Miscellanies 5.11.76

And Zeno too, the founder of the Stoic school, says in his book the Republic that one should make neither temples nor statues, for no construction is worthy of the gods; and he is not afraid to write these very words: “There will be no need to build temples; for one must not consider anything a temple that is not of great worth and holy; and nothing that is the work of builders and craftsmen is of great worth and holy.” Fittingly, then, Plato too, knowing the world to be God's temple, assigned to the citizens a place in the city where their images were to be set up, but forbade anyone to possess images of gods privately. “Let no one, then,” he says, “dedicate sacred things to the gods in any other way. For gold and silver, in other cities, both in private and in temples, is a possession that provokes envy; ivory, from a body that the soul has left, is not a pure offering; iron and bronze are instruments of war; but of wood let anyone dedicate whatever he wishes, provided it is made of a single piece, and likewise of stone, for the common temples.”