Paganism
Pagan gods, myths, cults, and festivals, and Christian criticism of them.
Passages that substantially address this topic, in date order.
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- Apology 2Aristides of Athens · ca. 125–145 · Aristides divides humanity into worshipers of many gods (Chaldeans, Greeks, Egyptians), Jews, and Christians.
- Apology 3Aristides of Athens · ca. 125–145 · The Chaldeans worship the elements and images of them, though the elements are perishable and the images cannot even protect themselves.
- Apology 4Aristides of Athens · ca. 125–145 · The heaven and the earth are not gods, since they are moved, ordered, and used, and are works of God.
- Apology 5Aristides of Athens · ca. 125–145 · Water, fire, and wind are not gods, since they serve human needs and obey God's command.
- Apology 6Aristides of Athens · ca. 125–145 · The sun and moon are not gods, since they move by necessity, suffer eclipses, and serve human use.
- Apology 7Aristides of Athens · ca. 125–145 · A human being is not a god but a creature subject to need, passion, and death; the Chaldeans' error is complete.
- Apology 8Aristides of Athens · ca. 125–145 · The Greeks invented gods with human passions and crimes, giving cover to every kind of wickedness.
- Apology 9Aristides of Athens · ca. 125–145 · Aristides lists the scandalous myths of Kronos, Zeus, and Hephaestus to show they cannot be gods.
- Apology 10Aristides of Athens · ca. 125–145 · Hermes, Asclepius, Ares, Dionysus, Heracles, and Apollo are shown by their own myths to be needy, sinful, or mortal, and so not gods.
- Apology 11Aristides of Athens · ca. 125–145 · Artemis, Aphrodite, and Adonis are no gods, and such myths have led people into every kind of wickedness.
- Apology 12Aristides of Athens · ca. 125–145 · The Egyptians erred worst of all, worshiping the unhappy Isis, Osiris, and Typhon and even animals and plants.
- Apology 13Aristides of Athens · ca. 125–145 · The idols and the myths refute themselves: gods at war with one another, and guilty of what the laws punish, cannot be gods, however their stories are interpreted.
- First Apology 21Justin Martyr · ca. 150–155 · The virgin birth, death, resurrection, and ascension of Christ are no stranger than the myths told of Zeus's sons.
- First Apology 22Justin Martyr · ca. 150–155 · Even by pagan standards, Jesus's divine sonship, crucifixion, virgin birth, and miracles have parallels; yet he is superior.
- First Apology 24Justin Martyr · ca. 150–155 · Christians alone are persecuted, though every people worships different gods.
- First Apology 25Justin Martyr · ca. 150–155 · Christians have abandoned the immoral gods of myth for the impassible God.
- First Apology 54Justin Martyr · ca. 150–155 · The demons, hearing the prophecies of Christ without understanding them, invented Dionysus, Bellerophon, Perseus, Heracles, and Asclepius as imitations.
- First Apology 62Justin Martyr · ca. 150–155 · Pagan purifications and the custom of removing shoes in temples imitate baptism and Moses at the burning bush, where Christ spoke with him.
- First Apology 64Justin Martyr · ca. 150–155 · Kore at the springs and Athena as Zeus's “first thought” imitate the Spirit over the waters and the Word.
- Acts of John 38Anonymous · ca. 150–200 · At the festival of Artemis John enters the temple in black and is seized by the crowd.
- On the Sole Government of God 1Anonymous · 2nd–3rd century (disputed) · Envy turned humanity from the one Lord to idols; the author will refute idolatry from the Greek poets themselves.
- On the Sole Government of God 5Anonymous · 2nd–3rd century (disputed) · Menander and Euripides are quoted mocking gods who are carried about, unjust, adulterous, or greedy, and pointing to the one God.
- On the Sole Government of God 6Anonymous · 2nd–3rd century (disputed) · Gods with human passions, taught by men and given to adultery, cannot be lords of all; one must embrace the one true name before the Judge.
- Discourse to the Greeks 1Anonymous · 2nd–3rd century (disputed) · The author left Greek ways because Homer's heroes are slaves of lust, deceit, and madness.
- Discourse to the Greeks 2Anonymous · 2nd–3rd century (disputed) · Hesiod's gods commit parricide, rape, adultery, and pederasty, and their roles are absurdly confused.
- Discourse to the Greeks 3Anonymous · 2nd–3rd century (disputed) · Heracles' labours end in shameful subjection to women, and Greek tragedy is full of crimes among gods and heroes.
- Discourse to the Greeks 4Anonymous · 2nd–3rd century (disputed) · Greek festivals breed excess and licentiousness; Greeks condemn in their families what they honour in their gods.
- Dialogue with Trypho 67.2Justin Martyr · ca. 155–160 · Trypho compares the virgin birth to the Greek myth of Perseus and urges Justin to call Jesus a man chosen for his righteousness.
- Dialogue with Trypho 69.2Justin Martyr · ca. 155–160 · The Dionysus myth imitates Jacob's prophecy.
- Dialogue with Trypho 69.3Justin Martyr · ca. 155–160 · Heracles and Asclepius imitate prophecies of Christ.
- Dialogue with Trypho 70.1Justin Martyr · ca. 155–160 · The Mithras cult, with its rock birth and cave, imitates Daniel and Isaiah.
- Dialogue with Trypho 70.5Justin Martyr · ca. 155–160 · The Perseus myth too is the serpent's imitation.
- Oration to the Greeks 8Tatian · ca. 165–172 · The demons invented astrology and fate; the myths show the gods to be as passionate and contradictory as mortals.
- Oration to the Greeks 10Tatian · ca. 165–172 · The gods of myth change shape for their lusts, and the constellations honor adulterers and even the dead favorite Antinous.
- Oration to the Greeks 21Tatian · ca. 165–172 · The incarnation is no more absurd than the Greek myths of gods in human form; and allegorizing the myths only abolishes the gods.
- To Autolycus 1.10Theophilus of Antioch · ca. 180–185 · The Egyptians worship animals and the Greeks statues of dead men; there are many Zeuses, one of whom has a tomb in Crete; all are idols and demons.
- To Autolycus 2.3Theophilus of Antioch · ca. 180–185 · If the gods were born, why are no gods born now? The true God is everywhere and contained by nothing; Zeus had a home on Ida and a tomb in Crete.
- To Autolycus 2.5Theophilus of Antioch · ca. 180–185 · Homer makes the water of Ocean the origin of the gods; Hesiod asks the Muses, who were born after the world, how the world began.
- To Autolycus 2.6Theophilus of Antioch · ca. 180–185 · Hesiod's account of creation begins from Chaos but never says who shaped it; only God can have made and ordered matter.
- To Autolycus 2.7Theophilus of Antioch · ca. 180–185 · The Greek genealogies, such as Satyrus's descent of the Ptolemies from Dionysus, show that the gods were ancestors of men, that is, men.
- A Plea for the Christians 1Athenagoras · ca. 176–180 · Every people may worship as it likes under the emperors' tolerant rule, yet Christians alone are persecuted for their name; they do not resist, but ask for a hearing.
- A Plea for the Christians 5Athenagoras · ca. 176–180 · The poets Euripides and Sophocles saw that the gods of popular belief are mere names, and pointed to one God known through his works.
- A Plea for the Christians 14Athenagoras · ca. 176–180 · The cities themselves worship different gods, many of them deified men; if disagreeing with them is impiety, every nation is impious.
- A Plea for the Christians 17Athenagoras · ca. 176–180 · The names of the gods come from the poets, and their images from recent sculptors whose names are known; such gods are younger than their makers.
- A Plea for the Christians 18Athenagoras · ca. 176–180 · As the two emperors, father and son, rule all things, so God rules all through his Son, the Word; the pagan gods, by their own poets' account, were born, like human beings.
- A Plea for the Christians 19Athenagoras · ca. 176–180 · Gods that came into being must perish; neither water nor matter can be the origin of all things, for the Maker must precede what is made.
- A Plea for the Christians 20Athenagoras · ca. 176–180 · The poets' gods have monstrous bodies and commit parricide, incest, and rape; such beings are no better than beasts and cannot be gods.
- A Plea for the Christians 21Athenagoras · ca. 176–180 · The gods of Homer rage, grieve, are wounded, commit adultery, and serve men for hire; beings with such passions are not gods.
- A Plea for the Christians 22Athenagoras · ca. 176–180 · Allegorical explanations of the gods as elements or seasons fail: elements and seasons change, while God is unchangeable; the elements need their Maker as a ship needs its pilot.
- A Plea for the Christians 28Athenagoras · ca. 176–180 · Herodotus and the Egyptian priests show that the Egyptian gods, from whom the Greeks took the names of theirs, were ancient kings whose tombs and sufferings are still shown.
- A Plea for the Christians 29Athenagoras · ca. 176–180 · The poets themselves show that Heracles, Asclepius, and other deified heroes were mortals with human vices who died.
- A Plea for the Christians 30Athenagoras · ca. 176–180 · Rulers, heroes, and even the emperor Hadrian's favorite Antinous were deified by their subjects; if the poets' stories of the gods are true, the gods were mortal. So ends the answer to the charge of atheism.
- Exhortation to the Greeks 1.2Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Leave the mountains of the pagan mysteries for Zion: the Word of God sings a new song that heals grief.
- Exhortation to the Greeks 2.12Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Clement exposes the mysteries: the Bacchic rites with their raw flesh and serpents, and the Eleusinian drama of Demeter and Kore.
- Exhortation to the Greeks 2.13Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Clement derives “orgies” and “mysteries” from wrath and pollution, and curses the founders of the mystery cults.
- Exhortation to the Greeks 2.15Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · The mysteries of Demeter and of Cybele celebrate incest, bloodshed, and obscenity, as their own secret formulas show.
- Exhortation to the Greeks 2.16Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · The myths behind the mysteries tell of Zeus's incest with Demeter and Persephone in the form of a serpent, recalled in the Sabazian rites.
- Exhortation to the Greeks 2.19Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · The Corybantic and Cabiric mysteries commemorate a fratricide and the worship of Dionysus's severed genitals.
- Exhortation to the Greeks 2.24Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · The so-called atheists of Greece, like Diagoras, at least saw through the error of the pagan gods, a first spark of wisdom.
- Exhortation to the Greeks 2.26Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Clement lists seven ways in which the gods were invented: from the stars, crops, punishments, passions, abstractions, the poets' genealogies, and benefactors.
- Exhortation to the Greeks 2.27Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Once children of wrath, Christians have become children of God; the pagan gods, stripped of their masks, turn out to be myths or men.
- Exhortation to the Greeks 2.28Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · The mythographers count several Zeuses, Athenas, and Apollos, which shows they were many different men.
- Exhortation to the Greeks 2.29Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · The gods' native lands, crafts, lives, and tombs show that they were human; Ares was even imprisoned in a jar.
- Exhortation to the Greeks 2.30Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Hephaestus, Asclepius, the Dioscuri, and Heracles were mortals; even the poets say so, and their tombs and appearance are recorded.
- Exhortation to the Greeks 2.33Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Homer's majestic Zeus was an adulterer, Heracles a seducer, and the goddesses too were adulteresses; such gods make immorality a model.
- Exhortation to the Greeks 2.34Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · The great Greek games are funeral rites for dead men and a serpent, and the phallic processions of Dionysus commemorate an obscene myth.
- Exhortation to the Greeks 2.35Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · The gods of myth served men as slaves and servants, even as go-betweens in adultery.
- Exhortation to the Greeks 2.36Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · The gods of the poets are wounded, bleed, eat, sleep, and beget children, which shows they are human.
- Exhortation to the Greeks 2.37Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Zeus, once a lover in many disguises, no longer acts at all; he is dead, and the Cretans show his tomb.
- Exhortation to the Greeks 2.38Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · The pagans' own cult titles betray the human and ridiculous origin of their gods: a Zeus Agamemnon, a “Strangled” Artemis, a “Gaping” Apollo.
- Exhortation to the Greeks 2.39Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Greek cult titles are obscene or absurd, and the Greeks who mock Egyptian animal worship honor storks, weasels, ants, mice, and flies themselves.
- Exhortation to the Greeks 3.42Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · The gods are man-hating daemons who delight in bloodshed; Clement lists the human sacrifices offered to them across the Greek and Roman world.
- Exhortation to the Greeks 3.44Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Superstition began with a few men and grew into the worship of many daemons; even Eros and Pan are late inventions, and the temples are really tombs.
- Exhortation to the Greeks 3.45Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Famous Greek temples contain the tombs of mortal men and women; those who worship there have trusted in the dead.
- Exhortation to the Greeks 4.48Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · The great Egyptian god Sarapis, called “not made by hands,” was a statue with a known history, made of ground metals and stones.
- Exhortation to the Greeks 4.53Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Fire has destroyed famous temples, a foretaste of judgment; and the sculptors modeled their gods on their lovers and on courtesans.
- Exhortation to the Greeks 4.54Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Kings and even private men declared themselves gods; the Athenians worshiped Philip and Demetrius, who defiled Athena's temple with a courtesan.
- Exhortation to the Greeks 4.55Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · The gods were once men honored after death, as Hippo's epitaph shows; Homer's weeping Zeus and his calling the gods “daemons” betray them.
- Exhortation to the Greeks 4.58Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Art has deceived even animals; the poets and craftsmen have filled the world with gods and made heaven a stage for comedy.
- Exhortation to the Greeks 5.64Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · The early philosophers made gods of the elements, which is still the worship of matter.
- Exhortation to the Greeks 7.75Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · The Greeks caught only sparks of the Word; even the comic poets mock the begging priests and their gods.
- Exhortation to the Greeks 7.76Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Homer and Euripides ridicule the gods: Athena, Aphrodite, Dionysus, Apollo, and Heracles are shown as base or mad.
- Exhortation to the Greeks 10.102Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Stones, natural phenomena, abstractions, and passions are not gods; to worship them is absurd.
- Against Heresies 3.6.3Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · When Scripture calls idols gods, it adds words showing that they are not gods, as David, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Elijah do.
- 21Anonymous · ca. 180–185 · Some worship plants, others animals.
- 22Anonymous · ca. 180–185 · Worship of deified men refuted from the myths themselves.
- Hortatory Address to the Greeks 2Anonymous · 2nd–3rd century (disputed) · The poets cannot be teachers of religion, for Homer portrays the gods as lustful, wounded, weeping, and warring with one another.
- Hortatory Address to the Greeks 15Anonymous · 2nd–3rd century (disputed) · Orpheus, the first teacher of polytheism, later proclaimed one self-begotten God and spoke of the Father's voice, that is, his Word.
- Hortatory Address to the Greeks 21Anonymous · 2nd–3rd century (disputed) · God has no proper name; his self-designation "He Who Is" distinguishes him from the non-existent gods that the devil taught men to believe in.
- Hortatory Address to the Greeks 28Anonymous · 2nd–3rd century (disputed) · Homer too learned in Egypt and borrowed from Moses: bodily punishment of Tityus, creation on Achilles' shield, paradise in Alcinous's garden, Babel in Otus and Ephialtes, and the devil's fall in Ate.
- Miscellanies 7.4.22Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · The Greeks imagine gods with human forms and passions, each people in its own likeness; the one who knows believes in the one God, who is good and never the cause of evil.
- Miscellanies 7.4.23Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Gods who can be offended like irritable old women, as Artemis was with Oeneus or Athena with Auge, show that the Greeks liken the divine to the worst of human beings.
- On Idolatry 14Tertullian · ca. 196–211 · The fear that refusing pagan customs will bring blasphemy on Christ's name is no excuse; Christians may live among pagans but not share their festivals, since they have their own Lord's day and Pentecost.
- Octavius 6.1Minucius Felix · ca. 197–250 · Caecilius argues it is better to keep the ancestral religion, as every people worships its own gods.
- Octavius 6.2Minucius Felix · ca. 197–250 · Rome won its empire by its piety, even adopting the gods of conquered peoples.
- Octavius 7.3Minucius Felix · ca. 197–250 · Caecilius lists famous Roman stories as proof of the gods' presence.
- Octavius 7.5Minucius Felix · ca. 197–250 · Rome's temples are made sacred by the gods who dwell in them.
- Octavius 8.3Minucius Felix · ca. 197–250 · If Athens punished Protagoras, how much worse is the Christians' attack on the gods.
- Octavius 20.5Minucius Felix · ca. 197–250 · The gods began as dead kings whose memorial statues came to be worshipped.
- Octavius 21.3Minucius Felix · ca. 197–250 · Alexander the Great learned from a priest that the gods were men.
- Octavius 21.8Minucius Felix · ca. 197–250 · Jupiter lived, reigned, and died in Crete, where his tomb is still shown.
- Octavius 21.9Minucius Felix · ca. 197–250 · Deified kings like Romulus and Juba were honoured, not truly believed to be gods.
- Octavius 22.1Minucius Felix · ca. 197–250 · The rites of Isis act out a yearly loss and finding of her son.
- Octavius 22.2Minucius Felix · ca. 197–250 · It is absurd to mourn one's gods; the Eleusinian rites act out Ceres' search for her daughter.
- Octavius 22.6Minucius Felix · ca. 197–250 · Jupiter appears in many contradictory forms under different titles.
- Octavius 23.4Minucius Felix · ca. 197–250 · Homer tells shameful stories of Jupiter's weakness and lust.
- Octavius 23.7Minucius Felix · ca. 197–250 · Myths of divine adultery and lust give authority to human vice.
- Octavius 24.4Minucius Felix · ca. 197–250 · Self-wounding and castration in worship are madness excused only by the numbers who do it.
- Octavius 25.5Minucius Felix · ca. 197–250 · Rome's temples come from plunder, and worshipping captured gods is sacrilege.
- Octavius 25.7Minucius Felix · ca. 197–250 · The conquered gods could not protect their own people, and Rome's native gods are mere men.
- Octavius 30.3Minucius Felix · ca. 197–250 · Child sacrifice to Saturn in Africa followed the example of the god.
- Apology 6Tertullian · ca. 197 · The Romans who accuse Christians of abandoning ancestral custom have themselves abandoned their ancestors' laws on luxury, women's modesty, marriage, and the gods.
- Apology 10Tertullian · ca. 197 · Christians are charged with sacrilege and treason for not worshiping the gods, but the gods were men, as the case of Saturn shows.
- Apology 11Tertullian · ca. 197 · There was no reason to make gods out of men: the world was complete from the beginning, and the deified men were wicked, while far better men were left in the underworld.
- Apology 12Tertullian · ca. 197 · The gods are only dead men and their images mere material, which suffer in their making the very tortures inflicted on Christians.
- Apology 13Tertullian · ca. 197 · The pagans themselves dishonor their gods by choosing among them, selling and taxing them, and treating them like the dead, and by deifying prostitutes, emperors, and court favorites.
- Apology 14Tertullian · ca. 197 · The pagans dishonor their gods in their sacrifices and in their own poets, who tell of gods wounded, chained, lustful, and punished.
- Apology 15Tertullian · ca. 197 · Mimes, plays, and the arena make sport of the gods, and temples serve as places of vice, so the pagans insult their gods more than Christians do.
- Apology 16Tertullian · ca. 197 · Tertullian refutes the slanders that Christians worship an ass's head, the cross, or the sun, and mocks a caricature of the Christian god displayed in Carthage.
- Apology 24Tertullian · ca. 197 · If the gods are not gods, Christians cannot injure religion; even granting them, one may honor the supreme God above subordinates, and to forbid choice of religion is itself irreligion.
- Apology 25Tertullian · ca. 197 · Rome's power is not a reward for its religion: its gods failed their own homelands, and Rome grew great by wars that sacked temples and captured gods.
- Apology 40Tertullian · ca. 197 · Christians are blamed for every disaster, yet worse disasters struck before Christ; the human race has always offended God, and Christians' fasting and prayer now soften his anger.
- On the Dress of Women 2.11Tertullian · ca. 197–206 · Christian women go out only for grave purposes, such as visiting the sick, the Eucharist, or hearing the word, and need no finery; the fear that plainness brings blasphemy is misplaced.
- To the Nations 1.9Tertullian · 197 · Christians are blamed for every disaster, yet disasters came long before Christians, and gods who need men to avenge them are weak.
- To the Nations 1.10Tertullian · 197 · Tertullian turns the charge of neglecting the gods back on the pagans, who sell, tax, mock, and parody their own gods and give the same honors to their dead.
- To the Nations 1.11Tertullian · 197 · The slander that Christians worship an ass's head comes from Tacitus, who contradicts himself, and pagans themselves worship asses and all kinds of animals.
- To the Nations 1.12Tertullian · 197 · Pagans who mock Christians as worshippers of the cross themselves venerate crosses in their wooden idols, in the frames of their statues, and in their military standards.
- To the Nations 2.1Tertullian · 197 · Tertullian takes up Varro's three kinds of theology, natural, mythical, and national, and argues that none of them can yield a true god, since true divinity must be certain, pure, and common to all.
- To the Nations 2.3Tertullian · 197 · The elements cannot be gods: the world either had a beginning and so is not eternal, or else Varro's reasons for calling the elements living beings point instead to an unseen mover behind them.
