebrew writings, exhorting in these words: swear in earnest, with a seriousness not without the Muses and its sister, culture, by the God who is cause of all, and swear by the Lord, the Father of the leader and cause, whom, if you philosophize rightly, you will come to know. And the speech in the Timaeus calls the Maker Father, speaking somewhat thus: 'Gods of gods, of whom I am Father and Maker of works.'

13.29| So when he says, ‘All things are around the King of all, and all things are for his sake, and he is the cause of all good things; the second is around the second things, and the third around the third,’ I understand this in no other way than as a declaration of the holy Triad: the third is the Holy Spirit, and the Son is the second, through whom all things came to be according to the will of the Father.

13.30| In the Republic's tenth book the same author mentions Er, a Pamphylian by birth and son of Armenius; this Er is Zoroaster. Zoroaster himself writes: ‘This is what Zoroaster, son of Armenius, a Pamphylian by birth, composed, having died in war, of all that I learned from the gods when I was in Hades.’ Plato says that this Zoroaster lay twelve days on the pyre and came back to life. Perhaps he hints not at resurrection but at this: that souls travel through the twelve signs of the zodiac to their taking up again, and that he says the same passage also leads downward to birth. We must suppose that this is also the meaning of the twelve labors of Heracles, after which the soul obtains release from this whole world. I will not pass over Empedocles either: this natural philosopher mentions the taking up of all things, as destined at some time to change into the essence of fire.”

13.31| “Most clearly of all, Heraclitus of Ephesus holds this opinion. He judged that one world is eternal and another perishable, the world according to its ordered arrangement, knowing that this is no different from the former in a certain condition. That the world, eternally of a certain quality out of all essence, is eternal, he makes plain by saying: ‘This world, the same for all, none of gods or men made, but it always was and is and will be, an ever-living fire, kindled in measures and quenched in measures.’ That he also taught that it is generated and perishable is shown by what follows: ‘Turnings of fire: first sea, and of the sea half is earth and half is fiery storm.’ For in effect he says that fire, under the Word and God who administers all things, is turned through air into moisture, which is like the seed of the ordered world, and this he calls sea; and from this heaven and earth and all they contain come to be again. How it is taken up again and set on fire he shows clearly through these words: ‘Sea is poured out and measured out to the same proportion as there was before it came to be.’ He says the same about the other elements likewise.”

13.32| “The most distinguished of the Stoics hold views similar to this, dealing in the same way with the conflagration, the administration of the world, the particular quality of the world and of man, and the continued existence of our souls. And Plato again, in the seventh book of the Republic, called the day here a ‘night-like day,’ because of the rulers of this darkness, I think; and he calls the soul’s road into the body sleep and death, in the same way as Heraclitus. Perhaps the Spirit was foretelling this about the Savior when it said through David, ‘I lay down and slept; I rose up, for the Lord will take hold of me.’ For it speaks in allegory not only of Christ’s resurrection as a waking from sleep but also of the Lord’s descent into flesh as sleep.

13.33| Thus the same Savior urges, ‘Keep awake,’ as if to say: practice living, and try to separate the soul from the body. And Plato, in the tenth book of the Republic, divines the Lord’s day through these words: “When seven days had passed for each of those in the meadow, they had to rise from there on the eighth and travel, and they arrived on the fourth day.” “We must understand the ‘meadow’ as the sphere of the fixed stars, as a gentle and pleasant place and a region of the holy; the seven days as each motion of the seven, and all the working craft hastening to the end of rest; and the journey after the wandering stars leads to heaven, which is to say to the eighth motion and day; and he says the souls depart on the fourth day, indicating the journey through the four elements.”

13.34| “But the seventh day is held sacred not only by the Hebrews but also by the Greeks, the day on which the whole world of all living and growing things revolves. Hesiod speaks of it thus: ‘First the new-moon day, the fourth, and the seventh, a holy day.’ And again: ‘On the seventh, once more, the bright light of the sun.’ Homer says: ‘Then on the seventh the holy day came down.’ And: ‘The seventh was holy.’ And once more: ‘It was the seventh day, and in it all things were completed.’ And again: ‘On the seventh dawn we left the stream of Acheron.’ Callimachus the poet too writes: ‘On the seventh dawn, and for him all things were finished.’ And again: ‘The seventh is among the good things, and the seventh is the day of birth,’ and ‘The seventh is among the first, and the seventh is perfect,’ and ‘All things were made in sevens in the starry heaven, appearing in circles as the years roll round.’”

13.35| “Even the elegies of Solon exalt the number seven greatly.” And is the following not similar to the Scripture that says, ‘Let us take away the righteous man from among us, because he is troublesome to us’? Plato, all but prophesying the saving dispensation, says in the second book of the Republic: “The righteous man, in such a condition, will be scourged, will have his two eyes gouged out, and at last, after suffering every evil, will be impaled.” “And Antisthenes, the Socratic, paraphrasing that prophetic Scripture, ‘To whom have you likened me? says the Lord,’ says that God resembles nothing, and for that reason no one can learn about him from an image. Xenophon the Athenian says much the same in so many words: ‘He who shakes all things and keeps them still is plainly someone great and powerful, but what form he has is unseen. Not even the sun, which seems all-radiant, appears to allow itself to be seen; if anyone gazes at it shamelessly, it takes away his sight.’” For what flesh can see with its eyes the heavenly and true immortal God who dwells at the pole? Nor can men, being mortal, stand against the rays of the sun, the Sibyl said beforehand.

13.36| Xenophanes of Colophon too, teaching that God is one and incorporeal, rightly adds: ‘One god, greatest among gods and men, not like mortals in body or in thought.’ And again: ‘But mortals suppose that gods are born, and have their own clothing and voice and body.’ And again: ‘But if oxen or lions had hands, or could draw with their hands and make works as men do, horses would draw the forms of gods like horses, and oxen like oxen, and they would make bodies such as each had themselves.’

13.37| Let us hear again what Bacchylides the lyric poet says about the divine: ‘They are unconquered by unseemly diseases and blameless, in nothing like men.’ And hear what the Stoic Cleanthes wrote about God in one of his poems: ‘You ask me what the good is like? Listen then: ordered, just, holy, pious, self-controlled, useful, fine, necessary, austere, upright, always advantageous, fearless, painless, profitable, free of pain, beneficial, pleasing, safe, dear, honored, consistent, glorious, unboastful, careful, gentle, vigorous, long-enduring, blameless, ever abiding.’

13.38| The same man, by implication, attacks the idolatry of the many, adding: ‘Servile is everyone who looks to glory, as if he would obtain some good from it.’ So we must no longer form our idea of the divine according to the opinion of the many. ‘For I do not think that he secretly, imitating the shape of a wicked mortal, came to your bed here like a man,’ Amphion says to Antiope. And Sophocles writes in plain words: ‘For Zeus married this man’s mother, not in gold form, nor clothed in the feathers of a swan, as he got the Pleuronian girl with child, but as a full man.’ Then going on he adds: ‘And the adulterer stood swiftly on the bridal steps.’ After this he describes still more plainly the incontinence of the mythical Zeus in some such way as this: ‘He touched neither feast nor lustral water, but went to the bed with his heart pricked, and all that night he coupled.’

13.39| Let these things be left to the foolishness of the theaters. But Heraclitus says plainly: ‘Of the Word, which is always binding, men prove to be without understanding, both before they hear it and once they have heard it.’ The lyric poet Melanippides sings: ‘Hear me, O Father, wonder of mortals, ruler of the ever-living soul.’ And the great Parmenides, as Plato says in the Sophist, writes in this manner about the divine: ‘Very many: that, being unborn, it is also imperishable, whole, only-begotten, unshaken, and unborn.’ Hesiod too says: ‘He himself is king of all and lord of the immortals, and no other contends with you for power.’

