Cure of the Greek Maladies 1 part 14/16

let the nations know that they are but men.” For since the human race had fallen into the uttermost irrationality, he necessarily asks that a lawgiver be given to them, so that they might both recognize their own nature and be delivered from their brutishness.

And in the twenty-first psalm:

“… [the ends] of the earth, and all the families of the nations shall worship before him;

for the kingdom is the Lord's, and he ruleth over the nations.” And what follows has the same meaning;

for he foretells the new people gathered from all the nations.

And, to pass over the greater part, hear him speaking in the forty-fourth psalm:

“Instead of thy fathers, thy sons are born;

thou shalt make them princes over all the earth.” And again in the forty-fifth psalm:

“Be still, and know that I am God;

I will be exalted among the nations;

I will be exalted in the earth.” And the psalm after this foretells the salvation of the nations:

“O clap your hands, all ye nations;

shout unto God with the voice of exultation;

for the Lord most high is terrible, a great king over all the earth.” And the seventh and the eighth, and indeed the ninth, and, so to speak, all the psalms foretell the transformation of the world and proclaim beforehand the calling and faith of the nations, and besides these, the pre-eternal existence of our God and Savior, his generation from the Father, his birth from the Virgin, the miracles, the sufferings, the unbelief of the Jews, the resurrection from the dead, the ascension into the heavens, the descent of the Spirit, and the course of the apostles over all land and sea.

And indeed all the other prophets too foretell these same things.

But I have judged it a needless labor to gather together all the predictions;

for I should have needed many books, both in writing them all and in saying what was fitting concerning each one.

But it is enough for you, if you are willing, to discern the truth from the others also, which you have heard.

For these are clear and true, and are, as it were, vivid images of the events.

Just as, then, one would more readily learn the art of the finest painters by setting the image beside the true and original model, so you also ought to set the prophecy, as it were a kind of design sketched out beforehand by the most wise painter, beside the events that have now reached their fulfillment, and behold the exactness of the likeness.

For of old, before the prophecy received its fulfillment, it took some labor to persuade the men of that time that the oracles were true;

but now that we see the things foretold long, long ago fulfilled, and those words become deeds, we have no need of labors to persuade the ears.

For these have the eyes as witnesses;

and Herodotus is superfluous to us when he says that men's ears are more untrustworthy than their eyes; for the eyes surely see the very things that the ears hear.

Since, therefore, you have both heard a few of the prophecies and have seen the testimony of the events, set, O men, the oracles of the prophets beside your own oracles, and cry out with the apostle:

“What fellowship hath light with darkness? And what concord hath Christ with Belial, or what portion hath a believer with an unbeliever? And what agreement hath the temple of God with idols?” For the choirs of the prophets are temples of God;

but the idols are dumb, those worshiped by the nations, concerning which the divine Spirit says:

“The idols of the nations are silver and gold, the work of men's hands;

they have mouths, but they speak not;

they have eyes, but they see not;

they have ears, but they hear not;

they have nostrils, but they smell not;

they have hands, but they handle not;

they have feet, but they walk not;

neither shall they make a sound in their throat;

for there is no breath in their mouth.

“Let those that make them become like unto them, and all that put their trust in them.” But may it be granted you to learn the truth and not to partake of the prophetic curse.

You have perhaps heard, O men, of that famous Aristippus, the grandson — through his daughter — of Aristippus the companion of Socrates.

He, living with his mother who was a philosopher, partook of philosophy in the fullest measure.

And he also received a name compounded from the fact:

For everyone used to call him "taught by his mother."

But for him it sufficed, for partaking in philosophy, to have his mother's instruction alone;

you, however, though you hear so many prophets and apostles, and indeed those who after them shone in teaching, are unwilling to learn the truth.

And this affliction befalls you because perhaps you reckon these teachings to be useless.

For it does not promise Syracusan luxury, nor a loose and pampered life, nor much-coveted wealth and the flooding stream of its riches, but sweat and toil and a life full of hardship.

For these things are plain to you, but the end of them is unseen;

for being accustomed to look only at things visible, you cannot see the nature of things invisible;

for you do not have those eyes whose maker is faith.

But I will make these things too plain to you, so far as is possible for me and within your capacity, again employing the torch-light of the divine oracles.

And I think it useful now too to set side by side the opinions of the philosophers and the doctrines of the divine Gospels, so that you may know what end those men appointed and what the divine words promise.

