The Stromata, Book VI

The Greeks Stole From Each Other

Before I take up the subject I proposed, I have to add, as a preface, what was left out at the end of Book V. I showed there that the symbolic way of writing is ancient, and that it was used not only by our own prophets but by most of the ancient Greeks and by a good many of the other non-Greek peoples as well. The next step was to go on to the mysteries of the initiated. I am putting that off until we come to refuting what the Greeks say about first principles, since I intend to show that the mysteries belong to the same line of thinking. And having shown that Greek thought is lit up on every side by the truth that was given to us in the Scriptures — taking that truth by its sense — I have shown, to put it no more harshly than this, that the theft of the truth passed over to them.

Come then: let us bring the Greeks forward as witnesses against themselves in the matter of this theft. Since they pilfer from one another, they establish the fact that they are thieves; and though they do not mean to be, they are caught quietly taking the truth that belongs to us and making it over to men of their own race. For if they will not keep their hands off each other, they will hardly keep them off our writers. I will say nothing about philosophical doctrines, since the very men who founded the rival schools admit in writing — so as not to be convicted of ingratitude — that they got the most important of their doctrines from Socrates. But first I will make use of a few pieces of evidence from the men most talked about and best regarded among the Greeks, exposing their plagiarizing habit and picking them out from various periods; then I will turn to what comes next.

Poets Copying Poets

Orpheus, then, composed this line:

Since nothing else is more shameless and more wretched than a woman.

And Homer plainly says:

Since nothing else is more dreadful and more shameless than a woman.

And Musaeus wrote:

Since skill is far better than strength.

Homer says:

By skill rather than strength the woodcutter is far the better man.

Again, Musaeus composed these lines:

And as the fruitful field puts out its leaves,

and on the ash trees some fade while others grow,

so the race of man whirls its own leaf around.

Homer copies it out:

Some of the leaves the wind strews on the ground;

the budding wood bears others, and in the season of spring

they come. So one race of men springs up, and one departs.

Again, Homer having said:

It is unholy to exult over dead men,

Archilochus and Cratinus write — Archilochus:

It is not a noble thing to sneer at the dead;

and Cratinus, in his Laconians:

For men it is a dreadful thing to exult

too much over the mighty dead.

Again, Archilochus takes over that line of Homer’s:

I erred, and I do not deny it: in place of many —

and writes it out like this:

I erred, and this ruin has somehow taken hold of another as well.

So too with the line:

War is impartial: it slays the slayer.

This as well he has altered and given out like this:

I will do it.

For to men Ares is truly impartial.

So too, taking over this:

The outcome of victory among men rests with the gods,

he openly encourages the young in the following iambic line:

The outcome of victory rests with the gods.

Again, Homer having said:

sleeping on the ground with unwashed feet,

Euripides writes in the Erechtheus:

They sleep out on the plain with no bed spread for them,

and never wash their feet in running water.

In the same way Archilochus said:

But one man delights his heart in this,

and one in that —

matching the line of Homer:

For one man delights in these deeds, and one in those —

and Euripides says in the Oeneus:

But one takes more delight in these ways, and one in those.

And I have heard Aeschylus saying:

The man who is doing well should stay at home;

and there too should he stay whose luck runs badly.

And Euripides shouting the same thing on the stage:

Happy the man who, prospering, stays at home.

And Menander saying it in comedy:

He ought to stay at home and remain a free man,

or else stop being happy in the right way.

Again, Theognis having said:

The exile has no friend who is loyal and true,

Euripides has written:

Every friend flies far from the man who is poor.

And Epicharmus, saying:

Daughter, what a wretched day —

you are old, and I am marrying you to a young man;

and adding:

For the young husband takes some other girl,

and the wife longs for another husband —

Euripides writes:

It is bad to yoke an old wife to a young man;

for he wants to share another woman’s bed,

and she, deserted by him, plots mischief.

Euripides having said, besides, in the Medea:

A bad man’s gifts do no good —

Sophocles gives out this iambic line in the Ajax:

Enemies’ gifts are no gifts and no benefit.

