Cure of the Greek Maladies 1 part 12/16

and the things of the Greeks have vanished and been given over to utter oblivion, while the things of the fishermen have flourished, and the God proclaimed by them is believed to be the God of all.

And the cities are full of those who hold these beliefs, and the villages are full, and the mountains are free of the deception; for in place of those altars and the old delusion, the choirs of ascetics inhabit them, hymning the Crucified and His Father and the all-holy Spirit.

And if anyone supposes that the piety of the emperors confirmed the doctrines of the fishermen, by this too he demonstrates the strength of these very doctrines.

...and of long-standing custom and of ancestral doctrines—unless indeed they admired the truth of the one and hated the fabulous character of the other.

And why do you not call to mind the ancient wars against the Church? For very easily indeed will you dissolve this opinion by means of those wars.

For if so many and such great emperors, having arrayed themselves against piety with all their might and brought to bear every kind of contrivance, did not produce even a slight shaking in its bulwarks, then he who does not regard the power of the fishermen as divine, but thinks it grew from imperial dominion, is foolish and utterly senseless.

And that this may become clearer to you, learn what is now being dared by the Persians.

For what kind of slaughter against the pious has not been devised by them? Are there not flayings, and amputations of hands and feet, and mutilations of ears and noses, and bonds devised for excess of pain, and pits carefully smeared and filled with the largest mice that feast on the bound? But nevertheless, though they have devised punishments so many and many times more against the pious, they maltreat and mutilate and utterly destroy the bodies, yet they do not plunder the treasure of the faith.

And though they compel all their subjects to bow to their other laws, they do not persuade believers to renounce the laws of the fishermen.

But whereas the Persians of old lived as citizens according to the laws of Zaradus, freely consorting with mothers and sisters and indeed even with daughters, and reckoning lawlessness to be lawful law, yet when they gave heed to the legislation of the fishermen, they trampled the laws of Zaradus as lawlessness, and loved the evangelical chastity;

and though they had learned from him to expose their dead to dogs and birds, now those who have believed do not endure to do this, but hide them in the earth, and pay no heed to the laws forbidding them to do this, nor do they shudder at the cruelty of those who punish them;

for they fear, I suppose, the tribunal of Christ more.

And laughing at the things that are seen, they dream of and stand in awe of the things that do not appear.

And these laws they received from Galilean men;

and they did not fear the dominion of the Romans, but submitted to the kingdom of the Crucified;

and to live according to the laws of the Romans neither Augustus compelled them, nor Trajan who overthrew their rule; but the writings of Peter and Paul and John and Matthew and Luke and Mark they honor as though brought from heaven, and the natives have submitted to the laws of foreigners and incomers.

And the Massagetae too, who of old reckoned thrice-wretched those who ended their lives in any other way and not by slaughter, and for this reason made it a law to sacrifice and feast upon the aged, when they gave heed to the laws of the fishermen and leather-workers, abhorred this abominable eating and slaughter.

And the Tibareni, who were accustomed to push the aged down very deep precipices, abolished this utterly wicked law when they hearkened to the evangelical laws.

No longer do the Hyrcanians or Caspians rear dogs on the bodies of the dead, nor do the Scythians bury alive together with the deceased those whom they loved.

So great a transformation of the nations did the laws of the fishermen effect.

And these men persuaded even the barbarian nations to live as citizens according to their laws;

but Plato, the best of the philosophers, having written laws, did not persuade even the Athenians, his own fellow-citizens, to order their polity according to his prescriptions;

for they are exceedingly laughable.

And lest anyone suppose that I am slandering the philosopher, hear, O men, what that man has legislated.

For having commanded that the women too—not only the young, but also the aged—should exercise naked, and then seeing those conversing with him laughing, he took up the point and said:

My argument would say all the same things concerning females as concerning males, namely that the females must train equally.

And I would say this argument fearing nothing—neither of horsemanship nor of gymnastics—as though it would be fitting for men but again not fitting for women. And who, hearing these things, would not reasonably laugh? For nature has apportioned to each sex what is suitable—to women wool-working, to men husbandry and the experience of war.

This very division Homer too has employed;

for in his verses he represented Hector saying to Andromache:

But go into the house and attend to your own tasks, the loom and the distaff, and bid the handmaids ply their work;

war shall be the concern of men.

But the philosopher did not even discern the distinction made by the poets, but bade the women exercise naked and ride horses too.