Now Epicurus appointed the most pleasant life as the end;

for he held pleasure alone to be the perfect good.

And Heraclitus of Ephesus changed the name but left the notion behind;

for instead of "pleasure" he set down "contentment."

But this definition also carries another implication;

for he set down contentment indefinitely, and did not make clear its quality.

For some are pleased by temperance, but others by the vice opposed to it;

and some by incontinence, others by self-control;

and these by an unjust and grasping life, those by a just one.

Therefore that which pleases each person, being agreeable and worthy of love—this he appointed as the end, having set down contentment in place of pleasure.

And the much-celebrated Pythagoras supposed the most perfect knowledge of numbers to be the ultimate good;

Hecataeus appointed self-sufficiency, Antisthenes freedom from vanity, and Anaxagoras of Clazomenae the contemplation of life and the freedom that comes from it, defining a definition truly befitting a philosopher.

For it is truly the greatest good to perceive the nature of things, to despise transient things, and to keep the soul unenslaved and free.

But Plato the son of Ariston, by the loftiness of his definition, surpassed even this one;

for he appointed as the end of goods being made like to God so far as is possible.

Praiseworthy indeed is the exhortation concerning the imitation of things divine;

and the addition of "so far as is possible" rendered the definition still more admirable;

for it is not possible to be made like to God in all respects.

For how could one who is visible be made like to the Invisible, and being small and circumscribed in a tiny place be made like to the Uncircumscribed who holds creation together, and again, being recent, be made like to the Eternal, and being unable even to make a cubit of heaven, be made like to the Maker of all things? Therefore it is possible to imitate neither that nature, nor that power, nor indeed that wisdom;

yet of His goodness, justice, gentleness, and love for mankind it is possible somehow to take some impressions.

For indeed the Master Christ set forth this imitation to those who aspire to perfection;

for He says, "Be merciful, even as your Father in heaven is merciful;"

for "He makes His sun rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the just and the unjust." And Plato's teacher too, Socrates the son of Sophroniscus, was wont to call happy not the one overflowing with wealth and borne along by favorable winds, but the one adorned with righteousness;

for he used to say that only the just is profitable.

But the orators were unwilling to give ear to these words;

for they said that the just is something other than the profitable, thereby showing the profitable in some way to be unprofitable;

for surely that which is separated from the just is unjust;

and the unjust is harmful;

and the harmful could not reasonably be called profitable.

Now Plato and Socrates spoke things both harmonious and praiseworthy;

but Aristotle, though he shared in Plato's teaching, did not profit from these doctrines, but said that happiness is filled up out of three classes of goods: those of the soul, those of the body, and those external;

for he said that the happy man must not only be adorned with virtue, but also have bodily strength, shine with beauty, and overflow with wealth;

and that the one deprived of any of these can least of all be called happy.

Or rather this man, as it seems, followed Simonides the poet;

"To be healthy is best for a man;

second, to be born fair in form;

third, to be wealthy without guile." And Theognis too counsels to flee poverty, and says:

"One must, fleeing poverty, hurl oneself into the vast deep sea and down from the sheer cliffs, O Cyrnus."

But the Stoics voted outright the opposite to these things.

For they appointed as the end living in accordance with nature, and said that the soul is neither benefited nor harmed by the body;

for neither does health force it toward virtue against its will, nor does sickness drag it down toward vice against its purpose;

for they used to say that these things are indifferent.

But that doctrine of theirs is altogether reckless;

for they used to say that the virtue of man and of God is the same.

Thus his love of pleasure trained him up into impiety;

for thinking thus of the God of the universe, that man dared this blasphemy.

And this the thrice-wretched man suffered, trusting in chance and in atoms, deeming all things to be without a ruler and uncared for, not awaiting an examination of the things done in life, but reckoning that the constitution of human beings lasts only as far as the grave.

But Plato sets forth both the tribunals there and the places of punishment, and says in the tenth book of the Republic:

"Thereupon savage men, fiery to behold, standing by and marking the sound, took some away apart and led them off; but Aridaeus and others they bound hand and foot and head, threw down, flayed, and dragged off along the road outside, carding them on thorn-bushes." And in the Phaedo too he says things very like these:

"For the third river, he says, issues forth between these in the middle, and near its outlet it falls into a great place burning with much fire, and forms a lake larger than the sea among us, boiling with water and mud.