13.40| Indeed even tragedy, drawing men away from idols, teaches them to look up to heaven. For Sophocles, as Hecataeus, the author of the histories, says in his work on Abraham and the Egyptians, cries out openly on the stage: ‘In truth there is one God, who made heaven and the broad earth, the bright swell of the sea and the force of the winds. But many of us mortals, going astray in heart, have set up images of gods, made of stone or bronze or fashioned of gold or ivory, as comfort for our troubles; and crowning them with sacrifices and fine festivals, we think that this is piety.’

13.41| And Euripides, in tragedy on the same stage, says: ‘Do you see this boundless aether above, holding the earth about in its moist embrace? Reckon this to be Zeus, consider this to be God.’ And in his play Peirithous the same poet writes these lines: ‘You, self-begotten, who in the swirl of aether wove together the nature of all things; about whom is light, and about whom swarthy night of changing hue, and the countless throng of stars ceaselessly dances.’ Here by ‘self-begotten’ he has meant the Maker Mind, and the lines that follow refer to the world, in which are the opposites of light and darkness. And Aeschylus the son of Euphorion says very solemnly of God: ‘Zeus is aether, Zeus is earth, Zeus is heaven; Zeus is all things, and whatever is higher than these.’

13.42| I know that Plato too bears witness to Heraclitus when he writes: ‘The one wise thing alone is unwilling and willing to be called by the name of Zeus.’ And again: ‘It is law also to obey the counsel of one.’ And if you want to trace back that saying, ‘Let him who has ears to hear, hear,’ you would find it shown in the Ephesian like this: ‘Those who hear without understanding are like the deaf; the saying bears witness to them that, present, they are absent.’ Do you long to hear plainly of a single first principle from the Greeks too? Timaeus of Locri, in his work on nature, will bear me witness in these very words: ‘There is one first principle of all things, unborn; for if it had been born, it would no longer be a first principle, but that from which the first principle came to be.’ For from there flowed the true opinion: ‘Hear, O Israel, the Lord your God is one, and him alone you shall serve.’ ‘This one, behold, is clear to all and does not lead astray,’ as the Sibyl says.

13.43| Xenocrates of Carthage, calling one Zeus the highest and the other the lowest, leaves an indication of a father and a son. And, most remarkable, the one who introduces gods subject to human passions seems to know the divine, though not even so does Epicurus respect him. He says, for example: ‘Why do you chase me with swift feet, son of Peleus, you who are mortal, and I an immortal god? You have not yet recognized that I am a god.’ By this he has shown that the divine cannot be caught or grasped by a mortal, neither by feet nor hands nor eyes nor by the body in any respect. ‘To whom have you likened the Lord? Or with what likeness have you likened him?’ says the Scripture. ‘Has a craftsman made an image, or a goldsmith, melting gold, overlaid him with gold?’ and what follows.

13.44| And the comic poet Epicharmus speaks plainly about the Word in his Republic, in some such way as this: ‘Human life greatly needs reckoning and number; we live by number and reckoning, for these save mortals.’ Then he adds explicitly: ‘The Word governs men and saves them rightly.’ Then, if there is reasoning in men, there is also a divine Word. ‘Reasoning is natural to man for the conduct of life; but the divine Word accompanies all the arts, itself teaching them what it is profitable to do. For man did not discover art; God brings it. And man’s reasoning is derived from the divine Word.’

13.45| Indeed, the Spirit cries out through Isaiah: ‘What does the multitude of your sacrifices matter to me? says the Lord. I am full of burnt offerings, and I do not want the fat of lambs and the blood of bulls.’ And a little later it adds: ‘Wash yourselves, become clean, remove the wickednesses from your souls,’ and what follows. The comic poet Menander writes in these very words: ‘If anyone, Pamphilus, offering a sacrifice of a great number of bulls, or of kids, or, by Zeus, of other such things, or fine works, having made cloaks of gold or purple, or figures of ivory or emerald, thinks that God has become well disposed to him, he is mistaken and has a light mind. For a man must be useful, not corrupting virgins and committing adultery, stealing and murdering for the sake of money. Do not covet even a needle’s thread, Pamphilus; for God sees you, standing close by.’

13.46| ‘I am a God who draws near, and not a God from afar. Will a man do something in secret, and I not see him?’ he says through Jeremiah. And Menander again, paraphrasing that Scripture, ‘Offer a sacrifice of righteousness, and hope in the Lord,’ writes somewhat like this: ‘Do not, my dearest friend, ever covet even a needle that belongs to another. For God delights in just deeds and not in unjust ones. He lets the one who labors raise up his own livelihood, plowing the earth night and day. And sacrifice to God continually, being righteous, and bright in your cloaks as in your heart. If you hear thunder, do not flee, master, if you are conscious of nothing against yourself. For God sees you, standing close by.’

13.47| ‘While you are still speaking,’ says the Scripture, ‘I will say, Behold, I am here.’ Again the comic poet Diphilus discourses somewhat like this about judgment: ‘Do you think, Nicerates, that the dead, having had their fill of every luxury in life, have escaped the divine as unnoticed? An eye of Justice exists that sees all things. For we hold that in Hades there are two paths, one of the just and the other of the impious. And if, as they say, the earth will cover both for all time, go off and steal, rob, be a villain—do not be deceived! There is also in Hades a judgment which God, master of all, will carry out, whose name is fearful, and I would not even name it. To sinners he gives a long life. And if any mortal thinks that in doing some evil day by day he has escaped the notice of the gods, his thoughts are wicked, and in thinking them he is caught, when Justice happens to find leisure. Look, all you who think there is no God. For there is, there is. And if someone does evil, being wicked by nature, let him profit by the time; for in time this man will pay the penalty later.’

13.48| Tragedy too sings in harmony with these things in the following lines: ‘For it will be, it will be, that time of the age, when the golden-faced aether will let loose its treasure full of fire. And the nourished flame will burn all things on earth and in the air, raging.’ And a little later it adds: ‘When the whole has failed, the entire depth of the waves will be gone, and the earth bereft of [….]; and, set on fire, it will no longer bring forth winged tribes; and then it will save all that it formerly destroyed.’

13.49| We shall find things similar to these written in the Orphic poems in some such way as this: ‘For having hidden them all, he brought them again into the joyful light from his holy heart, doing grievous deeds.’ But if we live holy and just lives, we are blessed here, and more blessed after our departure from here, not having happiness for some length of time but able to find rest forever, ‘sharing the hearth with the other immortals, at the same table, without share in [….], unwearied’—this is what the philosophical poetry of Empedocles says. No one, even according to the Greeks, will be so great as to rise above justice, or so small as to escape it.

13.50| The same Orpheus also says these things: ‘Look to the divine Word and attend to it, steering the mind-filled vessel of your heart; walk well upon the path, and look to the Lord of the world alone, the immortal.’ And again, speaking of God as invisible, he says that he was known to one man only, a Chaldean by race, whether he means Abraham by this or his son: ‘Unless it be one only-begotten offshoot from the ancient tribe of the Chaldeans; for he was skilled in the course of the stars, and in how the movement of the sphere circles around the earth, in a circle, equal on every side, each according to its own axis; and he guides by his breath the air and the flowing water.’

