Praeparatio evangelica

He brings in the heaven, that is, the eighth motion and day; and he says that souls depart on the fourth day, indicating the journey through the four elements. But the seventh day is held sacred not only by the Hebrews but also by the Greeks, on which the whole cosmos revolves, of all living and growing things. Hesiod, then, speaks of it thus: "First the fourth and the seventh day are a holy day." And again: "The seventh again is the bright light of the sun." And Homer: "Then the seventh day came, a holy day," and "The seventh was holy," and again: "It was the seventh day, and all was completed," and further: "On the seventh dawn we left the stream of Acheron." And indeed the poet Callimachus writes: "On the seventh dawn all things were wrought for him," and again: "The seventh is among good things, and the seventh is birth," and "The seventh is among the first, and the seventh is perfect," and "All seven are wrought in the starry heaven, appearing in the cycles of the revolving years." And the elegies of Solon greatly extol the hebdomad. What then? Does not Plato, almost prophesying the salvific economy, speak in the second book of the Republic in words similar to the scripture that says, "Let us remove the just man from ourselves, because he is troublesome to us," thus: "The just man, being so disposed, will be scourged, bound, have his eyes gouged out, and finally, after suffering all evils, will be impaled." And the Socratic Antisthenes, paraphrasing that prophetic scripture, "To what have you likened me? says the Lord," says that "God resembles nothing, therefore no one can learn him from an image." And the Athenian Xenophon says similar things verbatim.

The one who shakes everything and keeps it still is manifest as great and powerful, but what his form is like is invisible. Nor does the all-bright sun, though it seems to be seen, allow itself to be looked at; but if someone shamelessly gazes at it, it takes away his sight." For what flesh can see the heavenly and true immortal god with its eyes, who dwells in the pole? But not even can men stand opposite the rays of the sun, being mortal, as the Sibyl foretold. Well, then, Xenophanes of Colophon, teaching that god is one and incorporeal, adds: "One god, greatest among gods and men, not at all like mortals in body or in thought." And again: "But mortals think that gods are born, and have their own clothes, voice, and body." And again: "But if oxen or lions had hands, or could draw with their hands and accomplish works like men, then horses would draw forms of gods like horses, and oxen like oxen, and they would make bodies such as they themselves have." Let us then listen again to Bacchylides the lyric poet speaking about the divine: "They are unyoked from ever-present diseases and guiltless, in no way like men." And listen to Cleanthes the Stoic, who has written these things about god in some poem: "You ask me what the good is like? Listen then:

Ordered, just, holy, pious, self-controlled, useful, beautiful, fitting, severe, frank, always beneficial, fearless, painless, profitable, without grief, helpful, pleasing, safe, dear, honorable, agreed upon, glorious, without vanity, careful, gentle, vehement, lasting, blameless, always enduring. And the same author, in his secret teaching, attacking the idolatry of the many, adds: "Every man is unfree who looks to glory, as if he will obtain some good from it." Therefore one must not suppose about the divine according to the opinion of the many. For I do not think that, secretly imitating the shapes of a wicked light, I have come to your bed like a man, as Amphion says to Antiope. And Sophocles writes straightforwardly: "For Zeus married his mother, not in the form of gold nor clad in a swan's feather, as he made the Pleuronian maiden pregnant, but as a whole man." Then, going on, he added: "Swiftly the adulterer stood on the adulterous steps." On which matters, still more clearly, the

Incontinence of the mythologized Zeus he recounts somewhat as follows: "But he, having touched neither feast nor lustral water, went to the bed, his heart stung, and all that night he was in turmoil." Let these things then be dismissed to the follies of the theaters. Directly, Heraclitus says: "Of the Logos which is always, men become uncomprehending, both before they hear and after they have first heard." And the lyric poet Melanippides, singing, says: "Hear me, O father, wonder of mortals, ruler of the ever-living soul." And Parmenides, "the great," as Plato says in the Sophist, writes somewhat as follows concerning the divine: "Much indeed as ungenerated and indestructible it is, alone, only-begotten and unmoved and ungenerated." But also Hesiod says: "He himself is king and lord of all immortals, and no other contends with your power." Indeed, tragedy also, drawing away from idols, teaches us to look up to the heaven. For Sophocles, as Hecataeus, who compiled the histories, says in his work concerning Abraham and the Egyptians, directly exclaims on the stage: "One in truth, one is god, who made both the heaven and the wide earth, the bright swell of the sea, and the forces of the winds. But we mortals, with hearts often wandering, have set up as consolation for our woes images of gods, shapes of stone or bronze or gold-wrought or ivory, and to these we offer sacrifices and wretched festivals, thinking thus to be pious." And Euripides, in tragedy on the same stage: "You the self-grown, who in the ether and around the earth hold in your moist arms; consider this Zeus, regard this as god.

