The Scandals Are True and the Praise Is Flattery

What conclusion is left to us, then, except that the praises are false and flattering, while the deeds told of them are true? And one can confirm this from common practice. Nobody who delivers a speech in praise of someone accuses his conduct at the same time. Rather, if people’s deeds are disgraceful, those who praise them puff them up with praises because of the scandal, so that by extravagant praise they may impose on their hearers and hide the misconduct of the others. Suppose a man has to deliver a speech in praise of someone, but cannot find material for it in that person’s conduct or in any personal quality, because of the scandal attached to them. He praises them in another way, flattering them with what does not belong to them. That is just what their marvelous poets have done. Put to shame by the scandalous deeds of their so-called gods, they attached to them the title of beings above humanity. They did not know that their superhuman fancies cannot cover up human deeds, and that they will rather succeed in showing, by those human failings, that what belongs to God does not fit these beings. [a]

And I am inclined to think that they have told the passions and the deeds of the gods even against their own will. They were trying to clothe beings who are no gods, but mortal men, with the name and honor of God, which Scripture calls a name that cannot be shared. Since this venture of theirs was great and impious, the truth forced them, even against their will, to set out the passions of these persons. So their passions, recorded in the writings about them, stand in evidence for all who come after as a proof that they were no gods.