Eusebius of Caesarea: Praeparatio Evangelica (Preparation for the Gospel). Tr. E.H. Gifford (1903) -- Book 13

BOOK XIII

CONTENTS

PREFACE

SINCE it has been seen in the preceding Books that the philosophy of Plato in very many points contains a translation, as it were, of Moses and the sacred writings of the Hebrews into the Greek language, I now proceed to add what is still wanting to the argument, and to go through the opinions expressed upon the several topics by those who were before me, and at the same time to free myself from a plausible charge of reproach, in case any one should accuse me. Why then, he might say, if Moses and Plato have agreed so well in their philosophy, are we to follow the doctrines not of Plato but of Moses, when we ought to do the reverse, because, in addition to the equivalence of the doctrines, the Greek author would be more congenial to us as Greeks than the Barbarian?

Being loth to make a retort to this charge from respect to the philosopher, I defer this question to a later period, and will first examine those points which I mentioned first. Take then and read what sort of opinion Plato used to put forward concerning the Greek poets and writers on religion, and how he used to reject all the traditional notions concerning the gods, and thoroughly expose their absurdity.

CHAPTER I

[PLATO] ¹ 'To tell of the other divinities, and to learn their origin, is beyond our power; but we must give credence to those who have spoken in former times, who being, as they said, the offspring of gods, had certain knowledge, I suppose, of their own ancestors. It is impossible therefore to disbelieve children of the gods, even though they speak without certain or probable proofs: but as they declare that they are reporting family histories, we must in obedience to the law believe them.

'On their authority then let the origin of these gods be admitted and stated thus. The children of Ge and Uranus (Earth and Heaven) were Oceanus and Tethys, and their children Phorcys and Kronos and Rhea and the rest of them; and of Kronos and Rhea sprang Zeus and Hera, and all whom we know as their reputed brethren, and still others who were their offspring.'

In exhorting us hereby to believe the fables concerning gods, and the authors also of the fables as being forsooth the children of gods, in the first place by saying that 'the poets are the offspring of the gods,' it seems to me that he scoffingly implies that the gods also had been men, and of the same nature as their children.

And next he brings a direct charge against the theologians, whom he had declared to be the offspring of gods, in the assertion which he adds, 'even though they speak without probable or certain proofs,' and by the addition of the words 'as they said.' He seems too to be jesting when he says, they 'had certain knowledge, I suppose, of their own ancestors'_; and again, 'It is impossible to disbelieve children of the gods.' Also he expressly shows that he speaks thus against his own judgement on account of the laws, by confessing that it was necessary 'to believe them in obedience to the law.'

And in proof that this was his meaning, hear how in open and undisguised language he reproaches all the would-be theologians, smiting them in the Epinomis with the following words: ²

CHAPTER II

[PLATO] 'WITH regard therefore to the origin of gods and of living beings, as it has been misrepresented by those of former times, it seems necessary for me in the first place to give a better representation in the subsequent discourse, taking up again the argument which I have undertaken against the impious.'

That he has good reason for repudiating the theology of the earliest writers, he shows in the second Book of the Republic, where it is worth while to fix the attention upon the number and nature of the statements which he makes concerning the same poets and theologians, from the traditions handed down from old times concerning the Hellenic gods, speaking in the very words that follow: ³

CHAPTER III

[PLATO] 'IN the greater fables, said I, we shall discern the lesser also: for the general character and the effect of both the greater and the less must be the same. Do you not think so? Yes, I do, said he: but I do not even understand which you call the greater. Those, said I, which Hesiod and Homer and the other poets used to tell us. For they, I suppose, used to compose and tell, and do still tell, false stories to mankind.

'What kind of stories do you mean, said he, and what fault do you find with them?

'The fault, said I, which before and above all we ought to reprove, especially if the falsehood is unseemly.

'What is this fault?

'When a man in his discourse concerning gods and heroes misrepresents their nature, as when an artist paints what is not at all like the things which he may wish to imitate.

'Yes indeed, said he, it is right to condemn such things: but how. and what kind of faults do we mean?

'In the first place then, said I, it was an unseemly lie that was told by the author of that greatest fiction about the greatest gods, how Uranus wrought what Hesiod says he did, and how Kronos took revenge upon him. Again, the doings of Kronos and his treatment by his son, even if they were true, ought not, I should have thought, to have been thus lightly mentioned before young and silly persons, but, best of all, to have been buried in silence; or, if there were any necessity to tell them, then as few as possible should have heard them in secret, after sacrificing no mere pig, but some great and scarce victim, so that very few might have had a chance of hearing them.

'Yes indeed, said he, these stories are mischievous. Aye, said I, and they must not be told in our city, Adeimantus; nor must a young hearer be told, that he would be doing nothing extraordinary in committing the worst crimes, nor on the other hand in inflicting every kind of punishment upon his father if he did wrong, but would be doing what the first and greatest of the gods did.

'Certainly not, nor in my own opinion are such stories fit to be told.

'Nor yet, said I, about gods going to war with gods, and plotting against each other and fighting (untrue as such things are), ought anything to be said, if the future guardians of our city are to think it most disgraceful to be quarrelling lightly one with another. Far less ought we to tell them in fables and on tapestry about wars of the giants and many other quarrels of all kinds between gods and heroes and their own kinsmen and relations: but if we could in any way persuade them, that no citizen was ever at enmity with a fellow citizen, and that such a thing was unholy, these are the kind of tales that ought rather to be told to children from the first by old men and old women and by those who are growing elderly, and the poets should be compelled to make their tales like these.

'The chaining too of Hera by her son, and the hurling of Hephaestus out of heaven by his father, when he was going to defend his mother from a beating, and all the battles of the gods that Homer has invented, must not be admitted into the city, whether they are composed with or without allegorical meanings.

'For the youth is not able to judge what is allegory and what is not: but whatever opinions he accepts at such an age are wont to become indelible and unalterable: and on this account perhaps we ought to regard it of the highest importance, that the tales which they first hear "should be adapted in the most perfect manner to the promotion of virtue." ⁴

'Yes, that is reasonable, said he: but if any one were to ask us again which these fictions are, and what fables we mean, which should we mention? Then said I: My dear Adeimantus, you and I are not speaking at present as poets, but as founders of a state: and founders of a state ought to know the moulds in which poets should cast their fictions, and from which they must not be permitted to deviate, nor must they invent the fables themselves.

'Quite right, said he: but that is the very point, what would be the proper models in the case of theology?

'Some such as the following, said I; God must of course always be represented as He really is, whether a poet describes Him in epic verse, or in lyrics, or in tragedy.

'Yes, that must be so.

'Is not God then really good, and to be so described? 

'Of course.

'But surely nothing good is hurtful? Is it?

'I think not.

'Does then that which is not hurtful do hurt?

'Of course not.

'And does that which hurts not, do any evil?

'No, again.

'Neither can that which does no evil be the cause of any evil?

'How could it?

'Well then, is the good beneficial?

'Yes.

'It is the cause then of well-being?

'Yes.

'The good then is not the cause of all things, but only of what is right, and not the cause of evils.

'Quite so, said he.

'Neither then, said I, can God, since He is good, be the cause of all things, as the many say, but of few things that happen to men He is the cause, and of many things He is not the cause: for our good things are far fewer than the evil. And of the good we must assign no other cause than God, but of the evil we must seek the causes in other things, but not in God.

'I think, said he, you speak most truly.

'We must not then, said I, allow either Homer or any other poet foolishly to commit such an offence as this against the gods, and to say that

" Two coffers lie beside the door of Zeus, 
With gifts for man; one good, the other ill."  ⁵

'And to whom Zeus give a mixture of the two,

"Him sometimes evil, sometimes good befalls";  ⁶

'And to whom he gives no mixture, but the ill alone, 

"Him ravenous hunger o'er God's earth pursues." ⁷

'Nor must we admit that Zeus is to us

"The sole dispenser both of weal and woe." ⁸

'And if any one say that the violation of oaths and treaties wrought by Pandarus was brought about by Athene and Zeus,⁹ we shall not approve: nor that the strife and contest of the gods was caused by Themis and Zeus:¹⁰ nor again must we permit our young men to hear how Aeschylus says that

" God plants in mortal breasts the cause of sin, 
When He would utterly destroy a house."  ¹¹

'But if any one writes a poem, in which these iambics are found, about the sorrows of Niobe, or the calamities of "Pelops' line," or the "tale of Troy," or any other such events, either we must forbid him to call them the work of a god, or, if of a god, then he must invent some such explanation for them as we are now seeking, and must say that God did what was just and good, and the others were the better for being chastised. But we must not permit the poet to say that those who suffered punishment were miserable, and that this was God's doing.

'If, however, they would say that the wicked were miserable because they needed punishment, but were benefited by being punished by God, that we must approve.

'But as to saying that God, who is good, becomes the author of evil to any, we must by all possible means contend that no one shall make such statements in his own city, if it is to be governed by good laws, nor any one either young or old listen to his tales whether in verse or prose, as such statements if tittered would be impious, and neither profitable to us, nor consistent with themselves.

'I vote with you, said he, for this law, and am pleased with it.

'This then, said I, will be one of the laws and moulds in which our speakers must speak concerning God, and our poets write, That God is not the cause of all things, but only of the good.

'That is quite satisfactory, said he.

'And what then of this second? Do you suppose God to be a sorcerer, and of a nature to show Himself craftily now in one form and now in another, at one time actually becoming what He seems, and changing His own proper form into various shapes, and at another deceiving us, and making us imagine such transformations in Him; or do you think that He is a simple essence, and most unlikely to go out of His own proper form?

'I am not able, said he, to answer now off-hand.

'Well, what do you say to this? If anything were to change from its own proper form, must it not be changed either by itself or by some other?

'It must.

'Are not then the things which are in the best condition least liable to be altered or moved by another? As for example when a body is affected by meats and drinks and labours, and every plant by sunshine and winds and other such influences, is it not the healthiest and the most perfect that is altered least?

'Of course it is.

'And would not the bravest and wisest soul be least disturbed and altered by any influence from without?

'Yes.

'Moreover I suppose that, on the same principle, among all manufactured things, furniture, buildings, and clothes, those that are well made and in good condition suffer the least alteration from time and other influences?

'It is so.

'Everything then which is well constituted either by nature or art, or both, admits the least alteration by any other?

'So it seems.

'But surely God, and the things of God, are in every way most excellent?

'Of course.

'In this way then God is most unlikely to take many shapes.

'Most unlikely indeed.

'But would He change and alter Himself?

'Evidently, said he, if He is changed at all.

'Does He then change Himself into what is better and more beautiful, or into what is worse and less beautiful than Himself?

'It must be into what is worse than Himself, if He is changed at all: for surely we shall not say that God is imperfect in beauty or goodness.

'You are quite right, said I. And this being so, do you think, Adeimantus, that any one, whether god or man, would willingly make himself worse in any way?

'Impossible, said he.

'It is also impossible then, said I, that a god should be willing to change himself, but each one of them, as it seems, being as perfect as possible in beauty and goodness, remains ever absolutely in his own form.

'It seems to me quite certain, said he.

'Then, my good friend, said I, let none of the poets tell us that

" Gods, in the guise of strangers from afar, 
Wander in various forms from state to state."  ¹²

'Nor let any one slander Proteus and Thetis, nor introduce Hera in tragedies nor in any other poems transformed as a priestess begging alms

"For Inachus the Argive river-god's
Life-giving daughters."  ¹³

'These and many other such falsehoods let them cease to invent. Neither let our mothers be persuaded by these poets to terrify their children by the tales which they wickedly tell them, that certain gods forsooth wander about by night in the likeness of many animals of different kinds, lest they be both guilty of blasphemy against the gods, and at the same time make their children more cowardly.

'Let them beware, said he.

'But then, said I, do the gods, though they are not capable of actual change, make us imagine, by their deception and magic, that they appear in various forms?

'Perhaps, said he.

'Well then, said I, would a god be willing to lie either by word or by deed, in putting phantoms before us?

'I do not know, said he.

'Do you not know, said I, that the true lie, if one may so speak, is hated by all both gods and men?

'How do you mean? said he.

'You know, of course, said I, that no one willingly consents to lie to the highest and chiefest part of himself, and concerning matters of the highest importance, but every one fears above all to harbour a lie there.

'No, I do not even now understand you, said he.

'Because, said I, you think I have some grand meaning: but I only mean that to lie to the soul about realities, and to be deceived and ignorant, and to have and to hold the falsehood there, is what all men would most dislike, and what in that part of them they utterly detest.

'Yes, utterly, said he.

'But surely, as I was saying just now, this is what might most rightly be called "a true lie," this ignorance in the soul of the deceived: since the lie in words is a sort of imitation of the affection in the soul, and an image produced afterwards, not at all a pure unmixed lie. Is it not so?

'Yes, certainly.

'The real lie then is hated not only by gods, but also by men?

'I think so.

'Well then? When and in what case is the lie in words useful, and so not deserving to be hated? Is it not in dealing with enemies, and when any of those who are called our friends from madness or any kind of folly attempt to do some mischief, it then becomes useful as a remedy to turn them from their purpose?

'Also in those mythical tales of which we were speaking just now, because we know not how the truth stands about ancient events, do we not make the falsehood as much like truth as possible, and so make it useful?

'It certainly is so, said he.

'For which of these reasons then is falsehood useful to God? Would He lie from ignorance of ancient events by trying to make them like the truth?

'Nay, that would be ridiculous.

'There is nothing of the lying poet then in God?

'I think not.

'But would He lie through fear of His enemies?

'Far from it.

'Or because His friends are foolish or mad?

'Nay, said he, no fool or madman is a friend of God.

'There is no motive then for a god to lie?

'There is none.

'The nature then of gods and demi-gods is quite incapable of falsehood?

'Yes, utterly so.

'God then is perfectly simple and true both in deed and word, and neither changes in Himself, nor deceives others, either in apparitions, or by words, or by sending signs, either in dream or waking vision.

'I too think it is just as you say.

'You agree then, said I, that this is a second mould in which speech or poetry about the gods must be cast, that they neither are wizards who transform themselves nor mislead us by falsehoods either in word or in deed?

'I do agree.

'While therefore we commend many other things in Homer, we shall not commend this, the sending of the dream by Zeus to Agamemnon;¹⁴ nor the passage of Aeschylus, in which Thetis says that Apollo, singing at her marriage,

"Dwelt on my happy motherhood, 
The life from sickness free and lengthened years; 
Then all-inclusively he blest my lot, 
Favoured of heaven, in strains that cheered my soul.
And I too fondly deemed those lips divine 
Sacred to truth, fraught with prophetic skill; 
But he himself who sang, the marriage-guest 
Himself, who spake all this, 'twas even he 
That slew my son." ¹⁵

'When a poet says such things as these about gods, we shall be angry, and refuse him a chorus; neither shall we allow our teachers to use them for the education of the young, if our guardians are to grow up devout and godlike, as far as it is possible for man to be.

'I entirely assent, said he, to these principles, and would adopt them as laws.'

Thus speaks Plato: and you would find that the Hebrew Scripture does not contain disgraceful tales about the God of the universe, nor yet about the heavenly angels around Him, nor even about the men who are beloved of God, in any like manner to the Greek theologies; but it contains the model put forth by Plato, that God is good, and all things done by Him are of the same character.

Therefore after each of the works of creation that admirable man Moses adds,¹⁶ And God saw that it was good: and at the end of all he sums up his account of the whole and says,¹⁷ And God saw all things that He had made, and, behold, they were very good. It is also a doctrine of the Hebrews that God is not the author of evils, inasmuch as God made not death, neither hath He pleasure in the destruction of the living:¹⁸ for He created all things that they might have being, and the generative powers of the world are healthful; but by the envy of the devil death entered into the world.¹⁹

Wherefore by the prophet also God is introduced as saying to the man who from his own choice had become evil, Yet I had planted thee a fruitful vine: how wast thou turned back into the strange vine? ²⁰ And if it should anywhere be said that evils happen to the wicked from God, it must be understood as an accidental coincidence of name, this name being given to the chastisements which God in His goodness is said to send not for the hurt of those who are chastised, but for their benefit and profit: just as a physician to save the sick might be thought to apply bad things in his painful and bitter remedies.

Wherefore in the sacred Scripture also, where it is said that evils are brought upon men by God, we must apply the saying of Plato, 'that God did what was just and good,' even when He was inflicting stern treatment and what men think evils upon those who so deserved, and that 'they were the better for being chastised,' not only according to the philosopher but also according to the Hebrew Scripture which says,²¹ For whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom He receiveth.

'But we must not permit the poet to say that they who were punished were miserable, and that this was God's doing; if, however, they would say that the wicked were miserable because they needed chastisement, but were benefited by being punished by God, that we must approve. But as to saying that God, who is good, becomes the author of evil to any, we must by all possible means contend against it.' ²²

Moreover on the point that God is not subject to change, the Hebrew prophecy teaches as follows, speaking in the person of God: For I am the Lord your God, and I change not.²³ David also, in his description of God, cries aloud saying: They all shall wax old as doth a garment, and as a vesture shalt Thou roll them up, and they shall be changed: but Thou art the same, and Thy years shall not fail.²⁴

Wherever the Hebrew writings introduce the Word of God as appearing in form and fashion of man, we must remark that they do not represent Him as appearing to men in the same manner as Proteus and Thetis and Hera, according to the Greek legends, nor as the gods who wander about at night in the likeness of animals of many various kinds; but He came, as Plato himself says is sometimes necessary, for the benefit of friends: 'when through madness or some kind of folly they attempt to do mischief, then as a remedy to turn them from their purpose' ²⁵ the advent of God among men is useful.

