Miscellanies 1.15.66–1.18.90

These are the dates of the most ancient sages and philosophers among the Greeks. That most of them were barbarians by race and educated among barbarians, what need is there to say, if Pythagoras was shown to be a Tyrrhenian or Tyrian, Antisthenes was a Phrygian, and Orpheus an Odrysian or Thracian? Most show that Homer was an Egyptian. Thales, a Phoenician by race, is said to have met the prophets of the Egyptians, as did Pythagoras with these same men, for whose sake he was even circumcised, so that he might go down into the inner sanctuaries and learn the mystic philosophy from the Egyptians; he associated with the best of the Chaldeans and Magi; and his common auditory hints at what is now called the church. Plato does not deny that he imported the finest things into philosophy from the barbarians, and admits that he went to Egypt. At any rate in the Phaedo he says that the philosopher can be benefited from every quarter, writing: “Greece is large, Cebes,” he said, “in which there are very good men, and many are the races of the barbarians.”

So Plato thinks that there are philosophers among the barbarians too, while Epicurus, on the contrary, supposes that only Greeks can philosophize. And in the Symposium, praising the barbarians as having practiced it outstandingly, Plato says … “and others elsewhere in many places, among Greeks and among barbarians, for whom many temples have already arisen on account of such children.” The barbarians have clearly especially honored their lawgivers and teachers, calling them gods. For they suppose, according to Plato, that good souls, leaving the region above the heavens, endured to come into this Tartarus, and, taking a body, shared in all the evils of generation, caring for the human race; and they laid down laws and proclaimed philosophy, “than which no greater good ever came or will come to the human race from the gods.”

And it seems to me that, perceiving the great benefit that comes through the wise, they both revered these men and philosophized publicly. All the Brahmins, the Odrysians, the Getae, and the race of the Egyptians theologized exactly about their teachings, as did the Chaldeans and the Arabians called Happy, and those who lived in Palestine, and not the least part of the Persian race, and countless other races besides. Plato is clearly found always honoring the barbarians, remembering that both he and Pythagoras learned most and the noblest of their doctrines among barbarians. That is why he spoke of “races of barbarians,” knowing of races of barbarian philosophers; and in the Phaedrus he shows the Egyptian king wiser even than Thoth, whom he knows to be Hermes. And in the Charmides he shows that he knows certain Thracians who are said to make the soul immortal.

It is recorded that Pythagoras was a pupil of Sonchis, the Egyptian chief prophet; Plato of Sechnuphis of Heliopolis; and Eudoxus of Cnidus of Conuphis, also an Egyptian. And in his work on the soul, Plato again appears to know of prophecy, introducing a prophet who announces the word of Lachesis to the souls drawing their lots and foretells. And in the Timaeus he introduces the most wise Solon learning from the barbarian. The words run thus: “O Solon, Solon, you Greeks are always children, and there is no old Greek; for you have no learning gray with time.” Democritus made the Babylonian … ethical teachings his own; for he is said to have added to his own writings a translation of the stele of Acicarus, and one can note it by his writing “Thus says Democritus.” Indeed, somewhere, priding himself on his wide learning, he says of himself: “I have wandered over more of the earth than any man of my time, investigating the most distant things; I have seen the most climates and lands, and heard the most learned men; and in the composition of lines with demonstration no one ever surpassed me, not even the Egyptians called rope-stretchers; with all these I spent eighty years abroad.” For he went to Babylon, Persia, and Egypt, studying with the Magi and the priests. Pythagoras emulated Zoroaster the Persian Magus; and the followers of the heresy of Prodicus boast that they possess secret books of this man.

Alexander, in his work on the Pythagorean symbols, records that Pythagoras was a pupil of Zaratus the Assyrian (some think this is Ezekiel, but it is not, as will be shown later), and holds that Pythagoras also heard the Galatians and the Brahmins. Clearchus the Peripatetic says he knew a Jew who associated with Aristotle. And Heraclitus says that it was not by human means but with God that the future was revealed to the Sibyl. At any rate they say that at Delphi, beside the council house, a rock is shown on which the first Sibyl is said to have sat, having come from Helicon, reared by the Muses. Some say she came from the Malians, being the daughter of Lamia, daughter of Poseidon. Serapion in his verses says that the Sibyl did not cease prophesying even when she died, and that what went into the air from her after death is what prophesies in rumors and omens; and from her body, changed into earth, grass naturally sprang up, and whatever animals fed on it, born in that very place, give men an exact indication of the future through their entrails; and he thinks that her soul is the face that appears in the moon.

