Cure of the Greek Maladies 1 part 11/16

And Heraclitus too deems those slain in wars worthy of all honour;

for he says, 'Those slain by Ares gods honour, and men also,' and again:

'for they alone, being greater, obtain a greater portion.'

But this saying I for my part do not accept;

for very many who have embraced an utterly wicked life have undergone a violent death.

If, then, it is fitting to honour all who are slain by Ares, it is high time for you to render this reward also to the sons of Oedipus, who left their father uncared for, and, raging against one another for the sake of tyranny, reddened their own right hands with one another's blood;

and one must then honour also the Peisistratidae, who were justly slain by Harmodius and Aristogeiton.

But the Athenians did the opposite;

for those who slew them they honoured with bronze statues and bestowed exemption from public burdens upon their family.

It is not, then, all who are slain by Ares that must be honoured, according to Heraclitus, but those who gladly accepted death on behalf of piety;

for these alone are truly, according to this very man, the greater.

Wherefore indeed they enjoy a greater portion, both now receiving the reward brought by all men, and awaiting the eternal crowns.

And that saying of Heraclitus I greatly admire, that 'there await men when they die such things as they neither hope for nor imagine.'

And that the souls of the holy also enjoy a divine lot, Plato too has shown in the Phaedo, saying thus:

'And those who shall be deemed to have lived pre-eminently with regard to living holily, these are they who are released from these regions in the earth as from a prison, and arrive above at a pure dwelling.' And a little later he added this also:

'And they come to dwellings yet fairer than these, which it is neither easy to describe, nor is the present time sufficient.' But lest anyone, hearing these things and falling in love with that divine mode of existence, should suppose it to be a holy thing to remove himself from here by some force and necessity, he necessarily added:

'But one ought not to loose oneself from this, nor to run away, and—to put it in a word—to reckon matter as evil.'

And he says also that the soul, becoming by itself alone, is able to partake of true wisdom and of a power greater than the human, whenever the love that is from hence wings it up to heaven, arriving through the philosophic mode of life at the end of its hope, taking the beginning of another, everlasting life.

And again in the same dialogue he says:

And again in the same dialogue he says: 'that the fair souls depart hence with good hope;'

'but the wicked,' he says, 'live with evil hope.'

'but the wicked,' he says, 'live with evil hope.' This man also called philosophy a rehearsal for death.

For he says: All who rightly take up philosophy are in danger of having escaped the notice of others in this, that they practice nothing else than dying and being dead. All these things, then, he wrote in the Phaedo;

and in the tenth book of the Republic he speaks thus:

Of those who have died on military service, whoever ends his life with honor—shall we not say first of all that he is of the golden race? {–} Most certainly. And shortly after:

We shall hold, whenever anyone dies of old age or in some other manner, of those who have been judged in life to be surpassingly good. And in the Cratylus too he expanded this argument;

for he praises Hesiod and the other poets who have said,

that whenever a good man dies, he obtains a great portion and honor there, and becomes a daemon in accordance with the name of wisdom (phronesis).

On this ground, then, I too lay it down that the man of understanding (daemon) is such. And Hesiod, concerning the golden race, said this:

But after this race was covered over by fate, they are called holy daemons upon the earth, noble, averters of evil, guardians of mortal men.

If, then, the poet called those who lived best, and then died, noble and averters of evil and guardians of mortal men, and the best of the philosophers confirmed the poet's word and said that one ought even to tend and venerate their tombs, why do you blame what is done among us, O most excellent men? For those who have shone in piety and accepted slaughter for its sake, we name averters of evil and physicians—not calling them daemons (may we never rave so madly!), but friends of God and well-disposed servants, who use frank speech and announce to us the bringing in of good things.

This indeed the chief of the philosophers also made clear in the Epinomis:

I say it is not possible for men to become blessed and happy, except for a few.

As long as we live, this I lay down;

but for him who has died there is a fair hope of obtaining all things. And this is altogether like what is said by divine Scripture:

Call no man blessed before his end; and light is for the righteous continually; and the souls of the righteous are in the hand of God—and the like to these.