Solon having written:

For having too much breeds arrogance,

when a great store of wealth goes with it,

Theognis writes in the same way:

For having too much breeds arrogance,

when a great store of wealth goes with a bad man.

This is why Thucydides also says, in his Histories: “Many men, when great and unlooked-for prosperity comes to them in a short time, are apt to turn to arrogance.” And Philistus imitates the same thought, putting it this way: “And the many things that turn out prosperously for men, in the ordinary course of reason, tend with incredible danger toward disaster. For those who meet with unexpected success beyond their hopes are for the most part apt to turn to arrogance.”

Again, Euripides having written:

For children born of parents who have led

a hard and toiling life are the better sort —

Critias writes: “I begin with a man’s origin. He will be the best and strongest in body if his father exercises himself, eats in a hardy way, and puts his body to toilsome labor, and if the mother of the child to come is strong in body and gives herself exercise.”

Again, Homer having said of the shield Hephaestus made:

On it he made the earth and the sky and the sea,

and portrayed the mighty strength of Ocean’s rivers —

Pherecydes of Syros says: “Zas makes a cloak, large and beautiful, and works on it earth and Ogenos, and the palace of Ogenos.”

And Homer having said:

Shame, which greatly harms a man, or helps him —

Euripides writes in the Erechtheus:

Shame is a hard thing for me to judge.

It is needed. And at times it is a great mischief.

Take, as a parallel, plagiarisms like these, from men who flourished at the same time and were rivals of each other. From the Orestes of Euripides:

Dear charm of sleep, helper in sickness.

From the Eriphyle of Sophocles:

Off to sleep with you, healer of that sickness.

And from the Antigone of Sophocles:

Bastardy is a shameful name; but the nature is equal.

And from the Aleuades of Sophocles:

Every good thing has its nature equal.

Again, in the Ctimenus of Euripides:

God helps the man who works;

and in the Minos of Sophocles:

Fortune is no ally to men who do nothing;

and from the Alexander of Euripides:

But time will show; and learning by that test,

I will know whether you are good or bad;

and from the Hipponous of Sophocles:

Besides, hide nothing; for Time,

who sees all and hears all, unfolds everything.

But let us run through the following in the same way. Eumelus composed the line:

the nine daughters of Memory and Olympian Zeus,

and Solon begins his elegy like this:

the shining children of Memory and Olympian Zeus.

Again, Euripides paraphrases the line of Homer:

Who are you, and where from? Your city, and your parents — where?

using the following iambic lines in the Aegeus:

What country shall we say that you have left

to wander in exile? What is your land — the boundary

of your own native soil? Who fathered you?

And whose son do you call yourself?

And what about this? Theognis having said:

Wine drunk in quantity is bad; but if a man uses

it with judgment, it is not bad but good —

does Panyasis not write:

Above the gods’ best gift to men ranks wine,

drunk in measure; but drunk to excess, the worst.

Hesiod, too, saying:

But in return for the fire I will give you a plague,

for all men to take delight in —

Euripides writes:

and in return for the fire

another fire, greater and unconquerable,

sprang up in the shape of women.

And besides, Homer saying:

There is no satisfying the greedy belly,

the ruinous thing, which has caused men many troubles —

Euripides says:

Hard need and my ruinous belly overcome me;

and out of these come all evils.

Besides, Callias the comic poet having written:

Among madmen, they say, every man must be mad —

Menander expresses himself much the same way in Men for Sale, saying:

Wisdom is not always the right thing to have on hand:

sometimes a man must go mad along with the rest.

And Antimachus of Teos having said:

From gifts many evils come to mortals —

Augias composed the line:

For gifts deceive men’s minds and their doings.

And Hesiod having said:

A man never gained a better thing than a good wife,

nor a worse thing than a bad one —

Simonides said:

A man never gained a better prize than a good wife,

nor anything worse than a bad one.