So much about the Sibyl. Numa, the king of the Romans, was a Pythagorean, and, benefiting from the writings of Moses, prevented the Romans from making an image of God in human or animal form. At any rate, in the first hundred and seventy years, though they built temples, they made no statue, either sculpted or painted. For Numa showed them in a hidden way that it is not possible to lay hold of the best except by the mind alone. Philosophy, then, a thing of great benefit, flourished long ago among the barbarians, shining through the nations, and later came down to the Greeks as well. Its leaders were the prophets of the Egyptians, the Chaldeans of the Assyrians, the Druids of the Galatians, the Samanaeans of the Bactrians, the philosophers of the Celts, the Magi of the Persians (who by their magic foretold the birth of the Savior, coming to the land of Judea led by a star), the gymnosophists of the Indians, and other barbarian philosophers. Of these there are two kinds, some called Sarmanae and others Brahmins. Of the Sarmanae, those called forest-dwellers neither live in cities nor have roofs, but clothe themselves in the bark of trees, eat fruits, and drink water with their hands; they know neither marriage nor begetting of children, like those now called Encratites. There are also among the Indians those who obey the precepts of Boutta, whom they have honored as a god because of his extraordinary holiness.

Anacharsis too was a Scythian, and he is recorded as surpassing many philosophers among the Greeks. Hellanicus relates that the Hyperboreans live beyond the Rhipaean mountains and are taught righteousness, not eating meat but using fruits. They lead those who are sixty years old outside the gates and put them away. Among the Germans too there are the so-called holy women, who, looking at the eddies of rivers and judging by the windings and sounds of the streams, foretell the future. These at any rate did not let them join battle with Caesar before the new moon had shone. Far the oldest of all these is the race of the Jews, and Philo the Pythagorean shows at length that their philosophy, written down, preceded the philosophy of the Greeks; so does Aristobulus the Peripatetic, and many others, so that I need not go through them by name. Most clearly, Megasthenes the historian, who lived with Seleucus Nicator, writes thus in the third book of his Indica: “All that was said about nature by the ancients is said also by those who philosophize outside Greece, some among the Indians by the Brahmins, others in Syria by those called Jews.”

Some say, more mythically, that certain wise men of the so-called Idaean Dactyls were the first, to whom the invention of the so-called Ephesian letters and of musical rhythms is referred; for which reason dactyls among musicians have received their name. And the Idaean Dactyls were Phrygians and barbarians. Herodorus relates that Heracles, having become a seer and a natural philosopher, received the pillars of the world from Atlas the barbarian, the Phrygian, the myth hinting that he received the knowledge of heavenly things by learning. Hermippus of Berytus calls Chiron the Centaur wise; of him the author of the Titanomachy too says that he first “led the race of mortals to righteousness, showing oaths and cheerful sacrifices and the figures of Olympus.” Achilles, who fought against Ilium, was educated by him; and Hippo, the Centaur's daughter, who lived with Aeolus, taught him natural philosophy, her ancestral knowledge. Euripides too testifies about Hippo in some such way: “She first foretold divine things with clear oracles at the risings of the stars.” With this Aeolus Odysseus was entertained after the capture of Ilium. Note the dates for me, for comparison with the age of Moses and the most ancient philosophy of his time.

The barbarians were inventors not only of philosophy but of almost every art. The Egyptians, at any rate, were the first to introduce astronomy to mankind, and likewise the Chaldeans. The Egyptians first showed how to burn lamps, divided the year into twelve months, forbade intercourse with women in temples, and legislated that no one should enter temples from a woman unwashed; the same were inventors of geometry. Some say the Carians devised prediction by the stars. The Phrygians first observed the flights of birds, and the Tuscans, neighbors of Italy, perfected the inspection of sacrifices. The Isaurians and Arabians worked out augury, as indeed the Telmessians did divination by dreams. The Tyrrhenians invented the trumpet and the Phrygians the flute; for Olympus and Marsyas were Phrygians.

Cadmus, the inventor of letters for the Greeks, was a Phoenician, as Ephorus says; hence Herodotus writes that the letters were called Phoenician; others say that the Phoenicians and Syrians first devised letters. They say that Apis, a native Egyptian, invented medicine before Io came to Egypt, and that afterward Asclepius advanced the art. Atlas the Libyan first built a ship and sailed the sea. Celmis and Damnameneus, the Idaean Dactyls, first found iron in Cyprus; Delas, another Idaean, found the alloy of bronze, or, as Hesiod says, a Scythian. The Thracians first invented the so-called harpe (a curved sword), and were the first to use light shields on horseback. Likewise the Illyrians invented the so-called parma. They say too that the Tuscans devised sculpture, and that Itanus (he was a Samnite) first made the oblong shield. Cadmus the Phoenician discovered stone-cutting and devised the gold mines around Mount Pangaeus. And another nation, the Cappadocians, first invented the instrument called the nabla, as the Assyrians did the two-stringed lyre. The Carthaginians first built the quadrireme, and Bosporus built it on the spot.