- To the Nations 2.4Tertullian · 197 · The Greek word for god does not come from “running,” as some claim, but was borrowed from the name of the true God, who is unseen and distinct from matter; the philosophers' speculations about the heavens are futile.
- To the Nations 2.5Tertullian · 197 · People thank the physician, not the medicine, and blame the robber, not the sword; so the orderly service of the elements should lead them to the Maker who rules the elements, not to worship the elements themselves.
- To the Nations 2.7Tertullian · 197 · The heroes and gods of myth were men, many of them wicked, and pagans cannot both honor the poets who tell of their crimes and deny those stories while basing rites on them.
- To the Nations 2.8Tertullian · 197 · Local gods are unknown even to their own towns, and the Egyptians worship animals and even a man: Serapis, Tertullian argues, was really the patriarch Joseph, deified for his grain policy.
- To the Nations 2.9Tertullian · 197 · Tertullian mocks Varro's classes of Roman gods and the deified Romans, Aeneas the deserter, Romulus the fratricide, and others, who were worth less than many ordinary people never deified.
- To the Nations 2.10Tertullian · 197 · Tertullian retells the tale of Larentina, a harlot won by Hercules at dice and later deified, to show how cheaply the Romans hand out divinity.
- To the Nations 2.11Tertullian · 197 · Tertullian lists the minor Roman deities assigned to every stage of conception, birth, childhood, and marriage, including indecent wedding gods, to show the absurdity of such worship.
- To the Nations 2.12Tertullian · 197 · Tracing the gods to their origin in Saturn, Tertullian ridicules the myths of his birth and the allegory of Saturn as time, and argues from history and the Sibyl that Saturn and his line were men.
- To the Nations 2.13Tertullian · 197 · If men became gods after death, someone higher must have made them so, and no merit can explain it, since the stories of Saturn and Jupiter are full of incest, violence, and lust.
- To the Nations 2.14Tertullian · 197 · Hercules, Aesculapius, and Theseus did nothing that ordinary men have not surpassed, and their vices and crimes make them unworthy of heaven.
- To the Nations 2.15Tertullian · 197 · Pagans have set humans and animals among the stars and invented gods for sorrow, death, and every door, hinge, and slope, yet these things happen everywhere even where such gods are unknown.
- To the Nations 2.17Tertullian · 197 · Rome's empire was not a reward for its religion, which it plundered in conquering others; the one God who orders the times gives and takes away kingdoms.
- Prescription against Heretics 40Tertullian · ca. 203 · The devil imitates Christian sacraments in pagan mysteries, as in Mithraism, and likewise twists Scripture into heresy, which is a kind of idolatry.
- Antidote for the Scorpion's Sting 7Tertullian · ca. 211–213 · When heretics call God a murderer, Tertullian answers from Scripture: Wisdom “slaughters her children” for their life and glory, as God gave up his own Son; the pagans do not question their gods' demands for human sacrifice.
- Exhortation to Chastity 13Tertullian · ca. 208 · Even pagans honor once-married women and priestly celibacy, and Dido and Lucretia died rather than take a second man; how much more should Christians, like those of the church who live in continence, refuse a second marriage.
- On Fasting 16Tertullian · ca. 210–220 · Scripture punishes gluttony in Israel, Eli's house, and the prophet from Judah; even the heathen humble themselves by fasting, while the psychics make their belly their god.
- On the Crown 7Tertullian · 211 · Secular literature shows that crowns were invented by, and dedicated to, those the heathen worshipped as gods, so the crown belongs to idolatry and to the demons behind it.
- On the Crown 15Tertullian · 211 · Christians should keep their heads for the crown God gives the faithful, seen in the visions of Revelation; even initiates of Mithras refuse a crown for their god's sake, to the shame of crowned Christians.
- Fragment 12Julius Africanus · after 221 · A euhemerist account of the pagan gods as early kings descended from Shem: Kronos, Zeus (Picus), Ares (Baal), Faunus (Hermes), Aphrodite and Adonis.
- Refutation of All Heresies 1.26.2Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Hesiod's account of the origin of the gods, from Chaos, Earth, and Eros to Cronus and Zeus, is quoted at length.
- Refutation of All Heresies 5.7.22Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The Naassenes turn to the Egyptian mysteries of Isis.
- Refutation of All Heresies 5.7.23Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Isis seeking Osiris is read as changeable creation clothed in the seven planets.
- Refutation of All Heresies 5.7.28Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The Naassenes see the phallic image of Osiris, set up publicly, as the "good" proclaimed on the housetops.
- Refutation of All Heresies 5.7.29Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · They say Hermes, shown as a phallic pillar, is the Word.
- Refutation of All Heresies 5.7.30Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · They read Homer's Hermes leading the suitors' souls as the call to souls fallen from the heavenly Man.
- Refutation of All Heresies 5.7.38Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Ocean flowing down begets men, flowing up begets gods.
- Refutation of All Heresies 5.8.10Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Two statues at Samothrace are said to represent the Primal Man and the reborn spiritual man.
- Refutation of All Heresies 5.8.39Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · They say the Eleusinian mystery of the reaped ear of grain points to the Man.
- Refutation of All Heresies 5.8.40Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · They cite the Eleusinian hierophant's cry announcing the birth of a holy child.
- Refutation of All Heresies 5.8.41Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · They derive "Eleusis" from "coming" down and "Anactoreion" from going back up.
- Refutation of All Heresies 5.8.42Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The lesser mysteries lead to the greater, for "greater deaths obtain greater portions."
- Refutation of All Heresies 5.8.43Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The lesser mysteries of Persephone lie at the end of the broad road of the perishing.
- Refutation of All Heresies 5.8.44Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The greater mysteries are the gate of heaven, open only to the spiritual, who become bridegrooms.
- Refutation of All Heresies 5.9.8Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · A theater hymn to Attis lists his many names, which the Naassenes claim as their own.
- Refutation of All Heresies 5.9.9Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Another hymn to the many-formed Attis.
- Refutation of All Heresies 5.9.10Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The Naassenes attend the rites of the Great Mother and imitate her castrated priests.
- Refutation of All Heresies 5.9.12Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · They derive the word for temple from the serpent, claiming every rite honors him.
- Refutation of All Heresies 5.16.3Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Kronos brings every birth to decay, and the Peratae cite Homer's oath by the water of Styx as proof that even the gods fear water.
- Refutation of All Heresies 5.20.4Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The Sethian teaching derives from the old poets Musaeus, Linus, and Orpheus.
- Refutation of All Heresies 5.20.5Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Their doctrine of the womb and navel is in Orphic poems and in the rites of Phlius, older than the Eleusinian mysteries.
- Refutation of All Heresies 5.20.6Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Hippolytus describes a painting at Phlius of a winged old man pursuing a dark woman, which he links to Sethian doctrine.
- Refutation of All Heresies 5.23.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The Gnostic Justin leads his hearers back to Greek myths and binds them by oath before revealing his mystery.
- Refutation of All Heresies 5.25.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Herodotus tells how Heracles, asleep in Scythia, lost his horse.
- Refutation of All Heresies 5.25.2Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · A half-maiden in the wilderness promises to show Heracles his horse if he will lie with her.
- Refutation of All Heresies 5.25.3Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The creature is maiden above and viper below; Heracles lies with her and foretells three famous sons.
- Refutation of All Heresies 5.26.33Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Justin identifies the Good one with Priapus, “maker before” all things.
- Refutation of All Heresies 5.26.34Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · In the myth of Leda and the swan, the swan is Elohim and Leda is Eden.
- Refutation of All Heresies 5.26.35Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Justin reads other Greek myths, Ganymede and Danae, as his own story.
- Commentary on John 28.55Origen · ca. 230–248 · An apostate who returns to paganism is like one dead in Hades.
- Exhortation to Martyrdom 46Origen · 235 · Names are not mere conventions: calling God “Zeus” or the sun “Apollo” invokes demons, so God must be called only by the names Scripture gives him.
- Homily on 1 Samuel 1.13Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · We may speak lofty things only of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit; pagans with many gods and heretics who invent a higher god than the Creator “multiply lofty things.”
- Homilies on Joshua 7.4Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · The accursed things of Jericho are worldly habits, pagan festivals, astrology, and augury, which Christians must not bring into the church.
- Instructions 1.4Commodian · 3rd century (disputed) · Saturn, who grew old and devoured his children, was a mortal king, not a god.
- Instructions 1.5Commodian · 3rd century (disputed) · Jupiter, born in time on Crete, dethroned his father and seduced women; he is not the God who made heaven and earth.
- Instructions 1.6Commodian · 3rd century (disputed) · It is childish to believe that Jupiter, a mortal born on earth and dead in Crete, thunders from heaven.
- Instructions 1.10Commodian · 3rd century (disputed) · Neptune, a fisherman, hired mason, and adulterer, was a mortal.
- Instructions 1.12Commodian · 3rd century (disputed) · Bacchus, killed by the Titans and born a second time of Semele, was a mortal, and his rites are feigned frenzy.
- Instructions 1.19Commodian · 3rd century (disputed) · The devotees of Nemesis are fooled by drunken priests who carry and spin a wooden image and pretend to divine.
- Against Celsus 1.23Origen · ca. 248 · Celsus mocks the Hebrews' faith in one God, but the Greek gods are fictions; the order of the one world points to one Maker, who is neither a part nor a whole.
- Against Celsus 1.25Origen · ca. 248 · Divine names carry meanings and power—the angels' names, and above all the name of Jesus—so Christians rightly die rather than call God "Zeus."
- Against Celsus 3.2Origen · ca. 248 · Origen argues that the Jewish prophecies of Christ are no trifle, and that a nation taught to reject pagan oracles must have had genuine prophets to keep it from turning to them.
- Against Celsus 3.22Origen · ca. 248 · Celsus contrasts the deified Greek heroes with the risen Jesus; Origen asks whether Celsus thinks those heroes exist at all, and argues from their own stories that they could not have become gods.
- Against Celsus 3.25Origen · ca. 248 · Origen argues that healing and prophecy do not prove divinity, since Apollo's oracles honored a boxer and the licentious poet Archilochus, and the Pythia's inspiration was indecent, unlike anything Christians hold of Jesus.
- Against Celsus 3.26Origen · ca. 248 · Origen quotes Herodotus's account of Aristeas of Proconnesus, who vanished, reappeared, and was honored at Metapontum by command of Apollo, a story Celsus accepts without question.
- Against Celsus 3.35Origen · ca. 248 · Origen presses Celsus: either the hero-shrines have no power, making Celsus an Epicurean, or they do, in which case Jesus, who forbids their worship as demons, must be more powerful than all of them.
- Against Celsus 3.37Origen · ca. 248 · Origen says Christians refuse to compare Jesus with Zeus or Apollo, whom they know to be demons that feed on sacrifices, and explains that some fallen spirits, like deluded philosophers, proclaim themselves gods, so that one should trust only the God over all and Christ.
- Against Celsus 3.42Origen · ca. 248 · Origen replies that the body is not defiled by nature, only by vice, and that the pagan heroes Asclepius, Dionysus, and Heracles made no one better and lived immorally, so they have no better claim than Jesus to divinity.
- Against Celsus 3.43Origen · ca. 248 · Origen turns Celsus's defense of Zeus's tomb in Crete against him, citing Callimachus, who called the Cretans liars yet admitted Zeus was born, while Celsus accepts Jesus' burial but denies his resurrection.
- Against Celsus 4.17Origen · ca. 248 · The Christian account of Christ's descent is far nobler than Greek myths like that of Dionysus torn by the Titans, which the Greeks allegorize; Christ came down in love to seek the lost sheep.
- Against Celsus 4.38Origen · ca. 248 · Celsus mocks the creation of Eve from Adam's rib but admires Hesiod's myth of Pandora as allegory; Origen quotes Hesiod at length to show which story is more laughable read literally, and asks why only the Jews may not speak in allegory.
- Against Celsus 4.48Origen · ca. 248 · If any stories deserve shame, it is the Greek myths of gods castrating and devouring one another, which even Chrysippus allegorized obscenely; Christians therefore refuse to call God “Zeus” or give the sun and moon divine names.
- Against Celsus 5.2Origen · ca. 248 · Celsus's claim that no god or son of God ever comes down would also rule out Apollo and Asclepius, whom pagans believe visit earth, or reduce them to demons.
- Against Celsus 5.27Origen · ca. 248 · If every nation's customs are right as Celsus says, then parricide, incest, human sacrifice, and animal worship would all be holy, and holiness would be mere convention, which is absurd.
- Against Celsus 5.34Origen · ca. 248 · Celsus cites Herodotus to show that every nation clings to its own customs, however strange, and endorses Pindar's line that 'custom is king of all.'
- Against Celsus 5.38Origen · ca. 248 · Celsus's rule fails when people of different customs meet: must an Ethiopian among Arabians die or betray his gods? The Egyptian gods are nature allegories, and Sarapis a recent magical invention.
- Against Celsus 5.39Origen · ca. 248 · Celsus approves of Egyptians who revere man-eating crocodiles but blames Christians who honor Virtue itself, the Son of God, who is God's Wisdom and Righteousness, uniquely united with the soul of Jesus.
- Against Celsus 5.45Origen · ca. 248 · Against Celsus's view that divine names are interchangeable, Origen argues that names have power by nature, not convention: 'the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob' works against demons, but translated or replaced names do not.
- Against Celsus 6.22Origen · ca. 248 · Celsus describes the Mithraic seven-gated ladder of the planets, but Origen asks why he drags this, rather than any other mystery cult, into an attack on Christians and Jews.
- Against Celsus 6.39Origen · ca. 248 · Origen disputes Celsus's claim, taken from Herodotus, that different nations merely give different names to the same gods, and declines to answer for magic charms that have nothing to do with Christians.
- Against Celsus 6.42Origen · ca. 248 · Celsus mocks the Christian belief in Satan as a garbled version of Greek myths of divine war in Heraclitus, Pherecydes, Homer, and the Titans, which he reads as allegories.
- Against Celsus 7.3Origen · ca. 248 · Celsus prefers the Greek oracles to the Hebrew prophets, but Origen argues that even if the oracles are genuine they come from evil spirits, since the Pythian priestess received her spirit in a shameful way and prophesied in frenzy.
- Against Celsus 7.5Origen · ca. 248 · The spirits behind the oracles resemble evil souls that haunt tombs and feed on sacrifices; a true god at Delphi would have chosen a wise man, not an ordinary woman, as his prophet.
- Against Celsus 7.6Origen · ca. 248 · Apollo chose no wise person as his prophet and praised Socrates less for wisdom than for his sacrifices, and Homer's Chryses shows that such powers answer bribes of sacrifice, marks of demons, not gods.
- Against Celsus 7.54Origen · ca. 248 · Origen replies that Heracles' deeds were disgraceful, Orpheus told worse myths than Homer, and Anaxarchus and Epictetus, however brave, cannot be compared with Jesus, whose words still convert people.
- Against Celsus 8.21Origen · ca. 248 · Celsus asks why Christians do not join the public festivals; Origen answers that those festivals rest on human myths, and the true festival is doing one's duty and praying always, as Paul warns against observing days.
- Against Celsus 8.66Origen · ca. 248 · Celsus rightly says one must die rather than blaspheme God, but then urges hymning the Sun and Athena; Origen answers that Christians praise the sun as God's creature, which itself praises God, but reject Athena and her myths.
- To Donatus 8Cyprian of Carthage · ca. 246 · The theatre keeps ancient crimes alive, teaches adultery and effeminacy, and makes vice religious by showing the gods' immorality.
- That Idols Are Not Gods 1Cyprian of Carthage · ca. 246–250, if by Cyprian · The gods of the pagans were once kings, honored after death with images and rites that later generations turned into worship.
- That Idols Are Not Gods 3Cyprian of Carthage · ca. 246–250, if by Cyprian · Worship differs from nation to nation because each honors its own ancestors, as Alexander the Great learned; and if gods were born once, why no longer?
- That Idols Are Not Gods 4Cyprian of Carthage · ca. 246–250, if by Cyprian · Rome's own gods are deified men and vices, and the foreign gods it adopted could not even protect their own peoples.
- To Quirinus 3.59Cyprian of Carthage · ca. 248–250 (book 3 perhaps later) · The idols of the heathen are lifeless works of human hands, and the gods of the nations are demons.
- Acts of Achatius (Disputation of Achatius) 2Anonymous · ca. 250–251 · Achatius ridicules Apollo and the other gods from their own myths.
- To Demetrian 14Cyprian of Carthage · 252–253 · Gods that need their worshipers to avenge and guard them are weaker than those worshipers and cannot protect anyone.
- Symposium 8.14Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd century · Thecla describes the astrologers' spherical cosmos and zodiac and mocks its mythical origins: if the signs came from later myths, earlier people lived without any fate of birth.
- Against the Nations 1.2Arnobius of Sicca · ca. 297–303 · Arnobius asks what change in nature or in human life has actually occurred since Christianity appeared, and finds none.
- Against the Nations 1.28Arnobius of Sicca · ca. 297–303 · Pagans honor minor deities, deified prostitutes, and sacred animals, yet persecute Christians for worshiping the Father from whom any gods would derive their being and immortality.
- Against the Nations 1.34Arnobius of Sicca · ca. 297–303 · Jupiter, who was born and had parents, cannot be identified with the eternal, unbegotten God.
- Against the Nations 1.36Arnobius of Sicca · ca. 297–303 · The objection is that Christians worship a crucified man as God; Arnobius answers that the pagan gods were themselves once mortals with human births and stories.
- Against the Nations 1.37Arnobius of Sicca · ca. 297–303 · Pagans worship deified mortals, so they cannot fault Christians for worshiping one who was born a man.
- Against the Nations 1.41Arnobius of Sicca · ca. 297–303 · Pagans themselves worship gods who died violent deaths, such as Liber, Aesculapius, Hercules, Attis, and Romulus.
- Against the Nations 1.64Arnobius of Sicca · ca. 297–303 · Pagans deify tyrants and honor immoral philosophers, yet hate Christ, who harmed no one and brought good news of the soul's salvation.
- Against the Nations 2.68Arnobius of Sicca · ca. 297–303 · The Romans have altered even their sacrificial rites, so Christians may rightly choose a better and truer religion.
- Against the Nations 2.70Arnobius of Sicca · ca. 297–303 · By the pagans' own myths, their gods were born at particular times, so the pagans' religion too had a beginning.
- Against the Nations 2.71Arnobius of Sicca · ca. 297–303 · Arnobius calculates from the Roman legendary genealogy that Jupiter lived under two thousand years ago, so the pagan gods are themselves recent.
- Against the Nations 2.73Arnobius of Sicca · ca. 297–303 · Rome itself adopted new gods, such as Isis, Serapis, and the Great Mother, at known dates, so Christianity's recent arrival is no reproach.
- Against the Nations 3.4Arnobius of Sicca · ca. 297–303 · Even granting many gods, the pagans cannot know which gods really exist or what their true names are.
- Against the Nations 3.5Arnobius of Sicca · ca. 297–303 · Pagans cannot know the number of the gods and so neglect countless of them; they should pardon Christians for neglecting gods whose existence is unknown.
- Against the Nations 3.6Arnobius of Sicca · ca. 297–303 · Christians would honor the gods if they knew them, but pagan myths degrade them, beginning with the idea that the gods are male and female, as Cicero himself criticized.
- Against the Nations 3.9Arnobius of Sicca · ca. 297–303 · If the gods beget, heaven would overflow with them; if they do not, their sexual organs would be pointless.
- Against the Nations 3.10Arnobius of Sicca · ca. 297–303 · Arnobius mocks the implications of gods with sexes: lust, menstruation, pregnancy, and childbirth among the deities.
- Against the Nations 3.11Arnobius of Sicca · ca. 297–303 · If the gods are angry, it is with the pagans who dishonor them with shameful myths and rites, not with Christians.
- Against the Nations 3.13Arnobius of Sicca · ca. 297–303 · If the gods have human form, they must also have all the organs and entrails of the human body.
- Against the Nations 3.14Arnobius of Sicca · ca. 297–303 · If the gods have human shape, they must differ in features, and the sculptors' workshops show them as young, old, bald, or clothed.
- Against the Nations 3.15Arnobius of Sicca · ca. 297–303 · Giving the gods human bodies with hair, age, and clothing is as absurd as the Egyptians' animal gods, whom the pagans mock.
- Against the Nations 3.20Arnobius of Sicca · ca. 297–303 · Arnobius mocks the assignment of particular crafts and skills to particular gods.
- Against the Nations 3.21Arnobius of Sicca · ca. 297–303 · Arnobius asks why gods would need music, hunting, prophecy, medicine, midwifery, smithing, weaving, or oratory for themselves.
- Against the Nations 3.22Arnobius of Sicca · ca. 297–303 · If the gods teach the arts, they must first know them, which returns to the absurdity of gods practicing crafts they do not need.
- Against the Nations 3.23Arnobius of Sicca · ca. 297–303 · If gods preside over seafaring, farming, childbirth, healing, and athletics, why do those enterprises so often fail?