13.51| Then, as if paraphrasing ‘Heaven is my throne, and the earth a footstool for my feet,’ he adds: ‘And he himself is again set firm in great heaven upon a golden throne, and the earth lies beneath his feet. His right hand he has stretched out to the ends of Ocean; and the foundation of the mountains trembles within at his anger, and cannot bear his mighty strength. He is heavenly everywhere, and brings all things to their end on earth, himself having beginning and middle and end. It is not lawful for me to speak otherwise; I tremble in my limbs in my mind. He rules from on high,’ and what follows. For through these words he has shown all those prophetic sayings: ‘If he opens heaven, trembling will take hold; and from you the mountains will melt, as wax melts before the face of fire.’ And those through Isaiah: ‘Who has measured heaven by the span, and the whole earth in a handful?’

13.52| And again, where he says: ‘Ruler of aether and Hades, of sea and earth, who shake with thunder the mighty house of Olympus, whom the daimons shudder at, and the throng of the gods fears, whom the Fates obey, pitiless though they are; imperishable, mother-father, by whose wrath all things are shaken, who stir the winds and cover all things with clouds, splitting the broad aether with lightning bolts. Yours is the order in the stars, running by unchanging commands; around your fiery throne stand the much-toiling angels, whose concern it is that all things be accomplished for mortals. Yours is the spring that shines new with purple flowers; yours the winter, coming with cold clouds; Bromius once distributed your fruits of autumn in revelry.’

13.53| Then he adds, expressly naming God the All-ruler: ‘imperishable, immortal, to be named by immortals alone. Come, greatest of all gods, with mighty necessity, awe-inspiring, unconquered, great, imperishable, whom the aether crowns.’ Now by the word ‘mother-father’ he not only indicated the coming to be from non-being, but he also gave an opening to those who introduce emanations, perhaps even to think of a consort of God. But he is paraphrasing those prophetic Scriptures, the one through Hosea: ‘Behold, I am he who establishes thunder and creates spirit, whose hands set the foundations of heaven's host’; and the one through Moses: ‘See, see that I am, and there is no other God besides me. I kill and I make alive; I strike, and I will heal. And there is no one who will deliver out of my hands.’ And ‘he himself from good plants evil for mortals, and chilling war,’ according to Orpheus.

13.54| Archilochus of Paros says similar things: ‘O Zeus, yours is the power of heaven, and you look upon the wicked and lawless deeds of men.’ Let Orpheus sing to us again: ‘His right hand he has stretched out on every side to the end of Ocean; and the earth lies beneath his feet.’ This is evidently taken from there: ‘The Lord will save the inhabited places, and he will grasp the whole inhabited world in his hand like a nest; the Lord is he who made the earth by his might,’ as Jeremiah says, ‘and set the world upright by his wisdom.’ Moreover, Phocylides, calling the angels daimons, shows through this that certain of them are good and others worthless, since we too have received that some have revolted: ‘But there are daimons over men, now one and now another, some to deliver from evil when it comes upon a man.’

13.55| Rightly, then, does the comic poet Philemon cut away idolatry in these lines: ‘For us, no Fortune is a god; there is none; but what happens by itself, as it befalls each, is called Fortune.’ And the tragic poet Sophocles says: ‘Not even for the gods do all things come about by their own choice, apart from Zeus; for he holds both end and beginning.’ And Orpheus: ‘One power, one daimon came to be, great blazing heaven, in whom all things have been made, in whom all these things revolve: fire and water and earth,’ and what follows.

13.56| And the lyric poet Pindar is, as it were, in a bacchic frenzy when he says plainly: ‘What is God? Whatever is the All.’ And again: ‘God, who makes all things for mortals.’ And when he says: ‘Why do you expect one man to have even a little more wisdom than another? It is hard to search out the counsels of the gods with a mortal mind; he was born of a mortal mother,’ he has drawn his thought from this: ‘Who has known the Lord's mind? Or who has been his counselor?’

13.57| Hesiod too, in what he writes, agrees with the things already said: ‘No prophet is there among men upon earth who could know the mind of Zeus who bears the aegis.’ It is natural, then, that Solon the Athenian in his elegies, himself also following Hesiod, writes: ‘Altogether unseen by men is the mind of the immortals.’

13.58| Again, when Moses prophesied that because of the transgression the woman would bring forth in toils and pains, a poet of some note writes: ‘Never by day will they cease from labor and misery, nor by night from being hard pressed; and the gods will give them grievous cares.’

13.59| Further, Homer, by saying, ‘And the Father himself lifted up the golden scales,’ indicates that God is just. And the comic poet Menander, explaining that God is good, says: ‘A daimon stands beside every man as soon as he is born, a good guide into the mysteries of life. For we must not suppose a daimon to be evil, harming a worthy life.’ Then he adds: ‘And God is good in all’—saying either that God is wholly good, or, what is more likely, that God is good in everything.

13.60| Again, the tragedian Aeschylus, in presenting the power of God, does not shrink from calling him the Most High, in these words: ‘Set God apart from mortals, and do not suppose that he is made like yourself in flesh. You do not know him. At one time he appears as fire, in his irresistible rush, at another as water, at another as darkness, and he becomes like the beasts, as wind, cloud, lightning, thunder, rain. The sea serves him, and the rocks, and every spring and gathering of water; the mountains and the earth tremble, and the vast depth of the sea, and the height of the mountains, when the terrible eye of the Master looks upon them; for the glory of the Most High God is all-powerful.’ Does he not seem to you to be paraphrasing, ‘The earth trembles at the face of the Lord’?

13.61| After these, Apollo, most prophetic of the gods, bearing witness to the glory of God, is compelled to speak about Athena, at the time when the Medes were marching against Greece, saying that she begged and entreated Zeus on behalf of Attica. The oracle goes like this: ‘Pallas cannot appease Olympian Zeus, though she entreats him with many words and with close counsel. Many temples of the immortals he will give to raging fire, which perhaps now stand streaming with sweat, shaking with terror,’ and what follows.

13.62| Thearidas writes in his work On Nature: ‘The first principle of beings is truly one; for it is one and alone in the beginning.’ And ‘there is no other apart from the great King,’ says Orpheus; and the comic poet Diphilus, persuaded by this, says [….]: ‘The father of all that is, [….] honor him to the end, the sole discoverer and founder of so many good things.’

13.63| With good reason, therefore, Plato accustoms the best natures to come to the study which we said earlier was the greatest: to see the Good and to make that ascent. ‘This, as it seems, would not be the turning of a potsherd, but the turning around of a soul, from a kind of night-like day to the true ascent toward being, which we shall say is true philosophy.’ And he judges those who share in it to be of the golden race, saying: ‘You are all brothers; but those of the golden race most exactly, and in every way.’

13.64| Therefore the Father and Maker of all things is apprehended by all, innately and untaught: by lifeless things in sympathy; of living ensouled creatures, by those that are already immortal and by those that work day by day; of mortals, by some in fear while still carried in their mother’s womb, and by others by their own free reasoning. And all human beings, Greeks and barbarians alike, and no race anywhere, whether of farmers or nomads, nor even of citizens, can live without being first possessed by belief in the higher power. For this reason every eastern nation, every nation touching the western shores, the north, and all the lands toward the south, holds one and the same preconception about the one who established the rule, since the most universal of his works pass through all things equally.

13.65| Far more, the busy philosophers among the Greeks, setting out from the barbarian philosophy, gave the pre-eminence to the invisible, the only, the most powerful, the most skilful, and the cause of all other fine things. What follows from this, unless they were instructed by us, they did not know, nor even how God is naturally to be conceived, but only by a true circumlocution, as we have already said many times.”

13.66| So much for Clement. But since the philosophy of Plato has been set before us at some length and has proved to agree in most points with the Hebrew doctrines (for which we admire the man for his candor toward the truth in this and other matters), it is time to examine what these points are in which we no longer stand in the same relation to him, and prefer the philosophy considered barbarian to his own.

