Cure of the Greek Maladies 1 part 10/16

'Shall I eat the flesh of bulls or drink the blood of goats?' And having shown through all these things that the victims are superfluous and unworthy of the divine nature, He sets forth a new manner of sacrifice—not one that bloodies an altar, but one accomplished with the tongue and the lips:

'For offer unto God,' He said, 'the sacrifice of praise, and pay thy vows to the Most High;'

'and call upon Me in the day of thy trouble;'

'and I will deliver thee, and thou shalt glorify Me.'

For a reasonable and fitting word suffices Him above all the flocks and the herds of goats and the herds of cattle;

and accepting this, He recompenses those who offer it, extending aid and defending them in due season and delivering them from those who attempt to do them harm.

This very same thing He has also added at the end of the melody:

'The sacrifice of praise shall glorify Me;'

'and there is the way by which I will show him the salvation of God.' For it does not suffice merely to hymn the Benefactor;

for it is also needful to travel that way whose end is truly salvation.

This too the prophet said to God in another psalm:

'For sacrifice and offering Thou didst not desire;'

'whole burnt-offerings and sin-offerings Thou didst not require.' And in yet another melody He has delivered this:

'For I will praise,' he said, 'the name of my God with a song;'

'I will magnify Him with praise;'

for these indeed are His own words:

'…of your sacrifices?' says the Lord.

'Whole burnt-offerings of rams, and the fat of lambs, and the blood of bulls and of goats, I do not desire, even if you come to appear before Me.'

'For who has required these things at your hands?' And openly through these words He has made plain that He legislated these things not of necessity, but condescending to their weakness.

For this is the meaning of 'Who has required these things at your hands?' Then He went on:

'You shall no longer tread My court;'

'for if you bring Me fine flour, it is vain;'

'incense is an abomination to Me;'

'your new moons and sabbaths and the great day I cannot endure;'

'fasting and idleness and your feasts My soul hates.'

'You have become to Me a surfeit.' And these things are simply like the Davidic melody.

For here likewise He cast out not only the bulls and the goats and the lambs, but also the fine flour and the fragrance of the spices and the catalogue of the great festivals.

'Wash yourselves, become clean.' And lest they should suppose that He commanded them to use the customary lustral vessels, He necessarily added:

'Put away your wickednesses from your souls, from before My eyes.' And this clearly hints at the gift of the all-holy baptism.

And in the middle of the prophecy again the God of the prophet says through the prophet:

'I did not now call thee, Jacob, nor make thee to labour, Israel.'

'Thou hast not brought Me the sheep of thy whole burnt-offering, nor glorified Me in thy sacrifices;'

'thou hast not served Me with gifts, nor have I wearied thee with frankincense; nor hast thou bought Me incense with silver, nor have I desired the fat of thy sacrifices; but thou hast stood before Me in thy sins and in thine iniquities.' Thus again having shown the forms of the legal priestly service to be unprofitable, He promises the remission of sins, which He bestowed through the all-holy baptism:

'I, even I, am He that blots out thine iniquities for My own sake, and thy sins I will remember no more.' For not by works worthy of praise, but by faith alone have we obtained the mystical good things.

Wherefore indeed the divine apostle cries aloud:

'and this not of yourselves, it is the gift of God, that no one should boast.' This same thing He signifies here too, by the words 'for My own sake.'

These things He also solemnly attests through Jeremiah, saying:

'Gather your whole burnt-offerings together with your sacrifices, and eat flesh.'

'For I did not speak to your fathers nor command them, in the day when I brought them up out of Egypt, concerning whole burnt-offerings and sacrifice.' For the things He had commanded concerning these in the law belonged to their dullness, not to His own need and will.

'Your whole burnt-offerings are not acceptable, and your sacrifices have not pleased Me.' And again He cries out:

'Take away from Me the sound of thy songs, and the voice of thy instruments I will not hear.' And very many other such sayings may be found, clearly making manifest that God, not as needing sacrifices nor as delighting in smoke and savour and musical instruments, commanded these to be performed, but providing for the healing of those people.

Do not, therefore, think that you have an answer to the accusation of your sacrifices in counter-accusation.

Porphyry, having read these things accurately—for he spent much time upon them, brewing his writing against us—himself also declares sacrifice to be alien to piety, doing and suffering something very like the apes.

he was unwilling to embrace the truth, but remained an ape, or rather a jackdaw, beautifying himself with borrowed feathers.

This man, having composed many discourses on the need to abstain from living creatures, introduced Theophrastus saying that the men of old offered neither frankincense nor any other sacrifice, but, taking up in their hands a kind of down of green herbage as it were of the productive nature, burnt it, welcoming with this sacrifice the gods that appeared in heaven.