In the drama *Peirithous*, the same author also writes these tragic lines: "You, the self-grown, who have woven the nature of all things in the ethereal whirl, around whom light, and around, dark night of changeful hue, and the countless host of stars ceaselessly dance in a circle." For here he has called the self-grown the demiurgic mind, and the following words are applied to the cosmos, in which there are also the opposites of light and darkness. And Aeschylus, son of Euphorion, speaks very reverently of the god: "Zeus is aether, Zeus is earth, Zeus is heaven, Zeus is all things and whatever is higher than these." I know also that Plato bears witness to Heraclitus writing: "The one wise thing alone is unwilling and willing to be called by the name of Zeus." And again: "Law is to obey the counsel of one." And if you wish to refer to that famous saying, "Let him who has ears to hear, hear," you would find here indicated by the Ephesian: "The uncomprehending, when they hear, are like the deaf; the saying bears witness to them that they are absent while present." But do you desire to hear directly of one first principle even from the Greeks? Timaeus of Locri in his physical treatise will bear witness for me word for word: "There is one ungenerated first principle of all things; for if it were generated, it would no longer be a first principle, but that from which the first principle was generated." For the true opinion flowed from there: "Hear, O Israel, the Lord your God is one, and you shall worship him alone." This, behold, is clear and unerring for all, as the Sibyl says. And Xenocrates of Chalcedon, calling "the one highest Zeus, the other younger," leaves an indication of father and son. And most paradoxically, he who introduces the gods as subject to human passions appears to know the divine; yet even so, Epicurus does not revere him.

He says, then: "Why do you pursue me, son of Peleus, with swift feet, you who are yourself mortal, a deathless god? Do you not yet know that I am a god? For the divine is not to be captured by a mortal, nor is it to be comprehended either by feet or by hands or by eyes, nor at all by the body," he has declared. "To what have you likened the Lord? Or to what likeness have you likened him?" says the Scripture, "Has a carpenter or a goldsmith made an image, melting down gold and gilding it?" and so forth. And the comic poet Epicharmus speaks clearly about the Logos in his *Politeia* somewhat as follows: "Human life has great need of reasoning and number; we live by number and reasoning; for these preserve mortals." Then he expressly adds: "Logos governs humans, and preserves them according to its manner; if there is human reasoning, there is also divine Logos. It is natural for a human concerning the reversals of life. But the divine Logos, which accompanies all arts, itself teaches them what it is beneficial to do. For a human did not discover any art, but the god brings these. And the human Logos is naturally derived from the divine Logos." Yes, indeed, through Isaiah the Spirit cries out: "What is the multitude of your sacrifices to me? says the Lord; I am full of whole burnt offerings and the fat of lambs and the blood of bulls; I do not want them." And after a little, adding: "Wash yourselves, become clean, remove the wickedness from your souls," and so forth, the comic poet Menander writes in these very words:

If someone, Pamphilus, offering a sacrifice—whether a multitude of bulls or goats or, by Zeus, other such things, or constructions, making golden or purple cloaks, or figurines of ivory or emerald—thinks that the god is thus made well-disposed, that man is mistaken and has a light mind. For a man must be useful by nature, not corrupting virgins and committing adultery, stealing and murdering for the sake of money. Do not even desire a needle's thread, Pamphilus; for the god sees you, being near at hand. "I am a god who draws near, and not a god from afar. Will a man do something in secret, and I not see it?" he says through Jeremiah. And again Menander, paraphrasing that scripture—"Sacrifice a sacrifice of righteousness and hope in the Lord"—writes something like this: Do not ever desire another's needle, dearest friend. For the god delights in righteous deeds, not unrighteous ones. He allows the one who labors to raise up his own life, plowing the earth night and day. Sacrifice to the god continually, being righteous and being bright in your cloaks as in your heart. If you hear thunder, do not flee, having nothing on your own conscience, master. For the god sees you, being near at hand. "While you are still speaking," says the scripture, "I will say, 'Behold, I am present.'" Diphilus the comic again discusses something like this about judgment: Do you think, Niceratus, that the dead, having partaken of all luxury in life, have escaped the divine as if unnoticed? There is an eye of Justice that sees all things; for we believe that in Hades there are two paths, one for the just and another for the impious as a boundary. And even if the earth covers both, they say, in all time, the one who goes away steals, defrauds, stirs up—

Do not be deceived: there is also judgment in Hades, which the god who is master of all will perform, whose name is fearful, and I would not even utter it. He grants length of life to those who sin. If any mortal thinks that by doing evil during the day he escapes the notice of the gods, he holds a wicked thought and is caught while holding it, whenever Justice is at leisure. See, all of you who think there is no god. There is, there is; if someone does evil, being evil by nature, let him gain time, for in time he will later pay the penalty. The tragedy also agrees with these things through the following: "For there will be, there will be that time of eternity, when the gold-faced aether will split open the treasure full of fire; and the flame, having been fed, will burn everything on earth and in the air, raging." And a little later it adds: "And when the whole has perished, the entire depth of the waves will be gone, the earth will be bereft of its foundations, and the air, burnt, will no longer produce winged creatures." And then it will save all that it previously destroyed. We will find similar things in the Orphic writings, written something like this: "For having hidden all things, he again brought them forth into joyous light from his sacred heart, working terrible deeds." If we live piously and justly, we are blessed here, and more blessed after our departure from here, not having happiness for any limited time, but being able to rest in eternity, dwelling with other immortals, being at the same table, without share in grievous sorrows, unwearying, as the philosophical poetry of Empedocles says. No one will be so great, even among the Greeks, as to surpass

Justice, not even a small one, to escape notice. The same Orpheus also says this: Look to the divine word and attend to it, guiding the intelligent vessel of your heart; walk well on the path, and behold only the immortal lord of the cosmos. And again concerning the god, calling him invisible, he says that he is known only to one, a certain one of the Chaldean race, whether he means Abraham or his son, through these words: Unless there is a certain only-begotten scion of the Chaldean tribe from above; for he was skilled in the course of the star and the movement of the sphere around the earth as it revolves, and in the circle equal in measure, according to its own axis; and he guides the winds around the air and the stream. Then, as if paraphrasing the words, "The heaven is my throne, and the earth is the footstool of my feet," he adds: And he himself is again fixed upon the great heaven on a golden throne; and the earth stands beneath his feet. And he has stretched out his right hand to the limits of Ocean; and the base of the mountains trembles within from his wrath, and cannot bear his mighty strength. And he is everywhere, himself celestial, and on earth he brings all things to an end, having himself the beginning, the middle, and the end. It is not lawful for you to speak otherwise; my limbs tremble in my mind. He rules from on high, and also over these things. For through these words he has revealed all those prophetic sayings: "If he should open the heaven, trembling will seize you; and from you mountains will melt, as wax melts from the face of fire," and those through Isaiah: "Who measured the heaven with a span and the whole earth with a fist?" Again, when he says:

Of Aether and Hades, of sea and earth you are tyrant, who with thunder shakes the mighty house of Olympus, whom daimons dread and the company of gods fears, to whom the Moirai, though implacable, are obedient; imperishable, mother-father, by whose wrath all is shaken, who stirs the winds, and covers all with clouds, cleaving the broad aether with thunderbolts. Your order runs among the stars with unchangeable decrees; and by your fiery throne stand toiling angels, who care that all is accomplished for mortals; your spring shines new with purple flowers; your winter, coming with cold clouds; your Bacchic Bromius once distributed the fruits. Then he adds, expressly naming the god pantokrator: imperishable, immortal, known only to the immortals. Come, greatest of all gods, with strong necessity, fearful, unconquered, great, imperishable, whom aether crowns. Now through the term "mother-father" he indicated not only generation from non-being, but also gave occasion to those who introduce projections perhaps to conceive of a consort of the god; and he paraphrases those prophetic writings, both that through Hosea: "Behold, I am strengthening thunder and creating wind, whose hands laid the foundation of the host of heaven," and that through Moses: "See, see that I am, and there is no other god besides me. I will kill and make alive; I will strike and I will heal. And there is none who will deliver from my hands." But he himself plants evil from good for mortals and chilling war, according to Orpheus. Such things also the Parian Archilochus says: O Zeus, yours is the power of heaven, but you look upon deeds among men, both reckless and lawless.

Again let the Thracian Orpheus sing for us: his right hand is stretched out at the limit of Ocean from all sides, and the earth stands beneath his feet. These things are manifestly taken from there: "The Lord will save inhabited cities and will seize the whole inhabited world with his hand, as a nest, the Lord who made the earth in his strength," as Jeremiah says, "and set upright the inhabited world in his wisdom." Further, in addition to these things, Phocylides, calling the angels daimons, represents some of them as good, others as base through these words, since we too have received that some are apostates: "But daimons are over men, different at different times, some to ward off the evil of a man that is coming." Well then, Philemon the comic poet also cuts out idolatry through these words: "There is for us no Tyche as a god, there is not, but it is the spontaneous that happens as it chances to each, which is called Tyche." And Sophocles the tragedian: "Not even to the gods do all things happen of their own will apart from Zeus; for he has the end and also the beginning." And Orpheus: "One power, one daimon came to be, the great blazing heaven, and one thing all things are made, in which all these things revolve, fire and water and earth and the things upon them." And Pindar the lyric poet, as if inspired, says outright: "What is god? That which is the all." And again: "God, who makes all things for mortals." And when he says: "Why do you expect that a man has wisdom a little more than another man? To search out the plans of the gods with a mortal mind is difficult; he was born from a mortal mother." From there he drew the thought: "Who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who is his counselor?" But also Hesiod, through what he writes, agrees with what has been said before.

No mortal man is a seer who would know the mind of aegis-bearing Zeus. Reasonably, then, Solon the Athenian in his elegies, himself following Hesiod, writes: "The mind of the immortals is wholly invisible to men." Again, when Moses prophesied that the woman would give birth to toils and labors because of the transgression, some not obscure poet writes: "They will never cease from toil and misery, nor by night will they cease groaning; the gods will give grievous cares." Further, Homer, having said: "The father himself stretched the golden scales," indicates that the god is just. And Menander the comic poet, interpreting the god as good, says: "A spirit stands by every man immediately at birth, a good guide of life; for one must not consider that there is an evil spirit harming a good life." Then he adds: "The god is entirely good," meaning either that every god is good, or, which is more likely, that the god is good in all things. Again, Aeschylus the tragedian, setting forth the power of the god, does not hesitate to address him as "Most High" in these words: "Separate the god from mortals and do not think him similar to yourself, made of flesh. You do not know him. Sometimes he appears as fire, irresistible in force, sometimes as water, sometimes as darkness, and he himself becomes like beasts, like wind, cloud, and lightning, thunder, rain. The sea and rocks and every spring and body of water serve him; mountains and earth and the vast depth of the sea and the great height of mountains tremble when the master's fierce eye looks upon them; for the glory of the Most High God is all-powerful.

Does it not seem to you that this paraphrases the saying, "The earth trembles before the face of the Lord"? In addition to these things, the most prophetic Apollo, bearing witness to the glory of God, is compelled to speak concerning Athena, when the Medes were marching against Greece, that she begged and supplicated Zeus concerning Attica. The oracle runs thus: Pallas cannot appease Olympian Zeus, beseeching him with many words and subtle counsel. Many temples of the immortals will she give to devouring fire, which now stand streaming with sweat, quaking with fear, and so forth. Thearidas, in his On Nature, writes: "The beginning of beings, the beginning truly real, is one; for that in the beginning is one and alone." And Orpheus says: "Nor is there any other apart from the great king." The comic poet Diphilus, persuaded by him, says in most sententious terms: "Honor the father of all that is, through to the end, the sole discoverer and creator of such goods." Reasonably, then, Plato also habituates "the best natures to arrive at the study which we earlier said was the greatest, to see the good and to make that ascent." "This, as it seems, would not be the turning of a potsherd, but a turning around of the soul from a kind of night-day to the true return to that which is, which indeed we will affirm to be true philosophy," and he judges those who have partaken of this to be of the golden race, saying, "You are all indeed brothers"; and those of the golden race are most precise and complete. Therefore, the father and maker of all is innately and without instruction apprehended by all, by all things, the inanimate

feeling compassion for the animal; and of living beings, some already work daily as immortal, while others, still mortal, are carried in fear and through their mother still in the womb, and others by self-determined reason. And of men, all Greeks and barbarians, no race anywhere of farmers or nomads, nor even of city-dwellers, can live without being first seized by faith in the superior being. Therefore every eastern nation, and every one touching the western shores, northern and all those toward the south, have one and the same preconception about the one who established the rule, since even the most universal of his works have permeated all equally. Much more so the inquisitive philosophers among the Greeks, starting from barbarian philosophy, gave the privilege to the invisible, alone, most powerful, most skillful, and most responsible for the other best things, not knowing the consequences of these, unless they were instructed by us, nor even how God is naturally conceived, but only, as we have often said, by periphrasis true." So much also from Clement. But since at greater length the philosophy according to Plato has been presented to us as being in harmony in very many respects with the doctrines of the Hebrews, for which we also admire the man for his intelligence and his other good judgment of the truth, it is time to consider what these things are concerning which we are no longer similarly disposed toward him, but prefer the reputed barbarian philosophy over his own.

14. That Not All Things Have Been Said Successfully by Plato: For Which Reason We Have Not Unreasonably Rejected His Philosophy. The oracles of the Hebrews, divine prophecies and oracles of God, containing power according to human capacity, and inscribed with God as author, and confirmed in their promise through the prediction of future events and through the outcomes consistent with the prophecies, are said to be free from any false intention. Indeed, the "divine oracles are pure and like refined silver, a touchstone for the earth, purified sevenfold." But not so the works of Plato, nor of any other among human sages, who, with the eyes of mortal understanding and with perishable conjectures and probabilities, as if in a dream rather than in waking reality, having come to a perception of the nature of beings, have brought with them a great admixture of falsehood to the truth of nature, so that you cannot find in them a teaching pure of deceit. For instance, if you were willing to yield a little of your self-love and to contemplate light itself by the power of rational substance, you would recognize that this wonderful philosopher himself, the one who alone among the Greeks touched the portals of truth, dishonors the name of the gods with perishable matter and with images shaped by vulgar hands into the form of a man, and that after the great height of his lofty eloquence, by which he insisted on knowing the father and creator of this universe, he is driven down from somewhere above, from the supercosmic vaults, into the lowest depth of god-hated idolatry, together with the populace of the Athenians.

so that Socrates is not prevented from going down to the Piraeus to pray to the goddess and to see the citizens then for the first time celebrating the barbarian festival, and from ordering that a cock be sacrificed to Asclepius, as he confesses, and also the ancestral interpreter of the Greeks, the demon seated at Delphi, who delivers oracles. For this reason one might justly attribute the cause of superstitious error to the unphilosophical multitude. Take up the argument again a little from the beginning and see what your all-wise philosopher, after his incorporeal and imperishable ideas, after the first and second cause after god, after the intellectual and immortal substances, legislates concerning popular opinion, saying: "But to speak of the other demons and to know their generation is too great for us; we must trust those who have spoken before, who were descendants of gods, as they said, clearly knowing their own ancestors. It is impossible to disbelieve the children of gods, even if they speak without probable and necessary proofs, but as they claim to report their own affairs, we must follow the law and believe. So then, according to them, let the generation of these gods be as follows and be told: Ocean and Tethys were children of Earth and Heaven, and from them Phorcys, Cronus, and Rhea, and from Cronus and Rhea, Zeus, Hera, and all those whom we know as their brothers, and still other descendants of these." For these reasons we must abandon the philosopher, since he, not in a philosophical manner nor consistently with himself, has feigned the mythical genealogies of the poets. For one might have heard him saying in the Republic as follows:

In the greater myths," I said, "we shall also see the lesser ones. For the same pattern must hold and the same power must be in both the greater and the lesser. Or do you not think so?" "I do," he said, "but I do not understand what you mean by the greater ones." "Those which Hesiod and Homer," I said, "told us, and the other poets. For these, composing false myths for men, spoke and still speak," the passages set forth a little earlier. And again there were his words through which he said: "Then we shall erase," I said, "beginning from this verse, all such things: 'I would rather be a serf bound to another man' and the rest," through which he adds: "Again we shall require of Homer and the other poets not to represent Achilles, the son of a goddess, sometimes lying on his side, sometimes on his back," and what follows these. To which he adds: "Or Zeus, while the other gods and men slept, as though alone awake, easily forgetting all that he had planned because of the desire for sexual intercourse, and so struck at the sight of Hera that he did not even wish to go to the bedchamber but wanted to have intercourse with her on the ground," like a lark, "and saying that he was seized by desire as not even when they first consorted with each other, hiding from their parents.

nor the binding of Ares and Aphrodite by Hephaestus for such other reasons." 13.14.10 When these things have been said in this manner, what then does he mean by the subsequent statement that calls the poets children of the gods and asserts that it is impossible to disbelieve them, even though he testifies that they fabricated the myths about the gods without plausible and necessary demonstrations? 13.14.11 And what does the irrational faith, put forward out of fear of punishment from the laws, intend? And how are Uranus and the Earth first among the gods, and then their descendants, Oceanus and Tethys, Cronus and Rhea, and Zeus after all of them, and Hera and all those who are mythologized by Homer and Hesiod as their children and brothers and descendants, when he himself refuted these very things by saying: "This, I said, is what one must first and foremost blame, especially if someone does not lie well. What is this? When one represents badly in speech concerning gods and heroes, what they are like, just as a painter paints things that are not at all like what he intended to paint." And again: "First, I said, the greatest and most important falsehood, and the one who spoke it did not lie well, is that Uranus did what Hesiod says he did, and that Cronus took vengeance on him," and so forth. How then could the same poets, now false and not truthful, again be called descendants of the gods? But for these reasons, we must abandon this man, who feigned the Athenian populace out of fear of death; and we must honor Moses and the oracles of the Hebrews, which throughout adhere purely to the only true and unerring piety. Behold then

And another.

15. That Plato did not at all correctly expound the doctrine concerning the intelligible substances. The Hebrews say that the intermediate class of rational natures is created, not uncreated. And dividing this by reason into intellectual substances, they name them spirits and powers and ministers of God, angels and archangels; and from the falling away and perversion of these they introduce the race of demons and every form of contrary and evil activity. For this reason they do not permit those who do not bring the good and the beautiful inseparable from their nature to be considered gods, but they bring from the cause of all things not only their being but also their well-being and virtue, and they do not bring immortality either like the God over all or like that through which all things were constituted. Now Plato, like the Hebrews, posits the rational natures as incorporeal and intelligible substances, but he falls away from consistency, first by asserting that they are uncreated, just as every soul is, and then by saying that they subsist from an effluence of the first cause. For he does not wish to grant that they have come into being from non-being. Hence he also supposes that there is a race of several gods, positing in theory certain effluences and projections of the first and second cause, and that they are good by nature and in no way capable of departing from their own virtue, whence he deems them to be gods. He considers the tribe of demons to be different from these, being receptive of baseness and wickedness and change for the worse; of these some are called good, others bad.

Having set these things in this way contrary to the opinions of the Hebrews, he does not explain from what source it is reasonable to say that the daemons subsist. For no one of sound mind would say that they come from the matter of bodies, for that is irrational; but daemons are rational, and rational beings could never be born from the irrational. But if they come from the effluence of the higher beings, how are they not themselves gods equal to those who generated them? And how, when the source is good, are its products not similar? And from where did the shoot of vice in the secondary beings spring forth, if the root goes from above from good things and through good things? And how could bitter come from sweet? And if the race of wicked daemons is more difficult than all darkness and all bitterness, how could it be said to come from the effluence of the nature of the higher beings? And if it were from this, it would not have changed from its proper lot; but if it has been altered, it was not originally impassible in nature; and if it was not of such a nature, how could they be gods, if indeed they are capable of partaking of an evil portion? But if they are neither from the effluence of the higher beings nor from the matter of bodies, it is time either to say they are ungenerated and, along with the ungenerated matter of bodies, to array a third host of ungenerated rational beings against God, no longer representing God as the maker and creator of all things, or, acknowledging this, to confess in agreement with the words of the Hebrews that he makes even things that are not. And what do they know and teach concerning these matters?