14.1| The oracles of the Hebrews, which contain divine utterances and prophecies of a power more than human, and which carry God’s own authority in their titles and confirm their promise by the foretelling of future events and by results in agreement with the predictions, are said to be free of every false thought. At any rate the divine oracles are called ‘pure,’ and ‘silver tried in the fire, tested in the earth, purified seven times.’

14.2| But Plato’s writings are not of this kind, nor are those of any other of the wise men, who, with the eyes of a mortal mind and with perishable conjectures and guesses, as in a dream and not in waking, came to an impression of the nature of things, and mixed so much falsehood with the truth of nature that no teaching free of deception can be found in them.

14.3| For if you are willing to relax your self-regard a little, and to look upon the light itself with the power of your rational essence, you will recognize that marvelous philosopher, the only one of all the Greeks who touched the porch of the truth, disgracing the gods' name by applying it to perishable matter and to wooden images shaped into human likeness by the hands of artisans. After the lofty grandeur of his speech, in which he insisted that he knew both the Father and Maker of this universe, he was thrust down together with the people of Athens from somewhere on high, from the arches beyond the world, into the lowest depth of God-hated idolatry; so that he was not ashamed to have Socrates say that he went down to the Piraeus in order to pray to the goddess and to watch the barbarian festival then celebrated by the citizens for the first time, and to have him acknowledge that he ordered a cock to be sacrificed to Asclepius, and treat as divine the daimon seated at Delphi, the ancestral interpreter of the Greeks.

14.4| For this reason it would be reasonable to assign to the unphilosophical multitude the blame for the error of superstition. Take up the argument a little way back, and see how that all-wise man, after the incorporeal and imperishable Ideas, after God as first and second cause, and after the intelligent and immortal essences, laid down law about the opinion of the people, saying:

14.5| “As for the other daimons, to speak of them and to know their origin is beyond us. We must trust those who have spoken before, who were offspring of gods, as they said, and who surely knew their own ancestors. It is impossible, then, to disbelieve the children of gods, even when they speak without likely and necessary proofs; but since they claim to report on family matters, we must follow the custom and believe them. So let the genealogy of these gods be, according to them, as follows, and let it be told thus: Ocean and Tethys were born as children of Earth and Heaven; and from these came Phorcys, Cronus and Rhea, and all those with them; and from Cronus and Rhea, Zeus and Hera and all those whom we know to be called their brothers, and again their other offspring.”

14.6| For these reasons we must leave the philosopher behind, since, not as a philosopher should and not consistently with himself, he went along with the mythical genealogies of the poets. For he himself can be heard saying in the Republic: “‘In the greater stories,’ I said, ‘we shall see the lesser also. For the pattern must be the same, and the greater and the lesser must have the same effect; do you not think so?’ ‘I do,’ he said, ‘but I do not understand which you mean by the greater.’ ‘Those,’ I said, ‘which Hesiod and Homer told us, and the other poets. For these men composed false stories for human beings and told them, and still tell them,’” the passage set out a little earlier.

14.7| And again, it was he who said, in the passage where he says: “‘We shall therefore strike out,’ I said, ‘beginning from this line, everything of this sort: “I would rather be a hired servant to another, working the land,”’” and what follows; and in these he adds:

14.8| “‘Again, then, we shall beg Homer and the other poets not to depict Achilles, the son of a goddess, lying now on his side, now on his back,’” and what follows. To these he adds:

14.9| “‘Or Zeus, when the other gods and men were asleep, alone awake, easily forgetting everything he had planned because of his desire for love, and so struck on seeing Hera that he was unwilling even to go to the chamber, but wanted to lie with her right there on the ground; and saying that he was seized by desire as not even when they first went to one another, “hiding it from their dear parents”; nor the binding of Ares and Aphrodite by Hephaestus for other such reasons.’”

14.10| With these things said in this way, what then does he intend by the statement that follows, which calls the poets children of gods and says that it is impossible to disbelieve them, while testifying that they invented their myths about the gods without likely and necessary proofs?

14.11| And what does this irrational belief want, held up as a shield for fear of punishment by the laws? And how are Heaven and Earth first among gods, then their offspring Ocean and Tethys, Cronus, and all the children and brothers and descendants of these told in myth by Homer and Hesiod, when he himself was destroying these very things, saying:

14.12| “‘That,’ I said, ‘is what we must first and above all blame, especially if someone tells a lie in an unseemly way.’ ‘What is that?’ ‘When one in his speech makes a poor likeness of what gods and heroes are like, like a painter who paints nothing resembling the things he wished to paint.’” And again: “‘First of all,’ I said, ‘the one who spoke the greatest falsehood about the greatest matters did not lie well, when he said that Uranus did the things Hesiod says he did, and that Cronus in turn took vengeance on him,’” and what follows.

14.13| How, then, could these poets, who are now false and untruthful, be called again children of gods? For these reasons we must leave him behind, since he pandered to the people of Athens out of fear of death; and Moses must be honored, and the oracles of the Hebrews, which hold throughout to the one true and unerring piety. See another point as well.

15.1| The Hebrews say that the middle nature, the rational one, is generated and not unbegotten. Dividing it in thought into intelligent essences, they call them spirits and powers and ministers of God, angels and archangels; and from the fall and turning aside of some of these they introduce the race of daimons and every kind of opposing and wicked activity.

15.2| For this reason they do not permit us to regard as gods those who do not have the beautiful and the good inseparable from their nature, but who have even their existence not from themselves but brought upon them from the cause of all, and who have their well-being, their virtue, and their very immortality conferred on them, not in the way the God over all has them, nor in the way he has them through whom all things were established.

15.3| Plato, for his part, grants to the Hebrews that rational natures are incorporeal and intelligible essences, but he falls away from consistency, first by saying that they are unbegotten, like every soul, and then by saying that they came into being by an outflow from the first cause. For he does not wish to grant that they came from non-being.

15.4| For this reason he also posits a race of many gods, supposing in his account certain outflows and emanations of the first and the second cause; and that they are good by nature and in no way able to depart from their own virtue, from which he supposes that they are also gods.

15.5| Different from these he considers the race of daimons, which is capable of badness and wickedness and of a turn for the worse; some of them are, and are called, good, and others bad. But having set these things out in this way, in contrast to the opinions of the Hebrews, he does not explain whence it is likely that the daimons came into being.

15.6| For no one with any sense would say that they came from the matter of bodies, since this is irrational, and rational beings could never be born from the irrational, and the daimons are rational. If, on the other hand, they come from an outflow of the better beings, how are they not gods equally with those who begot them? And again, how, if the source is good, are its products not like it? And whence did the shoot of evil in the lower beings spring from the root, when the root runs from above out of good things and through good things?

15.7| And how could bitter come from sweet? And if the race of wicked daimons is harsher than all darkness and all bitterness, how could it be said to come from an outflow of the nature of the better beings? If it had come from that, it would not have turned away from its own allotment; and if it has been altered, then its nature was not impassible from the beginning; and if it was not of such a kind, how could they be gods, who are able to share in a base portion?

15.8| But if they come neither from an outflow of the better beings nor from the matter of bodies, it is time either to call them unbegotten, and, besides the unbegotten matter of bodies, to set up against God a third host of unbegotten rational beings, and no longer to render God the maker of all things and Maker of the whole; or, by agreeing to this, to agree also, in harmony with the words of the Hebrews, that he makes things that are not.

15.9| What do they teach about these matters? They say that the middle rational nature came into being neither from the matter of bodies nor from an outflow of the unbegotten essence that always remains the same in the same way; but that, not existing before, it came to be through the efficient power of the cause of all.