Then, having gone through many other such things, he added:

But as men advanced far into transgression concerning the first-fruits of sacrifices, the introduction of the most terrible victims was brought in, full of savagery, so that the curses formerly pronounced against us now seem to have reached their fulfilment, when men slaughtered victims and bloodied the altars. Then, having gone through many discourses, he said that one ought not to suppose those to be gods who delight in sacrifices by means of animals;

for, he said, it is most unjust and unholy and abominable and hurtful to sacrifice living creatures, and therefore not even pleasing to the gods.

And he added these things as well:

Reasonably does Theophrastus forbid those who wish truly to be pious to sacrifice living creatures, using also other such reasons. Then he shows what it is fitting to sacrifice, and says:

And indeed one ought to sacrifice those things by sacrificing which we shall harm no one;

for nothing ought to be so harmless to all as sacrifice. And again:

We must therefore abstain from living creatures in sacrifices. And he recalls also the murders formerly dared:

For, he says, in Rhodes, in the month Metageitnion, on the sixth day of the rising moon, a man used to be sacrificed to Cronus;

which, having long prevailed, was changed into a custom.

For they used to keep one of those publicly condemned to death until the Cronia. Then he says that in Salamis of Cyprus too a man used to be sacrificed to Agraulus the daughter of Cecrops, and in Heliopolis of Egypt three men used to be slaughtered each day.

And he says that the Lacedaemonians too sacrificed a man to Ares, and that in Laodicea of Syria and in Carthage of Libya such sacrifices were anciently offered, and that the Greeks, when going out to war, used to offer human sacrifice, and he goes through very many other such things.

And Plutarch too recorded things in harmony with these, and other writers composed many such things;

and tragic poets dramatized such calamities—that of Menoeceus at Thebes, of Codrus at Athens, and of the daughters of Leos.

And it is easy for one who wishes to come upon these in the ancient histories and to learn that these things were sacrificed because the so-called gods commanded them.

'And they sacrificed their sons and their daughters to the demons;'

'and they shed innocent blood, even the blood of their sons and daughters, whom they sacrificed to the graven images of Canaan.' And through the prophet Ezekiel again, reproaching them, He says:

'And thou didst take thy sons and thy daughters whom thou didst bear to Me, and didst offer them up to thy lovers.'

'This is beyond all thy harlotry.' These things, then, were anciently dared by Greeks and Romans and Egyptians, and moreover by Hebrews and by the other barbarians;

but after the manifestation of our God and Saviour, all those things have been extinguished, and the divine laws of the Gospels hold sway.

Sophocles the Athenian, in dramatizing those bloody deeds, theologized most excellently, and very wisely satirized the images of the demons and the lawless slaughters of the sacrifices:

'In truth there is one, one God alone, who fashioned heaven and the broad earth and the gleaming swell of the sea and the might of the winds.'

'But many mortals, wandering in heart, have set up for ourselves, as a solace of our woes, images of the gods made of stones or bronze or wrought of gold or ivory;'

'and offering to these sacrifices and fair festivals, we think that thus we are pious.'

Therefore not only we, but also your own poets and writers and philosophers laugh at the things you deem divine.

[They say that] Socrates the son of Sophroniscus bade them sacrifice a cock, in order to confute the indictment that had been brought against him;

for Anytus and Meletus indicted him as not believing the gods to exist.

For that he knew the Divine to be without need, he has clearly shown elsewhere.

For these too are his own words—if indeed Plato recorded his doctrines:

For not for need's sake did God make the world, that He might reap honours from men and from other gods and demons, gaining as it were a kind of revenue from creation—smoke from us, and proper services from gods and demons. And openly through these words he has shown that the Divine needs nothing, and that such sacrifices have nothing more than smoke, and smoke full of foul odour.

Having learned these things, then, both from your own teachers and from the divine oracles—from which these were plundered—and having confirmed the teaching, hate the victims befitting cooks and butchers, and offer to the Maker the sacrifice of praise.

And let it persuade you to do this, not the laws of those who reign, nor the fear of punishment, but the power of the truth, which has become known to all land and sea.

That famous Pythagoras, whose fame is wide among you, those who have written his sayings report to have said that one ought to prefer the Muses to the Sirens.

But I, if he had been wont to use simple and clear words, as indeed some others of the philosophers do, would have said that he preferred the more pleasant voice of the Muses;

but since his words are enigmatic and obscure—for he delivered his admonitions symbolically;

for of such a kind are 'do not poke the fire with a knife,' and 'do not sit upon a measure,' and 'do not eat the black-tailed fish,' and 'do not step over a yoke,' and the rest that are arranged together with these—I think that by the Sirens he likened the polished and over-elaborated discourses, and by the Muses those that have nothing adventitious, but display the beauty of truth bare.