- Against the Nations 3.24Arnobius of Sicca · ca. 297–303 · Gods who help only when paid with sacrifices are selling favors; the true God gives his benefits freely to all, good and bad alike.
- Against the Nations 3.25Arnobius of Sicca · ca. 297–303 · Arnobius ridicules minor deities assigned to wedding rites and to eating and drinking, and the savage natures ascribed to some gods.
- Against the Nations 3.26Arnobius of Sicca · ca. 297–303 · If Mars governs wars, either he fails to stop them or he delights in all the slaughter and ruin they bring.
- Against the Nations 3.27Arnobius of Sicca · ca. 297–303 · If Venus inspires love, she is responsible for adultery, incest, and the suicides of desperate lovers.
- Against the Nations 3.28Arnobius of Sicca · ca. 297–303 · Gods who stir up love, war, and discord cannot be the tranquil, perfect beings philosophy describes; either they do not do these things or they are not gods.
- Against the Nations 3.29Arnobius of Sicca · ca. 297–303 · Allegorical interpretations that make Janus the world or year and Saturn time abolish the very gods of myth and worship.
- Against the Nations 3.30Arnobius of Sicca · ca. 297–303 · If Jupiter is the sun or ether and Juno the air, the mythical Jupiter and Juno with all their cult titles do not exist.
- Against the Nations 3.32Arnobius of Sicca · ca. 297–303 · Etymologies making Mercury 'speech' and the Great Mother, Ceres, and Vesta all 'the earth' abolish these gods.
- Against the Nations 3.33Arnobius of Sicca · ca. 297–303 · Identifying Vulcan with fire, Venus with desire, Proserpina with sprouting crops, and Liber and Apollo with the sun abolishes these gods too.
- Against the Nations 3.35Arnobius of Sicca · ca. 297–303 · If the world is one living being, as the Stoics hold, its parts cannot be separate gods, and only the world itself would be divine.
- Against the Nations 4.1Arnobius of Sicca · ca. 297–303 · Arnobius asks whether the Roman deified virtues, such as Piety, Concord, and Victory, are real gods or mere names.
- Against the Nations 4.5Arnobius of Sicca · ca. 297–303 · Gods assigned to the left-hand regions make no sense, since left and right exist only relative to the observer.
- Against the Nations 4.7Arnobius of Sicca · ca. 297–303 · Arnobius lists obscene and trivial Roman deities, whose names reveal them as inventions.
- Against the Nations 4.13Arnobius of Sicca · ca. 297–303 · Perhaps one being, and the spirits under him, impersonates all the gods; and the pagans absurdly multiply gods who share the same names.
- Against the Nations 4.16Arnobius of Sicca · ca. 297–303 · Arnobius imagines five Minervas quarreling over the sacrifices offered to 'Minerva', leaving the worshiper unable to decide between them.
- Against the Nations 4.18Arnobius of Sicca · ca. 297–303 · The pagans cannot disown their theologians' writings, since all their knowledge of the gods comes from books.
- Against the Nations 4.22Arnobius of Sicca · ca. 297–303 · The myths of Jupiter's many affairs brand the king of the gods as a lecherous adulterer.
- Against the Nations 4.24Arnobius of Sicca · ca. 297–303 · The shameful myths about the gods, not the Christians, are the cause of humanity's troubles; Arnobius lists many such myths.
- Against the Nations 4.25Arnobius of Sicca · ca. 297–303 · It is the pagans' own poets and historians, not Christians, who tell of the gods' crimes, servitude, wounds, and burials.
- Against the Nations 4.26Arnobius of Sicca · ca. 297–303 · The pagans' own writings tell of the gods' countless seductions and of their love for boys.
- Against the Nations 4.28Arnobius of Sicca · ca. 297–303 · Gods to whom the myths ascribe birth, castration, war, lust, theft, and death would be human, not divine.
- Against the Nations 4.34Arnobius of Sicca · ca. 297–303 · Romans protect their rulers and citizens from slander by law but let poets slander the gods freely, which shows they do not truly revere them.
- Against the Nations 4.35Arnobius of Sicca · ca. 297–303 · In the theaters, before the priests and magistrates, actors portray Venus as a harlot, the Great Mother in lust, Hercules in agony, and Jupiter as an adulterer.
- Against the Nations 4.37Arnobius of Sicca · ca. 297–303 · If the gods are angry, the pagans' myths have provoked them; if they cannot be angry, they are not angry with Christians either.
- Against the Nations 5.1Arnobius of Sicca · ca. 297–303 · Arnobius retells from Valerius Antias the legend of Numa tricking Faunus and Picus, and then Jupiter, into substituting an onion, hair, and a fish for human heads in the rite of expiating lightning.
- Against the Nations 5.2Arnobius of Sicca · ca. 297–303 · The story is absurd: immortal gods do not thirst, get drunk, or get tied up, and Jupiter would not reveal how to frustrate his own thunderbolts.
- Against the Nations 5.3Arnobius of Sicca · ca. 297–303 · It is absurd that Jupiter was summoned by rites and outwitted by Numa, who could not have known in advance what Jupiter would say.
- Against the Nations 5.4Arnobius of Sicca · ca. 297–303 · The story makes Jupiter either foolish or cruel, since he first demanded human heads for a rite that an onion and a fish could satisfy.
- Against the Nations 5.5Arnobius of Sicca · ca. 297–303 · Arnobius begins to recount, from Timotheus, the Phrygian myth of the Great Mother and the birth of the violent two-sexed Agdestis.
- Against the Nations 5.6Arnobius of Sicca · ca. 297–303 · In the myth, Liber tricks Agdestis into castrating himself; from his blood a pomegranate grows, by which Nana conceives Attis, who is loved by the Great Mother and Agdestis.
- Against the Nations 5.7Arnobius of Sicca · ca. 297–303 · The myth continues: Agdestis drives the wedding guests mad, Attis castrates himself and dies under a pine, and from these events come the rites of the Great Mother's cult.
- Against the Nations 5.8Arnobius of Sicca · ca. 297–303 · If the Great Mother was born from Deucalion's stones, she is of human origin and, by Varro's chronology, less than two thousand years old.
- Against the Nations 5.9Arnobius of Sicca · ca. 297–303 · Arnobius ridicules the myth's picture of Jupiter attempting to violate his mother, the Great Mother.
- Against the Nations 5.10Arnobius of Sicca · ca. 297–303 · Arnobius mocks the myth's account of Agdestis conceived in a rock and born bellowing in the tenth month.
- Against the Nations 5.11Arnobius of Sicca · ca. 297–303 · Arnobius ridicules the gods' council deciding to castrate Agdestis and pictures Liber preparing the noose.
- Against the Nations 5.12Arnobius of Sicca · ca. 297–303 · Arnobius mocks the myth's account of the pomegranate that grew from Agdestis's blood and made Nana pregnant.
- Against the Nations 5.13Arnobius of Sicca · ca. 297–303 · Arnobius continues to mock the details of the Attis myth.
- Against the Nations 5.14Arnobius of Sicca · ca. 297–303 · The details of the Attis myth are shameful fables fit for old women's tales, and its ending is incredible.
- Against the Nations 5.16Arnobius of Sicca · ca. 297–303 · The rites of the Great Mother, with the sacred pine, wool, violets, mourning Galli, and fasting, reenact the Attis myth and show that it is believed.
- Against the Nations 5.17Arnobius of Sicca · ca. 297–303 · The mourning rites of the Galli either reenact the shameful myth or conceal something equally disgraceful.
- Against the Nations 5.18Arnobius of Sicca · ca. 297–303 · Arnobius passes over, while briefly mentioning, the Good Goddess's punishment for drinking wine and an obscene legend of the birth of King Servius Tullius.
- Against the Nations 5.19Arnobius of Sicca · ca. 297–303 · Arnobius mentions the savage and obscene rites of Bacchus, Cyprian Venus, and the Corybantes, and the myth of Liber torn apart by the Titans.
- Against the Nations 5.20Arnobius of Sicca · ca. 297–303 · Arnobius recounts the Phrygian mystery myth of Jupiter violating his mother Ceres in the form of a bull.
- Against the Nations 5.21Arnobius of Sicca · ca. 297–303 · The myth continues: Jupiter appeases Ceres with a ram's testicles, then as a serpent fathers a bull-child on their daughter Proserpina, as the Sabazian rites commemorate.
- Against the Nations 5.22Arnobius of Sicca · ca. 297–303 · The pagans heap every kind of adultery and even incest on Jupiter.
- Against the Nations 5.23Arnobius of Sicca · ca. 297–303 · Arnobius pictures the degrading scenes of Jupiter as a bull and gelding a ram, and says that such myths would rightly anger any real Jupiter.
- Against the Nations 5.24Arnobius of Sicca · ca. 297–303 · The Greek Thesmophoria are no better; Arnobius begins the Eleusinian myth of Proserpina's abduction and Ceres' search.
- Against the Nations 5.25Arnobius of Sicca · ca. 297–303 · Arnobius recounts the Eleusinian story in which Baubo cheers the grieving Ceres by an obscene exposure, so that she drinks the kykeon.
- Against the Nations 5.26Arnobius of Sicca · ca. 297–303 · Arnobius quotes Orphic verses describing Baubo and Ceres, and the Eleusinian password, as proof of the rites' shameful origin.
- Against the Nations 5.27Arnobius of Sicca · ca. 297–303 · The Eleusinian myth portrays gods who abduct, grieve, and are consoled by obscenity, which is unworthy of divinity.
- Against the Nations 5.28Arnobius of Sicca · ca. 297–303 · Arnobius recounts the obscene legend of Liber and Prosymnus as the origin of the phallic processions honoring Liber.
- Against the Nations 5.29Arnobius of Sicca · ca. 297–303 · The phallic cults show the truth of these myths; such gods, whose incest and lusts are celebrated, set a corrupting example that Christians rightly refuse to worship.
- Against the Nations 5.30Arnobius of Sicca · ca. 297–303 · Atheists and Euhemerists treat the gods more respectfully than the pagans, whose worship is full of slander against them.
- Against the Nations 5.31Arnobius of Sicca · ca. 297–303 · It is the pagans who have attributed every disgrace to the gods, so they, not Christians, have provoked divine anger.
- Against the Nations 5.32Arnobius of Sicca · ca. 297–303 · The pagan objection: the myths are allegories of natural processes, such as rain and seed, not literal accounts of divine vice.
- Against the Nations 5.33Arnobius of Sicca · ca. 297–303 · Allegorical interpretation is a sophist's trick; the insult lies in the words themselves, and the pagans cannot know the writers' hidden meanings.
- Against the Nations 5.34Arnobius of Sicca · ca. 297–303 · Allegory has no fixed limits; anyone can interpret the myths in countless ways, so no certain meaning can be drawn from them.
- Against the Nations 5.35Arnobius of Sicca · ca. 297–303 · If the myths are allegories, the pagans should explain every detail allegorically, which they cannot do.
- Against the Nations 5.39Arnobius of Sicca · ca. 297–303 · The mystery rites commemorate the events of the myths, which proves that the myths were understood as history, not allegory.
- Against the Nations 5.41Arnobius of Sicca · ca. 297–303 · Allegory used to veil shameful things in decent words; the pagans veil decent ideas in shameful stories, which is perverse.
- Against the Nations 5.44Arnobius of Sicca · ca. 297–303 · Many myths cannot be allegorized at all, and the pagans have doubled their fault by calling shameful things by the gods' names.
- Against the Nations 6.3Arnobius of Sicca · ca. 297–303 · Christians honor the gods as they honor the supreme God, without temples; temples are useless to gods, who need no shelter, and confining gods in houses insults them.
- Against the Nations 6.6Arnobius of Sicca · ca. 297–303 · Many temples are built over the tombs of mortals, which means either that the dead are worshiped or that the gods are insulted.
- Against the Nations 6.23Arnobius of Sicca · ca. 297–303 · Famous temples burned or were plundered while their gods did nothing, showing that no gods inhabit them.
- Against the Nations 7.3Arnobius of Sicca · ca. 297–303 · Sacrifices cannot feed the gods, since true gods need no nourishment and the offerings are simply burned or eaten by dogs.
- Against the Nations 7.4Arnobius of Sicca · ca. 297–303 · Gods cannot take pleasure in sacrifices, since they are free from passions and bodily senses, and the slaughter of animals is a pitiable sight even to humans.
- Against the Nations 7.9Arnobius of Sicca · ca. 297–303 · Arnobius imagines a sacrificial ox protesting that it is unjust to kill an innocent animal to atone for the crimes of guilty human beings.
- Against the Nations 7.12Arnobius of Sicca · ca. 297–303 · Gods who grant favors only in return for sacrifices would be venal, favoring the rich over the innocent poor and caught between warring peoples.
- Against the Nations 7.15Arnobius of Sicca · ca. 297–303 · The right honor for gods is a worthy opinion of them, not sacrifices, which turn altars into crematories.
- Against the Nations 7.16Arnobius of Sicca · ca. 297–303 · Sacrificial smoke is a stench; and if gods were honored with blood or human food, why not sacrifice every beast or offer vegetables too?
- Against the Nations 7.17Arnobius of Sicca · ca. 297–303 · Animals honoring humans with their own food would insult them; likewise sacrifices of rotting flesh insult gods and treat them like dogs to be bribed with scraps.
- Against the Nations 7.19Arnobius of Sicca · ca. 297–303 · Rules matching victims' sex and color to the gods rest on false beliefs about divine sexes and an underworld.
- Against the Nations 7.21Arnobius of Sicca · ca. 297–303 · No reason can be given why particular animals belong to particular gods, except human custom.
- Against the Nations 7.23Arnobius of Sicca · ca. 297–303 · Good gods would help without sacrifices and evil ones could not be changed by them; sacrifices to both kinds would confuse good and evil.
- Against the Nations 7.24Arnobius of Sicca · ca. 297–303 · Arnobius mocks the obscure technical names for the sausages, cakes, and entrails used in Roman sacrificial ritual.
- Against the Nations 7.25Arnobius of Sicca · ca. 297–303 · The elaborate menu of sacrificial dishes implies that the gods are gourmets with fussy stomachs, which is absurd.
- Against the Nations 7.26Arnobius of Sicca · ca. 297–303 · Incense was unknown to early Greeks, Etruscans, and Romans, so it cannot be necessary to the gods.
- Against the Nations 7.27Arnobius of Sicca · ca. 297–303 · Incense is merely tree resin; there is no reason why gods should be honored or appeased by it rather than any other gum.
- Against the Nations 7.28Arnobius of Sicca · ca. 297–303 · If gods enjoyed smells they would have nostrils and breathe, and so be mortal; incorporeal gods cannot perceive odors at all.
- Against the Nations 7.30Arnobius of Sicca · ca. 297–303 · Pouring wine cannot honor the gods; wine is linked with lust and madness, and customs without reason should not govern worship.
- Against the Nations 7.31Arnobius of Sicca · ca. 297–303 · The ritual formula limiting the wine offered to the gods implies that they are greedy and must be restrained by legal wording.
- Against the Nations 7.32Arnobius of Sicca · ca. 297–303 · Music, morning waking songs, ritual washings, divine banquets, feast-couches, and birthdays treat the gods like human beings.
- Against the Nations 7.33Arnobius of Sicca · ca. 297–303 · Games and plays, often obscene and performed by men legally marked with infamy, cannot honor or appease the gods.
- Against the Nations 7.34Arnobius of Sicca · ca. 297–303 · People, ignorant of God's nature, fashion gods in their own image, attributing to them human bodies, feelings, pleasures, and customs.
- Against the Nations 7.35Arnobius of Sicca · ca. 297–303 · Arnobius begins a point-by-point comparison: Christians hold nobler views than pagans on the birth, sex, form, and crafts of the gods.
- Against the Nations 7.36Arnobius of Sicca · ca. 297–303 · The comparison continues: Christians deny that true gods cause evils, feel anger, love blood, or delight in incense, wine, music, and games.
- Against the Nations 7.38Arnobius of Sicca · ca. 297–303 · The pagan objection: history shows that the gods sent disasters when offended and relented when appeased by sacrifices and games.
- Against the Nations 7.39Arnobius of Sicca · ca. 297–303 · Arnobius accepts that the annals record such events, and retells the story of the flogged slave at the games, Jupiter's dream, and the pestilence.
- Against the Nations 7.41Arnobius of Sicca · ca. 297–303 · A god who delighted in chariot races and was angered by a slave's punishment at the games is unworthy of the name.
- Against the Nations 7.42Arnobius of Sicca · ca. 297–303 · Punishing a whole city, including women and infants, with plague for a fault at the games would be monstrous in a god.
- Against the Nations 7.43Arnobius of Sicca · ca. 297–303 · Jupiter's choosing an ignorant rustic, killing his innocent sons, and then sparing him only to feel his bereavement show cruelty, not divinity.
- Against the Nations 7.44Arnobius of Sicca · ca. 297–303 · The histories show gods delighting in games and angered by trifles; and the Aesculapius brought to Rome to end a plague was simply a large snake.
- Against the Nations 7.45Arnobius of Sicca · ca. 297–303 · The snake ate, digested, and needed a ship to travel, like an animal; a god who wished to be seen should have appeared in his true form.
- Against the Nations 7.46Arnobius of Sicca · ca. 297–303 · The snake's disappearance on the Tiber island proves nothing; by every visible feature it was an earthly animal.
- Against the Nations 7.50Arnobius of Sicca · ca. 297–303 · Rome's victory over Hannibal came from human courage and circumstance, not a stone; a true god would not have waited to be summoned or been hindered by distance.
- Church History 4.8.2Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 300–325 · Hegesippus (quoted) dates himself by mentioning the recent deification of Hadrian's favourite Antinous.
- Church History 4.8.3Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 300–325 · Justin (quoted) also mentions the recent cult of Antinous.
- Church History 4.13.2Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 300–325 · The ordinance (quoted): the gods themselves will punish those who refuse to worship them.
- Church History 4.15.26Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 300–325 · The Martyrdom (quoted): the crowd raged against Polycarp as the teacher of Asia and destroyer of their gods.
- Church History 7.11.7Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 300–325 · Aemilianus offers safety if they will worship the gods who protect the empire.
- Church History 7.17.1Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 300–325 · At the Jordan springs at Paneas, Astyrius's prayer ended a pagan "miracle" in which sacrifices vanished.
- Church History 8.14.9Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 300–325 · Maximin persecuted more harshly, rebuilt temples, organized a pagan priesthood with provincial high priests, and rewarded sorcerers.
- Church History 9.1.3Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 300–325 · Sabinus's letter says the emperors had sought to lead all, including those of foreign custom, to worship the gods.
- Church History 9.4.2Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 300–325 · Maximin approved the petitions, renewed persecution, and appointed prominent men as pagan priests and high priests.
- Church History 9.7.2Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 300–325 · Maximin's rescript praises Tyre for recognizing, after long error, that the world is governed by the immortal gods.
- Church History 9.7.4Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 300–325 · Tyre's devotion to the gods was already well known from its deeds.
- Church History 9.7.5Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 300–325 · Tyre deserves to be called a dwelling of the gods.
- Church History 9.7.7Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 300–325 · The emperor says Zeus, Tyre's protector, inspired the city's request and showed the value of worshiping the gods.
- Church History 9.7.8Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 300–325 · The rescript credits the gods with good harvests and protection from war, plague, storm, and earthquake, which it says often struck before.
- Martyrdom of Ignatius 1Anonymous · 4th–5th century (disputed) · The Martyrdom of Ignatius: his trial before Trajan at Antioch, his journey through Smyrna and Troas to Rome, and his death in the amphitheatre.
- Homilies 4.8Anonymous · 4th century (reworking earlier material) · Clement argues that ancestral customs must be kept only if they are godly, and that his father erred in believing the Greek myths about the gods.
- Homilies 4.12Anonymous · 4th century (reworking earlier material) · Greek teaching of immoral gods and of astrological fate removes shame and repentance.
- Homilies 4.16Anonymous · 4th century (reworking earlier material) · Clement lists the crimes of Cronus and Zeus in the myths: castration, devouring children, pederasty, adultery, and incest.
- Homilies 5.11Anonymous · 4th century (reworking earlier material) · The letter claims that laws against adultery are mocked by Zeus himself, who lay with countless women, and urges imitation of the gods.
- Homilies 5.21Anonymous · 4th century (reworking earlier material) · The reply argues that Eros cannot be a god: either he suffers passion willingly or is driven by another, leading to an endless regress; love is simply a human appetite.
- Homilies 6.2Anonymous · 4th century (reworking earlier material) · Appion denies the literal truth of the myths of Kronos, Zeus, and the judgment of Paris, and promises an allegorical explanation.
- Homilies 6.3Anonymous · 4th century (reworking earlier material) · Appion begins his allegory: in the beginning was chaos, which Homer implies, Hesiod names, and Orpheus calls an egg.
- Homilies 6.17Anonymous · 4th century (reworking earlier material) · Clement objects that whether the myths are true or allegories, those who told them encouraged sin and insulted their own gods.
- Homilies 6.18Anonymous · 4th century (reworking earlier material) · Clement argues that the myth-makers acted like demons by clothing supposed truths in shameful stories, and suggests that wicked men invented the outrages.