Again, Epicharmus having said:

Think of yourself as one who will live long,

and as one who will not —

Euripides writes:

Why? Since the wealth we have is uncertain,

why do we not live as free from care

and as pleasantly as we can?

In the same way, Diphilus the comic poet having said:

The life of men is liable to change —

Posidippus says:

No man of mortal mould has passed his life

free from suffering, nor again has kept on

prospering to the end.

Plato speaks to you in the same way, writing of man as a creature subject to change. Again, Euripides having said:

O life, full of trouble for mortal men,

how slippery you are in everything!

Now you grow, and now you waste away.

And no limit at all has been set

for mortals to make an end of their course,

except when Death’s pitiless final end

comes, sent from Zeus —

Diphilus writes:

There is no life that does not have its own troubles:

pains, cares, thefts, anxieties, disease;

and Death, coming like a physician, gives

his patients rest in quiet sleep.

Furthermore, Euripides having said:

Many are the shapes of fortune,

and many are the things the gods bring about against all expectation —

Theodectes the tragic poet writes in the same way:

the instability of mortals’ fates.

And Bacchylides having said:

To few men only is it given

to reach gray old age prospering all the while,

and never meet with disasters —

Moschion the comic poet writes:

But that man is the most blessed of all

who leads an even life from beginning to end.

And you will find that Theognis having said:

A young wife is no advantage to a man

grown old, since she will not obey the helm

as a ship does —

Aristophanes the comic poet writes:

An old man and a young wife suit each other badly.

And Anacreon having written:

I sing of Love, the luxurious,

crowned with garlands of flowers.

He is the king of the gods,

and he subdues mortal men —

Euripides writes:

For Love does not attack men only,

and women; he also disturbs

the souls of the gods above, and goes down

into the sea.

But rather than drag the discussion out any further in my anxiety to show how prone the Greeks are to plagiarism in expressions and doctrines, let me bring in the express testimony of Hippias, the sophist from Elis, who discourses on the very point at issue and speaks like this: “Some of these things are perhaps said by Orpheus, some briefly by Musaeus; some in one place, some in another; some by Hesiod, some by Homer, some by the rest of the poets; some in prose compositions, some by Greeks and some by non-Greeks. And I, taking from all of them the things that matter most and belong together, will make this present discourse of mine new and varied.”

Philosophers, Historians, and Speechwriters

And so that we may see that philosophy and history, and even oratory, are not free of the same reproach, it is right to bring in a few instances from them. Alcmaeon of Croton having said, “It is easier to guard against a man who is an enemy than against a friend,” Sophocles wrote in the Antigone:

For what sore is more grievous than a bad friend?

And Xenophon said: “There is no other way a man can injure his enemies than by appearing to be a friend.”

And Euripides having said in the Telephus:

Shall we Greeks be slaves to barbarians? —

Thrasymachus says, in the speech for the people of Larissa: “Shall we be slaves to Archelaus — Greeks to a barbarian?”

And Orpheus having said:

Water is what soul changes into, and death is what water changes into;

from water comes earth, and what comes from earth is water again,

and from that, soul, which changes the whole upper air —

Heraclitus puts the wording of these lines together and writes:

It is death for souls to become water, and death for

water to become earth; and from earth comes water,

and from water, soul.

And Athamas the Pythagorean having said, “This is how the beginning of the universe came about; and there are four roots — fire, water, air, earth — for from these comes the origin of everything that is produced,” Empedocles of Agrigentum wrote:

Hear first the four roots of all things:

fire, water, earth, and the boundless height of the upper air;

for out of these comes all that was, is, and shall be.

And Plato having said, “This is why the gods, who know men, release from life sooner the ones they value most,” Menander wrote:

Whom the gods love dies young.