For by so much as the bloom that comes from nature is better than that decked out by the cosmetic art, by so much is the comeliness of truth superior to the eloquence and cleverness of words.

We must believe, therefore, O men, if no other, at least the much-celebrated philosopher who lays down these laws, and must not deem the divine oracles to be despised, since they have not abused the superfluity of words by nature, but offer to us the beauty of truth bare and resplendent.

But He willed that not five or ten or fifteen or a hundred or twice as many should enjoy the saving streams, but all men—both Greeks and barbarians, both those reared in learning and those who have not tasted of letters, and shoemakers and weavers and bronze-workers and the others who ply the crafts, and besides these also household servants and beggars and tillers of the soil and grove-keepers, and women likewise—both those overflowing with wealth and those yoked to toil and constrained to live by the labour of their hands.

For this cause, having used fishermen and tax-collectors and a leather-worker as His ministers, He offered to men the saving and divine teachings, not changing their tongues which they had received from the beginning, but pouring forth through them the clear and transparent streams of wisdom;

[men look not] to the beauty [of the cups], but those who are thirsty fill themselves with the stream, not gazing at the cups, but admiring the wine.

This all men continue to do;

and enjoying the divine streams, they not only do not mock the tongues of the apostles, but even exceedingly admire them—that being uninitiated in glib discourses, and some having learned to fish from childhood, others having sat at the tax-collectors' booths, and others having plied the leather-worker's craft, they were suddenly shown forth as ministers of divine words and dispensers of heavenly gifts, and saviours warding off evil, and most brilliant luminaries, enlightening not one nation, but as many as the visible sun shines upon.

And all are exceedingly amazed and marvel that even when dead they accomplish the very things which they were wont to perform while living—nay rather, far greater and more splendid are the things wrought by them after their departure hence.

For when they lived together with their bodies, they would go now to these, now to those, and at one time conversed with Romans, at another with Spaniards or Celts;

but since they departed to Him by whom they were sent forth, all enjoy them unceasingly—not only Romans, and all who love their yoke and are guided by them, but also Persians and Scythians and Massagetae and Sauromatae and Indians and Ethiopians, and, to speak comprehensively, all the ends of the inhabited world.

For their writings, being simple and stripped of Hellenic brilliance, and moreover small and few, are worthy of love to all men—except you and any who, like you, having the mist of unbelief poured over him, is unwilling to see the radiance of truth.

And these writings are stripped not only of Hellenic refinement, but the very nature of the matters about which they teach is not lofty or conspicuous or much-gazed-at.

For they do not display to their devotees some visible kingdom, adorned with purple and gleaming with a crown and dignified with the number and greatness of shield-bearers and spearmen, possessing so great an army and generals trained to excel in wars, and the other things which make their possessors much-talked-of; but a cave and a manger and a poor working virgin, and a babe wrapped in cheap swaddling-clothes and laid in the empty manger, and an obscure and small place in which these things came to pass; and again, when the babe had grown, poverty and hunger and thirst and the toil of travelling, and after these the suffering sung of by all—the blows on the cheek, the scourges on the back, the cross, the nails, the gall, the vinegar, the death.

But nevertheless the apostles' writings, recounting these and such things, persuaded all men that the Son of God and pre-eternal God and Maker and Fashioner of all things was He who put on the human nature and through it wrought the salvation of men.

And not simply did they persuade, but they implanted in most so great a faith that they most gladly accepted death on behalf of these doctrines, and to those who bade them deny, they would least of all give up their tongues, but offered their backs to those willing to scourge them, and submitted their sides to torches and claws, and their necks to swords, and were beaten to death readily and impaled, and moreover burned and saw wild beasts feasting on their bodies.

Wherefore indeed the Steward of the contest bestowed on them unquenchable fame and a memory that overcomes the nature of time;

for though he is by nature wont to wither all things, he has preserved their glory unwithered.

And the noble souls of the victors range about heaven, dancing together with the choirs of the bodiless ones;

but their bodies one tomb does not hide for each one apart, rather cities and villages, having distributed these among themselves, name them saviours of both souls and bodies and physicians, and honour them as guardians of cities and protectors;

they receive the divine gifts.

And though the body has been divided, the grace has remained undivided, and that small and tiniest relic has equal power with the martyr in no way and nowhere divided;

for the grace that blooms upon them distributes the gifts, measuring out its bounty by the faith of those who approach.