15.10| In this way they are not gods, nor are they properly deemed worthy of this name, because their nature is not equal to that of the one who made them, and the good does not cling to them inseparably as it does to God; and the opposite of the beautiful is something they may even admit, through a neglect of devotion to the better, which each one has brought about for himself, being by nature master of his own impulse and judgment. So much for these matters. Let us go on to others.

16.1| Having laid down, like the Hebrews, that the soul is immortal, and having called it like God, he no longer follows them when he says at one time that its essence is composite, as though it brought with it a part of the indivisible cause that always remains the same, and a part of the divisible nature concerned with bodies.

16.2| He says in these very words in the Timaeus: “And he constructed the soul, prior to the body in birth and in excellence and older, as mistress and ruler of what is ruled, out of the following and in the following manner. From the indivisible essence that always remains the same, and from the divisible essence that comes to be about bodies, he mixed together, from both, a third form of essence in the middle, of the nature of the Same and of the Other, and placed it in the same way in the middle between their indivisible part and the part divisible in bodies. And taking these three, he mixed them all into one form, forcing the nature of the Other, which is hard to blend, into harmony with the Same.”

16.3| Hence it is natural that in his account the passible element is joined to the essence of the soul. But at one time he distinguishes the essence of the soul in this way, and at another he attaches to it some other, worse absurdity: that this divine and heavenly soul, the incorporeal and rational, like God, and in the greatness of its virtue rising over the arches of heaven, descends from somewhere above, from beyond the world, into asses, wolves, ants, and bees, and he urges us to believe this on his word without any proof.

16.4| For he says in the work on the soul: “And they wander up to the point where, through the desire of the bodily element that accompanies them, they are again bound into a body. And they are bound, as is likely, into such characters as they happened to have practiced in their life.”

16.5| “What sort do you mean, Socrates?” “Take, for example, those who have practiced gluttony, wantonness and drunkenness, and have not been careful, are likely to be clothed in the species of asses and similar beasts; do you not think so?” “That is very likely.”

16.6| “And those who have preferred injustice, tyranny and plunder, into the species of wolves, hawks and kites; where else should we say such souls go?” “Certainly into such,” said Cebes. “Then it is clear,” he said, “as to the others also, how each would go in accordance with the likenesses of their practice.”

16.7| “‘Clearly,’ he said; ‘how could it be otherwise?’ ‘And are not the happiest of these, and those who go to the best place, those who have practiced the popular and civic virtue, which they call moderation and justice, born of habit and practice without philosophy and mind?’ ‘How are these the happiest?’ ‘Because it is likely that these arrive again at a civic and gentle kind such as that of bees or wasps or ants, or even again into the human race itself.’”

16.8| And in the Phaedrus hear what he goes through: “To the same place from which it came, no soul returns in ten thousand years; for it does not grow wings before so long a time, except the soul of the man who has philosophized without guile or has loved boys with philosophy. These, in the third thousand-year cycle, if they choose this life three times in succession, having thus regained their wings, depart in the three-thousandth year. The others, when they have ended their first life, receive judgment; and after the judgment some go to the places of correction under the earth and pay the penalty, while others, lightened by justice, are carried to a place in heaven and spend their time in a manner worthy of the life they lived in human form. In the thousandth year both groups arrive at the allotment and choice of a second life, and each chooses the one she wishes. Then a man's soul enters the life of a beast, and out of a beast that had once been a man it comes again into a man.”

16.9| That is what he says in the Phaedrus; and in the Republic hear him write the following: “He said that he saw the soul that had once been Orpheus choosing the life of a swan, unwilling to be born of a woman, from hatred for the female sex on account of the death they had caused him. He saw the soul of Thamyras choosing a nightingale’s life; and he saw a swan changing to the choice of a human life, and other musical animals likewise, as is likely.

16.10| The soul that drew its lot chose a lion’s life; it was the soul of Ajax the son of Telamon, shunning becoming a man, remembering the judgment of the arms. The next was that of Agamemnon, who, hating the human race because of his sufferings, exchanged it for an eagle’s life. The soul of Atalanta, which drew a lot in the middle, seeing the great honors of an athlete, could not pass them by but took them. Following her, he saw the soul of Epeius, son of Panopeus, passing over into a craftswoman's nature; and far off, among the last, he saw the soul of the buffoon Thersites putting on the form of an ape.

16.11| By chance the soul of Odysseus, having drawn the last lot of all, came to choose; and, from memory of its former toils having laid aside ambition, it went about for a long time looking for the life of a private man free of affairs, and found with difficulty one that lay somewhere neglected by the others; and seeing it, it said that it would have done the same even if it had drawn the first lot, and chose it gladly. And in the same way, from the other beasts, souls passed into men and also into one another, the unjust changing to the wild, the just to the tame, and all sorts of mixtures took place.”

16.12| Having said so much about the soul, Plato is clearly Egyptianizing in his doctrine; for the account is not the Hebrews’, because it is not a friend to the truth either. This is not the time to refute it, since he himself did not take up the question by way of proofs. But this much one might reasonably point out: it was not consistent for the same man to say that at death the souls of the impious, departing from here, pay for what they did in Hades and are punished there without end, and again to assert that they choose their lives here according to their own judgment.

16.13| For he says they are bound into a body by desire for the bodily element; and that those brought up in wantonness and gluttony become asses, passing into the bodies of other beasts, choosing these by their own judgment and not by penalty; and that the unjust and plunderers become wolves and kites, having come to this willingly. Then Orpheus' soul wished to be a swan; that of Thamyras, a nightingale; and Thersites chose the life of an ape.

16.14| Where then would be the judgment after departure from here, which he sketches in the work on the soul, saying: “When the dead arrive at the place to which the daimon conducts each one, . . . those who are judged to have lived a middling life go to the Acheron, and embarking on the vehicles that are theirs, they come on these to the lake, and there they dwell, and being purified and paying the penalties for their wrongs, they are released, if anyone has done any wrong, and for their good deeds they receive honors, each according to his worth. But those who are judged incurable owing to the magnitude of their offenses, having committed many great temple robberies, or many unjust and lawless murders, or whatever other such things there are, these the fitting destiny casts into Tartarus, from which they never come out.”

16.15| That is how he goes through the matter of the impious. Now hear what he says about the pious: “Of these, those who have purified themselves sufficiently by philosophy live altogether without hardships for the time to come, and arrive at dwellings still more beautiful than these, which are neither easy to describe nor is the time sufficient at present.”

16.16| And in the Gorgias note what he says: “The man who has passed through life justly and piously, when he dies, goes away to the Isles of the Blessed and lives there in complete happiness, apart from evils; but the man who has lived unjustly and godlessly goes to the prison of retribution and justice, which they call Tartarus . . . and from those who have committed the greatest wrongs and become incurable because of such wrongs, the examples are made; and these themselves are no longer benefited, being incurable, but others are benefited who see them suffering for all time, because of their greatest sins, the most painful and fearful sufferings, simply hung up as examples there in the prison in Hades, as spectacles and warnings to the unjust who arrive from time to time.”

16.17| How could these accounts be in harmony with the teaching about the exchange of bodies, which they say the soul chooses as it goes round? For how can the same soul undergo punishments and prisons and so great a penalty for all time after death here, and again, as though released and free of its bonds, choose whatever lives it wishes? And if it is going to choose again the lives of pleasure, where is the prison of retribution and justice? One could take up countless other points against the argument at leisure, but this is not the time to lengthen the discussion.

