Where Have the Gods Gone

A few days ago we had a conversation, my very good Autolycus, in which you asked who my God was and gave your ears to my talk for a little while, and I set out for you how I worship God. Then we said goodbye to each other and went home, each to his own house, on the friendliest of terms — although at first you had been hard on me. You know and remember that you took what we say to be foolishness. Afterwards you urged me on. So, amateur at speaking though I am, I want now, by means of this book, to show you more exactly the empty labor and the empty worship you are held in; and at the same time, out of a few of your own histories — the ones you read, and perhaps do not yet understand — to make the truth plain to you. [a]

It really does seem laughable to me that stonecutters and modelers, or painters, or metal-casters should mold and paint and carve and cast and manufacture gods — gods which, once the craftsmen have made them, they think nothing of. But as soon as somebody buys them and sets them up in a so-called temple or in a house, then not only do the buyers sacrifice to them: the very men who made them and sold them come with eagerness, with a whole array of sacrifices and drink offerings, to bow down to them. They take them for gods, and do not see that they are exactly what they were when these same men made them — stone, or bronze, or wood, or paint, or some other material. The same thing has happened to you, when you read the histories and genealogies of the so-called gods. When you come upon the accounts of their births, you think of them as men; but afterwards you address them as gods and worship them, without stopping to notice or to understand that they were born exactly the kind of beings you have just read that they were. [b]

As for the gods of those days, if they really were begotten, then the begetting was plentiful. But now — where is any begetting of gods on display? If back then they fathered and were fathered, plainly there ought to be gods being born right up to the present. If not, the whole business will be judged feeble: either they have grown old and no longer father children, or they have died and no longer exist. If gods were begotten, they ought to be begotten right up to now, exactly as human beings are begotten — in fact there ought to be more gods than human beings, as the Sibyl says: [c]

For if the children born of human beings — mortal and short-lived as we are — are on display right up to now, and human birth has not stopped, so that cities and villages are crowded and the countryside is settled as well, then how much more ought the gods, who according to your poets do not die, to be fathering and being fathered, since you say that the gods came to be by begetting? And why was the mountain called Olympus lived in by the gods back then, and now stands deserted? Or why did Zeus live on Ida back then — he was known to be living there, according to Homer and the rest of the poets — and now cannot be found? And why was he not everywhere, but was found in one part of the earth? Either he neglected the rest, or he was unable to be everywhere and to look after everything. If he was, say, in a place in the east, he was not in a place in the west; and if he was in the western parts, he was not in the eastern. But this belongs to God, the Most High and Almighty, the God who really is: not only to be everywhere, but also to see everything and hear everyone, and further, not to be contained in a place. Otherwise the place that contained him would turn out to be greater than he is, since what contains is greater than what is contained. God is not contained. He is himself the place of all things. So why has Zeus left Ida? Did he die, or did that mountain stop pleasing him? And where did he go? Into the heavens? No. But you will say, to Crete? Yes — and there his tomb is shown to this day. Again you will say, to Pisa, where to this day he lends glory to the hands of Phidias. Let us go, then, to the writings of the philosophers and the poets.

Some of the Stoics deny that there is a God at all; or if there is one, they say he takes thought for nobody but himself. Views like these were put out, and put out completely, by the folly of Epicurus and Chrysippus. Others say that everything happens of itself, that the world is uncreated and nature everlasting; and they have dared to declare that there is no providence of God whatever, but that the only god is each person’s own conscience. Others again lay it down that the spirit which has spread through everything is God. Plato and his school do acknowledge that God is uncreated, and the Father and Maker of all things — and then they lay it down that matter is uncreated too, and say that it has flourished alongside God. But if God is uncreated and matter is uncreated, then on the Platonists’ showing God is no longer the Maker of all things, and God’s sole rule is not established either, so far as their view goes. And further: just as God, being uncreated, is also unalterable, so if matter too were uncreated it would be unalterable and equal to God. What is created is subject to turning and change; what is uncreated does not turn and does not change. And what is so great about it if God made the world out of material already lying there? Even a human craftsman, once he gets material from somebody, makes out of it whatever he likes. God’s power is shown in this: that out of things that are not he makes whatever he likes — just as giving soul and motion belongs to no one but God alone. A man can make an image, but he cannot give reason, or breath, or feeling to the thing he has made. God has more than this: he makes a thing that reasons, breathes, and feels. So then, as God is more powerful than a man in all these respects, so also in this — that out of things that are not he creates, and has created, the things that are, whatever he likes and however he likes. [f]

So the opinion held among your philosophers and writers does not agree with itself. For while they were declaring all that, the poet Homer turns up bringing in the origin — not only of the world but of the gods as well — on a completely different assumption. Somewhere he says: [i]

In saying this he does not, after all, present us with a god. For who does not know that Ocean is water? And if water, then not God. God, if he is the Maker of all things — as he certainly is — is therefore the creator of the water and of the seas too. Hesiod, for his part, told of the begetting not only of the gods but of the world itself. And having said the world was made, he had no strength to say by whom it came to be. He also said that Cronus, and Zeus who came from him, and Poseidon and Pluto were gods — and we find that these are later than the world. He tells, too, how Cronus was made war on by Zeus, his own son. This is how he puts it:

Then he goes on to speak of Zeus’s daughters, whom he calls the Muses; and he turns up as their suppliant, wanting to learn from them how everything came to be. For he says:

But how did the Muses know these things, when they are later than the world? Or how could they tell them to Hesiod, when their father had not yet been born?