From there it proceeds in a circle, turbid and muddy;

and coiling about, it arrives elsewhere and at the extremity of the Acherusian lake, yet does not mingle with its water;

and after coiling many times beneath the earth, it empties out.

And this is the one they surname Pyriphlegethon (Blazing-with-fire);

of which the lava-streams also blow up fragments wherever they chance upon the earth.

And again, directly opposite this, the fourth river falls into a place both terrible and savage.

It is said to have a color wholly like dark blue;

this one they surname Stygian;

and the river forms the lake by emptying into it: the Styx.

And after falling in there and taking up certain powers in the water, sinking beneath the earth and coiling about, it proceeds opposite to Pyriphlegethon and meets it in the Acherusian lake from the opposite side."

[He speaks] of the irremediable punishments of those who have lived impiously.

And I too will recall a few of these somehow;

"But those who seem to be incurable because of the magnitude of their sins—having committed many great sacrileges, or many unjust and lawless murders, or other such things as happen to be of this kind—these the fitting destiny hurls into Tartarus, whence they never come out."

"But those who seem to have committed sins that are curable, though great—such as having done some violent deed against father or mother in anger, and then living the rest of their life in repentance, or having become murderers in some other such manner—these must indeed fall into Tartarus, but having fallen in and spent a year there, the wave casts them out, the murderers down the Cocytus, and the parricides down the Pyriphlegethon." Then he teaches how they cry out and beseech those whom they have wronged to grant them forgiveness;

then, when those refuse, how they are sent back again into the lake to undergo the same punishments.

Having thus shown the places of punishment, he indicates also the regions of those who have lived well, speaking somewhat thus:

"But those who are judged to have excelled toward living a holy life—these are they who are freed and released from these regions in the earth as from prisons, and arrive up above into the pure habitation, and are settled upon the earth."

"And of these very ones, those who have been sufficiently purified by philosophy live altogether without toils for the time thereafter, and arrive at habitations still fairer than these, which it is neither easy to make plain, nor is the present time sufficient;

but for the sake of these things which we have recounted, O Simmias, one must do all things so as to partake of virtue and wisdom.

For the prize is fair, and the hope is great." And in the Gorgias too he says things very like these:

"Hear now a very fair account, which you, as I think, will deem a myth, but I a [true] account;

for let what I am about to say be told to you as being true." And a little after:

"The one who has passed through life justly and holily, when he dies, departs to the Isles of the Blessed and dwells in all happiness apart from evils;

but the one who has lived unjustly and godlessly goes to the prison of judgment and justice, which indeed they call Tartarus." And again:

"Then they must be judged stripped of all these things;

for they must be judged when dead;

and the judge too must be naked, being dead, beholding with the soul itself the very soul of each who has died suddenly, bereft of all his kin, having left behind on earth all that adornment, so that the judgment may be just." So precisely did Plato believe that there are tribunals in Hades.

For he [the prophet] surely says concerning those who are punished:

"Their worm shall not die, and their fire shall not be quenched." And again:

"Who will declare to us that fire is kindled? Who will declare to us the eternal place?" And there are very many other such things to be found among the prophets.

But the philosopher, taking some things from there and mixing in others from the Greek myths, composed his accounts concerning these matters;

and what follows has the same sense:

"For of the judges, he says—as I was saying—first that famous Rhadamanthus, if he takes hold of such a one, knows nothing else about him, neither who he is nor of what parentage, but only that he is some wicked person;

and seeing this, he sends him away to Tartarus, marking him whether he seems to be curable or incurable;

and arriving there, he suffers what is fitting.

But sometimes, seeing a soul of one who has lived holily and with truth—of a private man or some other, but most of all, as I for my part affirm, O Callicles, of a philosopher who has minded his own affairs and not been a busybody in life—he admires it and sends it off to the Isles of the Blessed." And after a few words he added:

"For my part, O Callicles, I am persuaded by these accounts, and I consider how I shall present my soul to the judge as most healthy.

Bidding farewell, then, to the honors of the many, and practicing the truth, I will try in reality, so far as I am able, to be best both in living and, when I die, in dying.

And I call upon all other men too, so far as I am able;

and indeed I call upon you in return to this life, this contest, which I say is worth more than all the contests here;

and I reproach you, that you will not be able to help yourself when the trial and the judgment come upon you of which I was just now speaking.

But coming before that judge, the son of Aegina, when he takes hold of you and leads you off, you will gape and grow dizzy no less there than I here;

and perhaps he will strike you on the jaw dishonorably and altogether treat you with insolence."