And Euripides having written in the Oenomaus:

We judge of what is hidden by what we see;

and in the Phoenix:

By signs what is hidden is fairly grasped —

Hyperides says, “But we have to investigate what is unseen by learning from signs and probabilities.” And Isocrates having said, “We must guess at the future from the past,” Andocides does not shrink from saying, “For we have to use what has happened before as signs for what is going to be.” Besides, Theognis having said:

The evil of counterfeit silver and gold is not unbearable,

Cyrnus, and a wise man has no trouble detecting it;

but if a friend’s mind is hidden in his breast,

if he is false and has a treacherous heart inside him,

this is the basest thing for mortals, and God has caused it,

and of all things the hardest to detect —

Euripides writes:

O Zeus, why have you given men clear tests

for counterfeit gold, while on the body there grows

no mark good enough to show clearly

who the wicked man is?

Hyperides himself also says, “There is no feature of the mind stamped on the faces of men.”

Again, Stasinus having composed the line:

A fool, who kills the father and leaves the children —

Xenophon says, “For I seem to myself to have acted in the same way as a man who kills the father and spares his children.” And Sophocles having written in the Antigone:

With my mother and father now in Hades,

no brother can ever spring up for me again —

Herodotus says, “With my mother and father no longer alive, I shall not have another brother.” In addition to these, Theopompus having written:

Old men are children twice over, in very truth;

and, before him, Sophocles in the Peleus:

Peleus, son of Aeacus — I keep house for him alone,

and I guide him, old as he is now, and train him again,

for the aged man has become a child once more —

Antiphon the orator says, “For the nursing of the old is like the nursing of children.” And Plato the philosopher says, “The old man, then, it seems, will be a child twice over.” Further, Thucydides having said, “We alone bore the brunt at Marathon,” Demosthenes said, “by the men who bore the brunt at Marathon.”

Nor will I leave out the following. Cratinus having said in The Wine-Flask:

The preparation, perhaps, you know,

Andocides the orator says, “The preparation, gentlemen of the jury, and the eagerness of our enemies, nearly all of you know.” In the same way Nicias, in the speech about the deposit, against Lysias, says, “The preparation and the eagerness of our adversaries you see, gentlemen of the jury.” After him Aeschines says, “You see the preparation, men of Athens, and the line of battle.” Again, Demosthenes having said, “What zeal and what canvassing, men of Athens, have been used in this contest, I think nearly all of you are aware,” Philinus says much the same: “What zeal, what drawing up of a line of battle, gentlemen of the jury, have taken place in this contest, I think not one of you is unaware.” And Isocrates having said, “As if she were a relative of his money and not of him,” Lysias says in the Orphics, “And he was plainly a relative not of the persons, but of the money.”

Since Homer also wrote:

My friend, if by running away from this war

we could win exemption from old age and death,

I would not fight among the front ranks myself,

nor would I send you into the glorious battle;

but as it is — since ten thousand fates of death stand over us

in any case, which no man may escape

or dodge — come on. To someone we shall bring

renown, or someone shall bring it to us —

Theopompus writes, “For if, by avoiding the danger in front of us, we were going to pass the rest of our time in safety, it would be no wonder that a man should show love of life. But as it is, so many fatal accidents belong to living that death in battle looks preferable.”

And what about this? When Chilon the sage produced the saying, “Stand surety, and ruin is at hand,” did Epicharmus not utter the same thought in other words when he said, “Suretyship is the daughter of ruin, and loss the daughter of suretyship”? Further, Hippocrates the physician having written, “You must look at the season, the place, the age, and the disease,” Euripides says in hexameter verse:

Those who mean to practice the healing art well

must study the way people live, and take note

of the soil, and consider the diseases accordingly.

Again, Homer having written:

I say that no mortal man escapes his doom —

Archinus says, “All men are bound to die, sooner or later,” and Demosthenes, “Death is the end of life for all men, even if a man shuts himself up in a little room and keeps watch.”

And Herodotus again, in his account of Glaucus the Spartan, having said that the Pythia told him, “In the case of God, to say and to do are the same,” Aristophanes said:

For to think and to do are the same.

And before him Parmenides of Elea said:

For thinking and being are the same.