Now no species of living creatures on earth is dearer to God than man, a species which is of the kindred and family of the Word of God, by whom also man was made rational in the nature of his soul; with good reason therefore they say that the heavenly Word, in His care for a living creature whom He loved, came for the healing of the whole race, which had become subject to disease and a strange kind of madness, so that they knew neither God their Father, nor the proper essence of their own spiritual nature, nor yet God's providence which preserves the universe, but had almost come into the degenerate state of an irrational animal.

And on this account, they say, the Saviour and Physician at His advent departed not from His own proper nature, nor yet deceived those who saw Him, but preserved the truth of both natures, the invisible and the visible. For in one way He was seen as true man, and in another way He was the true Word of God, not by witchcraft nor by deluding the spectators; for even Plato thought that the divine nature was rightly free from falsehood.

'Therefore God the Word, being perfectly simple and true both in deed and in word, neither changed Himself, nor deceived others, either by apparitions or by words, or by sending signs, either in dream or waking vision.' ²⁶ For all such actions He performed, as became a Physician of reasonable souls, for the salvation of the whole human race, in reality and not in mere seeming, by means of the human nature which He assumed; and thus He bestowed on all of us reconciliation and friendship with His Father through that knowledge of God and true religion which was announced by Him.

Such then are our doctrines: and with those who say otherwise 'we shall be angry, and refuse them a chorus, neither shall we allow our teachers to use their sayings for the education of the young, if our guardians are to grow up devout and godlike,' ²⁷ as our philosopher also thought to be best.

CHAPTER IV

[PLATO] 'FOR though these men themselves consider Zeus the best and most righteous of the gods, yet they acknowledge that even he bound his own father Kronos, because he used wickedly to devour his sons, and that Kronos too had mutilated his own father for similar reasons; but they are angry with me because I proceed against my father for doing wrong, and so they contradict themselves in regard both to the gods and to me.

'Is this then the reason, Euthyphron, why I am prosecuted, because when any one says such things about the gods, I am vexed at hearing them? And for this, it seems, some one will say that I commit a great sin. Now therefore if you, who know so well about such matters, agree with them, it seems that I too must of necessity agree. For what else can I say, since I myself admit that I know nothing about them? But tell me, for friendship's sake, do you really believe that these things are so?

'Yes, Socrates, and more wonderful things than these, of which the multitude know nothing.

'Do you then also believe that there has really been war among the gods, and dire quarrels and battles, and many other such things, as are told by the poets, and seen in the decorations of our temples by good painters? Especially at the Great Panathenaea the robe that is carried up to the Acropolis is full of such embroideries. Are we to say that these tales are true, Euthyphron?

'Not these alone, O Socrates; but, as I said just now, I will, if you like, relate to you many other tales concerning the gods, which, I am sure, you will be astonished to hear.' ²⁸

Thus writes Plato in the Euthyphron. And Numenius explains his meaning in his book concerning The Secrets in Plato, speaking in the way following: ²⁹

CHAPTER V

[NUMENIUS] 'IF Plato, after proposing to write about the theology of the Athenians, had then been displeased with it, and accused it of containing tales of the quarrels of the gods among themselves, and of singing how some had intercourse with their children, and others devoured them, and how for these things children took vengeance upon their fathers, and brothers upon brothers, and other things of this kind,----if, I say, Plato had taken these stories and openly censured them, I think he would have afforded to the Athenians an occasion for showing their wickedness again by killing him, just as they killed Socrates.

'But since he would not have preferred life to truthfulness, and saw that he should be able to preserve both life and truth, he gave the part of the Athenians to Euthyphron, a boastful and stupid person, and especially bad in theology, but represented Socrates in his own person, and in his peculiar style, in which he was accustomed to converse with and confute every one.'

CHAPTER VI

[PLATO] ³⁰ 'MY dear Crito, your zeal would be most valuable, if it were consistent at all with right; but if not, the greater the zeal, the more dangerous. We must consider therefore whether we ought to do this or not; for I not only am now but always have been so disposed as to yield to no other persuasion from my friends except the reason which on consideration may appear to me the best.

'The arguments then which I used to urge aforetime, I cannot reject now, because this mischance has come upon me; but they appear to me of no less force, and I prefer and honour the same reasons as I did before: and unless we have any better to urge in my present position, be assured that I shall never agree with you, not even if the power of the multitude should try to scare us like children with more bugbears than at present, threatening bonds, and all kinds of death, and confiscations of goods.

'What then will be the fairest way of examining the question? Should we in the first place take up again this argument which you urge, I mean that concerning men's opinions, whether it was in every case a right statement or not, that we ought to pay attention to some opinions, and not to others? Or whether the statement was right before I was condemned to die, but now has been manifestly proved to have been urged just for the sake of arguing, while it was in reality mere jesting and trifling?

'My own desire then is to consider with your help, Crito, whether the argument will appear to me to be in anyway altered, now that I am. in this position, or still the same; and whether we shall renounce it or act according to it. Now I think that by those who thought they were talking seriously, it was generally stated in the same manner as I stated it just now, that of the opinions which men entertain we ought to prize some highly, and not others.

'Pray tell me, Crito, do you not think this a right statement? For you, in all human probability, are in no danger of dying to-morrow, and your judgement will not be perverted by the present mischance. Consider then: do you not think it a satisfactory statement, that we ought not to respect all the opinions that men hold, but to respect some and not others? Nor yet the opinions of all men, but those of some, and not of others? What say you? Is not this a right statement?

'Quite right.

'Must we not then respect the good opinions, and not the bad?

'Yes.

'And are not the opinions of the wise good, and those of the foolish bad?

'Of course.

'Come then, what again was said about such matters as these? Does a man who is learning gymnastics with serious attention give heed to the praise and blame and opinion of every man, or only of that one who may happen to be a physician or a trainer?

'Only of that one.

'He ought then to fear the censures and welcome the praises of that one, and not those of the many?

'That is evident.

'He must act then, and practise, and eat and drink in such way as may seem good to the one who is his master and understands the matter, rather than to all the others together.

'It is so.

'Well; and if he disobey that one, and disregard his opinion and praises, and respect those of the many who understand nothing about it, will he suffer no harm?

'Of course he will.

'But what is this harm? And whither does it tend, and to what part of the disobedient person?

'Evidently to the body, for it does harm to this.

'You are right. And, Crito, is not the case the same with the rest, not to go through them all? Moreover, in regard to what things are just and unjust, and disgraceful and honourable, and good and evil, which are the subjects of our present consultation, must we follow the opinion of the many and fear it, or that of the one, if there is a man of understanding, whom we ought to reverence and fear more than all the rest together? And if we fail to follow him we shall corrupt and ruin that part of us which, as we said, is improved by justice and degraded by injustice. Or is that part of no importance?

'I think it is important, Socrates.

'Well then, if we ruin that part of us, which is improved by what is healthful and damaged by what is unwholesome, by not yielding to the opinion of those who have understanding, is our life worth living when that is ruined? Now this part, I suppose, is the body, is it not?

'Yes.

'Is our life then worth living with a wretched and diseased body?

'By no means.

'But is then life tolerable for us with that part of us diseased which is damaged by injustice and improved by justice? Or do we believe that part of us, whatever it is, which is concerned with injustice and justice to be more worthless than the body?

'By no means.

'More precious then?

'By far.

'Then, my good friend, we must not care thus at all what the many will say of us, but what the man who understands about justice and injustice will say, the one man, and the very truth. So in the first place this proposal of yours is not right, when you advise that we ought to care for the opinion of the many in reference to what is just and honourable and good, and the contrary.'

The word of salvation also says: 'Ye seek the glory which cometh from men, and the glory which cometh from the Only One ye seek not.' ³¹ Wherefore we also in our conflicts for religion do rightly in not considering what the many will say of us, but what is the will of One, even the Word of God, whom having in our judgement chosen once for all, it behoves us still to honour even as we did before, and not to change, no, 'not even if the power of the multitude should scare us like children with bugbears.' ³² Now such were the men who bore illustrious testimony of old among the Hebrews.

CHAPTER VII

[PLATO] ³³ 'Do we say that we must not intentionally do wrong in any way, or that we ought to do wrong in one way, and not in another? Or is it neither honourable nor good to do wrong in any way, as we have often agreed in former times, and as I was saying just now? Or have all those our former admissions been scattered to the winds in these last few days, and have we at our age, dear Crito, while holding earnest discourse with one another, been unaware so long that we are no better than children? Or is it most surely true, as we used then to say, that whether the many affirm or deny it, and whether we are to receive still harder treatment or more gentle than now, nevertheless to do wrong is in every way both evil and disgraceful to the wrong-doer? Is this what we assert or not?

'It is.

'We must not then do wrong in any way.

'Surely not.

'Not even return wrong for wrong then, as is the opinion of the many, since we must never do wrong in any way?

'Evidently not.

'Well, again? Ought we, Crito, to do evil or not?

'Of course we ought not, Socrates.

'Well then? To render evil for evil, as the many say, is that just or not just?

'Not just.

'For, I suppose, there is no difference between doing evil to men, and doing them wrong.

'You say well.

'Then we must neither do wrong in return, nor do evil to any man, whatever we may suffer from him. But take care, dear Crito, lest you may be making this admission against your real opinion. For I know that this is what very few people think or ever will think. Between those then who have adopted this opinion and those who have not there is no common purpose, but they must necessarily despise each other when they look each at the others' intentions. Therefore do you also consider very carefully whether you share and agree with my opinion, and let us begin our deliberations from this point, that it is never right either to do wrong, or to return wrong, or when evil-entreated to retaliate by rendering evil. Or do you draw back, and not agree with my first principle? For I have long been of this opinion, and am so still. But if you have formed any other opinion, speak and explain. If, however, you abide by what you held before, listen to the next step.

'I do abide by it, and agree with you. But say on.

'I go on then to state the next point, or rather I ask whether a man ought to do whatever he has admitted to any one to he just, or falsely to abandon it?

'He ought to do it.'

Compare with this the saying: 'Render to no man evil for evil';³⁴ and this: 'Bless them that curse you: pray for them that despitefully use and persecute you, that ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven, who maketh His sun to rise upon the evil and upon the good, and sendeth rain upon the just and on the unjust.' ³⁵ Also this: 'Being reviled, we bless; being persecuted, we endure; being defamed, we intreat': ³⁶ a passage which occurs in our sacred Scriptures. The Hebrew prophet also says: 'If I rendered evil to them that rendered evil to me.' ³⁷ And again: 'With them that hate peace I am for peace.' ³⁸

CHAPTER VIII

[PLATO] ³⁹ 'BUT you used to boast then that you were not grieved if you must die, but preferred death, as you said, to banishment; now, however, you are neither ashamed of those fine sayings, nor pay any respect to us, the laws, but are attempting to destroy us; and you cire doing just what the vilest slave would do, in trying to run away contrary to the conditions and agreements on which you consented to be our citizen.

'In the first place, therefore, answer us this very question, whether we state the truth in asserting that you have agreed to be governed according to us in deed, and not only in word; or is it untrue? What are we to say in answer to this, Crito? Must we not admit it?

'Yes, Socrates, we must.

'Are you not then, they would say, transgressing the covenants and agreements which you made with us, and to which you agreed under no compulsion, nor deception? Nor were you forced to decide too hastily, but for a period of seventy years you were at liberty to go away, if you were not satisfied with us, and if our agreements appeared to you unjust?

'You did not, however, prefer either Lacedaemon or Crete, which you are always saying are well governed, nor any other state, Hellenic nor Barbarian, but you travelled away from Athens less than the lame and the blind and the cripples. So much more than other Athenians were you in love with the state, and of course with us the laws; for who would like a state without laws? And will you not now abide by your agreements? You will, if you take our advice, Socrates.'

CHAPTER IX

⁴⁰ 'FOR whoever is a corrupter of laws, would be surely thought a corrupter of young and foolish persons. Will you then flee from the well-governed states, and the best-behaved of men? And if you do this, will your life be worth living? Or will you associate with them, and feel no shame in discoursing with them,----and what arguments will you use, dear Socrates? The same as here, that virtue and justice and institutions and laws are the most precious things for mankind? And do you not think that this conduct of Socrates would be unseemly? You certainly ought to think so.

'But you will depart from these regions, and go to Crito's friends in Thessaly: for there forsooth is the greatest disorder and licence. And perhaps it will please them to hear from you, in what a ridiculous fashion you made your escape from the prison, having wrapped yourself in some disguise, or taken a goatskin, or something else such as runaways usually dress themselves up in, and so transformed your appearance.

'But will there be no one to remark that, being an old man, with probably but a short time left to live, you dared to show so greedy a love of life in defiance of the highest laws? Perhaps not, if you do not annoy any one: but otherwise, you will have to listen to many things unworthy, dear Socrates, of you. So you will live by cringing to all men, and serving them; and what will you be doing but feasting in Thessaly, as if you had gone abroad to Thessaly for a dinner? And those fine discourses about justice and the other virtues, where will they be?

'But forsooth you wish to live for the sake of your children, that you may bring them up and educate them?

'What then? Will you take them to Thessaly and bring them up and educate them there, making aliens of them, that they may receive this further benefit from you? Or if instead of that they are brought up here, will they be better brought up and educated because you are alive though not with them? For your friends will take care of them? They will take care of them then if you are gone away to Thessaly; but if you are gone to the other world, will they not take care of them, if indeed there is any good in those who say that they are your friends? You must surely suppose they will.

'Nay, dear Socrates, listen to us who have reared you, and value neither children, nor life, nor any thing else as of more account than justice, that when you come to the unseen world you may have all these pleas to offer in your defence to the rulers there. For it is evident that to act in this manner is neither in this life better or more just or more holy for you or any of yours, nor will it be better for you when you have arrived in the other world.

'But now, if you go hence, you will go as one who has suffered injustice not from us, the laws, but from men. But if you go abroad in this disgraceful manner, returning injury for injury and evil for evil, transgressing your own agreements and covenants which you made with us, and wronging those whom you ought least to wrong, yourself and your friends and country and us, we shall be angry with you while you live, and in the other world our brethren, the laws in Hades, will give you no friendly reception, knowing that you have tried your best to destroy us.'

CHAPTER X

⁴¹ 'PERHAPS therefore some one will say, Are you not ashamed then, Socrates, of having pursued such a course of life, that you are now in danger of being put to death for it? But I should return a just answer to him, You are wrong in what you say, Sir, if you suppose that any man who is of the least good ought to take into account the risk of life or death, instead of looking at this point alone in his actions, whether he is doing what is just or unjust, the works of a good or a bad man.

'For according to your argument the demi-gods who died at Troy would be good for nothing, especially the son of Thetis, who so despised danger in comparison with incurring disgrace, that though his mother, being a goddess, had spoken to him, I suppose, in this way, when he was so eager to kill Hector, O my Son, if you avenge the murder of your friend Patroclus and kill Hector, you will be killed yourself, for, said she,

"On Hector's fate thine own will follow close."  ⁴²

And after hearing this he cared little for death and danger, but fearing much more to live as a coward and not avenge his friends, he exclaims:

"Would I might die this hour"  ⁴³

after inflicting vengeance on the injurious foe, that I remain not here a laughing-stock,

"Cumbering the ground, beside the sharp-beaked ships."  ⁴⁴

'Think you that he cared for death and danger? Thus, O men of Athens, the case stands in very truth: wherever a man has chosen his own post because he thought it best, or has been placed by a commander, there, in my judgement, he is bound to await the danger, taking no account either of death or of anything else than disgrace.

'If therefore, O men of Athens, when the leaders whom you chose to be my commanders set me in my post at Potidaea, and Amphipolis, and at Delium, or anywhere else, I remained just like any other where they placed me and ran the risk of being killed,----how strangely should I have acted, when the god, as I thought and supposed, ordered me to live the life of a philosopher, examining myself and others, if in this case, through fear either of death or anything else whatever, I should desert my post.

'Strange it would be indeed, and then in truth any one might justly bring me before the court, on the ground that I do not believe in the existence of gods, since I disobey the oracle, and am afraid of death, and think myself wise when I am not. For to be afraid to die, Sirs, is nothing else than to think oneself to be wise, when one is not: for it is to think that one knows, what one does not know. For no one knows about death even whether it may not be the greatest of all blessings to man; but they fear it as if they certainly knew that it is the greatest of evils. And what is this but that same disgraceful ignorance, for a man to think that he knows what he does not know?

'But I, Sirs, perhaps on this subject also differ from most men in this; and were I to say that I am wiser than another in any respect, it would be in this, that, as I do not know enough about the state of things in Hades, so I also think that I do not know. But I do know that to do wrong and to disobey one's superior, whether god or man, is evil and disgraceful. Those evils therefore which I know to be evil I shall always fear and shun, rather than things which, for aught I know, may really be good.

