Discourse to the Greeks

Do not suppose, men of Greece, that my separation from your customs is unreasoning or undiscerning. For I found nothing in them holy or pleasing to God. For the very compositions of your poets are memorials of madness and incontinence. Whoever goes to school with the one most eminent in education among you is the most troubled of all men. For first they say that Agamemnon, aiding his brother's licentiousness, madness, and unrestrained desire, gave even his daughter readily to be sacrificed, and threw all Greece into turmoil to rescue Helen, carried off by a leprous shepherd. And when, in the course of the war, they had brought back captives, Agamemnon himself (was overcome) by Chryseis, … and took up enmity for Briseis's sake. And the son of Peleus himself, having subdued …, your hero, was the slave of Polyxena and was conquered by a dead Amazon; putting off the god-made armour and putting on a bridal robe, he became a sacrifice of love-charms in the temple of Apollo. And the Ithacan son of Laertes made a trade of virtue out of vice. That he was without good sense his voyage past the Sirens showed, because he could not use his sense to stop his ears. Ajax son of Telamon, who carried the shield of seven ox-hides, was seized by madness when defeated in the judgment against Odysseus over the armour. In these things I do not wish to be educated. For I do not aspire to such virtue as to believe the myths of Homer. For the whole rhapsody, the beginning and the end of the Iliad and the Odyssey, is a woman.

But since Hesiod after Homer wrote the Works and Days, who will agree with his drivelling theogony? For they say that Cronus, the son of Uranus, cast his father down from his rule and seized the sceptre; and that, being on his guard against suffering the same, he chose to eat his children; but that Zeus, stolen away and hidden by the device of the Curetes, bound his father in chains and divided (the rule), as the story goes, Pluto obtaining the portion of Hades. But Pluto carried off the Maiden, and Demeter, wandering through the deserts, searched for her child. And this myth the fire at Eleusis raised to great heights. Again, Poseidon disgraced Melanippe as she drew water, and abused a crowd of Nereids, not a few, whose names, if we were to recount them, would waste a great quantity of words. Zeus was an adulterer in many ways: with Antiope as a satyr, with Danaë as gold, and with Europa a bull; and he grew wings for Leda. The love of Semele convicted both his incontinence and Semele's jealousy. And they say he carried off the Phrygian Ganymede to pour his wine. These things the sons of Cronus did. And your far-famed son of Leto, who professed prophecy, convicted himself of lying: he pursued Daphne and did not catch her, and to his beloved … he did not foretell his death. I pass over in silence the manliness of Athena, the womanishness of Dionysus, and the harlotry of Aphrodite. Read to Zeus, men of Greece, the law against parricide, and the penalty for adultery, and the shamefulness of pederasty. Teach Athena and Artemis the works of women, and Dionysus those of men. What dignity does a woman show adorned with weapons, or a man prettified with cymbals and garlands and women's clothing, and celebrating orgies with a herd of women?

For the three-nights' son of Alcmene, sung as leader in the contests, the son of Zeus, who slew the lion and destroyed the many-headed hydra; who put to death the wild, tireless boar, and was able to bring down the man-eating birds in their flight, and brought the three-headed dog up from Hades; who was able to clear the strong walls of Augeas of dung, and killed the bulls and the stag whose nostrils breathed fire; who took the golden fruit from the tree, having slain the poisonous serpent (and why he killed Achelous it is not lawful to say, and the guest-killing Busiris), and leaped over mountains to get water that gave out an articulate voice, as the story goes: he who was able to do so many such great deeds, like a child was stunned with cymbals by satyrs, and overcome by love of a woman, and delighted to be struck on the buttocks by a laughing Lydian woman. And at last, unable to put off the tunic of Nessus, he made his own pyre and so ended his life. Let Hephaestus set aside his jealousy and not begrudge it, if he was hated as old and lame of foot, while Ares was loved as young and handsome. Since, then, men of Greece, your gods have been convicted of incontinence, and your heroes are unmanly, as the histories on which your dramas are built have shown: the curse of Atreus, the bed of Thyestes, the pollution of the Pelopids, Danaus murdering out of envy and, drunk (with rage), making (Aegyptus) childless; and the Furies prepared the Thyestean banquets. And Procne, turned into a bird, laments to this day, and her sister, the daughter of Cecrops, shrills with her tongue cut out. And why should one even speak of the goads of Oedipus, the murder of Laius, the marriage with his mother, and the mutual slaughter of those who were at once his brothers and his children?

And I have come to hate your festivals. For there are immoderate surfeits there, and subtle flutes calling out to frenzied movements, and elaborate anointings with perfumes, and the putting on of garlands. With such a heap of evils you erase shame, and you are filled with it in mind, maddened by incontinence; and you are accustomed to practise unholy and frenzied unions. And I would say this further to you: why are you, a Greek, indignant with your son if, imitating Zeus, he plots against you and has despoiled your marriage? Why do you think him your enemy, yet worship the one who is like him? And why do you blame your wife for living licentiously, yet have honoured Aphrodite with temples? If these things had been said by others, it would have seemed a bare accusation and not the truth. But as it is, your own poets sing these things, and your histories cry them aloud.

Come, then, men of Greece, and share in incomparable wisdom; be taught by the divine Word, and learn of the incorruptible King; and do not recognize as heroes those who work slaughter of nations. For our own Ruler, the divine Word, who is already continually set over us, does not wish for strength of body or beauty of form or the haughtiness of noble birth, but a pure soul, walled about with holiness, and the watchwords of our King, divine deeds; for through the Word power passes through into the soul. (O trumpet of peace for the soul at war! O place of refuge from terrible passions! O teaching that quenches the fire within the soul!) This teaching does not make poets, does not equip philosophers or clever orators; but by its instruction it makes mortals immortal, mortals gods, and carries them from earth to the regions beyond Olympus. Come, be taught; become as I am, for I too was as you are. These things conquered me: the divinity of the teaching and the power of the Word. For as a good charmer makes a terrible serpent creep out of its den and drives it off, so the Word drives out from the very recesses of the soul the terrible passions of sense: first desire, through which every terrible thing (is born), … and things like these. Desire, then, being driven out, the soul becomes calm and serene. And freed from the evils that flowed about its neck, it goes back to the one who made it. For it must be restored to the place from which it departed, from which it came to be, …