And Plato having said, “And we shall be saying nothing absurd, perhaps, if we say that the beginning of love is sight; hope diminishes the passion, memory feeds it, and keeping company preserves it” — does Philemon the comic poet not write:

First they all see; then they admire;

then they gaze; then they come to hope;

and that is how love arises?

Further, Demosthenes having said, “For death is a debt we all owe,” and so on, Phanocles writes in Loves, or Beautiful Boys:

But from the Fates’ unbroken thread there is no escape

for those that feed upon the earth.

You will also find that Plato having said, “For the first sprout of every plant, once it has got a fair start according to the excellence of its own nature, has the most power to bring on its proper end,” the historian writes, “Further, it is not natural for one of the wild plants to become cultivated, after they have passed the earlier period of growth.” And these lines of Empedocles:

For I have already been a boy and a girl,

and a bush, and a bird, and a mute fish in the sea —

Euripides copies out in the Chrysippus:

But nothing dies

of the things that are; they are only dissolved,

one out of the other,

and show a different form.

And Plato having said, in the Republic, that women were to be held in common, Euripides writes in the Protesilaus:

For a woman’s bed, then, is common property.

Further, Euripides having written:

For the self-restrained, what suffices is enough —

Epicurus says outright, “Self-sufficiency is the greatest wealth of all.”

Again, Aristophanes having written:

You will enjoy your life in safety, being just

and free from turmoil, and live well without fear —

Epicurus says, “The greatest fruit of righteousness is freedom from disturbance.”

Let these kinds of Greek plagiarism of ideas, then, stand as they are — sample enough, and clear enough, for anyone able to see it.

Whole Books Taken Over

And they have not only been caught pirating and paraphrasing thoughts and expressions, as will be shown; they will also be convicted of holding what was stolen outright. For they have taken other men’s work whole and published it as their own — as Eugamon of Cyrene did with the entire book on the Thesprotians from Musaeus, and Pisander of Camirus with the Heraclea of Pisinus of Lindus, and Panyasis of Halicarnassus with the Capture of Oechalia from Cleophilus of Samos.

You will also find that Homer, the great poet, took from Orpheus — from the Disappearance of Dionysus — these words and what follows, word for word:

As a man rears a luxuriant shoot of olive.

And in the Theogony Orpheus says this of Kronos:

He lay there, his thick neck bent aside, and

all-conquering Sleep had taken hold of him.

These lines Homer transferred to the Cyclops. And Hesiod writes of Melampus:

It is a glad thing to hear what the immortals have assigned

to men — it marks off the brave from the cowards clearly,

and so on, taking it word for word from the poet Musaeus.

And Aristophanes the comic poet has, in the first of his Women at the Thesmophoria, transferred the words from the Empiprameni of Cratinus. And Plato the comic poet and Aristophanes in the Daedalus steal from each other. The Cocalus, composed by Araros the son of Aristophanes, was altered by the comic poet Philemon and made into the comedy called The Changeling.

Eumelus and Acusilaus the historians turned the contents of Hesiod into prose and published them as their own. Gorgias of Leontini and Eudemus of Naxos, the historians, stole from Melesagoras. And besides, there is Bion of Proconnesus, who abridged and copied out the writings of the ancient Cadmus, and Archilochus, and Aristotle, and Leandrus, and Hellanicus, and Hecataeus, and Androtion, and Philochorus. Dieuchidas of Megara took the opening of his treatise from the Deucalion of Hellanicus. I pass over Heraclitus of Ephesus in silence — he took a very great deal from Orpheus.

Plato got the immortality of the soul from Pythagoras, and Pythagoras from the Egyptians. And many of the Platonists have written books showing that the Stoics — as we said at the beginning — and Aristotle took most of their doctrines, and the chief ones, from Plato. Epicurus, too, pilfered his leading doctrines from Democritus. Let that be enough. Life would run out on me if I undertook to go over the matter in detail, exposing the selfish plagiarism of the Greeks and the way they claim to have discovered the best of the doctrines they in fact received from us.