'Therefore not even if you acquit me now, and refuse to believe Anytus, who said that either I ought not to have come into this court at all, or that, since I had come, it was impossible to avoid putting me to death, and told you that, if I should be acquitted, at once your sons would all be utterly corrupted by practising what Socrates teaches----if in answer to this you should say to me,

Socrates, we are not going to be persuaded by Anytus this time, but we acquit you, on this condition however, that you cease to spend your time in this speculation, and in philosophy; and if you be convicted of doing so any more, you will be put to death;----if then, as I said, you were to acquit me on these conditions, I should say to you, O men of Athens, I honour and I love you, but I shall obey the god rather than you, and as long as I have breath and power, I shall never cease from studying philosophy, and exhorting and instructing any of you whom I may meet from time to time, in my usual style of discourse.'

And a little further on he adds: ⁴⁵

'Let us then consider it also in this way, that there is much reason to hope that death is a good. For the state of the dead is one of two things: either it is like non-existence and absence of all sensation in the dead, or, as is commonly said, it is a sort of transference and migration of the soul from this region to another. And if there is no sensation, but as it were a sleep in which the sleeper sees nothing even in a dream, death must be a wonderful gain.

'For I suppose, that if a man were obliged to select the night in which he slept so soundly as to see nothing even in a dream, and to compare all the other nights and days of his life with this night,----if, I say, he were obliged to consider and tell us how many days and nights in the course of his life he had passed more happily and more pleasantly than this night, I think that not merely any ordinary person but even the great King himself would find these better nights very few in comparison with all the rest of his days and nights. If therefore death is something of this kind, I call it a gain: for thus all time appears nothing more than a single night.

'But if on the other hand death is like a departure hence to another place, and if what is said is true, that all the dead exist there, what greater good could there be than this, O my judges? For if on arriving in Hades, after having been delivered from the self-styled judges here, a man shall find the true judges, who are said to give judgement there, Minos, and Rhadamanthus, and Aeacus, and Triptolemus, and all the other demi-gods who were just in their own lives, will the change of abode be worth nothing?

'Or on the contrary, what would any of you pay to associate with Orpheus, and Musaeus, and Hesiod, and Homer? For my part I am willing to die many a death, if indeed these things are true, since I too should find it a delightful occupation there, whenever I met with Palamedes, and Ajax the son of Telamon, and any other of the ancients who has died through an unjust judgement, to compare my own sufferings with theirs,----no unpleasant thing, methinks it would he. And moreover the chief delight would be to spend my life in examining and scrutinizing the dwellers in that world, as I do those here, to learn which of them is wise, and which, though he thinks so, is not.'

We also have the saying: 'We ought to obey God rather than men.' ⁴⁶ And: 'Be not afraid of them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul.' ⁴⁷ And we know, 'that if the earthly house of our bodily frame be dissolved, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens':⁴⁸ ... and that 'whilst we are absent from the body we are at home with the Lord,' ⁴⁹ who also hath promised to all who have hoped in Him, that they shall rest in the bosoms of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, and, in company with all the other Hebrew prophets and righteous men beloved of God, shall pass the long eternity in a blessed life.

CHAPTER XI

⁵⁰ 'OF those then who have been killed in war, shall we not say in the first place that any one who died an honourable death was of the golden race?

'Most certainly.

'But when any of such a race as this have died, shall we not believe Hesiod, that:

"These still on earth as holy daemons dwell, 
Brave guardians of mankind from every ill"?

'Yes, we shall believe him.

'Shall we then inquire of the god how we ought to class daemons and deities, and with what difference, and place them thus in whatever way he may direct?

'Of course we shall.

'And for all time to come, believing them to have become daemons, we shall so serve and worship their tombs; and these same customs we shall observe, when from old age or any other cause any one dies of those who have been judged pre-eminently good in life? '

These customs also may fitly be adopted on the death of those beloved of God, whom you would not do wrong in calling soldiers of the true religion. Hence comes also our custom of visiting their tombs, and offering our prayers beside them, and honouring their blessed souls, believing that we do this with good reason.

But in truth though I have made these selections out of the writings of Plato, any other student might find still more points of agreement with our doctrines in the same author, and perhaps in others also. Since, however, others before us have touched upon the same subject, I think it would be right for me to look at the results of their work also. And I will quote first the words of the Hebrew philosopher Aristobulus, which are as follows: ⁵¹

CHAPTER XII

[ARISTOBULUS] 'IT is evident that Plato closely followed our legislation, and has carefully studied the several precepts contained in it. For others before Demetrius Phalereus, and prior to the supremacy of Alexander and the Persians, have translated both the narrative of the exodus of the Hebrews our fellow countrymen from Egypt, and the fame of all that had happened to them, and the conquest of the land, and the exposition of the whole Law; so that it is manifest that many things have been borrowed by the aforesaid philosopher, for he is very learned: as also Pythagoras transferred many of our precepts and inserted them in his own system of doctrines.

'But the entire translation of all the contents of our law was made in the time of the king surnamed Philadelphus, thy ancestor, who brought greater zeal to the work, which was managed by Demetrius Phalereus.'

Then, after interposing some remarks, he further says:

'For we must understand the voice of God not as words spoken, but as construction of works, just as Moses in the Law has spoken of the whole creation of the world as words of God. For he constantly says of each work, "And God said, and it was so."

'Now it seems to me that he has been very carefully followed in all by Pythagoras, and Socrates, and Plato, who said that they heard the voice of God, when they were contemplating the arrangement of the universe so accurately made and indissolubly combined by God. Moreover, Orpheus, in verses taken from his writings in the Sacred Legend, thus sets forth the doctrine that all things are governed by divine power, and that they have had a beginning, and that God is over all. And this is what he says: ⁵²

"I speak to those who lawfully may hear: 
Depart, and close the doors, all ye profane, 
Who hate the ordinances of the just, 
The law divine announced to all mankind. 
But thou, Musaeus, child of the bright Moon, 
Lend me thine ear; for I have truths to tell. 
Let not the former fancies of thy mind 
Amerce thee of the dear and blessed life. 
Look to the word divine, keep close to that, 
And guide thereby the deep thoughts of thine heart. 
Walk wisely in the way, and look to none, 
Save to the immortal Framer of the world: 
For thus of Him an ancient story speaks: 
One, perfect in Himself, all else by Him 
Made perfect: ever present in His works, 
By mortal eyes unseen, by mind alone 
Discerned. It is not He that out of good 
Makes evil to spring up for mortal men. 
Both love and hatred wait upon His steps, 
And war and pestilence, and sorrow and tears: 
For there is none but He. All other things 
'Twere easy to behold, could'st thou but first 
Behold Himself here present upon earth. 
The footsteps and the mighty hand of God 
Whene'er I see, I'll show them thee, my son: 
But Him I cannot see, so dense a cloud 
In tenfold darkness wraps our feeble sight. 
Him in His power no mortal could behold, 
Save one, a scion of Chaldaean race: 
For he was skilled to mark the sun's bright path, 
And how in even circle round the earth
The starry sphere on its own axis turns, 
And winds their chariot guide o'er sea and sky; 
And showed where fire's bright flame its strength displayed. 
But God Himself, high above heaven unmoved, 
Sits on His golden throne, and plants His feet 
On the broad earth; His right hand He extends 
O'er Ocean's farthest bound; the eternal hills 
Tremble in their deep heart, nor can endure 
His mighty power. And still above the heavens
Alone He sits, and governs all on earth, 
Himself first cause, and means, and end of all. 
So men of old, so tells the Nile-born sage, 
Taught by the twofold tablet of God's law; 
Nor otherwise dare I of Him to speak: 
In heart and limbs I tremble at the thought, 
How He from heaven all things in order rules. 
Draw near in thought, my son; but guard thy tongue 
With care, and store this doctrine in thine heart."

Aratus also speaks of the same subject thus: ⁵³

"From Zeus begin the song, nor ever leave 
His name unsung, whose godhead fills all streets, 
All thronging marts of men, the boundless sea 
And all its ports: whose aid all mortals need; 
For we his offspring are; and kindly he 
Reveals to man good omens of success, 
Stirs him to labour by the hope of food, 
Tells when the land best suits the grazing ox, 
Or when the plough; when favouring seasons bid 
Plant the young tree, and sow the various seed."

'It is clearly shown, I think, that all things are pervaded by the power of God: and this I have properly represented by taking away the name of Zeus which runs through the poems; for it is to God that their thought is sent up, and for that reason I have so expressed it. These quotations, therefore, which I have brought forward are not inappropriate to the questions before us.

'For all the philosophers agree, that we ought to hold pious opinions concerning God, and to this especially our system gives excellent exhortation; and the whole constitution of our law is arranged with reference to piety, and justice, and temperance, and all things else that are truly good.'

To this, after an interval, he adds what follows: ⁵⁴

'With this it is closely connected, that God the Creator of the whole world, has also given us the seventh day as a rest, because for all men life is full of troubles: which day indeed might naturally be called the first birth of light, whereby all things are beheld.

'The same thought might also be metaphorically applied in the case of wisdom, for from it all light proceeds. And it has been said by some who were of the Peripatetic School that wisdom is in place of a beacon-light, for by following it constantly men will be rendered free from trouble through their whole life.

'But more clearly and more beautifully one of our forefathers, Solomon, said that it has existed before heaven and earth;⁵⁵ which indeed agrees with what has been said above. But what is clearly stated by the Law, that God rested on the seventh day, means not, as some suppose, that God henceforth ceases to do anything, but it refers to the fact that, after He has brought the arrangement of His works to completion, He has arranged them thus for all time.

'For it points out that in six days He made the heaven and the earth and all things that are therein, to distinguish the times, and predict the order in which one thing comes before another: for after arranging their order, He keeps them so, and makes no change. He has also plainly declared that the seventh day is ordained for us by the Law, to be a sign of that which is our seventh faculty, namely reason, whereby we have knowledge of things human and divine.

'Also the whole world of living creatures, and of all plants that grow, revolves in sevens. And its name "Sabbath" is interpreted as meaning "rest."

'Homer also and Hesiod declare, what they have borrowed from our books, that it is a holy day; Hesiod in the following words: ⁵⁶

"The first, the fourth, the seventh a holy day."

'And again he says:

''And on the seventh again the sun shines bright."

'Homer too speaks as follows:

" And soon the seventh returned, a holy day."

'And again:

" It was the seventh day, and all was done."

'Again:

" And on the seventh dawn the baleful stream 
Of Acheron we left."

'By which he means, that after the soul's forgetfulness and vice have been left, the things it chose before are abandoned on the true seventh which is reason, and we receive the knowledge of truth, as we have said before. 

'Linus too speaks thus:

"All things are finished on the seventh dawn." 

'And again:

"Good is the seventh day, and seventh birth." 

'And:

"Among the prime, and perfect is the seventh."

'And:

"Seven orbs created in the starlit sky 
Shine in their courses through revolving years."'

Such then are the statements of Aristobulus. And what Clement has said on the same subject, you may learn from the following: ⁵⁷

CHAPTER XIII

[CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA] 'BUT we must add the further evidence, and show now more clearly the plagiarism of the Greeks from the Barbarian philosophy. For the Stoics say that God, as also the soul of course, is in essence body and spirit. All this you will find directly stated in their writings. For I do not wish you now to consider whether their allegorical interpretations, as the Gnostic verity delivers them, show one thing and mean another, like clever wrestlers. But what they say is that God extends through all being, while we call Him simply the Creator, and Creator by a word.

Now they were misled by what is said in Wisdom: "Yea, she pervadeth and penetrateth all things by virtue of her purity":⁵⁸ since they did not understand that this is said of that wisdom which was the first-created of God. Yes, say they; but the philosophers, Stoics as well as Plato and Pythagoras and even Aristotle the Peripatetic, suppose matter to be one of the first principles, and do not assume one only principle.

'Let them know, then, that the so-called matter, which is said by them to be without quality or shape, has been previously described more boldly by Plato as "Not-being"; and is it perchance from knowing that the real and true first cause is one, that he speaks so mysteriously in the Timaeus in these very words?

⁵⁹ 'Now therefore let my position be stated as follows: "Of the first principle or principles of all things, or in whatever way it is thought right to describe them, I must not speak at present, for no other reason than this, that it is difficult to explain my opinions according to our present form of discourse."

'And, besides, that prophetic expression, "The earth was invisible and without order," ⁶⁰ has given them suggestions of a material essence. In fact, the interposition of "chance" occurred to Epicurus from having misunderstood the language of the following passage: "Vanity of vanities, all is vanity." ⁶¹ To Aristotle it occurred to bring Providence down only so far as to the moon, from this Psalm: " Thy mercy, O LORD, is in the heaven, and Thy truth reacheth unto the clouds." ⁶² For before the coming of the Lord the meaning of the prophetic mysteries was not as yet revealed.

'Again the chastisements after death and the punishment by fire were stolen from our Barbarian philosophy both by every Muse of poetry and even by the Greek philosophy. Plato, for instance, in the last Book of the Republic says in. express terms: "Hereupon certain fierce men of fiery aspect, who were standing by and understood the sound, seized and led away some of them separately; But Aridaeus and the rest they bound hand and foot and head together, and threw them down, and flayed them, and dragged them along the road outside, carding them like wool on thorns." ⁶³ For his "fiery men" are meant to indicate angels, who seize the unrighteous and punish them. " Who maketh," says the Scripture, " His angels spirits, and His ministers a flaming fire." ⁶⁴

'Now it follows upon this that the soul is immortal. For that which is undergoing punishment or correction being in a state of sensation, must be living, though it be said to suffer. Again, does not Plato know also rivers of fire, and the deep of the earth, called by the Barbarians Gehenna, which he calls poetically Tartarus, and introduces Cocytus, and Acheron, and Phlegethon, and names of this kind, as places of punishment for correctional training? And representing, according to the Scripture, the angels of the least of the little ones which behold the face of God,⁶⁵ and also His supervision extended to us through the angels set over us, he does not hesitate to write:

'"After all the souls have chosen their lives, according to their lot, they went forward in order to Lachesis, and she sent with each the genius of his choice, to be the guardian of his life, and the fulfiller of his chosen destiny." ⁶⁶

'Perhaps also something of this kind was intimated to Socrates by his daemon.

'Nay more, the philosophers borrowed, from Moses their doctrine that the world was created, and Plato has said expressly:

' " Was it that the world had no beginning of creation, or has it been created at first from some beginning? For it is visible, and tangible, and has a body." ⁶⁷

'And again, when he says: "To find therefore the Maker and Father of this universe is a hard task," ⁶⁸ he not only shows that the world has been generated, but also indicates that it was generated from Him, as from one alone, and sprang up out of non-existence. The Stoics also suppose that the world has been created.

'The devil too, so often mentioned by the Barbarian philosophy, the prince of the daemons, is described by Plato, in the tenth Book of the Laws, as being a malignant soul, in the following words: ⁶⁹ "As then a soul directs and inhabits all things that move in every direction, must we not say that it also directs the heaven?

' " Of course.

' "One soul or more? More, I will answer for both of you. Less than two surely we must not suppose, one that does good, and the other that has power to work evil."

'In like manner also he writes in the Phaedrus thus: ⁷⁰ "There are indeed other evils, but with most of them some daemon has mingled an immediate pleasure." And further in the tenth Book of the Laws be directly expresses that thought of the Apostle: "Our wrestling is not against blood and flesh, . . . but against the spiritual powers of the hosts in heaven," ⁷¹ when he writes thus:

' " For since we agreed among ourselves that the heaven is full of many goods, and full also of evils, and of more evils than goods, such a conflict as this, we say, is immortal, and requires wonderful caution." ⁷²

'Again, the Barbarian philosophy knows one intelligible world, and another sensible, the one an archetype, and the other an image of that fair model; and the former it ascribes to unity, as being perceptible to thought only, but the sensible to the number six: for among the Pythagoreans six is called marriage, as being a generative number. And in the unity it sets an invisible heaven, and a holy earth, and intelligible light. For "In the beginning," says the Scripture, "God created the heaven and the earth: and the earth was invisible." ⁷³ Then it adds, "And God said, Let there be light, and there was light." ⁷⁴ But in the creation of the sensible world He framed a solid heaven (and what is solid is sensible), and a visible earth, and a light that is seen. Do you not think that from this passage Plato was led to leave the "ideas" of living things in the intelligible world, and to create the sensible forms according to the various kinds of that intelligible world?

'With good reason, therefore, Moses says that the body was formed of earth, what Plato calls "an earthly tabernacle," but that the reasonable soul was breathed by God from, on high into man's face: for they say that the ruling faculty is seated in this part, and interpret thus the accessory entrance of the soul through the organs of sense in the first-formed man; for which reason also man, they say, is made "after the image and likeness of God." ⁷⁵

'For the image of God is the divine and royal Word, the impassible man; and an image of that image is the human mind. But if you will admit another name for the growing likeness, you will find it called in Moses a following of God: for he says, "Walk after the LORD your God, . . . and keep His commandments." ⁷⁶ And all the virtuous are, I suppose, followers and servants of God.