He does, in a way, lay down matter and the making of the world, saying: [k]

And even after saying this he did not make clear by whom these things came to be. For if in the first place there was Chaos, and some matter was already lying there, uncreated, then who was it that refitted it, and reshaped it, and gave it another form? Did matter remake and order itself? Zeus came into being long afterwards — not only after matter, but after the world and a multitude of human beings; and so did his father Cronus. Or rather, was there something in charge that made it — I mean God, who also set it in order? Besides, on every count he turns out to be talking nonsense and contradicting himself. After speaking of earth and heaven and sea, he wants the gods to have come from them; and out of these he announces certain most terrible men, kinsmen of the gods — the race of the Titans and the Cyclopes and a crowd of Giants, and the demons of Egypt, or rather worthless men, as Apollonides, also called Horapius, records in the book titled Semenouthi and in the rest of his histories about Egyptian worship and the Egyptian kings.

And why should I go through the Greek myths and the empty labor in them — Pluto reigning over the darkness, Poseidon sinking beneath the sea and wrapping himself around Melanippe and fathering a man-eating son, or all the tragedies your writers made out of Zeus’s children? That these were born men and not gods, they record themselves, when they list their family lines. Aristophanes the comic poet, in the play titled The Birds, took on the subject of the world’s making and said that in the beginning the world’s frame came out of an egg: [m]

And Satyrus, writing the history of the wards of Alexandria, begins from Philopator, also called Ptolemy, and reports that Dionysus was the founder of his line — which is why Ptolemy established the tribe as the first one. Satyrus says this:

From Dionysus and Althea daughter of Thestius came Deianira; from her and Heracles son of Zeus, Hyllus; from him Cleodemus; from him Aristomachus; from him Temenus; from him Ceisus; from him Maron; from him Thestius; from him Acous; from him Aristomidas; from him Caranus; from him Coenus; from him Tyrimmas; from him Perdiccas; from him Philip; from him Aeropus; from him Alcetas; from him Amyntas; from him Bocrus; from him Meleager; from him Arsinoe; from her and Lagus, Ptolemy also called Soter; from him and Berenice, Ptolemy Philadelphus; from him and Arsinoe, Ptolemy Euergetes; from him and Berenice the daughter of Magas, who reigned in Cyrene, Ptolemy Philopator.

That, then, is how the kinship of the Alexandrian kings with Dionysus runs. This is also why there are wards registered in the Dionysian tribe. The Althean is from Althea, who became Dionysus’s wife and was Thestius’s daughter; the Deianirian is from the daughter of Dionysus and Althea, who was Heracles’ wife. And this is where the wards among them get their names: the Ariadnian, from the daughter of Minos, Dionysus’s wife, a girl devoted to her father, who slept with Dionysus when he took the shape of a helmsman; the Thestian, from Thestius, Althea’s father; the Thoantian, from Thoas, Dionysus’s son; the Staphylian, from Staphylus, Dionysus’s son; the Euaenian, from Eunous, Dionysus’s son; the Maronian, from Maron, son of Ariadne and Dionysus. All of these are sons of Dionysus. Many other such names have come about and are still in use to this day: from Heracles the Heraclidae, from Apollo the Apollonidae and the Apollonii, from Poseidon the Poseidonii, and from Zeus the Dii and the Diogenae.

And why should I list the rest of that mass of names and genealogies? So then, in every way all the writers are made fools of — the poets, and the so-called philosophers, and the people who pay attention to them as well. What they put together about their gods was myths, rather, and stupidities. They did not show them to be gods but men, and men of whom some were drunks and others fornicators and murderers. About the making of the world, too, what they said disagrees with itself and is worthless. First, some declared the world uncreated, as we showed earlier; and those who claim it is uncreated and an everlasting nature said nothing consistent with those who laid it down that it was made. They were speaking by guesswork and human notion, and not according to truth. Others, on the other hand, said that there is providence, and undid the positions of the first group. Aratus says: [p]

Which of them, then, are we to believe — Aratus, or Sophocles, when he says:

And Homer does not sing in tune with this one either. For he says:

And Simonides:

Euripides likewise:

And Menander:

And Euripides again:

And Thestius:

And after saying countless things of this kind, they said things that disagreed with themselves. Sophocles, at any rate, who in another place says there is no providence, also says:

Besides, they brought in a multitude of gods and also spoke of a sole rule; and to those who say there is providence they have said the opposite, that there is none. That is why Euripides admits:

So without meaning to they admit that they do not know the truth. They were inspired by demons and puffed up by them, and what they said they said through them. The poets — Homer, I mean, and Hesiod — being, as they say, inspired by the Muses, spoke out of a fantasy and a delusion, and not with a clean spirit but with a deceiving one. This is plainly shown by the fact that even to this day people with demons in them are sometimes exorcised in the name of the God who really is, and those deceiving spirits admit for themselves that they are demons — the same ones who were at work in those writers back then. Still, some of them sometimes sobered up in soul and said things that agreed with the prophets, so that it might stand as a witness both to themselves and to everyone: about God’s sole rule, and about judgment, and about the rest of what they said.

But the men of God, carrying the Holy Spirit and becoming prophets, inspired and made wise by God himself, became taught by God, and holy, and righteous. That is why they were also counted worthy to receive this reward: they became instruments of God, and made room for the wisdom that comes from him, and by that wisdom they spoke both about the creation of the world and about everything else. They foretold plagues and famines and wars, too. And there was not one of them, or two, but a good many, at different times and seasons, among the Hebrews — and among the Greeks there was the Sibyl. They have all said things that are friendly to one another and in agreement: what happened before their time, what happened in their own time, and what is being completed among us now. That is why we are also persuaded about the things still to come, that they will happen just so, since the first things have been carried out. [v]