And what follows is in agreement with what came before:

Let the judge, in considering the proper measure of the time for marriages, make his decision while viewing the males naked, and the women naked down to the navel. But he who legislates these things did not even call to mind the words of the wife of Candaules.

For she indeed, when her husband bade her display her body naked, said very chastely that a woman, in putting off her tunic, puts off her modesty along with it.

And so the philosopher strips brides of modesty and teaches them shamelessness.

And in the tenth book of the Laws he wrote things much like these:

For the sake of such a pursuit, he says, one ought to make educational arrangements—boys and girls dancing in choruses, both viewing and being viewed, with reason and with a certain age affording suitable pretexts, naked males and naked females, as far as each one's sober modesty allows. But I see the ruin that springs from this, and no profit at all springing up along with it.

For not only were they trained into shamelessness by being naked and viewing naked men, but they also furnished one another with many occasions of licentiousness.

For the spectacle of naked bodies incited both the men and the women to outlandish lusts.

But lest, in laying bare the harm that springs from these laws, we seem to be reviling the philosopher rather than refuting him, let us pass over to the all-excellent laws of marriage, making our refutations moderate.

Let us then hear him saying in the Republic:

That all the women of all these men be common, and that no woman dwell privately with any one man;

and the children in turn common, and that neither a parent know his own offspring, nor a child his parent. Then he adds on:

One lawgiver for them, then, said I, having selected the women just as the men, will hand them over, as far as possible, of like nature.

And they, inasmuch as they have houses and common messes, and no one possesses anything of the sort privately, will be together; and being mingled together both in the gymnasia and in the rest of their nurture, they will be drawn, I think, by innate necessity, toward intercourse with one another;

or do I not seem to you to speak of necessities? – Not geometrical ones indeed, said he, but erotic necessities, which are likely to be keener than those for persuading and dragging along the great mass. That the philosopher then bade the women be common needs no long words for refutation.

For he himself has expressly legislated and devised the necessity of common intercourse.

For dwelling in common, he said, and feasting in common and exercising together, they will be thrust by innate desire toward intercourse with one another.

And this indeed renders the children common, since each one consorts without restraint with whatever women he chances upon, and they regard as their own those born of these unions.

Perceiving this, the interlocutor, when Socrates had said:

Or do I not seem to you to speak of necessities? added on:

Not geometrical ones indeed, but erotic necessities, which are likely to be keener than those for persuading and dragging along the great mass. And I marvel at the shamelessness of those who now wish to interpret—or rather attempt to misinterpret—the writings of Plato;

...that he did not legislate a community in common, but a community of friendship, and they do not listen to him saying:

Sharing with one another dwellings and banquets and gymnasia, they will be drawn by necessity and by innate desire toward intercourse with one another. But perhaps, blushing at the laughable laws of the philosopher, they try to cover over the error of their teacher;

yet they ought to have remembered his own words, that the man is dear, but the truth is dear too;

and though both are dear, the truth is dearer.

But come, then, let us listen to the other laws too:

A woman, said I, is to bear children for the city beginning from twenty years of age;

and a man, when he has passed the sharpest prime of his running, is from then on to beget for the city until fifty-five years of age. But these things do not have a very obvious harm, whereas what follows is worthy not of laughter, but of lamentation and of a fire that consumes these all-excellent laws:

And when the women and the men have passed the age for begetting, we shall, I suppose, leave them free to have intercourse with whomever they wish, having charged them earnestly to be most zealous not to bring any conceived fetus to light; and if anyone should be forced to it, to dispose of it thus, on the understanding that there is no nurture for such a one. What Echetus or Phalaris ever legislated such things? And who ever dared such murders as though doing lawful deeds? For in charging them not to bring it to light, he plainly enjoins the destruction of the infants with abortifacient drugs, and the infants that survive the deadly drug and are born, he bids them dispose of in such a way that they may not enjoy even the most ordinary care, but be destroyed either by famine or by frost, or become food for wild beasts.

What excess of cruelty does this leave behind? Such things, then, has he legislated concerning marriage and child-bearing;

and what he expounds concerning the rest of licentiousness is easy for anyone who wishes to learn.

For those who embrace unnatural lewdness he has supposed to be blessed both here, and has said that when they have departed hence they will be happy;

For they carry off, he says, no small prize of their love.