'Hence the Stoics have said that the end of philosophy is to live according to the guidance of nature, while Plato says it is to become like God, as we showed in the second Miscellany; and Zeno the Stoic having received it from Plato, and he from the Barbarian philosophy, says that all good men are friends one of another. For in the Phaedrus Socrates says that "Fate has not ordained that the wicked should be a friend to the wicked; nor the good fail to be a friend to the good." ⁷⁷

'This he also fully showed in the Lysis, ⁷⁸ that friendship can never be preserved amid injustice and wickedness. The Athenian Stranger too says in like manner, "That it is conduct pleasing to God and like Him, and has one ancient saying in its favour, when 'like loves like' if it be in measure, but things beyond measure agree neither with things beyond nor with things within measure. And God must be to us the measure of all things." ⁷⁹

'Then lower down Plato adds again:

' " For indeed every good man is like every other good man, and consequently being also like God, he is beloved both by every good man and by God." Arrived at this point, I am reminded of the following passage, for at the end of the Timaeus he says that "one should assimilate that which perceives to that which is perceived, according to its original nature, and by thus assimilating them attain the end of that life which is proposed by the gods to men as the best both for the present time and for that which is to follow." ⁸⁰

And after a few sentences he adds: ⁸¹

'That we are brethren as belonging to one God and one teacher, Plato evidently declares in the following terms:

" For ye in the city are all brothers, as we shall say to them in telling the fable; but God, in forming as many of you as are fit to rule, mixed gold in their composition, wherefore they are the most to be honoured: and for all the auxiliaries silver, but iron and copper for the husbandmen and other operatives." ⁸²

'Whence, he says, it has necessarily come to pass that some embrace and love those things which are objects of knowledge, and others those which are matters of opinion. For perhaps he is prophesying of that elect nature which desires knowledge; unless in assuming three natures he, as some supposed, is describing three forms of polity, that of the Jews silver, that of the Greeks the third, and that of the Christians in whom there has been infused the royal gold, the Holy Spirit.

'Also he exhibits the Christian life when writing word for word in the Theaetetus: ⁸³

''Let us speak then of the leaders; for why should one talk about those who spend their time to no good purpose in philosophy? But these leaders, I suppose, neither know the way to the Agora, nor where the court of justice is, or the council-chamber, or any other public assembly of the State; and laws, and decrees whether read or written, they neither see nor hear. The strivings of political clubs, and meetings, to obtain offices, and revellings with flute-girls are practices which do not occur to them even in dreams. And what has happened well or ill in the city, or what evil has come to any one from his ancestors, is less known to them than, as the proverb says, the number of gallons in the sea. As to all these things he knows not even that he does not know them: for in fact it is his body only that has its place and home in the city, but the man himself 'is flying,' as Pindar says,'underneath the earth' ⁸⁴ and above the heaven, studying the stars, and scrutinizing every nature on all sides."

'Again, with the Lord's saying, "Let your yea be yea, and your nay, nay," ⁸⁵ we must compare this: "But it is by no means right for me to admit a falsehood, and to suppress a truth." ⁸⁶ Also with the prohibition of swearing agrees this saying in the tenth Book of the Laws: "Let there be no praising nor swearing about anything." ⁸⁷ And to speak generally, Pythagoras and Socrates and Plato, when they say that they hear God's voice, while carefully contemplating the constitution of the universe as made by God and held together without interruption, must have heard Moses say, in describing the word of God as a deed, "He spake, and it was done." ⁸⁸

'Also taking their stand upon the formation of the man out of dust, the philosophers on every occasion proclaim that the body is of earth, and Homer does not shrink from putting it in the light of a curse:

" But may all ye to earth and water turn."  ⁸⁹

Just as Esaias says: " And tread them down as clay." ⁹⁰

'Callimachus too writes expressly:

" It was that year in which the winged tribe 
And they that swim the sea or tread the earth 
Spake like the clay Prometheus called to life." ⁹¹

'And again the same poet said:

" If thou wast fashioned by Prometheus' hand, 
And not of other clay." ⁹²

'Hesiod also says of Pandora:

" Renowned Hephaestus bade he with all speed 
Mix earth with water, and therein infuse 
The voice and mind of man." ⁹³

'Now as the Stoics define nature as an artistic fire which proceeds systematically to generation; ⁹⁴ so by the Scripture God and His Word are represented figuratively by fire and light. Again, is not Homer also alluding to the separation of the water from the land, and the clear discovery of the dry land, when he says of Tethys and Oceanus:

" For now have they long time 
From love and from the marriage-bed abstained "? ⁹⁵

'Again, the most learned among the Greeks ascribe to God power in all things: thus Epicharmus, who was a Pythagorean, says:

" Nothing e'er from God escapeth; this behoves thee well to know; 
He o'erlooks us closely; nothing is to God impossible." ⁹⁶

'The lyric poet too:

" From thickest darkness of the night 
God can call forth the purest light, 
Or with dark clouds at will o'erlay 
The brightness of the orient day." ⁹⁷

'He who alone can turn the present day into night, the poet says, is God.

'Aratus also, in the book entitled Phaenomena, after saying:

" From Zeus begin the song, nor ever leave
His name unsung, whose godhead fills all streets, 
All thronging marts of men, the boundless sea, 
And all its ports; whose aid all mortals need,"  ⁹⁸

'adds:

"For we his offspring are,"

as it were by creation,

. . . "and kindly he 
Reveals to man good omens of success. 
In heaven he set those guiding lights, and marked 
Their several course; and for the year he wove 
The circlet of the stars, to show to man 
What best the seasons suit, that all things set 
In order due may grow. Him ever first, 
Him last our prayers invoke. Hail, Father, hail!
Wonder and joy and blessing of mankind."

'Also before him Homer, in the account of the shield made by Hephaestus, describes the creation of the world in accordance with Moses, saying:

"Thereon were figured earth, and sky, and sea, 
And all the signs that crown the vault of heaven." ⁹⁹

'For the Zeus who is celebrated in all poems and prose compositions, carries up our thought to God.

'Then, further, Democritus writes that some few of mankind are in the light, so to say, ¹⁰⁰ "who lift up their hands to that place which we Greeks now call the air, and mythically speak of all as Zeus; and he knows all things, and gives and takes away, and he is king of all." With deeper mystery the Boeotian Pindar, as being a Pythagorean, teaches:

" One race of men and one of gods, 
Both from one mother draw our breath," ¹⁰¹

that is, from matter: he teaches also that the Creator of this world is one, whom he calls,

" Father, of all artificers the best," ¹⁰²

who has also provided the means of advancement to divinity according to merit.

'For I say nothing as to Plato, how he plainly appears in the Epistle to Erastus and Coriscus to set forth Father and Son somehow from the Hebrew Scriptures, when he exhorts them in these words ¹⁰³ "to invoke both with a graceful earnestness, and with the culture which is akin to such earnestness, the God who is the cause of all, and also to invoke the Father and Lord of Him who is ruler and cause, whom (says he) ye shall know, if ye study philosophy aright."

'Also Zeus in his harangue in the Timaeus calls the Creator Father, in these words: ¹⁰⁴

"Ye gods and sons of gods, whose Father I am, and Creator of the works." So that also when he says, ¹⁰⁵ "Around the King of all are all things, and for His sake they all are, and that is the cause of all things beautiful; and around a Second are the secondary things, and around a Third the tertiary," I understand it in no other way than that the Holy Trinity is signified. For I think that the Holy Spirit is the third, and the Son the second, "by whom all things were made" according to the will of the Father.

'The same author, in the tenth Book of the Republic,¹⁰⁶ mentions Er, the son of Armenius, a Pamphylian by birth, who is Zoroaster. At least Zoroaster himself writes, "Zoroaster the son of Armenius, a Pamphylian by birth, having been slain in war, writes down here all things which when in Hades I learned from the gods." Now Plato says that this Zoroaster when laid upon the funeral pile on the twelfth day after death came to life again. Perhaps he alludes not to the resurrection, but to the circumstance that the way for souls to their reception above is through the twelve signs of the Zodiac, and Plato himself says that their way of return to birth is the same. In this way we must understand also that the labours of Hercules were said to be twelve, after which the soul obtains its release from this world entirely. Empedocles also I do not pass over, who mentions the restitution of all things in merely physical language, saying that there will at some time be a change into the essence of fire.

'And most plainly is Heracleitus of Ephesus of this opinion, who maintained that there is one world eternal, and another that perishes, namely, the world in its orderly arrangement, which he knew to be no other than a certain condition of the former. But that he knew the world, which consisting of all being is eternally of a certain quality, to be eternal, he makes evident in speaking thus: ¹⁰⁷

" The world which is the same for all was made neither by any god nor man, but always was, and is, and shall be, an everliving fire, kindled in measure, and in measure extinguished."

'His doctrine was that the world was created and perishable, as is shown by what he adds: "The transmutations of fire are first sea, and of sea one half becomes earth and the other half lightning." ¹⁰⁸ For virtually he says, that by God the Word, who administers the universe, fire is changed through air into moisture, the seed as it were of the cosmical arrangement; and this moisture he calls sea.¹⁰⁹ And out of this again heaven and earth arise, and all things therein contained.

'How the world is again taken back into the primitive essence, and destroyed by fire, he clearly shows in these words: " The sea is spread abroad, and is measured to the same proportion as it was before it became earth." In like manner concerning the other elements the same is to be understood.

'Doctrines similar to this are taught also by the most celebrated of the Stoics in their discussions concerning a conflagration and re-arrangement of the world's order, and concerning both the world and man in their proper quality, and the continuance of our souls. Again, Plato in the seventh Book of the Republic has called our day here a " darkness visible," ¹¹⁰ because, I suppose, of the world-rulers of this darkness; and the soul's entrance into the body he has called "sleep" and "death," in the same manner as Heracleitus.¹¹¹ And is this, perhaps, what the Holy Spirit, speaking by David, foretold concerning our Saviour: " I laid me down and slept: I awaked, for the LORD will sustain me." ¹¹² For he figuratively calls not only the Resurrection of Christ an awaking from sleep, but also the Lord's coming down into flesh a sleep.

'For instance, the same Saviour gives the exhortation "Watch," as much as to say, study to live, and try to keep the soul independent of the body. Also in the tenth Book of the Republic, Plato speaks prophetically of the Lord's day in these words: 

"But when those in the meadow had each been there seven days, they were obliged on the eighth to arise thence and proceed on their journey, and arrive on the fourth day." ¹¹³

'By the meadow, therefore, we must understand the fixed sphere, as a quiet and pleasant place, and an abode of the saints; and by the seven days, each motion of the seven planets, and the whole effective device which speeds them to their final rest. The journey after passing the planets leads to heaven, that is to the eighth motion and eighth day; and when he says that the souls are four days on the journey, he indicates their passage through the four elements.

'Moreover, the Greeks as well as the Hebrews recognize the holiness of the seventh day, by which the cycle of the whole world of animals and plants is regulated. Hesiod, for instance, speaks of it thus:

"The first, the fourth, the seventh a holy day." 

'And again:

"And on the seventh again the sun shines bright." 

'Homer too:

" And soon the seventh returned, a holy day." 

'And again:

"The seventh day was holy."  ¹¹⁴

'And again:

" It was the seventh day, and all was done." 

'And again:

"And on the seventh day the baleful stream 
Of Acheron we left."

'Moreover, the poet Callimachus writes:

"All things were finished on the seventh dawn."

'And again:

" Good is the seventh day, and seventh birth."

'And:

" Among the prime, and perfect is the seventh."

'Also:

" Seven orbs created in the starlit sky 
Shine in their courses through revolving years."

'The Elegies of Solon also make the seventh day very divine.  ¹¹⁵

'And again: Is it not like the Scripture, which says, ¹¹⁶ "Let us take away from us the righteous man, because he is of disservice to us," when Plato, all but foretelling the dispensation of salvation, speaks thus in the second Book of the Republic: "In these circumstances the just man will be scourged, fettered, both eyes torn out; and at last, after suffering every kind of torture, he will be crucified "? ¹¹⁷ Antisthenes too, the Socratic, paraphrases that prophetic Scripture, "To whom did ye liken Me? saith the LORD," when he says that "God is like to none, wherefore no man can come to know Him from an image." ¹¹⁸ The like thoughts Xenophon the Athenian expresses in these words: " That He who moves all things, and is Himself at rest, is a great and mighty Being, is manifest: but what He is in form, is unknown. Neither, indeed, does the sun, which appears to shine on all, seem to allow himself to be seen: but if any one gazes impudently upon him, he is deprived of sight." ¹¹⁹ The Sibyl had said before:

"What flesh can e'er behold with mortal eyes 
The immortal God, who dwells above the skies? 
Or who of mortal birth can stand and gaze 
With eyes unshrinking on the sun's fierce rays?" ¹²⁰

'Rightly, therefore, does also Xenophanes of Colophon, when teaching that God is one and incorporeal, add this:

" One God there is, supreme o'er gods and men, 
Not like in form to mortals, nor in mind." ¹²¹

'And again:

" But mortals fondly deem that gods are born, 
Have voice, and form, and raiment like their own." ¹²²

'And again:

"If then the ox and lion had but hands 
To paint and model works of art, like man, 
The ox would give his god an oxlike shape, 
The horse a figure like his own would frame, 
And each would deify his kindred form." ¹²³

'Again, then, let us listen to Bacchylides, the lyric poet, when he says concerning the divine nature:

" No taint of foul disease can them assail, 
No bane annoy, unlike in all to man." ¹²⁴

'Hear also Cleanthes, the Stoic, who has written as follows in a certain poem concerning the Deity:

"Askest thou what good is? List then to me. 
Good is well ordered, holy, just, devout, 
Self-mastering, useful, honourable, right, 
Grave, self-dependent, ever full of help, 
Unmoved by fear, by sorrow, and by pain, 
Beneficent, well pleasing, friendly, safe, 
Of good report, acknowledged, and esteemed, 
Free from vainglory, careful, gentle, strong, 
Deliberate, blameless, during to the end." ¹²⁵

'The same author, tacitly accusing the idolatry of the multitude, adds this:

"Poor slave is he who to opinion looks, 
In hope, forsooth, some honour thence to gain." ¹²⁶

'We must not, therefore, any longer think of the divine nature according to the opinion of the multitude: for, as Amphion says in the Antiope:

" Never can I believe that secretly, 
Disguised in fashion of some wicked knave, 
Zeus visited thy bed in human form." ¹²⁷

'But Sophocles writes in straightforward language:

" For this man's mother was by Zeus espoused, 
Not in a shower of gold, nor in disguise 
Of feathered swan, as when he pregnant made 
Fair Leda, but complete in manly form." ¹²⁸

'Then farther down he added:

"Swiftly then the adulterer 
Upon the bridal chamber's threshold stood." ¹²⁹

'After which he still more openly describes the incontinence of Zeus as represented in the fable, in the following manner:

"Then he nor feast, nor lustral water touched, 
But hastened to the couch, with heart deep stung 
By lust, and wantoned there that whole night through." ¹³⁰

'Let these things, however, he left to the follies of the theatres. Heracleitus expressly says: "Men are found incapable of understanding the reason of what is right on each occasion, both before they have heard it, and on hearing it for the first time."

'And Melanippides, the lyric poet, sings thus:

" Hear me, O Father, man's delight, 
Thou ruler of the undying soul." ¹³¹

'Parmenides too, "the Great," as Plato calls him in the Sophist,¹³² writes in the following manner concerning the Deity:

" Many the proofs that show 
The Deity knows neither birth nor death, 
Sole of His kind, complete, immovable." ¹³³

'Moreover, Hesiod says that He is

"Sole king and lord of all the immortal gods, 
With whom no other may in power contend." ¹³⁴

'Nay, further, Tragedy also draws us away from the idols, and teaches us to look up to heaven. For as Hecataeus, who composed the Histories, says in the passage concerning Abraham and the Egyptians, Sophocles openly cries out upon the stage:

"There is in truth One God, and One alone, 
Who made the lofty heavens, and wide-spread earth, 
The sea's blue wave, and might of warring winds. 
But we poor mortals with deceived heart, 
Seeking some solace for our many woes, 
Raised images of gods in stone or bronze, 
Or figures Wrought of gold or ivory; 
And when we crowned their sacrifice, and held 
High festival, we thought this piety." ¹³⁵

'Euripides, too, says in his tragedy upon the same stage:

"Seest thou this boundless ether spread on high, 
With watery arms embracing all the earth? 
Call this thy Zeus, deem this thine only god."  ¹³⁶

'In the drama of Pirithous also the same tragic poet speaks as follows:

" Thee we sing, the Self-begotten, 
Who all nature dost embrace, 
And mid yon bright ether guidest
In her everlasting race. 
Day and dusky night returning 
Deck for Thee heaven's wide expanse: 
Myriad stars for ever burning
Weave round Thee their mystic dance." ¹³⁷ 

'For here he speaks of the Creative mind as " the Self-begotten," and all things that follow are ranked with the cosmos, in which also are the alternations of light and darkness.

