Preface concerning the oracles in various cities, and the most celebrated responses by the extraordinary manifestations of demons, and our reason for disregarding them
The third kind of polytheistic error, from which we have been set free by the power and kindness of our Redeemer and Savior, the time calls us to refute in this fourth book of the Preparation for the Gospel. For since they divide the whole form of their theology generally into three: the mythical, dramatized by the poets; the physical, invented by the philosophers; and that maintained by the laws and preserved in each city and country; and since two of these parts have already been unfolded by us in the preceding books, the historical, which they call mythical, and that which rises above the myths, which they call physical or theoretical or whatever else they like to call it, it is time now to go through the third. This is the one established in cities and countries, called by them civic, which is above all maintained by the laws, as being at once ancient and ancestral and as displaying at once the excellence of the power of the beings it proclaims as gods. For oracles and prophecies are noised abroad among them, healings and cures of all kinds of afflictions, and punishments of the impious. Claiming to have experienced these, they have thoroughly persuaded themselves that they do right in honoring the divine, and that we commit the greatest impiety in holding of no account powers so manifest and beneficent, and that we plainly break the law, since each one should reverence his ancestral religion, not move what is immovable, but walk in and follow the piety of his ancestors, and not meddle out of love of novelty. Thus, they say, death too has rightly been fixed by the laws as the penalty for offenders. The first kind of theology, the historical and mythical, let anyone, they say, assign to the poets as he likes, as also the second to the philosophers, since it is set forth through the more physical allegory of the myths. But the third, which the rulers have enacted must be honored and preserved as both ancient and civic, let no poet or philosopher disturb; but let everyone, in fields and cities, abide by and walk in the ordinances that have prevailed from of old, obeying the ancestral laws. Against this, then, it is time to give our account and render the reason for the gospel work of our Savior, which proclaims the opposite of what has been said and legislates against the laws of all the nations. That the lifeless images are not gods is evident even to themselves; that their mythical theology bears no dignified account worthy of God has been shown in the first book, as in the second and third that the more physical and philosophical interpretation of the myths contains no explanation free from force. Come, then, let us consider the third point: what we should think of the powers lurking in the images, whether they are of a refined character, good and truly divine, or the opposite of all these. Another, perhaps, going through the account of these things, might suppose that the whole is deceit and the tricks and knavery of sorcerers, rejecting the belief entirely, so as to think that the things noised abroad about them belong not only not to a god but not even to a wicked demon. For, he would say, the verses and compositions of the oracles are fictions of men not without talent but well equipped for deceit, composed in a middle and ambiguous way, and cleverly fitted to either of the outcomes expected; and the wonders that deceive the many by marvels depend on natural causes. For, he would say, there are in the nature of the universe many kinds of roots, herbs, plants, fruits, and stones, and powers of all kinds of other matter, dry and moist: some repelling and driving certain things away, others naturally gathering and drawing them; some able to separate and scatter, to condense and contract, others to loosen, moisten, and rarefy; some again preserving and others killing, changing things entirely, altering what is present, transforming it now this way and now that; some doing this for a longer time, others for a short time; some again effective on a multitude, others only on a few; some leading in these things, others following, some running together with others, increasing and perishing together; yes, and some productive of health, not far from the science of medicine, and others causing disease and deadly. Some things happen by natural necessity, increasing and waning with the moon; there are countless antipathies of animals, plants, and roots, and many fumigations that stupefy and cause sleep, and others that produce visions. The places and spots where the rites are performed contribute not least; and there are instruments and apparatus skillfully prepared for them long beforehand. Many accomplices in the trickery are employed from outside, who inquire about those who arrive, the needs of each, and what each has come to ask. Many things too are hidden in the inner shrines and in the recesses of the temples inaccessible to the many; and darkness contributes no little to their purpose; and not least the preconceived belief and the superstition of those who approach them as gods, and the opinion inherited from their ancestors that has taken hold of them. Let there be added the foolishness of the mind of the many, the weakness and want of critical reasoning of the multitude, and on the other hand the cleverness and malice of those busy with this evil art, and the deceitfulness and knavery of the sorcerers' ways: now promising each what will please him beforehand and soothing the present with good hopes, now guessing at the future and prophesying at random, and darkening the meaning of the oracles with ambiguous and obscure words, so that no one understands what was given in the oracle, and they escape refutation by the obscurity of what was said. Many things too come about by other deceits and marvel-mongering, with certain incantations employed in the proceedings together with some unintelligible and barbarous utterance, so that what in no way comes about through them may seem to be effected by them. Above all, the many, and even those thought to start from education, are dazzled by the verses of the oracles themselves, finely adorned in the composition of words, finely puffed up with the bulk of grandiloquence, fashioned with much pompous elevation and pretended conceit of inspiration, and deceiving almost the whole people by their ambiguous utterance.
That it is easy for any who will to prove the promise of the oracles to be the deceit and knavery of human impostors
Of the oracles that have escaped ambiguity, given out not from foreknowledge of the future but by some conjecture, countless ones, or rather almost all, have often been convicted of falling short of the prediction, the outcome of events turning out contrary to what the oracle said; unless perhaps, rarely, one in ten thousand, happening by some chance course or in line with a guessed expectation of the future, was thought to make the oracle come true. This you would see them noising abroad above all, engraving it on pillars and shouting it everywhere on earth; how many times, it may be, they failed they will never mention at all, but that something of what was foretold happened to one man out of ten thousand they carry up and down. It is as if someone, when two people casting lots out of ten thousand happened once to fall on the same number, should marvel as though it came about by divination and foreknowledge that the same number fell to both. For such, he would say, is the case of an oracle that once happens to come true by chance out of countless thousands given. A man with nothing solid in the depth of his soul, observing this, is overwhelmed with wonder at the oracle; when it would be far better for him not to be foolish, but to reckon how many others the oracles have caused to die in sedition and war, to examine the histories of the ancients, and to see that even at the time when Greek affairs flourished, and the oracles once so famous, but now no longer existing, stood firm, receiving all care and zeal from the natives who revered and served them with ancestral laws and mysteries, they showed no divine work of virtue. And then most of all they were proved powerless in the calamities of war, in which the noble givers of oracles, unable to help, were caught deceiving those who fled to them for refuge by the ambiguity of their oracles. This we shall show at the proper time, setting out how they even provoked those who consulted them to war against one another, how they did not give their answers about serious matters, how they misled the inquirers in sport through their oracles, and how they hid their own ignorance in the darkness of obscurity. Consider too, on inquiry, how they often promised the sick strength, life, and recovery, and then, having been believed as gods and having exacted great fees for this inspired trade, were not long after detected for what they were, shown to be sorcerers and not gods, when no happy end overtook those they had deceived. Why need I say that the wonderful prophets did not give their help even to their own fellow residents living in the same city, but you would see countless people there sick, maimed, and disfigured in their whole body? Why, then, did they hold out good hopes to those coming from outside and far off from foreign lands, but not to their fellow residents, to whom above all, as their own friends and fellow citizens, they should have given the benefit of the presence of the gods? Was it not because they could more easily deceive strangers who did not know their trickery, but not their familiar neighbors, who were not unacquainted with the art and were privy to the game played in the rites? So the whole thing was not divine, nor superior to human contrivance; so that in the greatest calamities, those that hung over the impious from above, from God the universal King, the temples themselves with their offerings and images suffered utter destruction and sudden collapse. For where is the temple at Delphi, celebrated among all the Greeks from all time? Where is the Pythian? The Clarian? Where the Dodonaean? The Delphic oracle, the story goes, was burned three times by the Thracians, the oracle being of no avail for knowledge of the future, nor able to protect the Pythian's own property. The Capitol at Rome is recorded to have suffered the same in the times of the Ptolemies, when the temple of Vesta at Rome is also said to have been burned. About the time of Julius Caesar they record that the great Olympian statue of the Greeks, at Olympia itself, was struck by the god with a thunderbolt. At another time, they say, the temple of Capitoline Zeus was burned, the Pantheon destroyed by lightning, and the temple at Alexandria likewise burned down. Of these things testimonies are recorded among the Greeks themselves. It would be a long account if one were to number each, trying to show that the wonderful oracle-givers have been caught unable to defend even their own temples. And those who were of no use to themselves in calamities could hardly ever help others. But adding one thing to what has been said, one would have seen the greatest point of all: that already many of the extremely inspired, the very chief hierophants, theologians, and prophets among them, celebrated for this divine wisdom, not only long ago but also lately in our own time, under torture before the Roman tribunals revealed that the whole error was produced by the deceits of men, confessing that the whole thing was a contrived sorcery; and they recorded the whole manner of the contrivance and the methods of the evil art in their words taken down in the court records. So, having paid the just penalty for their destructive error, they revealed the whole matter, confirming the proof of what has been said by the deeds themselves. And who were these? Do not think they were outcasts or obscure people. Some of them came from this wonderful and noble philosophy, of those who wear the cloak and have raised their eyebrows high; others were caught from among the magistrates of the city of Antioch, the very men who were especially distinguished for their outrages against us in the persecution of our time. And we know too that the philosopher and prophet at Miletus suffered things like those described. Gathering these and still more things, one might say that the causes of the oracles in the cities are neither gods nor even demons, but the error and deceit of sorcerers. And among the Greeks themselves there were whole schools, distinguished in philosophy, that championed this opinion, such as the followers of Aristotle and all the Peripatetics after them, the Cynics, and the Epicureans. These I have admired most of all: how, brought up in Greek ways from their swaddling clothes and having received from father to son the belief that these are gods, they were not caught by either side, but mightily refuted the celebrated oracles and the divinations sought by all as bearing nothing true, and declared them useless and rather harmful. Though there are countless writers who have overthrown divination at greater length, I think it enough for the present, to bear witness to what has been said, to set out one passage of one of them, which answers the arguments constructed by Chrysippus about fate from the prediction of oracles. The writer, then, addressing him, refutes him, showing that he wrongly infers fate from the oracles, that the oracles of the Greeks are false in most things, that they rarely come true by chance, and that their prediction is useless and harmful. Listen, then, to what he says word for word:
Extract from Diogenianus, that their soothsaying is inconsistent and full of falsehood, and their prediction useless and mischievous
"He brings another proof too in the book mentioned, of this kind. He says the predictions of the seers could not be true unless all things were encompassed by fate. This too is full of great simplicity. For he argues as if it were evident that all the predictions of the so-called seers come true, or as if this would be granted by anyone more readily than that all things happen by fate, and as if it were not equally false itself; since evidence shows the opposite, I mean that not all the things foretold come true, but rather that most do not. So Chrysippus has given us his proof, establishing each of the two by the other. He wants to show that all things happen by fate from the existence of divination, but he could not prove that divination exists otherwise than by first assuming that all things happen by fate. What method of proof could be worse than this? For that some of what the seers predict evidently comes true would be a sign not that divination is a science, but that outcomes by chance coincide with the predictions; which shows us no science. For we would not call an archer skilled who once hit the target but often missed, nor a physician one who kills most of those he treats but was once able to save one; nor do we call anything at all a science which does not succeed in all, or at least most, of its proper works. That the so-called seers fail for the most part the whole of human life would testify, and these very men who profess the art of divination, who do not help themselves by it in the needs of life, but sometimes use their own judgment and the counsel and help of those thought to have experience in each matter. But that what we have agreed to call divination does not exist, we shall show more fully elsewhere, setting out Epicurus's views on this. For now we shall add this much to what has been said: first, that the so-called seers' sometimes speaking the truth in their predictions would be the work not of science but of a chance cause (for we who have distinguished the clear notions assigned to each name have agreed to call the work of chance not what never hits the mark, but what does not hit it always, nor for the most part, nor by science, when someone does sometimes hit it); and then, even if it were true by hypothesis that divination observes and foretells all future things, it would follow that all things are by fate, but its usefulness and benefit to life would never be shown; which is the chief reason Chrysippus seems to praise divination. For what use would it be to us to learn beforehand misfortunes that will certainly come, which we could not even guard against? For how could anyone guard against what happens by fate? So divination would be of no use to us, but rather it would turn to some harm, causing men to grieve in vain beforehand over the misfortunes foretold, which must of necessity come. No one will say that the prediction of future good things gives equal joy in return, since man is not so made as to rejoice over expected goods as much as he is pained by evils. Besides, we do not much expect misfortunes to happen to us before we hear of them, but we all, so to speak, rather expect good things, because of our natural affinity to them; for most people even hope for more than is possible. So it happens that the prediction of good things does not much increase joy, because each person even without prediction expects better things of himself, or increases it only a little by the apparent certainty, and often even diminishes the joy, when less than was hoped is heard; but the prediction of evils greatly disturbs, both because they are by nature to be shunned and because they are sometimes foretold contrary to expectation. But even if this did not happen, it would be plain to everyone that prediction would be useless. For if anyone says that the usefulness of divination will be preserved because a misfortune certain to come is foretold unless we guard against it, he will no longer show that all things will happen by fate, since it will be in our power to guard or not to guard against it. And if anyone says that this too has been necessitated, so that fate extends to everything that exists, the usefulness of divination is again destroyed; for we shall guard against it if it is fated, and evidently we shall not guard against it if it is not fated, even if all the seers foretell the future to us. At any rate Chrysippus himself says that the parents of Oedipus and of Alexander son of Priam devised many ways of killing them, in order to guard against the evil foretold from them, and could not. So, he says, there was no benefit even to them from the prediction of evils, because of the causation of fate. Let this be said over and above, to show that divination is not only unreal but also useless." So says the philosopher. But consider for yourself how, being Greeks and having acquired from youth the Greek education with which they were raised, and knowing their ancestral beliefs about the gods better than anyone, all the Aristotelians, the Cynics and Epicureans, and all who thought like them, laughed at the oracles celebrated among the Greeks themselves. And yet, if the reports about the marvels of the oracles were true, it is likely that these men too would have been astonished, being Greeks, knowing their ancestral customs exactly, and putting nothing worth knowing in second place. There would be a great abundance of these and similar things to collect for the overthrow of the case for the oracles. But I do not think the present argument should proceed this way, but as we began: granting that those who stand up for them speak the truth, let us learn, from what they themselves admit, when they say that the oracles are true and the responses given at Pytho divine, the exact disclosure of what they reveal.
That from these great evils we were delivered by the evangelic teaching of our Savior
I think it plain to everyone that the refutation of these matters will contain no small part, but the greatest and most necessary, of the gospel subject. For if all those everywhere before the coming of our Savior Jesus Christ, Greeks and barbarians, should be shown not to have known the true God, but either to have held as existing things that do not exist, or to have been led about here and there like the blind by certain wicked spirits fighting against God and evil and unclean demons, and dragged down by them into a depth of wickedness (for what else is this than to be possessed by demons?), how would not the great mystery of the gospel dispensation be seen to be all the greater? For all people everywhere have been called back by the voice of our Savior from the inherited error of the tyranny of demons, and those living to the ends of the earth have been redeemed from the deceit that held all life from of old; so that from then until now the ancient foundations of the error of all nations, with their temples and images, have been dissolved and pulled down, and truly holy temples and schools of piety to the universal King and creator of all things have been raised up in the midst of cities and villages throughout the whole world by the power and virtue of our Savior; and sacrifices worthy of God, the prayers of the holy, with a disposition purified from all vice, in tranquility of soul and the taking up of every virtue according to the divine and saving teachings, are offered day by day continually from all the nations, the only sacrifices pleasing and acceptable to the God over all. This being so, would we not have shown at the same time that we became apostates from our inherited superstition with sober reasoning and not by giving ourselves up to unreason, loving the better by a just and true judgment and becoming lovers of the inspired and true piety? But enough of this; we must now take up the matters before us.
The division of Greek theology
Those who have studied Greek theology exactly divide the whole account, in another way than the methods we have mentioned, into four classes. First of all they distinguish the first God, saying they know that he is the first over all and the father and king of all the gods; after him the race of gods is second; next that of demons; and fourth that of heroes. All these, sharing in the form of the better, in one way lead and in another are led, and everything of this kind is called light by participation in light. But of the worse substance, they say, evil is the leader; this is the race of wicked demons, which has no friendship with the good but holds the first power in the nature of the opposites, as God does among the better; and everything of this kind is called darkness. Having made these distinctions in this way, they say that heaven and the ether as far as the moon are assigned to the gods, the regions about the moon and the air to demons, and the regions about the earth and under the earth to souls. Using this division, they say that first of all one must worship the heavenly and ethereal gods; second the good demons; third the souls of heroes; and fourth one must propitiate the bad and wicked demons. But while dividing these things in word, in deed they confound everything, worshipping instead of all those mentioned only the wicked powers and being wholly enslaved to them, as the argument will prove as it proceeds. You may, then, consider from what is to be set out what kind of powers working through the images one must declare them to be, whether gods or demons, and whether evil or good. Our divine oracles call no demon at all good, but say that all who have received this lot and this name are wicked, just as they call no other truly and properly God but the one cause of all things. The refined and good powers, since they are begotten by nature and fall far short of the unbegotten God who made them, and are moreover separated from the wicked race of demons, the Scriptures do not see fit to call either gods or demons; but, as being between God and demons, they are accustomed to name them by an apt and middle title: angels of God and ministering spirits, divine powers and archangels, and by some other names suited to their functions. And the demons, if we should give their etymology too, are aptly so named not, as the Greeks think, from being knowing (daemones) and skilled, but from fearing (deimainein), that is, being afraid and terrifying. The divine and good powers, they say, are foreign to the demonic name as they are to the demonic character; since it would be the most unreasonable thing of all to count worthy of one and the same name beings unlike both in choice and in the nature of their character.
That we confirm the testimonies used in our arguments not by our own assertions, but by our quotations from the Greeks; concerning the secrets of the oracles, from quotations of the Greeks
Come, then, let us examine what the nature of their oracles is, so that we may learn to what kind of power one must assign them, and whether we were right to depart from them or not. If I were to bring forward the refutations of these things from myself, I know well that I should not offer an argument beyond reproach to the fault-finders. Therefore, saying nothing of my own, I shall again use the testimonies of outsiders. Of the countless prose writers and philosophers among the Greeks, I choose before all as suited to the matters at hand that very friend of demons who in our own time has won renown by his falsehoods against us. For he, more than any philosopher of our time, seems to have consorted with demons and with those he calls gods, to have championed them, and much more to have investigated what concerns them more exactly. In the work he entitled On the Philosophy from Oracles he made a collection of oracles of Apollo and of the other gods and good demons, choosing those he thought most sufficient both to prove the excellence of those proclaimed as gods and to exhort to what he likes to call divine wisdom. From these very oracles, then, that he selected and thought worth recording, it is good to judge the oracle-givers and consider of what power they are. First let us see how the man mentioned, at the beginning of his writing, swears to us that he tells the truth, speaking thus:
Extract from Porphyry on the oracles. His oath of the truth of his statements.
"Firm and steadfast is he who draws his hopes of salvation from here, as from the only firm source; to whom you shall impart these things, withholding nothing. For I call the gods themselves to witness that I have neither added nor taken away anything of the thoughts of the oracles, except where I have corrected an erroneous expression, or changed it for greater clearness, or filled out a defective meter, or struck out something not bearing on the purpose; but I have kept the sense of what was said pure, guarding against the impiety of such a thing more than against the avenging justice that follows sacrilege. The present collection will contain a record of many philosophical doctrines, as the gods declared the truth to be; and we shall touch briefly also on the practice of oracles, which will help both contemplation and the whole purification of life. What benefit the collection has will be known best by those who, struggling to discover the truth, have prayed that they might obtain a manifestation from the gods and find rest from their perplexity through the trustworthy teaching of the speakers." Having used such a preface, he solemnly charges and announces beforehand that what is to be said must not be disclosed to the many, speaking thus:
That his intended statements must not be published to all
"Do you, if anything, try not to publish these things, nor to throw them even to the profane, for the sake of glory or gain or some other impure flattery. For there is danger not only to you if you transgress these commands, but also to me, who too easily trusted one unable to keep benefits to himself. They must be given to those who have ordered their life for the salvation of the soul." And after other matters he adds: "Hide these things as more secret than secrets; for not even the gods declared the things about themselves openly, but through riddles." Since, then, the account has raised such expectations, come, let us consider through the inspired and Pythian oracles of what kind we should reckon the invisible powers proclaimed as gods; for a man too may be refuted by his own words and practices. The man mentioned, in the very work he entitled On the Philosophy from Oracles, sets down oracles of Apollo commanding animal sacrifices to be performed, and to sacrifice animals not only to demons, nor only to the earthly powers, but also to the ethereal and heavenly ones. But elsewhere the same writer, admitting that all those to whom the Greeks performed sacrifices with blood and the slaughter of irrational animals are demons and not gods, says that it is neither necessary nor holy to sacrifice animals to gods. Listen, then, to his first words, in which, collecting the material on the philosophy from oracles, he shows how Apollo teaches that the gods must be served. He sets it out, writing thus:
How the worship of the gods by sacrifice is prescribed by Apollo
"Next, after what has been said about piety, we may record what they declared in oracles about their worship, part of which we have already set out in the books On Piety. The oracle of Apollo, which also contains a division of the order of the gods, is this: 'Work, friend, having come upon this god-given path, and do not forget the blessed ones, slaying sacrifices, now to the gods of the earth, now to the heavenly, now to the kings of the ether themselves and of the watery air, and to those of the sea and to all those beneath the earth; for all things are bound in the fullness of the nature of these. I will sing how it is lawful to perform the offerings of animals (and engrave my oracle on tablets): some to the earthly, some to the heavenly gods; bright ones to the heavenly, and to those of the earth like them in color. Divide the sacrifices of the earthly gods in three as you slay them; bury those for the gods below, and pour the blood into a pit, and pour honey, the nymphs, and the gifts of Dionysus. For those who ever fly about the earth, fill the altar everywhere full of fire with blood, cast into the fire the body of a winged creature you have sacrificed, and knead honey with Deo's barley meal and put it in, and throw on fumes of frankincense and sacred grains. When you go by the sands, pour gray brine on the head and sacrifice, and cast the whole animal into the deep wave of the sea. Having finished all these, go to the broad chorus of the airy gods of heaven. Then for the starry and ethereal gods over all, let the blood from the throats pool around the offerings in streams, and the limbs be prepared for the gods in a feast; give the extremities to Hephaestus, and eat the rest, filling all the flowing air with sweet fumes; and send up prayers to the gods.' And a little later he explains the oracle, interpreting it thus: "The sacrifices are of this kind, assigned according to the division of the gods mentioned before. For since there are gods under the earth and on the earth, the former called subterranean and infernal, the latter terrestrial and earthly, he commands in common to sacrifice black four-footed victims to these; but he varies the manner of the sacrifice. For he commands to slaughter them on altars for the gods on the earth, and over pits for those under the earth, and moreover, having sacrificed, to bury the bodies for these. For that four-footed victims are common to these he himself added when asked: 'These are common to the earthly and the subterranean alone: four-footed creatures for the earthly, the fresh-formed limbs of lambs.' To the gods of the air he commands to sacrifice birds, burning them whole and carrying the blood round the altars; to those of the sea, birds too, but to release them alive into the waves, being black in color. For he says: 'To the gods the winged creatures, and to those of the sea the black ones,' meaning winged creatures for all the gods except the earthly, and black ones only for those of the sea, so white for the others. To the heavenly and ethereal gods one must dedicate the extremities of the victims, which are white, and eat the other parts; for of these alone you may eat, but not of the others. Those he called heavenly in the division he here calls starry. Will it be necessary, then, to explain the symbols of the sacrifices, which are plain to the intelligent? Four-footed and land animals to the earthly gods, for like rejoices in like. The sheep is earthly and therefore dear to Demeter, and with the sun in heaven it brings to birth the appearing of the fruits out of the earth. They are black, for such is the earth, dark by nature. And three, for three is the symbol of the bodily and earthy. To the gods on the earth one must sacrifice above, on altars, for they dwell on the earth; to those under the earth in a pit and with burial, where they spend their time. Winged creatures to the others, because all things move. For the water of the sea too is ever-moving, but black; therefore such victims are suitable. To the gods of the air white ones, for the air too is lit up, being of transparent nature. To the heavenly and ethereal gods the lighter parts of the animals, that is, the extremities, of which one must share in the sacrifice. For these are givers of good things, while the others are averters of evils." Such are the extracts from the Philosophy from Oracles of the wonderful divine sage.