But not even these things persuade you to hymn their God, but you laugh and mock at the honour offered them by all, and suppose it a pollution to draw near to the tombs.

But even if all men stumbled at these things, yet at least it was not fitting for Greeks alone to be indignant at things done in this way;

for theirs are the libations and the offerings to the dead and the heroes and the demigods and the men made into gods.

For indeed Heracles, who was born a man, the son of Alcmene and Amphitryon, they declared a god, as they supposed, and reckoned him among the other gods.

But [Plato], when men priding themselves on a pedigree of twenty-five generations of ancestors and tracing it back to Heracles the son of Amphitryon, [says] that their pettiness appeared to him absurd, since Amphitryon himself was the twenty-fifth in the upward line—what fortune befell him—and the fiftieth from him; and he laughs at those unable to reason and to be rid of the foolish vanity of an empty soul. And Isocrates the orator speaks thus:

'For Zeus begat Heracles and Tantalus, as the myths say and all believe.' Thus did those capable of discernment laugh at the things mythologized by the rest;

but nevertheless, for one who was a man and compelled to serve Eurystheus, they both built temples and constructed altars and honoured him with sacrifices and allotted feasts—not only Spartans and Athenians, but all Greece and most of Europe.

for indeed in Tyre too and in other cities they built for him very many and very great shrines.

And not only did they assign him annual festivals, but they also honoured him with quadrennial games, and that too knowing him to be a man, and a man not temperate nor a lover of philosophy, but one who lived in licentiousness and lust.

For—to pass over all the rest of his incontinence—they say that he lay with fifty maidens in a single night, perhaps having that as his thirteenth labour;

and this alone suffices to make manifest the whole bent of his life.

And indeed he endured the end of his life before its time on account of such incontinence.

for she, having prepared a love-charm and anointed the man's tunic with it, sent it to him at his request, and hoped indeed to ensnare him to herself, but failed of what she hoped;

for that charm, having inflamed the body of Heracles, encompassed him with a most grievous disease;

and he, in anguish and unable to bear the suffering, having heaped up a pyre and laid himself upon it, received the end of his life—a fitting one indeed, for the pursuits of the one deified by you were not worthy of deification.

But nevertheless, even knowing these things—for the ancient writings teach them—they none the less called even him saviour and styled him averter of evil, and tacked on to their speech the phrase 'Lord Heracles';

and you likewise pride yourselves on such phrases, deeming it sufficient for the splendour of culture to append such little catch-words.

And Asclepius too, Apollodorus says, according to some was the son of Arsinoe, but according to others of Coronis, who was secretly forced into union with Apollo; and having conceived and borne and exposed the babe, he says that certain hunters found it being nourished by a dog, took it up and brought it to Chiron the Centaur, and that then it was reared there and trained in the science of medicine, and first gave proof of it in Tricca and Epidaurus.

And he was so consummately and very diligently educated, he says, that he not only healed the sick, but even raised up some of the dead;

wherefore the Thunder-loving one, being wroth, smote him with thunderbolts and took him out of life.

Accordingly he was a man too, and one not reared like other men, but having received his first nourishment from a dog and being saved by the pity of huntsmen, and not possessing the art of healing from divine wisdom and knowledge, but having been trained in this craft by Chiron.

And this Chiron was also the tutor of Achilles.

Whence it is clear that they lived in the same time, or that he was a little older than Achilles, since he also sailed with the Argonauts, and his son Machaon fought alongside Achilles.

And the thunderbolt and the conflagration that ensued show the mortality of his nature.

But even though he was born thus, as has been said, and saved and reared and burned up, they reckoned him among the other gods and consecrated precincts to him and dedicated altars, and with libation and savour of fat—of old openly, but now perhaps in secret—you honour and deem his images worthy of divine honour, and marvel at the serpent coiled about him and say it is a symbol of medicine, because, just as that creature sheds its old age, so medicine sets men free from diseases.

And that in Homer's time this man had not yet attained deification, the poet is witness, having shown not Asclepius, but Paeon, healing the wounds of Ares;

for these gods of theirs must needs both have wounds and have physicians.

And Machaon too he calls not the son of a god nor even of a demigod, but of a physician:

'a man, the son of Asclepius the blameless physician.'

But nevertheless this one too was deemed worthy of divine honour, and that though he was effeminate and womanish and an androgyne;

for he promised to give to those who helped him a reward, not gold or silver, but the outrage of his body;

and he became so truth-loving concerning that abominable promise that, when those who had aided him had died before receiving that much-accursed reward, he devised another way to fulfil his pledge.

And I keep silence about the fig-wood phallus and the rites performed in connection with it;

for I am ashamed to tell the things over which the Greeks held festival.

and not only in Sparta, but also in Athens did they deem these worthy of precincts.