Aeschylus also, the son of Euphorion, speaks very solemnly of God:

" Zeus is the bright pure ether, Zeus the earth, 
The heaven, the universe, and all above." ¹³⁸

'I know that Plato adds his testimony to Heracleitus when he writes: " One, the only wise, wills not to be described, and wills to be named Zeus." ¹³⁹ And again, "law is obedience to the will of one." ¹⁴⁰ Also if you should wish to trace back the meaning of the saying, " He that hath ears to hear, let him hear," ¹⁴¹ you would find it explained by the Ephesian thus: " Those who hear without understanding are like deaf persons: the proverb witnesses of them that though present they are absent." ¹⁴²

'But you wish perhaps to hear from the Greeks an express statement of one first cause? Timaeus the Locrian, in his treatise on Nature, will testify for me word for word: "There is one beginning of all things, which is unoriginate: for if it had an origin, it would be no longer a beginning, but that from which it originated would be the beginning." ¹⁴³ For this opinion, which is true, flowed from the passage, " Hear, O Israel, the LORD thy God is One, and Him only shalt thou serve." ¹⁴⁴

"Lo! He is clear to all, from error free,"  ¹⁴⁵

as says the Sibyl.

'Also Xenocrates, the Chalcedonian, by naming " the High and Nether" Zeus,¹⁴⁶ admits an indication of Father and Son. And the strangest thing of all is, that the Deity seems to be known to Homer, who represents the gods as subject to human passions, yet even so does not gain the respect of Epicurus. Homer says at least:

"Achilles, why with active feet pursue, 
Thou mortal, me Immortal? 
Knowest thou not My Godhead? " ¹⁴⁷

'For he has made it clear that the deity cannot be apprehended by a mortal, nor perceived by feet, or hands, or eyes, or by the body at all. "To whom have ye likened the Lord? Or to what likeness have ye compared Him?" ¹⁴⁸ says the Scripture. " Is He an image that a workman made, or did a goldsmith melt gold and spread it over Him? " and the rest.

'The Comic poet Epicharmus also, in his Republic, speaks evidently of the Word (Reason) in this manner:

" Greatest need hath man of Reason and of number in life's ways; 
For in them is our salvation, and by them we mortals live." ¹⁴⁹

Then he adds expressly:  ¹⁵⁰

"Reason is man's guide, to govern and preserve him in the way."

Then:

" Mortal men have use of Reason; Reason also is divine: 
Reason is the gift of nature for man's life and sustenance. 
Reason man's divine attendant guideth him in all his arts: 
Reason is his sole instructor, teaching what is best to do. 
Art is not of man's invention, but a gift that comes from God, 
Man's own reason is the offspring of that Reason all-divine."

'Moreover, the Spirit had cried by the mouth of Esaias, " What is the multitude of your sacrifices unto me? saith the LORD: I am full of the burnt-offerings [of rams], and in the fat of lambs and blood of bulls [and of he-goats] I have no delight"; ¹⁵¹ and added soon after, " Wash you, make you clean, put away your iniquities from your souls." ¹⁵² So Menander, the Comic poet, writes what answers to this in these very words:

"For whosoever brings a sacrifice 
Of countless bulls or kids, O Pamphilus, 
Or aught like these, who works of art designs, 
Vestments of gold or purple, life-like forms 
Graven in emerald or ivory, 
And hopes thereby God's favour may be 
Won He strangely errs, and hath a dullard's mind. 
Man's duty is to help his brother man, 
Nor simple maid nor wedded wife betray. 
Nor steal nor murder for foul lucre's sake. 
Then covet not, dear friend, a needle's thread, 
For God is ever near to watch thy deeds."  ¹⁵³

'" I am a God at hand, and not a God far off. Shall man do aught in secret places, and I not see him?" ¹⁵⁴ So God speaks by Jeremiah. And again Menander, paraphrasing that Scripture, "Offer the sacrifice of righteousness, and put your trust in the LORD," ¹⁵⁵ writes in this way:

                                   "Then, dearest friend, 
Ne'er covet even a pin that is not thine; 
For God in works of righteousness delights, 
And thine own life permits thee to enrich, 
Ploughing the land and toiling night and day. 
Then be thou ever just, and worship God 
With heart as pure as is thy festal robe. 
And if the thunder roll, flee not, my lord, 
For conscious of no guilt thou need'st not fear: 
Since God is watching o'er thee nigh at hand." ¹⁵⁶

"Whilst thou art yet speaking, I will say, Behold, here I am," ¹⁵⁷ saith the Scripture.

'Diphilus again, the Comic poet, discourses of the Judgement somewhat as follows: ¹⁵⁸

"Thinkest thou then, Niceratus, the dead,
Who in this life all luxury enjoyed,
Escaped from God lie hidden from His sight?
There is an eye of Justice that sees all,
And even in Hades we believe there are
Two paths of destiny, one for the just,
The other for the ungodly. If men say
The earth shall hide them both alike for ever,
Go rob, and steal, all right and wrong confound: 
Be not deceived; in Hades judgement waits,
Which God will execute, the Lord of all,
Whose Name so terrible I dare not speak.
He to the sinners length of days accords;
¹⁵⁹ But if a mortal thinks, that day by day
He can do evil, and escape the gods,
In this his wicked thought, though Justice lag
With tardy foot, he shall be caught at last.
¹⁶⁰ All ye who think there is no God, beware!
There is, there is: let then the wicked man
Cease to do ill, and so redeem the time:
Else his just doom he shall at last receive."

'With this the tragedy also agrees in these words:

¹⁶¹ "There comes in after days, there comes a time, 
When you bright golden ether shall pour forth
Her store of fire, until the well-fed flame
All things in heaven and earth shall fiercely burn."

And again soon after it adds:

"And then when all creation is dissolved, 
The sea's last wave shall die upon the shore, 
The bald earth stript of trees, the burning air 
No winged thing shall bear upon its breast; 
When all is lost then all shall be restored."

The like thoughts we shall find also expressed in the Orphic poems, as follows:

"He hides them all, then from his heart again 
With anxious care brings all to gladsome light." ¹⁶²

And if we live a just and holy life throughout, happy are we here, and happier after our departure hence, enjoying blessedness not merely for a time, but enabled to find rest in eternity.

"Sharing with all the gods one hearth, one feast, 
And free from human sorrows, toil, and death." 

So says the philosophic poetry of Empedocles. There is none so great, even in the opinion of the Greeks, as to be above the judgement, nor so small as to be hidden from it. 'The same Orpheus says also this:

" Look to the word divine, keep close to that, 
And guide thereby the deep thoughts of thine heart. 
Walk wisely in the way; and look to none 
Save to the immortal Framer of the world." ¹⁶³ 

And again concerning God, calling Him invisible, he says that He was made known only to one certain person, a Chaldaean by birth, whether he so speaks of Abraham, or of his son, in the following words:

"Save one, a scion of Chaldaean race: 
For he was skilled to mark the sun's bright path, 
And how in even circle round the earth 
The starry sphere on its own axis turns, 
And winds their chariot guide o'er sea and sky." ¹⁶⁴

'Then, as it were paraphrasing the Scripture, " Heaven is my throne, and earth the footstool of my feet," ¹⁶⁵ he adds:

"But God Himself high above heav'n, unmoved, 
Sits on His golden throne; and plants His feet 
On the broad earth; His right hand He extends 
O'er Ocean's farthest bound; the eternal hills 
Tremble in their deep heart, nor can endure 
His mighty power. And still above the heavens 
Alone He sits, and governs all on earth. 
Himself first cause, and means, and end of all. 
Not otherwise dare I to speak of Him: 
In heart and limbs I tremble at the thought, 
How He from heav'n all things in order rules," ¹⁶⁶ 

and the lines that follow these. For herein he has plainly set forth all those prophetic sayings: "Whosoever shall rend the heaven, trembling shall seize him: and from Thee the. mountains shall melt away, as wax melteth from the presence of fire." ¹⁶⁷ Also what is said by the mouth of Esaias: "Who measured the heaven with a span, and all the earth with his fist?" ¹⁶⁸

'Again, when he says:

"Lord of the heavens, of Hades, land, and sea, 
Whose thunders shake Olympus' strong-built dome, 
Whom daemons shuddering flee, and all the gods 
Do fear, and Fates implacable obey. 
Eternal Mother and eternal Sire, 
Whose anger shakes the universal frame, 
Awakes the stormy wind, veils all with clouds, 
And rends with sudden flash the expanse of heav'n. 
At Thy command the stars their changeless course 
In order run. Before Thy fiery throne 
Angels unwearied stand; whose only care 
Is to perform Thy gracious will for man. 
Thine is the Spring new-decked with purple buds, 
The winter Thine, with chilling clouds o'ercast, 
And autumn with its merry vintage Thine." ¹⁶⁹

'Then, expressly calling God the Almighty, he adds:

" Come, then, thou deathless and Immortal Power, 
Whose name none but Immortals can express. 
Mightiest of Gods, whose will is strong as Fate, 
Dreadful art Thou, resistless in Thy might, 
Deathless, and with etherial glory crowned." ¹⁷⁰

So then by the word μητροπάτωρ he not only indicated the creation out of nothing, but gave occasion perhaps to those who introduce the doctrine of emissions to imagine also a consort of God. And he paraphrases the prophetic Scriptures, both that which was spoken by Hosea (Amos): " Lo! I am he that formeth the thunder and createth the wind, whose hands founded the host of heaven":¹⁷¹ and that which was spoken by Moses: " See, see, that it is I, and there is no other god but me. I will kill, and I will make to live: I will wound, and I will heal: and there is none that shall deliver out of my hand." ¹⁷²

" 'Tis He that out of good for mortals brings 
Evil and cruel war," ¹⁷³

according to Orpheus.

'Such also is the saying of Archilochus of Pares:

"Zeus, Father Zeus, the realm of heav'n is thine, 
But knavish and unholy deeds of men 
Scape not thine eye." ¹⁷⁴

'Let Thracian Orpheus again sing for us thus:

                                     "His right hand He extends 
O'er Ocean's farthest bound; and plants His feet 
On the broad earth." ¹⁷⁵

These thoughts are manifestly taken from that passage, "The Lord shall shake inhabited cities, and take the whole world in His hand, as a nest";¹⁷⁶ "The LORD who made the earth by His power," as Jeremiah says, " and established the world by His wisdom." ¹⁷⁷

'Moreover in addition to this Phocylides, calling the angels daemons, shows in the following words that some of them are good and some bad, as we also have been taught that some are apostate:

" But daemons different in kind o'er men 
At various times preside; some to protect 
Mankind from coming evils." ¹⁷⁸

'Well therefore does Philemon also, the Comic poet, exterminate idolatry by these words:

" Fortune is no divinity for us, 
No goddess; only that which of itself 
Happens by chance to each is fortune called." ¹⁷⁹

'Sophocles too, the Tragedian, says:

"Not even the gods have all things at their will, 
Save Zeus, the final and first cause of all." ¹⁸⁰

'Orpheus also says:

" One power, one god, one vast and flaming heav'n, 
One universal frame, wherein revolve 
All things which here we see, fire, water, earth," ¹⁸¹

and the lines that follow.

'Pindar too, the Lyric poet, breaks out as it were in transport, saying expressly:

" What then is God? The All." ¹⁸²

'And again:

" God, who for mortals all things makes,
(Gives also grace to song)." ¹⁸³

'Also when he says:

"Why hope in wisdom to excel 
Thy brother man? It is not well 
For mortals here on earth 
With minds of human birth 
The counsels of the gods to scan." ¹⁸⁴

He has drawn his thought from the passage: " Who hath known the mind of the LORD? Or who hath been His counsellor?" ¹⁸⁵

'Moreover Hesiod agrees with what has been said above in writing thus:

"Of men on earth no prophet so inspired 
Can know the mind of aegis-bearing Zeus." ¹⁸⁶

With good reason, therefore, does the Athenian Solon himself follow Hesiod, when he writes:

"The Immortals' mind is all unknown to men."  ¹⁸⁷

'Again, as Moses had foretold that the woman because of the transgression should bring forth children to pain and sorrow, a certain poet of no little distinction writes:

" Never by day from labour and distress 
By night from groaning shall they cease; so hard 
The cares and troubles which the gods shall give." ¹⁸⁸

'Moreover Homer shows that God is just, when he says:

"The Eternal Father hung His golden scales aloft." ¹⁸⁹

And Menander, the Comic poet, interprets God's, goodness, when he says:

" By every man from moment of his birth 
A friendly genius stands, life's mystic guide. 
No evil daemon he (forbid the thought!), 
With power malign to mar thy happy lot." ¹⁹⁰

And then he adds:

" Ἅπαντα δ' ἀγαθὸν εἶναι τὸν Θεόν,"

meaning either "that every god is good," or, what is the truer meaning, " that in all things God is good."

'Again, Aeschylus, the Tragic poet, in setting forth the power of God does not hesitate to call Him the Most High in the following passage:

"Set God apart from mortals in thy thought, 
Nor deem that, like thyself, He too is flesh. 
Thou know'st. Him not: as fire He now appears. 
A mighty force, now water, now dark storm. 
Again in likeness of the beasts He comes, 
Of wind, or lightning, thunder, cloud, or rain. 
The seas, and sea-girt rocks, the springing wells, 
The gathering floods, obey His sovereign will. 
The pillars of the earth, the vast abyss 
Of Ocean, and the mountain-tops do shake, 
If the dread Master's eye but look on them: 
So glorious is the power of God Most High." ¹⁹¹

Does it not seem to you that he is paraphrasing that passage: " At the presence of the LORD the earth trembles." ¹⁹²

'Besides this, the chief prophet Apollo is compelled, in testimony to the glory of God, to say of Athena, when the Medes were marching against Greece, that she entreated and supplicated Zeus for Attica. And the oracle is as follows:

"Pallas with many words and counsel wise 
May pray, but ne'er appease Olympian Zeus. 
For he to the consuming fire will give 
The shrines of many gods, who now perchance 
Stand bathed in chilling sweat, and shake with fear," ¹⁹³

and so forth.

[CLEMENT] 'Thearidas, in his book On Nature, writes, "The first cause of things that exist, the real and true cause, is one. For that is in the beginning one and alone." ¹⁹⁴

"There is none other save the mighty King," ¹⁹⁵

as Orpheus says. And with him the Comic poet Diphilus agrees in a very sententious manner, when he says:

"Him never cease to honour and adore, 
Father of all, sole source of every good." ¹⁹⁶

'With good reason, therefore, Plato trains "the noblest natures to attain that learning which in the former part of our discussion we declared to be the highest, both to discern the good and to make the great ascent." ¹⁹⁷ "This then, as it seems, would be no mere turning of an oyster-shell, but the conversion of a soul passing from a kind 'of darkness visible' to the true upward path of being, which we shall call true philosophy";¹⁹⁸ and those who have partaken thereof he judges to belong to the golden race, when he says, "Ye are doubtless all brethren";¹⁹⁹ but those who are of the golden race can judge most accurately, and in every way. . . . ²⁰⁰

'Instinctively, therefore, and without teaching, all things derive from all a conception of the Father and Maker of all, things inanimate by suffering with the animal creation, and of living beings those which are already immortal by working in the light of day, and of those still mortal some (perceive Him) in fear while carried by their mother in the womb, but others by independent reasoning. And of mankind both Greeks and Barbarians all have this conception; and nowhere is there any race either of husbandmen or of shepherds, nay not even of the dwellers in cities, who can live without being prepossessed by the belief in that higher power. Wherefore every nation of the east, and every one that touches the western shores, the northern also, and all upon the south, have one and the same presentiment of Him who established the government of the world, inasmuch as the most universal of His operations have pervaded all things alike.

'Much more did the inquisitive philosophers among the Greeks, by an impulse from the Barbarian philosophy, ascribe the pre-eminence to the One invisible most mighty and most skilful chief cause of all things most beautiful, without understanding the consequences of this, unless they were instructed by us, nay, not even understanding how God Himself is naturally to be conceived, but only, as we have said many times already, in a true but indirect way.'

So far Clement. But since the Philosophy of Plato was shown by us at some length to be in very many things in agreement with the doctrines of the Hebrews (for which we admire the man's wisdom and his candour also in regard to the truth), it is time to consider what the points are in which, as we say, we are no longer so favourably disposed towards him, but prefer that which is accounted the Barbarian philosophy to his.

CHAPTER XIV

THE oracles of the Hebrews containing prophecies and responses of a divine power beyond that of man, and claiming God as their author, and confirming their promise by the prediction of things to come, and by the results corresponding to the prophecies, are said to be free from all erroneous thought. For instance, 'the words of God are declared to be pure words, and silver tried in the fire, tested by earth, purified seven times.' ²⁰¹

But not such are the words of Plato, nor yet of any other of the wise among men, who with the eyes of mortal thought and with feeble guesses and comparisons, as in a dream, and not awake, attained to a notion of the nature of all things, but superadded to the truth of nature a large admixture of falsehood, so that one can find in them no learning free from error.

Now, for example, if you would suppress a little of this self-admiration, and contemplate the true light itself by the faculty of reason, you would perceive that even that wonderful philosopher, who alone of all the Greeks touched the threshold of truth, dishonours the name of the gods by applying it to perishable matter and carved images fashioned by mechanic hands into a human shape; and after the lofty height of his magniloquence, wherein he contended that he knew the Father and Maker of this universe, is thrust down from his place on high among the supramundane circles, and sinks with the common people of Athens into the lowest depth of their God-detested idolatry; so that he does not shrink from saying that Socrates had gone down to the Peiraeus to pray to the goddess, and to see his fellow citizens then for the first time celebrating their barbarous festival; acknowledging also that he had enjoined the offering of a cock to Aesculapius, and regarded as a god the ancestral prophet of the Greeks, the daemon who sits enshrined at Delphi.