- Homilies 11.31Anonymous · 4th century (reworking earlier material) · Whatever pagans did well belongs to the truth and should be kept, and more should be done.
- Recognitions 2.41Anonymous · Greek original 3rd–4th century; Rufinus's Latin translation before 407 · Peter shows from Scripture that other so-called gods are subject to the God of the Jews, and that the title 'god' is given loosely to Moses, judges, and idols.
- Recognitions 5.17Anonymous · Greek original 3rd–4th century; Rufinus's Latin translation before 407 · The ancient serpent, condemned to eat earth, insinuates belief in many gods to draw people from faith in the one God.
- Recognitions 5.19Anonymous · Greek original 3rd–4th century; Rufinus's Latin translation before 407 · Peter turns the analogy of Caesar and his officials against polytheists: as no official may take Caesar's name, no being may take the name of God.
- Recognitions 5.22Anonymous · Greek original 3rd–4th century; Rufinus's Latin translation before 407 · Nothing made can share the name of God, the uncreated maker of all, not even the corruptible world or its parts, and God's patience is no license to misuse his name.
- Recognitions 10.17Anonymous · Greek original 3rd–4th century; Rufinus's Latin translation before 407 · Clement recounts the Orphic cosmogony of the cosmic egg and the androgynous Phanes, and the birth of the six Titans and six Titanesses.
- Recognitions 10.18Anonymous · Greek original 3rd–4th century; Rufinus's Latin translation before 407 · Clement recounts how the Titans married the Titanesses, and how Saturn devoured his sons Aides and Neptune until Rhea hid Jupiter, with the Corybantes drowning out his cries.
- Recognitions 10.20Anonymous · Greek original 3rd–4th century; Rufinus's Latin translation before 407 · Clement recounts Jupiter's incest with his sister Juno, his swallowing of Metis, the births of Minerva and Liber, his incest with Persephone, his overthrow and castration of Saturn, and the birth of Aphrodite.
- Recognitions 10.21Anonymous · Greek original 3rd–4th century; Rufinus's Latin translation before 407 · Clement lists dozens of women whom Jupiter seduced and the children born of them.
- Recognitions 10.23Anonymous · Greek original 3rd–4th century; Rufinus's Latin translation before 407 · Jupiter's adulteries, his cruelty to his own offspring, and his tomb in Crete show him a wicked man, honored as father of gods only because the evil one wished to promote imitation of his crimes.
- Recognitions 10.25Anonymous · Greek original 3rd–4th century; Rufinus's Latin translation before 407 · Since peoples still worship recently deified mortals such as Adonis, Osiris, Hector, Achilles, and Alexander, the older gods too must have been dead men honored in error.
- Recognitions 10.28Anonymous · Greek original 3rd–4th century; Rufinus's Latin translation before 407 · Clement wonders why pagans worship a criminal like Jupiter, and Peter explains that his example excuses their own sins and that his myths are embedded in schoolboy education.
- Recognitions 10.30Anonymous · Greek original 3rd–4th century; Rufinus's Latin translation before 407 · Niceta explains that the Greeks read Orpheus and Hesiod either literally or allegorically, and sets out the Orphic account of chaos, the cosmic egg, and the androgynous first principle that separated the elements.
- Recognitions 10.35Anonymous · Greek original 3rd–4th century; Rufinus's Latin translation before 407 · Aquila objects that if the myths hid honorable meanings their author was impious to clothe them in shameful stories, since pagan worship imitates the literal myths and the allegories reform no one.
- Recognitions 10.37Anonymous · Greek original 3rd–4th century; Rufinus's Latin translation before 407 · The mysteries reenact the myths literally, and devotees even castrate themselves, proving that the shameful stories, not the allegories, are what is believed.
- Recognitions 10.41Anonymous · Greek original 3rd–4th century; Rufinus's Latin translation before 407 · Niceta explains the allegory: the banquet is the world, Peleus and Thetis the dry and moist elements, Juno, Minerva, and Venus chastity, courage, and lust, and Paris the untrained mind that chooses lust and brings ruin.
- Divine Institutes 1.8.3Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Pagans foolishly think beings born of man and woman can be gods, though the Sibyl denies it.
- Divine Institutes 1.8.4Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · The gods born of two parents were therefore men.
- Divine Institutes 1.8.8Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · God can beget without a female; the pagan gods were powerful kings deified out of gratitude.
- Divine Institutes 1.9.1Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Hercules, born of adultery, defiled the world with lust and could not be divine.
- Divine Institutes 1.9.2Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Hercules' labours were the deeds of a brave man, not of a god.
- Divine Institutes 1.10.1Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Aesculapius did nothing divine and was killed by a thunderbolt.
- Divine Institutes 1.10.2Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Tarquitius and Cicero describe Aesculapius as an exposed child who became a physician and was buried.
- Divine Institutes 1.10.3Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Apollo served as a herdsman and a hired builder, and violated and killed a boy he loved.
- Divine Institutes 1.10.4Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Mars was a murderer and an adulterer.
- Divine Institutes 1.10.8Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Liber conquered India but was shamefully conquered by lust.
- Divine Institutes 1.10.10Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Jupiter overthrew his father, fought the Titans, and spent his life in debauchery and adultery.
- Divine Institutes 1.11.5Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Everyone believes Jupiter reigns in heaven, as their worship shows.
- Divine Institutes 1.11.6Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Jupiter was born of Saturn and Rhea after countless people already lived, so he cannot be the maker of men.
- Divine Institutes 1.11.10Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Jupiter needed Themis to tell him the future, so he lacked divine foreknowledge.
- Divine Institutes 1.11.12Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Jupiter swears by the Styx, which implies a power above the gods and fear of death.
- Divine Institutes 1.11.14Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · If even Jupiter obeys the Fates, the Fates rather than he should be said to reign.
- Divine Institutes 1.11.16Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Jupiter, secretly saved at birth, was named Zeus because he was Saturn's first son to survive.
- Divine Institutes 1.11.17Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · The poets described real men and invented only their divinity.
- Divine Institutes 1.11.18Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · The shower of gold was really the price Jupiter paid to seduce Danae.
- Divine Institutes 1.11.33Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Euhemerus wrote a history of the gods as men, based on temple inscriptions.
- Divine Institutes 1.11.35Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Jupiter lived on Mount Olympus, whose name also means heaven, as Ennius records.
- Divine Institutes 1.11.43Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Calling God "Jupiter" belittles him and is impious.
- Divine Institutes 1.13.1Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Saturn was a man who castrated another man, not a god.
- Divine Institutes 1.13.2Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Saturn killed his sons, and the Sacred History says men then ate human flesh until Jupiter forbade it.
- Divine Institutes 1.13.3Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Saturn's cannibalism leaves him unjust; Ops hid the infant Jupiter in Crete.
- Divine Institutes 1.14.2Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Ennius relates that Saturn married Ops and, urged by his mother and sisters, kept the kingdom from his elder brother Titan.
- Divine Institutes 1.14.4Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Saturn's first son was killed; Jupiter was hidden and Juno shown.
- Divine Institutes 1.15.1Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Since the gods were men, Lactantius explains how they came to be called gods.
- Divine Institutes 1.15.2Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · The first kings were called gods from wonder, flattery, or gratitude.
- Divine Institutes 1.15.6Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Cities deified brave men to encourage virtue, as Romans did their emperors.
- Divine Institutes 1.15.12Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Virgil shows Aeneas establishing worship of his dead father Anchises.
- Divine Institutes 1.15.16Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Cicero, in his Consolation on his daughter's death, said the public gods were men.
- Divine Institutes 1.15.23Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Cicero's Laws command worship of those whose merits placed them in heaven.
- Divine Institutes 1.15.24Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · In the Tusculans Cicero says even the chief gods went from earth to heaven.
- Divine Institutes 1.15.26Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Cicero hinted that even the chief gods were men but feared to say so openly.
- Divine Institutes 1.15.32Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Julius Proculus, prompted by the senators, falsely claimed Romulus appeared as a god.
- Divine Institutes 1.16.4Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Belief in goddesses implies the gods mate and bear children.
- Divine Institutes 1.16.5Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Two sexes imply conception, which cannot apply to God.
- Divine Institutes 1.16.8Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Either the gods are innumerable or their sexes serve only lust.
- Divine Institutes 1.16.10Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Seneca mocks Jupiter for no longer fathering children.
- Divine Institutes 1.16.14Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Reversing the argument, female gods prove they are not gods.
- Divine Institutes 1.16.17Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Female deities show the pagan gods are not gods.
- Divine Institutes 1.17.3Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Cicero, a priest and philosopher, exposed the gods as fictions.
- Divine Institutes 1.17.4Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Cicero destroyed the false gods but, not knowing the truth, could not say what is true.
- Divine Institutes 1.17.5Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · The gods were men, which is why their images show different ages.
- Divine Institutes 1.18.1Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Lactantius turns to those who praise gods for having been deified for virtue, gifts, or arts.
- Divine Institutes 1.18.3Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Hercules is said to have won immortality by bodily strength.
- Divine Institutes 1.18.8Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Romans think conquering generals become gods through war and destruction.
- Divine Institutes 1.18.10Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · One murderer is shut out of temples, but a mass killer is admitted to heaven.
- Divine Institutes 1.18.18Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Ceres and Liber were deified for grain and wine, though Scripture shows these were used earlier.
- Divine Institutes 1.19.4Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Since Aesculapius was struck down, he was a man, not a god.
- Divine Institutes 1.19.6Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · If gods were once men, the poets' accounts of their sins should be believed.
- Divine Institutes 1.20.2Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Livy says the She-wolf was Larentina, a prostitute called lupa.
- Divine Institutes 1.20.17Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · If virtues are deified, vices will be too, as the Romans deified Blight and Fever.
- Divine Institutes 1.20.36Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Roman cults of Caca, Cunina, Stercutus, and others are more foolish than Egyptian animal worship.
- Divine Institutes 1.20.37Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Romans worship a rough stone, Terminus, said to be the stone Saturn swallowed.
- Divine Institutes 1.21.1Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Human sacrifice to Jupiter continued in Cyprus until Hadrian.
- Divine Institutes 1.21.3Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Gauls and even Latins offered human blood to their gods.
- Divine Institutes 1.21.4Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Romans, who boast of humanity, are more savage than barbarians in these rites.
- Divine Institutes 1.21.6Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Saturn was worshipped in Latium by throwing men into the Tiber.
- Divine Institutes 1.21.13Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · The Carthaginians sacrificed two hundred noble sons to Saturn after a defeat.
- Divine Institutes 1.21.16Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · The rites of Cybele and Bellona involve self-castration and self-wounding.
- Divine Institutes 1.21.20Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · The rites of Isis re-enact her loss and finding of her son.
- Divine Institutes 1.21.24Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · The Eleusinian rites re-enact Ceres' search for Proserpina with torches.
- Divine Institutes 1.21.38Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Jupiter's Cretan rites recall how the goat Amalthea nursed him.
- Divine Institutes 1.22.1Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Numa introduced Roman superstitions, pretending to meet the goddess Egeria.
- Divine Institutes 1.22.5Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Numa's own books, found later, undermined all religions, so the senate ordered them destroyed.
- Divine Institutes 1.22.19Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Didymus says the Cretan king Melisseus first sacrificed to gods, and his daughters nursed Jupiter.
- Divine Institutes 1.22.21Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · The Sacred History says Jupiter set up shrines to himself.
- Divine Institutes 1.22.28Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Melisseus may have begun worship of Jupiter's family, leading Jupiter to claim divine honours.
- Divine Institutes 1.23.5Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Saturn lived no more than 1,800 years ago, so pagan rites are not truly ancient.
- Divine Institutes 2.1.6Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Pagans who acknowledge the supreme God yet do not worship him have no excuse.
- Divine Institutes 2.4.16Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Dionysius of Sicily plundered and mocked the gods.
- Divine Institutes 2.4.20Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Dionysius prospered unpunished, so the gods should have avenged themselves.
- Divine Institutes 2.4.23Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · People punish sacrilege for fear the gods will blame them, though the gods cannot harm the robbers.
- Divine Institutes 2.5.4Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Some foolishly worship the senseless elements.
- Divine Institutes 2.5.8Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Cicero's Stoic speaker argues that the stars' order shows they are gods.
- Divine Institutes 2.5.10Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Christians deny the stars are gods; the philosophers are more foolish than the common people.
- Divine Institutes 2.5.11Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Lactantius mocks the idea of worshipping each of the innumerable stars.
- Divine Institutes 2.5.12Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · The stars' fixed courses show they are not gods.
- Divine Institutes 2.5.25Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · If the stars are not gods, neither are the sun, moon, or heaven.
- Divine Institutes 2.5.26Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · The earth and its parts are not gods.
- Divine Institutes 2.5.27Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Neither water, springs, rivers, nor sea are gods.
- Divine Institutes 2.7.11Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Statues of Fortune and Juno were said to have spoken.
- Divine Institutes 2.7.12Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Claudia moved the stranded ship of Cybele with her girdle, proving her chastity.
- Divine Institutes 2.7.20Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Jupiter reportedly appeared in a dream to Atinius demanding that the games be repeated.
- Divine Institutes 2.13.10Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · The Egyptians, under clear skies, first began to worship the stars.
- Divine Institutes 2.13.11Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Then the Egyptians invented animal-shaped gods.
- Divine Institutes 2.13.12Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Other peoples first worshipped the elements, then deified kings, and so became the Gentiles.
- Divine Institutes 2.13.13Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · The worship of God is older than paganism.
- Divine Institutes 3.17.10Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Lucretius complains that lightning strikes temples and the innocent.
- Divine Institutes 3.17.11Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · God destroys temples because they are not his.
- Divine Institutes 3.17.15Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Rebuilding the Capitol defied heaven's judgment.
- Divine Institutes 3.20.3Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Some pagan rites forbid men to look on them, on pain of punishment.
- Divine Institutes 4.3.1Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Pagan worship has no wisdom and no moral teaching, only bodily ritual.
- Divine Institutes 4.3.12Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Lucilius mocked the many gods all called 'father'.
- Divine Institutes 4.4.7Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · The gods did not make man and are younger than man.
- Divine Institutes 4.27.3Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · A Christian present at pagan sacrifice spoils the omens, which provoked persecution.
- Divine Institutes 4.28.16Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Since the ancient gods were dead men too, pagans are superstitious and Christians religious.
- Divine Institutes 5.5.9Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · When Jupiter overthrew Saturn and was worshipped, Justice left the earth.
- Divine Institutes 5.10.15Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Worshippers imitate violent and immoral gods.
- Divine Institutes 5.10.16Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · The gods' thefts and adulteries teach vice.
- Divine Institutes 5.10.17Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · The gods train their worshippers in injustice.
- Divine Institutes 5.19.15Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Pagan books show their gods were mortals.
- Divine Institutes 5.19.19Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Mysteries are kept secret to hide that they honor dead men.
- Divine Institutes 5.19.27Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Pagan worship is external and leaves no mark on life.
- Divine Institutes 5.19.29Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Pagan religion is mere ritual of the fingers.
- Divine Institutes 5.20.12Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Egyptians and theater-goers insult the gods more than Christians do.
- Divine Institutes 6.1.5Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Pagans think blood and wine make them religious.
- Divine Institutes 6.2.9Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Earthly rites show the gods were mortal men.
- Divine Institutes 6.2.10Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Pagan gods favor any criminal who sacrifices.
- Divine Institutes 6.2.11Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Persius mocks buying the gods with offal.
- Divine Institutes 6.20.34Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · The games are pagan religious festivals.
- Divine Institutes 7.6.6Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · The gods cannot need offerings.
- Divine Institutes 7.6.7Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Pagan religion answers none of life's questions.
- Martyrdom of Dasius 1Anonymous · 303–304 · The soldiers' custom: a chosen man plays king for thirty days at the festival of Cronos and is then put to death.
- Martyrdom of Dasius 3Anonymous · 303–304 · The author condemns Christians who keep the pagan New Year masquerades.
- Acts of Euplus of Catania (Latin) 2Anonymous · 304 (12 August) · Under torture Euplius confesses the Trinity and refuses to surrender the Scriptures.
- On the Anger of God 11.7Lactantius · ca. 313–314 · The many gods were once men, great early kings honored after death for their benefits to mankind.
- On the Anger of God 11.8Lactantius · ca. 313–314 · Early Greek writers, and Euhemerus and Ennius, show that the gods and goddesses were once human.
- On the Anger of God 11.9Lactantius · ca. 313–314 · Cicero, following them, demolished the public cults but could not supply the true religion.
- Preparation for the Gospel 1.2.2Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · The critic charges that Christians are impious and atheists for abandoning ancestral customs.
- Preparation for the Gospel 1.2.3Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · The critic asks what pardon Christians deserve for abandoning the universally worshipped gods for Jewish myths.
- Preparation for the Gospel 1.6.1Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · The Phoenicians and Egyptians were said to be the first to deify the heavenly bodies and to introduce stories of the gods' origins.
- Preparation for the Gospel 1.6.3Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Others fell away and worshipped the heavenly bodies, at first without temples or images.
- Preparation for the Gospel 1.6.4Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Polytheism grew worse among Phoenicians and Egyptians; Orpheus and Cadmus brought their rites, and letters, to the Greeks.
- Preparation for the Gospel 1.9.1Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Diodorus says the early Egyptians worshipped the sun and moon as Osiris and Isis.
- Preparation for the Gospel 1.9.5Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · In the Phoenician theology the earliest people worshipped the heavenly bodies and the fruits of the earth that sustained them.
- Preparation for the Gospel 1.9.7Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Porphyry, citing Theophrastus, says the Egyptians first sacrificed to the heavenly gods long before incense was used.
- Preparation for the Gospel 1.9.12Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Plato's Cratylus says the first Greeks worshipped only the heavenly bodies, called theoi from their running.
- Preparation for the Gospel 1.9.14Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · The Greeks' own testimony shows that the earliest people knew no named gods or demons and offered no animal sacrifices.
- Preparation for the Gospel 1.9.16Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · The earliest people had no theogonies, images, or male and female gods.
- Preparation for the Gospel 1.9.17Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · The names of gods, invocations of spirits, myths, and mysteries were all later inventions.
- Preparation for the Gospel 1.9.19Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Polytheism appeared later, beginning with Phoenicians and Egyptians and spreading to the Greeks.
- Preparation for the Gospel 1.9.22Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Sanchuniathon's gods turn out to be wicked mortal men and women, still worshipped everywhere.
- Preparation for the Gospel 1.9.29Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Philo explains that the Phoenicians and Egyptians deified their benefactors and kings, besides the heavenly bodies.
- Preparation for the Gospel 1.10.6Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · The first people deified and worshipped the plants that fed them.
- Preparation for the Gospel 1.10.44Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Philo describes the ancient custom of rulers sacrificing a beloved child in times of danger, as Cronus sacrificed his only son.
- Preparation for the Gospel 1.10.46Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Tauthus deified the serpent as the most spirit-filled and fiery of creatures.
- Preparation for the Gospel 1.10.47Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · The serpent renews itself by shedding its skin and was therefore used in temples and mysteries.
- Preparation for the Gospel 1.10.48Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Philo says the serpent was thought immortal and was worshipped as Agathodaemon or Kneph.
- Preparation for the Gospel 1.10.52Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Philo cites Zoroaster and Ostanes for a hawk-headed supreme god.
- Preparation for the Gospel 1.10.53Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · All these peoples, following Tauthus, built temples to serpents and worshipped them as the greatest gods.
- Preparation for the Gospel 1.10.55Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · These accounts are presented as true history, not allegory, and refute themselves; Eusebius turns to the Egyptians.
- Preparation for the Gospel, Book 2, preface 2Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · The Greeks' own writers admit that the ancient stories of the gods were meant literally, not as allegories.
- Preparation for the Gospel 2.1.2Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · The Egyptian gods were mortal men made immortal for their benefits to mankind.
- Preparation for the Gospel 2.1.15Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · After death Osiris was deified, and Isis and Hermes established his rites.
- Preparation for the Gospel 2.1.22Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · The phallic rites of the Greek Dionysiac mysteries came from Egypt.
- Preparation for the Gospel 2.1.33Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · One explanation of Egyptian animal worship: the gods once escaped danger by taking animal forms.
- Preparation for the Gospel 2.1.39Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · The goat and the phallus were worshipped as symbols of generation.
- Preparation for the Gospel 2.1.52Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Egyptian and Phoenician mythologies together spread ancient superstition among the nations.
- Preparation for the Gospel 2.1.53Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Greek religion is a collection of fragments and misunderstandings of Egyptian myth.
- Preparation for the Gospel 2.2.6Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · An earlier Dionysus, Sabazius, son of Zeus and Persephone, was honored in secret night rites.
- Preparation for the Gospel 2.2.13Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · The phallus was honored as the cause of generation, as Isis honored that of Osiris.
- Preparation for the Gospel 2.2.53Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Diodorus distinguishes eternal gods (the heavenly bodies) from earthly men deified for their benefits.
- Preparation for the Gospel 2.2.54Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Diodorus will summarize both Euhemerus and the poets on the earthly gods.
- Preparation for the Gospel 2.3.6Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Clement will expose the mysteries and their gods before the spectators of truth.
- Preparation for the Gospel 2.3.10Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Mysteries are only myths that ensnare the foolish and superstitious.