"Perhaps, then, these things seem to you to be told as a tale, as by an old woman, and you will despise them;

and it would be nothing to wonder at to despise them, if by searching we were able to find anything better and truer than these;

but as it is you see that, being three of you who are the wisest of the Greeks—you and Polus and Gorgias—you cannot demonstrate that one must live any other life than this, which manifestly is profitable for the world to come." Such things he set forth at length in this dialogue too, both concerning the things there, and most wisely he exhorted men to give heed to those things which free one from the punishments yonder.

And in the Crito too he brings in the Laws speaking to Socrates:

"But, O Socrates, obeying us your nurturers, esteem neither children, nor life, nor anything else above the just, so that going to Hades you may have all these things to plead in your defense before the rulers there." And in the Apology he also says that death is a good thing;

"For let us consider, he said, also in this way, how great is the hope that it is a good thing.

For either it is such that the dead man is nothing and has no perception at all of anything;

or, according to what is said, it happens to be some change and migration of the soul from this place to another." But these things of his are to be praised, even if they have some admixture of spurious doctrines—Rhadamanthus and Minos and the Isles of the Blessed, and indeed also the notion that only the souls separated from the bodies are punished.

For these things are surely foreign to the doctrines of the truth;

yet he has some small excuse in a way, not having shared in the apostolic teaching.

But the transmigrations of souls, which he filched from the doctrines of Pythagoras, must, O men, be utterly shunned.

For indeed those doctrines are utterly laughable.

For concerning the souls sent down into bodies he said in the Phaedo that they enter, as is likely, into such characters as they happen to have practiced in this life:

"What sort of things, then, do you mean, O Socrates? — Such as: those who have practiced gluttony, insolence, and love of drink, and have not been on their guard, are likely to enter into the kinds of asses and beasts—is it not so? — You speak very probably."

"— And those who have given preference to acts of injustice, tyrannies, and rapacity enter into the kinds of wolves and hawks and kites;

or where else should we say such souls go? — Assuredly, said Cebes, into such kinds." And, that I may not lengthen this by recounting everything, one can find him saying that the souls of those who have practiced civic virtue are transmigrated into bees and wasps and ants, and indeed into the human race.

But these things are not only worthy of laughter, but also outright contrary to what he has already said.

For in those passages he said that the souls are punished, some being cast into the Acheron and the Acherusian lake, others into the Styx and Cocytus and Pyriphlegethon;

and that those who have sinned incurably are forever borne about in Tartarus with the streams of Pyriphlegethon, while those who have transgressed in curable ways, borne by the wave, beseech those whom they have wronged, who appear upon the bank, and again are carried back by the wave into the lake;

[but here he says that the souls of the unjust] are brought into the bodies of kites, while those who have practiced civic virtue enjoy thrice-blessed prizes, becoming wasps and bees and ants;

for such are the rewards the philosopher assigned to those who care for virtue.

And these things too are outright contradictory;

for in the things said before he sent them off to the Isles of the Blessed, and declared that the habitations of philosophers are not even to be uttered in words;

but here he allotted them the life of wasps and bees and ants, and said that those who in their former life had done no wrong receive as a prize the doing of wrong and the maiming of others.

For indeed wasps and bees are by nature able to sting with their sting, and ants pillage the standing crops and divide the fruits with the farmers, having shared least of all in the labors;

and the wasps too war against the planters, destroying the fruit of the plants;

and the bees too do this in some measure.

But none of these things did the best of the philosophers perceive, but he looked only to the glory of the one who had first said these things.

And elsewhere too he tells such tales and says:

"For to the place whence each soul comes, it does not arrive for ten thousand years.

For it does not grow wings before such a span of time, except the soul of one who has philosophized without guile, or has loved boys together with philosophy.

And these, at the third period of a thousand years, are released;

and having three times in succession winged this life thus, in the thousandth year they depart.

But the others, when they have ended their first life, meet with judgment;

and being judged, some, going to the places of justice beneath the earth, pay the penalty;

but others, lightened by Justice into some place of heaven, pass their time worthily of the life they lived in human form." And the absurdity of these accounts too is easy to perceive.

For who in the world taught him the myriads of years, and that when ten thousand years have passed, then each of the souls returns to its own region? But the things in between these not even to the most utterly licentious would it be fitting to say—how much less to a philosopher? For with those who have achieved unmixed philosophy he yoked together the licentious and the pederasts, and said that these and those would enjoy the same prizes.