Wherefore also the blame of the superstitious delusion of the unphilosophical multitude might with good reason be ascribed to him. Take up again for instance his discourse a little farther back, and after his incorporeal and imperishable 'ideas,' and after a first god and a second cause, and after intelligent and immortal essences, observe what kind of laws the all-wise philosopher would enact concerning the belief of the common people, speaking thus: ²⁰²

[PLATO] 'To tell of the other divinities and to learn their origin is beyond us; but we must give credence to those who have spoken in former times, who being, as they said, the offspring of gods, had, I suppose, a clear knowledge of their own ancestors. It is impossible therefore to disbelieve children of the gods, even though they speak without certain or probable proofs: but as they assert that they are reporting family histories, we must in obedience to the law believe them.

'On their authority then let the origin of these gods be as follows and so stated. The children of Earth and Heaven were Oceanus and Tethys; and their children Phorcys and Kronos and Rhea, and all the others with them: and of Kronos and Rhea came Zeus and Hera, and all whom we know as their reputed brethren, and still others who were their offspring.'

For these reasons then we must give up the great philosopher, as having misrepresented the fabulous theogonies of the poets, not like a philosopher, nor in a self-consistent manner. For you had the opportunity of hearing himself speak in the Republic as follows: ²⁰³

'In the greater fables, said I, we shall also discern the less: for there must be the same type, and the same tendency in both the greater and the less: do you not think so?

'Yes, I do, said he: but I do not even understand which you call the greater.

'Those, said I, which Hesiod and Homer and the other poets told us: for they, I suppose, were the composers of fictitious tales, which they told and still tell to mankind'; meaning the stories which we have quoted a little above.

Again there was that passage of his in which he said, ²⁰⁴

'We shall begin then, said I, with the following verse, and strike out it and all that are like it:

" Fain would I serve some master in the field," ²⁰⁵

and the rest; also the passage wherein he adds: ²⁰⁶

'Once more then we shall entreat Homer and the other poets not to represent Achilles, the son of a goddess,

" Now turning on his side, and now again 
Upon his back," ²⁰⁷

and the rest that follows. To this he adds: ²⁰⁸

'Or to say that Zeus, while all the other gods and men were asleep, and he alone awake, lightly forgot all the plans he had devised, through the eagerness of desire, and was so smitten at sight of Hera that he would not even wait to go into his chamber, but wished to lie with her there on the ground like a lark, and said that he was possessed by a stronger passion than even when they first used to meet "without the knowledge of their dear parents." ²⁰⁹ Nor shall we admit the tale of Ares and Aphrodite being bound by Hephaestus for acts of the same kind!'

And then after having told these tales in such a manner, what does he mean in the saying which comes after, by calling the poets 'children of the gods,' ²¹⁰ and asserting that 'to disbelieve them is impossible,' although he protested that they had invented the fictitious stories about the gods 'without necessary or probable proofs'?

And what is the meaning of this unreasonable belief, put forward in fear of punishment from the laws? And how can Uranus and Ge be first of the gods, then their offspring Oceanus and Tethys, and after all these Kronos, and Rhea, and Zeus, and Hera, and all their sons and brothers and descendants mentioned in fables by Homer and Hesiod, when he was refuting these very stories by speaking thus: ²¹¹

'The fault, said I, which we ought to reprove before all and above all, especially if a man lies in unseemly fashion.

'What fault is that?

'When a man in his discourse concerning gods and heroes misrepresents their nature, just as when an artist paints what is not at all like the things which he may wish to imitate.'

And again: ²¹²

'In the first place, said I, it was no seemly lie that was told by the author of that greatest lie about the greatest gods, how Uranus wrought what Hesiod says he did, ²¹³ and how Kronos took revenge upon him,' and what follows this.

But how could the same poets who are here called false and untruthful be spoken of on the other hand as offspring of the gods? However, for these reasons we must abandon this philosopher, as having through fear of death played false with the Athenian democracy: but must honour Moses, and the Hebrew oracles, as everywhere shining out from the one true religion that is free from error. Look then at another point.

CHAPTER XV

THE Hebrews say that the intermediate nature of rational beings is generated and not without beginning. And in their account they distinguish this nature into intelligent beings whom they call spirits, and powers, and God's ministering angels and archangels: and from their fall and transgression they derive the race of daemons, and the whole species of the adverse and wicked agency.

For which reason they forbid us to regard as gods those who are not possessed of virtue and goodness as inseparable from their nature, but have received their very existence not from themselves but from the Cause of all, and also acquire their well-being, and their virtue, and their immortality itself not in the same manner as either He who is God over all, or He by whom all things were made.

But Plato although, like the Hebrews, he supposes the rational natures to be incorporeal and intelligible essences, yet falls away from consistency, by first asserting that they, as well as every soul, are unoriginated, and then saying that they were formed out of an effluence of the First Cause. For he does not mean to admit that they have arisen out of nothing.

Wherefore also he supposes that there is a numerous race of gods, assuming in his argument certain effluences and emissions of the First and Second Causes: and that they are in nature good and in no way capable of departing from their proper virtue, whence also he supposes them to be gods.

But the tribe of daemons he believes to be different from these, as being capable of baseness and wickedness, and change for the worse: and some of these are called, and are, good and some evil. But while he thus makes these suppositions contrary to the Hebrew doctrines, he does not explain from what source it may reasonably be said that the daemons arose.

For that they arose from the matter of the corporeal elements no one in his senses would assert: for this matter is irrational, but rational things can never be born of an irrational, and the daemons are rational. If, however, these come from an effluence of the greater gods, how then are they not themselves gods as much as those who have begotten them? And how if the source is good are the things which flow from it not like it? And whence in these latter did a shoot of wickedness grow up, if the root comes originally from good and passes through good? Of how can bitter come from the sweet?

If then the race of the wicked daemons is worse than any darkness and any bitterness, how can it be said to come from an effluence of the nature of the better powers? If it was from this, it would not have turned aside from its proper lot: and if it has been changed, then it was not at first impassible in its nature: and if it was not such, how then could they be gods who are capable of participating in an evil destiny?

If, however, they were neither from the effluence of the better powers, nor yet from the matter of the corporeal elements, we must now either say that they were unoriginated, and must set over against God in addition to the unoriginated matter of the corporeal elements a third group of unoriginated rational beings, thus no longer representing God as being the Maker of all, and Framer of the Universe, or, if we admit this, we must also admit that He made the non-existent, according to the statements of the Hebrews,

For what do these teach on this subject? They say that the intermediate nature of rational beings arose neither from the matter of the corporeal elements, nor from an effluence of the essence which is unbegotten and ever remains in the same mode and relations; but that having no previous existence it has come into being by the effective power of the Cause of all.

And thus they are no gods, nor have been properly dignified with the title, because they are not equalized in nature with their Maker, nor have goodness inseparably attached to them, like God, but sometimes would even admit the contrary to that which is good through disregard of that study of the higher power, which everyone has wrought out for himself, who is by nature master of his own movement and purpose. So much then for this subject; and now let us pass to another.

CHAPTER, XVI

PLATO, although he agreed with the Hebrews in supposing the soul immortal, and saying that it was like unto God, no longer follows them when he sometimes says that its essence is composite, as if involving a certain part of the indivisible and immutable Cause, and a part of the divisible nature belonging to bodies.

He speaks, for instance, in the Timaeus in these very words: ²¹⁴

[PLATO] 'But to the soul, as a mistress to rule over a subject, He gave priority and precedence over the body both in origin and excellence, and made her out of the following constituents and in the following manner. Of the indivisible and ever immutable essence, and of the other divisible essence belonging to bodies, He compounded a third intermediate species of essence out of both the nature of 'the same' and the nature of 'the other,' and in this way set it midway between the indivisible part and the divisible part which belongs to bodies. And he took the three, as they now were, and mingled them all together into one "idea," and as the nature of "the other" was hard to combine, he fitted it by force into "the same."'

Hence also he has naturally connected the passible part with the rational part of the essence. But though at one time he has given this decision concerning the essence of soul, at another he involves it in a different and worse absurdity, by declaring that the divine and heavenly essence, which is incorporeal and rational and like unto God, and which by virtue of its great excellence soars above the celestial circles, comes down from above out of the supramundane regions upon asses, and wolves, and ants, and bees, and calls upon us to believe this account without any proof.

He speaks accordingly in the discourse Concerning the Soul as follows: ²¹⁵

'So they continue to wander until, by the craving of that corporeal nature which still accompanies them, they are again imprisoned in a body: and probably they are imprisoned in animals of such moral nature as the habits which they may themselves happen to have followed in life.

'What kind of natures do you mean, Socrates?

'For example, those who have practised gluttony, and wantonness, and drunkenness, and have taken no good heed, probably sink into the class of asses and other beasts of that kind: do you not think so?

'Yes, what you say is quite probable.

'And those who have preferred a course of injustice and tyranny and plunder go into the classes of wolves, and hawks, and kites: or whither else should we say that such souls go?

'Certainly into such as these, said Cebes.

'Well then, said he, as to the other cases it is evident what way each soul will go, according to the affinities of their habits.

'Quite evident, said he, for how could it be otherwise?

'Well then, said he, are not the happiest among them and those who pass into the best place the men who have practised the civil and political virtue which is called temperance and justice, produced by habit and attention, without the aid of philosophy and intellect?

'How now are these the happiest?

'Because it is probable that these pass again into some social and gentle race, of bees perhaps or wasps or ants, or even back again into the human race itself.'

In the Phaedrus also hear how he discourses: ²¹⁶

'For to the same state from which each soul has come she does not attain within ten thousand years; for before this time none grows wings except the soul of the guileless philosopher, or of the philosophic lover. These in the third period of a thousand years, if they have chosen this life thrice successively, so get their wings and fly away in the three-thousandth year. But the others receive judgement when they have finished their first life: and after judgement some go to the houses of correction beneath the earth and suffer punishment, and others, lifted by the judgement to some place in heaven, live in a manner worthy of the life which they lived in human form. But in the thousandth year both good and evil souls come to an allotment and choice of their second life, and choose whichever each may wish. And there both a human soul may pass into the life of a beast, and from a beast he who was once a man may pass back into a man again.'

This is what he says in the Phaedrus; but now listen to him writing in the Republic in the following style: ²¹⁷

'For he said that he saw the soul which was once that of Orpheus choosing the life of a swan, out of hatred of the female sex, because he had been killed by them, and would not be conceived and born of woman. Then he saw the soul of Thamyras choose the life of a nightingale: he saw also a swan changing and making choice of a man's life, and other musical animals in like manner, as was natural. And the soul that gained the twentieth lot chose a lion's life; and it was the soul of Ajax, son of Telamon, which shrank from becoming a man because he remembered the judgement concerning the arms.

'And the soul of Agamemnon which came next, and also hated the human race because of his sufferings, changed for the life of an eagle. The soul of Atalanta, whose lot was about the middle, having observed the great honours of an athlete, could not pass by without choosing that life. Next after her he saw the soul of Epeius, the son of Panopeus, passing into the nature of a female artist. Far off among the hindmost he saw the soul of Thersites, the buffoon, entering into an ape.

'The soul of Odysseus, having by chance obtained the last lot of all, came forward to choose; and having been cured of ambition by remembrance of his former troubles, went about for a long time seeking for the life of a private person free from business, and with difficulty found one lying somewhere neglected by all the rest, and when he saw it he said that he would have done the same even if he had gained the first lot, and so chose it gladly. Of the other animals also some in like manner passed into men and into one another, the unjust changing into the savage, and the just into the gentle, and formed all kinds of mixtures.'

In these discourses concerning the soul it is evident that Plato is following the Egyptian doctrines: for his statement is not that of the Hebrews, since it is not in accordance with truth. There is, however, no occasion to refute this, because he did not himself attempt the problem in the way of demonstration. But thus much one may reasonably remark, that it was not consistent for the same person to say that at the moment of decease the souls of the ungodly departing hence suffer in Hades the just penalties of their deeds, and there undergo eternal punishment, and then to assert that they choose again their modes of life here according to their own will.

For he says that they become imprisoned in a body through desire of what is bodily; and that some of them who have been reared in wantonness and gluttony become asses, and enter into the bodies of other beasts, choosing them at will and not according to just desert; and the unjust and rapacious become wolves, and kites, having entered into this nature of their own accord. Then he says that the soul of Orpheus wished to be a swan; and the soul of Thamyras chose the life of a nightingale, and Thersites that of an ape.

But where then would be that judgement after their departure hence, which he describes in the dialogue On the Soul, saying: ²¹⁸

'When the deceased have arrived at the place to which each is brought by his daemon, . . . then those who may be thought to have lived an ordinary life proceed to Acheron, and having embarked in such vessels as there are for them, they arrive in these at the lake; and there they dwell, and are purged and punished for their crimes, and so absolved from any offence which each has committed: and for their good deeds they receive rewards each according to his desert. But any who may be thought to be incurable because of the greatness of their sins, having perpetrated either many great acts of sacrilege or many wicked and lawless murders, or any other crimes of this kind, these, I say, are cast by their suitable destiny into Tartarus, whence they never come out.

Thus he described the fate of the ungodly; and now hear how he speaks of the pious: ²¹⁹

'And of this class those who have thoroughly purified themselves by philosophy live for the time to come altogether free from troubles, and attain to abodes still more beautiful than the former, to describe which is neither easy, nor is the time at present sufficient.'

In the Gorgias also observe what he says: ²²⁰

'The man who has lived a just and holy life departs after death to the Islands of the Blessed, and there dwells in perfect happiness beyond the reach of ills. But he who has lived an unjust and godless life goes to the prison-house of vengeance and punishment, which they call Tartarus, . . . and whoever may have committed the worst misdeeds, and because of such crimes have become incurable, of these the examples are made. And, being incurable, they receive no more benefit themselves; but others receive benefit, who see them for their great sins enduring the most painful and terrible sufferings for all time, hung up simply as examples there in the prison-house in Hades, a spectacle and warning to the wicked who are continually arriving.' ²²¹

How can this agree with the statements concerning an exchange of bodies, which the soul, they say, seeks after and chooses? For how can the same soul after its departure hence endure tortures, and prisons, and all this punishment for ever, and on the other hand as one released and free from bonds choose whatever modes of life it will? And if it were likely to choose again the life of pleasure, where then is the prison-house of vengeance and punishment? At leisure one might attack the argument at a thousand other points, on the thought of which there is no time to enlarge.

So the first error in Plato's opinion on this subject has been thus detected; but the second slip in the exposition of his doctrine, wherein he laid down that one part of the soul is divine and rational and another part of it irrational and passible, has been condemned even by his own friends, as one may learn from statements of the following kind: ²²²

CHAPTER XVII

[SEVERUS] 'WITH regard to the soul as described by Plato, which he says was composed by God of an impassible and a passible essence, as some intermediate colour from white and black, this is what we have to say, that when in time a separation of them takes place the soul must necessarily disappear, like the composition of the intermediate colour, when each of its constituents is naturally separated in time into its proper colour. But if this is so we shall show the soul to be perishable and not immortal.

'For if this is admitted, that nothing in nature is without its opposite, and that all things in the world have been arranged by God out of the nature of these opposites, He having impressed upon them a friendship and communion, as of dry with moist, and hot with cold, heavy with light, white with black, sweet with bitter, hard with soft, and on all qualities of this kind one other combination including them all, and then upon the impassible essence a combination with the passible, and if the combined and mingled elements naturally in time undergo a separation from each other, and if it is to be assumed that the soul has been produced out of an impassible and a passible essence, then, in the same way as the intermediate colour, so also this must naturally disappear in time, when the opposite elements in its composition press towards their proper nature.

'For do we not see that what is naturally heavy, even though it be lifted up by us, or by any natural lightness being added to it from without, presses down as before in its own natural direction? How in like manner also that which is by nature light, if borne downward by similar external causes, presses upward itself as before? For things which have been combined into one out of two mutual opposites cannot possibly remain always in the same state, unless there is always in them some third kind of natural substance.

'But soul in fact is not any third thing compounded of two mutual opposites, but simple and in its sameness of nature impassible and incorporeal: whence Plato and his School said that it was immortal.

'Since, however, it is a doctrine common to all that man is made of soul and body, and the motions which take place within us apart from the body, whether voluntary or involuntary, are said to be affections of the soul, most of the philosophers, guessing hereby that its substance is passible, say that it is mortal and of a corporeal nature, not incorporeal. But Plato was driven to interweave the passible element with its naturally impassible essence. That neither, however, is the case we shall endeavour to demonstrate by arguing from what Plato and the others have severally said, and explaining the powers which operate within us.'

Let this suffice for my quotation from Severus the Platonist On the Soul.

But in addition to what has been already said consider also the following point in regard to the origin of heaven and the luminaries therein.