- Preparation for the Gospel 2.3.16Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · The mysteries of Demeter celebrate Zeus's incest with his mother and her wrath.
- Preparation for the Gospel 2.3.17Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · The Phrygian rites recount Zeus's sham self-castration.
- Preparation for the Gospel 2.3.20Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · The Sabazian rite of drawing a serpent through the bosom recalls Zeus's incest.
- Preparation for the Gospel 2.3.28Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · The mysteries consist of murders and burials, with absurd food taboos.
- Preparation for the Gospel 2.3.38Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · The mysteries are a deceit resting on custom and empty opinion.
- Preparation for the Gospel 2.3.42Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Clement calls the initiates atheists twice over: ignorant of the true God and worshippers of nonexistent gods.
- Preparation for the Gospel 2.4.4Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Many pagans have themselves seen through their ancestral error and turned away.
- Preparation for the Gospel 2.4.5Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Some pagans rejected the myths outright; others reinterpreted them as hidden natural philosophy.
- Preparation for the Gospel 2.5.3Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · The pagans worshipped images of dead men, having forgotten God and his justice.
- Preparation for the Gospel 2.5.5Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Others deified wise men, strongmen, tyrants, sorcerers, and benefactors.
- Preparation for the Gospel 2.6.1Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Clement says superstition multiplied demons and temples, which were in fact tombs.
- Preparation for the Gospel 2.6.7Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Clement says the worshippers of tombs are dead men trusting in the dead.
- Preparation for the Gospel 2.6.9Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Antinous's tomb became a temple and a city, and tombs are admired like temples.
- Preparation for the Gospel 2.6.13Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · They transferred their natural sense of the divine to human benefactors, rulers, and sorcerers.
- Preparation for the Gospel 2.6.14Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Blinded, they ignored the crimes of their deified men and admired them for their power.
- Preparation for the Gospel 2.6.15Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Without laws, they celebrated the adulteries, incest, and murders of their deified leaders as heroic deeds.
- Preparation for the Gospel 2.6.18Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · They deified the elements and the fruits of the earth under the names of the gods.
- Preparation for the Gospel 2.6.20Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Earlier generations deified animals, sexual organs, and passions.
- Preparation for the Gospel 2.7.6Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Plato forbids myths of wars among the gods; poets must tell stories that teach concord.
- Preparation for the Gospel 2.7.8Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Plato rejects both the myths and their allegories, so Christians are justified in abandoning them.
- Preparation for the Gospel 2.8.1Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Romulus founded his laws on the worship of the gods.
- Preparation for the Gospel 2.8.2Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Romulus established temples, festivals, and sacrifices like the best Greek customs.
- Preparation for the Gospel 2.8.3Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Romulus rejected the myths that slandered the gods.
- Preparation for the Gospel 2.8.4Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · The Romans tell no stories of the gods' crimes and sufferings.
- Preparation for the Gospel 2.8.6Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Roman religion is free of frenzied rites and nightly revels.
- Preparation for the Gospel 2.8.7Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Rome adopted no foreign rites publicly, and adapted even imported ones such as those of the Idaean Mother.
- Preparation for the Gospel 2.8.8Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Phrygian priests serve the Great Mother at Rome, while Roman magistrates offer her sacrifices.
- Preparation for the Gospel 2.8.9Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · No native Roman may take part in the Phrygian rites, so cautious is Rome about foreign religion.
- Preparation for the Gospel 2.8.11Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Dionysius prefers Roman theology, since the benefit of Greek myths reaches only a few.
- Preparation for the Gospel 2.8.12Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · The masses take the myths in the worst sense and either despise the gods or imitate their vices.
- Preparation for the Gospel 3.3.1Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Diodorus says Osiris and Isis, the sun and moon, govern the world through the seasons.
- Preparation for the Gospel 3.3.9Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Homer learned from the Egyptian priests that the gods visit cities in disguise.
- Preparation for the Gospel 3.3.10Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Earthly gods, deified kings, bore the names of the heavenly ones; Helios was the first king.
- Preparation for the Gospel 3.3.17Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Eusebius concludes that pagan deification concerns dead men, and the allegories are invented.
- Preparation for the Gospel 3.3.19Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · The rites and hymns point to mortal men, not to elements.
- Preparation for the Gospel 3.4.3Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Egyptian theology recognized no incorporeal creator, only the stars and fate.
- Preparation for the Gospel 3.4.6Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Porphyry says the Egyptians held that the same soul dwells in all animals and therefore deified them.
- Preparation for the Gospel 3.5.3Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · The Egyptians gave the name of God to beasts not even worthy of the name of men.
- Preparation for the Gospel 3.9.2Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · The Orphic hymn describes Zeus as the whole universe, with heaven as his head and the ether as his mind.
- Preparation for the Gospel 3.10.19Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · The creative mind cannot be the Zeus of bronze statues or the father of mortal heroes.
- Preparation for the Gospel 3.10.20Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Phoenicians and Egyptians both recorded Zeus as a mortal man.
- Preparation for the Gospel 3.10.21Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Cretans, Atlantians, and others likewise recorded Zeus as a mortal of shameful life.
- Preparation for the Gospel 3.13.20Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · The allegorists escape the shameful myths only by retreating to the heavenly bodies.
- Preparation for the Gospel 3.13.21Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · The allegorists worship the creation instead of the Creator.
- Preparation for the Gospel 3.14.1Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Despite their philosophy, the philosophers joined the crowd in sacrifices and image worship.
- Preparation for the Gospel 3.14.2Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · The philosophers' practice contradicts their words, and their gods confirm the myths.
- Preparation for the Gospel 3.15.1Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · When gods and philosophers disagree about the gods, reason must side with the gods' own testimony.
- Preparation for the Gospel 3.15.4Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · The gods support both poets and philosophers, who contradict each other.
- Preparation for the Gospel 4.1.2Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Pagan theology has three kinds, mythical, physical, and civic; Eusebius now treats the civic.
- Preparation for the Gospel 4.1.4Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · The pagans insist that the civic religion, unlike myth or philosophy, must not be questioned.
- Preparation for the Gospel 4.9.2Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Apollo's oracle prescribes different animal sacrifices for gods of the underworld, earth, air, sea, and heaven.
- Preparation for the Gospel 4.9.3Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Porphyry explains that underworld and earthly gods receive black four-footed victims, slaughtered over pits or on altars.
- Preparation for the Gospel 4.9.4Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Birds are prescribed for gods of the air and sea, black ones for the sea.
- Preparation for the Gospel 4.9.5Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · White victims go to the heavenly gods, whose sacrifices alone may be eaten.
- Preparation for the Gospel 4.16.1Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Porphyry reports the human sacrifice to Cronus at Rhodes.
- Preparation for the Gospel 4.16.12Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Clement catalogs human sacrifices among the Greeks and calls them murder.
- Preparation for the Gospel 4.16.15Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Dionysius tells how the Pelasgians suffered disasters for not paying the tithe of their children vowed to the gods.
- Preparation for the Gospel 4.16.19Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Diodorus describes the Carthaginians' mass sacrifice of children to Cronus during Agathocles' siege.
- Preparation for the Gospel 5.3.1Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Because the demons took many guises, pagans divided their gods into many classes.
- Preparation for the Gospel 5.3.2Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · The first kinds of deification are the heavenly bodies and deified benefactors.
- Preparation for the Gospel 5.3.3Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · The third kind is the mythical, which the philosophers turned into physical allegory.
- Preparation for the Gospel 5.3.4Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · A fourth kind deifies the passions.
- Preparation for the Gospel 5.3.5Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · They deified love and desire, and named speech Hermes and reason Athena; a fifth kind comes from human activities.
- Preparation for the Gospel 5.3.6Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · War and the crafts were assigned to gods.
- Preparation for the Gospel 5.5.3Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Plutarch relates that myths of Python, Typhon, and the Titans concern exiled and punished demons, and that demons are called by gods' names.
- Preparation for the Gospel 5.36.4Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · The trunk became a cult object by Delphi's sanction.
- Preparation for the Gospel 7.2.1Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Other peoples, knowing only the body, made pleasure their highest good and god.
- Preparation for the Gospel 7.2.2Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · The pursuit of pleasure led peoples to deify heavenly bodies, nature, passions, rulers, and demons, or to atheism and hedonism.
- Preparation for the Gospel 7.2.4Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Greeks and barbarians worshiped pleasure in their rites, which Christianity has abolished.
- Preparation for the Gospel 7.2.6Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · The worship of pleasure brought the ancient nations into every vice.
- Preparation for the Gospel 10.1.3Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Earlier books showed that Greek religion was borrowed from the barbarians.
- Preparation for the Gospel 10.4.4Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · The earliest Greek religion was brought from Phoenicia and Egypt by Cadmus, Orpheus, and others.
- Preparation for the Gospel 10.4.6Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Polytheistic worship with temples and images prevailed everywhere.
- Preparation for the Gospel 10.4.8Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Later Greek philosophy found the ancestral religion and oracles useless.
- Preparation for the Gospel 10.4.26Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Greece had temples and oracles but no true wisdom.
- Preparation for the Gospel 10.4.29Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · From the Hebrews they learned of the one God and against their own gods.
- Preparation for the Gospel 10.4.32Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Christians should be praised for leaving falsehood without falling into atheism or mixing truth with polytheism.
- Preparation for the Gospel 10.8.6Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Melampus brought Dionysian rites and myths from Egypt.
- Preparation for the Gospel 10.8.12Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Homer’s stories of Zeus and Hera come from Egyptian rites.
- Preparation for the Gospel 10.12.23Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Isis, called Demeter, lived eleven generations after Moses.
- Preparation for the Gospel 10.12.24Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Apis of Argos was later worshipped as Sarapis.
- Preparation for the Gospel 10.12.25Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Another explanation of the name Sarapis.
- Preparation for the Gospel 10.12.26Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Leto was contemporary with Tityus.
- Preparation for the Gospel 10.12.27Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Apollo too was born within history.
- Preparation for the Gospel 10.12.30Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Moses is older even than most Greek gods.
- Preparation for the Gospel 13.1.2Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Plato’s summary of the poets’ genealogy of the gods.
- Preparation for the Gospel 13.1.3Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Eusebius: Plato mocks the poets by calling them children of gods.
- Preparation for the Gospel 13.3.2Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · The chief fault of the poets is portraying the gods falsely.
- Preparation for the Gospel 13.3.5Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Tales of wars among the gods must not be told; the poets must teach harmony.
- Preparation for the Gospel 13.4.1Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Socrates (Euthyphro): people accept the crimes of Zeus and Cronus yet blame Euthyphro.
- Preparation for the Gospel 14.9.5Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · If the ancestral religion had been true, philosophy would have been unnecessary.
- Preparation for the Gospel 14.9.6Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · The philosophers’ wanderings and quarrels show that the ancestral religion did not give them truth.
- Preparation for the Gospel 14.16.1Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Plutarch: some philosophers denied the gods altogether; Euripides hinted at it through Sisyphus.
- Preparation for the Gospel 14.16.13Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Polytheism deified dead men; Eusebius now turns to those who rejected the senses.
- Preparation for the Gospel 14.27.8Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · The Epicureans’ idle gods have no reason to be called gods or worshipped.
- Preparation for the Gospel 14.27.9Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Dionysius mocks Epicurus’ gods feasting in the void on atomic ambrosia.
- Preparation for the Gospel 14.27.10Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Epicurus’ oaths by gods he did not believe in were empty habits.
- Preparation for the Gospel 14.27.11Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Epicurus feigned belief in gods; he never learned from the heavens and earth what Scripture proclaims.
- Preparation for the Gospel 15.1.2Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · The ancient rites still celebrate the myths of the gods.
- Preparation for the Gospel 15.15.4Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · The world is a city of gods and men.
- Preparation for the Gospel 15.43.2Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Thales, Pythagoras, Plato, and the Stoics: daimones are souls; heroes are disembodied souls.
- Preparation for the Gospel 15.43.3Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Epicurus rejects daimones and heroes.
- Epitome of the Divine Institutes 6.2Lactantius · ca. 314–320 · Gods born of intercourse are absurd, since sex exists only to preserve mortal kinds.
- Epitome of the Divine Institutes 6.4Lactantius · ca. 314–320 · The pagan gods were mortal kings deified after death for their benefits to mankind.
- Epitome of the Divine Institutes 7.1Lactantius · ca. 314–320 · The recorded deeds of the gods show they were human.
- Epitome of the Divine Institutes 7.5Lactantius · ca. 314–320 · Hercules burned himself to death; his life shows he was a man, not a god.
- Epitome of the Divine Institutes 8.2Lactantius · ca. 314–320 · Aesculapius died by lightning and was buried; Apollo served as a herdsman and mourned a boy he killed.
- Epitome of the Divine Institutes 10.1Lactantius · ca. 314–320 · Jupiter overthrew his father and was given to every lust.
- Epitome of the Divine Institutes 11.1Lactantius · ca. 314–320 · Poets do not invent everything but veil real events in figures.
- Epitome of the Divine Institutes 12.1Lactantius · ca. 314–320 · Poets clothed true events in divine colouring, as with the gods' kingdoms.
- Epitome of the Divine Institutes 12.3Lactantius · ca. 314–320 · Those who call the poets liars still worship gods in male and female forms, agreeing with them.
- Epitome of the Divine Institutes 13.2Lactantius · ca. 314–320 · Euhemerus compiled the human histories of the gods from temple inscriptions.
- Epitome of the Divine Institutes 13.4Lactantius · ca. 314–320 · Euhemerus says Jupiter died in Crete, where his tomb bears his name.
- Epitome of the Divine Institutes 15.5Lactantius · ca. 314–320 · Rome honoured Bald Venus and Jupiter the Baker for help in the Gallic siege.
- Epitome of the Divine Institutes 15.6Lactantius · ca. 314–320 · Rome deified Fear, Pallor, Mind, Honour, and Virtue.
- Epitome of the Divine Institutes 16.1Lactantius · ca. 314–320 · The senate made virtues into gods, putting them in temples instead of hearts.
- Epitome of the Divine Institutes 16.2Lactantius · ca. 314–320 · Worse still are gods like Rust, Fever, Dung, and others.
- Epitome of the Divine Institutes 17.1Lactantius · ca. 314–320 · Faunus introduced these follies into Latium.
- Epitome of the Divine Institutes 17.2Lactantius · ca. 314–320 · Numa loaded early Rome with new cults to tame its warlike people.
- Epitome of the Divine Institutes 18.1Lactantius · ca. 314–320 · Human sacrifice was offered to Jupiter in Cyprus.
- Epitome of the Divine Institutes 18.3Lactantius · ca. 314–320 · The Carthaginians sacrificed children to Saturn.
- Epitome of the Divine Institutes 18.4Lactantius · ca. 314–320 · Priests of Cybele and Bellona mutilate themselves.
- Epitome of the Divine Institutes 18.7Lactantius · ca. 314–320 · The mysteries of Ceres re-enact the search for Proserpina.
- Epitome of the Divine Institutes 19.3Lactantius · ca. 314–320 · Melisseus first introduced sacrifices, to Vesta and the Mother of the Gods.
- Epitome of the Divine Institutes 21.1Lactantius · ca. 314–320 · Others worship the heavenly bodies instead of their maker.
- Epitome of the Divine Institutes 25.1Lactantius · ca. 314–320 · Summary: pagan worship is impious and vain, being given to dead men, lifeless images, and fallen spirits.
- Epitome of the Divine Institutes 48.1Lactantius · ca. 314–320 · Real gods would not need human defenders.
- Epitome of the Divine Institutes 48.2Lactantius · ca. 314–320 · Gods who cannot avenge themselves cannot help anyone.
- Epitome of the Divine Institutes 48.3Lactantius · ca. 314–320 · Defending one's god admits the god's weakness.
- Epitome of the Divine Institutes 50.3Lactantius · ca. 314–320 · Egyptian animal cults, mockery on stage, and atheist philosophers go unpunished.
- Epitome of the Divine Institutes 54.6Lactantius · ca. 314–320 · When people turned to many gods, justice fled and human fellowship broke down.
- On the Deaths of the Persecutors 36.4Lactantius · ca. 314–315 · He appointed pagan high priests in each city to suppress Christian worship.
- Demonstration of the Gospel 1.1.15Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · Eusebius recalls that the Preparation answered the first charge, from pagans, that Christians abandoned their ancestral gods for Hebrew oracles.
- Demonstration of the Gospel 1.1.17Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · The Preparation showed that Christians left paganism by reasoned judgment.
- Demonstration of the Gospel 1.2.2Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · Judaism is life under the law of Moses; Hellenism is the worship of many gods.
- Demonstration of the Gospel 1.2.14Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · Pagan nations, sunk in incest, homosexual practice, human sacrifice, and idolatry, could not share Abraham’s blessing as they were.
- Demonstration of the Gospel 1.10.2Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · Greek tradition held that the first men offered only plants and that animal sacrifice was a later impiety equal to murder.
- Demonstration of the Gospel 3.5.54Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · They plan to attack the gods of Rome, Greece, and Egypt.
- Demonstration of the Gospel 3.7.26Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · People were so struck by the apostles' miracles that some took them for Hermes and Zeus.
- Demonstration of the Gospel 4.8.1Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · The angels of the nations directed weaker peoples to the heavenly bodies.
- Demonstration of the Gospel, Book 5, preface 7Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · The demons’ delight in shameful myths about themselves proved them unclean.
- Demonstration of the Gospel 9.2.1Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · Isaiah foretells the Lord’s coming to Egypt, the first home of polytheism and demon worship.
- Oration to the Assembly of the Saints 4.1Constantine the Great · ca. 325 (dated variously 317–325) · Gods who are born must perish, and if they kept being born they would overflow heaven; the myths of divine marriages and adulteries dishonour them.
- Oration to the Assembly of the Saints 4.3Constantine the Great · ca. 325 (dated variously 317–325) · Pagans show the tombs of their 'immortal' gods, proving them to have been mortal men.
- Oration to the Assembly of the Saints 10.2Constantine the Great · ca. 325 (dated variously 317–325) · The poets tell of divine judges of the dead, yet also of gods who fight, grieve, and cannot help even their own children.
- Oration to the Assembly of the Saints 10.3Constantine the Great · ca. 325 (dated variously 317–325) · If the poets are inspired, their tales of suffering gods must be true; if poets may lie, as some say, they cannot be trusted.
- Against the Heathen 9Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 318–325 · Idolatry descended step by step from the heavenly bodies to the elements, to men, beasts, and monsters, to deified lust, to rulers such as Hadrian’s Antinous, and to emperors voted gods by the Roman senate.
- Against the Heathen 10Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 318–325 · Deifying the dead is an old custom: Theseus’ decrees, the cult of goddesses, and portraits of the mourned dead all became gods, and even Plato went to worship an image of Artemis.
- Against the Heathen 11Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 318–325 · Scripture (Wisdom 14) explains how idols arose from grief and flattery, and the poets’ own tales of Zeus show him to be no god but the most shameful of men.
- Against the Heathen 12Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 318–325 · The myths of the gods’ adulteries, incest, quarrels, and wounds show them to be weak and wicked men, yet their worshipers deify the very vices their own laws punish.
- Against the Heathen 13Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 318–325 · Idolaters worship the craftsman’s art rather than the craftsman, and living, rational beings serve lifeless objects they themselves must guard.
- Against the Heathen 15Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 318–325 · The idols’ idle sense-organs betray their lifelessness, and the poets who tell of the gods’ vices prove that they are not even good men.
- Against the Heathen 16Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 318–325 · The plea of poetic license fails: if the poets lied about the gods’ deeds, they lied about their names too; deeds reveal natures, and these deeds are human and shameful.
- Against the Heathen 17Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 318–325 · The poets’ praises of the gods are flattery meant to hide their shameful deeds, and truth forced the poets to record those deeds as evidence against them.
- Against the Heathen 18Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 318–325 · The gods cannot be honored as inventors of the arts, for the arts come from human nature, and by that logic every human inventor would be a god.
- Against the Heathen 23Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 318–325 · Every nation, city, and village worships different and contradictory gods, as in Egypt, because people who have turned from the one God and his Word wander in many directions.
- Against the Heathen 24Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 318–325 · Since one people’s gods are another people’s sacrifices, libations, or washing water, all these gods destroy one another.
- Against the Heathen 25Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 318–325 · Human sacrifice among Scythians, Egyptians, Phoenicians, Cretans, and early Romans shows the cruelty of demon-gods, whose worshipers imitate their murders and licentiousness.
- Against the Heathen 26Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 318–325 · Temple prostitution, ritual emasculation, and the vices described in Romans 1 are learned from gods whose own myths are full of the same deeds.
- Against the Heathen 27Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 318–325 · Against those who worship the cosmos, Athanasius argues that each part of creation, from the sun to the winds and the elements, depends on the others and so points to its Maker.
- Against the Heathen 29Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 318–325 · Since the parts of creation hinder and overcome one another, they cannot be gods; having refuted error, Athanasius turns to the Word of the Father, through whom the Father is known.
- On the Incarnation 15.6Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 318–325 · Christ's resurrection showed the heroes and poets' gods to be false.
- On the Incarnation 41.1Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 318–325 · The Greeks mock the incarnation while blind to their own shameful idols.
- On the Incarnation 46.2Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 318–325 · The poets' gods and heroes were exposed as mortals only after Christ's resurrection.