But again forgetting these accounts—for he had allotted heaven to such souls—he said in the Republic that the soul of Orpheus received the body of a swan, and that Agamemnon became an eagle, Ajax a lion, Atalanta an athlete, and Thersites an ape, I do not know for what reason consenting to insert this irrationality of doctrines into his discourses;

yet he is clearly playing rather than being in earnest in those passages where he expounds the transmigrations;

for in many places he sets forth the places of punishment in Hades.

But I will turn back again to these things, lest I leave the philosopher in those ridiculous accounts.

Hear him, then, saying:

"But it is not, said I, the tale of Alcinous that I shall tell you, but of a valiant man, Er the son of Armenius, a Pamphylian by race;

who, having died in war, when the corpses, ten days dead, were taken up already decomposed, was taken up sound; and being conveyed home, about to be buried, on the twelfth day, lying upon the pyre, he came back to life, and having come back to life, he told what he had seen there."

"He said that, when his soul went forth, it journeyed already with many, and they arrived at a certain marvelous place, in which there were two openings of the earth adjoining one another, and in the heaven again above two others opposite;

and judges sat between these, who, when they had given judgment, bade the just journey to the right and upward through the heaven, having fastened upon them in front tokens of the judgments passed, but the unjust [to journey] to the left and downward, these too having behind them a token of all that they had done."

"And when he himself drew near, they said that he must become a messenger to men of the things there, and they charged him to listen and behold all the things in that place." These accounts are truly worthy of philosophy.

[He sends] up to heaven the souls that have lived well, but down into Hades those that have chosen the contrary.

And indeed Plutarch too, in what he wrote On the Soul, indicated both the judge and the ministers of the tribunal, inserting some such narrative into his treatise:

"We ourselves too, he says, were present with this Antyllus, together with Sositeles and Heracleon, as he narrated."

"For when he seemed to the physicians to be past living, having recovered a little from a fainting fit that was not violent, he neither did nor said anything deranged, but said that he had died and again been released, and that he would not die at all from that sickness, but also that those who had led him off had been rebuked by their lord;

for being sent for Nicandas, they had brought him instead of that man;

and Nicandas was a cobbler." And he says also that, when Nicandas died, immediately Antyllus regained his strength.

What sort, then, the doctrines of the philosophers are, and how some of them measured happiness by the belly, while others laid hold of more perfect words; and how some reckoned the life of human beings to last only as far as the grave, while others dreamed up the recompenses for things done in life and indicated, as far as words allowed, the punishments full of dread—neither leaving even these free of myths—you have learned through the things we have said.

And it is now time for you to behold also the doctrines of the sacred Gospels, doctrines worthy of God.

Now these [the Scriptures] say that the beginning of good things is the praised fear;

for "the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom," according to Solomon and his father;

and the end is the life ordered by the divine laws;

for "Blessed are the blameless in the way, who walk in the law of the Lord;

blessed are those who search out His testimonies;

with the whole heart they will seek Him out." And this the Savior of all taught also in the sacred Gospels.

For He calls blessed not those who are rich and live in luxury and are borne along with the current, but the poor in spirit and the meek and the merciful and those who hunger and thirst for righteousness and those who endure suffering ill for the sake of some good; and to those who accomplish these and such things He promises the kingdom of the heavens.

And I think it useful to read out to you these very laws, written in the form of a blessing:

"Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of the heavens.

Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.

Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.

Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.

Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of the heavens." And the rest too, O men, has the same sense;

but it suffices even for these to make plain the aim of the Lawgiver, and to what end He taught us to look.

For He did not bid us look out for wealth, nor for bodily beauty and health, but for the sweat of virtue and the dangers undergone for it, and its greatest and unspeakable prizes.

For what account is competent to give evidence of a kingdom of the heavens that is imperishable and boundless, and of a life ageless and griefless and free from cares? Concerning these things the divinely-inspired Paul cries aloud:

"The things which eye has not seen, and ear has not heard, and which have not come up upon the heart of man, the things which God has prepared for those who love Him." But if the very eyewitness of these things was not able to tell what he was deemed worthy to see, hardly would another presume upon the unutterable.

And that he too appointed eternal life as the end of good things, hear him writing to the Romans:

"For when you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness.

What fruit then did you have at that time in the things of which you are now ashamed? For the end of those things is death;