For it is not lawful for those who have already begun the journey beneath heaven to go into darkness and the journey beneath the earth, but to lead a bright life and be happy, traveling together with one another and winged alike for love's sake. And to these he adds these words:

O child, and thus the friendship from a lover shall be bestowed on you as a divine gift. And he said these things not concerning those who love chastely, but concerning those who love licentiously;

and it is easy to learn these things from his dialogues.

Such a law neither Nero, the most shameful emperor of the Romans, nor Sardanapalus the Assyrian, notorious for pleasures and luxuries, ever wrote or ever praised.

For I think that even those who are exceedingly enslaved to sensual indulgences do not praise the passion, but are enslaved to habit, having made custom into a settled disposition.

And what need is there to tell how many things he has legislated unlawfully concerning murders? For he bids the man who kills his own house-slave go unpunished; the man who slays another's in anger to pay only the price; the man who kills a free man in anger he decrees to go into exile for only two years; the man who slays even with premeditation he orders to be exiled for three years; and the man who, even after his exile, has done the same things he penalizes with perpetual exile alone.

And he has legislated similar things for fathers who have slain their children, and children who have killed their fathers, and husbands their wives, and wives their husbands.

But the philosopher composed such laws and persuaded no human being—not citizen, not foreigner, not townsman, not countryman, not Greek, not barbarian, not slave, not free, not man, not woman, not young, not old, not one nurtured in learning, not one uninitiated in learning—to live according to these laws.

But I, for the rest, will read out the laws which the fishermen and the tax-collectors and the leather-worker brought to all men.

And you, setting these and those side by side, marvel at the God-befitting rays of these laws.

The philosopher, then, both admired licentious pederasty and displayed its thrice-blessed prizes;

but our Savior chastises not only the licentious act, but also the look of this kind:

For He said: Whoever looks upon a woman to lust after her has already committed adultery with her in his heart. And the one indeed legislated to consort without restraint even with others' wives;

but the Maker of nature, since in creating the nature of men He fashioned from the beginning one man and one woman, both forbids the dissolving of marriage, and gave only one ground of dissolution—the one that truly tears apart the yoke.

For He says: Everyone who puts away his wife, except for the matter of fornication, makes her commit adultery;

but if she dissolves the laws of marriage and looks toward another, then He bids the yoke be loosed.

And such things again He has legislated through the leather-worker;

and that man, writing to the Corinthians, brought the laws to all men:

For he said: It is good for a man not to touch a woman;

but on account of fornications let each man have his own wife, and let each woman have her own husband. See how great is the difference between the laws of the philosopher and those of the leather-worker! For this man enjoined each woman to have her own husband and each man his own wife;

but that one ordained that all the women of all the men be common.

And in laying down laws concerning continence too, he neither permits the wife to flee her husband's company if he does not approve of this, nor the husband, if the wife does not consent:

For he says: The wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband;

and likewise also the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife;

do not deprive one another, except perhaps by agreement. For he reckons that the one who pursues continence against the other's judgment is depriving him of his right.

Then, leading on little by little to perfection, he added:

For a season, that you may give yourselves to fasting and prayer, and come together again to the same. And having thus measured the laws to nature, he states the reason too:

Lest Satan tempt you. And teaching that the latter takes occasions from us, he added:

For he said: The unmarried man is anxious about the things of the Lord, how he may please the Lord;

but the married man is anxious about the things of the world, how he may please his wife. And he said the same things concerning women too, teaching that virginity procures a life free from cares.

Marvel, O men, at the tongue of the leather-worker, and worship the One who spoke through it.

And if you wish, learn the laws concerning murder too.

For the philosopher did not even bid the man who has slain his father to undergo an equal punishment; but our Savior chastises both reviling uttered out of season and anger unjustly stirred up:

For He said: Everyone who is angry with his brother without cause shall be liable to the judgment;

and whoever says 'Raca' shall be liable to the council;

and whoever says 'You fool' shall be liable to the Gehenna of fire. And He threatened that He would demand an accounting even for idle words.

And He commanded to do good not only to friends, but also to enemies:

For He said: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you. Then He also shows the prize that surpasses the worth of those who contend:

That you may become sons of your Father who is in heaven;

for He makes His sun rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the just and the unjust. And in laying down laws concerning oaths too, He forbids the very oaths, saying that the yes and the no suffice for the confirmation of what is said.

