The Excuse That the Gods Invented the Arts

What defense, then, what proof that these are real gods, can those who hold this superstition offer? By what has just been said, our argument has shown them to be men, and not respectable men. But perhaps they will turn to another argument and point proudly to the things useful for life that these gods discovered. They will say that the reason they count them gods is that they were of use to humankind. For Zeus is said to have had the art of molding figures, Poseidon that of the helmsman, Hephaestus the smith’s, Athena that of weaving, Apollo that of music, Artemis that of hunting, Hera dressmaking, Demeter farming, and others other arts, as those who tell us about them have related. [a]

But people ought to credit these and similar arts not to the gods alone but to the common nature of humankind, for it is by observing nature that people discover the arts. Even common speech calls art an imitation of nature. So if these beings were skilled in the arts they practiced, that is no reason to think them gods, but rather to think them men. For the arts were not their creation; in them they too, like others, imitated nature. Human beings by nature are able to gain knowledge, according to the definition laid down about them. So it is no surprise if, by human intelligence, looking at their own nature for themselves and coming to know it, they have hit upon the arts.

Or if they say that discovering the arts entitles them to be proclaimed gods, then it is high time to proclaim as gods the discoverers of the other arts, on the same grounds on which the former were thought worthy of that title. For the Phoenicians invented letters, Homer epic poetry, Zeno of Elea dialectic, Corax of Syracuse rhetoric, Aristaeus beekeeping, Triptolemus the sowing of grain, and Lycurgus of Sparta and Solon of Athens laws; while Palamedes discovered the order of the letters, and numbers, and measures and weights. And others passed on various other things useful for human life, as our historians testify. If then the arts make gods, and because of them carved gods exist, it follows on their own showing that those who later discovered the other arts must be gods. Or if they do not think these worthy of divine honor, but recognize that they are men, it would only be consistent not to give even the name of gods to Zeus, Hera and the others, but to believe that they too were human beings. All the more so, since they were not even respectable in their own day; just as, by the very act of sculpting their form in statues, they show that they are nothing else but men.