And that the President of all allotted to the righteous insults and revilings and outrages and scourges in the present life, Plato too has written in the Republic;

for he says: The righteous man, being so disposed, will be scourged, racked, bound, will have his eyes burnt out, and at last, having suffered every evil, will be impaled. Are not, then, those who do these things thrice-wretched, and those who suffer them thrice-blessed? And that the souls of the holy, even when they have come to be outside the body, are able to care for human affairs, Plato taught this too in the eleventh book of the Laws:

For we seem to me to have gone through our earlier discussions at an opportune time, namely that the souls of the dead have a certain power after they have died, and care for human affairs.

These things are indeed true, but they are long arguments to set out;

and one ought to trust the other reports concerning such matters, since they are so many and exceedingly ancient;

and one ought to trust those who legislate that these things are so. So the philosopher bids us trust even the reports;

but you not only disbelieve us and are unwilling to give heed to the truth of facts that cries aloud, but you do not even consent to trust your own philosopher, who says outright that the souls of the holy, released from their bodies, care for human affairs.

To whom does it so fittingly belong to attain this prize, as to those who have loved divine things ardently, and have remained to the end in what they chose from the beginning, and have not endured to forsake the post in which they were stationed? This argument too Plato confirms in the Apology:

For the truth is thus, O men of Athens:

wherever a man has stationed himself, judging it to be best, or has been stationed by a commander, there, as it seems to me, he must remain and face danger, reckoning nothing—neither death nor anything else—above what is shameful. And again, a little after:

For to fear death, O men, is nothing else than to seem to be wise without being so. And again, after a few words:

At least, before evils which I know to be evils, I will not fear nor flee those things which I do not know whether they may even turn out to be good. And again:

For in other respects too those there are happier than those here, and moreover for the remaining time they are immortal. And these words too are his, O dear men:

For neither Meletus nor Anytus could harm me;

for I do not think it is lawful for a better man to be harmed by a worse.

He might perhaps kill me, or banish me, or disenfranchise me;

but these things this man perhaps supposes, and some other person somewhere, to be great evils;

I, however, do not think so, but rather think that to do what this man now does—unjustly attempting to kill a man—is a far greater evil. Such things, then, did Socrates philosophize even in the very trial, as Plato has testified; yet nevertheless he did not attain the honor paid to the martyrs;

for those who shared in his teachings neither built him a shrine, nor consecrated a sacred precinct, nor allotted him a festival, but left him, though he had become wise and brave, without honor—and that although he too had submitted to an unjust slaying.

But he did not possess the best and unmixed piety;

for there was mingled with it much of the error that prevailed at that time.

For which reason he was not even deemed worthy of the honor after death;

nor yet that famous Anaxarchus, who, being pounded with iron pestles, said, as they report: Pound, pound the pouch of Anaxarchus;

for Anaxarchus you do not pound. Nor yet Zeno the Eleatic, who, being compelled to inform on certain secret matters, held out against the tortures, confessing nothing;

and as Eratosthenes says in his work On Goods and Evils, this man, fearing lest, overpowered by the excess of his sufferings, he might disclose some of the conspiracy and betray his fellow-conspirators, bit off his tongue with his teeth and spat it at the tyrant.

They say that Theodotus the Pythagorean did this very same thing, and Paul, the disciple of Lacydes, as Timotheus of Pergamum recorded in his work On the Courage of the Philosophers;

and Achaicus too testifies to this in his Ethics.

But nevertheless none of these was deemed worthy of the honor paid to the martyrs;

nor indeed those who set up the brilliant and much-celebrated trophies—not Miltiades, not Cimon, not Pericles, not Themistocles, not Aristides son of Lysimachus;

and yet this last was reputed not only brave but also just;

but nevertheless neither he, nor Brasidas the Spartan, nor Agesilaus, nor Lysander who overthrew the empire of the Athenians, nor Pelopidas the Boeotarch, nor Epaminondas who ravaged Laconia and dared to march his army against Sparta, nor the most illustrious of the Roman generals—Scipio the first, his namesake, Cato, Sulla, Marius, Pompey, Caesar himself;

for each of these distinguished himself in commands and in feats of valor in wars, yet did not partake of the prize of the martyrs;

but all these, while living, were the objects of admiration, and conquered the barbarians, and after their victories held processions and festivals; but when they died, they differ in nothing from the multitude;

for they have neither distinguished tombs nor are honored with yearly public banquets.