- On the Incarnation 47.3Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 318–325 · Christ's coming exposed the poets' gods as mortals and revealed him alone as true God.
- On the Incarnation 49.3Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 318–325 · Heracles and Dionysus are honored for lesser deeds, while Christ, who drove out disease, demons, and death and taught self-control, is mocked.
- Theophany 1.2Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 325–337
- Theophany 1.26Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 325–337
- Theophany 2.4Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 325–337
- Theophany 2.5Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 325–337
- Theophany 2.6Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 325–337
- Theophany 2.7Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 325–337
- Theophany 2.8Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 325–337
- Theophany 2.9Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 325–337
- Theophany 2.12Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 325–337
- Theophany 2.13Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 325–337
- Theophany 2.14Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 325–337
- Theophany 2.18Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 325–337
- Theophany 2.30Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 325–337
- Theophany 2.31Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 325–337
- Theophany 2.34Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 325–337
- Theophany 2.38Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 325–337
- Theophany 2.39Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 325–337
- Theophany 2.40Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 325–337
- Theophany 2.41Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 325–337
- Theophany 2.46Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 325–337
- Theophany 2.49Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 325–337
- Theophany 2.50Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 325–337
- Theophany 2.51Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 325–337
- Theophany 2.53Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 325–337
- Theophany 2.54Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 325–337
- Theophany 2.55Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 325–337
- Theophany 2.56Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 325–337
- Theophany 2.57Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 325–337
- Theophany 2.58Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 325–337
- Theophany 2.59Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 325–337
- Theophany 2.60Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 325–337
- Theophany 2.61Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 325–337
- Theophany 2.62Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 325–337
- Theophany 2.63Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 325–337
- Theophany 2.64Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 325–337
- Theophany 2.67Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 325–337
- Theophany 2.69Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 325–337
- Theophany 2.70Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 325–337
- Theophany 2.71Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 325–337
- Theophany 2.73Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 325–337
- Theophany 2.75Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 325–337
- Theophany 2.76Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 325–337
- Theophany 2.78Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 325–337
- Theophany 2.80Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 325–337
- Theophany 2.86Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 325–337
- Theophany 2.88Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 325–337
- Theophany 2.89Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 325–337
- Theophany 2.90Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 325–337
- Theophany 2.91Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 325–337
- Theophany 2.92Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 325–337
- Theophany 3.1Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 325–337
- Tricennial Oration (In Praise of Constantine) 2.5Eusebius of Caesarea · 335–336 · Celebrating thirty years of rule, Constantine offers God not blood sacrifices but his own soul and the souls of his subjects brought to true worship.
- Tricennial Oration (In Praise of Constantine) 7.3Eusebius of Caesarea · 335–336 · Pagans deified generation (Aphrodite) and death (Pluto) and, expecting no judgment, lived wickedly.
- Tricennial Oration (In Praise of Constantine) 7.4Eusebius of Caesarea · 335–336 · Pagans deified pleasures, which gave rise to the mysteries of Demeter and Kore, Dionysus, Aphrodite, and the immoral myths of Zeus.
- Tricennial Oration (In Praise of Constantine) 9.2Eusebius of Caesarea · 335–336 · Under the old gods the empire knew not peace but constant war and civil bloodshed.
- Tricennial Oration (In Praise of Constantine) 12.9Eusebius of Caesarea · 335–336 · The many parts of the world do not imply many gods; polytheists err by deifying its parts.
- Tricennial Oration (In Praise of Constantine) 12.10Eusebius of Caesarea · 335–336 · To divide the world into many gods, or to call the world God, is as absurd as calling each limb of one man a man; the divine nature is simple and without parts.
- Tricennial Oration (In Praise of Constantine) 13.2Eusebius of Caesarea · 335–336 · Pagans deified the earth's fruits, the human mind and speech, and even their own passions and lusts.
- Tricennial Oration (In Praise of Constantine) 13.4Eusebius of Caesarea · 335–336 · They called demons gods, used sorcery to summon spirits, and deified men such as Heracles and Osiris; even learned Egyptians could not distinguish God from mortal nature.
- Tricennial Oration (In Praise of Constantine) 13.5Eusebius of Caesarea · 335–336 · Every nation deified local men, monsters and passions, men who taught no virtue but were given to vice; and by imitating their gods' adulteries and crimes they destroyed their own souls.
- Tricennial Oration (In Praise of Constantine) 13.7Eusebius of Caesarea · 335–336 · Eusebius lists human sacrifices among Phoenicians, Greeks, Egyptians, Libyans, Arabs and even at Rome, to show the madness of idolatry.
- Tricennial Oration (In Praise of Constantine) 13.8Eusebius of Caesarea · 335–336 · Diodorus and Dionysius of Halicarnassus record mass child sacrifice at Carthage and human tithes demanded by the gods in Italy.
- On Ecclesiastical Theology 1.12.10Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 337–339 · Against the poets' “father of men and gods,” the church proclaims one God and one only Son.
- Life of Constantine 2.5.1Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 337–339 · Before the battle Licinius gathered his officers in a sacred grove and sacrificed to his gods.
- Life of Constantine 2.5.2Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 337–339 · Licinius tells his men that Constantine has betrayed the ancestral gods for a foreign god.
- Life of Constantine 3.26.3Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 337–339 · Over the tomb they built a shrine of Aphrodite.
- Life of Constantine 3.26.7Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 337–339 · The pagan shrine was demolished.
- Life of Constantine 3.48.2Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 337–339 · Constantinople was to be free of pagan worship.
- Life of Constantine 3.54.1Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 337–339 · While honoring God, Constantine also exposed pagan error.
- Life of Constantine 3.54.2Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 337–339 · Temples were stripped, and famous pagan statues were displayed as spectacles in Constantinople.
- Life of Constantine 3.55.2Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 337–339 · It was a remote shrine of Aphrodite at Aphaca in Lebanon.
- Life of Constantine 3.55.4Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 337–339 · Constantine ordered the temple destroyed.
- Life of Constantine 3.56.1Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 337–339 · Constantine ordered the destruction of the healing shrine of the Cilician god.
- Life of Constantine 3.56.2Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 337–339 · The temple fell, and the “healer” could not save himself.
- Life of Constantine 3.56.3Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 337–339 · The temple was destroyed completely.
- Life of Constantine 3.57.1Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 337–339 · Many pagans turned to Christ or at least ridiculed their old gods.
- Life of Constantine 3.57.4Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 337–339 · The inner sanctuaries were opened, exposing the old blindness of the nations.
- Life of Constantine 4.25.2Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 337–339 · In Egypt the effeminate priests of the Nile cult were suppressed.
- Life of Constantine 4.39.2Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 337–339 · In many places people destroyed their temples voluntarily and built churches; Eusebius now turns to Constantine's last years.
- Oration III Against the Arians 7Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 339–346 · Texts calling God “one” and “only” are not aimed at the Son, who is no rival to the Father but glorifies him; they are directed against the false gods made by human beings.
- Oration III Against the Arians 16Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 339–346 · A created Son who is also called God would give the Arians two gods, two lords, and two faiths, like the Greeks; but the Son is the Father's own form, so God and faith are one.
- Canon 39Anonymous · ca. 343–381 · Christians are not to join pagan festivals.
- Catechetical Lecture 6.11Cyril of Jerusalem · ca. 350 · The Greek gods are shown to be no gods by their adulteries and deaths; the Son came down to heal this error and make the Father known.
- Catechetical Lecture 12.27Cyril of Jerusalem · ca. 350 · Greeks who believe myths of men born from stones, Athena from Zeus' head and Dionysus from his thigh cannot call the virgin birth impossible.
- Life of Antony 74Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 357–360 · Antony answered Greek sages who mocked the cross: the cross shows courage, the Incarnation shows the unchanged Word sharing human birth, while their myths and doctrine of the soul’s fall and transmigration dishonor the divine.
- Life of Antony 75Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 357–360 · Antony contrasts the honorable death of the cross with pagan myths, and points to the resurrection and Christ’s miracles as proof that he is God.
- Life of Antony 76Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 357–360 · Allegorizing the gods as natural forces still means worshiping creation instead of the Creator, as absurd as honoring a house instead of its architect.
- On the Trinity 1.4Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 356–360 · Pagan theologies contradict one another; reason shows that the divine must be one, eternal, and almighty.
- On Not Sparing Those Who Sin against God 35Lucifer of Cagliari · ca. 356–361 · Closing his work, Lucifer compares the bishops' sufferings under Constantius with the Jews' under Antiochus's decrees in 2 Maccabees and urges the emperor to repent and return to the church before he joins the tyrants in punishment.
- On Receiving the Homoousion 1Marius Victorinus · ca. 357–362 · Victorinus opens his short appeal for accepting homoousion by setting Christian faith in one God, Father and Son, between pagan polytheism and Jewish monotheism, and explaining that God's being is substance (ousia or hypostasis).
- Homilies on the Psalms 44.10Basil of Caesarea · ca. 360-378 · On Ps 45:10–12 Basil reads the address to the daughter as Christ's call to the Church of the nations to hear and contemplate, forget her pagan customs and father the devil, and recover her beauty; the gifts of Tyre are the homage of converted Canaan, and worship goes to Christ, her head.
- Tractates on the Psalms 61.2Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · After the endless confusion of pagan philosophy and religion, the believer finds in the prophets, the apostles, and the incarnation the firm ground of faith and is no longer moved.
- Tractates on the Psalms 64.10Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · The sea is the world, ruled by the devil; when Christ is preached, the demons fall silent, oracles cease, and exorcism by Christians troubles the nations, some of whom come to fear God.
- Tractates on the Psalms 65.7Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · Hilary lists the philosophers’ and pagans’ errors about the world and its elements as the enemies’ lie about God.
- Tractates on the Psalms 122.5Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · If pagans cling stubbornly to false gods, believers should all the more keep their eyes fixed on the true God, creator and giver of resurrection.
- Tractates on the Psalms 132.6Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · Hermon, meaning 'anathema', is a mountain of pagan worship, linked by a book of uncertain authorship with fallen angels; Zion is the church.
- Tractates on the Psalms 137.10Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · God's name is now magnified among all peoples, while pagan temples, idols, and divination fall silent.
- Commentary on Ephesians 4.17Marius Victorinus · ca. 360–363 · Paul warns the Ephesians, with the Lord as witness, no longer to live like the Gentiles, whose minds are darkened and alienated from the life of God through ignorance and blindness of heart.
- Commentary on Galatians 4.8Marius Victorinus · ca. 360–363 · Before knowing God through Christ, the Galatians served false gods, not even the angels sometimes called gods, but worldly powers invented by the devil.
- Commentary on Galatians 4.9Marius Victorinus · ca. 360–363 · Turning back to “weak and needy elements” could mean pagan worship of the elements, but Victorinus takes it chiefly of the Galatians’ fleshly reading of the Jewish law, which serves the ever-needy flesh, after they had been known by God.
- Oration 4.1Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 362–383 · Gregory summons the whole world, the angels, and the soul of Constantius to hear his thanksgiving for the fall of the emperor Julian, whose letters and sacrifices he condemns.
- Oration 4.60Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 362–383 · The rest of the first invective: Julian's indirect persecution, his assault on the army and the cross-standard, the outrages of Heliopolis, Gaza, and Arethusa (Mark of Arethusa), his law against Christian teachers, his plan to copy the church's institutions, and Gregory's satire of pagan myth and ethics compared with Christian morals.
- Oration 5.31Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 362–383 · Gregory contrasts pagan rites with Christian worship, and God's creating word with his word that ended the persecution.
- Oration 5.32Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 362–383 · Gregory mocks the silenced oracles and the pagan gods, then begins his exhortation: those disciplined by God should not sin again.
- Oration 38.6Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 362–383 · Pagan festivals of the belly are left to the Greeks; Christians, who worship the Word, are to find their delight in the word.
- Oration 39.3Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 362–383 · Christian baptism is neither the shadowy purification of the law nor like the pagan mysteries, which are demonic inventions disguised as myth.
- Oration 39.4Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 362–383 · Gregory contrasts the feast with pagan myths and mysteries: the births of Zeus, the rites of Rhea and Demeter at Eleusis, Dionysus, Aphrodite, phallic rites and human sacrifice.
- Oration 39.5Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 362–383 · The list continues: Pelops, Hecate, the oracles, Magian and Chaldaean divination, Thracian and Orphic rites, Mithras, Osiris, Isis, Apis and the Nile; none of these is what Christians celebrate.
- Oration 41.1Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 362–383 · Oration 41, on Pentecost, contrasts Christian with Jewish and pagan feasts, then explains the honour of the number seven in the Law (Sabbath, seventh year, Pentecost, Jubilee) and the fiftieth day as a figure of the age to come.
- Tractates 1.5.8Zeno of Verona · ca. 362-380 · Zeno describes the practical conflicts and dangers when a Christian woman married to a pagan must keep her worship and his.
- Hexaemeron 6.2Basil of Caesarea · ca. 370 · The sun and moon were made after the plants so that no one would think them the source of light or growth; they are vehicles for the light already created, and "God said … God made" points to two persons.
- Commentary on Galatians 4:10Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Observing days, months, seasons and years means pagan superstitions about lucky and unlucky days, festivals and the January new year, which God's servants must avoid.
- Commentary on Romans 6:19Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Paul asks only that we serve righteousness as fully as we once served sin; the fruits of sin, like the shameful Phrygian rites, end in death.
- On the Destruction of Jerusalem 2.4Anonymous · ca. 370 · The scandal of Paulina, deceived by Mundus disguised as Anubis in the temple of Isis at Rome, and Tiberius's punishment of the priests.
- Question 84, section 3Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · The devil set up pagan spring rites with expiation by blood at the time of Easter so that the Christian mysteries would look like an imitation, but Christian miracles show where the truth is.
- Question 114, section 1Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · In a treatise against the pagans, Ambrosiaster argues that their worship has no warrant, since their gods never claimed divinity or gave commands, and their rites were instituted by men.
- Question 114, section 4Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · The Christian God proved his claim to be the only God by mighty works, while pagans worship gods who gave no signs, and with shameful rites.
- Question 114, section 7Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · Ambrosiaster attacks pagan rites that require castrated, effeminate priests, contrasting them with the Christian law of chastity.
- Question 114, section 30Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · The worship of the true God began with Adam and was renewed in Abraham, so pagan claims to be older than Christianity are false.
- Letter 21.13Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome interprets the pigs' pods as the vices, and also the pagan literature, that feed demons, and warns clergy against reading the classics for pleasure.
- Letter 22.29Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome advises Eustochium on companions, humility toward her maidservants, and avoiding idle widows and affected speech, and asks what pagan literature has to do with Scripture.
- Letter 78.3Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome interprets the first station, Rameses ('thunder of joy'), as the soul's joyful departure from the world, leaving behind the errors of the philosophers.
- Letter 98.3Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Theophilus says heretics have no share in the feast, and describes how humanity, before Christ, fell into worshipping rulers as gods.
- Letter 107.1Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Writing to Laeta, daughter of the pagan pontiff Albinus and wife of Toxotius, Jerome cites Paul on mixed marriages, rejoices in her Christian household and daughter Paula, and hopes her father too will convert as Rome turns from its temples.
- Letter 107.2Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome urges Laeta not to despair of her father's conversion, citing the penitent thief, Nebuchadnezzar, the prefect Gracchus who destroyed a Mithraeum, and the spread of Christianity among the nations.
- Letter 123.7Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome cites pagan examples of priestly monogamy and of women who died rather than take another man, including the Teuton matrons after Aquae Sextiae.
- Ancoratus 103.1Epiphanius of Salamis · 374 · People made gods of their own passions.
- Ancoratus 104.7Epiphanius of Salamis · 374 · Worshipers of Isis should be ashamed.
- Ancoratus 105.5Epiphanius of Salamis · 374 · Zeus and Hermes were adulterers.
- Ancoratus 106.2Epiphanius of Salamis · 374 · There were several Zeuses.
- Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 3.1.10Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · The Greek gods and the deified founders of peoples.
- Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 26.16.6Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Their rite is traced to Zeus.
- Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 26.16.7Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · All sects draw on Greek myth.
- Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 26.16.8Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Clement explained the myth of Zeus swallowing Metis obscenely.
- Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 31.2.4Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Valentinus modelled his system on Hesiod's Theogony, changing only the names.
- Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 31.2.5Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Valentinus's first aeon, Depth, corresponds to Hesiod's Chaos.
- Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 31.3.2Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Compared with Hesiod and Stesichorus, the Valentinian system is the same myth.
- Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 31.3.3Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · The heretics merely copied Greek myth with new barbarous names.
- Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 31.3.4Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Epiphanius lists Hesiod's primeval deities for comparison.
- Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 31.3.5Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · The poets' deities can also be paired like the Valentinian aeons.
- Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 31.3.6Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · In the poets, primal beings pair and produce Earth, Heaven and their offspring.
- Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 31.3.7Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · The poets' deities are set out in pairs like the aeons.
- Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 31.3.8Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Close study shows how much the Valentinians borrowed from the poets.
- Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 31.4.6Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Epiphanius will show how they joined their fables to the poets'.
- Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 31.4.7Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Epiphanius lists poetic names that correspond to the lower Ogdoad.
- Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 31.4.8Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · The poets' many deities could supply the 365 of other heresies.
- Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 31.4.9Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · The poets go on to the Olympian gods and countless others.
- Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 33.8.9Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Their knowledge comes not from Scripture but from pagan poets.
- Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 51.22.5Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Pagans celebrate the solstice on 25 December.
- Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 51.22.8Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Pagans hold a great festival on the night of the Epiphany.
- Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 51.22.9Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · At Alexandria the festival is held in the temple of Kore.
- Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 51.22.10Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · The Alexandrian rite celebrating Kore's birth of the Aeon.
- Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 51.22.11Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Similar rites are held at Petra and Elusa.
- Apostolic Canon 71Anonymous · ca. 380 · Christians may not bring offerings to pagan temples or synagogues.
- Life of Paul the Hermit 8Jerome · ca. 375–379 · Antony meets a satyr who asks his prayers and confesses Christ, and Jerome cites a similar creature shown under Constantius.
- On Virgins 1.4Ambrose · ca. 377 · Pagan virginity (the Vestals, the priestesses of Pallas, Phrygian and Bacchic rites, a Pythagorean woman who bit off her tongue) is temporary, hired, or failed; Christian virgins such as Agnes conquer even unseen powers.
- On Virgins 2.5Ambrose · ca. 377 · The Christian virgin and soldier surpass the famous friends Damon and Pythias; the tyrant who admired those friends mocked his own helpless gods, whereas the true God punished and pardoned Jeroboam.
- On Virgins 3.2Ambrose · ca. 377 · Youth must be restrained by moderate wine, fasting, and sparing food; Ambrose mocks the pagan fable of Hippolytus, Diana, Neptune, and Aesculapius, and warns virgins against heating foods, banquets, and social calls.
- Theological Oration 1 (Or. 27), Against the Eunomians 6Gregory of Nazianzus · 380 · Public quarrels about the begetting of the Son hand pagan critics weapons and serve their own immoral gods.
- Theological Oration 1 (Or. 27), Against the Eunomians 9Gregory of Nazianzus · 380 · Gregory mocks the self-made theologians and sends their love of argument to pagan philosophy and to open questions where error is harmless.
- Book of Heresies 10.1Philastrius of Brescia · ca. 380s · The sun-worshippers do not know that the sun serves God's command.
- Book of Heresies 111.2Philastrius of Brescia · ca. 380s · Philastrius discusses the origin of the word “pagan”.
- Eleven Tractates 1.15Priscillian · ca. 380–385 · They had already rejected the pagan planetary gods before their conversion, and they anathematize anyone who calls the sun, moon, and planets gods.
- Eleven Tractates 1.17Priscillian · ca. 380–385 · Christians, redeemed by Christ's blood, reject the planetary gods: Saturn's golden age, the Sun, and the Moon are idols of those who love the world.
- Eleven Tractates 1.18Priscillian · ca. 380–385 · Those who worship Mars, Jupiter, and Mercury are slaves of lust and money; Christians have Christ, who cancelled their debt on the cross.
- Eleven Tractates 5.84Priscillian · ca. 380–385 · Others make gods of the sun and moon; all such teachers are the false teachers described by Jude and Peter.
- Pilgrimage (Itinerarium) 20.8Egeria · ca. 381-395 · Haran is pagan, and its people honour the tombs of Nahor and Bethuel.
- Second Apology of David 30Ambrose · ca. 384-397 · Pagans believe their gods took human and monstrous forms, and Jewish Scripture speaks of God becoming present and even beast-like; so the incarnation is not incredible.
- Catechetical Oration 0Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 385–390 · Gregory explains that instruction in the faith must be adapted to each hearer's errors, and begins with the pagan: perfect divinity admits no distinction, so there can be only one God.
- On Jacob and the Happy Life 2.33Ambrose · ca. 386-390 · The idols and earrings buried under the barren tree signify the end of pagan worship in the church; Ambrose links the tree to the one named in Susanna's trial.
- Letter 16.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Maximus of Madaura, a pagan grammarian, writes to Augustine that the many gods are names for the powers of the one supreme God.
- Letter 17.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine answers Maximus's mockery of Punic martyrs' names by explaining the meaning of Namphamo, citing Virgil, and pointing to absurd Roman gods.
- Letter 17.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine turns Virgil against Maximus, noting that Virgil and Cicero present the gods as having once been men.
