Preparation for the Gospel, Book 13

Since it has been shown in the preceding books that the philosophy of Plato contains, in very many points, a rendering of Moses and of the sacred writings of the Hebrews into the Greek tongue, so to speak, I come now both to add what remains to the argument and to go through what our predecessors have said on these subjects, and at the same time to clear myself of a plausible charge, should anyone accuse us and say: Why, then, when Moses and Plato have taught philosophy in agreement, do we pursue the teachings of Moses and not those of Plato, when the reverse ought to be the case, since, the doctrines being equal, the Greek rather than the barbarian would be the fitting guide for us who are Greeks? But since I shrink from answering this, out of respect for the philosopher, I put off this discussion till later, and shall first examine the points I mentioned first. Take, then, and read what opinion Plato held of the Greek theologians and poets, and how he set aside all the ancestral notions about the gods and exposed the absurdity in them.

How Plato exposed the absurdity of the Greek theology. From the Timaeus

“Concerning the other daimones, to tell and to know their origin is beyond us; we must believe those who have spoken of it before, who were, as they said, offspring of the gods, and surely, I suppose, knew their own ancestors well. It is impossible, then, to disbelieve the children of gods, even though they speak without probable or necessary proofs; but since they profess to report what concerns their own family, we must follow the law and believe them. Let the origin of these gods, then, be held and told by us as they tell it. Of Earth and Heaven were born Oceanus and Tethys; of these, Phorcys, Cronus and Rhea; and of Cronus and Rhea, Zeus and Hera and all whom we know as their reputed brothers and sisters, and further other offspring of these.” By these words he bids us believe the myths about the gods, and the very poets of the myths as being offspring of the gods. First, by saying that the poets are offspring of the gods, he seems to me to mock them, as though the gods too had been men and were like their offspring in nature. Next he openly discredits the theologians whom he called offspring of the gods, by what he adds, saying “although they speak without probable or necessary proofs,” and by what he inserts, “as they said.” He seems to be joking when he says, “surely, I suppose, they knew their own ancestors well,” and “it is impossible to disbelieve the children of gods.” And he makes it quite plain that he says these things against his own judgment for the sake of the laws, when he admits that one must follow the law and believe them. That this was his meaning, hear how with a bare and unveiled voice he discredits all the so-called theologians, striking at them in the Epinomis in these words:

Further on the same subject from the dialogue Epinomis

“Theogony and zoogony, then, it seems, I must first set forth better, since those before us represented them badly, taking up again, in accordance with what was said later, the argument I attempted against the impious.” That he has good reason to reject the theology of the ancients he teaches in the second book of the Republic. There it is worth paying attention to how many and what kind of things he relates about these same poets and theologians, concerning the traditions handed down of old about the Greek gods. He speaks in these very words:

Further on the same subject from the second Book of the Republic; also that God is not the cause of evils

“In the greater myths, I said, we shall see the lesser too. For the greater and the lesser must be of the same stamp and have the same effect. Do you not think so? I do, he said; but I do not see what you mean by the greater either. Those, I said, that Hesiod and Homer told us, and the other poets. For they, I suppose, composed false myths for mankind, and told them, and still tell them. What kind, he said, and what fault do you find in them? The fault, I said, that ought to be blamed first and most of all, especially if the lie is not a good one. What is that? When someone represents badly in words what the gods and heroes are like, as a painter does whose picture is not at all like the things he wished to paint. Yes, he said, it is right to blame such things. But how do we mean, and what sort? First, I said, he who told the greatest lie about the greatest things did not lie well: that Heaven did what Hesiod says he did, and how Cronus in turn took vengeance on him. As for the deeds of Cronus and what he suffered at the hands of his son, even if they were true I should not think they ought to be told so lightly to the foolish and the young, but rather passed over in silence; or, if there were some necessity to tell them, that as few as possible should hear them in secret, after sacrificing not a pig but some great and hard-to-obtain victim, so that very few might happen to hear them. Yes, he said, these stories are indeed hard. And they are not to be told, Adeimantus, I said, in our city. Nor must a young man be told that in committing the worst crimes he would be doing nothing remarkable, nor again in punishing a father who wrongs him in every way, but would only be doing what the first and greatest of the gods did. No, by Zeus, he said, I do not think them fit to be told either. Nor at all, I said, that gods make war on gods and plot against them and fight them, for it is not even true; if, that is, those who are to guard our city must think it most shameful to quarrel lightly with one another. Far less must we tell them tales of the battles of the giants, or embroider them, or the many other enmities of all kinds of gods and heroes toward their kin and family. But if we are somehow to persuade them that no citizen ever hated another and that this is unholy, such things rather must be told to the children from the start, and by old men and old women and those growing older; and the poets must be compelled to compose close to these. But Hera’s binding by her son, and Hephaestus’ being hurled out by his father when he was going to defend his mother as she was beaten, and all the battles of the gods that Homer has composed, must not be admitted into the city, whether they are composed with hidden meanings or without hidden meanings. For the young person cannot judge what is a hidden meaning and what is not; whatever he takes into his opinions at that age tends to become indelible and unchangeable. For which reason, perhaps, we should take the greatest care that the first things they hear should be stories composed as finely as possible for the sake of virtue.” “Yes, he said, that is reasonable. But if someone were to ask us what these are and what the stories are, what should we say? And I said: Adeimantus, you and I are not poets at present but founders of a city. Founders ought to know the patterns on which the poets must compose their myths, and from which they must not be allowed to depart when they compose; but they need not compose myths themselves. Right, he said. But just this: what would the patterns for speaking about the gods be? Something like this, I said: God must always be represented as he really is, whether one composes about him in epic, in lyric, or in tragedy. He must. Is not God truly good, and must he not be spoken of as such? Of course. But surely nothing good is harmful, is it? I do not think so. Does what is not harmful do harm? Not at all. And does what does no harm do any evil? No, nor that. And what does no evil would not be the cause of any evil? How could it? Again, is the good beneficial? Yes. Then it is the cause of well-being? Yes. Then the good is not the cause of all things, but of things that are well it is the cause, and of evils it is not the cause. Entirely so, he said. Then neither, I said, would God, since he is good, be the cause of all things, as the many say; he is the cause of few things for men, and not the cause of many; for our good things are far fewer than our evils. And of the good things no one else must be held the cause; but of the evils we must seek some other causes, and not God. You seem to me to speak most truly, he said. Then we must not accept, I said, from Homer or any other poet, this foolish error about the gods, when he says that “two jars stand on the floor of Zeus, full of fates, the one of good, the other of evil;” “and to whom Zeus gives a mixture of both, he meets now with evil, now with good;” but to whom he gives not so, but the one kind unmixed, “him evil hunger drives over the divine earth;” nor that Zeus “is made the steward for us of good and evil alike.” And as for the breaking of the oaths and truce, which Pandarus brought about, if anyone says it came about through Athena and Zeus, we shall not approve; nor the strife and judgment of the gods through Themis and Zeus; nor again must we let the young hear, as Aeschylus says, that “God plants a cause in mortals when he wishes to destroy a house utterly.” But if anyone composes a work containing these iambics, the sufferings of Niobe, or of the descendants of Pelops, or the Trojan tale, or anything else of this kind, we must either not allow him to say they are the deeds of God, or if of God, he must find for them something like the account we are now seeking, and must say that God did what was just and good, and that they were benefited by being punished. But that those who pay the penalty are miserable, and that the one who did this was God, the poet must not be allowed to say. But if they should say that the wicked were miserable because they needed punishment, and that in paying the penalty they were benefited by God, that must be allowed. But that God, being good, becomes the cause of evils to anyone, we must contend against in every way, that no one should say this in his own city, if it is to be well governed, and that no one, younger or older, should hear it, whether told in verse or without verse; since such things, if said, would be neither holy, nor profitable to us, nor consistent with themselves. I vote with you for this law, he said, and it pleases me. This, then, I said, would be one of the laws and patterns concerning God, by which speakers must speak and poets compose: that God is not the cause of all things, but of the good. And it is quite sufficient, he said. And what of this second one? Do you think God is a sorcerer, who appears by design now in one form and now in another, at one time himself changing and altering his own shape into many forms, at another deceiving us and making us think such things of him? Or is he simple, and least of all things departs from his own form? I cannot say offhand, he said. What of this? If anything departs from its own form, must it not be changed either by itself or by something else? It must. Are not things that are in the best condition least altered and moved by something else, as a body by food and drink and toil, and every plant by the heat of the sun and winds and such affections? Is not the healthiest and strongest least altered? Of course. And would not any affection from outside least disturb the soul that is bravest and wisest? Yes. And surely, on the same principle, all composite things, utensils and buildings and garments, those that are well made and in good condition are least altered by time and other affections. That is so. Then everything that is in good condition, by nature or by art or by both, admits least of change from something else. So it seems. But God and what belongs to God are in every way in the best condition. Of course. In this way, then, God would least of all have many forms. Least of all, indeed. But would he change and alter himself? Clearly, he said, if he is altered at all. Then does he change himself for the better and fairer, or for the worse and uglier than himself? Necessarily for the worse, he said, if he is altered; for we shall surely not say that God is lacking in beauty or virtue. Very right, I said. And this being so, do you think, Adeimantus, that anyone, whether of gods or men, would willingly make himself worse in any way? Impossible, he said. Then it is impossible, I said, that a god should wish to alter himself; but, as it seems, each of them, being as fair and good as possible, remains for ever simply in his own form. That seems to me entirely necessary, he said. Then let none of the poets, my good friend, I said, tell us that “gods, in the likeness of strangers from other lands, taking all kinds of shapes, go about the cities;” nor let anyone tell lies about Proteus and Thetis, nor bring in Hera, in tragedies or in other poems, transformed, as a priestess begging “for the life-giving children of Inachus, the Argive river.” And they should not tell us many other such lies. Nor again let mothers, persuaded by them, terrify their children by telling the tales badly, that certain gods go about by night in the likeness of many strangers of all kinds, so that they may not both blaspheme against the gods and at the same time make their children more cowardly. No, indeed, he said. But perhaps, I said, the gods themselves are such as not to change, but make us think that they appear in all sorts of forms, deceiving and bewitching us? Perhaps, he said. What then? I said. Would God be willing to lie, in word or deed, by presenting a phantom? I do not know, he said. Do you not know, I said, that the true lie, if one may so call it, is hated by all gods and men? How do you mean? he said. You know, I suppose, I said, that no one is willing to be deceived in the most sovereign part of himself and about the most sovereign things, but fears above all to have falsehood there. Even now I do not understand, he said. For you think I am saying something grand, I said. But I mean that to be deceived and to have been deceived in the soul about the things that are, and to be ignorant, and to have and hold falsehood there, is what all would least accept, and they hate it most of all in such a place. Very much so, he said. But surely, as I said just now, this would most rightly be called the true lie: the ignorance in the soul of one deceived; for the lie in words is a kind of imitation of the affection in the soul, an image that comes after, not a wholly unmixed lie. Is it not so? Quite so. The real lie, then, is hated not only by gods but also by men. I think so. What of the lie in words? When and to whom is it useful, so as not to deserve hatred? Is it not useful against enemies, and with those we call friends, when through madness or some folly they try to do something evil, then as a medicine to turn them from it? And in the myths we were speaking of just now, because we do not know the truth about ancient things, we make the falsehood as much like the truth as possible, and so make it useful? Indeed, he said, it is so. In which of these ways, then, is falsehood useful to God? Would he lie through not knowing ancient things, making them seem likely? That would be absurd, he said. Then there is no lying poet in God? I do not think so. But would he lie for fear of his enemies? Far from it. Or because of the folly or madness of his friends? But no one who is foolish or mad, he said, is dear to the gods. Then there is no reason why God should lie? There is none. Then the daimonic and the divine are in every way free from falsehood. Altogether, he said. Then God is altogether simple and true in deed and word, and neither changes himself nor deceives others, whether by appearances or by the sending of signs, whether waking or dreaming. So it seems to me too, he said, as you speak. You agree, then, I said, that this is the second pattern by which we must speak and compose about the gods: that they are not sorcerers who change themselves, nor lead us astray by falsehoods in word or deed? I agree. Then, though we praise much in Homer, this we shall not praise: the sending of the dream by Zeus to Agamemnon; nor Aeschylus, when Thetis says that Apollo, singing at her wedding, dwelt on her happy motherhood: “free from sickness, and fortunes of long life, he hailed with a paean, cheering me. And I hoped that Phoebus’ divine mouth was free of falsehood, teeming with the prophetic art. But he himself who sang, himself present at the feast, himself who said these things, he it is who killed my son.” When anyone says such things about the gods, we shall be angry and refuse him a chorus, nor shall we allow teachers to use them for the education of the young, if our guardians are to be god-fearing and godlike, so far as is possible for a human being. I entirely agree with these patterns, he said, and would use them as laws.” So much for Plato. But you would find that the Scripture of the Hebrews contains no shameful myths at all about the God of the universe, nor even about the divine angels around him, nor indeed about the men dear to God, as the Greek theologies do; rather it contains the pattern set out by Plato, that God is good and that all things made by him are of the same kind. At each of the things he made, the admirable Moses adds, “And God saw that it was good.” And summing up the account of all things, he says, “And God saw all things that he had made, and they were very good.” It is also a doctrine of the Hebrews that God is not the cause of evils, since “God did not make death, nor does he delight in the destruction of the living; for he created all things that they might exist, and the generations of the world are wholesome”; “but through the envy of the devil death entered into the world.” Therefore in the prophet too God is introduced saying to him who became evil by his own choice: “But I planted you a fruitful vine, wholly true; how have you turned back, you strange vine?” And if anywhere it is said that evils come upon the wicked from God, it must be understood in a different sense, punishments being so called, which God, being good, is said to inflict not to harm those punished but for their benefit and advantage; just as a physician might be thought to apply evils when, for the saving of the sick, he applies painful and bitter remedies. So too in the divine Scripture, where evils are said to be brought upon men by God, we must say what Plato says: that God did what was just and good, and when he brought gloomy things, thought evils by men, upon those who deserved them, they were benefited by being punished, not only according to the philosopher but also according to the Scripture of the Hebrews, which says, “For whom the Lord loves he disciplines, and he scourges every son whom he receives.” But that those who pay the penalty are miserable, and that the one who did this was God, the poet must not be allowed to say; but if they should say that the wicked were miserable because they needed punishment, and that in paying the penalty they were benefited by God, that must be allowed; but that God, being good, becomes the cause of evils to anyone, we must contend against in every way. Moreover, concerning God’s not being changed, the prophecy among the Hebrews teaches somehow thus, speaking in the person of God: “For I am the Lord your God, and I am not changed.” And in his theologies David cries out, saying: “All will grow old like a garment, and like a cloak you will roll them up, and they will be changed; but you are the same, and your years will not fail.” And if anywhere they bring in the Word of God appearing in human form and shape, it must be said that the writings of the Hebrews introduce the Word of God as having appeared to men, not as in the Greek myths, like Proteus and Thetis and Hera, nor like the gods who go about by night in the likeness of many and various creatures, but, as Plato himself says one must at times do for the benefit of friends, “when through madness or some folly they try to do something evil, then for the sake of turning them from it”, God’s coming among men became useful as a medicine. Since, then, of all living things on earth none was a race dearer to God than man, akin and related to the Word of God, from whom he had also received the rational nature of his soul, it was fitting, they say, that the heavenly Word, caring for him as for a dear creature, should come to heal the whole race, which had suffered a strange disease and madness, so as to know neither God the Father, nor the proper being of its own intellectual nature, nor again God’s providence, the savior of the universe, but had come almost to the derangement of an irrational animal. That is why they say the Savior and Physician came, not departing from his own nature, nor deceiving those who saw him, but preserving both truly, the invisible and the visible. For in one respect he was seen as a true man, and in another he was truly the Word of God, not bewitching or deceiving those who saw him, since Plato too thought it right that the divine should be free from falsehood. Truly, then, God the Word, being simple and true in deed and word, neither changed himself nor deceived others, whether by appearances, or by words, or by the sending of signs, or in dreams. For all such things, as physician of rational souls, he carried out for the salvation of the whole human race truly, and not in appearance, through the man whom he had taken up, granting to us all friendship with his own Father and return to him, through the knowledge of God and true godliness proclaimed by him. Such, then, is our teaching. But with those who speak otherwise we shall be angry and refuse them a chorus, nor shall we allow teachers to use them for the education of the young, if our guardians are to be god-fearing and godlike, as seemed best to the philosopher too.

That nothing else than indecent fables were contained in the narratives concerning the gods of the Greeks, for not believing which Socrates was put to death by the Athenians. From the Euthyphron

“For these very people believe that Zeus is the best and most just of the gods, and they admit that he bound his own father because he unjustly swallowed his sons, and that that father in turn castrated his own father for other such reasons; yet they are angry with me because I proceed against my father for his wrongdoing, and so they contradict themselves both about the gods and about me. Is this, then, Euthyphro, the reason why I am being prosecuted, that whenever anyone says such things about the gods I somehow find them hard to accept? For this, it seems, someone will say I do wrong. Now then, if you too, who know such matters well, agree with these things, we too must agree, it seems. For what are we to say, we who admit that we ourselves know nothing about them? But tell me, by the god of friendship, do you truly believe these things happened so? Yes, Socrates, and things still more wonderful than these, which the many do not know. Then do you believe there really is war among the gods against one another, and terrible enmities and battles and many other such things, such as are told by the poets, and with which our other sacred things are adorned by good painters, and especially the robe that is carried up to the Acropolis at the Great Panathenaea, full of such embroideries? Are we to say these things are true, Euthyphro? Not only these, Socrates; but, as I said just now, I will also tell you, if you like, many other things about the gods which I am sure will astonish you when you hear them.” So Plato in the Euthyphro. And Numenius makes his meaning clear in his work On the Secrets in Plato, speaking somewhat as follows:

Numenius on the same subject, from The Secrets in Plato

“If Plato, having undertaken to write about the theology of the Athenians, had then shown his displeasure with it and accused it of telling of the gods’ factions against one another, and of the unions of some with their children, and of others devouring them, and of others in return punishing their fathers and brothers punishing brothers, and other such things; if Plato had taken these and accused them openly, he would, I think, have given the Athenians occasion to become wicked again and to kill him too, as they did Socrates. But since he would not have chosen to live rather than to tell the truth, and yet saw that he could both live and tell the truth safely, he put Euthyphro in the character of the Athenians, a boastful and stupid man and as bad a theologian as any, and set Socrates himself against him in his own character, in which he was accustomed to refute everyone he talked with.”

That one must not heed the opinions of the multitude, nor depart from one's own purpose for fear of death. From the Crito

“My dear Crito, your eagerness is worth a great deal, if it has some rightness with it; but if not, the greater it is, the harder it is to deal with. We must therefore consider whether we should do this or not; for I am not only now but always the kind of man who obeys nothing else in me but the reasoning that appears best to me when I reflect. The arguments I used before I cannot now throw out because this fortune has come upon me; they seem to me much the same, and I respect and honor the same ones as before. Unless we can say something better at present, be sure that I will not give way to you, not even if the power of the many tries to frighten us like children with more bugbears than now, sending against us chains and deaths and confiscations of property. How, then, should we examine these things most reasonably? If first we take up this argument that you put forward about opinions, whether it was rightly said each time or not, that we should pay attention to some opinions and not to others? Or was it rightly said before I had to die, while now it has become plain that it was said merely for the sake of argument, and was really child’s play and nonsense? I long, Crito, to examine together with you whether it will appear any different to me now that I am in this situation, or the same, and whether we shall dismiss it or obey it. It used to be said, I think, each time, by those who thought they were saying something, as I was saying just now, that of the opinions men hold some should be valued highly and others not. Tell me, by the gods, Crito, does this not seem to you well said? For you, as far as human things go, are in no danger of dying tomorrow, and the present misfortune would not lead you astray. Consider, then: does it not seem to you sufficiently said that we must not honor all the opinions of men, but some and not others, nor those of all men, but of some and not others? What do you say? Is this not well said? It is. Then the good ones are to be honored, and the bad ones not? Yes. And the good are those of the wise, and the bad those of the foolish? Of course. Come, then, how was this sort of thing put? Does a man in training, and practicing it, pay attention to the praise and blame and opinion of every man, or only of that one who happens to be a physician or trainer? Of that one alone. Then he should fear the blame and welcome the praise of that one man, and not of the many. Clearly. Then he must act and train, and eat and drink, in the way that seems good to the one man, the overseer who understands, rather than to all the rest together. That is so. Well then. If he disobeys the one and dishonors his opinion and praise, and honors those of the many who understand nothing, will he not suffer some harm? Of course. And what is this harm? Where does it tend, and to what part of the one who disobeys? Clearly to the body; for this it ruins. You are right. And so with other things, Crito, so that we need not go through them all; and especially concerning things just and unjust, shameful and honorable, good and evil, about which we are now deliberating: must we follow the opinion of the many and fear it, or that of the one, if there is one who understands, whom we ought to respect and fear more than all the others together? If we do not follow him, we shall corrupt and maim that which used to become better by justice and was destroyed by injustice. Or is this nothing? I think it is something, Socrates. Come, then: if we destroy what is made better by the healthy and ruined by the unhealthy, by obeying an opinion not that of those who understand, is life worth living for us when it is ruined? And this, I suppose, is the body, is it not? Yes. Is life worth living with a wretched and ruined body? By no means. But is life worth living for us when that is ruined which injustice maims and justice benefits? Or do we think that part of us, whatever it is, with which injustice and justice are concerned, to be inferior to the body? By no means. More precious, then? Far more. Then, my excellent friend, we should not care so very much what the many will say of us, but what the one who understands about just and unjust things will say, the one, and the truth itself. So first, in this, you are not proposing rightly when you propose that we must care about the opinion of the many concerning things just and honorable and good and their opposites.” And the saving Word also says, “You seek the glory that comes from men, and you do not seek the glory that comes from the only One.” Therefore we too act rightly in our contests for godliness, not considering what the many will say of us, but what the one Word of God wills, whom, once we have chosen him by judgment, it is fitting to honor then just as before, and not to change sides, not even if the power of the many tries to frighten us like children. Such too were those among the Hebrews of old who shone in martyrdom.

That we must not retaliate on those who have endeavored to injure us. From the same

“Do we say that one must in no way do wrong willingly, or that one must do wrong in one way but not in another? Or is doing wrong in no way either good or honorable, as we have often agreed in former times? Which is what was said just now too. Or have all those former agreements of ours been poured away in these few days, and have we, Crito, at our age, old men talking seriously with one another, long been unaware that we were no better than children? Or is it above all as it was said by us then: whether the many say so or not, and whether we must suffer still harder things than these or gentler ones, nevertheless doing wrong is in every way evil and shameful for the one who does it? Do we say so or not? We do. Then one must in no way do wrong. Certainly not. Then one must not even, when wronged, do wrong in return, as the many think, since one must in no way do wrong? It seems not. And what of this: must one do evil, Crito, or not? Surely not, Socrates. And what? To do evil in return when one suffers evil, as the many say, is it just or not just? Not at all. For doing evil to men, I suppose, differs in no way from doing wrong. You are right. Then one must neither do wrong in return nor do evil to any man, whatever one may suffer at their hands. But see, Crito, in agreeing to this, that you do not agree against your belief. For I know that only a few think this and will think it. Between those who think so and those who do not there is no common counsel, but they must despise one another when they see one another’s decisions. So consider very carefully whether you share and agree with this, and let us begin our deliberation from here: that it is never right to do wrong, or to do wrong in return, or, when suffering evil, to defend oneself by doing evil in return. Or do you stand apart and not share this starting point? For to me it seemed so long ago and still seems so now. If you think otherwise, speak and teach me; but if you abide by what was said before, hear what follows. I abide by it and agree; speak. Then I say next, or rather I ask: when one has agreed with someone on things that are just, must one do them, or cheat? One must do them.” Set beside these the words, “repaying no one evil for evil,” and “Bless those who curse you; pray for those who mistreat and persecute you, that you may become sons of your Father who is in heaven, who makes his sun rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the just and the unjust,” and further, “Being reviled, we bless; being persecuted, we endure; being slandered, we entreat,” which are contained in our sacred writings. And the prophet among the Hebrews says, “If I have repaid those who repaid me with evil”; and again, “With those who hate peace I was peaceable.”

That we must not set aside what has once been rightly determined, not even if any one threaten death. And this will apply to those who renounce their religion in times of persecution

“But you then prided yourself on not being distressed if you had to die, and you chose, as you said, death rather than exile. But now you are neither ashamed of those words nor do you respect us, the laws, trying to destroy us; and you are doing what the meanest slave would do, trying to run away contrary to the compacts and agreements by which you agreed with us to live as a citizen. First, then, answer us this very thing: are we speaking the truth in saying that you agreed to live as a citizen according to us in deed and not merely in word, or not? What shall we say to this, Crito? Must we not agree? We must, Socrates. Then what, they would say, are you doing but transgressing your compacts and agreements with us, which you made not under compulsion, nor deceived, nor forced to decide in a short time, but in seventy years, during which you were free to leave if we did not please you, or if the agreements did not seem just to you? But you preferred neither Lacedaemon nor Crete, which you are always saying are well governed, nor any other of the Greek cities, nor of the barbarian ones; you went away from the city less than the lame and the blind and the other cripples. So much more than the other Athenians did the city please you, and we the laws, clearly; for who would be pleased with a city without laws? And now will you not abide by your agreements? You will, if you are persuaded by us, Socrates.”

What will be the disposition of the man who through fear of death renounces his own purpose

“For whoever is a destroyer of laws would surely seem to be a destroyer of young and foolish men. Will you then flee the well-governed cities and the most orderly of men? And if you do this, will your life be worth living? Or will you approach them and shamelessly converse with them, Socrates, and say what? The same things you say here, that virtue and justice are of the greatest worth to men, and customs and laws? And do you not think that the affair of Socrates will appear improper? One must think so. But you will leave these places and go to Thessaly, to Crito’s friends; for there is the greatest disorder and licentiousness there, and perhaps they would gladly hear from you how comically you ran away from the prison, putting on some disguise, or taking a leather cloak, or the other things runaways usually dress in, and changing your own appearance. And that, an old man with little of life likely left, you dared to cling so greedily to life, transgressing the greatest laws, will no one say it? Perhaps not, if you offend no one; but otherwise, Socrates, you will hear many things unworthy of yourself. You will live, then, fawning on all men and serving them, doing what, except feasting in Thessaly, as if you had gone abroad to Thessaly for a dinner? And those arguments about justice and the rest of virtue, where will they be for us? But you wish to live for your children’s sake, to bring them up and educate them? What then? Will you take them to Thessaly and bring them up and educate them there, making them foreigners, so that they may enjoy this from you too? Or not that, but if they are brought up here while you are alive, will they be better brought up and educated though you are not with them? For your friends will take care of them. Will they care for them if you go abroad to Thessaly, but not care for them if you go abroad to Hades, if those who say they are your friends are of any use? One must think they will. No, Socrates, obey us who brought you up, and put neither children nor life nor anything else before justice, so that when you come to Hades you may have all this to say in your defense to the rulers there. For neither here does it appear better for you, nor more just, nor holier, nor for any of yours, if you do these things, nor will it be better when you arrive there. But now you will depart, if you depart, wronged not by us the laws but by men. But if you go out so shamefully, returning wrong for wrong and evil for evil, transgressing your own agreements and compacts with us, and doing evil to those you should least of all, yourself, your friends, your country and us, we shall be angry with you while you live, and there our brothers, the laws in Hades, will not receive you kindly, knowing that you tried to destroy us as far as lay in you.”

That one ought not to shrink from death in defense of the truth. From the Apology of Socrates

“Perhaps someone may say, ‘Are you not ashamed, Socrates, to have followed such a pursuit that you are now in danger of being put to death?’ I would answer him with a just reply: ‘You do not speak well, man, if you think that a man who is of even a little use should take into account the risk of living or dying, and not consider this alone when he acts, whether he does what is just or unjust, the deeds of a good man or a bad.’ For by your argument all the demigods who died at Troy would be worthless, and especially the son of Thetis, who so despised danger in comparison with enduring anything shameful that, when his mother, a goddess, said to him, as he was eager to kill Hector, something like this, I think: ‘My child, if you avenge the slaying of your comrade Patroclus and kill Hector, you will die yourself; for immediately,’ she says, ‘after Hector your fate is ready’; he, on hearing this, made light of death and danger, and fearing far more to live as a coward and not avenge his friends, ‘Immediately,’ he says, ‘may I die, having punished the wrongdoer, that I may not stay here a laughingstock beside the curved ships, a burden on the earth.’ Do you think he gave thought to death and danger? For this is the truth, men of Athens: wherever a man stations himself, thinking it best, or is stationed by his commander, there he must, I think, stay and face danger, taking into account neither death nor anything else before disgrace. I would have done a terrible thing, men of Athens, if, when the commanders whom you chose to command me stationed me at Potidaea and Amphipolis and Delium, I stayed where they stationed me, like anyone else, and ran the risk of death, but when the god stationed me, as I thought and believed, to live philosophizing and examining myself and others, I should then, through fear of death or anything else whatever, desert my post. That would indeed be terrible, and then truly someone might justly bring me to court for not believing that there are gods, disobeying the oracle, fearing death, and thinking myself wise when I am not. For to fear death, gentlemen, is nothing other than to think oneself wise when one is not; for it is to think one knows what one does not know. No one knows whether death is not even the greatest of all goods for man, yet they fear it as if they knew well that it is the greatest of evils. And is not this the shameful ignorance, to think one knows what one does not know? In this, gentlemen, and here, I perhaps differ from most men; and if I were to say that I am wiser than anyone in anything, it would be in this: that not knowing enough about the things in Hades, I also think I do not know. But that to do wrong and to disobey one’s better, whether god or man, is evil and shameful, I know. So I shall never fear or flee things which I do not know may not even be good, rather than evils which I know to be evils. So that even if you were now to acquit me, disbelieving Anytus, who said that either I ought not to have been brought here at all, or, since I have been brought, it was impossible not to put me to death, telling you that if I escaped, your sons, practicing what Socrates teaches, would all be utterly corrupted; if you were to say to me in reply, ‘Socrates, we will not now be persuaded by Anytus, but we acquit you, on this condition, however, that you no longer spend your time in this search or philosophize; and if you are caught still doing this, you shall die’; if, then, as I said, you were to acquit me on these terms, I would say to you: ‘Men of Athens, I hold you in affection and love you, but I will obey the god rather than you; and as long as I breathe and am able, I will not stop philosophizing and exhorting you and pointing out the truth to whichever of you I meet, saying what I am accustomed to say.’” And after a little he adds: “Let us reflect in this way too, that there is great hope that it is a good. For to be dead is one of two things: either the dead man is as it were nothing and has no perception of anything, or, as is said, it is a change and a migration of the soul from this place to another. And if there is no perception, but it is like a sleep when one sleeps and does not even see a dream, death would be a wonderful gain. For I think that if someone had to pick out the night in which he slept so soundly as not even to dream, and set beside it the other nights and days of his own life, and had to consider and say how many days and nights in his life he had lived better and more pleasantly than that night, I think that not merely a private person but the Great King himself would find them easy to count compared with the other days and nights. If death is like this, I call it a gain; for then all time appears to be no more than a single night. But if death is like a journey from here to another place, and what is said is true, that all the dead are there, what greater good could there be than this, judges? For if a man, arriving in Hades and rid of these who call themselves judges, will find the true judges who are said to judge there, Minos and Rhadamanthus and Aeacus and Triptolemus, and all the other demigods who were just in their own life, would the journey be a poor one? Or again, to be with Orpheus and Musaeus and Hesiod and Homer, what would any of you not give? I am willing to die many times, if these things are true; since for me myself the time spent there would be wonderful, when I met Palamedes and Ajax son of Telamon and any other of the ancients who died through an unjust judgment. To compare my own sufferings with theirs would, I think, not be unpleasant. And above all, to spend my time examining and searching those there, as I do those here, which of them is wise and which thinks he is but is not.” And among us it is said, “We must obey God rather than men,” and, “Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul”; and we know that “if our earthly house of this tent is dissolved, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens,” and that “being away from the body we are at home with the Lord,” who has promised all who have hoped in him that they shall rest in the bosom of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, and with the other men dear to God among the Hebrews, prophets and righteous men, shall spend the long ages in blessed life.

How we ought to honor the death of those who have nobly resigned their life. From Plato

“Of those who die on campaign, whoever dies having distinguished himself, shall we not say first that he is of the golden race? Most certainly. And shall we not believe Hesiod, that when any of this race die, ‘they become holy daimones upon the earth, noble, averters of evil, guardians of mortal men’? We shall believe him. Then we shall inquire of the god how we must bury such daimonic and divine men, and with what distinction, and bury them in whatever way he directs? Why should we not? And for the rest of time we shall tend and revere their tombs as those of daimones. And we shall hold the same customs whenever any of those who were judged exceptionally good in life die of old age or in any other way.” These words also fit the death of those dear to God, whom you would not be wrong to call soldiers of true godliness. Hence it is also our custom to go to their tombs, to make our prayers beside them, and to honor their blessed souls, these things too being reasonably done by us. But we have gathered these things from Plato; another lover of fine things might find even more in the same author in agreement with our doctrines, and perhaps in others too. And since others before us have also taken up the same subject, I think it well that we should also look at what they have worked out. I shall set out first the words of Aristobulus, the philosopher from among the Hebrews, which run thus:

How Aristobulus the Peripatetic, who was a Hebrew before our time, acknowledges that the Greeks have started from the philosophy of the Hebrews. From the statements of Aristobulus addressed to King Ptolemy

“It is clear that Plato followed our legislation, and he has clearly studied each of the things in it closely. For before Demetrius of Phalerum, before the rule of Alexander and of the Persians, it had been translated by others: the account of the exodus of the Hebrews, our fellow countrymen, from Egypt, and the manifestation of all that happened to them, and the conquest of the land, and the exposition of the whole legislation; so that it is quite clear that the previously mentioned philosopher took many things from it, for he was very learned, just as Pythagoras also transferred many of our teachings and set them in his own body of doctrine. But the complete translation of everything in the law took place under the king called Philadelphus, your ancestor, who brought greater zeal to it, Demetrius of Phalerum managing the matters concerning it.” Then, after saying some things in between, he goes on to say: “For the divine voice must be taken not as spoken speech but as the construction of works, just as Moses in the legislation has called the whole creation of the world words of God. For he says continually at each thing, ‘And God said, and it came to be.’ And it seems to me that Pythagoras and Socrates and Plato, having studied everything closely, followed him, when they say that they hear the voice of God, contemplating accurately the construction of the universe as made by God and held together by him without ceasing. Further, Orpheus too, in verses from the sayings according to the Sacred Discourse attributed to him, sets out thus concerning all things being held together by divine power, and being created, and God being over all. He speaks thus: “I will speak to those for whom it is lawful; but close the doors, you profane, fleeing the ordinances of the just, since the divine law has been laid down for all. But you, Musaeus, offspring of the light-bringing Moon, listen; for I will tell the truth, and let not what appeared before in your breast deprive you of dear life. But looking to the divine Word, wait on it, directing the intelligent vessel of your heart; and tread well the path, and look only to the immortal molder of the world. An ancient saying shines forth about him: he is one, complete in himself, and by him all things are brought to completion; and he himself moves among them, yet no mortal soul sees him, but the mind sees him. He does not, out of good things, send evil upon mortal men; but favor and hatred attend him, and war and plague and tearful sorrows; nor is there any other. You would easily see all things, if you were to see him. Before that, here on earth, my child, I will show you, when I see his footprints and the strong hand of the mighty God. But him I do not see; for a cloud is set fast about him for the rest of me; and ten folds stand before men. For no one of mortal men could see him ruling, except a certain only-begotten one, a shoot from above of the race of the Chaldeans; for he was skilled in the course of the star, and in how the movement of the sphere revolves around the earth, in a circle evenly, each on its own axis; and he guides the winds around the air and around the stream of water; and he makes appear the gleam of mighty-born fire. He himself again is set fast upon the great heaven on a golden throne, and the earth stands beneath his feet; and he has stretched out his right hand to the ends of the ocean; and the base of the mountains trembles within at heart, and cannot bear his mighty strength. He is wholly heavenly, and brings all things to their end on earth, himself holding the beginning and the middle and the end, as the saying of the ancients, as the one born of the water ordained, having received it from God in his judgments, according to the twofold law. It is not lawful to speak otherwise; I tremble in my limbs, in my mind. From on high he rules over all things in order. Child, draw near with your thoughts, keeping well control of your tongue, and store the saying in your breast.” And Aratus too speaks thus about the same things: “From Zeus let us begin, whom men never leave unspoken; full of God are all the streets, and all the marketplaces of men, and full is the sea and the harbors; and everywhere we all have need of God. For we are also his offspring; and he, kindly to men, gives favorable signs, and rouses the peoples to work, reminding them of their livelihood; he tells when the soil is best for oxen and for mattocks, he tells when the seasons are favorable both to dig around plants and to sow all seeds.” I think it has been clearly shown that the power of God is through all things. And we have marked it as is fitting, removing the Dis and Zeus of the verses; for their meaning refers to God; that is why we have spoken so. We have, then, not unfittingly brought these things forward for the matters under inquiry. For all the philosophers agree that we must hold holy conceptions about God, which our school especially enjoins, and well. And the whole structure of our law is ordered with reference to godliness and justice and self-control and the other things that are truly good.” Next after these, after other things, he adds: “It follows that God, having constructed the whole world, also gave us, because life is toilsome for all, the seventh day as a rest; which might also in nature be called the first, the genesis of light, in which all things are viewed together. The same might be transferred to wisdom also, for all light comes from it. And some of those of the Peripatetic school have said that it holds the place of a lamp; for those who follow it continually will remain undisturbed throughout their whole life. But one of our ancestors, Solomon, said more clearly and finely that it existed before heaven and earth. And this agrees with what was said before. And what is made clear by the legislation, that God rested on it, does not mean, as some suppose, that God no longer makes anything; it means that, having caused their order to cease, he has so ordered it for all time. For it signifies that in six days he made heaven and earth and all things in them, so as to show the times and foretell the order, what comes before what. For having ordered them, he so holds them together and changes them. And he has made it clear to us as legal (the seventh day) as a sign of the seventh faculty established in us, reason, by which we have knowledge of things human and divine. And the whole world of all living things and all growing things revolves in sevens; and its being called the Sabbath is interpreted as being rest. And Homer and Hesiod also make it clear that it is holy, having taken it from our books. Hesiod thus: “First the first of the month, the fourth, and the seventh, a holy day.” And again he says: “And on the seventh again the bright light of the sun.” And Homer speaks thus: “And then on the seventh came down the holy day.” And again: “It was the seventh day, and on it all things had been finished.” And: “And on the seventh dawn we left the stream of Acheron.” Signifying this, that from forgetfulness and wickedness of soul what was said before is left behind on the true seventh, which is reason, and we receive knowledge of the truth, as has been said before. And Linus says thus: “On the seventh dawn all things were made complete.” And again: “The seventh is among the good, and the seventh is birth.” And: “The seventh among the first, and the seventh is perfect.” And: “All things are made seven in the starry heaven, appearing in circles as the years come round.”” Such, then, are the words of Aristobulus. And what Clement too has said on the same subject you may learn from the following:

How Clement likewise proves that the noble sayings of the Greeks are in agreement with the doctrines of the Hebrews. From the fifth Miscellany

“We must add what follows, and now show more clearly the Greek theft from the barbarian philosophy. The Stoics say that God is a body, and a spirit in his essence, just as indeed they say of the soul. All these things you will find plainly in the Scriptures. But do not think for now of their allegories as the knowledge-bearing truth hands them down, if, like skilled wrestlers, they point to one thing and signify another. The Stoics say that God pervades all being; but we call him only Maker, and Maker by the word. What misled them was what is said in Wisdom: “It pervades and penetrates all things because of its purity,” since they did not understand that this is said of the wisdom first created by God. Yes, they say, but the philosophers posit matter among the first principles, the Stoics and Plato and Pythagoras, and Aristotle the Peripatetic too, and not one principle. Let them know, then, that the so-called matter is said by them to be without quality and without shape, and Plato was bold enough to say that it is not being; and perhaps, knowing in a very mystical way that the one truly existing principle is one, he says in the Timaeus in these very words: “Now let our view be this: the principle of all things, or principles, or whatever one thinks about them, is not to be stated now, for no other reason than that it is hard to make one’s opinions clear in the present manner of exposition.” “Besides, that prophetic phrase, ‘And the earth was invisible and unformed,’ gave them grounds for a material substance. And indeed Epicurus’ introduction of chance came from this, since he did not follow the saying, ‘Vanity of vanities, all is vanity.’ And it occurred to Aristotle to bring providence down as far as the moon from this psalm: ‘Lord, your mercy is in the heaven, and your truth reaches to the clouds.’ For the revelation of the prophetic mysteries had not yet been unveiled before the coming of the Lord. Again, the punishments after death and the retribution by fire were stolen from the barbarian philosophy both by all the poetic Muse and by Greek philosophy. Plato, at least, in the last book of the Republic says in these very words: “Then wild men, fiery to look upon, standing by and hearing the sound, took some away apart and led them off; but Ardiaeus and the others they bound hand and foot and head, threw them down and flayed them, and dragged them along the road outside, carding them on thorns.” By the fiery men he means angels, who seize the unjust and punish them. “Who makes his angels spirits,” it says, “and his ministers a flaming fire.” “It follows from this that the soul is immortal. For what is punished or corrected, being in a state of perception, lives, even if it is said to suffer. Again, does not Plato know of rivers of fire and the depth of the earth, which the barbarians call Gehenna, naming it poetically Tartarus, and bringing in Cocytus and Acheron and Pyriphlegethon and certain other such places of punishment that chasten for correction? And showing the angels of the little and least ones, as the Scripture says, who see God, and also the oversight that comes to us through the angels set over us, he does not hesitate to write: ‘When all the souls had chosen their lives, they went in order, as they had drawn lots, to Lachesis; and she sent with each the daimon he had chosen, as guardian of his life and fulfiller of the things chosen.’ Perhaps Socrates’ daimonion too hinted at something of this kind.” “And indeed the philosophers, having taken it over, taught that the world came into being. And Plato said plainly: ‘Has it had no beginning of generation, or has it come to be, having started from some beginning? For it is visible and tangible and has a body.’ And again, when he says, ‘To find the maker and father of this universe is a task,’ he not only showed that the world came into being, but signifies that it came to be from him as from one alone, and was brought into existence out of what was not. The Stoics too hold that the world came into being. And the devil, of whom the barbarian philosophy speaks so much, the ruler of the demons, Plato in the tenth book of the Laws calls an evil-working soul, in these words: “Must we not say that soul, which governs and dwells in all things that move in every way, governs heaven also? Of course. One, or more? More, I shall answer for you both. Let us suppose no fewer than two: one beneficent, and one able to work the opposite.” So too in the Phaedrus he writes this: “There are also other evils, but some daimon has mixed pleasure for the moment into most of them.” And in the tenth book of the Laws he plainly shows that apostolic saying, “Our wrestling is not against blood and flesh, but against the spiritual things in the heavens,” writing somewhat thus: “For since we have agreed among ourselves that heaven is full of many good things, and also of their opposites, but more of those that are not good, such a battle, we say, is undying, and requires wonderful watchfulness.” Again, the barbarian philosophy knows one world that is intelligible and another that is sensible; the one the archetype, the other the image of the beautiful pattern. The one it assigns to the monad, as intelligible; the sensible to the hexad; for among the Pythagoreans the hexad is called marriage, as being the generative number. And in the monad it establishes an invisible heaven and a holy earth and intelligible light; for “in the beginning,” it says, “God made the heaven and the earth; and the earth was invisible.” Then it adds, “And God said, Let there be light, and there was light.” And in the sensible creation he made a solid heaven, for what is solid is sensible, and an earth that is visible, and light that is seen. Does it not seem to you that from this Plato leaves ideas of living things in the intelligible world and makes the sensible species according to the intelligible kinds? Fittingly, then, Moses says that the body was molded from earth, which Plato calls the earthly tent, but that the rational soul was breathed in from above by God into the face. For there, they say, the ruling faculty is seated, interpreting the entry of the soul through the senses into the first-formed man as an addition; and that is why man was made after the image and likeness. For the image of God is the divine and royal Word, the impassible man; and the image of the image is the human mind. And if you wish to take the likeness by another name, you would find it called in Moses a divine following. For he says, “Walk after the Lord your God, and keep his commandments.” And all the virtuous, I think, are followers and servants of God. From this the Stoics have said that the end of philosophy is to live in accordance with nature, and Plato, likeness to God, as we showed in the second Miscellany. And Zeno the Stoic, taking it from Plato, and Plato from the barbarian philosophy, says that all the good are friends of one another. For Socrates says in the Phaedrus that it is not fated that the bad should be friend to the bad, nor the good not friend to the good. This he also proved sufficiently in the Lysis: that friendship could never be preserved in injustice and wickedness. And the Athenian Stranger likewise says: “That action is dear to God and follows him which has an ancient saying in its favor, that like is dear to like when it is measured, but things without measure are dear neither to the measureless nor to the measured; and God would be for us the measure of all things.” Then, a little further on, Plato adds: “For every good man is like the good man, and being like God, is a friend both to every good man and to God.” Having come to this point, I remembered that too; for at the end of the Timaeus he says: “One must make that which thinks like that which is thought, according to its original nature; and having made it like, one has the end of the best life set before men by the gods, for the present and for the time to come.” And a little after he adds: “That we are brothers, as being of the one God and of one Teacher, Plato too seems to show well, somewhat thus: ‘For you are all brothers in the city, as we shall say to them in telling the myth. But God, in molding those of you who are fit to rule, mixed gold into them at their birth, which is why they are most honored; into the auxiliaries, silver; and iron and bronze into the farmers and the other craftsmen.’” Hence, he says, it is necessary that some love and embrace the things in which there is knowledge, and others those in which there is opinion. For perhaps he divines this elect nature that aspires to knowledge; unless, positing three natures, he describes three polities, as some have supposed: the silver of the Jews, the third of the Greeks, and of the Christians, in whom the royal gold has been mixed, the Holy Spirit. And describing the life of Christians, he writes word for word in the Theaetetus: “Let us speak of the leaders; for why should one speak of those who spend their time in philosophy poorly? These, I suppose, do not know from their youth the way to the marketplace, or where the court or council chamber is, or any other public meeting place of the city; laws and decrees, spoken or written, they neither see nor hear. The eagerness of political clubs for offices, and meetings, and revels with flute-girls, it does not occur to them even in a dream to engage in. Whether anything has happened well or badly in the city, or what evil has come to anyone from his ancestors, escapes them more than the proverbial measures of the sea. And he does not even know that he does not know all these things; but in truth only his body lies and dwells in the city, while he himself flies, as Pindar says, ‘beneath the earth’ and ‘above the heaven,’ studying the stars and searching out every nature everywhere.” “Again, with the Lord’s saying, ‘Let your yes be yes and your no no,’ we must compare this: ‘But it is in no way lawful for me to admit a lie and to do away with the truth.’ And with the prohibition of swearing agrees this phrase in the tenth book of the Laws: ‘Let praise and oath be absent from everything.’ And in general, Pythagoras and Socrates and Plato, when they say that they hear the voice of God, contemplating the structure of the universe as made by God accurately and held together without ceasing, have heard Moses saying, ‘He spoke and it came to be,’ describing the word of God as a work. And dwelling on the molding of man from dust, the philosophers constantly call the body earthly; and Homer does not hesitate to put as a curse, “But may you all become water and earth,” just as Isaiah says, “And trample them like clay.” And Callimachus writes explicitly: “That was the year in which the winged creature, and that in the sea, and the four-footed spoke just as the clay of Prometheus.” And again the same: “If Prometheus molded you, and you are not made of other clay.” And Hesiod says of Pandora: “And he commanded famous Hephaestus to mix immediately earth with water, and put in it the voice and mind of a human being.” The Stoics define nature as craftsmanlike fire, proceeding methodically to generation; and God and his Word are spoken of allegorically by Scripture as fire and light. What then? Does not Homer too, paraphrasing the separation of the water from the earth and the manifest uncovering of the dry land, say of Tethys and Oceanus, “For already for a long time they have kept apart from each other’s bed and love”? Again, the most learned among the Greeks also attribute power in all things to God: Epicharmus, who was a Pythagorean, saying: “Nothing escapes the divine; this you must know; he himself is our overseer, and nothing is impossible for God.” And the lyric poet: “It is possible for God to raise up spotless light out of black night, and to cover with dark-clouded gloom the pure gleam of day.” He alone, he says, who can make night while it is day, is God. And in the poem entitled Phaenomena Aratus, having said, “From Zeus let us begin, whom we men never leave unspoken; full of Zeus are all the streets, and all the marketplaces of men, and full is the sea and the harbors; and everywhere we all have need of Zeus,” adds, “For we are also his offspring,” that is, by creation, “and he, kindly to men, gives favorable signs. For he himself fixed the signs in heaven, distinguishing the stars, and planned for the year stars that should most give men well-ordered signs of the seasons, that all things might grow steadily. Therefore they always propitiate him first and last. Hail, Father, great wonder, great gift to men!” And before him Homer, making a world in the manner of Moses on the shield made by Hephaestus, says, “On it he made the earth, on it the heaven, on it the sea,” and, “on it all the constellations with which heaven is crowned.” For the Zeus celebrated in poems and prose writings refers the thought to God. Now Democritus writes that a few men, as it were in the light of day, raising their hands toward what we Greeks now call the air, said: “Zeus considers all things, and he knows all and gives and takes away, and he is king of all.” And more mystically Pindar the Boeotian, being a Pythagorean, “One is the race of men, one of gods, and from one mother we both breathe,” that is, matter; and he speaks of one creator of these, whom he calls the father, the best of craftsmen, who also provides advancement to divinity according to merit. I pass over Plato; he plainly, in the letter to Erastus and Coriscus, appears, I do not know how, to indicate the Father and the Son from the Hebrew Scriptures, exhorting them in these words: “swearing with an earnestness not unrefined and with education, the sister of earnestness, by the God of all, the cause, and by the Lord and Father of the ruler and cause, whom, if you rightly pursue philosophy, you will know.” And the speech in the Timaeus calls the Creator Father, saying somewhat thus: “Gods of gods, of whom I am father and maker of works.” So that when he says, “All things are about the King of all, and all things are for his sake, and he is the cause of all things beautiful; and the second about the second, and the third about the third,” I understand nothing else than that the holy Trinity is indicated. For the third is the Holy Spirit, and the Son the second, through whom all things came to be according to the will of the Father. The same author in the tenth book of the Republic mentions Er the son of Armenius, a Pamphylian by race, who is Zoroaster. At least Zoroaster himself writes: “These things wrote Zoroaster, son of Armenius, a Pamphylian by race, who died in war, what I learned from the gods when I was in Hades.” This Zoroaster, Plato says, came back to life on the twelfth day while lying on the pyre. Perhaps he hints not at the resurrection but at this: that the way for souls to their taking up is through the twelve signs of the zodiac; and he himself says that the descent to birth is by the same way. In the same way we must understand the twelve labors of Heracles to be spoken of, after which the soul obtains release from this whole world. I do not pass over Empedocles either: this natural philosopher mentions the taking up of all things as going to take place one day, by a change into the substance of fire.” “Most clearly Heraclitus of Ephesus holds this opinion, judging that there is one world that is everlasting and another that perishes, namely the one in its ordered arrangement, knowing that this is not different from the former in a certain respect. But that he knew the world formed of all substance to be everlasting, he makes plain when he says: ‘This world, the same for all, no one of gods or men made; but it always was and is and will be, ever-living fire, kindled in measures and quenched in measures.’ And that he taught it to be both generated and perishable is shown by what follows: ‘Turnings of fire: first sea; and of sea half is earth and half fiery storm-wind.’ For he says in effect that fire, by the Word and God that governs all things, is turned through air into moisture, which is as it were the seed of the world-ordering, and which he calls sea; and from this again come into being heaven and earth and what they contain. And how it is taken up again and set on fire he makes clear in these words: ‘Sea is poured out and measured into the same proportion as it was before it became earth.’ And likewise the same concerning the other elements.” “Similar to this are the doctrines of the most distinguished of the Stoics about the conflagration, treating of it as well as of the government of the world and of the individual world and man, and of the survival of our souls. And again Plato, in the seventh book of the Republic, has called the day here “a nightly day,” because, I think, of the world-rulers of this darkness; and the soul’s way into the body sleep and death, just as Heraclitus does. And did not the Spirit foretell this of the Savior through David, saying, “I lay down and slept; I awoke, for the Lord will help me”? For he speaks allegorically not only of the resurrection of Christ as rising from sleep, but also of the Lord’s descent into flesh as sleep. Indeed the Savior himself charges us, “Watch,” that is, practice how to live, and try to separate the soul from the body. And Plato divines the Lord’s day in the tenth book of the Republic in these words: “And when seven days had passed for each of those in the meadow, they had to rise up from there on the eighth and journey, and arrive on the fourth day.” “By the meadow we must understand the fixed sphere, as a gentle and pleasant place and the place of the holy; by the seven days, each movement of the seven, and all the working art hastening to its end of rest; and the journey after the planets leads to heaven, that is, to the eighth movement and day. And he says the souls go away on the fourth day, indicating the passage through the four elements.” “Not only the Hebrews but also the Greeks know the seventh day as holy, according to which the whole world of all living things and growing things revolves. Hesiod speaks thus of it: ‘First the first of the month, the fourth, and the seventh, a holy day.’ And again: ‘And on the seventh again the bright light of the sun.’ And Homer: ‘And then on the seventh came down the holy day.’ And ‘The seventh was holy.’ And again: ‘It was the seventh day, and on it all things had been finished.’ And again: ‘And on the seventh dawn we left the stream of Acheron.’ Indeed Callimachus the poet also writes: ‘On the seventh dawn all things had been made for him.’ And again: ‘The seventh is among the good, and the seventh is birth.’ And ‘The seventh among the first, and the seventh is perfect.’ And ‘All things were made seven in the starry heaven, appearing in circles as the years come round.’” “The elegies of Solon too greatly deify the number seven.” “And is it not like the Scripture which says, ‘Let us take away the just man from among us, for he is troublesome to us,’ when Plato, all but prophesying the saving dispensation, says in the second book of the Republic: ‘Being so disposed, the just man will be scourged, will have his eyes gouged out, and at last, having suffered every evil, will be impaled’?” “And the Socratic Antisthenes, paraphrasing that prophetic Scripture, ‘To whom have you likened me? says the Lord,’ says that God is like no one, and that therefore no one can learn him from an image. And Xenophon the Athenian says similar things word for word: ‘He who shakes all things and makes them still is manifest as great and mighty, but what he is like in form is unseen. Not even the sun, which seems to give light to all, allows itself to be looked at; but if anyone gazes at it shamelessly, it takes away his sight.’” “For what flesh can see with its eyes the heavenly and true God, immortal, who dwells in the sky? Not even against the rays of the sun can men stand, being born mortal,” the Sibyl foretold. Well, then, does Xenophanes of Colophon also teach that God is one and incorporeal, adding: “One God, greatest among gods and men, like mortals neither in body nor in thought.” And again: “But mortals think that gods are born, and have their own clothing and voice and body.” And again: “But if oxen or lions had hands, or could paint with their hands and do the works that men do, horses would paint the forms of the gods like horses, and oxen like oxen, and would make their bodies such as the body each of them has.” Let us hear again Bacchylides the lyric poet saying of the divine: “They are untouched by shameful diseases and blameless, in no way like men.” And hear Cleanthes the Stoic, who has written this about God in a certain poem: “You ask me what the good is like? Hear then: ordered, just, holy, pious, master of itself, useful, beautiful, fitting, austere, straightforward, always advantageous, fearless, painless, profitable, without grief, helpful, pleasing, secure, friendly, honored, consistent, of good repute, free from vanity, caring, gentle, vehement, lasting, blameless, ever abiding.” And the same writer, tacitly attacking the idolatry of the many, adds: “Every man is ignoble who looks to opinion, as though he will obtain something good from it.” We must not, then, any longer form our ideas of the divine according to the opinion of the many: “For I do not think that Zeus, imitating the form of a wicked man, came secretly to your bed, like a human being,” Amphion says to Antiope. But Sophocles writes outspokenly: “The mother of this man Zeus wedded, not golden-formed, nor clad in swan’s plumage, as when he got the Pleuronian maiden with child, but wholly a man.” Then going on he added: “And swiftly on the bridal steps stood the adulterer.” Upon which he relates still more plainly the incontinence of the Zeus of fable, somewhat thus: “He, touching neither feast nor lustral water, went to the bed with his heart stung, and the whole of that night he leapt upon her.” Let these things be left to the follies of the theaters. But plainly Heraclitus says: “Of the Word that is needful men are always without understanding, both before they hear it and when they have first heard it.” And the lyric poet Melanippides sings: “Hear me, Father, wonder of mortals, ruler of the ever-living soul.” And the great Parmenides, as Plato says in the Sophist, writes somewhat thus of the divine: “Very many signs that being is unborn and imperishable, whole, unique, unshaken, and unborn.” And Hesiod too: “For he,” he says, “is king and lord of all the immortals; and no other has vied with you in might.” Indeed, tragedy too, drawing away from idols, teaches us to look up to heaven. For Sophocles, as Hecataeus, who composed the histories, says in his work on Abraham and the Egyptians, cries out plainly on the stage: “One in truth, one is God, who made the heaven and the wide earth, and the gleaming swell of the sea, and the might of the winds. But we mortals, many of us straying in heart, set up as a comfort for our troubles images of the gods of stone, or of bronze, or forms made of gold or ivory; and crowning these with sacrifices and fine festivals, we think so to be pious.” And Euripides, writing tragedy on the same stage, says: “Do you see this boundless ether on high, holding the earth around in its moist arms? This consider Zeus, this hold to be God.” And in the drama Pirithous the same writes this in tragic verse: “You, self-generated, who wove the nature of all things in the ethereal whirl, round whom light and dark, spangled night, and the countless throng of stars dance forever.” For here he has called the creative mind self-generated, and what follows applies to the world, in which there are also the opposites of light and darkness. And Aeschylus son of Euphorion says very solemnly of God: “Zeus is ether, Zeus is earth, Zeus is heaven, Zeus is all things, and whatever is higher than these.” I know too that Plato bears witness with Heraclitus when he writes: “The one wise thing is unwilling and willing to be called by the name of Zeus.” And again: “It is law also to obey the counsel of one.” And if you wish to trace that saying, “He who has ears to hear, let him hear,” you would find it set out thus by the Ephesian: “Those without understanding, though they hear, are like the deaf; the saying bears witness to them: present, they are absent.” But do you long to hear plainly of one first principle from the Greeks too? Timaeus of Locri, in his work on nature, will bear witness to me word for word thus: “There is one principle of all things, unbegotten; for if it had come into being, it would no longer be a principle, but that from which the principle came into being.” For from there flowed the true opinion: “Hear, Israel,” it says, “the Lord your God is one, and him only shall you serve.” “See, he is clear to all, unerring,” as the Sibyl says. And Xenocrates of Chalcedon, calling the one Zeus the highest and the other the lowest, leaves an indication of the Father and the Son. And, most surprising, he who introduces the gods with human passions (Homer) appears to know the divine; and Epicurus does not respect him even so. He says, at least: “Why, son of Peleus, do you pursue me with swift feet, being yourself mortal, me an immortal god? Not yet have you known that I am a god.” For he has shown that the divine cannot be caught or grasped by a mortal, neither with feet nor hands nor eyes, nor at all with the body. “To whom have you likened the Lord? Or with what likeness have you likened him?” says the Scripture. “Has a carpenter made an image, or a goldsmith, having melted gold, gilded it over?” and so on. And the comic poet Epicharmus speaks clearly of the Word in the Republic, somewhat thus: “Life for men needs reckoning and number very much; we live by number and reckoning; for these save mortals.” Then he adds explicitly: “Reason steers men and saves them properly.” Then: “If there is human reasoning, there is also a divine Word.” “Reason is born in man for the shaping of life.” “And the divine Word accompanies all arts, itself teaching them what they must do with profit. For it was not man who found art; God brings it.” “And the reason of man is born of the divine Word.” Indeed, when the Spirit cried through Isaiah, “What to me is the multitude of your sacrifices? says the Lord; I am full of burnt offerings, and the fat of lambs and the blood of bulls I do not want,” and a little after added, “Wash, become clean, put away the wickedness from your souls,” and so on, Menander the comic poet writes in these very words: “If anyone, Pamphilus, offering a sacrifice, a multitude of bulls or kids, or, by Zeus, other such things, or works of art, making golden or purple cloaks, or figures of ivory or emerald, thinks he has made God well disposed, he is mistaken and has a light mind. For a man must be useful, not corrupting virgins and committing adultery, stealing and killing for money. Do not covet even the thread of a needle, Pamphilus; for God sees you, being near at hand.” “I am a God near at hand, and not a God far off. Shall a man do anything in secret, and I not see him?” he says through Jeremiah. And again Menander, paraphrasing that Scripture, “Offer a sacrifice of righteousness, and hope in the Lord,” writes somewhat thus: “Do not ever covet even the thread of a needle belonging to another, dearest friend. For God takes pleasure in just works, and not in unjust. He allows the one who toils to raise up his own life, plowing the earth night and day. Sacrifice to God always by being just, shining not in your cloaks so much as in your heart. If you hear thunder, do not flee, if you are conscious of nothing, master. For God sees you, being near at hand.” “While you are still speaking,” says the Scripture, “I will say, Look, I am here.” Again Diphilus the comic poet discourses on the judgment somewhat thus: “Do you think, Niceratus, that the dead, who have shared every luxury in life, have escaped the divine as unnoticed? There is an eye of Justice which sees all things. For in Hades too we hold there are two paths, one the way of the just, the other of the impious. And if the earth shall cover the two for all time, go, steal, rob, make havoc; do not be deceived. There is judgment in Hades too, which God the Lord of all will execute, whose name is fearful, and I would not even name it. He gives to sinners length of life. But if any mortal thinks that, doing evil day by day, he escapes the notice of the gods, he thinks wickedly, and in thinking so he is caught, when Justice happens to be at leisure. See, you who think there is no God. For there is, there is. And if anyone, being wicked by nature, does evil, let him make the most of the time; for in time he will pay the penalty later.” And tragedy agrees with these in the following: “For there will come, there will come that time of the age, when the golden ether shall open its treasure full of fire; and the flame, fed full, shall burn up in its fury all things on earth and on high.” And a little after he adds again: “And when all things fail, the whole deep of the waves will be gone, and the earth bare of trees, and no longer will it bring forth winged tribes, being on fire; and afterward it will save all things which it destroyed before.” We shall find similar things in the Orphic poems, written somewhat thus: “For having hidden all, he brought them again into the joyful light from his holy heart, working mighty deeds.” And if we live holily and justly, we are blessed here, and more blessed after our departure from here, having happiness not for a time but able to rest in eternity, “sharing the hearth of other immortals, sharing their table, free from manly sorrows, unwearied,” as the philosophical poetry of Empedocles says. No one, even according to the Greeks, will be so great as to rise above justice, nor so small as to escape it. The same Orpheus also says this: “But looking to the divine Word, wait on it, directing the intelligent vessel of your heart; tread well the path, and look only to the immortal Lord of the world.” And again concerning God, saying that he is invisible, he says that he was known only to one man, a Chaldean by race, whether he means Abraham or his son, in these words: “except a certain only-begotten one, a shoot from above of the race of the Chaldeans; for he was skilled in the course of the star, and in how the movement of the sphere revolves around the earth, in a circle evenly, each on its own axis; and he guides by the wind around the air and around the stream.” Then, as if paraphrasing “Heaven is my throne, and the earth the footstool of my feet,” he adds: “He himself again is set fast upon the great heaven on a golden throne, and the earth stands beneath his feet. And he has stretched out his right hand around the ends of Ocean; the base of the mountains trembles within at heart, and cannot bear his mighty strength. He is wholly heavenly, and brings all things to their end on earth, himself holding the beginning and the middle and the end. It is not lawful for you to speak otherwise; I tremble in my limbs, in my mind. He rules from on high,” and so on. For by these he has shown all those prophetic words: “If you open heaven, trembling will seize the mountains from you, and they will melt, as wax melts before the fire,” and those through Isaiah, “Who measured heaven with a span, and all the earth with his hand?” Again, when he says: “Lord of the ether and of Hades, of sea and of earth, who with thunders shake the strong house of Olympus, at whom the daimones shudder and the throng of gods is afraid, whom the Fates obey, relentless though they are; imperishable, mother-father, by whose anger all things are shaken, who move the winds and cover all things with clouds, splitting the broad ether with lightnings: yours is the order among the stars, running by unchangeable decrees; and by your fiery throne stand angels of much toil, whose care it is how all things are accomplished for mortals. Yours is the spring that shines new with purple flowers; yours the winter, coming with cold clouds; yours the autumn that Bromius once distributed to his bacchants.” Then he adds, expressly naming God the Almighty: “Imperishable, immortal, utterable only by immortals. Come, greatest of all gods, with strong necessity, fearful, invincible, great, imperishable, whom the ether crowns.” By “mother-father” he has not only indicated generation from nothing, but has perhaps given occasion to those who introduce emanations to conceive also of a consort of God. And he paraphrases those prophetic Scriptures, that through Hosea, “Look, I am he who makes the thunder firm and creates the wind, whose hands founded the host of heaven,” and that through Moses, “See, see that I am, and there is no other god besides me. I will kill and I will make alive; I will strike and I will heal; and there is none who will deliver out of my hands.” “And he himself plants evil for mortals out of good, and chilling war,” according to Orpheus. Archilochus of Paros says such things too: “Zeus, yours is the power of heaven, and you look upon the deeds of men, wicked and lawless.” Again let Orpheus sing to us: “And he has stretched out his right hand on all sides to the end of Ocean; and the earth stands beneath his feet.” These are clearly taken from that passage: “The Lord will save inhabited cities, and he will grasp the whole world with his hand like a nest,” “the Lord who made the earth by his strength,” as Jeremiah says, “and set up the world by his wisdom.” Further, Phocylides, calling the angels daimones, shows in these words that some of them are good and some bad, since we too have received that there are certain apostates: “But there are daimones over men, now some, now others; some to free a man from oncoming evil.” Well, then, does Philemon the comic poet cut out idolatry in these words: “There is no goddess Fortune for us, there is not; but what happens by chance, as it falls out for each, is called Fortune.” And Sophocles the tragedian says: “Not even for the gods are all things at their own choice, apart from Zeus; for he holds the end and the beginning.” And Orpheus: “One power, one daimon came to be, the great blazing heaven; and in one all things were made, in which all these revolve, fire and water and earth,” and so on. And Pindar the lyric poet speaks as if in Bacchic frenzy, saying plainly: “What is God? What is the All.” And again: “God, who makes all things for mortals.” And when he says, “Why do you hope for wisdom, in which man has little above man? It is hard for a mortal mind to search out the counsels of the gods; and he was born of a mortal mother,” he has drawn the thought from there: “Who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been his counselor?” And Hesiod too, in what he writes, agrees with what has been said: “No prophet among men upon the earth could know the mind of aegis-bearing Zeus.” Fittingly, then, Solon of Athens, following Hesiod, writes in his elegies: “The mind of the immortals is wholly unseen by men.” Again, when Moses prophesied that because of the transgression the woman would bear children in toils and pains, a poet of no small fame writes: “Never by day will they cease from toil and misery, nor at all by night, being worn down; and the gods will give them hard cares.” Further, Homer, when he says, “And the father himself held out the golden scales,” indicates that God is just. And Menander the comic poet, interpreting God as good, says: “A daimon stands by every man as soon as he is born, a good guide of his life; for we must not think there is an evil daimon harming a good life.” Then he adds that God is wholly good, meaning either that every god is good, or, what is more likely, that God is good in all things. Again, Aeschylus the tragedian, setting forth the power of God, does not hesitate to call him Most High in these words: “Set God apart from mortals, and do not think that he is fleshly like yourself. You do not know him. Now he appears as fire, unapproachable in onset, now as water, now as darkness; and he himself becomes like beasts, like wind, and cloud, and lightning, thunder, rain. The sea serves him, and the rocks, and every spring, and the gatherings of water; the mountains tremble, and the earth, and the monstrous depth of the sea, and the height of the mountains, when the fierce eye of the Master looks upon them; for the glory of the Most High God can do all things.” Does he not seem to you to paraphrase that saying, “At the presence of the Lord the earth trembles”? Besides these, Apollo the most prophetic, bearing witness to the glory of God, is compelled to say of Athena, when the Medes marched against Greece, how she begged and entreated Zeus for Attica. The oracle runs thus: “Pallas cannot appease Olympian Zeus, though she beseeches him with many words and close counsel. Many temples of the immortals he will give to devouring fire, which now perhaps stand streaming with sweat, quivering with fear,” and so on. And Thearidas writes in his work On Nature: “The principle of things that are, the truly true principle, is one; for in the beginning it is one and alone.” “Nor is there any other apart from the great king,” says Orpheus. Persuaded by him, the comic poet Diphilus says very gnomically: “The father of all things that are, … him honor to the end, sole finder and founder of so many goods.” Fittingly, then, Plato trains the best natures to come to the study which we said before was the greatest: to see the good and to make that ascent. “This, it seems, would not be the turning of a potsherd, but the turning around of a soul from a kind of nightly day to the true ascent to what is, which we shall say is true philosophy.” And those who share in it he judges to be of the golden race, saying, “You are all brothers”; but those of the golden race most exactly, and in every way one. The Father and Maker of all things, then, is apprehended by all, innately and without teaching: by inanimate things, which feel with him; and of living beings, by the animate ones, some already immortal, others working day by day; and of mortal ones, some in fear, still carried in their mother’s womb, others by self-determining reason. And of men, all, Greeks and barbarians alike; and no race anywhere, whether farmers or nomads, nor even of city-dwellers, can live unless it has first been possessed by faith in the Higher Being. Therefore every nation of the east, every one touching the western shores, the north and all the regions toward the south, has one and the same preconception concerning him who established the government of all, since the most universal of his operations have pervaded all things equally. Much more did the inquisitive philosophers among the Greeks, setting out from the barbarian philosophy, give the precedence to the invisible, sole, most powerful, most skillful, and supreme cause of all other excellent things; not knowing the consequences of these, unless they were instructed by us, nor even how God is naturally to be conceived, but only, as we have often said already, by a true periphrasis.” So much, then, from Clement. But since it has been shown at length that the philosophy of Plato is in most points in harmony with the doctrines of the Hebrews (for which we also admire the man, both for this and for his general good sense regarding the truth), it is time to consider what those points are on which we say we are no longer equally disposed toward him, and on account of which we prefer what is considered the barbarian philosophy to that which follows him.

That Plato has not stated all things correctly: so it is not without reason that we have declined his philosophy, and accepted the Hebrew oracles

The oracles of the Hebrews, containing divine responses and prophecies of a power beyond the human, inscribed with God as their author, and confirming their promise by the foretelling of things to come and by events that agree with the predictions, are said to be free from every false thought. At any rate, the divine oracles have been proclaimed “pure, and silver tried in the fire, proved in the earth, purified seven times.” But the writings of Plato are not of this kind, nor indeed those of any other of the wise among men, who, having come to an imagination of the nature of things with the eyes of a mortal mind, by perishable conjectures and guesses, as in a dream and not awake, have brought in much admixture of falsehood with the truth of nature, so that no teaching free of deception can be found in them. For example, if you would be willing to lay aside a little of your self-love and contemplate the light itself by the power of the rational being, you would recognize that wonderful philosopher himself, the one alone of all the Greeks who touched the doorposts of truth, disgracing the name of the gods by applying it to perishable matter and to images made by vulgar hands in the shape of men; and, after the great height of his lofty speech, by which he claimed to know the Father and Creator of this universe, being pushed down from somewhere on high, from above the vaults of the world, into the lowest depth of God-hated idolatry together with the people of the Athenians: so that he is not ashamed that Socrates says he went down to the Piraeus to pray to the goddess and to watch the citizens celebrating the barbarian festival for the first time, and that he admits he ordered a cock to be sacrificed to Asclepius, and that he deifies the ancestral interpreter of the Greeks, the daimon who sits in Delphi. Therefore he might fittingly be charged with the guilt of the superstitious error of the unphilosophic multitude. Take up the argument a little from above, and see what laws the all-wise man made for you concerning popular opinion, after the incorporeal and imperishable ideas, after God, the first and the second cause, and after the intellectual and immortal beings, saying: “Concerning the other daimones, to tell and to know their origin is beyond us. We must believe those who have spoken of it before, who were, as they said, offspring of the gods, and surely, I suppose, knew their own ancestors. It is impossible, then, to disbelieve the children of gods, even though they speak without probable or necessary proofs; but since they profess to report what concerns their own family, we must follow the law and believe them. Let the origin of these gods, then, be held and told by us as they tell it: Of Earth and Heaven were born Oceanus and Tethys; of these, Phorcys, Cronus and Rhea, and all who came with them; and of Cronus and Rhea, Zeus and Hera and all whom we know as their reputed brothers and sisters, and further their other offspring.” For these reasons the philosopher must be left behind by us, since, not as a philosopher nor consistently with himself, he pretended to accept the mythical genealogies of the poets. For one could hear him saying this in the Republic: “In the greater myths, I said, we shall see the lesser too. For the greater and the lesser must be of the same stamp and have the same effect. Do you not think so? I do, he said; but I do not see what you mean by the greater either. Those, I said, that Hesiod and Homer told us, and the other poets. For they, I suppose, composed false myths for men, and told them, and still tell them”: the words quoted a little before. And again his were the words in which he said: “We shall strike out, then, I said, beginning with this verse, all such things: ‘I would rather be a serf on the land, toiling for another,’” and what follows; and the words in which he adds: “Again we shall ask Homer and the other poets not to portray Achilles, son of a goddess, ‘now lying on his side, and now again on his back,’” and what follows. To which he adds: “Or Zeus, when the other gods and men were asleep and he alone awake, easily forgetting all that he had planned because of his desire for sexual pleasure, and so struck at the sight of Hera that he did not even wish to go into the chamber, but wanted to lie with her there on the ground, like a lark; and saying that he is so possessed by desire as not even when they first went to each other ‘without their parents’ knowledge’; nor the binding of Ares and Aphrodite by Hephaestus for other such things.” These things having been said in this way, what then does his later statement mean, which calls the poets children of gods, says that it is impossible to disbelieve them, and bears witness that they invented the myths about the gods without probable or necessary proofs? And what does the irrational faith mean, put forward through fear of punishment from the laws? And how are Heaven and Earth the first of the gods, and then their offspring, Oceanus and Tethys, and Cronus, and all the children and brothers and descendants of these told in the myths of Homer and Hesiod, when he himself was doing away with these very things, saying: “The fault, I said, that ought to be blamed first and most of all, especially if anyone lies not well. What is that? When someone represents badly in words what the gods and heroes are like, as a painter does whose picture is not at all like the things he wished to paint.” And again: “First, I said, he who told the greatest lie about the greatest things did not lie well: that Heaven did what Hesiod says he did, and how Cronus in turn took vengeance on him,” and what follows. How then could the same poets, now called false and untruthful, again be called offspring of the gods? For these reasons, then, this man must be left behind by us, since through fear of death he pretended to agree with the people of the Athenians; and Moses must be honored, and the oracles of the Hebrews, which hold throughout to the pure, the only true and unerring godliness. Now look at another point.

That Plato was not altogether right in his conduct of the argument concerning the intelligible essences, but the Hebrews were

The Hebrews say that the middle order of rational natures is generated and not ungenerated. Dividing this in thought into intellectual beings, they call them spirits and powers and ministers of God, angels and archangels; and from the falling away and perversion of these they derive the race of demons and every kind of contrary and wicked activity. Therefore they do not allow those to be considered gods who do not carry the beautiful and good as inseparable from their nature, but have received even their existence not from themselves but from the cause of all, and their well-being and virtue, and immortality itself, possessing these neither in the same way as the God over all nor as him through whom all things were made. Plato, like the Hebrews, posits the rational natures as incorporeal and intelligible beings, but he falls away from consistency, first by saying that they are ungenerated, like every soul, and then by saying that they came into being from an emanation of the first cause. For he will not allow that they came into being from what is not. Therefore he also supposes a race of many gods, conceiving in thought certain emanations and projections of the first and second cause, and holding that they are good by nature and in no way able to depart from their own virtue; for which reason he also thinks them gods. He considers the race of daimones to be different from these, being capable of baseness and wickedness and of turning to the worse; and he says that some of them are good and some bad, and are so called. Having laid this down in this way, contrary to the teaching of the Hebrews, he does not explain from what source it is reasonable to say that the daimones came into being. No one with sense would say they came from the matter of bodies; for that is irrational, and rational things could never be born from the irrational, and the daimones are rational. But if they come from the emanation of the higher beings, how are they not gods themselves, equal to those who begot them? How, when the source is good, are its products not like it? And from where did the shoot of evil in the second order spring, when the root proceeds from above, from good things and through good things? How could bitter come from sweet? And if the race of wicked daimones is harsher than all darkness and all bitterness, how could it be said to come from an emanation of the higher nature? If it were from that, it would not have turned from its own lot; and if it has been altered, it was not from the beginning impassible in nature; and if it was not such, how could they be gods who are capable of sharing a bad lot? But if they are neither from the emanation of the higher beings nor from the matter of bodies, it is time either to call them ungenerated, and besides the ungenerated matter of bodies to range a third body of ungenerated rational beings against God, and no longer to make God the maker of all things and creator of the universe; or else, admitting this, to confess in agreement with the words of the Hebrews that he makes even the things that are not. And what do these teach about these things? They say that the middle order of rational natures did not come into being either from the matter of bodies or from an emanation of the ungenerated being which is always the same and unchanging, but that, not existing before, it came into being by the active power of the cause of all. And in this way they are not gods, nor properly deemed worthy of this name, because they are not equal in nature to their Maker, nor do they carry the good as inseparable, as God does; and at times they may even receive what is contrary to the good, through neglect of their attention to the better, which each has brought about for himself, being by nature master of his own impulse and will. So much on these things also. Let us pass on to other matters.

That Plato did not on all points hold right opinions concerning the soul, like the Hebrews

Having supposed, like the Hebrews, that the soul is immortal, and having said that it is like God, he is no longer consistent with them when he says at one time that its essence is composite, as taking one part from the indivisible cause that is always the same, and one part from the nature that is divisible in bodies. He speaks thus, in these very words, in the Timaeus: “And he made the soul prior to the body and older in birth and excellence, to be its mistress and ruler and the body its subject, out of the following elements and in the following way. From the indivisible being that is always the same, and from the divisible being that comes to be in bodies, he mixed a third form of being between the two, partaking of the nature of the same and of the other; and he set it accordingly in the middle between the indivisible of them and that which is divisible in bodies. And taking these three, he mixed them all into one form, forcing the nature of the other, which is hard to mix, into union with the same.” Hence, reasonably according to his account, the passible part of the soul’s being is joined to it. But at one time he has taken this view of the soul’s essence, at another he attaches to it another, worse absurdity, saying that that divine and heavenly soul, incorporeal and rational, like God, and by the greatness of its virtue rising above the vaults of heaven, comes down from somewhere above the world into asses and wolves and ants and bees; and he urges us to believe this argument without any proof. He says this, then, in the dialogue On the Soul: “And they wander until, through the desire of the bodily nature that follows them about, they are bound again into a body. And they are bound, as is likely, into such characters as they happen to have practiced in life. What kinds do you mean, Socrates? For example, those who have practiced gluttony and insolence and drunkenness, and taken no care to avoid them, are likely to enter the races of asses and such beasts. Do you not think so? What you say is very likely. And those who have preferred injustice and tyranny and robbery, into the races of wolves and hawks and kites; or where else should we say such souls go? Certainly, said Cebes, into such. Then, he said, it is clear about the others too, where each would go according to the likeness of its practices. Clearly, he said; of course. Then the happiest even of these, he said, and those who go to the best place, are those who have practiced the popular and civic virtue which they call temperance and justice, arising from habit and practice, without philosophy and mind? Why are these the happiest? Because it is likely that they come again into some such civic and gentle race, perhaps of bees or wasps or ants, or even back into the human race itself.” And hear what he relates in the Phaedrus: “For the soul does not come to the same place from which it came for ten thousand years; for it does not grow wings before so long a time, except the soul of one who has philosophized sincerely, or loved boys with philosophy. These, in the third period of a thousand years, if they choose this life three times in succession, thus grow their wings and depart in the three-thousandth year. But the others, when they have ended their first life, come to judgment; and having been judged, some go to the places of correction under the earth and pay the penalty, while others, lifted up by justice to some place in heaven, live in a manner worthy of the life they lived in human form. And in the thousandth year both come to the allotment and choice of their second life, and each chooses the one it wishes. There a human soul passes into the life of a beast, and from a beast, one that was once a man passes back into a man.” So much in the Phaedrus. And hear him writing such things as these in the Republic: “He said he saw the soul that had once been Orpheus choosing the life of a swan, out of hatred of the female sex because of his death at their hands, not wishing to be born of a woman; and he saw the soul of Thamyras choosing that of a nightingale; and he saw a swan changing to the choice of a human life, and other musical creatures likewise, as was likely. The soul that drew its lot chose the life of a lion; it was that of Ajax son of Telamon, avoiding becoming a man, remembering the judgment of the arms. And next the soul of Agamemnon; this too, hostile to the human race because of its sufferings, exchanged for the life of an eagle. And the soul of Atalanta, which had drawn its lot among the middle ones, seeing the great honors of a male athlete, could not pass them by but took them. After her he saw the soul of Epeius son of Panopeus going into the nature of a craftswoman; and far off, among the last, he saw the soul of the buffoon Thersites putting on an ape. And by chance the soul of Odysseus, having drawn the last lot of all, went to choose; and remembering its former toils, having recovered from ambition, it went about for a long time seeking the life of a private man who minded his own business, and with difficulty found it lying somewhere, neglected by the others; and when it saw it, it said that it would have done the same even if it had drawn the first lot, and chose it gladly. And from the other beasts likewise some went into men and into one another, the unjust changing into the wild, the just into the tame, and all kinds of mixtures were made.” Having said so much about the soul, Plato is plainly following the Egyptians in his doctrine; for the teaching is not that of the Hebrews, since it is not a friend of truth. This is not the time to refute it, since he himself did not attempt the problem with proofs. But one might reasonably point out this much: that it was not consistent for the same man to say that the souls of the impious, departing from here at death, pay the penalty in Hades for what they did and are punished there without end, and again to say that they choose their lives here according to their own will. For he says that they are bound into a body by desire for the bodily; and that those brought up in insolence and gluttony become asses, and enter the bodies of other beasts, choosing these by their own will, not by way of justice; and that the unjust and rapacious become wolves and kites, coming to this willingly. Then that the soul of Orpheus wished to be a swan, that of Thamyras a nightingale, and that Thersites chose the life of an ape. Where, then, would be the judgment after departure from here, which he describes in the dialogue On the Soul, saying: “When the dead have come to the place to which his daimon brings each … those who are judged to have lived a middling life go to the Acheron, embark on the vessels there for them, and on these come to the lake; and there they dwell, and being purified, and paying the penalty for their wrongdoings, they are released, if anyone has done wrong, and receive rewards for their good deeds, each according to his merit. But those who are judged incurable because of the greatness of their sins, having committed many great sacrileges, or many unjust and lawless murders, or other such things, these their fitting fate hurls into Tartarus, from which they never come out.” Thus he described the fate of the impious. Hear how he speaks of the godly: “And of these, those who have been sufficiently purified by philosophy live thereafter altogether without toils for all time to come, and come to dwellings even fairer than these, which it is not easy to describe, nor is there sufficient time at present.” And attend to what he says in the Gorgias: “That he who has passed his life justly and holily, when he dies, goes away to the islands of the blessed and dwells in all happiness apart from evils; but he who has lived unjustly and godlessly goes to the prison of retribution and justice, which they call Tartarus … And those who have committed the extreme wrongs and have become incurable through such wrongs, from these the examples are made; and they themselves are no longer benefited, since they are incurable, but others are benefited who see them suffering for all time the greatest, most painful and most fearful sufferings for their sins, simply hung up there in the prison in Hades as examples, a spectacle and a warning to the unjust who are always arriving.” How could these things agree with the arguments about the exchange of bodies, which say that the soul, migrating, chooses them? For how could the same soul undergo punishments and prisons and such great penalty for all time after its death here, and again, as if released and free from bonds, choose whatever lives it wishes? And if it is again to choose what is pleasant, where then is the prison of retribution and justice? One might at leisure find countless other objections to the argument, on which it is not the time to dwell at length. Thus the first slip of Plato’s opinion on these matters has been shown in some way. The other, in the structure of the doctrine, by which he defined one part of the soul as divine and rational, and another part as irrational and passible, has been condemned even by his own followers, as may be learned from the following words:

That the nature of the soul does not, as Plato supposes, consist of an impassive and passive essence. From the Platonist Severus On the Soul

“Concerning the soul according to Plato, which he says was composed by God of impassible and passible being, as one of the intermediate colors is from white and black, we have this to say: that, as these separate in time, it must necessarily disappear, as the composition of the intermediate color does, each part from which it was composed separating in time by nature into its own. If so, we shall declare the soul perishable and not immortal. For if it is agreed that nothing in nature exists without its opposite, and that the things in the world have been ordered by God out of the nature of opposites, he having put friendship and fellowship into them, as the dry toward the wet, the hot toward the cold, the heavy toward the light, white toward black, sweet toward bitter, hard toward soft, and in all such things one other fellowship of all, impassible being toward passible; and if things blended and mixed admit by nature of separation from one another in time, and the soul shall be supposed to have come from impassible and passible being, then, like the intermediate color, it too must by nature disappear in time, as the opposites in its composition press toward their own nature. For do we not see that what is heavy by nature, even if it is carried upward by us or by some natural lightness added to it from outside, likewise forces its way down toward its own nature? And likewise what is light by nature, carried down by similar external causes, forces its way upward? For things brought together into one from two opposites cannot remain always in the same state, unless some third thing of the being of existing things is always present in them. But the soul is not some third thing compounded of two opposites; it is simple, and by its very nature impassible and incorporeal. Hence Plato and those after him said that it is immortal. But since it is the common account of all that man is made of soul and body, and the affections that happen in us, willingly and unwillingly, without the body are said to belong to the soul, the many, judging by this that its essence is passible, say that it is mortal and bodily, and not incorporeal. But Plato was compelled to weave passible being into the soul, which is impassible by nature. That it is neither the one nor the other, as each party has said, Plato and the others, we shall try to show by argument, setting out the powers at work in us.” Let these words from Severus the Platonist’s On the Soul be set out by me. And besides what has been said, consider this also, concerning the origin of heaven and of the luminaries in it.

That Plato was not altogether right in his opinions concerning heaven and the heavenly lights in it

Having given, in agreement with the Hebrews, the account of heaven and the things that appear in it, according to which they are generated, made by the cause of the universe, and partake of bodily and perishable substance, he no longer, like the Hebrews, legislates that they are to be worshipped and held to be gods, saying thus in the Epinomis: “Whom, then, do I mean when I speak with such reverence of a god, Megillus and Clinias? Heaven, I suppose, which it is most just that we, like all the other daimones and gods, should honor and pray to above all; and that it has been the cause of all other good things to us, we would all agree.” Then further on in the same work he adds this: “And as visible gods, the greatest, most honored, and sharpest-sighted everywhere, we must name first the nature of the stars, and all that we perceive came into being with them; and after these and under them in order the daimones, an airy race, holding the third and middle seat, the cause of interpretation, whom we ought greatly to honor with prayers for the sake of their auspicious passage.” Having said in these words that the beings described are gods, he goes through the following in the Timaeus, explaining the nature of their first composition: “As fire is to air, so air is to water, and as air is to water, so water is to earth; and so he bound together and constructed a heaven visible and tangible. And for these reasons, out of these elements, such as they are and four in number, the body of the world was made, harmonized by proportion, and it has friendship from them, so that, having come together into one with itself, it became indissoluble by any other than him who bound it together.” Then he adds: “And having set the soul in the middle of it, he stretched it through the whole and further wrapped the body round with it from outside; and he established one heaven alone, solitary, a circle turning in a circle.” And again, further on, he adds: “From such reasoning and design of God for the generation of time, so that time might be generated, the sun and moon and five other stars, which have the name of planets, came into being for the distinguishing and guarding of the numbers of time; and God, having made bodies for each of them, set them in the orbits in which the circuit of the other was moving.” And he adds: “And having had their bodies bound with living bonds, they became living beings and learned their appointed task.” And in the tenth book of the Laws he declares generally about every soul, speaking thus: “All things that partake of soul change, possessing in themselves the cause of change; and having changed, they move according to the order and law of destiny. Those whose characters have changed in smaller matters move over the surface of the land; those that have fallen into more and greater injustice, into the depth.” If, then, all things that partake of soul change, possessing in themselves the cause of change, and heaven and sun and moon partake of soul according to Plato himself, then these too would change, possessing in themselves the cause of change, according to his own argument. How then does he say again that they are everlasting, and for this reason gods, though they are in a perishable body and capable of being dissolved? He says, then, again in the Timaeus: “When, then, all the gods, both those who revolve visibly and those who appear as far as they will, had come into being, he who begot this universe says to them: Gods of gods, of whom I am maker and father of works, which are indissoluble except by my will. Now all that is bound can be dissolved; but to wish to dissolve what is well fitted together and in good state is the part of the wicked. Therefore, since you have come into being, you are not immortal nor wholly indissoluble; yet you shall not be dissolved, nor meet with the fate of death, having obtained my will as a bond still greater and more sovereign than those with which you were bound when you came into being.” So Plato. Fittingly, then, Moses and the oracles of the Hebrews forbid us to worship these and to hold them gods, but, leading us up to God the King of all, the very Creator of sun and moon and stars and of the whole heaven and world, who bound together and fitted all things by his divine Word, he legislates that we hold him alone to be God and render to him alone the honor of worship, saying: “Take care that, when you see the sun and the moon and all the stars and all the host of heaven, you are not led astray to worship them.” Philo, who was instructed in the learning of the Hebrews, interprets these words, explaining them at length, saying somewhat thus, word for word: “Some have supposed that the sun and moon and the other stars are gods with absolute power, to whom they have attributed the causes of all things that come to be. But to Moses the world seemed to be both generated and, as it were, the greatest city, having rulers and subjects: as rulers all the bodies in heaven, both planets and fixed stars; as subjects, the natures below the moon in the air and around the earth. But the rulers mentioned are not independent, but lieutenants of the one Father of all, imitating his oversight and so administering rightly, while he presides over each thing that has come to be according to justice and law; whereas those who do not see the charioteer mounted above attribute the causes of what happens in the world to the yoked team as if they were self-acting. Their ignorance the most holy lawgiver changes into knowledge, saying thus: ‘Take care that, when you see the sun and the moon and the stars and all the host of heaven, you are not led astray to worship them.’ Very aptly and well he called the acceptance of the things mentioned as gods a going astray. For those who saw that the yearly seasons are made by the approaches and withdrawals of the sun, in which the generation of animals and plants and fruits is brought to completion in fixed periods of time; and that the moon, as servant and successor of the sun, by night takes up the care and charge of what the sun has by day; and that the other stars, by their sympathy with things on earth, perform and do countless things for the preservation of the universe, went astray in an endless wandering, supposing that these alone are gods. But if they had been eager to walk by the road that does not go astray, they would at once have known that, just as sense has become an under-servant of mind, in the same way all sensible things have been constituted servants of the intelligible. And he goes on to say: “So that, passing beyond all visible being in our reasoning, let us go on to the honoring of the formless and invisible, who can be grasped by thought alone, who is not only the God of things intelligible and sensible, but also the Creator of all. But if anyone gives the service due to the eternal Maker to another, later and generated, let him be recorded as deranged and guilty of the greatest impiety.” These truly pure and divine teachings of the Hebrews’ godliness we have honored above a conceited philosophy. Why should I go on at length and bring to light the rest of Plato’s views, when from these one may infer what I now pass over in silence? I have not been led to say these things for the sake of slander, since I greatly admire the man, and consider him dear above all the Greeks and honor him, as one who thought what is dear and akin to me, even if not altogether the same; but I show the deficiency of his thought by setting it beside Moses and the prophets among the Hebrews. And yet one prepared to find fault could have charged him with countless things, such as his solemn and wise arrangements about women in the Republic, or his solemn discourse about lawless love in the Phaedrus. But you, if you long to hear these too, take and read these words of his:

What kind of laws concerning women were not rightly ordained by Plato

“Perhaps, I said, many of the things now being said would seem ridiculous, contrary to custom, if they are done as they are said. Very much so, he said. What, I said, do you see as the most ridiculous of them? Clearly, is it not the women exercising naked in the wrestling schools with the men, not only the young but even the older ones, like the old men in the gymnasia who, though wrinkled and not pleasant to look at, still love exercise?” And next he adds: “But the man who laughs at naked women exercising for the sake of what is best, plucking the fruit of the wisdom of laughter, does not know, it seems, at what he is laughing.” And he says in the seventh book of the Laws: “That boys and girls, then, must learn to dance and to exercise; and for the boys there would be dancing masters, and for the girls dancing mistresses, not unsuitable for the training.” And he sets down in it this also: “And our Maiden and Mistress, delighting in the training of the dance, did not think she should play with empty hands, but decked in full armor so to go through the dance; which it would be wholly fitting for youths and maidens alike to imitate.” And he legislates thus that women also are to make war: “In these, foreigners living there for pay are to teach those who attend all the lessons that concern war and all that concern music; not that the one whose father wishes attends and the one whose father does not is left out of education, but, as the saying is, every man and child, as far as possible, must be educated of necessity, as belonging to the city rather than to their parents. The same, then, my law would say about females in every respect as about males, that the females must be trained equally; and I would say this without any fear, either of horsemanship or of gymnastics, that it would be fitting for men but not fitting for women.” And again, further on, he says: “Let us establish gymnasia and all the bodily exercises concerned with war, archery and every kind of throwing, light-armed fighting and every kind of fighting in arms, tactical maneuvers and every kind of marching of armies and encampment, and all the lessons that bear on horsemanship. For all these there must be public teachers, receiving pay from the city, and their pupils must be the boys and men of the city, and the girls and women, knowing all these things: the girls, while still girls, having practiced all dancing and fighting in arms, and the women having taken part in maneuvers and formations and the taking up and laying down of arms.” But the teaching of the Hebrews would not assent to these things either; it will say the opposite, ascribing success in war not even to the strength of men, let alone of women, but referring everything to God and his alliance. It says, then: “Unless the Lord builds a house, those who build it have labored in vain. Unless the Lord guards a city, the watchman has stayed awake in vain.” But see how the admirable philosopher introduces women even into the athletic contest, speaking somewhat thus: “For women: for girls under the age of puberty, naked, the stade and the double course and the horse race and the long race, competing on the course itself; and for those of thirteen years and over, until marriage, remaining in the contests not more than twenty years nor less than eighteen; and these, dressed in fitting attire, must come down to compete in these races. Let this be so concerning races for men and women. As for contests of strength, instead of wrestling and the other heavy contests now in use, fighting in arms, one against one and two against two.” And having said next, “The same thing, then, we must order those who are expert in fighting in arms, when we call on them, to help us legislate,” he adds: “Let the same laws be made concerning females, up to marriage.” Then again, joining to these the laws about light-armed fighting and the pancration and archery, and throwing stones by hand and with the sling, and about horse races, he again adds here too concerning females: “Concerning women in these things it is not worth forcing them to take part by laws and commands; but if, from their former training passing into habit, their nature permits and does not object to girls or maidens taking part, let them, and do not blame them.” So much from Plato about women. And this admirable law is also his: “If a man leaves daughters, … going back through brothers and nephews, first the males, then the females, in one family. And let the judge, examining the suitability or unsuitability of age for marriage, decide, viewing the males naked and the females naked to the navel.” And he says that at festivals too they must dance naked, speaking thus in the sixth book of the Laws: “For the sake of this serious purpose, then, they must hold their sports with dancing, youths and maidens, and at the same time seeing and being seen, with reason and at an age that gives reasonable occasions, naked, both men and women, so far as each one’s modesty allows.” Besides all these, hear also what is in the Republic about the law that wives are to be held in common: “This law follows, I said, and the others before it, I think. Which? That these women are all to be common to all these men, and no woman is to live with any man privately; and the children too are to be common, and neither is a parent to know his own offspring, nor a child its parent.” And next he adds: “Likely, he said. You, then, I said, as their lawgiver, having selected the men, will in the same way select the women and hand them over, as far as possible of like nature; and they, having common houses and common meals, and no one possessing any such thing privately, will be together; and being mixed together in the gymnasia and in the rest of their upbringing, they will be led, I think, by an innate necessity to union with one another. Or do I not seem to you to speak of necessities? Not geometrical, he said, but erotic necessities, which are likely to be keener than those for persuading and drawing the great mass of people.” Perhaps someone will explain the meaning of these words otherwise, saying that he does not propose what is usually supposed. For he did not say without distinction that all the women are common, so that anyone at all may be licentious with them, but that their distribution to the men lies in the power of the rulers. They are common in the way one might say public property is common, being distributed to those to whom it belongs by those entrusted with it. Well, let that be so. But what would you say on learning that he also orders that what is conceived is not to be brought to light, saying thus? “For a woman, I said, beginning from twenty years to bear children for the city until forty; for a man, when he has passed his sharpest prime of running, from then to beget for the city until fifty-five.” To which he adds: “But when, I think, the women and the men have passed the age of begetting, we shall leave them free to associate with whomever they wish.” And he adds: “Directing them to be especially careful not to bring to light any child conceived, if one is; and if one forces its way, to dispose of it on the understanding that there is no rearing for such a child.” Such, then, are his rules about the conduct of women. Now hear what kind his teaching on lawless love is:

Plato's directions in the Phaedrus concerning unlawful love opposed to the Laws of Moses

“And when he continues doing this and draws near, with touching, in the gymnasia and in their other meetings, then the fountain of that stream which Zeus, when in love with Ganymede, named desire, pouring in abundance upon the lover, partly sinks into him, and partly, when he is filled, flows out; and as a breath or an echo rebounding from smooth and hard surfaces is carried back to where it started, so the stream of beauty, going back into the beautiful one through the eyes, the natural way to the soul, arriving and setting the passages of the wings astir, waters them and makes the wings begin to grow, and fills the soul of the beloved in turn with love. He loves, then, but what he loves he does not know; he neither knows what he has experienced nor can tell it, but like one who has caught an eye disease from another he can give no reason for it.” And he adds next: “He desires, like the lover but more weakly, to see, to touch, to kiss, to lie with him; and then, as is likely, he soon does these things. In their lying together, then, the lover’s unruly horse has something to say to the charioteer, and asks for a little enjoyment in return for many toils; but the beloved’s has nothing to say, but swelling and perplexed embraces the lover and kisses him, welcoming him as very well disposed; and when they lie together, he is ready not to refuse his part in gratifying the lover, if he should ask to obtain it …. If, then, the better elements of the mind prevail, leading to an ordered life and philosophy, they pass their life here in blessedness and concord, masters of themselves and orderly.” Then, after other things, he adds: “But if they follow a coarser and ambitious way of life, perhaps in drink or some other carelessness the two unruly beasts of burden in them, catching their souls off guard, bring them together and choose and accomplish that course which the many count blessed; and having accomplished it, thereafter they continue in it, but rarely, since what they do is not approved by their whole mind. These two too are friends, though less than the others, to one another, both during their love and after it has passed, thinking that they have given and received the greatest pledges, which it is not lawful ever to break and come to enmity. And at the end they leave the body without wings, but eager to grow them, so that they carry off no small prize for their erotic madness. For it is no longer the law that those who have already begun the heavenly journey should go into darkness and the journey under the earth; but they lead a bright life and are happy, journeying with one another, and when they grow wings they grow them together because of their love. So great and so divine are the gifts, my boy, that the friendship of a lover will bestow on you.” Such are the teachings of Plato, but not those of Moses, who expressly legislates the opposite, proclaiming with a loud voice the fitting penalty against pederasts. He says at least: “Whoever lies with a male as with a woman, both have committed an abomination; let them surely be put to death; they are guilty.” And: “Cursed is everyone who lies with a male as with a woman.” Why should we now show that the wisest man, passing over the pederast (for not even in the Laws did he see fit to fix the death penalty against pederasts), orders that a slave be punished with death who does not report a treasure found by someone else? But hear these words too, so that you may not suppose that I slander him:

Concerning the laws of murder in Plato, which were not worthy of his great intellect: with these the laws of Moses should be contrasted

“Whatever the god answers concerning the property and him who moved it, let the city do this, serving the oracles of the god. And if the informer is a free man, let him have a reputation for virtue, and if he does not inform, for wickedness; but if he is a slave, the informer would rightly be made free by the city, which pays his master his price; but if he does not inform, let him be punished with death.” Here it is not the one who disturbed something forbidden who is punished with death, but the one who did not report another’s offense. And elsewhere he declares a master pure if he kills his own slave in anger. He says, then: “If a man kills his own slave, let him purify himself; but if another’s, in anger, let him pay the owner twice the damage.” And hear this too from his laws, which he set out concerning murderers: “If anyone kills a free man with his own hand, and the deed was done without premeditation in some anger, let him suffer the rest as it would befit one who killed without passion to suffer; but let him of necessity go into exile for two years, chastening his own anger.” And to this he next adds another law of this kind: “He who kills in anger but with premeditation, let him in other respects be treated according to the previous law, but let him go into exile for three years, as the other was exiled for two, being punished for a longer time because of the greatness of his anger.” Then next he legislates thus about one who kills a second time: “And if ever, after returning, either of them, overcome by anger, does this same thing again, let him go into exile and never return.” And again next he says: “If, which happens but rarely, a father or mother in anger kills a son or daughter by blows or in some violent way, let them be purified with the same purifications as the others and be in exile for three years; and when the killers return, let the wife be separated from the husband and the husband from the wife, and let them never again have children together.” And he adds to these: “If a husband kills his wedded wife in anger, or a wife does this same thing to her own husband, let them be purified with the same purifications and complete three years of exile. And when one who has done such a thing returns, he must not share in sacred rites with his own children, nor ever eat at the same table. And if a brother or sister kills a brother or sister in anger, let it be declared that the purifications and years of exile must be the same as were stated for parents and offspring; and let the one who has deprived brothers of brothers and parents of children never share a hearth with them, nor be a partner in sacred rites. — But if a brother kills a brother in a civil strife when fighting has broken out, or in some such way, defending himself against one who first started the violence, let him be pure, as if he had killed an enemy. And likewise if a citizen kills a citizen, or a foreigner a foreigner. And if a foreigner kills a citizen, or a citizen a foreigner, in self-defense, let him likewise be pure; and if a slave kills a slave, likewise. But if a slave kills a free man in self-defense, let him be liable to the same laws as one who killed his father. — Whoever with premeditation and unjustly kills with his own hand any of his fellow tribesmen, first let him be excluded from the customary places, not polluting marketplace or temples or harbors or any other common gathering, whether anyone forbids the doer these things or not; for the law forbids … And he who does not prosecute when he should, or does not make proclamation, if within the degree of cousins, … and secondly let him be liable to anyone who wishes to take vengeance on behalf of the dead.—And a wife who wounds her own husband with intent to kill, or a husband his own wife, let him go into perpetual exile.” Such are the philosopher’s laws. But if we must also compare those of Moses with these, hear what he ordains concerning murderers: “If anyone strikes a man and he dies, let him surely be put to death. But if not willingly, but God delivered him into his hands, I will give you a place where the slayer shall flee. But if anyone attacks his neighbor to kill him by treachery and flees for refuge, you shall take him from my altar to put him to death. Whoever strikes his father or his mother, let him surely be put to death. And if two men quarrel, and one strikes his neighbor with a stone or his fist, and he does not die but is confined to bed, if the man rises and walks about outside on his staff, the one who struck him shall be clear; only he shall pay for his loss of time and the costs of healing. And if anyone strikes his male servant or his female servant with a rod, and he dies under his hands, he shall surely be punished. But if he lives a day or two, he shall not be punished; for he is his money. And if anyone strikes the eye of his male servant or the eye of his maidservant and blinds it, he shall let them go free in return for their eye.” Such, then, are the laws of Moses. But hear again in what way and for what reasons Plato orders a slave to be tormented with unremitting blows: “Whenever anyone wishes to gather what is now called the noble grape or the figs called noble, if he takes from his own, let him gather as he will and when he wishes; but if from others’, without persuading them, let him always be punished, following the rule not to move what one did not put down. But if a slave, without persuading the owner of the fields, touches any of such things, let him be scourged with as many lashes as there are grapes in the bunch and figs on the fig tree.” Such are his laws on these matters, unworthy of Plato’s greatness of mind. How solemn and humane are those of Moses you may learn by hearing him speak thus: “If you go into your neighbor’s vineyard, you shall eat grapes, as much as you wish to be filled, but you shall not put any into a vessel.” And again: “If you go into your neighbor’s standing grain and gather ears with your hands, you shall not put a sickle to your neighbor’s grain.” And again: “If you reap your harvest in your field and forget a sheaf in your field, you shall not go back to take it; it shall be for the poor and the stranger and the orphan and the widow, that the Lord your God may bless you in every work of your hands. If you gather olives, you shall not go back to glean what is behind you; it shall be for the stranger and the orphan and the widow. And if you harvest your vineyard, you shall not glean what is left behind you; these shall be for the stranger and the widow.” Such are the laws of Moses. Plato’s are plain, among which you would find countless that are blameless; and accepting above all the solemn and excellent things in him, we bid a long farewell to those that are not such. But now that these things have been gone through in this way, and the reason has been given why we have decided not to philosophize according to Plato, it is time to bring the rest of our promise to completion, and to examine the other schools of Greek philosophy.