For they have been deprived not only of royal honor, but even of that which private men have shared.

And yet some of the senseless even proclaimed themselves gods and built temples for themselves.

For Antiochus was surnamed god, and Gaius the successor of Tiberius, and Vespasian and Hadrian built themselves very great temples; but together with their life they were stripped also of the impious honor.

...adorned in manifold ways and casting off the radiant gleams of their beauty.

And to these we resort not once or twice or five times a year, but often we celebrate festal gatherings, and often, every day, we offer up hymns to the Master of these.

And those who are healthy ask for the safeguarding of their health, while those who wrestle with some disease ask for deliverance from their sufferings;

the childless also ask for children, and the barren entreat to become mothers, and those who have enjoyed this gift ask that the gifts may be kept sound for them;

and those setting out on some journey abroad implore these saints to become their fellow-travelers and guides of the way;

and those who have obtained their return offer the confession of thanksgiving, approaching them not as gods, but entreating them as divine men and calling upon them to become ambassadors on their behalf.

And that those who ask in faith do obtain what they request, the votive offerings of these people openly testify, displaying the healing.

For some bring representations of eyes, others of feet, others of hands;

and some are made of gold, others of other material.

These things proclaim the power of those who lie there;

and their power declares their God to be the true God.

For let us examine who, and from where, are those deemed worthy of this grace.

Were they certain distinguished and conspicuous persons, or such as boasted in the splendor of their lineage, or who were awash in the streams of wealth, or who became renowned from some position of power? By no means, O men.

For they shared in none of these things, but were private persons or soldiers; and some of them were even house-slaves and serving-maids, who contended nobly in exceedingly weak bodies;

and some of the women bore the yoke of marriage chastely, while others did not even know what marriage was.

And I for my part hear that some, brought up on the stage and suddenly enrolled among the contestants, became worthy of victory and obtained the crowns, and after the proclamation greatly terrified the demons to whom they had formerly been subject;

and many also, priests and temple-wardens, set up trophies against impiety.

From such men and women were composed the choirs of the martyrs.

And philosophers and orators are given over to oblivion, and the multitude do not even know the names of kings and generals, while the names of the martyrs all know better than the names of their dearest ones;

and they are eager to bestow the names of these on their children, contriving thereby security and protection for them.

And why do I speak of philosophers and kings and generals? For they have wiped out even the memory of the so-called gods themselves from the minds of men.

For the precincts of those gods have been so utterly destroyed that not even the shape of their forms remains, nor do men of the present day know the pattern of their altars; while the materials of these have been consecrated to the shrines of the martyrs.

For the Master brought in His own dead in place of your gods, and showed the latter to have vanished, while He apportioned to these the honor of those.

And in place of the former pomp and shameful deeds and shameful speech, sober festivals are kept—not having drunkenness and revelry and laughter, but divine hymns and the hearing of sacred oracles and prayer adorned with praiseworthy tears.

...the demons to whom they had formerly been subject;

and many also, priests and temple-wardens, set up trophies against impiety.

From such men and women were composed the choirs of the martyrs.

And philosophers and orators are given over to oblivion, and the multitude do not even know the names of kings and generals, while the names of the martyrs all know better than the names of their dearest ones;

and they are eager to bestow the names of these on their children, contriving thereby security and protection for them.

And why do I speak of philosophers and kings and generals? For they have wiped out even the memory of the so-called gods themselves from the minds of men.

For the precincts of those gods have been so utterly destroyed that not even the shape of their forms remains, nor do men of the present day know the pattern of their altars; while the materials of these have been consecrated to the shrines of the martyrs.

For the Master brought in His own dead in place of your gods, and showed the latter to have vanished, while He apportioned to these the honor of those.

And in place of the former pomp and shameful deeds and shameful speech, sober festivals are kept—not having drunkenness and revelry and laughter, but divine hymns and the hearing of sacred oracles and prayer adorned with praiseworthy tears.

Seeing, then, the profit of the honor paid to the martyrs, flee, O friends, the deception of the demons;

and using these as luminaries and guides, travel the journey that leads to God, that you may share in their choral dance in the imperishable ages.

You indeed, O men, long to hear finely-wrought words and seek to be charmed by them;

but wherever you do not find these, you laugh and mock and stop up your ears and refuse to give heed to what is said.

Yet you ought to have perceived that most of the very most precious things are concealed in cheap coverings.

For the costly pearl, thrice-desired even by the wealthy, the despicable oyster both produces and nourishes, and indeed also conceals;

but those who purchase it, giving as much gold as possible, let the oyster go.

And around those translucent precious stones which adorn the royal head, another nature of stone lies outside, altogether useless;

but the craftsmen of such adornment, by cutting away and scraping off this superfluous and useless part, lay bare the beauty of those transparent stones.

And gold too, beloved by the many, and silver and bronze and iron besides, sand and earth cover over;

but those who search out the veins of gold-ore and silver-ore dig through the mines and gather the grains.

And when the gold has become stamped and received the royal mark, it is not gold from outside, but either leather or wooden cases that protect it.

Fittingly, then, it is not certain brilliant and pompous words, but simple and plain ones, known to all, that proclaim the true opinion concerning divine and human things; and exceedingly cheap cases carry the great and unutterable treasure.

And how great strength and power these possess, one might most easily perceive by bringing forward the lawgivers of the Greeks and Romans, and setting beside them our fishermen and tax-collectors.

...the tribes of the barbarians to embrace the evangelical legislation.

For since the Romans mastered the inhabited world, these too live as citizens according to their laws.

Again, they say that Charondas was the first lawgiver of Italy and Sicily;

but not even he persuaded the Tyrrhenians or Celts or Iberians or Celtiberians—and that though they were neighbors and bordering peoples—to accept the laws laid down by him.

And why do I speak of neighbors? For not even those who at that time admired and cherished these laws now live according to them;

for they too have come under the yoke of the Roman laws.

Zaleucus laid down laws for the Locrians, having received the knowledge of them from Athena, as those who love to fashion myths assert;

but neither the Acarnanians nor the Phocians nor indeed the other Locrians put up with his legislation, and that though they dwelt not far off, but were close neighbors.

They tell also of the oracle which the Pythian gave concerning him:

You come, O Lycurgus, to my rich temple, dear to Zeus and to all who hold the Olympian dwellings; I am in doubt whether to prophesy you a god or a man;

but I rather hope you to be a god, O Lycurgus.

You have come seeking good government.

Such, then, was this man and the oracle concerning him.

But neither the great fame of the lawgiver, nor the renown of Sparta, nor the oracle of the Pythian compelled the Argives or Tegeans or Mantineans or Corinthians—though dwelling very near—to accept the polity of the Lacedaemonians.

And why do I speak of the others? For the Phliasians inhabit a small town, and always loved the hegemony of the Lacedaemonians and were their allies, but although they were led by them and ever waged war together with them, they did not use their laws.

And the Athenians themselves too, having bidden these laws farewell—and moreover the Lacedaemonians and Locrians and Thebans and the rest of the Greeks—live as citizens according to the laws of the Romans.

And the Romans, having collected together the laws current among Greeks and barbarians, and having taken from each lawgiver those reputed to be best laid down, compelled as many nations as came under their yoke to be subject to these laws; but those who were unwilling to be governed by them they neither persuaded nor compelled to embrace their polity.

And many, though they have accepted the bridle of servitude, do not endure to live according to their laws.

For neither the Ethiopians who border on the Egyptian Thebes, nor the very numerous tribes of Ishmael, nor the Lazi, nor the Sanni, nor the Abasgi, nor the other barbarians who embrace the dominion of the Romans, conduct their mutual contracts according to the laws of the Romans.

...have brought to all men the evangelical laws.

And not only the Romans and those subject to them, but also the Scythian and Sarmatian nations, and Indians and Ethiopians and Persians and Seres and Hyrcanians and Bactrians and Britons and Cimbri and Germans, and in a word every nation and race of men, they persuaded to receive the laws of the Crucified—not by using arms and many myriads of picked troops, nor employing the violence of Persian cruelty, but by persuading and by demonstrating the laws to be profitable; and they did this not even without dangers, but enduring many drunken outrages in the cities, and receiving from all comers many scourgings, and being racked and imprisoned and undergoing every kind of torture.

For though they were benefactors and saviors and physicians, some men drove them out as plotters and enemies, others even stoned them, others bound them with fetters and stocks; and some of them they beat to death, others they impaled, and others they handed over to wild beasts.

But although they shot down the lawgivers, they did not abolish the strength of the laws;

for the laws were shown to be far stronger after their death.

For to the Persians and Scythians and the other barbarian nations the laws passed over after the death of those men;

and though all warred against them—not only barbarians but the Romans themselves—they remained holding equal strength;

and when the Romans set every rope in motion so as to destroy the memory of the fishermen and the leather-worker, they rendered it more brilliant and more conspicuous;

and they ordered the laws of Lycurgus and Solon and Zaleucus and Charondas and Minos and the other lawgivers to be in abeyance, and none of those who lived under them spoke against it, but the word became law;

and the memory of those much-talked-of lawgivers was extinguished, while the laws of the Romans now govern the cities of the Greeks.

And among the Lacedaemonians one cannot see the expulsion of foreigners, nor the servitude of the helots, nor the neodamodeis, nor the license for pederasty derived from the laws of Lycurgus, nor the lawful transgressions in marriages.

For Lycurgus, the best of lawgivers, as it seems to the wise men of the Greeks, decreed in his laws, as those who have described the Lacedaemonian constitution say, that it was permitted both to men and to women already having taken up the yoke of marriage—the women to bear children by other men, the men with women yoked to other husbands—to produce children, freely cohabiting;

and Plato admired these laws, and modeled the city fashioned by him according to them.

But let us keep the philosopher for last, as a philosopher and one priding himself on being the best of lawgivers; now let us refute the weakness of the Pythian laws—for it makes no difference to call them Pythian or Lycurgean.

For as soon as the Romans ordered these to be in abeyance and their own to prevail, the unconquerable strength of Lycurgus's laws was dissolved;

for it sent many of those who embraced them to their death, using all manner of forms of torture.

And Trajan too and Hadrian arrayed themselves vehemently against these laws;

and Hadrian subjected to the bridle and indeed compelled even the Scythian nations to bow to his scepters;

but he was not able to abolish the legislation of the fishermen and the leather-worker.

And Hadrian utterly demolished the city of those who had crucified Jesus, yet did not persuade those who had believed in Him to abandon His service.

And Antoninus too, who came after them, and Verus who came from him, set up many brilliant trophies against the barbarians and imposed the yoke of their dominion on peoples that loved an independent life;

but those who had loved to bear the yoke of the saving cross they neither persuaded nor compelled to abandon what they loved, and that although they terrified them with many threats and used very many punishments.

And in certain cities they even burned the churches filled with men and women and children;

and on the very day of the saving Passion, on which we celebrate the memory both of the Passion and of the Master's Resurrection, they demolished all the churches in the dominion of the Romans.

But although they dissolved the joinings of the stones, they did not dissolve the piety of souls.

And what was dared against the Christians in the reign of Julian too, the aged know, and we ourselves have heard it from those who saw that tragedy and recounted it;

but all these men—being so many, and ruling so great an empire, and having broken the audacity of so many barbarians, and having distinguished themselves brilliantly in wars—did not prevail over men who lived by the labor of their hands, rustics living in poverty, and women who provided their livelihood by wool-working, though they employed ten thousand contrivances.

And why do I speak of men and women? For they were not even able to cast out the opinions concerning God and our Savior from boys who had been taught the first rudiments;

and though raving like Corybants and frenzied, and employing ten thousand devices and sophistries, they did not abolish the laws of the fishermen, but by their warfare rendered them far stronger; and they were exactly like men who wish to extinguish a flame, but bring oil to it and make it fiercer.

For indeed these men too, by their war against piety, made manifest the strength of the truth.

And just as of old the fire, though burning that bush, did not consume it, so the missiles of the persecutors did not consume the persecuted;

but just as, when woodcutters cut down trees, far more shoots than those cut sprout up from the roots, so then, when the pious were being killed, many times more came to the teaching of the gospels, and the blood of those cut off became as irrigation to the newly-planted.

For those who now are adorned with the name of the faith are a myriad times more than those who believed of old.

For the children of the enemies, abhorring the madness of their fathers, went over to the phalanx of the persecuted;