The Poets and Artists Expose Their Own Gods

If only the craftsman had made the gods without any shape at all! Then they would not lie open to such a plain exposure of their lack of sense. For they might have fooled simple people into thinking that the idols had senses, were it not that they carry the marks of the senses, eyes for example, and noses and ears and hands and mouth, without any movement of actual perception and without any grasp of the things the senses perceive. But as it is, they have these things and do not have them; they stand and do not stand; they sit and do not sit. For they have none of the real working of these things. They stay fixed just as their maker pleased, giving no sign of a god, but plainly mere lifeless objects, set there by human skill.

Or if only the heralds and prophets of these false gods, I mean the poets and writers, had simply written that they were gods, and had not also told of their deeds, which expose their godlessness and their scandalous lives! For by the mere name of divinity they might have stolen the truth away, or rather, led the mass of people astray from it. But as it is, they tell of the love affairs and immoralities of Zeus, the corruption of youths by the other gods, the lustful jealousies of the goddesses, and the fears and cowardly acts and other wickedness. In this way they simply convict themselves of telling stories not only about no gods at all, but not even about respectable people. On the contrary, they are telling tales about shameful persons, far removed from anything honorable.