CHAPTER XVIII

PLATO agrees with the Hebrews in the account which he gives of the heaven and its phenomena, according to which it was settled that they have had a beginning, as having been made by the Author of the universe, and that they partake of the corporeal and perishable substance; but he no longer agrees with the Hebrews when he enacts a law that men should worship them and believe them to be gods, speaking thus in the Epinomis:²²³

[PS.-PLATO] 'Whom then, O Megillus and Cleinias, do I ever with reverence speak of as god? Heaven, I suppose, which it is most right for us, like all others, daemons as well as gods, to honour, and to pray especially to it: and that it has also been the author of all other blessings to us all men would agree.'

Then lower down in the same work he adds this: ²²⁴

'But of the visible gods, who are the greatest and most honourable, and have the keenest sight in all directions, the first we must declare to be the nature of the stars, and all things that we perceive to have been created with them; and next to these and under them the daemons in order, and, as occupying a third and intermediate abode, an aerial race acting as our interpreters, whom we ought to honour much with prayers for the sake of their favourable intervention.'

Having hereby declared that the aforesaid beings are gods, he gives in the Timaeus a physical explanation of their original constitution, in the following description: ²²⁵

[PLATO] '(Having arranged that) as fire is to air, so is air to water, and as air to water, so is water to earth, of these He combined and constituted a visible and tangible heaven. And for these reasons and out of these elements, such as I have described, being four in number, the body of the world was formed in harmony by due proportion, and from them gained a friendliness such that after having coalesced in itself it became indissoluble by any other except the author of its combination.'

Then he adds: ²²⁶

'And in the centre of it He set a soul, which He not only spread throughout, but also wrapped it round the body on the outside, and so formed one single and solitary heaven as a circle revolving in a circle.'

And again lower down he says in addition: ²²⁷

'In accordance then with reason and this purpose of God for the birth of time, that time might begin, sun, and moon, and five other luminaries, which are surnamed planets, have been created in order to define and preserve the reckonings of time: and, after having made their several bodies, God set them in the orbits traversed by the revolution of "the other." '

Also he adds: ²²⁸

'And the bodies bound together by animated bonds became living beings, and learned the law appointed for them.'

In the tenth Book also of the Laws he gives a general explanation concerning every kind of soul, speaking as follows: ²²⁹

'All things, however, that partake of soul are subject to change, as possessing in themselves the cause of change. And when they have changed they move on in the order and law of their destiny: if they have made only small change in their moral characters, they make small changes of place on the surface of the ground; but if they have fallen away more frequently and culpably, they pass into the abyss.'

So then if 'all things which partake of soul are liable to change, as possessing the cause of change in themselves,' and if heaven, and sun, and moon are, according to Plato himself, partakers of soul, then these also must change, 'as possessing the cause of change in themselves,' according to his statement. How then does he say on the other hand that they are eternal and therefore gods, although existing in a mortal body, and liable to be dissolved? At least he says again in the Timaeus: ²³⁰

'When therefore all gods, both those which are visible in their revolutions and those which appear only as far as they choose, had been created, the author of this universe spake to them as follows:

'Ye gods and sons of gods, the works whereof I am the creator and father, are indissoluble save by My will. Therefore though all that is bound may be dissolved, yet only an evil being would wish to dissolve that which is well composed and in right condition. Wherefore also since ye have come into existence, though ye are not altogether immortal nor indissoluble, nevertheless ye shall not be dissolved nor incur the fate of death, since in My will ye have found a still stronger and more valid bond than those by which ye were bound together at the time of your creation.'

So speaks Plato. With good reason therefore do Moses and the Hebrew oracles forbid to worship these and to regard them as gods; but leading us upward to the God who is King of all, the very creator of sun and moon and stars and the whole heaven and world, who by a divine word combined and fitted all things together, he bids us by his law to believe in Him alone as God, and to ascribe the honour of worship to Him only, saying, 'Lest, when thou see the sun and moon and all the stars and all the host of heaven, thou be deceived and worship them.' ²³¹

This command is interpreted and explained at large by Philo, the man so learned in the affairs of the Hebrews, speaking thus word for word: ²³²

[PHILO] 'Some supposed that sun and moon and the other luminaries are gods of absolute power, to whom they attributed the causes of all things that are made. But Moses thought that the world was both created, and was the greatest of all States, having rulers and subjects, the rulers being all in heaven, such as are planets and fixed stars, and the subjects being the natures beneath the moon, in the air, and near the earth.

'But the so-called rulers, he thought, were not independent, but deputies of one universal Father, by imitating whose superintendence they succeed in ruling every thing in creation in accordance with justice and law. But they who did not discern Him who sits as charioteer ascribed the causes of all things which are done in the world to those who are yoked under Him, as if they worked independently. But the most sacred Lawgiver changes their ignorance into knowledge, when He speaks thus: ''Lest, when thou beholdest the sun and the moon and the stars and all the host of heaven, thou be deceived and worship them." ²³³

'With well-directed aim and nobly did he call the acceptance of the above-mentioned as gods a deception. For they saw that the seasons of the year, in which the generations of animals and plants and fruits are brought to completion in definite periods, of time are settled by the advance and retreat of the Sun; they saw also that the Moon as handmaid and successor of the Sun had taken up by night the care and superintendence of the same as the Sun by day, and that the other luminaries in accordance with their sympathy towards things terrestrial were working and doing countless services for the permanence of the whole; and so they fell into an endless delusion in supposing that these were the only gods.

'Whereas if they had been attentive to walk by the unerring path they would have learned at once that in the same way as sense is the servant of mind, so also were all who can be perceived by sense made ministers of Him whom mind alone can perceive.'

Also he further says: ²³⁴

'So having transcended by reason all visible being, let us go on to the dignity of Him who is without bodily form and invisible, and can be apprehended by thought alone, who is not only the God of the worlds both of thought and sense, but also the Creator of all things. But if any one assign the worship of the Eternal Maker to another younger and begotten being, let him be written down as a madman and guilty of the greatest impiety.'

These are the truly genuine and divine teachings of the Hebrew religion which we have preferred to their vain philosophy. Why need I enlarge further, and bring to light the other errors of Plato, when it is easy from what has been already said to guess also what points I have now passed over in silence? It was not, however, for the sake of accusing him that I was led to speak of these things, since for my part I very greatly admire the man, and esteem him as a friend above all the Greeks, and honour him as one whose sentiments are dear and congenial to myself, although not the same throughout; but I wished to show in what his intelligence falls short in comparison with Moses and the Hebrew prophets.

And yet to one prepared to find fault it were easy to pass censure on countless points, such as his solemn and sapient regulations with regard to women in the Republic, or such as his fine phrases about unnatural love in the Phaedrus. If, however, you desire to listen to these subjects also, take and read his utterances which follow: ²³⁵

CHAPTER XIX

[PLATO] 'PERHAPS now, said I, many points connected with our present subject will appear more than usually ridiculous, if they are to be carried out as described.

'Certainly, said he.

'What then, said I, is the most ridiculous thing that you see in them? Is it not, of course, that the women are to practise gymnastics naked in the palaestra with the men, and not only the young women but even the elder also; just as the old men in the gymnasia, when though wrinkled and not pleasing in appearance, they nevertheless love to practise gymnastics.'

And next he adds: ²³⁶

'But the man who laughs at the women taking exercise naked for the best of purposes, as though forsooth he were "reaping fruit of wisdom" ²³⁷ in his laughter, seems not even to know at what he is laughing.'

He says also in the seventh Book of the Laws: ²³⁸

'It will therefore evidently be necessary for the boys and girls to learn dancing and gymnastics; and there will be dancing-masters for the boys and mistresses for the girls, that they may go through the exercise with the greater advantage.'

He also writes therein as follows: ²³⁹

'Again, I suppose, our virgin Queen, who delighted in the practice of the dance, did not think fit to play with empty hands, but to be arrayed in full armour and so perform the dance: an example which most surely it would become both youths and maidens alike to imitate.'

He also enacts a law that women should even go to war, in the following words: ²⁴⁰

'And in all these schools teachers of the several subjects, being resident foreigners, should be induced by payments to give fill instructions relating to war to those who come as pupils, and all relating to music, not merely to one who may come at his father's wish, while another, without such wish, neglects his education; but, as the saying is, every man and boy, as far as possible, must receive compulsory education, as belonging more to the State than to their parents. All the same rules my law would enjoin for women as much as for men, that the females also should practise the same exercises. And neither as to horsemanship nor gymnastics should I have any fear in making this statement, that, though becoming to men, it would not be becoming to women.'

And again a little lower down he says: ²⁴¹

'Let us consider as gymnastics all bodily exercises relating to war, in archery, and in throwing all kinds of missiles, and the use of the target, and all fighting in heavy armour, and tactical evolutions, and all kinds of marching, camps and encamping, and all instructions pertaining to horsemanship. For there must be public teachers of all these arts, earning pay from the State, and their pupils, all the boys and men in the city and girls and women, must be skilled in all these matters; having while still girls practised every kind of dancing and fighting in heavy armour, and as women having applied themselves to evolutions, and tactics, and grounding and taking up arms.'

But neither to these rules would the Hebrew doctrine assent, but would assert the very opposite, ascribing success in war not even to the strength of men, much less to that of women, but attributing all to God and to His aid in battle. And so it says: 'Except the Lord build the house, their labour is but lost that build it. Except the Lord keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain.' ²⁴²

But observe how the wonderful philosopher also brings the women into the gymnastic contests, speaking thus: ²⁴³

'But as to women, let girls who are still young contend naked in the foot-race, and double course, and horse-race, and long race on the race-course itself: but those of thirteen years are to go on until their union in marriage, but not beyond twenty years nor less than eighteen; and they must come down to contend in these races clothed in befitting dress.

'So let these be our rules of racing for both men and women. But as to trials of strength, instead of wrestling and all such contests which now are severe, let there be fighting in armour, both single combats, and two against two.'

And next, after saying, ²⁴⁴

'So also we must call to our aid those who excel in fighting in armour, and bid them help us to frame the like laws,'

he adds these words: ²⁴⁵

'Let also the same laws be in force in regard to the females until the time of marriage.'

Then after having appended immediately to these laws those concerning the training of peltasts and the pancratium, and archery, and throwing stones from the hand and with a sling, and concerning the horserace, here again he adds these words concerning the females:

'But it is not right to force females by laws and ordinances to participate in these contests; if, however, just from their former training passing into a habit their natural, constitution without inconvenience allows children or maidens to take part, we must permit it and not blame them.' ²⁴⁶

So far the laws of Plato concerning women. But the following extraordinary law is also his: ²⁴⁷

'If any have left female children, let the judge go back through brothers and brothers' sons, first on the male side, and afterwards on the female, in one and the same family: and let him judge by examination the fitness or unfitness of the time for marriage, inspecting the males naked, and the females naked as far as the navel.'

Moreover at the festivals he says that they must dance naked, speaking in the sixth Book of the Laws as follows: ²⁴⁸

'For this so serious purpose therefore they ought to perform their sports and dance together youths and maidens, both seeing and being seen within bounds of reason and of a certain age implying suitable causes, both sexes being naked so far as sober modesty in each permits.'

In addition to all this hear also the following passages in the Republic on the law that the women should be in common: ²⁴⁹

'This law, said I, and the others which went before have, I suppose, the following law as their consequence.

'What is that?

'These women must all be common to all these men, and none live with any man as his own: and the children too must be common, and neither any parent know his own offspring, nor any child his father.'

Next he adds: ²⁵⁰

'It is probable, said he. You therefore, said I, as their lawgiver will select the women as well as the men, and, as far as possible assign those who are of like nature: and they, as having houses and meals in common, and none possessing anything of this kind privately, will of course be together, and being mixed up together both in the gymnasia and in their general mode of life will be led, I suppose, by the necessity of nature to intercourse with each other. Or do you think that what I say will not necessarily occur?

'Not by any mathematical necessity, said he, but by constraints of love, which are likely to be keener than the other kind in persuading and drawing the mass of mankind.'

But some one perhaps will explain the meaning of these passages in a different way, and will say that they do not suggest what is commonly supposed; since he does not say that all the women without distinction are to be in common, so that wantonness may be allowed to every chance-comer, but that the assignment of them among the men is to lie in the power of the magistrates. For they are to be common in the same way as one may say that the public money is common, being distributed to the proper persons by those who are entrusted with it. Suppose then that this is so.

But what would you say on learning that he also bids them not to bring forth into light what they conceive, speaking as follows? ²⁵¹

'For a woman, said I, let the law be that beginning from the twentieth year she should bear children for the State until the fortieth year: and for a man, after he has passed the most vigorous prime of his course, henceforward to beget children for the State until his fifty-fifth year.'

After which he says: ²⁵²

'But when both the women and the men, I suppose, have passed the age for begetting children, we shall let them go free perhaps to have intercourse with whomsoever they please.'

And he adds: ²⁵³

'Having strictly charged them, if possible, to bring forth no embryo to light, if such there should be; but should any force its way, to deal with it on the understanding that there is no maintenance for such a child.'

Such are his directions concerning the conduct of women: and concerning unnatural love [for which he makes a long apology----ED.], how unlike are his sentiments to those of Moses, who in laws expressly contrary pronounces with loud voice the fit sentence against sodomites.

Why need we still urge the charge that this most wise philosopher after acquitting such sinners, against whom he did not think it fit to prescribe sentence of death, directs in his Laws that the slave who failed to give information of a treasure discovered by another should be punished with death. But that you may not suspect me of bearing false witness, listen also to what follows: ²⁵⁴

CHAPTER XXI

'WHATEVER answer the god may give in regard to the property and the man who removed it, that let the city execute in obedience to the oracles of the god. And if the informer be a free man, let him have the reputation of goodness; but if he fail to inform, of baseness. But if he be a slave, the informer may rightly be made free by the city, on payment of his value to his master; but if he fail to give information, let him be punished by death.'

Here again the punishment of death is enacted not against the man who has purloined some forbidden property, but against him who failed to inform against another who had done wrong: and in another case too he declares a master free from guilt if he kill his own slave in anger. He says in fact: ²⁵⁵

'If he have killed a slave of his own, let him undergo purification; but if he have killed another man's slave in anger, let him pay the owner twofold for the loss.'

Listen also to this passage of the laws which he enacted in regard to murderers: ²⁵⁶

'If therefore any one with his own hand slay a free man, and the deed have been done in a passion without premeditation, let him suffer all other penalties that were deemed right for one who slew another without anger to suffer, but let him undergo compulsory exile for two years to correct his passion.'

And then he appends to this another law of the following kind: ²⁵⁷

'But let the man who has slain another in anger, yet with premeditation, suffer all other the same penalties as the former offender; but just as the other was banished for two years, let him be banished for three, being punished for a longer term because of the violence of his passion.'

Then next he enacts such laws as the following in regard to one who has committed homicide a second time: ²⁵⁸

'But if ever after returning from exile either of them be overcome by anger and commit this same offence again, let him be banished and never return.'

And again afterwards he says: ²⁵⁹

'But if, as occurs sometimes, though not often, a father or mother from anger kill a son or a daughter by blows or any manner of violence, let them undergo the same purifications as the others, and spend three years in exile. But when the homicides have returned from exile, let the wife be separated from her husband and the husband from the wife, and not beget children together any more.'

To this also he adds: ²⁶⁰

'But if any man in anger slay his wedded wife, or a wife do the same in like manner to her own husband, let them undergo the same purifications, but continue three years in banishment. And when the author of such a deed has returned, let him have no communion in sacred rites with his children, nor ever sit at the same table with them.

²⁶¹ 'And if a brother or sister slay brother or sister in anger, be it enacted that the same purifications and banishments as have been appointed for parents and children be undergone by them; and let them never have the same home with those whom they have deprived of brothers, or of children, nor share in their sacred rites.

'But if brother slay brother in a faction fight, or in other like manner, while defending himself against an assault, let him be guiltless, as if he had slain an enemy in war. And in like manner if a citizen slay a fellow citizen, or a foreigner a foreigner. But if a foreigner slay a citizen, or a citizen a foreigner in self-defence, let him be in the same position as to being guiltless: and in like manner if a slave kill a slave. But if on the other hand a slave kill a free man in self-defence, let him be subject to the same laws as the slayer of a father.

²⁶² 'Whosoever designedly and wrongfully slays with his own hand any one of his kinsmen, in the first place let him be excluded from legal rights, polluting neither agora, nor temples, nor harbours, nor any other public assembly, whether any one interdict the doer of these deeds or not: for the law interdicts him. . . . And let the man who fails to prosecute him, when he ought, or fails to proclaim him be excluded from kinship: . . . and in the second place let him be liable to prosecution by any one who wishes to exact retribution for the deceased. ²⁶³ And if a woman has wounded her husband, or a man his wife, with design to kill, let either suffer perpetual banishment.'

Such are the laws of the philosopher: and if we are to bring those of Moses into comparison with them, hear what sort of ordinances he makes concerning cases of homicide.²⁶⁴ 'If one smite a man and he die, let him surely be put to death. And if he did it not purposely, but God delivered him 'into his hands, I will give thee a place whither the slayer shall flee. But if a man set upon his neighbour to slay him with guile, and flee for refuge, thou shalt take him from Mine altar to put him to death. He that smiteth his father, or his mother, shall surely be put to death. . . . And if two men revile one another, and one smite his neighbour with a stone or with his fist, and he die not, but be laid upon his bed, if the man rise again, and walk abroad upon his staff, then shall he that smote him be quit: only he shall pay for his loss of time, and the fees of his physician. And if a man smite his servant, or his maid, with a staff, and he die under his hands, he shall surely be punished. But if he live a day or two he shall not be punished; for he is his money. . . . ²⁶⁵ And if a man smite the eye of his servant, or the eye of his handmaiden, and blind him utterly, he shall send them forth free for their eyes' sake.'