And He called the propertyless life the most perfect;

and [foretold] both scourges and various slaughters:

For He said: In the world you have tribulation; and:

Blessed are you when they revile you and persecute you and say every evil word against you, lying, for My sake;

rejoice and be exceedingly glad, for your reward is great in the heavens. And He pointed out the toils and dangers, but promised to render the prizes and the crowns at the end of life.

And in another place He says:

If they persecuted Me, they will persecute you also;

if they kept My word, they will keep yours also. And again:

If they called the master of the house Beelzebul, how much more those of his household. Such, then, are the laws;

and it is truly worthy also to marvel at those divinely-inspired men, and at those who believed in them.

For hearing such words, and receiving from Him who called them neither wealth nor power nor strength of body, but believing in long—and these, unseen—promises, they both embraced the toils and endured the dangers, and traveling round the inhabited world, brought their teachings to the nations.

And no less is it fitting to praise those who received them, because, seeing nothing conspicuous or notable in the heralds—but fishermen's and leather-workers' tongues and utmost poverty (for they did not even have an abundance of necessary food;

for whence could they have had it, who were even forbidden by law to be anxious about the morrow?)—they not only believed what was said, but also despised the laws current among them and departed from their ancestral customs, and they too lived the rest of their time amid dangers, heralding alike with their teachers, and alike being subjected to drunken outrage and insult, and traveling through the same surging seas.

And so great a reverence did they have for those who had braved danger unto death, and indeed all still have, that they regard their tombs as treasuries supplying good things of every kind.

Behold, then, O men, the power of these laws.

For the Romans and the Persians and those dwelling outside their dominion, having been very eager to abolish these laws, displayed their own weakness, but rendered the strength of these laws more manifest.

But against the laws of Lycurgus and Solon no one made war, yet they were dissolved of their own accord.

And neither the Pythian nor the Polias (Athena) confirmed the laws laid down by them, but they were extinguished at once when the Romans gave the command.

but none of you could point to this;

whereas we point out that, for the sake of the fishermen's and leather-workers' laws, many myriads both of men and of women endured to die;

and witnesses are the shrines of the martyrs, both making cities resplendent and brightening the countryside and bringing benefit alike to strangers and to natives.

Since, then, the difference both of the laws and of the lawgivers has become manifest from comparison, and the one was seen to be the inventions of human reasonings, the other God-given and saving, receive, O men, the divinely-inspired gifts, and do not dishonor the bountiful and generous Provider.

And you will know their God-befitting character more accurately, if you encounter them after driving out the wicked preconception of your souls.

Those who lust after tyranny seize a dominion that in no way belongs to them, but they put around themselves the outward form of kingship—the purple robe, the crown, the throne, the team of horses, the bodyguards—yet they do not wish to emulate the royal manner;

and they are not benevolent guardians, but most harsh rulers.

For this reason the lawful kings often overthrow them, pitying those treated lawlessly by them; and often soldiers and peoples too strip them of their dominion, not bearing their insolence.

This both the utterly wicked demons have done and have suffered.

For having abandoned the rank they were allotted, and having run away from the most gentle dominion of their Maker, they seized the tyranny, and having plundered the divine name, proclaimed themselves gods, and persuaded the senseless among men to offer divine worship to them;

then, being eager to strengthen their dominion, they brashly claimed both to foreknow the future and to foretell it, by this most of all deluding men who are easy to catch.

And that these oracles belonged to utterly wicked demons who had plundered the divine title, the very silence now lying upon them is sufficient to prove.

For after the appearance of our Savior, those who brought this deception to men fled away, not enduring the radiance of the divine light.

And Plutarch of Chaeronea too testifies expressly to this—a man not a Hebrew, but a Greek both in race and in tongue, and moreover enslaved to Greek opinions, and one who accurately understood the deception of the oracles.