16.18| The first slip in Plato’s opinion on these matters has been shown in this way. The second, in the construction of the doctrine, by which he defined one part of the soul as divine and rational, and another as irrational and passible, has also been condemned by his own pupils, as one can learn from such words as these:

17.1| “As to the soul according to Plato, which he says was put together by God from a passible and an impassible essence, as one of the middle colors is made from white and black, we have this to say: that when these are separated in time, it must needs vanish, like the composition of a middle color, as each of the elements from which it was composed is in time naturally parted to its own. If so, we shall declare the soul perishable and not immortal.

17.2| For if it is agreed that nothing in nature exists without its opposite, and that the things in the world have been ordered by God out of the nature of opposites, he having created friendship and fellowship among them, as with moist and dry, cold and hot, light and heavy, black and white, bitter and sweet, soft and hard, and for all such things one further fellowship of them all, namely of the impassible essence with the passible—and things blended and mixed admit in time a natural separation from one another—and the soul will be supposed to have come from an impassible and a passible essence, then it must be that, like the middle color, it too will vanish in time by nature, the opposites in its composition hastening to their own nature.

17.3| Do we not see that what is by nature heavy, even if it is carried upward by us or by some natural lightness added to it from outside, is itself forced back downward to its own nature? And likewise what is by nature light, when carried down by similar outside causes, is itself forced upward? For things brought together into the same place from two contraries cannot always remain in it, unless some third thing, the essence of existing things, is always present in them.

17.4| But the soul is not a third thing composed of two contraries; it is simple, and by the same nature impassible and incorporeal. Hence Plato and those after him said that it is immortal.

17.5| Since all agree that man is composed of soul and body, and the passions that arise in us without the body, voluntary or involuntary, are said to belong to the soul, the many, judging by this that its essence is passible, declare it mortal and bodily, not incorporeal.

17.6| Plato, however, was compelled, because of its natural impassibility, to weave a passible essence into it as well. We shall try, by setting out the powers that operate in us, to show by argument that neither is the case, as Plato and the others have each asserted.”

17.7| Let these words from On the Soul by Severus the Platonist suffice for me. But consider, besides what has been said, this too about the origin of heaven and of the luminaries in it.

18.1| Having given an account of heaven and the things that appear in it in agreement with the Hebrews, according to which they are generated, made by the cause of the whole, and constituted with a share in bodily and perishable essence, he no longer, like the Hebrews, legislates that they be worshiped and regarded as gods, saying in the Epinomis:

18.2| “Which god, then, Megillus and Clinias, do I mean when I speak with reverence? Heaven, nearly; whom it is most just that we honor and pray to above all, as all other daimons and gods do. And that he has been the cause to us of all other good things as well, we should all agree.”

18.3| Then going down a little in the same work he adds: “The visible gods, the greatest and most honored, who see most sharply everywhere, we must say are first the nature of the stars, and all that we perceive to have come into being together with them; and after these and below them in order, the daimons, an airy race, holding the third and middle seat, the cause of interpretation, whom we ought greatly to honor with prayers for the sake of the auspicious passage.”

18.4| Having said in these words that the beings described are gods, he goes on, discussing the nature of their first constitution in the Timaeus: “As fire is to air, so air is to water, and as air is to water, so water is to earth; he bound together and constructed a heaven visible and tangible. And for these reasons, out of such things, numbering four, the body of the world was generated, agreeing through proportion, and it had friendship from these, so that, having come together into itself, it became indissoluble by anything else except him who bound it together.”

18.5| Then he adds: “And placing soul in the middle of it, he stretched it through the whole and further wrapped the body around it from outside; and he established heaven, one, alone and solitary, turning round in a circle.”

18.6| And going down further he continues: “From such reasoning and thought of God for the coming-to-be of time, that time might come to be, the sun and moon and five other stars, named the wanderers, came to be for the determination and guarding of the numbers of time; and having made bodies for each of them, God set them in the revolutions which the circuit of the Other was traversing.”

18.7| And he adds: “Bound with ensouled bonds, the bodies became living creatures and learned what had been commanded.”

18.8| And in the tenth book of the Laws he declares generally about all soul, saying: “All things that have a share in soul change, having within themselves the cause of change; and as they change they are carried according to the order and law of fate. Those whose characters change a little move less far, along the surface of the ground; those that change more, and more unjustly, fall into the depth.”

18.9| If, then, all things that have a share in soul change, having within themselves the cause of change, and heaven, sun and moon have a share in soul according to Plato himself, then these too, by his own argument, would change, having within themselves the cause of change. How then does he say again that they are eternal and for this reason gods, although they are in a perishable body and capable of being dissolved?

18.10| For he says again in the Timaeus: “When all those gods who move in their courses visibly, and those who appear whenever they will, had come into being, he who begot this universe spoke to them thus: ‘Gods of gods, whose Maker and father I am, works that are indissoluble unless I will it. Now everything that is bound can be dissolved; but to will to dissolve what has been well fitted together and is in good order belongs to an evil one. Therefore, since you have come into being, you are not immortal nor wholly indissoluble; yet you shall certainly not be dissolved, nor meet the fate of death, since you have received in my will a greater and more sovereign bond than those with which you were bound together when you were born.’”

18.11| So says Plato. Rightly, then, Moses and the oracles of the Hebrews forbid worshiping these as gods, and, leading men up to the God who reigns as King over all, himself the Maker of sun, moon and stars and of the entire heaven and world, who has bound and fitted all things together by his divine Word, they legislate that he alone be regarded as God and that the honor of worship be given to him alone, saying: “Lest, on seeing the sun and the moon and all the stars and the whole ornament of heaven, you are led astray and bow down to them.”

18.12| Philo, educated in the Hebrew writings, explains this at length and makes it clear, speaking somewhat as follows in these very words: “Some have supposed that the sun and moon and the other stars are independent gods, to whom they assigned the causes of everything that comes to be. But to Moses the world seemed to be both generated and a very great city having rulers and subjects: rulers, all the bodies in heaven, such as the wandering and fixed stars; and subjects, the natures in the air beneath the moon and round the earth.

18.13| The rulers so called are not independent but viceroys of the one Father of all, who act rightly by imitating his oversight, while he presides over each of the things that have come to be according to justice and law. But those who do not see the charioteer who has mounted the team attribute to the team, as though it acted on its own, the causes of what happens in the world. Their ignorance the most holy lawgiver turns into knowledge, saying: ‘Lest, seeing the sun, the moon, the stars, and every ornament of heaven, you be led astray and worship them.’

18.14| Quite directly and well he called the acceptance of these as gods a ‘straying.’ For those who saw that the seasons of the year are established by the approaches and withdrawals of the sun, in which the generation of animals and plants and fruits is brought to completion in fixed cycles of time; and the moon, as the servant and successor of the sun, taking up at night the care and oversight of what the sun oversees by day; and the other stars, through their sympathy with earthly things, working and doing countless things for the preservation of the whole—these men strayed with an endless straying, suspecting that these alone are gods.

18.15| But if they had been eager to travel by the road that does not stray, they would at once have understood that, just as sensation has become the servant of mind, in the same way all sensible things have been constituted as servants of the intelligible.

18.16| And he adds, saying: “So that, passing over by reason all visible essence, we may go to the honor of him who is unseen and invisible and grasped only by thought, who is not only God of intelligible and sensible things but Maker of all. And if anyone assigns the service due to the eternal Maker to another, younger and generated, let him be recorded as out of his mind and guilty of the greatest impiety.”

18.17| These teachings of the piety of the Hebrews, uncorrupted and truly divine, we have honored above puffed-up philosophy. Why need I draw out at length the rest of Plato into the light, when from these one can infer even the things I now pass over in silence? I have not been led to say this for the sake of slander, since I admire the man greatly, and consider and honor him as the dearest of all the Greeks, as one who thought things dear and akin to mine, if not entirely equal to them, while I show the shortfall of his thought in comparison with Moses and the prophets among the Hebrews.