- Letter 17.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine answers the charge of Christian secrecy by pointing to the secret rites of Liber and the frenzied public processions of Madaura's leading men.
- Letter 47.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine argues that using the good faith of someone who swore by false gods is not a share in his sin, and that oaths are forbidden to guard against perjury.
- Letter 47.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine explains that produce, water, and baths are not defiled by pagan offerings, and that spoils of destroyed temples may be put to common or sacred use but not taken for private gain.
- Letter 91.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine argues, citing Terence and Cicero, that imitating the pagan gods makes men worse, as with the young man in Terence who excused his lust by Jupiter’s example.
- Letter 91.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine mocks the claim that the myths of the gods are interpreted allegorically, pointing to the public celebration of Jupiter’s adulteries and the obscene games of Flora.
- Letter 91.8Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine recounts the pagan riot at Calama on 1 June 408: a forbidden festival, repeated stoning of the church, arson, and the murder of a monk, while the town’s leaders did nothing.
- Letter 102.10Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Pagans who say their gods were served differently in different times must allow the same for the one true religion, whose rites follow God's will.
- Letter 102.13Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Christians do not fault paganism for changing its rites over time, but for worshipping false gods; what suits each time is set by providence.
- Letter 102.16Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · The third question objects that Christians condemn pagan sacrifices though their own God once required offerings.
- Letter 118.27Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine deplores Democritus's teaching that the gods are images flowing from bodies, and asks from what body the image of truth could come.
- Letter 138.18Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Comparing Apollonius and Apuleius with Christ is laughable; Christian teaching is called an enemy of the state because it exposed the demons behind pagan gods and magic.
- Letter 184.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine describes the plan and progress of the City of God (ten books done, the fourteenth in hand), which will answer their questions.
- Letter 232.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine asks the pagan council of Madaura why they greeted him “in the Lord” while still worshiping idols, unless they mean to mock him.
- Letter 232.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine says the Madaurans' Christian greeting and closing must be either sincere, in which case nothing bars them from the Church, or mockery of Christ's name.
- Letter 232.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine argues from fulfilled prophecy: the dispersion of the Jews, the spread of the gospel, heresies and schisms, and the fall of idolatry and conversion of the emperors.
- Letter 234.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · The pagan Longinianus replies with elaborate compliments, appealing to Socratic, Orphic and Hermetic precepts, and calls Augustine a uniquely good man.
- Letter 234.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Longinianus says the way to God is a life of virtue with the help of the gods and purification by the ancient rites and abstinence.
- Letter 235.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine asks Longinianus whether the ancient rites purify the good life, produce it, complete it, or form part of it.
- Homilies on Matthew 54.5John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · The cross, which saved the world and routs demons, is the Christian’s boast before scoffing pagans; as soldiers of a King who is near to all, Christians can draw near to him by justice and almsgiving, which Isaiah 58 promises he will answer at once.
- Hexameron (Exameron) 1.2Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · To make the world eternal with God, or divine, leads to the worship of its parts.
- Hexameron (Exameron) 1.4Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · If the world or its parts are gods, nothing coherent can be said about the divine.
- Hexameron (Exameron) 4.1Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · Before speaking of the sun, Ambrose bids his hearers cleanse their minds and remember that light and plants came before the sun, which is no god.
- On True Religion 1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 389–391 · Augustine begins by observing that the pagan philosophers held conflicting views in their schools while sharing the same temples and rites with the people.
- On True Religion 25Augustine of Hippo · ca. 389–391 · Augustine argues that those who teach the worship of one God are to be believed before those who teach many, and that the miracles which won faith at first were not continued into his own time, lest people always seek visible things.
- Sermon 24.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Idolaters are “dead stones” like their idols; the Church, made of living stones, labors to free them, hoping that God can raise children to Abraham from stones.
- Sermon 24.6Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Since the “Roman gods” have been removed at Rome, they should not remain at Carthage; Augustine mocks the gilded beard of a statue of Hercules, which has been shaved off.
- Sermon 62.10Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Excusing attendance at feasts before the Genius of Carthage as “not a god” fails, for its altar shows that pagans treat it as divine, and Paul forbids partnership with demons.
- Sermon 62.11Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Christians must not press on Christ’s body as pagans do; the best way to win pagans is to abandon their festivals, leaving them ashamed of their small numbers.
- Sermon 81.9Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Rome is the Romans, not its buildings; the city may be chastised but cities and the world pass away, and Rome’s gods had already failed Troy; Christians should answer by hospitality to the refugees.
- Sermon 105.12Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Augustine prays for the blasphemers rather than mocking them, grieves for the Christians of Rome, and answers that the idols could not protect Rome, since they could not protect themselves, while Christian Constantinople and Carthage stand.
- Sermon 105.13Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Rome’s fall was not caused by the loss of the idols: the pagan Radagaisus, who sacrificed daily, was defeated after the images were removed, and it was the idol-hating Goths who took the city; Christians who suffered there lost nothing eternal.
- Sermon 121.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Some of Christ’s own did receive him; the stones that cry out when the children are silent are the Gentiles, formerly worshippers of stones, from whom God has raised up children of Abraham, as the newly baptized show.
- Sermon 196.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Augustine warns his congregation in advance not to take part in the pagan New Year festivities, recalling the discipline given to Christians who joined a pagan sea-bathing rite at midsummer.
- Sermon 198.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · On the pagan New Year, Augustine reminds the crowd of the psalm they sang, “gather us from the nations”: they are gathered out if the pagan revels do not delight them.
- Sermon 198.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Christians are separated from pagans by what they believe, hope, and love, and must show it by giving alms, going to church, and fasting instead of joining the New Year revels.
- Sermon 296.7Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · To the pagan complaint that Rome fell in Christian times after the old sacrifices were forbidden, Augustine answers that Christians are called to heaven, and that Rome had burned twice before under pagan worship, by the Gauls and under Nero.
- Sermon 312.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Even now, in this world, the martyrs plainly have won: their memorials are honored everywhere while the demons' idols and altars have fallen.
- Against Jovinianus 1.41Jerome · 393 · Jerome turns to pagan history and legend for examples of honored virginity and of virgins who died to preserve their chastity.
- Against Jovinianus 1.48Jerome · 393 · Jerome adds examples from pagan history and literature of the troubles of marriage, and the views of Epicurus and Chrysippus.
- Against Jovinianus 2.17Jerome · 393 · Jerome answers the appeal to Christ's eating and drinking: Christ sanctified fasting, ate after the resurrection only to prove his body, and Scripture condemns gluttony and commands fasts.
- Life of Saint Martin 12Sulpicius Severus · ca. 396–397 · Mistaking a pagan funeral for an idolatrous procession, Martin halts the bearers with the sign of the cross, then releases them.
- Life of Saint Martin 13Sulpicius Severus · ca. 396–397 · Bound in the path of a falling sacred pine, Martin makes the sign of the cross and the tree falls the other way; many pagans believe.
- Life of Saint Martin 14Sulpicius Severus · ca. 396–397 · Martin turns back a fire from a neighbouring house and, after three days of fasting, destroys a temple at Leprosum protected by angels.
- Life of Saint Martin 15Sulpicius Severus · ca. 396–397 · Pagans who try to kill Martin are thwarted, and often his preaching leads them to destroy their own temples.
- Life of Saint Martin 17Sulpicius Severus · ca. 396–397 · Martin casts out two demons at Trier, one from the slave of the pagan Taetradius, who then becomes a Christian.
- Confessions 1.25Augustine of Hippo · ca. 397–401 · Augustine denounces the custom of teaching boys the myths of the poets, in which Jupiter both thunders and commits adultery, giving divine authority to vice.
- Confessions 8.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 397–401 · Simplicianus tells Augustine how the famous pagan rhetor Victorinus became a Christian.
- Against Faustus the Manichaean 9.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine answers with Paul’s olive tree: the Gentiles are grafted into the holy root of Israel, in which Christ was always preached, and the Manichaeans remain in the wild olive of paganism.
- Against Faustus the Manichaean 13.15Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine allows that pagan seers' sayings about God may refute paganism, but says they carry no authority compared with the Hebrew prophets, whose whole kingdom was a prophecy of Christ.
- Against Faustus the Manichaean 16.10Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine answers that temple, altar, priest and sacrifice appear in the New Testament too, as figures fulfilled in Christ and the church, while the Manichaeans' worship of the sun and moon is the true likeness to paganism.
- Against Faustus the Manichaean 18.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine answers the taunt of “Saturn's chains”: pagan names of days and months imply no worship, as the Manichaeans keep their Bema in March without worshipping Mars, and the Sabbath, meaning rest, was a shadow of things to come.
- Against Faustus the Manichaean 20.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Faustus retorts that catholic Christians and Jews are the true schisms of paganism, keeping its belief in one principle and its rites in altered form.
- Against Faustus the Manichaean 20.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine replies that the Manichaeans are not called pagans but are worse than pagans, since pagans worship real created things while the Manichaeans worship mere inventions.
- Against Faustus the Manichaean 20.9Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine says the Manichaeans are worse than pagans: pagans worship real things and interpret their myths allegorically, while the Manichaean gods (Splenditenens, Atlas, the First Man, the Mighty Spirit) do not exist at all.
- Against Faustus the Manichaean 20.15Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine asks how a Manichaean can call himself God’s temple when he believes his body was built by the devil and imprisons part of God.
- Against Faustus the Manichaean 20.18Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine explains that pagan sacrifices imitate, and Hebrew sacrifices foretold, the one true sacrifice of Christ, which Christians commemorate in offering and receiving his body and blood.
- Against Faustus the Manichaean 20.19Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine replies that belief in one God did not come to Christians from the pagans; rather, pagan sages retained some knowledge of the one God but turned to worship of creatures, while the Manichaeans are worse still.
- Against Faustus the Manichaean 22.16Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine says he would answer a pagan critic from pagan authors themselves, who speak of a creator God rejoicing in his work, giving laws, and asking questions he knows the answers to.
- Against Faustus the Manichaean 22.93Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine interprets Moses' burning, grinding, and making the people drink the golden calf as Christ dissolving pagan idolatry by the fire of his power, the word, and baptism, incorporating Gentiles into his body.
- The Harmony of the Gospels 1.13Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399–400 · If the pagans trust report, the far greater report of the church proclaims Christ as God; and if they have books by Christ, let them produce them.
- The Harmony of the Gospels 1.18Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399–400 · The Hebrews worshiped the one true God only, and the Romans refused to adopt his rites because he forbade all other gods.
- The Harmony of the Gospels 1.19Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399–400 · The gods of the conquered nations did not give Rome its empire; the one true God distributes earthly kingdoms by his hidden judgment.
- The Harmony of the Gospels 1.23Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399–400 · Because Porphyry reports oracles praising Christ, the pagans blaspheme his disciples instead of him.
- The Harmony of the Gospels 1.25Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399–400 · Augustine presses the pagans on why the God of Israel alone was refused worship, when he has prevailed over all their gods.
- The Harmony of the Gospels 1.26Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399–400 · The Romans refused the God of Israel because, as Socrates said each god should be worshiped as he commands, his worship excluded all others.
- The Harmony of the Gospels 1.27Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399–400 · If the pagans call gods those whose seers gave petty answers, the God whose prophets foretold the conversion of all nations is surely God.
- The Harmony of the Gospels 1.28Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399–400 · No pagan seer foretold the triumph of the God of Israel or warned against obeying him, while the prophets foretold the fall of the idols.
- The Harmony of the Gospels 1.29Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399–400 · Since the God of Israel publicly forbids the other gods while they never forbid him, he is the one to be chosen.
- The Harmony of the Gospels 1.30Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399–400 · Some identify the God of the Jews with Saturn or, like Varro, with Jupiter, yet neither of those gods forbade the worship of the other.
- The Harmony of the Gospels 1.32Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399–400 · Euhemerus, Cicero, and the deification of Romulus and Caesar show that the pagan gods were dead men whose names were later given to the stars.
- The Harmony of the Gospels 1.33Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399–400 · Varro and the Egyptian priest Leon also show that the pagan gods were once human beings.
- The Harmony of the Gospels 1.37Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399–400 · The Platonists who worship all gods cannot rightly worship the God of Israel, who through his prophets forbade all others.
- The Harmony of the Gospels 1.38Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399–400 · No pagan god forbids the worship of another, however shameful, while the God of Israel forbids them all and has overthrown them.
- The Harmony of the Gospels 1.42Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399–400 · Whether the pagans identify the God of Israel with Jupiter or Saturn, they do not obey him, though he has now subjected kings to Christ and made the idolaters hide.
- The Harmony of the Gospels 1.45Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399–400 · Even if the God of Israel is only the ruler of the elements, as one philosopher said, he outranks all the gods of parts and should be worshiped alone.
- The Harmony of the Gospels 1.50Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399–400 · The pagans can produce no prophecy from their own seers against the God of Israel or the Christians, which shows their complaint of decline to be baseless.
- Questions and Answers to the Orthodox 41–42Anonymous · 5th century (disputed) · The demoniac's strength to break chains was the demon's own, not given to his body; and pagan claims that the gods punished disobedience to oracles are refuted by paganism's defeat, against which it could use only human force.
- Questions and Answers to the Orthodox 73–74Anonymous · 5th century (disputed) · Evil is a turning from the good, not its necessary contrast, and what preceded the world was simply nothing; and paganism cannot return as true religion did, since the end is the judgment by fire through Christ, whose kingdom is everlasting, and persecution only strengthened Christianity.
- Questions and Answers to the Orthodox 98–99Anonymous · 5th century (disputed) · Two questions: fear of God is compatible with perfect love, since we fear to lose what we love until the contest is over; and the law's animal sacrifices honored God as the offering of the worshiper's own soul, unlike pagan human sacrifice, while Jephthah is praised for keeping his rash vow, which God allowed as a warning against open-ended vows.
- Questions and Answers to the Orthodox 126Anonymous · 5th century (disputed) · Prosperity is given by God to pious and impious alike and proves nothing about religion; cities were laid waste under paganism too, while Christianity ended human sacrifice and brought less war.
- Commentary on the Apostles' Creed 11Rufinus of Aquileia · ca. 404 · Rufinus answers pagan mockery of the virgin birth by pointing to the phoenix, bees, and the pagans' own myths of strange births.
- Dialogues 3.8Sulpicius Severus · ca. 404–406 · Martin drives a demon from Avitianus’s back, after which the count is gentler; at Amboise a storm overthrows a pagan temple after Martin’s night of prayer.
- On the Divination of Demons 12Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–411 · Pagan claims of earlier predictions are probably invented after the event, and no pagan god ever dared to speak against the God of Israel, who foretold and brought about their overthrow.
- On the Divination of Demons 14Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–411 · The dwindling pagans who mock Christian foolishness are fulfilling Scripture, which also strengthens believers against their scorn.
- Tractates on the Gospel of John 7.6Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · Against a pagan festival celebrating a woman's blood that outweighed gold, Augustine sets the blood of the Lamb that redeemed the world; demons imitate Christian redemption and even mix Christ's name into their charms to deceive Christians.
- Tractates on the Gospel of John 7.24Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · Augustine explains that he preached at length to keep his hearers away during the hours of the pagan festival, and urges them to pray for those who took part.
- Tractates on the Gospel of John 20.11Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · No separation is found in Father and Son by one who rises above body and mind; as the psalmist poured out his soul above himself, God is reached only by passing beyond oneself.
- City of God 1.2Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine argues from Virgil's account of Troy that conquerors never spared the defeated for the sake of the defeated people's gods, whose images could not even protect themselves.
- City of God 1.3Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine mocks the belief that Rome depended on the conquered household gods of Troy, since Virgil himself shows those gods needing human protection.
- City of God 1.4Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine contrasts Juno's sanctuary at Troy, used by the Greeks to hold captives and plunder, with the basilicas of the apostles, where the Goths spared refugees and restored property.
- City of God 1.6Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine shows from the examples of Marcellus at Syracuse and Fabius at Tarentum that even the most restrained Roman conquerors never granted asylum in temples.
- City of God 1.15Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine argues from the story of Regulus, tortured to death by the Carthaginians after keeping his oath to the gods, that worship of the gods does not secure temporal happiness.
- City of God 1.32Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine notes that the gods themselves ordered stage plays to end a plague, while the pontiff Scipio forbade theaters to protect morals, and that Roman refugees at Carthage still flocked to the theaters.
- City of God 1.36Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine outlines the plan of the following books: Rome's calamities before Christ, the true God's role in Rome's rise, and a refutation of the philosophers who worship gods for the life after death.
- City of God 2.4Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine argues that the pagan gods gave their worshippers no moral teaching, recalling from his youth the obscene songs performed before the Mother of the gods at her festival of washing.
- City of God 2.5Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine argues that Scipio Nasica would never have wanted his own mother honored with the obscenities offered to the Mother of the gods, and that her choice of him as the best man was a deception.
- City of God 2.6Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine challenges pagans to show any place where their gods taught moral precepts, as churches do wherever Christianity spreads.
- City of God 2.7Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine argues that philosophy is human discovery, not divine precept, and that pagans imitate the immoral deeds of their gods, as in Terence's young man who cites Jupiter's example.
- City of God 2.8Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine argues that the gods themselves demanded the stage plays that portrayed their vices, so they cannot be excused by blaming the poets.
- City of God 2.9Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine quotes Cicero's Republic on the Roman law against defamatory verse, contrasting it with Greek comedy's license, which followed the gods' own pleasure in being ridiculed.
- City of God 2.10Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine explains that demons welcome both true and false tales of divine vice because such tales lend heavenly authority to human wickedness.
- City of God 2.11Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine notes that the Greeks, consistently with their gods' tastes, honored actors and even made them statesmen and envoys.
- City of God 2.12Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine criticizes the Romans for protecting their own reputation from poets by law while allowing the poets to defame their gods.
- City of God 2.13Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine sets Greek and Roman attitudes to actors against each other in a syllogism concluding that gods who demand stage plays should not be worshipped.
- City of God 2.14Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine argues that Plato, who banished poets from his ideal city, was better than the gods who demanded plays, and that the Romans' own laws condemned their gods.
- City of God 2.15Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine notes that the Romans gave Plato no shrine but made Romulus a god with his own flamen, a sign of flattery rather than reason.
- City of God 2.16Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine observes that the Romans borrowed their laws from Solon's Athens and from their own kings, not from their gods, who took no care for their morals.
- City of God 2.18Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine quotes Sallust's own History to show that Rome suffered oppression and discord even in its best period and sank into utter corruption after Carthage fell, long before Christ.
- City of God 2.22Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine argues that the gods gave no moral laws to prevent the civil strife of the Gracchi, Marius, and Sulla, and ridicules the claim that they had abandoned Rome, recalling that the geese, not the gods, saved the Capitol.
- City of God 2.23Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine argues from the careers of Marius, Regulus, Metellus, and Catiline that temporal good fortune does not depend on the gods but on the hidden providence of the true God.
- City of God 2.26Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine argues that any secret moral teaching in pagan mysteries was a demonic disguise, while the public festivals, like those of Caelestis he watched at Carthage, openly taught vice.
- City of God 2.27Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine cites Cicero's own references to appeasing the gods with games, and argues that such obscene rites taught the whole city vice while any secret moral teaching remained hidden.
- City of God 2.29Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine exhorts the Roman character, noble by nature, to abandon demon worship and seek citizenship in the heavenly city, whose empire has no end.
- City of God 3.1Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine turns from moral evils to the external calamities, such as war and famine, which Rome suffered while it worshipped the gods before Christ.
- City of God 3.2Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine mocks the claim that Troy fell for Laomedon's perjury, pointing out that gods who could not foresee it were poor diviners and that Rome was full of perjury without being punished.
- City of God 3.3Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine argues that gods who themselves committed adultery, as Venus did with Anchises and Mars with Romulus's mother, could not have abandoned Troy to punish Paris.
- City of God 3.4Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine reports Varro's view that it is useful for great men to believe themselves descended from gods even if it is false, and notes how much room this leaves for religious fictions.
- City of God 3.5Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine argues that if Romulus's mother, a Vestal, was not with Mars, her unchastity was a sacrilege the gods should have punished in Rome more than Paris's adultery in Troy.
- City of God 3.7Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine recounts how the Marian general Fimbria destroyed Ilium for its loyalty to Sulla, showing that the gods neither protected their kin city nor had truly departed.
- City of God 3.8Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine mocks the idea that the gods of Troy protected Rome, suggesting they were always in the wrong place.
- City of God 3.9Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine argues that Numa's long peace was a gift of the true God, not of the gods whose rites he founded, since after those rites were established Rome was almost never at peace.
- City of God 3.11Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine recounts the weeping statue of Apollo at Cumae, interpreted as grief for Greek defeats, and suggests Numa added new gods because the Trojan gods had proved powerless.
- City of God 3.12Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine notes how Rome kept adding gods, from Jupiter's Capitol to Aesculapius and the Mother of the gods, yet suffered great disasters under their protection.
- City of God 3.15Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine reviews the violent ends of most of Rome's kings and doubts Romulus's deification, noting Cicero's own skepticism and contrasting the eclipse at Romulus's death with the miraculous darkness at Christ's crucifixion.