This man composed many other works—for the man was very learned and exceedingly experienced—and he composed also some writings concerning divinations, and he entitled this treatise On the Oracles That Have Ceased;

in this work, then, among many other things, he said this too:

That those who preside over the oracles are not gods—for whom it is fitting to be removed from earthly things—but demons who are servants of the gods, does not seem to me to be wrongly maintained;

but to attribute to these demons, all but taking a fee, sins and infatuations and wanderings out of the verses of Empedocles, and moreover to suppose that they die, as men do, this I consider too rash and too barbarous. These things neither a prophet of ours nor an apostle said, nor any other of those who believed in them and were eager to hold their doctrines, but a man trained in every kind of learning, yet enslaved to the ancient deception of the philosophers;

this man said, first, that those who give oracles are not gods, but demons; and next, that their temple-wardens, possessed by them and worked up into bacchic frenzy, give oracles for a fee, and foretell nothing true, but even concerning those matters of which they boast to have the exhalation and the inspiration, announce beforehand many dreadful and grievous things—not only infatuations and wanderings, but also deaths, in a manner like men—and that they utter the verses not from any inspiration or possession, but by plundering them from the poetry of Empedocles.

And what follows has the same sense:

And concerning the mystic rites, in which it is possible to grasp the greatest indications of the truth concerning demons, let there be a discreet silence on my part, as Herodotus says;

and others, performed amid frenzied and neck-flinging tumult, I would say are accomplished for the sake of averting—not any of the gods, but wicked demons—men making them as a propitiation in place of the ancient human sacrifices. In the previously examined passages, then, he said that the oracles are not of gods, but of demons;

and here he also called them wicked, employing as the clearest proofs the things done by them.

For to whom do eatings of raw flesh and rendings, and shameful speech and shameful deeds, and frenzies of those who rage and fling back their necks amid tumult, belong—save to utterly wicked demons who injure the race of men? These of old, like avenging spirits, delighted in the slaughters of thrice-wretched men; but when they saw that men had come to abhor that man-slaying and blood-pollution which was so beloved to them, and had ceased from the abomination, they devised the scourgings and the eatings of raw flesh and the other rites.

And these things too he has added to what was said:

When Ammonius had ceased, 'Rather,' said I, 'expound to us concerning the oracle, O Cleombrotus.'

For great is the ancient renown of the divinity there, but its present state seems to be withering away.

Therefore time itself reveals the cause of the failing of the oracles.

And Porphyry too, in his work On the Philosophy from Oracles, said also the following:

But moreover the exact knowledge of the course (of the stars) and the explanations derived from these are incomprehensible to human beings—and not only to these, but even to some of the demons;

hence they also lie about many things when they are questioned. So then, gentlemen, since you disbelieve us when we speak about your oracles, believe the one who is our bitterest enemy but most dear to you;

for this man is our implacable foe, who has taken up the open battle against true religion.

Now this man has said that the demons who preside over the so-called places of divination tell lies.

But that he calls these same beings both gods, and yet attributes to them astrology rather than divine foreknowledge, he has made clear in that very treatise:

For what the gods say—if indeed they say it as knowing what has been allotted by fate—they declare from the course of the stars;

and almost all the gods who do not lie have made this plain. But those whom he here called gods, he again said in this same treatise (and in no other) are not gods:

for after setting down the oracle of Apollo—which teaches how one must sacrifice to the gods upon the earth, how to those beneath the earth, how to those in the sea, and how to those in heaven and the upper air—he refutes this oracle as not being sound, asserting that one ought not to regard as gods those who delight in sacrifices made through animals;

for he says that to slaughter living creatures (as sacrifice) is the most unjust of all things, and unholy and abominable and harmful, and for this reason not even pleasing to the gods.

Then he brings in Theophrastus, who says that sacrifices made through animals are not fitting for gods, but for demons.

He also ridicules the human sacrifices of the ancients, and recounts a great many of them that were committed among many peoples.

Then, after teaching that it was the wicked demons who commanded these to be performed, he added:

for they do not assail a pure soul. But the Pythian (Apollo) legislates the very opposite of what Porphyry does;

for he commands the one who seeks an oracle to give certain ransom-offerings to the wicked demon—libations and a funeral pyre and dark blood and wine all black;

and after adding such things, he also instructed him in the prayer which one must offer when sacrificing:

"O demon, who hast been allotted the diadem of souls that wander in sin, dwelling beneath the airy recesses, and above the chthonic depths..."

...refuting his own argument, that those who delight in sacrifices are not gods.

And so that no one might suppose that he was fabricating these things falsely, he has prefixed an oath to the treatise:

For he not only corrected the erroneous wordings and rendered the ambiguous ones clear, but he also healed the lameness of the verses which the Pythian uttered through his interpreters (prophets).

That the so-called seers fail in most of their predictions, the whole life of humankind would bear witness, and these very men themselves who profess the art of divination. And a little later:

But now I will add this much to what has been said: