A Plea for the Christians 21

And yet, if they had only said that the gods were fleshly and had blood and seed and passions of anger and desire, even then one ought to consider such stories nonsense and laughable; for in God there is neither anger, nor desire and appetite, nor seed for begetting children. Let them be fleshly, then, but above wrath and anger, so that Athena may not be seen “angry with father Zeus, and savage wrath seized her,” nor Hera be looked on thus: “Hera's breast could not contain her anger, but she spoke.” Let them be above grief: “Alas, a man dear to me I see with my eyes pursued around the wall; my heart laments.” I call even human beings ignorant and boorish who give way to anger and grief. But when “the father of men and gods” laments his son: “Woe is me, that it is fated for Sarpedon, dearest of men to me, to be slain by Patroclus son of Menoetius!” and for all his lamenting cannot snatch him from danger: “Sarpedon, son of Zeus; but he does not help even his own son”; who would not blame the ignorance of those who, on the strength of such myths, are lovers of the gods, or rather godless? Let them be fleshly, but let not Aphrodite be wounded in body by Diomedes: “The son of Tydeus, high-spirited Diomedes, wounded me,” nor in soul by Ares: “How Zeus's daughter Aphrodite always dishonors me, because I am lame, and loves destructive Ares”; “and he tore her fair skin.” The one who is terrible in war, Zeus's ally against the Titans, shows himself weaker than Diomedes. “He raged like Ares wielding the spear.” Be silent, Homer; a god does not rage. But you describe the god to me as bloodstained and a bane to mortals, “Ares, Ares, bane of mortals, bloodstained,” and you tell of his adultery and his bonds: “The two went to bed and slept, and about them were poured the cunning bonds of wise Hephaestus, and they could not move a limb.” Will they not give up this great and impious nonsense about the gods? Heaven is castrated; Kronos is bound and cast into Tartarus; the Titans revolt; Styx dies in the battle: so they even show that the gods are mortal. They love one another; they love human beings: “Aeneas, whom divine Aphrodite bore to Anchises, the goddess lying with a mortal in the glens of Ida.” Do they not love? Do they not suffer? Surely, if they were gods, desire would not touch them! Even if God takes flesh by a divine dispensation, is he therefore a slave of desire? “For never yet did love of goddess or woman so flood and overpower the heart in my breast: not when I loved the wife of Ixion, nor when I loved Danae of the fair ankles, daughter of Acrisius, nor the daughter of far-famed Phoenix, nor Semele, nor Alcmene in Thebes, nor Demeter, the fair-haired queen, nor glorious Leto, nor you yourself.” He is created, he is perishable, having nothing of God in him. They even serve human beings for hire: “O house of Admetus, in which I endured to accept a menial's table, god though I am”; and they herd cattle: “Coming to this land I tended cattle for my host, and kept this house safe.” So Admetus is superior to the god! O prophet and sage, who foreknows the future for others, you did not foresee the killing of your beloved, but even killed your friend with your own hand. “And I hoped that the divine mouth of Phoebus was free of falsehood, teeming with prophetic art” (so Aeschylus reproaches Apollo as a false prophet); “yet he who sang, he who was present at the feast, he who said these things, he it is who killed my son.”