Medea, daughter of Aeetes, the Colchian, first devised the dyeing of hair. And the Noropes (a Paeonian people, now called Norici) worked bronze and first refined iron. Amycus, king of the Bebryces, first invented boxing thongs. In music, Olympus the Mysian cultivated the Lydian mode; and the so-called Troglodytes invented the sambuca, a musical instrument. They say that Satyrus the Phrygian invented the transverse pipe; likewise Agnis, also a Phrygian, the three-stringed lyre and the diatonic mode; Olympus, likewise a Phrygian, instrumental notes; Marsyas, of the same country as those just named, the Phrygian, Mixophrygian, and Mixolydian modes; and Thamyris the Thracian devised the Dorian. We have heard that the Persians first made the carriage, the couch, and the footstool, and that the Sidonians built the trireme. The Sicilians near Italy first invented the phorminx, not much inferior to the cithara, and devised castanets. They record that linen garments were invented in the time of … Semiramis, queen of the Egyptians; and Hellanicus says that Atossa, who reigned over the Persians, first composed letters.

Scamon of Mitylene, Theophrastus of Eresus, Cydippus of Mantinea, and further Antiphanes, Aristodemus, and Aristotle, and besides these Philostephanus, and also Strato the Peripatetic, recorded these things in their works On Inventions. I have set out a few of them to establish the inventive and life-benefiting nature of the barbarians, from whom the Greeks have benefited in their pursuits. And if anyone disparages the barbarian tongue, “For me,” says Anacharsis, “all the Greeks speak Scythian.” He was the one admired among the Greeks who said, “My covering is a cloak, my supper milk and cheese.” You see barbarian philosophy professing deeds, not words.

And the apostle says thus: “So you too, unless you give an intelligible word by the tongue, how will what is spoken be known? For you will be speaking into the air. There are, it may be, so many kinds of languages in the world, and none is without meaning. If, then, I do not know the meaning of the language, I shall be a barbarian to the speaker, and the speaker a barbarian to me.” And “let the one who speaks in a tongue pray that he may interpret.” Indeed, the teaching and writing of prose came late to the Greeks. Alcmaeon of Croton, son of Perithus, first composed a treatise on nature; others record that Anaxagoras of Clazomenae, son of Hegesibulus, first published a book in writing. Terpander of Antissa first set poems to music and put the laws of the Spartans into song; Lasus of Hermione devised the dithyramb, Stesichorus of Himera the hymn, Alcman of Sparta the choral dance, Anacreon of Teos love songs; Pindar of Thebes the dance song; and Timotheus of Miletus first sang nomes with chorus and cithara.

Archilochus of Paros devised the iambic, Hipponax of Ephesus the limping iambic, Thespis of Athens tragedy, and Susarion of Icaria comedy. The sons of the grammarians hand down their dates; it would be long to set them out exactly, since Dionysus himself, from whom the Dionysiac spectacles come, is shown to be much later than Moses. They say that Antiphon of Rhamnus, son of Sophilus, first invented school discourses and rhetorical figures, and was the first to plead for a fee and to write a forensic speech for publication, as Diodorus says. Apollodorus of Cumae first introduced the name “grammarian” instead of “critic” and was called a grammarian; some say Eratosthenes of Cyrene, since he published two books entitled Grammatica. But the first to be called a grammarian as we now use the word was Praxiphanes of Mitylene, son of Dionysophanes. Zaleucus the Locrian is recorded as the first to make laws; others say Minos, son of Zeus, in the time of Lynceus. He lived after Danaus, in the eleventh generation from Inachus and Moses, as we shall show a little further on. Lycurgus, living many years after the capture of Ilium, gave laws to the Spartans a hundred and fifty years before the Olympiads; the dates of Solon we have given already.

Draco too, also a lawgiver, is found to have lived about the thirty-ninth Olympiad. Antilochus, who wrote about the sages, reckons from the age of Pythagoras to the death of Epicurus, which occurred on the tenth of Gamelion, three hundred and twelve years in all. They also say that Phanothea, the wife of Icarius, invented the heroic hexameter; others, Themis, one of the Titanesses. Didymus, in his work on Pythagorean philosophy, relates that Theano of Croton was the first woman to philosophize and write poems. Greek philosophy, then, as some say, lays hold of the truth by chance in some way, dimly and not of the whole; as others would have it, it gets its impulse from the devil. Some have supposed that certain inferior powers inspired all philosophy. But even if Greek philosophy does not comprehend the greatness of the truth, and further is too weak to carry out the Lord's commandments, yet it prepares the way for the most royal teaching, in some way making one self-controlled, molding the character beforehand, and preparing the one who believes in providence to receive the truth.

Yes, they say it is written, “All who came before the Lord's coming are thieves and robbers.” All, then, who came before the incarnation of the Word are to be understood more generally. But the prophets, since they were sent and inspired by the Lord, are not thieves but servants. At any rate Scripture says, “Wisdom sent her servants, calling with a lofty proclamation to the bowl of wine.” But philosophy, they say, was not sent by the Lord, but came stolen or given by a thief; whether, then, some power or angel, having learned something of the truth and not remaining in it, inspired these things and, having stolen them, taught them. Not that the Lord did not know, who knew the ends of what would be before the foundation of the world and each thing's being; but he did not prevent it. For the theft that came to human beings then had some benefit, not because the one who stole looked to what was profitable, but because providence directed the outcome of the daring deed to what was profitable.

I know that many continually attack us, saying that what does not prevent is a cause. For they say that the one who did not guard or did not prevent is the cause of the theft, as the one who did not put out the fire at its beginning is the cause of the burning, and the pilot who did not shorten sail is the cause of the shipwreck. Thus the causes of these are punished by the law; for to the one who had the power to prevent, the blame for what happens is attached. We say to them that the cause is understood in making, acting, and doing, but that what does not prevent is in this respect inactive. Further, the cause is concerned with the activity, as the shipbuilder with the ship coming to be and the builder with the house being built; but what does not prevent is separate from what happens. It is accomplished for this reason, that what could prevent does not act or prevent. For what does the one who does not prevent do? And their argument even leads to absurdity, if they will blame for the wound not the arrow but the shield that did not prevent the arrow from passing through; for they will blame not the thief but the one who did not prevent the theft.

And let them say, then, that not Hector burned the ships of the Greeks, but Achilles, because, being able to prevent Hector, he did not prevent him. But he, out of wrath (and it was in his power to be wrathful or not), did not keep off the fire, and is perhaps a joint cause; whereas the devil, having free will, was able both to repent and to steal, and he himself is the cause of the theft, not the Lord who did not prevent it. Nor was the gift harmful, so that prevention was needed. If we must be exact with them, let them know that what does not prevent, which we say happened in the case of the theft, is no cause at all; but what prevents is liable to the charge of being a cause. For the one who holds a shield before another is the cause of his not being wounded, preventing him from being wounded; and Socrates' divine sign was a cause, not by not preventing, but by turning him away, even if it did not urge him on. Neither praises nor blames, neither honors nor punishments would be just if the soul did not have the power of impulse and aversion.

nor if vice were involuntary. Hence the one who prevents is a cause, but the one who does not prevent justly judges the choice of the soul, so that God may remain as far as possible without responsibility for vice for us. And since choice and impulse begin sins, and sometimes a mistaken supposition prevails, from which, since it is ignorance and lack of learning, we neglect to withdraw, he would fittingly punish (for having a fever is involuntary too; but when someone has a fever through his own fault and intemperance, we blame him), so too, though vice is involuntary. For no one chooses evil as evil, but, carried away by the pleasure connected with it, supposing it good, he considers it worth taking. This being so, it rests with us to be freed from ignorance and from the base and pleasurable choice, and, before these, not to assent to those deceitful impressions. The devil is called a robber and a thief because he mixed false prophets in among the prophets, like tares among the wheat. “All, then, who came before the Lord are thieves and robbers”: not simply all human beings, but all the false prophets and all who were not properly sent by him.

The false prophets too had what was stolen, the prophetic name, being prophets, but of the liar. For the Lord says: “You are of your father the devil, and you wish to do your father's desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaks falsehood, he speaks from his own, for he is a liar and the father of it.” And among their lies the false prophets spoke some truths too, and indeed they prophesied in ecstasy, as servants of the apostate. The Shepherd, the angel of repentance, also says to Hermas about the false prophet: “For he speaks some true words; for the devil fills him with his own spirit, to see if he can break any of the righteous.” All things, then, are ordered from above for good, “that the manifold wisdom of God might be made known through the church, according to the foreknowledge of the ages, which he made in Christ.” And nothing opposes God or is contrary to him, since he is Lord and Almighty.

But the counsels and activities of the apostates too, being partial, arise from a bad disposition, like bodily diseases; but they are steered by universal providence to a healthy end, even if the cause produces disease. At any rate, the greatest thing of divine providence is not to allow the vice that sprang from a voluntary apostasy to remain useless and unprofitable, nor to become harmful in every respect. For it is the work of divine wisdom, virtue, and power not only to do good (for this, so to speak, is God's nature, as it is fire's to warm and light's to give light), but especially this: to bring about some good and useful end through the evils devised by some, and to use profitably what seems bad, as in the case of the martyrdom that comes from temptation.

There is, then, in philosophy too, stolen as if by Prometheus, a little fire usefully kindled into light, a trace of wisdom and a movement toward God. In this way the philosophers among the Greeks would be thieves and robbers, since, before the Lord's coming, they took portions of the truth from the Hebrew prophets, not with full knowledge, but appropriating them as their own doctrines; some they falsified, some they cleverly elaborated out of curiosity but without understanding, and some they discovered; for perhaps they too had “the spirit of perception.” Aristotle too agreed with Scripture, calling sophistry a thievery of wisdom, as we showed before. And the apostle says, “which things we also speak, not in words taught by human wisdom, but in those taught by the Spirit.” For of the prophets he says, “We have all received from his fullness,” that is, from Christ's. So the prophets are not thieves. “And my teaching is not mine,” says the Lord, “but the Father's who sent me.” But of those who steal he says, “He who speaks from himself seeks his own glory.” Such are the Greeks, self-loving and boastful. And Scripture, calling them “wise,” does not disparage the truly wise, but those who think themselves wise.

And of these, it says, “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the understanding of the prudent I will set aside.” At any rate the apostle adds: “Where is the wise man? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age?” by contrast with the scribes placing the inquirers of this age, the philosophers from the Gentiles. “Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?” Equivalent to: he showed it to be foolish and not true, as they thought. And if you ask the cause of their pretended wisdom, he will say, “because of the hardness of their heart.” “Since in the wisdom of God,” that is, proclaimed through the prophets, “the world did not know through wisdom,” the wisdom that spoke through the prophets, “him,” that is, God, “God was pleased through the foolishness of preaching,” which seemed foolishness to the Greeks, “to save those who believe. For the Jews,” he says, “ask for signs” for belief, “and the Greeks seek wisdom,” that is, the so-called compelling arguments and other syllogisms, “but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to the Jews,” because, though they knew the prophecy, they did not believe its fulfillment, “and foolishness to the Greeks”; for those who think themselves wise consider it a myth that the Son of God speaks through a man, and that God has a Son, and further that he suffered. Hence the prejudice of their conceit persuades them to disbelieve. For the Savior's coming did not make people foolish, hard-hearted, and unbelieving, but understanding, obedient, and moreover faithful; but those who were unwilling to obey, separated from those who obeyed by voluntary choice, were shown to be without understanding, unbelieving, and foolish. “But to those who are called, Jews and Greeks, Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God.”

Or should “Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?” rather (which is better) be taken as a denial, equivalent to “He did not make it foolish,” so that the cause of their hardness of heart may not appear to come from God, who would have made the wisdom foolish? On the contrary, though they were wise, they have come under greater blame by not believing the preaching; for both the choice and the turning away from the truth are voluntary. And by “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise” he means that it will be outshone by comparison with the despised and disdained barbarian philosophy, as a lamp outshone by the sun is said to be destroyed because it does not perform the same function. All human beings, then, having been called, those who were willing to obey were named “called.” “For there is no injustice with God.” Thus those from each race who believed are “a people for his own possession.” And in the Acts of the Apostles you might find word for word: “Those, then, who received his word were baptized”; but those unwilling to obey clearly withdrew themselves.

To these the prophecy says, “If you are willing and listen to me, you will eat the good things of the land,” showing that both choice and turning away rest with us. And the apostle called the teaching according to the Lord “the wisdom of God,” to show that the true philosophy is handed down through the Son. But the one who thinks himself wise has certain exhortations from the apostle too, which command him “to put on the new man, created according to God in righteousness and holiness of truth. Therefore, putting away falsehood, speak truth; do not give place to the devil. Let the thief steal no longer, but rather let him labor, working what is good,” and to work is to labor further in seeking the truth, together with rational beneficence, “so that you may have something to share with the one in need,” both of worldly abundance and of divine wisdom. For he wishes the word to be taught, and the money, carefully tested, to be put with the bankers for lending. Hence he adds: “Let no rotten word come out of your mouth”; the rotten word is the one from conceit; “but whatever is good for building up as the need may be, that it may give grace to those who hear.” And the word of the good God must necessarily be good. How is the one who saves not good?