- City of God 3.17Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine lists the calamities of the early Republic, from social strife, famine, and plague to the Gallic sack, the Caudine Forks, and the war with Pyrrhus, asking where the gods were.
- City of God 3.18Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine recalls the devastation of the Punic wars, the capture of Regulus, and a flood and fire at Rome in which the pontiff Metellus had to rescue the sacred objects of Vesta, showing their powerlessness.
- City of God 3.20Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine recounts the destruction of Saguntum, Rome's faithful ally, by Hannibal, and argues that the gods who witnessed its treaty did nothing to save it.
- City of God 3.25Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine mocks the building of a temple of Concord on the site of the Gracchan massacres, asking why Discord, who caused Troy's fall, received no temple.
- City of God 3.31Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine concludes Book 3 by arguing that the many wars, prodigies, eruptions, and plagues of pagan times would all have been blamed on Christianity had it existed then.
- City of God 4.1Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine summarizes the purpose of Book 1: to answer those who blame Christianity for present evils and to expose the gods as demons who delight in their own crimes.
- City of God 4.5Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine uses the example of the gladiators' revolt under Spartacus to ask which god helped them to power, and argues that brief power is no real benefit.
- City of God 4.7Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine argues that if the gods moved from Assyria to the Medes and Persians, they were faithless or weak, and that Rome's present affliction, like earlier ones, need not be permanent.
- City of God 4.8Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine ridicules the multitude of petty Roman deities, each confined to a single tiny function, as incapable of building an empire.
- City of God 4.9Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine turns to Jupiter as the supposed author of Rome's greatness, noting Varro's view that the one God worshipped without images is Jupiter under another name, and Varro's criticism of images.
- City of God 4.10Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine exposes the contradictions in the physical allegories that assign gods to the elements, from Jupiter and Juno to the confusions of Vesta and Venus.
- City of God 4.11Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine lists the host of deities that learned pagans identify with Jupiter as the world soul, and argues that on this view it would be simpler to worship the one God alone.
- City of God 4.12Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine argues that if God is the soul of the world, every creature would be part of God, so that treading on or killing anything would be treading on or killing a part of God.
- City of God 4.13Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine rejects the view that rational beings are parts of God, since then parts of God would be beaten and sin, and turns to the claim that Jupiter as king of the gods enlarged the Roman empire.
- City of God 4.16Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine notes that the Romans worshipped deities of action and exertion publicly but kept the temple of Quiet outside the city, and contrasts the rest Christ offers.
- City of God 4.17Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine argues that it is the true King of the ages who gives victory through his angels, and that if Victory obeys Jupiter, Jupiter alone should be worshipped.
- City of God 4.18Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine exposes the confusion between the goddesses Felicity and Fortune, arguing that a blind Fortune is not worth worshipping and a discerning one is not fortune.
- City of God 4.19Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine mocks the report that the statue of Fortuna Muliebris spoke twice, attributing it to demonic deception.
- City of God 4.20Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine argues that Virtue and Faith are gifts of God, not goddesses, and asks why, if they are deities, the Romans did not also deify temperance, fortitude, and prudence.
- City of God 4.21Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine argues that if Virtue and Felicity were goddesses, all the other petty deities would be superfluous, and that both are in truth gifts of God.
- City of God 4.22Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine ridicules Varro's boast that his catalogue of the gods' functions helps the Romans know whom to ask for what.
- City of God 4.23Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine argues that if Felicity were a goddess she alone should have been worshipped in the highest temple, recalls how Terminus, Mars, and Juventas refused to yield to Jupiter, and concludes that felicity must be sought from the true God who gives it.
- City of God 4.24Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine reports the pagan defense that their ancestors named gods after the gifts they gave, not meaning the gifts themselves to be divine.
- City of God 4.25Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine argues that by naming the giver of felicity after felicity itself, the pagans showed they sought an unknown God distinct from Jupiter, and this God alone should be worshipped.
- City of God 4.27Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine reports Scaevola's division of gods into poetic, philosophical, and civil kinds, and criticizes the pontiff's view that it is expedient for states to be deceived in religion.
- City of God 4.28Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine argues that the false gods could not have given Rome its empire, which depended on the will of the one true God.
- City of God 4.29Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine shows that the augury promising Rome unshaken boundaries was proved false by defeats and by the cessions of Hadrian and Jovian.
- City of God 4.30Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine cites Cicero's Balbus, who condemns the fables and images of the gods yet cannot separate Rome's ancestral religion from superstition.
- City of God 4.31Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine shows that Varro privately rejected the popular gods, thought religion purer without images, and came near to believing in one God governing the world.
- City of God 4.32Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine argues that Rome's rulers, like the demons, deliberately kept the people in religious error in order to control them.
- City of God 4.34Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine shows that God gave Israel every earthly good without the Roman gods, and that the dispersion of the Jews serves as a witness to prophecy.
- City of God 5.23Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine recounts the sudden defeat of the pagan Goth Radagaisus near Rome (406) and the sparing of refugees in churches at Alaric's sack (410) as signs of God's merciful providence.
- City of God 6.1Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine turns from those who worship the gods for this life to those who worship them for the life after death, and argues that gods too petty even for earthly goods cannot give eternal life.
- City of God 6.2Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine praises Varro's unequalled learning and argues that, though Varro worshipped the gods, the way he exposed their rites shows a man bound by his city's custom.
- City of God 6.3Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine describes how Varro's forty-one books of Antiquities were arranged, with the sixteen books on divine things ending with the gods themselves.
- City of God 6.4Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine argues that Varro, by putting human institutions before divine things, tacitly admitted that the civil gods were human inventions rather than realities.
- City of God 6.5Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine sets out Varro's three theologies — mythical for the theater, natural for philosophers, civil for the city — and argues that the civil cannot be separated from the fabulous.
- City of God 6.6Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Addressing Varro directly, Augustine argues that fabulous and civil theology honor the same gods with the same shameful things and cannot lead to eternal life.
- City of God 6.7Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine argues that civil religion contains the same indecencies as the stage — the sacristan who diced with Hercules, the rites of Attis and the castrated Galli — so the two theologies cannot be separated.
- City of God 6.8Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine rejects the claim that allegorical 'natural' interpretations excuse the civil rites, since the same method would excuse the poets' fables that the pagans themselves condemn.
- City of God 6.9Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine ridicules the minute division of divine functions — the gods of childbirth and of the wedding night — and concludes that Varro, by exposing civil theology, meant to leave room only for natural theology.
- City of God 6.10Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine quotes Seneca's lost treatise Against Superstitions, which mocked the civil cults more boldly than Varro, but faults Seneca for still practicing what he condemned.
- City of God 6.12Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine concludes that since the gods of civil theology cannot give happiness, they cannot give eternal life, which is happiness without end.
- City of God 7.1Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine turns to Varro's 'select gods' to see whether they, unlike the lesser gods of civil theology, can give eternal life.
- City of God 7.2Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine lists Varro's twenty select gods and notes that they are found busy at the same petty tasks as the obscure gods, some of whom give more important gifts.
- City of God 7.3Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine argues that the select gods were not chosen for greater functions, since obscure gods give life and sense while the select ones share petty tasks, so their selection seems a matter of mere fortune.
- City of God 7.4Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine observes that the obscure gods escaped the scandalous stories told of the select gods, and that even blameless Janus was given a monstrous two- or four-faced image.
- City of God 7.5Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine reports Varro's claim that the images of the gods symbolize the world-soul and its parts, and argues that even this natural theology reaches only the soul, not the God who made the soul.
- City of God 7.6Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine summarizes Varro's natural theology: God is the world-soul, and the parts of the world are full of souls — stars as gods, and aerial heroes, lares, and genii.
- City of God 7.7Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine argues that if Janus is the world, he should have ends as well as beginnings, making a separate god Terminus absurd.
- City of God 7.8Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine mocks the interpretation of two-faced Janus as the open mouth and of four-faced Janus as the four quarters, ending with Christ's word 'I am the door.'
- City of God 7.9Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine examines Varro's claim that Jupiter holds the causes of things and is the world, and shows that this conflicts with Janus also being the world.
- City of God 7.10Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine asks why Janus and Jupiter are two gods if both are the one world, since one being with two powers is not two beings.
- City of God 7.11Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine lists Jupiter's many surnames, noting that one god with many functions is not thereby many gods, and mocks the overlapping of Jupiter and Rumina.
- City of God 7.12Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine ridicules the naming of Jupiter as 'Money' and contrasts money with true riches, which are virtue and wisdom.
- City of God 7.13Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine shows that Varro's definitions make Saturn and Genius identical with Jupiter, the world-soul.
- City of God 7.14Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine argues that Mercury and Mars, as the gods of speech and war, are either absorbed into Jupiter or are mere human activities and no gods at all.
- City of God 7.15Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine shows the confusion of identifying the gods with the planets and asks why the constellations of the zodiac received no worship.
- City of God 7.16Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine surveys how the select gods are identified with the world or its parts, so that one god becomes many things and one thing many gods.
- City of God 7.17Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine shows that Varro himself declared his accounts of the uncertain, certain, and select gods to be matters of doubtful opinion.
- City of God 7.18Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine judges it more credible that the gods were deified men than that their myths are allegories of nature, as Varro's reading of Saturn and Jupiter shows.
- City of God 7.19Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine picks apart Varro's agricultural allegories of Saturn — the devoured children, the clod, the sickle, the castration of Heaven — showing that they contradict themselves and point only to bodily things.
- City of God 7.20Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine reports that Varro interprets the Eleusinian mysteries only as a story about grain and the fertility of seeds.
- City of God 7.21Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine describes, from Varro, the phallic processions of Liber at the Italian crossroads and at Lavinium as proof of the uncleanness of the civil rites.
- City of God 7.22Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine mocks Varro's making two goddesses, Venilia and Salacia, out of the incoming and outgoing wave.
- City of God 7.23Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine examines Varro's three grades of the world-soul and shows the confusion of making the one earth into Tellus, Dis, Proserpina, Tellumo, Altor, and Rusor.
- City of God 7.24Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine argues that the many names of Tellus should not make many gods, and denounces the castration of the Galli in the cult of the Great Mother as worse than the other obscene rites.
- City of God 7.25Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine rejects Porphyry's interpretation of the castrated Attis as the spring flowers that fall before the fruit.
- City of God 7.26Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine denounces the castrated priests of the Great Mother, still seen recently in Carthage, as a disgrace worse than all the other myths of the gods.
- City of God 7.27Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine argues that the physical allegories point only to changeable creatures, and that worshipping a creature, or worshipping God with shameful rites, is sin — and doing both is a double sin.
- City of God 7.28Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine shows that Varro's scheme of referring gods to heaven and goddesses to earth contradicts itself, as Minerva, Neptune, and Dis show.
- City of God 7.33Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine says that only the Christian religion reveals the pagan gods as demons, from whom Christ's humility sets people free, and that Varro's natural explanations cannot excuse their rites.
- City of God 7.34Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine recounts from Varro how Numa's books explaining the causes of the Roman rites were unearthed and burned by the senate as too shameful to be known.
- City of God 8.12Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine explains why he debates the Platonists — Plotinus, Iamblichus, Porphyry, Apuleius — and notes that they all nevertheless offered sacrifice to many gods.
- City of God 8.13Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine argues that since Plato held all gods to be good and banished the poets, the beings who demand obscene plays and punished Titus Latinius cannot be good gods.
- City of God 8.18Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine mocks the idea that the chaste and innocent must reach the good gods through demons who love the very vices they avoid.
- City of God 8.20Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine mocks the maxim that 'no god mingles with man,' since it implies that the gods mingle with deceiving demons rather than with penitent men.
- City of God 8.21Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine traps the Platonists in a fourfold dilemma: whatever the demons report to the gods about Plato and the stage, the good gods are made ignorant, dishonored, or deceived.
- City of God 8.22Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine concludes that demons are not mediators but fallen spirits, confined to the air, who deceive people into worshipping them as gods or go-betweens.
- City of God 8.26Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine shows from Hermes' own words that the gods of Egypt were dead men, so that the pagans, not the Christians honoring the martyrs, are the worshippers of the dead.
- City of God 9.7Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine shows that Apuleius makes the partisan 'gods' of Homer into demons, since he holds the true gods far from such passions.
- City of God 9.12Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine sets out Apuleius' three contrasts between gods and men: lofty place, eternity, and happiness against lowly place, mortality, and misery.
- City of God 9.16Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine ridicules the claim that gods avoid men to escape contamination, since the supreme God touches wise minds and the sun's rays touch filth without being defiled.
- City of God 18.5Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine reports Varro's explanation that the Argive king Apis, dying in Egypt, became the god Serapis, and explains the Apis bull as a demonic deception.
- City of God 18.8Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine dates the birth of Moses and argues that figures such as Prometheus, Atlas, Mercury, Hercules, and Minerva were human beings later honoured as gods.
- City of God 18.9Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine relates Varro's account of how Athens was named after Minerva by the women's vote, and how the women were punished to appease Neptune.
- City of God 18.10Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine notes that Varro rejects the myth that Mars was tried on the Areopagus yet reports the contest of Neptune and Minerva as history, and dates Deucalion's flood.
- City of God 18.12Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine lists the rites and games instituted by Greek kings between the exodus and the death of Joshua and argues that the gods who delight in fabulous crimes are guilty of real ones.
- City of God 18.13Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine lists the Greek fables invented in the period of the judges and blames the worshippers of Jupiter for accepting and staging the shameful stories told of him.
- City of God 18.14Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine describes the “theological poets” such as Orpheus, who sang of the gods but did not rightly serve the one God, and mentions men such as Ino and Castor and Pollux who were deified.
- City of God 18.15Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine dates the end of the Argive kingdom and the beginning of the Laurentine kings to the judgeship of Deborah, and shows that Saturn, Picus, and Faunus were men deified by the Latins.
- City of God 18.16Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine reports the story that Diomede was deified after the Trojan War and that his companions became birds that guard his temple.
- City of God 18.17Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine reports Varro's stories of Circe and of Arcadians turned into wolves, from which Varro derives the names Lycaeus and the Roman Luperci.
- City of God 18.19Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine dates the arrival of Aeneas in Italy to the judge Abdon and notes the deification of Aeneas, Sancus, and Codrus, and the end of the Sicyonian kingdom under Eli.
- City of God 18.21Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine traces the Latin kings from Aeneas to Numitor, dates the end of the Assyrian empire to the reign of Procas, and discusses the stories of Romulus's birth and the she-wolf.
- City of God 18.24Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine dates Thales and the fall of the northern kingdom to the reign of Romulus, notes Cicero's praise of Romulus's deification, and dates the Samian Sibyl to the reign of Numa and Manasseh.
- City of God 18.54Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine refutes the pagan oracle by dating the 365 years from Pentecost to the consulship of Honorius and Eutychianus (AD 398), noting that the next year the temples of Carthage were overthrown and the church grew, and concludes Book 18.
- City of God 19.17Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine explains that the heavenly city, while a pilgrim on earth, shares the use of temporal goods and obeys the laws of the earthly city for the sake of peace, but must dissent from it in religion, since it worships the one God alone.
- City of God 19.23Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine examines oracles quoted by Porphyry, in which Apollo condemns Christ while praising the God of the Hebrews and Hecate praises Christ as a pious man while cursing Christians, and argues that the demons' aim is to keep men from becoming Christians and that justice, and so a true people, exists only where the one God alone receives sacrifice.
- City of God 22.6Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Contrasting Rome's belief in Romulus with the church's faith in Christ, Augustine argues that Rome made its founder a god by love, while the church, persuaded by miracles and prophecy, loved Christ by believing him God, and its martyrs died rather than deny him.
- City of God 22.10Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · The martyrs are not gods; Christians build memorials, not temples, for them and offer the sacrifice, which is the body of Christ, to the one God at their shrines, whereas the demons work wonders to be worshipped.
- Commentary on Jeremiah 1.21Jerome · ca. 414-419 · No pagan nation abandons its false gods, yet Israel abandoned the true God for idols; so too people pursue vice more zealously than virtue.
- Seven Books of History against the Pagans 1.0.9Orosius · ca. 417–418 · Augustine asked Orosius to answer the pagans who blame the present troubles on Christianity.
- Seven Books of History against the Pagans 2.19.15Orosius · ca. 417–418 · Lightning destroyed the pagan statues the Goths had not burned.
- Seven Books of History against the Pagans 3.4.4Orosius · ca. 417–418 · He will tell how Rome tried to appease the gods.
- Seven Books of History against the Pagans 3.4.5Orosius · ca. 417–418 · Stage plays were introduced to appease the gods.
- Seven Books of History against the Pagans 3.14.6Orosius · ca. 417–418 · The gods could not stop him getting the death he wanted.
- Seven Books of History against the Pagans 3.16.12Orosius · ca. 417–418 · Alexander visited the oracle of Ammon.
- Seven Books of History against the Pagans 3.16.13Orosius · ca. 417–418 · Alexander arranged the oracle's answer, showing the gods are dumb.
- Seven Books of History against the Pagans 3.22.5Orosius · ca. 417–418 · Rome brought the serpent of Aesculapius to stop the plague.
- Seven Books of History against the Pagans 4.6.3Orosius · ca. 417–418 · Carthage sacrificed children against plague.
- Seven Books of History against the Pagans 4.6.4Orosius · ca. 417–418 · Such sacrifices only aided the plague.
- Seven Books of History against the Pagans 4.6.6Orosius · ca. 417–418 · Their gods turned away, or rather God was angry.
- Seven Books of History against the Pagans 4.6.37Orosius · ca. 417–418 · The pagans are enemies of God and truth.
- Seven Books of History against the Pagans 4.11.9Orosius · ca. 417–418 · The fire burned the temple of Vesta.
- Seven Books of History against the Pagans 4.13.3Orosius · ca. 417–418 · Rome buried alive two Gauls and a Greek woman as a sacrifice.
- Seven Books of History against the Pagans 6.1.2Orosius · ca. 417–418 · Polytheism arose from misplaced fear and is now abandoned.
- Seven Books of History against the Pagans 6.1.3Orosius · ca. 417–418 · Even the pagans acknowledge one supreme God.
- Seven Books of History against the Pagans 6.1.10Orosius · ca. 417–418 · The pagans credit their gods with the empire.
- Seven Books of History against the Pagans 6.1.11Orosius · ca. 417–418 · The pagans claim the gods left when the rites ceased.
- Seven Books of History against the Pagans 6.1.13Orosius · ca. 417–418 · Who earned Romulus's safety by worship?
- Seven Books of History against the Pagans 6.1.19Orosius · ca. 417–418 · The gods were worshiped devoutly when Christ came.
- Seven Books of History against the Pagans 6.5.7Orosius · ca. 417–418 · Mithridates's death and his doubt about the gods.
- Seven Books of History against the Pagans 6.5.8Orosius · ca. 417–418 · Mithridates doubted the gods but did not know the true God.
- Seven Books of History against the Pagans 6.5.10Orosius · ca. 417–418 · Those who still worship the gods are more guilty.
- Seven Books of History against the Pagans 7.1.6Orosius · ca. 417–418 · Christians and pagans differ in faith, not in reverence.
- Seven Books of History against the Pagans 7.1.8Orosius · ca. 417–418 · The pagan gods are caught in a dilemma.
- Seven Books of History against the Pagans 7.1.9Orosius · ca. 417–418 · Gods worthy of the name do not depend on material.
- Seven Books of History against the Pagans 7.28.28Orosius · ca. 417–418 · Constantine closes the pagan temples.
- Seven Books of History against the Pagans 7.37.5Orosius · ca. 417–418 · Radagaisus vows Roman blood to his gods.
- Seven Books of History against the Pagans 7.37.6Orosius · ca. 417–418 · The pagans blame the loss of the gods.
- Seven Books of History against the Pagans 7.37.10Orosius · ca. 417–418 · A pagan victory would have revived idolatry.
- Seven Books of History against the Pagans 7.37.11Orosius · ca. 417–418 · God destroyed the pagan and let the Christian prevail.
- Retractations 2.31Augustine of Hippo · 426-427 · Augustine describes his answers to six questions against the pagans and explains that being “worthy” of salvation depends on God's calling, not one's own merits.
- Retractations 2.43Augustine of Hippo · 426-427 · Augustine explains that he wrote The City of God after the sack of Rome by Alaric, outlines the plan of its twenty-two books, and corrects remarks on Abraham's sacrifice and Samuel's descent.
- Instructions 2.9Eucherius of Lyon · ca. 428-434 · Names of idols and demonic beings in Scripture explained.
- Part 3, chapter 38Quodvultdeus of Carthage · ca. 445-450 · The prophecies of the destruction of idols are fulfilled in the author’s own times: the closing of temples under Theodosius, Symmachus’ failed plea for the altar of Victory, Eutropius’ flight to the church, the exposure of the frauds in the Serapeum and a Roman cave, and the consecration and later destruction of the temple of Caelestis at Carthage, which the author witnessed.