That they who delight in animal sacrifices cannot be gods
Come, let us compare with these the opposite words of the same writer, which he has set down in the work he entitled On Abstinence from Animal Food. There, moved by right reasoning, he first of all admits that one must not burn incense or sacrifice anything at all to the God over all, nor even to the divine and heavenly powers after him. Then, going on, he refutes the beliefs of the many, saying that one must not suppose those who delight in animal sacrifices to be gods. For he says that to sacrifice animals is the most unjust of all things, unholy, abominable, and harmful, and therefore not pleasing to gods. In saying this he would plainly refute his own god; for he said just now that the oracle commanded animal sacrifice not only to the subterranean and earthly gods, but also to those of the air, heaven, and ether. So says Apollo; but Porphyry, calling Theophrastus to witness, says that animal sacrifice befits not gods but demons only. So, according to his and Theophrastus's account, Apollo is a demon and not a god, and so are all those considered gods among all the nations, to whom all, rulers and ruled alike, in cities and countries, perform animal sacrifices; for according to the writers mentioned these must be thought nothing other than demons. But if they say they are good, how, if sacrifice by blood was unholy, abominable, and harmful, could those who delight in such things be good? And if they should appear to delight not only in such sacrifices, but, through excess of cruelty and inhumanity, in the slaughter and sacrifice of men, how would they not plainly be bloodthirsty, akin to all cruelty and inhumanity, and nothing else than wicked demons? When we have received the proof of these things, I think the reasonableness of our withdrawal from the beings described will have been shown. For it is neither holy nor pious to bring down the reverend name of God and the highest honor to wicked spirits; it would not even be so to confer on robbers and housebreakers the title of one invested with royal dignity among men. Therefore we, taught to worship only the God over all and to honor fittingly the God-loving and blessed powers around him, bring nothing earthly and dead, no gore and blood, nothing of perishable and material substance; but with a mind purified of all vice, and a body clothed with the adornment of purity and self-control, brighter than any robe, with right doctrines worthy of God, and above all with a genuine disposition, we pray to keep even to death the piety handed down by our Savior. But having set out these things first, it is time to proceed to the proofs of what has been said. First of all it is reasonable to go through the passages in which the writer mentioned, in the work he entitled On Abstinence from Animal Food, says that one must neither burn incense nor sacrifice anything earthly to the God over all or to the divine powers after him; for such things are foreign to fitting piety.
That none of the fruits of the earth may be offered to the supreme God either as incense or sacrifice
"To the God over all, as a wise man said, we neither burn nor name anything perceptible; for there is nothing material that is not at once impure to the immaterial. Therefore not even speech uttered by the voice is fitting for him, nor inner speech when it is defiled by passion of the soul; but we worship him in pure silence and with pure thoughts about him. We must, then, united with him and made like him, offer our own elevation as a holy sacrifice to God, which is also our hymn and our salvation. This sacrifice, then, is performed in the impassibility of the soul and in the contemplation of God."
Not even to the divine powers is it right to offer any of the fruits of the earth either as incense or sacrifice
"To his offspring, the intelligible gods, we must now add hymns in words. For the sacrifice is a first-fruit of what each has given, through which he nourishes our being and holds it in existence. As a farmer offers first-fruits of his sheaves and tree fruits, so let us offer to them first-fruits of good thoughts about them, giving thanks for the contemplation they have given us, and because they truly nourish us by the sight of themselves, being with us, appearing, and shining on our salvation." So says this writer. And akin to him are the words about the first and great God that Apollonius of Tyana himself, celebrated by the many, is said to write in his work On Sacrifices, as follows:
Further concerning the impropriety of offering the fruits of the earth to the supreme God
"In this way, I think, one would best pay fitting attention to the divine and obtain its favor and kindness above all other men: if to God, whom we called first, who is one and separate from all, after whom the others must be recognized, he should sacrifice nothing at all, nor kindle fire, nor name anything perceptible at all (for he needs nothing even from those greater than we are, and there is no plant that the earth sends up, nor animal that it or the air nourishes, which has not some defilement); but should always use toward him only the higher speech, I mean that which does not pass through the mouth, and should ask good things from the most beautiful of beings through the most beautiful thing in us, which is mind, needing no instrument. So according to this no sacrifice must be offered to the great God over all." This being so, see now what the former writer records about animal sacrifice, calling Theophrastus as witness to the account:
To offer animals to the gods is unlawful and injurious and unjust and unholy, and subject to execration
"But as men advanced far from the first-fruits in sacrifices into lawlessness, the adoption of the most dreadful offerings, full of cruelty, was brought in, so that the curses spoken of before against us seem now to have been fulfilled, when men slaughtered victims and bloodied the altars, from the time when, having experienced famines and wars, they touched blood. Therefore the divine power, as Theophrastus says, indignant at both, seems to have inflicted the fitting punishment; so that some men have become atheists, and others might justly be called evil-minded rather than worshippers of evil gods, because they think the gods are wicked by nature and no better than we are. Thus some appear to have become men who offer no sacrifice, and others men who sacrifice wrongly and touch unlawful victims." Again the same writer adds this: "These things being so, Theophrastus rightly forbids those who wish to be truly pious to sacrifice living creatures, using also such other reasons as these." And he adds: "We must sacrifice those things by sacrificing which we shall harm no one; for nothing ought to be so harmless as a sacrifice. But if someone says that God has given us animals for our use no less than fruits, yet in sacrificing animals one does them some harm, since they are deprived of their soul. These, then, must not be sacrificed. For sacrifice (thysia) is, as the name shows, something holy (hosia); and no one is holy who repays favors out of what belongs to others, whether he takes fruits or plants without the owner's will. For how is it holy when those deprived are wronged? And if one who takes another's fruits does not sacrifice holily, it is altogether unholy to sacrifice things more precious than these, taking them from someone; for so the outrage becomes greater. And the soul is far more precious than what grows from the earth, and it is not fitting to take it away by sacrificing animals." And he adds: "We must, then, abstain from animals in sacrifices." And again he says: "What is unholy, then, or costly, must not be sacrificed." And next: "So, even if we must offer first-fruits of animals, we must sacrifice them to the gods for one of these reasons; for we sacrifice for one of these reasons. Would anyone think, then, that God receives honor from us when we are seen to do wrong in our first-fruits, or rather that he would consider such an act a dishonor? In this very thing, by killing in sacrifice animals that do no wrong, we admit that we do wrong; so for the sake of honor none of the other animals must be sacrificed. Nor indeed in repaying benefits to them; for one who repays a just return for a benefit and the worth of a kindness ought not to provide it from wronging others. He will seem no more to repay a favor than if someone should seize his neighbor's goods and crown others with them, as if repaying a favor and honor. Nor for the sake of some good things. For he who hunts for good treatment by an unjust act is suspected of being ungrateful even when he is well treated. So animals must not be sacrificed to the gods even in hope of benefit. For one might perhaps escape the notice of men in doing this, but it is impossible to escape the notice of God. If, then, one must sacrifice for one of these reasons, but none of them should lead us to do it, it is plain that animals must not be sacrificed to the gods at all." And again he adds: "For with these [the first offerings] both nature and every sense of the human soul were pleased: 'And the altar was not drenched with the unmixed blood of bulls, but this was the greatest abomination among men, to tear out the life and eat the fine limbs.'" And after other matters: "When a young man learns that the gods delight in extravagance and, as they say, in feasts of oxen and other animals, when would he willingly be sober? And thinking that he sacrifices things pleasing to the gods, how will he not think himself free to do wrong, since he will buy off his sin through sacrifices? But if he is persuaded that the gods have no need of these things, but look to the character of those who approach them, receiving as the greatest sacrifice right understanding about themselves and about things, how will he not be self-controlled, just, and holy? To the gods the best first-fruit is a pure mind and a soul free from passion; but it is fitting also to offer moderate first-fruits of other things, not carelessly but with all eagerness. For honors should be like the seats of precedence, the rising up and making room for good men, not like the payment of taxes." Clearly, then, it has been admitted by these words, according to the Greeks and their philosophers, that no living thing could reasonably be sacrificed to the gods; for the thing is unholy, unjust, harmful, and not free from pollution. So he was no god, nor any truthful and good demon, the oracle-giver who a little before was exacting libations of blood and savor of fat; nor were all those to whom the oracle commanded animals to be sacrificed. We must, then, call the one who lied a deceiver, a cheat, and plainly a wicked demon, who proclaimed as gods beings that are not, and commanded animal sacrifice not only to the earthly and subterranean but also to the heavenly, ethereal, and starry gods. Whom, then, if not gods, one should take all those mentioned to be, the writer himself will relate in the following:
That their offerings are made to demons and not to gods
"He who cares for piety knows that no living thing is sacrificed to gods, but to demons, either good or bad; and he knows whose part it is to sacrifice to these, and to what extent they need it." And next again he says: "That those who understood the powers in the universe offered sacrifices of blood not to gods but to demons has been confirmed by the theologians themselves; and also that of these some are evil-doers, while the good will not trouble us." So says the writer mentioned. And since he said that of the demons alone some are good and some bad, come, let us see how all those considered gods by them are convicted of being not good demons but bad ones. You may take the proof of this as follows. The good benefits, and its opposite harms. If, then, those proclaimed everywhere, whether gods or demons, the very ones celebrated by all and worshipped by all the nations, Cronus and Zeus, Hera and Athena and the like, and the invisible powers and demons working through the images, should be shown to delight not only in the slaughter and sacrifice of irrational animals but also in the killing and sacrifice of men, and in this way to ruin the souls of wretched men, what harm could you conceive worse than this? For if the sacrifice of irrational animals was called by the philosophers accursed and wrongly offered, abominable, unjust, unholy, and not harmless to those who sacrifice, and for all these reasons unworthy of gods, what should one think of sacrifice by the slaughter of men? Would not this be the most impious and unholy of all? How, then, could it reasonably be called dear to good demons, and not to utterly abominable and destructive spirits? Come, then, let us prove and show how great a hold the ruin of polytheistic error had on human life before the gospel teaching of our Savior. For, as will be shown, it was dissolved and overthrown not at any other time than in the times of Hadrian, when the teaching of Christ was already shining out like light in every place. To these things, not we, but the words of those who do not share our views will again plainly testify, accusing the times before this of such wickedness that the superstitious went beyond even the bounds of nature, maddened and plainly possessed by the destructive spirits, so as to think that the bloodthirsty powers were appeased by the blood of those dearest to them and by countless other human sacrifices. A father would sacrifice his only son, and a mother her beloved daughter, to the demon; those dearest slaughtered their kin as if they were irrational animals belonging to others; and they sacrificed to their so-called gods, in cities and countries, their neighbors and fellow citizens, whetting their humane and compassionate nature to mercilessness and inhumanity, and showing a truly mad and demonic character. You would find, if you examined all Greek and barbarian history, how some consecrated sons, others daughters, and others even themselves in sacrifices to the demons. I bring before you as witness of these things the same writer as before, in the same work in which he forbade the sacrifice of irrational animals as unholy and most unjust, saying this word for word:
Porphyry on human sacrifice in old time
"And that we say these things not lightly, since history is full of them, these examples will be enough to show. In Rhodes, in the month Metageitnion, on the sixth day of the month, a man was sacrificed to Cronus. This custom, after prevailing a long time, was changed: they kept one of those publicly condemned to death until the Cronia, and when the festival came, they led the man outside the gates, opposite the shrine of Aristobule, gave him wine to drink, and slaughtered him. In what is now Salamis, formerly called Coronea, in the month called Aphrodisius among the Cyprians, a man was sacrificed to Agraulus, daughter of Cecrops and of the nymph Agraulis. The custom continued until the time of Diomedes; then it changed, so that the man was sacrificed to Diomedes. The temple of Athena and that of Agraulus and Diomedes are in one enclosure. The victim, led by the young men, ran three times round the altar; then the priest struck him with a spear in the throat, and so they burned him whole on the heaped pyre. This ordinance Diphilus, king of Cyprus, abolished in the time of Seleucus the theologian, changing the custom to the sacrifice of an ox; and the demon accepted the ox instead of the man. So equivalent is the act. At Heliopolis in Egypt too Amosis abolished the law of human sacrifice, as Manetho testifies in his work On Ancient Customs and Piety. They were sacrificed to Hera, and were examined like the pure calves that are sought out and sealed. Three were sacrificed each day; in their place Amosis ordered the same number of wax figures to be offered. In Chios too they sacrificed a man to Dionysus Omadius (the Raw-eater), tearing him apart, and in Tenedos, as Euelpis of Carystus says; and Apollodorus says that the Lacedaemonians sacrificed a man to Ares. The Phoenicians, in great calamities of war, plague, or drought, sacrificed one of their dearest, chosen by vote, to Cronus; and the Phoenician history is full of those who sacrificed, which Sanchuniathon wrote in the Phoenician language and Philo of Byblos translated into Greek in eight books. Ister, in his Collection of Cretan Sacrifices, says that the Curetes in ancient times sacrificed children to Cronus. And Pallas, who made the best collection about the mysteries of Mithras, says that human sacrifices were abolished almost everywhere under the emperor Hadrian. For in Laodicea in Syria a virgin was sacrificed to Athena every year, but now a deer. And indeed the Carthaginians in Libya performed this sacrifice, which Iphicrates stopped. And the Dumatenes of Arabia sacrificed a boy every year and buried him under the altar, which they use as an image. Phylarchus records that all the Greeks in common killed a man before going out against their enemies. And I pass over the Thracians and Scythians, and how the Athenians put to death the daughter of Erechtheus and Praxithea. But even now who does not know that in the great city a man is slaughtered at the feast of Jupiter Latiaris? And again he says: "From that time until now, not only in Arcadia at the Lycaea, nor in Carthage to Cronus, do all in common offer human sacrifices, but periodically, in memory of the custom, they sprinkle the altars with the blood of their own kin." Let these extracts from the work mentioned be set down. From the first book of Philo's Phoenician History I shall set out this: "It was the custom of the ancients, in great calamities of danger, that instead of the destruction of all, the rulers of the city or nation gave up the most beloved of their children to be slaughtered as a ransom to the avenging demons; and those given up were slaughtered with mystic rites. Cronus, then, whom the Phoenicians call El, who was king of the country and afterward, at the end of his life, was deified as the star of Cronus, having an only-begotten son by a nymph of the country called Anobret, whom they called Ieoud for this reason (the only-begotten is still so called among the Phoenicians), when very great dangers from war had seized the country, adorned his son with royal attire, prepared an altar, and sacrificed him." This is how these things were. Rightly, then, the admirable Clement in his Exhortation to the Greeks, blaming these very things, himself laments the error of men, saying: "Come, then, let us add this too: that your gods are inhuman and man-hating demons, who not only rejoice in the madness of men but also enjoy the murder of men; providing themselves occasions of pleasure, now in the armed contests in the stadiums, now in the countless rivalries for glory in wars, so that they may be able to glut themselves to the full with human blood. And already, falling upon cities and nations like plagues, they have demanded savage libations. Aristomenes the Messenian, at any rate, slaughtered three hundred men to Zeus of Ithome, thinking he was offering so many and such fine hecatombs; among them was Theopompus, king of the Lacedaemonians, a noble victim. The Tauri, the people who live around the Tauric Chersonese, at once sacrifice to the Tauric Artemis any strangers they catch among them, those shipwrecked at sea. These sacrifices of yours Euripides represents on the stage. Monimus records in his Collection of Marvels that at Pella in Thessaly an Achaean man is sacrificed to Peleus and Chiron. Anticlides in his Returns declares that the Lyctians (they are a people of Crete) slaughter men to Zeus; and Dosiadas says the Lesbians offer the like sacrifice to Dionysus. As for the Phocaeans (for I will not pass them by), Pythocles in the third book On Concord records that they burn a man whole to Artemis Tauropolus. Erechtheus of Attica and Marius the Roman sacrificed their own daughters, the one to Pherephatta, as Demaratus says in the first book of his Tragic Subjects, the other, Marius, to the averting gods, as Dorotheus records in the fourth book of his Italian History. How humane the demons are shown to be from this! And how are not the superstitious correspondingly unholy, the demons being acclaimed as saviors, and the people asking salvation from those who plot against salvation? Supposing they offer fair sacrifices to them, they have not noticed that they are slaughtering men. For murder does not become a sacrifice because of the place; not even if someone slaughters a man to Artemis and Zeus in a supposedly sacred place rather than to anger and love of money, other demons like them, on altars or on roads, calling it a sacred victim; such a sacrifice is murder and manslaughter. Why, then, you men, wisest of all living creatures, do we flee from savage beasts, and if we meet a bear or a lion somewhere, turn aside, 'as when a man, seeing a serpent in the mountain glens, starts back, and trembling seizes his limbs beneath, and he retreats again'; but when you perceive and understand that demons are destructive and accursed, plotting against men, hating them, and ruining them, do you not turn away or flee from them?" So much Clement. I can also produce for you another witness of the bloodguiltiness of the godless and inhuman demons, Dionysius of Halicarnassus, a man who set out the whole of Roman history accurately. He too writes that Zeus and Apollo once demanded human sacrifices, and that those of whom they were demanded offered to the gods the portion of all their fruits and cattle, but, because they did not sacrifice men too, fell into all kinds of calamities. There is nothing like hearing the historian himself relating it thus: "Few remained in Italy through the foresight of the Aborigines. First, then, the ruin of their homes seemed to begin for the cities when the land was afflicted by drought, when no fruit remained ripe on the trees, but fell off unripe; nor did the seeds that sent up shoots and flowered fulfill their natural time to the ripeness of the ear; nor did enough grass grow for the cattle; and of the springs some were no longer good to drink, some failed in summer, and some dried up altogether. Things akin to these happened to the births of cattle and of women: either the embryos miscarried, or perished in birth, sometimes destroying the mothers as well; and if any escaped the danger of birth maimed or imperfect or harmed by some other mischance, it was of no use to rear it. Then the rest of the population too, those in their prime, were afflicted with diseases and deaths beyond the usual number. When they consulted the oracle, asking which of the gods or demons they had offended to suffer these things, and what they must do to hope for relief from their troubles, the god answered that, having obtained what they wished, they had not paid what they vowed, but still owed what was of most value. For the Pelasgians, when a dearth of all goods had come upon their land, had vowed to Zeus, Apollo, and the Cabiri to sacrifice tithes of all that should accrue to them; and when the prayer was fulfilled, they set aside the portion of all their fruits and cattle and sacrificed it to the gods, as if they had vowed these alone. This Myrsilus of Lesbos has recorded, writing almost in the same words as I do now, except that he calls the people not Pelasgians but Tyrrhenians; the reason I shall give a little later." "When they learned the oracle that was brought back, they could not understand what was said. In their perplexity one of the elders, interpreting the oracle, said that they were wholly mistaken if they thought the gods accused them unjustly; for the first-fruits of their goods had all been paid rightly and justly, but the portion of human offspring, the thing above all most precious to the gods, was still owed; and if the gods received their just share of these too, the oracle would be fulfilled. Some thought this rightly said, others that the account had been concocted by design. When someone proposed asking the god whether it pleased him to receive tithes of men, they sent envoys a second time, and the god answered that they should do so. From this, strife seized them about the manner of the tithing; and first the leaders of the cities fell into confusion among themselves, then the rest of the people came to suspect those in authority. The expulsions took place in no order, but, as was natural, of men driven out by frenzy and divine madness; and many whole households were wiped out when part of them was removed, since the kinsmen did not think it right to be left behind by those who were departing, their dearest ones, and to remain among their worst enemies. These, then, were the first to leave Italy, and they wandered over much of Greece and of the barbarian land. After the first, others suffered the same, and this went on for years. For the rulers in the cities did not cease taking the first-fruits of the youth as they came to manhood, thinking it right to render the gods their due and fearing seditions from those who escaped notice. Many too were driven out by their adversaries out of enmity under a fair pretext; so that there were many expulsions, and the Pelasgian race was scattered over most of the earth." And a little later he says: "They say too that the ancients performed the sacrifices to Cronus, as was done at Carthage as long as the city lasted and is done among the Celts to this day, and among some other western nations they kill men; and that Heracles, wishing to put an end to the custom of this sacrifice, set up the altar on the Saturnian hill and began sacrifices of pure victims consecrated on a pure fire. And so that men should have no scruple, as having neglected ancestral sacrifices, he taught the natives to appease the god's anger by making images in the likeness of men, adorned in the same way as the men they used to bind hand and foot and throw into the stream of the Tiber, and casting these into the river instead of the men, so that whatever ominous fear remained in the souls of all might be removed, while images of the ancient practice were still preserved. This the Romans continued to do even to my time, a little after the spring equinox, in the month of May, on the so-called Ides, meaning this to be the day of the full moon. On it, after offering beforehand the victims prescribed by the laws, the so-called pontiffs, the most distinguished of the priests, and with them the virgins who guard the undying fire, the praetors, and those of the other citizens who may lawfully be present at the rites, throw from the sacred bridge into the stream of the Tiber images made in the forms of men, thirty in number, calling them Argei." So much for these things. Diodorus too records things like these in the twentieth book of his Historical Library, after the death of Alexander of Macedon, under the first Ptolemy, about the Carthaginians when they were besieged by Agathocles, tyrant of Sicily, writing this word for word: "They also blamed Cronus for opposing them, inasmuch as in former times they had sacrificed to this god the best of their sons, but later bought children secretly, reared them, and sent them to the sacrifice; and when an inquiry was made, some of those sacrificed were found to have been substituted. Taking these things to heart and seeing the enemy encamped before their walls, they were filled with superstitious fear, as having abolished the ancestral honors of the gods. Eager to correct their errors, they selected two hundred of the noblest children and sacrificed them publicly; and others who were under suspicion gave themselves up voluntarily, not fewer than three hundred. There was among them a bronze statue of Cronus, stretching out its hands palm upward and sloping toward the ground, so that the child placed on them rolled off and fell into a pit full of fire." Such things this writer too has handed down through his history. Rightly, then, the Scripture of the Hebrews also blames those of the circumcision who imitated such things, saying: "And they sacrificed their sons and their daughters to demons; and the land was polluted with blood, and was defiled by their works." But I think it has been clearly proved by these things that the most ancient and first setting up of images was demonic, and all the idolatrous deification of the nations was the work of demons, not good but altogether most wicked and evil; so that the oracle spoken in the prophecies is fulfilled: "All the gods of the nations are demons"; and the apostolic word, in which it says that "what they sacrifice, they sacrifice to demons and not to God." Or if there were anything good in them, so as on this account to share the title of the good, it would be beneficent and a savior of all, a friend of justice and protective of men. Being such, how could it delight in the slaughter of men? And how did it not prevent the human race by oracles from doing such things? Surely it was worse and baser than men, who by the penalties of the laws brought the bloodthirsty to their senses. For it was no god but a man who put an end to the long and lasting disease of human sacrifice. That these things belonged to bad and wicked demons would be still plainer to you if you considered the infamous and licentious prostitution practiced in their honor even now at Heliopolis in Phoenicia and among very many other peoples. For they say that adulteries, seductions, and other unlawful unions must be performed in honor of the gods, as a debt owed, and that first-fruits of the act of adultery and prostitution must be offered to the gods, dedicating to them the gains of this inglorious and indecent traffic as some good thank-offering. For these things are like the human sacrifices. If, then, it is not fitting even for a self-controlled man to delight in murders, foul talk, and unlawful unions with women who sell their youth for hire, far less can it be said that it belongs to gods or good demons to accept such things. And if anyone should say that these things admittedly belong to bad demons, but that the good ones are others, whom they especially worship as saviors, we must ask where their good saviors were, if they worshipped these too, that they did not keep the wicked from doing such things against those who fled to them for refuge? Where were the good demons, that they did not drive away the harmful ones and fight for their worshippers? Why did they disregard, overlooking it, the rational and God-loving race of men worn down by the cruelty of the bad demons, and not proclaim plainly to all to flee without turning back and to reject every so-called god, as being no god but a bad demon, to whom cruel, inhuman, lawless, and shameful things are dear? And if formerly at Rhodes there was a so-called god who delighted in human sacrifices, the true God, if there were one, would have stopped the practice and proclaimed to all that this was not a god but a bad demon; and if at Salamis, formerly called Coronea, where in the month called Aphrodisius by the Cyprians a man was sacrificed, the true God would have declared this one too to be an accursed demon, stopping the practice as impious and unholy. And if at Heliopolis in Egypt Amosis abolished the law of human sacrifice, the true God would have taught that the man had been far better than the god; for it was no god, but again a demon, that led the human sacrifice. Nor would the true God have failed to ordain that Hera's demon be regarded as abominable, to whom, as the history shows, three men were sacrificed every day. And what could be more truly demonic than the so-called Dionysus Omadius, to whom they say they sacrificed a man in Chios, tearing him limb from limb, or the one in Tenedos likewise, whom they too appeased with human sacrifice? The true God would have forbidden sacrificing a man to Ares, the man-destroying and war-loving demon, and would have ordained that no one slaughter for him the dearest of his own or of others. And if a virgin, as they say, was sacrificed every year to Athena at Laodicea in Syria, the true God would not have hesitated to call her too a wicked demon; as also the one in Libya who delighted in the like, and the one in Arabia, to whom they sacrificed a boy every year and buried him under the altar.
That after the teaching of the Gospel the old custom of human sacrifice was abolished; pagan theology was entirely concerned with evil demons
All these, and those who delighted in foul speech and the unlawful corruption of women and in the rest of the madness listed before, the true and good god, or demon, would have warned people beforehand by no means to regard as gods. But no one of all who ever were is recorded to have done this, except only the God honored among the Hebrews, as the only and true God. For he alone, through Moses the prophet and theologian, proclaimed to all not to worship the bad demons as good, but on the contrary to turn away from them and drive them off as being evil spirits; and he legislated, moreover, to pull down their temples and their unholy and profane rites, and to wipe out entirely from among men the memory of them as gods and the honor paid to them. For it was not holy for those cared for by the good to propitiate the bad. Whether it is Phylarchus or anyone else who records that all the Greeks killed a man before going out to war, do not hesitate to take him too as a witness of the demonic seizure of the Greeks; nor fail to declare that those in Africa, and the Thracians and Scythians who do the like, have been led into the same madness of the demons; as also the Athenians and those in the Great City, if indeed they too slaughtered men at the festivals of great Jupiter. But gathering together the list of all those mentioned, you would find, one may almost say, that all the deification of the nations was dedicated to these very murderous spirits and wicked demons. For if at Rhodes and Salamis and the other islands, at Heliopolis in Egypt, at Chios and Tenedos, Sparta and Arcadia, Phoenicia and Libya, and besides all these in Syria and Arabia, and among all the Greeks and their foremost, the Athenians, at Carthage and in Africa, and among Thracians and Scythians, the demonic killing of men has been shown to have been practiced in ancient times and to have lasted until our Savior, how could you not reasonably say that all were then enslaved to the wicked demons, and that there was no rest from such great evils for human life before the teaching of our Savior shone forth? For the account of the history showed that these things lasted until the times of Hadrian and were abolished from then on; and this was above all the time when the saving teaching was flourishing among all men. Nor can they say that these were offered to the wicked demons; for the history showed that human sacrifices were performed above all to the greatest gods themselves. For it said they were sacrificed to Hera, Athena, Cronus, Ares, and Dionysus, to Zeus himself who is over all, and to Phoebus, the most revered and wisest of all, Apollo; and these and no others they proclaim the greatest gods, good and saviors. So these themselves would be the wicked demons. For if they delighted in such human sacrifices and killings, how could you not reasonably count them among the bloodguilty wicked spirits, whether they are said to delight in such things themselves or to permit and overlook them when done by others? For why should they allow men at all to propitiate the wicked spirits? Why should they go so astray as to serve and flatter the bad? Why be enslaved to the wicked, when, being good and gods, they ought to drive away as far as possible from the haunts of men everything bad and wicked by a stronger and more divine power? A good father would not allow his own son to be ruined by wicked men; a sober master will not overlook his servant being carried off by enemies; a general in war, when he can save his own men, will not give them up as captives to the enemy; nor a shepherd his flock to the wolves. Will gods and good demons, then, give up the human race to the wicked and bad? And will the thirty thousand guardians of mortal men, the shepherds and saviors, kings, fathers, and lords, hand over their dearest so pitilessly and cruelly to be harried by enemies, adversaries, and wild beasts, and not fight in front of them, shielding those who flee to them; driving the hostile and wicked demons far from the flock of men like savage and flesh-eating beasts; and teaching every man, trusting in the multitude of countless gods and good demons that are his kin, and consecrated to gods not only stronger but more numerous and greatest, to care little, or rather not at all, for the weakness of the wicked demons? But since they did not do this, but on the contrary themselves worked with the wicked, sending up through their oracles the human sacrifices described and delighting in all foul speech and the deeds that follow it, it is plain in fact, as they say, that they too differed in no way in nature from bad demons, or rather were of one and the same choice and mind; and still more, that there was no god at all, nor any good demon, among those worshipped of old by all the nations in cities and countries. For how could the bad ever be dear to the good, unless one should say that light and darkness can be mixed into one? And how much better is human reasoning than the reputed gods, bidding men not to sacrifice even to bad demons! The writer mentioned before, where he said one must not sacrifice animals, says that one must not sacrifice even to bad demons, in this way:
It is wrong to sacrifice to evil demons
"Therefore a wise and sober man will beware of using such sacrifices, through which he will draw such beings to himself, and will be eager to purify his soul in every way; for they do not attack a pure soul, because it is unlike them. And if it is necessary for cities to propitiate these too, that is nothing to us; for in cities wealth and external and bodily things are thought to be goods, and their opposites evils, and care for the soul is very rare in them." Next to this he adds, saying:
How we ought to be devoted to the supreme God
"But we, as far as we can, shall not need what these provide, but make every effort, both from the soul and from external things, to become like God and those around him (which happens through freedom from passion and through a clear understanding of what truly is, and a life directed toward it and in accordance with it), and to become unlike wicked men and demons and everything in general that delights in the mortal and material. "The philosopher we describe, who stands apart from external things, will reasonably, we say, not trouble demons, nor need seers, nor the entrails of animals. For he has practiced withdrawing from the things for whose sake divinations exist. He does not engage in marriage, so as to trouble the seer about marriage; nor in commerce, nor about a servant, nor about theft and the other vainglory among men. And about what he seeks, no seer nor the entrails of animals will show the truth; but he himself through himself, as we say, approaching God, who is established in his true inward parts, will receive counsels about eternal life, having flowed wholly there." Very clearly, then, the account has shown by these words to whom one must ascribe the oracles, inquiries by sacrifice, and the foreknowledge of hidden things admired by the many. For he calls all these vainglory and rejects them as worked by wicked demons. At any rate, going through the account of bad demons, and saying that the wise and sober man will never give himself up to them nor draw them to himself by sacrifices, he next adds that the philosopher will not need oracles, nor entrails of animals, nor the like, since these belong to the evil art of demons. If, then, according to this, the wise and sober man must beware of using such sacrifices as draw the demons to himself (and these were the sacrifices by shedding of blood and slaughter of irrational animals), none of those of old who sacrificed animals to the demons, and much less those who sacrificed men, could justly be called sober and wise. And almost all the nations everywhere, before our Savior was shown to men, were caught propitiating the bad demons with human sacrifices performed in every place. So none of them was wise and sober. Common human reasoning, then, following right reason, plainly proclaims to every wise and sober man not to use sacrifices in the service of wicked demons, but to be eager to purify the soul in every way; for they do not attack a pure soul, because it is unlike them. But their god Apollo (for he must again be compared with men, and it must be shown how far he falls short of right reasoning) commands sacrifice to the wicked demon, plainly as being his friend; for like is dear to the bad. The witness of this is the same writer as before, in the work he entitled On the Philosophy from Oracles, recording thus word for word:
How Apollo enjoins sacrifice to the evil daemon
"At any rate, when the prophet was eager and pressing to see the divine with his own eyes, Apollo said that such a thing was impossible before giving ransoms to the wicked demon. He says thus: 'Give ransoms to the dread dweller of your native land: first libations, then a pyre, and the dark blood of black wine, and the white streams of sheep together.' And he spoke more clearly about the same things: 'Cast wine and milk and the bright form of water, and fruit-bearing wood of Zeus-born oaks; and laying down the entrails, pour libations with rich streams.' And when asked with what prayer, he began but did not finish, saying thus: 'Demon, who have received the crown of sinful souls, beneath the recesses of the air and above those of the earth.'" So says the wonderful god, or rather the much-erring demon. But the teachings of natural reasoning command the opposite: to purify the soul, and not to draw the wicked demons by sacrifices; for they do not attack a pure soul, because it is unlike them. And if the man who is cautious and does not sacrifice to demons has rightly been judged wise and sober, I leave you to consider whom, and of what kind, one should reasonably think the one who advises through the oracle to sacrifice to the wicked. Running back from here it will be plain what kind of character belonged to those who delighted in human sacrifices, or who formerly enslaved the whole human race to them. And if anyone should say that the practice of human sacrifice is not bad, but was most rightly performed by the ancients, it is time to blame all men now, because no one is as pious as their fathers.
None other than our Lord and Savior ever delivered the whole human race from the deceit of demons
But if the men of our time wisely turned away from the harsh and savage cruelty, then none of the ancients was wise who appeased the wicked demons with human killings. Indeed, even to a blind man, as they say, it is plain that those proclaimed as gods of old by all the nations would be neither gods nor good demons, but banished very far from the good. Therefore they might justly be called enemies of God and impious, having ruined all life; from whom, from all time, no one but our Savior and Lord, the Christ of God, provided for all men the means of escape, announcing as good news to all alike, Greeks and barbarians, the cure of their ancestral disease and freedom from their bitter and most ancient slavery. To this the word of the gospel demonstration urges us to hasten, crying with a loud voice to all, for all to hear: "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me; he has sent me to proclaim good news to the poor, to preach release to captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to heal the brokenhearted"; and again: "to bring out those bound from their chains, and from the prison house those who sit in darkness." For these things the truly divine oracles among the Hebrews foretold from of old, announcing the redemption of us who were formerly blind in soul and bound in the many-stranded chains of wicked demons. Therefore, having rightly had the eyes of our understanding enlightened by the saving word, and having become sober, reverent, wise, and free from all evils, we will neither sacrifice to nor serve the reputed gods of the nations, who once tyrannized over us too; but, led and brought by our Savior's teaching to the only and true God, who is Lord and nourisher, Savior and benefactor, and also maker, creator, and universal King of all things, we will hold him alone to be true God and give the fitting worship to him alone, honoring him alone and revering him alone, not in the way the demons like, but as has been handed down by the Savior of all men whom he sent, through his gospel teaching. Worshipping God in this way, we will drive away and banish the wicked demons from ourselves, far from fearing them, by purity alone, a clean character, and a sober and all-virtuous life, the life prescribed by our Savior; for it is agreed that they cannot approach a pure soul because it is unlike them. Nor will we need divinations and oracles, nor search the entrails of animals, nor meddle with anything worked by demonic agency. For the word of Christ has instructed us to practice withdrawing from the things for whose sake the many pursue these, and has urged us to seek only those things about which truly no seer nor the entrails of animals will show the truth, but only the Word of God himself, who dwells in the true inward parts of those able, through the utmost purity of soul, to receive him within themselves. Concerning them he says somewhere in the sacred writings: "I will dwell in them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people." These, then, are the refutations of the wickedness of the demons drawn from the subject of sacrifices. Listen also to what the author of On Abstinence from Animal Food records again about the same things, plainly admitting that the wicked demons, molding themselves in many shapes and taking forms of every kind, escape the notice of the many and deceive them. For, he says, putting on the masks of the good and winning over the multitudes by inflaming the desires of men, they wish to be called the highest gods. And he says they have been so strong as to deceive even the wisest poets and philosophers of the Greeks, whom he admits to have been the causes of the perversion of the multitude; that from them all sorcery arose, and pleasures are procured for men through them; how, being bad demons, they wish to be gods; and how the power that presides over them is thought to be the greatest god. Porphyry records all this in this way:
How demons act
"All souls that do not master the pneuma joined to them, but are for the most part mastered by it, are for this reason carried and swept about greatly whenever the passions and desires of the pneuma take their impulse; and these souls are demons too, but may reasonably be called evil-doing. And all of these, and those of the opposite power, are invisible and entirely imperceptible to human senses. For they are not clothed in a solid body, nor do all have one form, but they exist in many shapes; and the forms that mold and stamp their pneuma sometimes appear and sometimes are invisible; and sometimes the worse ones even change their forms. The pneuma, insofar as it is bodily, is passible and perishable; but because it is so bound by the souls that their form lasts a long time, it is still not eternal; for it is likely that something is continually flowing away from it and changing. The bodies of the good are well proportioned, like those of visible beings, but those of the evil-doers are disproportioned. These, assigning more to the passive part, inhabit the region about the earth and there is no evil they do not attempt. For having a wholly violent and treacherous character, and being deprived of the protection of the better daemon, they make their attacks mostly vehement and sudden, like ambushes, sometimes trying to escape notice, and sometimes using force." And next he adds: "They do these and similar things wishing to turn us away from the right notion of the gods and to turn us to themselves. For they themselves delight in all things done so inconsistently and incongruously; and as if putting on the masks of the other gods, they enjoy our folly, winning over the multitudes by inflaming the desires of men with loves and longings for wealth, power, and pleasures, and vainglory too, from which arise seditions, wars, and things akin to these. And worst of all, they go further from here and persuade men of the same things about the greatest gods, even to the point of bringing the best god under these charges; by whom, they say, everything has been thrown into confusion. And this has happened not only to ordinary people, but also to many of those engaged in philosophy. And the cause has come from both sides. For those philosophers who did not stand apart from the common course fell in with the multitudes in the same opinions; and the multitudes in turn, hearing from those thought wise things agreeing with their own opinions, were strengthened all the more in thinking such things about the gods. For poetry further inflamed men's beliefs by using language made for astonishment and enchantment, able to produce spellbinding and belief about the most impossible things; whereas one ought to be firmly persuaded that the good never harms and the bad never helps. For it is not the work of heat, as Plato says, to cool, but of its opposite, nor of cold to heat, but of its opposite; so neither is it the work of the just to harm. And the divine is surely by nature the most just of all, since otherwise it would not be divine. So this power and function must be cut off from the beneficent demons. For the power that is naturally disposed and willing to harm is opposite to the beneficent one; and opposites could never exist in the same subject." And again: "It is through the opposite powers that all sorcery is accomplished; for these and their leader are especially honored by those who bring about evils through sorcery. For they are full of every kind of illusion and able to deceive by their wonder-working. Through them the wretched prepare philters and love charms; for all licentiousness, and hope of wealth and glory, come through them, and above all deceit. For falsehood is akin to them; for they wish to be gods, and the power that presides over them wishes to seem the greatest god. These are they who delight 'in libation and savor of fat,' by which their pneumatic and bodily part is fattened. For this lives on vapors and exhalations, in various ways through various things, and is strengthened by the sacrifices of blood and flesh." By these words we have heard them admit that not only the poets among the Greeks inflamed men's beliefs about the bad demons as about gods and good beings, but also those engaged in philosophy who seemed to be in earnest about the gods; and they themselves, honoring not gods but wicked demons, threw the multitudes and the peoples headlong into the like error. At any rate the account plainly admitted that the multitudes, hearing from those thought wise things about the gods agreeing with their own opinions, were strengthened all the more in thinking of the wicked demons as of gods. And these charges are brought not by us, but by those who know their own affairs more exactly than we do. The same writer, at any rate, being no casual acquaintance with the superstition hidden from the many, says that the wicked demons wish to be gods and to have the reputation of good beings among men; and who the power presiding over them is, the same will again make plain, saying that the rulers of the wicked demons are Sarapis and Hecate; the divine Scripture says Beelzebul. Listen how he writes about this too in his On the Philosophy from Oracles:
Of the evil demons and the character of their rulers
"We suspect, not without reason, that the wicked demons are under Sarapis, persuaded not only by the symbols, but because the propitiations and averting rites concerning them are addressed to Pluto, as we showed in the first book. And this god is the same as Pluto, and for this reason is above all ruler of demons and gives tokens for driving them away. He it was, at any rate, who made known to his suppliants that they approach men taking the likeness of all kinds of animals. Hence among the Egyptians and Phoenicians, and in general among those wise in divine things, thongs are cracked in the temples and animals dashed on the ground before the worship of the gods, the priests driving these demons away by giving them the breath or blood of animals and by beating the air, so that when they have gone the presence of the god may come. Every house too is full of them, and for this reason they first purify it and cast them out when they call down a god. And our bodies too are full of them; for they delight especially in certain kinds of food. When we eat they approach and settle on the body; and this is the reason for the purifications, not chiefly because of the gods, but so that these may depart. They delight most in blood and in impurities, and enjoy these by entering those who use them. For in general the intensifying of desire toward anything and the impulse of the pneuma's appetite grow vehement from no other cause than their presence; and they compel men to fall into inarticulate sounds and belchings through the shared enjoyment that comes about with them. For wherever there is a drawing in of much breath, either because the belly has been filled through indulgence or because eagerness from the intensity of pleasure blows out and draws in much from outside, there let the presence of such spirits be shown to you. So far does human nature dare to discover the snares set around it; for when the god enters, the breath is multiplied." So much, then, about the wicked demons, whose ruler he says is Sarapis. The same writer teaches that Hecate too rules them, saying thus: "Perhaps these are the ones whom Sarapis rules, and whose symbol is the three-headed dog, that is, the wicked demon in the three elements, water, earth, and air; whom the god who has them in hand restrains. And Hecate too rules them, as holding together the three elements." And again he says: "Adding one more oracle, which Hecate herself has given, I will end the account of her: 'Here am I, the maiden of many forms, roaming the heavens, bull-faced, three-headed, ruthless, with golden arrows, Phoebe who knows no bed, Eileithyia bringing light to mortals, bearing the threefold tokens of a threefold nature: in the ether I appear in fiery images, the air I occupy with gleaming wheels, and the earth guides the dark race of my whelps.'" To which the writer adds plainly who the whelps are: that they are the wicked demons, of whom we have just finished speaking. So much for this. But let us confirm still more, by further proofs, that those whom the many proclaim as gods are truly wicked demons and bring nothing good.
Connections in Preparation for the Gospel, Book 4
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