The Gods of the Greeks

Among us, then — I do not say so many, but has anyone known even two or three who turned traitor to the laws, or who were afraid of death? And I do not mean that easiest of deaths, the kind that comes to men in battle, but the death that comes with torture of the body, which seems to be the hardest of all. In my opinion some of those who conquered us have inflicted it on those in their power, not out of hatred, but because they wanted to see an astonishing sight: whether there are any people in the world who believe that the only evil for them is to be forced to do anything against their own laws, or to speak a word against them. No one should wonder that we face death for our laws with more courage than all other people. For even those of our practices that seem easiest, others do not easily endure: I mean working with our own hands, plainness of food, and not eating or drinking, or having intercourse, or spending lavishly, at random or just as each happens to want; and again, keeping an unalterable rule of days of rest. Men who charge at close quarters with the sword and rout the enemy at the first onset could not face the commands that govern daily living. But for us, our willing obedience to the law in these things means that we can show our nobility on that other field as well. [a]

And yet your Lysimachuses and Molons and other writers of their sort — worthless sophists, deceivers of young men — revile us as the very worst of mankind. For my part, I would rather not have examined the customs of other peoples. It is our ancestral custom to keep our own laws, not to accuse those of others. Our lawgiver has expressly forbidden us to mock or blaspheme the gods recognized by others, out of respect for the very name “god.” But since our accusers think to refute us by setting their religion beside ours, it is impossible to keep silent — all the more because what I am about to say has not been composed by me for this occasion, but has been said by many, and by men of the highest reputation. For which of those admired among the Greeks for wisdom has not censured their most famous poets and their most trusted lawgivers for sowing such notions about the gods among the masses from the beginning? They declare the gods to be as many as they themselves please, born of one another and in every kind of way. They sort them by places and ways of life, as if they were kinds of animals: some under the earth, some in the sea, and the oldest of them bound in Tartarus. Over those to whom they have allotted heaven they set one who in name is their father, but in his deeds a tyrant and a master. That, they say, is why his wife, his brother and his daughter — the daughter he brought forth from his own head — formed a plot against him, to seize him and lock him up, just as he himself had done to his own father. [c]

With good reason the wisest men think these things deserve severe censure. They also laugh at the idea that we must believe some of the gods to be beardless youths and others old and bearded; that some are assigned to crafts, one god working as a smith and a goddess as a weaver; that one god makes war and fights alongside men; that others play the lyre or delight in archery; and that factions arise among them, and quarrels over human beings, to the point that they not only lay hands on one another but are even wounded by men, and lament and suffer for it. But the most outrageous thing of all is the lack of restraint in their unions and their love affairs, which they attribute to almost all of them, male gods and goddesses alike. How can that be anything but absurd? Then the noblest of them, and first of all the father himself, looks on while the women he has deceived and made pregnant are imprisoned or drowned in the sea; and he can neither save his own offspring, being himself ruled by fate, nor bear their deaths without tears. Fine things these are, and so is what follows! Adultery in heaven is watched by the gods so shamelessly that some of them have confessed they envied the pair who were bound in the act. And why should they not, when the eldest of them, their king, could not hold back his urge to lie with his wife long enough even to go to their bedroom? Then there are the gods who are slaves to men, now building for wages, now herding flocks, and others chained like criminals in a prison of bronze. What sensible person would not be provoked by such stories to rebuke those who invented them, and to condemn the great foolishness of those who accept them? Others have even molded Dread and Fear, and Madness and Deceit — and which of the vilest passions have they not? — into the nature and form of a god, and they have persuaded cities to offer sacrifice to the more respectable of these. They are thus driven into a great necessity: to regard some of the gods as givers of good things and to call others “averters of evil.” And then they try to be rid of these, as they would of the worst of men, by favors and gifts, expecting to suffer some great harm from them unless they pay them their wages. [e]

What, then, is the cause of so much inconsistency and error about the divine? I suppose it is this. From the beginning their lawgivers did not perceive the true nature of God, and they did not even define as much accurate knowledge as they were able to grasp and order the rest of their constitution by it. Instead, as though it were one of the most trivial matters, they left the poets free to bring in whatever gods they liked, subject to every passion, and the orators free to enroll as citizens, by public decree, any foreign god that suited them. Painters and sculptors, too, enjoyed great license in this among the Greeks, each devising some form of his own, one modeling it in clay, another painting it; and the most admired craftsmen of all have ivory and gold as the material for their endless novelties. So some temples are left entirely deserted, while others are eagerly thronged and adorned with every kind of purification. Then the gods who once flourished in honors have grown old, and those who flourished after them have been put in a second rank — for that is the more respectful way to say it. Other gods, new ones, are brought in and receive worship; and of the temples some are left desolate, while others are newly founded, as each person pleases. Yet they ought to have done the very opposite, and kept their belief about God and the honor they pay him unchanged. [f]

Apollonius Molon, then, was one of these senseless and conceited men. But those who truly practiced philosophy among the Greeks were not unaware of anything I have said, nor ignorant of the lame excuses offered by allegory. That is why they rightly despised these stories, while in the true and fitting view of God they agreed with us. Starting from that view, Plato says that none of the other poets should be admitted into his state, and he politely sends even Homer away, after crowning him and pouring perfume over him, so that he may not destroy the right belief about God with his myths. Above all, Plato imitated our lawgiver in prescribing no lesson to his citizens so strongly as that they all learn the laws accurately, and also in taking care that outsiders should not mix with them at random, but that the state should be kept pure, made up of those who abide by the laws. Apollonius Molon took none of this into account when he accused us of not admitting people already committed to other beliefs about God, and of refusing fellowship with those who choose to live by a different way of life. But this is not peculiar to us. It is common to all — not only to the Greeks, but to the most highly esteemed of the Greeks. The Spartans made a practice of expelling foreigners and would not allow their own citizens to travel abroad, suspecting that both would corrupt their laws. One might perhaps fairly reproach them for their surliness, since they gave no one a share either in their citizenship or in living among them. We, on the other hand, do not think fit to copy the ways of others, yet we gladly receive those who wish to share ours. And that, I think, may be taken as proof both of our humanity and of our magnanimity. [h]