Such then are the laws of Moses. Now hear again in what way, and for what kind of offences, Plato orders that the slave shall be punished with scourging without hope of pardon: ²⁶⁶

'"When a man wishes to gather the vintage of what are now called fine grapes, or the so-called fine figs, if he be taking them from his own property, let him gather the fruit however and whenever he will: but if from the property of others without having gained permission, let that man always be punished, in accordance with the principle of not taking up what one laid not down. But if a slave touch any of such things without having gained permission of the owner of the farms, for every berry of the grapes and every fig of the fig-tree let him be scourged with an equal number of stripes.'

Such are the enactments against these offences, unworthy of the magnanimity of Plato. But how noble and humane those of Moses are you may learn by listening to him while he speaks as follows: ²⁶⁷ 'When thou art come into thy neighbour's vineyard, thou shalt eat grapes until thy soul be satisfied, but shalt not put any into thy vessel.' And again: 'If thou come into thy neighbour's standing corn, and pluck the ears with thy hands, then thou shalt not put a sickle to thy neighbour's standing corn.' And again: ²⁶⁸ 'If thou reapest thy harvest in thy field, and hast forgotten a sheaf in thy field, thou shalt not turn back again to take it: it shall be for the poor, for the stranger, for the fatherless, and for the widow, that the LORD thy God may bless thee in every work of thine hands. And if thou gather thine olives, thou shalt not turn back to glean what is left behind thee: it shall be for the stranger, and the fatherless, and the widow. And if thou gather the grapes of thy vineyard, thou shalt not glean over again what is left behind thee: this shall be for the stranger, for the fatherless and for the widow.'

These then are the enactments found in Moses. And Plato's are well known, in which you may find thousands irreproachable, whereof we most gladly welcome all that is noble and excellent in him, and bid a long leave to what is not of such a character. But since we have travelled so far through these matters, and have shown cause why we have not chosen to follow Plato in philosophy, it is time to bring the rest of our promise to completion, and to review the other sects of Greek philosophy.

[Footnotes moved to the end and numbered]

1. 639 d 1 Plato, Timaeus, p. 40 D, quoted also p. 75 d 5, and p. 692 c 1

2. 640 c 5 Ps.-Plato, Epinomis, 980 C

3. 641 a 1 Plato, Republic, 377 C, quoted again p. 692 d 9

4. 642 c 1 From the translation of Davies and Vaughan.

5. 643 b 3 Hom. Il. xxiv. 527 (Lord Derby)

6. b 6 ibid.

7. 530 c 1 ibid.532

8. c 3 Cf. Hom. Il. iv. 84; xix. 224

9. c 4 ibid. iii. 275

10. c 6 ibid. xx. 4

11. c 9 Aeschylus, Niobe, Fr. 160

12. 645 b 6 Homer, Odyssey, xvii. 485 

13. c 2 Aeschylus, Xantriae, a Fragment known only from Plato's quotation

14. 646 d 14 Homer, Il. ii. 5 ff.

15. 647 a 2 Aeschylus, Fragment, 266 (281)

16. c 4 Gen. i. 10

17. c 6 ibid i. 31

18. c 9 Wisd. i. 13

19. d 1 Wisdom ii. 24 

20.  d 4 Jer. ii. 21

21. 648 a 10 Heb. xii. 6; Prov. iii. 12

22. b 2 Cf. 643 d 6

23. b 12 Mal. iii. 6 

24.  c 2 Ps. cii. 26, 27

25. d 2 Cf. 646 b 5

26. 649 b 1 Cf. 646 d a

27. 649 c 3 Cf. 647 a 12

28. d 1 Plato, Euthyphron, 5 E

29. 650 d 1 Numenius, a Fragment preserved by Eusebius

30. 651 b 1 Plato, Crito, 46 B

31. 653 b 12 Joh. v. 44

32. c 6 Cf. 651 c 11

33. d 1 Plato, Crito, 49 A

34. 654 d 11 Rom. xii. 17

35. d 12 Matt. v. 44, 45

36. 655 a 3 1 Cor. iv. 12 

37.  b 3 Ps. vii. 4

38. b 4 Ps. cxx. 7

39. c 1 Plato, Crito, p. 52 C

40. 658 b 1 Crito, 53 C. The Laws still speak.

41. 659 d 1 Plato, Apology of Socrates, 28 B

42. 660 a 7 Hom. Il. xviii. 96

43. b 1 ibid. 98

44. b 4 ibid. 104

45. 661 c 5 Plato, Apology of Socrates, 40 C

46. 662 c 7 Acts v. 29

47. c 8 Matt. x. 28

48. c 9 2 Cor. v. 1

49. d 1 ibid. 8 

50.  663 a 1 Plato, Republic, 468 E

51. 663 d 2 Aristobulus, cf. p. 411 A

52. 664 d 1 Orphic Fragment, ii (Hermann)

53. 666 b 3 Aratus, Phaenomena, 1

54. 667 a 4 Aristobulus

55. b5 Prov. viii. 23, 27

56. d 7 Hesiod, Works and Days, 770. The verses that follow are all spurious

57. 668 d 1 Clement of Alexandria, Miscellany, v. 14, p. 699 Potter 

58.  669 a 1 Wisdom vii. 24

59. b 4 Plato, Timaeus, 48 C

60. b 9 Gen. i. 2

61. c 4 Eccles. i. 2

62. c 6 Ps. (xxxv) xxxvi. 5

63. d 3 Plato, Republic, 615E

64. d 9 Ps. (ciii) civ. 4

65. 670 a 9 Matt, xviii. 10

66. b 3 Plato, Republic, 620 D

67. b 1 Plato, Timaeus, 28 B

68. c 2 ibid. 28 C

69. d 1 Plato, Laws, 896 D

70. d 7 Plato, Phaedrus, 240 A

71. d 10 Eph. vi. 12

72. 671 a 1 Plato, Laws, 906 A

73. b 3 Gen. i. 1

74. b 4 ibid. 3

75. c 7 Cf. Gen. i. 26

76. d 3 Deut. xiii. 4

77. 672 a 1 Plato, Phaedrus, 255 B

78. a 4 Plato, Lysis, 214 C

79. a 6 Laws, 716 C

80. b 4 Plato, Timaeus, 90 D

81. b 10 Clement of Alexandria, Miscellany, v. 14, p. 706 Potter

82. b 12 Plato, Republic, 415 A

83. d 7 Theaetetus, 173 C

84. 673 a 8 Pindar, Fr. (226), 123

85. b 2 Matt. v. 37 

86.  b 3 Theaetetus, 151 D

87. b 6 Laws, 917 C

88. c 2 Ps. (xxxii) xxxiii. 9

89. c 8 Hom. Il. vii. 99

90. c 9 Isa. x. 6

91. 673 d 2 Callimachus, Fr. 87

92. d 6 ibid. 133

93. d 9 Hesiod, Works and Days, 60

94. 674 a 1 Diog. Laertius, vii. 156

95. a 7 Hom.Il. xiv. 206

96. b 1 Epicharmus, Fr. 297 (Mullach, i. p. 146)

97. b 4 Pindar, Fr. 106 (3)

98. c 1 Aratus, Phaenomena, 1

99. 675 a 1 Hom. Il. xviii. 483 (Lord Derby's translation)

100. a 6 Cf. Clem. Al. Protrept. c. vi. p. 59 Potter

101. b 2 Pindar, Nem. vi. 1

102. b 6 Paean. Fr. vi

103. b 12 Pseudo-Plato, Epistle, vi. 323 C

104. 675 c 5 Timaeus, 41 A

105. c 6 Pseudo-Plato, Epistle, ii. 312 E

106. d 4 Plato, Republic, 614 B

107. 676 b 8 Heracleitus, Fr. 27 (Mullach)

108. c 2 Heracleitus, Fr. 28 (Mullach)

109. c 7 ibid. Fr. 29

110. d 8 Plato, Republic, 521 C; Eph. vi. 12

111. d 10 Plato, Phaedo, 95 D

112. d 12 Ps. iii. 5

113. 677 a 8 Plato, Republic, 616 B

114. 677 d See p. 667 d

115. 678 a 6 Solon Fr. xiv. (Hermann, Poet. Min. Gr. iii. 139)

116. b 1 Wisdom ii. 12

117. b 4 Plato, Republic, 361 E; see notes on p. 583 d

118. b 8 Isa. xl. 25

119. c 2 Xenophon, Memorabilia, iv. iii. 13, 14

120. c 8 Sibylline Oracles, Fr. i. 10-13

121. d 5 Xenophanes, Fr. i. i (Mullach)

122. d 8 ibid. Fr. v

123. 679 a 3 ibid. Fr. vi

124. b 4 Bacchylides, Fr. 60.(Kenyon)

125.  679 b 8 Cleanthes, Fr. 1. 45 (Mullach, i. p. 152)

126.  d 3 ibid. 1. 54

127.  d 8 Euripides, Antiope, Fr. 6

128.  680 a 2 Sophocles, Fr. 708

129.  b 1 ibid. 

130.  b 5 Heracleitus, Fr. ii; Aristotle, Rhetoric, iii. 5, 6

131.  b 9 Melanippides, Fr. 8 (Bergk), Parnell's Greek Lyric Poetry, p. 275 

132.  c 1 Plato, Sophist, 237 A

133.  c 3 Parmenides, Fr. i. 59 (Mullach)

134.  c 7 Hesiod, Fr. 53 (Gaisf.), 152 (Göttling)

135.  d 5 Pseudo-Sophocles, Fr. 18, in Müller, Fr. Hist. Gr., tom. ii

136.  681 a 3 Euripides, Fragment quoted by Lucian, Jupiter Trag., c. 41

137.  a 8 Euripides, Pirithous, Fr. ii.

138.  681 b 9 Aeschylus, Fr. Incert. 295

139.  c 3 Heracleitus, Fr. 12 (Mullach) 

140.  c 4 ibid. Fr. 56 (Mullach)

141.  c 6 Luke viii. 8

142.  c 7 Heracleitus, Fr. 4 (Mullach)

143.  d 2 Cf. Plato, Phaedrus, 245 D

144.  d 6 Deut. vi. 4, 13

145.  d 8 Sibylline Oracle's, Fr. i (Rzach, p. 234)

146.  d 10 Xenocrates, Fr. 2 (Mullach, iii. p. 114) Cf. Comus, l. 20.

147.  682 a 5 Hom. Il. xxii. 8 (Lord Derby's translation)

148.  b 1 Is. xl. 18

149.  b 7 Epicharmus, Republic

150. c 3 Cf. Plato, Republic, vii. 522: the following fragments of Epicharmus seem to be otherwise unknown

151.  d 4 Is. 1. 11

152.  d 7 ibid. 16

153.  d 10 Pseudo-Menander (Meineke, p. 306)

154.  683 b 3 Jer. xxiii. 23, 24

155.  683 b 5 Ps. iv. 5

156.  b 8 Pseudo-Menander (Meineke, p. 308)

157.  d 1 Is. Iviii. 9

158.  d 5 Pseudo-Philemon (Meineke, p. 865)

159.  684 a 7 Euripides, Phrixus, Fr. viii; cf. Valckenär, Aristobulus, c. i.

160.  b 3 Cf. Valckenär, ibid.

161.  b 8 Pseudo-Justin, De Monarchia, c. iii.

162.  d 3 Orph. Fr. 123 (Abel), vi (Hermann); Stob. Ecl. I. ii. 23

163.  685 a 5 Orph. Fr. ii. 6; cf. 664 d 6

164.  b 6 ibid. 23

165.  c 4 Is. lxvi. i

166.  c 6 Orph. Fr. ii. 29

167.  686 a 5 Is. lxiv. 1

168.  b 1 ibid. xl. 12

169.  b 4 Orphic Fr. iii. 1

170.  d 5 ibid. iii. 14

171.  687 a 5 Amos iv. 13

172.  a 7 Deut. xxxii. 39 Cf. Hos. xiii. 4

173.  b 1 Orphic Fr. i. 11

174.  b 5 Archilochus, Fr. xvii

175.  b 9 Orphic Fr. i 19

176.  c 2 Is. x, 14

177.  c 4 Jer. x. 12

178.  d 3 Phocylides, Fr. i. 19 (cf. ii. 31)

179.  d 8 Philemon, Fr. xlviii

180.  688 a 1 Fragment otherwise unknown

181.  688 a 4 Orph. Fr. vi. 16 (Hermann)

182.  b 3 Pindar, Fr. 104 (Boeckh)

183.  b 5 ibid Fr. 105

184.  b 8 ibid. Fr. 33

185.  b 14 Is. xl. 13

186.  c 3 Hesiod, Fr. iii (Gaisford)

187.  c 7 Solon, Fr. x

188.  d 4 Hesiod, Works and Days, 174-176 

189.  d 8 Homer, Il. viii. 689

190.  680 a 1 Menander, Fr. 18

191.  b 1 Ps.-Aeschylus, Fr. in Ps.-Justin, De Monarchia, c. ii

192.  c 6 Ps. cxiv. 7

193.  c 11 Herodotus, vii. 141; cf. 218 d 5

194.  690 a 2 Thearidas, On Nature, a work otherwise unknown

195.  a 5 Orph. Fr. i. 13

196.  a 8 Diphilus, Fr. 52

197.  b 1 Plato, Republic, 519 C

198.  b 4 ibid. 521C

199.  b 8 ibid. 415 A

200.  b 10 The Greek text is defective here

201.  691 c 6 Ps. xli. 6

202.  692 c 1 Plato, Timaeus, 40 D; cf. 75 d, 639 d

203.  d 10 Plato, Republic, 377 C

204.  693 a 8 ibid. 386 C

205.  a 10 Hom. Od. xi. 488

206.  b 2 Plato, Republic, 388 A

207.  b 4 Hom. Il. xxiv. 10

208.  b 7 Plato, ibid. 390 B

209.  693 c 5 Hom. Il. xiv. 291

210.  c 10 Plato, Timaeus, 40 D 

211. d 11 ibid. Republic, 377 D

212.  694 a 3 ibid. 377 E

213.  a 5 Hesiod, Theogony, 154, 178

214.  696 b 9 Plato, Timaeus, 34 C

215.  697 a 1 Plato, Phaedo, 81 D

216.  c 6 Plato, Phaedrus, 248 E

217.  698 a 1 ibid. Republic, 620 A

218.  699 a 10 Plato, Phaedo, 113 D

219.  c 4 ibid. 114 C

220.  c 10 ibid. Gorgias, 523 A

221.  d 3 ibid. 535 C

222.  700 c 1 Severus, On the Soul, a Fragment preserved by Eusebius

223.  702 b 9 Ps.-Plato, Epinomis, 977 A

224.  c 5 ibid. 984 D

225.  d 5 Plato, Timaeus, 32 B

226.  703 a 2 Plato, Timaeus, 34 B

227.  a 7 ibid. 38C

228.  b 3 ibid. 38 E

229.  b 8 ibid. Laws, 904 C

230.  703 d 5 Plato, Timaeus, 41 A

231.  704 b 3 Deut. iv. 19

232.  b 8 Philo Iud. De Monarchia, i. c. i. p. 213

233.  d 5 Deut. iv. 19

234.  705 b 1 Philo Iud. De Monarchia, i. c. i. p. 214

235.  706 a 1 Plato, Republic, 452 A

236.  b 1 ibid. 457 B

237.  b 2 Pindar, Fr. 227

238.  b 6 Plato, Laws, 813 B

239.  b 11 ibid. 796 B

240.  c 6 ibid. 804 C

241.  d 7 ibid. 813 D

242.  707 b 5 Ps. cxxvii. 1

243.  b 10 Plato, Laws, 833 C

244.  c 9 ibid. 833 E

245.  d 1 ibid. 834 A

246.  d 9 Plato, Laws, 834 D

247.  708 a 3 ibid. 924 E

248.  a 12 ibid. 771 E

249.  b 8 Plato, Republic, 457 G

250.  c 4 ibid. 458 C

251.  709 a 2 Plato, Republic, 460 E

252.  a 8 ibid. 461 B

253.  b 1 ibid. 461 C

254.  711 b 1 Plato, Laws, 914 A

255.  c 11 ibid. 868 A

256.  711 d 4 Plato, Laws, 867 C

257.  d 11 ibid. 867 D

258.  712 a 1 ibid. 868 A 

259.  a 5 ibid. 868 C

260.  a 13 ibid. 868 D

261.  b 6 Plato, Laws, 869 B

262.  d 1 ibid. 871 A

263.  d 10 ibid. 877 C

264.  713 a 4 Ex. xxi. 12

265.  713 b 9 Ex. xxi. 26

266.  c 6 Plato, Laws, 844 E

267.  d 6 Deut. xxiii. 24, 25 

268.  d 11 Deut. xxiv. 19

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