18.18| And yet, for a person prepared to find fault, countless things could be blamed, such as the solemn and wise provisions he made about women in the Republic, or the solemn speeches about unlawful love in the Phaedrus. And if you long to hear these too, take and read these words of his:

19.1| “‘Perhaps,’ I said, ‘many of the things now being said would appear ridiculous, contrary to custom, if they were carried out as described.’ ‘Very much so,’ he said. ‘What do you see as the most ridiculous of them?’ I said. ‘Is it not clearly that the women should exercise naked in the wrestling schools with the men, not only the young but even the older ones, like old men in the gymnasia, when they are wrinkled and unpleasant to look at and yet still love exercise?’”

19.2| And he adds next: “‘But the man who laughs at naked women exercising for the sake of the best, plucking the fruit of the ridiculous as wisdom, does not even know, it seems, what he is laughing at.’”

19.3| He says in the seventh book of the Laws as well: “‘So boys and girls will have to dance and, plainly, to learn gymnastics; and there should be male dancers for the boys and female dancers for the girls, and this will be no less suitable for training.’” He puts in the same book also this: “‘And our maiden and mistress, delighted by the training of the dance, did not think it right to play with empty hands, but, adorned in full armor, to perform the dance; all of which it would be altogether fitting for boys and girls alike to imitate.’”

19.4| And he legislates that women go to war in some such way as this: “‘In these, foreigners residing for pay shall teach all the subjects that relate to war to those who attend, and those that relate to music, not with the boy attending if his father wishes and being let off his schooling if he does not; but, as the saying goes, every man and boy must of necessity be educated, so far as possible, since they belong to the city rather than to their parents.

19.5| My law would say the same about females in every respect as about males: that women must practice the same things. And I would state this without any fear: neither of riding nor of gymnastics would I say that it is fitting for men but not fitting for women.’”

19.6| And again, going on a little further, he says: “‘Let us set up gymnastic exercises and all the bodily training for war: of archery and every kind of throwing, of light-shield service and every kind of fighting in arms, of tactical maneuvers and every kind of army march and encampment, and all the studies that bear on horsemanship. For of all these there must be public teachers, receiving pay from the city, and as their pupils the boys and men of the city, and girls and women knowledgeable in all these things; the girls, while still girls, having practiced every dance and fight in arms, and the women having taken up maneuvers and formations, and the laying down and taking up of weapons.’”

19.7| But the word of the Hebrews would not assent even to these things; it will speak against them, ascribing success in wars not to the strength of men, let alone of women, but referring everything to God and to the alliance that comes from him. So it says: “Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain. Unless the Lord guards the city, the guard keeps watch in vain.”

19.8| Now see how that marvelous philosopher brings women into the athletic contest as well, saying somewhat like this: “‘For women: for girls not yet grown, naked, the stadium race, the double race, the horse race and the long race, competing in the running itself; and for those of thirteen and over who remain in this partnership until marriage—not later than twenty nor earlier than eighteen—in suitable dress they shall go down to the contest of these races.”

19.9| “‘And let this be the rule about races for men and women; as for contests of strength, in place of wrestling and the like, the heavy contests of today, let there be fighting in arms, one against one, and two against two.’”

19.10| And after saying next, “‘In the same way we must call in the experts in fighting in arms and bid them help us legislate,’” he adds, saying: “‘Let the same laws be made also for females up to marriage.’”

19.11| Then again, joining on to these the laws about light-shield fighting, the all-in contest, the bow, the throwing of stones from the hand and with the sling, and the contest of horses, here too he adds about females: “‘As to females in these, it is not worth forcing them by laws and orders into this partnership; but if, from the earlier training itself, now becoming habit, their nature allows it and does not object to girls or maidens taking part, let it be permitted and not blamed.’”

19.12| So much from Plato on women. This marvelous law, too, is his: “‘If anyone leaves behind daughters, let the inheritance pass through brothers and nephews, first to the males, and later to the females, within one family; and as to the proportion or disproportion of the age of marriage, let a judge examine and decide, viewing the males naked and the females naked to the navel.’” And he says that in the festivals also they must dance naked, speaking thus in the sixth book of the Laws:

19.13| “For the sake of such earnestness, they should also make their amusements, dancing as men and women, boys and girls, both watching and being watched, with reason and with some age that provides fitting grounds, naked, men and women, so far as each one’s modest sense of shame allows.”

19.14| In addition to all this, hear also what is said in the Republic about the law of having wives in common. “‘Following on this, I think,’ I said, ‘and on the other matters before it, is this law.’ ‘What?’ ‘That these women be, all of them, common to all these men; and that none live privately with any man; and the children in turn shall be common, and no parent shall know his own offspring nor any child its parent.’”

19.15| And next he adds: “‘Likely,’ he said. ‘Then you, the lawgiver for them,’ I said, ‘having chosen the women just as you chose the men, will hand them over, as far as possible of like nature; and they, having houses and common meals together, and no one possessing anything of this kind privately, will be together, and mingling together in the gymnasia and in the rest of their upbringing, they will be led, I think, by innate necessity to union with one another. Or do I seem to you to speak of things not necessary?’ ‘Not by geometrical necessities,’ he said, ‘but by erotic necessities, which are likely to be keener than those at persuading and drawing the multitude.’”

19.16| But someone will perhaps explain the sense of this passage otherwise, saying that it does not lay down what is customarily thought. For he did not say without qualification that all the women are common, so that any chance men may be licentious, but that their distribution to the men lies in the authority of the rulers. They are common in the way in which one might say that public funds are common, which are distributed by those entrusted with them to those to whom they are due. Let this be so, then.

19.17| And what would you say, having learned that he also commands that the offspring not be brought to light, speaking thus: “‘A woman,’ I said, ‘beginning from the age of twenty to the age of forty, shall bear children for the city; and a man, once he has passed the sharpest prime of running, shall from then on beget for the city until the age of fifty-five.’”

19.18| To this he adds: “‘But when the women and the men have passed the age of begetting, we shall, I think, let them associate freely with whomever they wish.’” And he adds: “‘Having commanded them to take the greatest care not to bring to light any offspring, if one is conceived; and if anyone forces it, to treat it as though there were no nurture for such a child.’” So much for the ordering of women. Now hear what he has to say on unlawful love.

20.1| “‘When he keeps on doing this and comes near, with touching, in the gymnasia and in other company, then the stream of that flow, which Zeus, in love with Ganymede, named desire, rushes in abundance toward the lover; part sinks into him, and part, when he is filled, flows out again. And as a breath or an echo, rebounding from smooth and solid surfaces, is carried back to where it started, so the stream of beauty goes back again to the beautiful one through the eyes, and, arriving where it is natural for it to go to the soul, it stirs the passages of the wings, waters them, and sets them to growing feathers, and fills the soul of the beloved in turn with love. So he loves, but whom he loves he does not know; and he neither knows what has happened to him nor can he say, but as if he had caught an eye disease from another, he has no reason to give.’”

20.2| And he adds next: “‘He desires, in a manner similar to the other, though more weakly, to see, to touch, to kiss, to lie with him; and, as is likely, he soon does these things afterward. Then, in their lying together, the lover’s unruly horse has something to say to the charioteer, and claims to enjoy a little in return for many toils; but the horse of the beloved has nothing to say, but, swelling and at a loss, embraces the lover and kisses him, as one greeting a very kindly friend; and when they lie together, he is the sort who would not refuse to grant his own share to the lover, if he asked to obtain it . . .