And very many other wretched and thrice-wretched little men did they deify and honour with public banquets.

For indeed the Pythian seer bade Cleomedes of Astypalaea, the boxer, enjoy divine honour, and the Pythian priestess delivered this oracle:

'Last of the heroes is Cleomedes of Astypalaea, whom honour with sacrifices, as being no longer mortal.'

This man, having struck his antagonist with a single blow, laid open his side, and thrusting his hand inside laid hold of the entrails; then, when the judges of the games, indignant at the excess of his savagery, imposed a penalty, he withdrew in heavy displeasure, and passing through the marketplace, dragging down one of the columns that supported the roof, he buried under it a band of youths who happened to be there attending their teacher.

For these exploits the Pythian ranked him among the gods.

And Hadrian, the emperor of the Romans, they say, proclaimed Antinous—who had been his minion—a god, and built a temple, and commanded that he be deemed worthy of divine honour by his subjects.

And the Hyacinthia the Spartans reckoned a very great festival and public banquet.

…[that one is polluted by] drawing near the dead? For these things belong to folly and the uttermost ignorance.

For at Athens too, as Antiochus has written in his ninth book of history, up on the acropolis there is the tomb of Cecrops beside the City-Guardian goddess herself;

and in Larissa of Thessaly again, in the temple of Athena, he says that Acrisius is buried;

and that Lycophrone was buried in the sanctuary of Artemis in Magnesia, Zeno of Myndus said;

and they record that the altar of Apollo in Telmessus is the tomb of Telmessus the seer.

But nevertheless neither did those who buried them then suppose that they defiled the altars, nor did those who later sacrificed think that they thereby partook of any pollution.

You alone suppose this, but the ancients supposed none of these things.

And Thucydides describes the honour paid to those who died in the Peloponnesian War, and how each one deemed worthy of burial the bodies of his kindred that were found, and what great honour they contrived for those least to be found—preparing coffins of cypress wood, and all in common, both leaders and followers and attendants, and constructing a very great tomb for those who had been consumed by birds or dogs or jackals.

Thus also did they honour those who fell in the battle-line at Marathon.

And that they also offered libations to the dead, you yourselves know, who dare to perform these by night, contrary to the laws;

and Homer too bears witness, showing the son of Laertes, according to the instructions of Circe, digging the pit and accomplishing the libations, and recounting these very things to Alcinous:

'For I,' he says, 'having drawn my sharp sword from beside my thigh, dug a pit a cubit's length this way and that;'

'and around it I poured a libation to all the dead—first with honey-mixture, then with sweet wine, the third time with water;'

'and over it I sprinkled white barley-meal, and I made many supplications to the strengthless heads of the dead, [vowing] when I came to Ithaca to sacrifice a barren heifer, the best there is, in my halls, and to fill the pyre with good things, and to Teiresias apart to sacrifice a ram all-black alone, one that excels among our flocks.'

'And when with vows and prayers I had besought the nations of the dead, I took the sheep and cut their throats over the pit;'

'and they gathered, the souls of the dead that had perished, up from beneath Erebus.'

Then he explains how the throng of souls came running together and pressed eagerly to partake of the libations.

But we, O men, render to the martyrs neither sacrifices nor libations, but honour them as divine and God-beloved men.

For they so loved Him who made and saved them, that they deemed slaughter on His behalf worthy of love.

But if you think that they have no sense of what is being done and do not enjoy any divine and truly thrice-blessed lot, let Pindar the lyric poet cast out this opinion of yours, saying thus:

'…of the pious, who dwell in the heavens, with songs hymn the great Blessed One in their hymns.'

But if heaven is the dwelling-place of those who have lived piously, the martyrs have this lot;

for none is more pious than these.

And Empedocles of Acragas speaks thus:

'And at the last they come to be seers and minstrels and physicians and chieftains among earth-dwelling men;'

'thence they spring up as gods, foremost in honours.'

Does he not bear witness to righteousness and temperance and wisdom and prudence? For what is more temperate than those who would not endure to depart from the things which from the beginning they held to be good? And what is more righteous than those who requited the divine benefits and gave up even their bodies to slaughter on behalf of Him who gave up His body to the cross? And what is more prudent or wiser than those who took such counsel and despised the things here, as having nothing secure or abiding, but fell in love with those things which discourse cannot interpret? And what is more manly than those who contended against many and varied sufferings and conquered their tormentors by the endurance of their resolve? Therefore these are simply the chieftains of men and their champions and defenders and averters of evils, dispelling the harms brought upon us by the demons.