20.3| If, then, the better parts of the mind win them over to an ordered way of life and philosophy, they pass their life here in blessedness and concord, masters of themselves and orderly.’”

20.4| Then after other things he adds: “‘But if they adopt a coarser and more ambitious way of life, then perhaps in drunkenness or some other carelessness the unruly pair of yokemates, catching their souls off guard, bring them together and choose and accomplish the choice which the many count blessed; and having accomplished it, they thereafter continue to practice it, though rarely, since they do it without the full approval of the mind.

20.5| These two also are friends, though less than the former, to each other, both during their love and after it, thinking that they have given and received the greatest pledges, which it is not lawful to break and ever fall into enmity.

20.6| At death they leave the body without wings, but with an impulse to grow them, so that they carry off no small prize of erotic madness. For it is not the law that those who have already begun the journey under heaven should go into darkness and the path beneath the earth, but that they live a bright life and be happy, traveling together, and be winged alike because of love. So many and so divine are the gifts, my boy, that a lover’s friendship will give you.’”

20.7| Such are the things of Plato, but not those of Moses, who expressly legislates against them, uttering with a great voice the fitting penalty against pederasts. He says at any rate: “Whoever lies with a male as with a woman, both have done an abomination; let them surely be put to death; they are guilty.” And: “Cursed is everyone who lies with a male as with a woman.” Why need I now demonstrate that the wisest of men let the pederast off, since in the Laws he did not think fit to fix a penalty of death against pederasts, though he commands that a slave be punished with death who has not reported a treasure found by someone else? Listen to this too, so that you do not suppose I am slandering him:

21.1| “Whatever the god decrees,” he says, “about the possessions and the one who moved them, let the city, serving the oracles of the god, do. And if the informer is a free man, let him have a reputation for virtue, and if he does not inform, one for wickedness; but if he is a slave, the informer would rightly be made free by the city, which pays the price to his master; and if he does not inform, let him be punished with death.”

21.2| Here too the penalty of death is imposed not on the one who has disturbed something forbidden but on the one who did not report another’s offense. And elsewhere he declares a master pure if he kills his own slave in anger. He says: “The man who kills his own slave shall be purified; but if he kills another’s in anger, let him pay double the damage to the owner.”

21.3| Hear this too from his laws, which he laid down concerning murderers: “If a man kills a free person with his own hand, and the deed was done without premeditation, from some anger, then in other respects let him suffer as is fitting for one who has killed without anger; but let him go into exile for two years, of necessity, punishing his own temper.”

21.4| And to this he adds next another law of this kind: “He who has killed in anger, but with plotting, shall in other respects be treated as in the preceding case, but shall go into exile for three years, just as the other did for two, being punished for a longer time because of the greatness of his anger.”

21.5| Then next, concerning the one who kills a second time, he legislates as follows: “But if either of them, having at some time returned, is overcome by anger and does the same thing, he shall go into exile and never return.”

21.6| And again next he says: “But if, as does happen, though rarely, a father or mother in anger kills a son or daughter by blows or by some violent means, they shall undergo the same purifications as others and spend three years abroad; and when the killers return, wife shall be separated from husband and husband from wife, and they shall never again beget children together.”

21.7| And to this he adds: “If a husband in anger kills his wedded wife, or a woman likewise kills her own husband, they shall be purified with the same purifications and complete three years in exile. And when he who has done such a deed returns, let him not share in sacrifices with his own children, nor ever sit at table with them.

21.8| And if a brother kills a brother or sister, or a sister a brother or sister, in anger, let it be said that the purifications and years of exile must be performed as was stated for parents and offspring, also for those who have deprived brothers of brothers and parents of children; and let such a one never share a hearth with those he has bereaved, nor take part in their sacrifices.

21.9| But if a brother kills a brother in a faction when a fight has broken out, or in some such way, in defense against one who began to use his hands first, let him be pure, as one who has killed an enemy. And likewise if a citizen kills a citizen, or a foreigner a foreigner. And if a foreigner kills a citizen, or a citizen a foreigner, acting in self-defense, let him be pure in the same way; and likewise a slave who kills a slave. But if a slave in self-defense kills a free man, let him be liable under the same laws as the man who killed his father.

21.10| Whoever with forethought and unjustly kills with his own hand any of his own kin, shall first be excluded from the lawful places, not polluting the market or the temples or the harbors or any other public assembly, whether anyone forbids the man who did this or not. For the law forbids it . . . And he who does not prosecute when he should, or does not make the proclamation, shall be excluded from his kinsmen of the degree of cousins, and secondly he shall be liable to anyone who wishes to avenge the dead. A woman who has wounded her own husband with the plot of killing him, or a man his own wife, shall be exiled for ever.”

21.11| Such are the laws of the philosopher. But if we must also compare those of Moses with them, hear what he lays down about murders: “If anyone strikes a man and he dies, let him be put to death. But if he did not do it willingly, but God handed him over into his hands, I will give you a place where the killer shall flee. But if anyone plots against his neighbor to kill him by guile and flees to refuge, you shall take him from my altar to put him to death. He who strikes his father or his mother shall be put to death; and should two men quarrel and one strikes his neighbor with a stone or fist and he does not die but takes to his bed, if the man gets up and walks about outside on his staff, the one who struck him shall be innocent; only he shall pay for his lost time and the cost of the physicians. And if anyone strikes his male slave or female slave with a rod and the slave dies under his hands, he shall be avenged with a penalty. But if the slave lives on a day or two, he is not to be avenged, for he is his money. And if anyone strikes the eye of his servant or of his maidservant and blinds it, he shall send them away free in exchange for their eye.”

21.12| Such are the laws of Moses. Now hear in what manner and for what reasons Plato again commands that a household slave be tormented with relentless blows: “When someone wishes to gather the fruit of the so-called noble grape or the noble figs, if he takes them from his own property, let him enjoy the fruit as he wishes and when he wishes; but if from another’s, having persuaded [….] following the rule not to move what one did not lay down, let that man always be penalized. But if a slave, without persuading the master of the lands, touches any such thing, let him be whipped with a lash for every grape of the bunch and every fig from the tree.”

21.13| Such, then, are his rulings against these people, unworthy of Plato’s greatness of mind. But how venerable and humane are the laws in Moses you may learn by hearing him speak somewhat as follows: “If you go into your neighbor’s vineyard, you shall eat grapes, as many as will fill your soul, but you shall not put any into a vessel.” And again: “If you go into your neighbor’s standing grain and gather ears in your hands, you shall not put a sickle to your neighbor’s grain.” And again: “If you reap your harvest in your field and forget a sheaf in your field, you shall not turn back to take it; it shall belong to the poor, the proselyte, the orphan, and the widow, so that the Lord your God may bless you in every work of your hands. And if you gather your olives, you shall not go back to glean what is behind you; it shall be for the proselyte, the orphan, and the widow. And if you harvest your vineyard, you shall not go back to gather what is behind you; these things shall be for the proselyte and the widow.”

21.14| So much for what is in Moses. As for Plato’s writings, they are well known, and in them you would find countless things beyond reproach; of what he has, we gladly accept above all what is venerable and best, and to what is not of that kind we bid a long farewell. But now that these matters have been gone through in this way, and the reason has been given why we have decided not to practice philosophy after Plato’s fashion, the time has come to bring the remainder of our promise to its end as well, and to survey the other schools of Greek philosophy.

Cite a passage by its number: every paragraph here has its own anchor (for example https://openscriptorium.com/read/eusebius/087-preparation-for-the-gospel-book-xiii#p1), and the bracketed reference numbers link the same way.

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