the intermediate nature of rational beings, they say, subsists neither from the matter of bodies nor from an effluence of the ungenerated and always identically and uniformly existing substance, but, not having existed before, came to be by the active power of the cause of all things. And that these are not gods nor are they properly deemed worthy of this appellation, because their nature is not equal to that of their maker, nor do they, like God, inseparably draw the good, and that which is opposite to the beautiful they might at times admit, through neglect of attention to the better, which each has himself wrought for himself, being naturally master of his own impulse and judgment. So much for these matters. Let us now proceed to another.

10. THAT PLATO DID NOT IN ALL RESPECTS THINK CORRECTLY ABOUT THE SOUL. Like the Hebrews, he posits the soul as immortal and says it is similar to God, but he no longer consistently with them sometimes says its substance is composite, as if it brings in one part from the indivisible and always identically existing cause and another part from the divisible nature that pertains to bodies. He speaks thus in his own words in the Timaeus: "He, then, who is prior in generation and in virtue, and older than the body, as mistress and ruler over that which is to be ruled, compounded the soul from the following and in this manner: from the indivisible and always identically existing substance, and from the divisible substance that comes to be among bodies, he blended a third form of substance in between from both, and also from the nature of the Same and that of the Other, and according to these he constituted it in the middle of their indivisible and the divisible that pertains to bodies. And taking these three as existent, he blended them all into one form, the nature of the Other being difficult to mix.

existing into the same forcibly harmonized." Hence naturally the passive part is also attached by him to the definition of its essence. But at one time he has thus defined the essence of the soul, at another he attaches to it a different and worse absurdity, that divine and heavenly, incorporeal and rational soul, resembling God and by the magnitude of its virtue surpassing the heavenly vaults, descends from somewhere above from the supramundane realms into asses and wolves and ants and bees, and urges us to believe this account without any proof. He says then in the *On the Soul* as follows: "And up to this point they wander, until by the desire of the bodily form that follows them they are again bound into a body. And they are bound, as is likely, into such natures as they may have practiced in life. What natures do you mean, Socrates? For example, those who have practiced gluttony and insolence and love of drink and have not been careful, it is likely they enter into the races of asses and wild beasts; or do you not think so? Very likely, you say. And those who have preferred injustice and tyranny and plunder, into the races of wolves and hawks and kites; or where else would we say such souls go? Certainly, said Cebes, into such. Then, said he, it is clear also for the rest, where each would go according to the likenesses of their practice. It is clear, said he; how could it not be?

Therefore," he said, "the happiest of these, and those who go to the best place, are those who have practiced popular and civic virtue, which they call temperance and justice, arising from habit and practice without philosophy and intellect." "How are these the happiest?" "Because it is likely that they will again arrive at such a civic and tame species, whether of bees or wasps or ants, or even back into the human race itself." And in the *Phaedrus* listen to what he sets forth: "For each soul does not return to the same place from which it came for ten thousand years; for it does not grow wings before that time, except the soul of one who has philosophized guilelessly or who has loved boys with philosophy. These, in the third thousand-year cycle, if they choose this life three times in succession, having thus grown wings, depart in the three-thousandth year. The others, when they have ended their first life, undergo judgment; and after judgment, some go to places of punishment under the earth and pay the penalty, while others, lightened by justice, pass time in some region of the sky, living worthily of the life they led in human form. In the thousandth year, both arrive at the allotment and choice of the second life, and choose whatever they wish.

...each. There indeed the human soul arrives at the life of a beast, and from a beast, which once was a man, again into a man." And these things are in the *Phaedrus*; but in the *Republic* hear what he writes as follows: "He said he saw the soul that was once Orpheus choosing the life of a swan, out of hatred for the female sex because of the death inflicted by them, not wishing to be born of a woman. He saw the soul of Thamyras choosing that of a nightingale; he saw also a swan changing to the choice of a human life, and other musical animals likewise. The soul that drew the twentieth lot chose the life of a lion; it was that of Ajax son of Telamon, shunning being born a man, remembering the judgment of the arms. Next, the soul of Agamemnon, also out of hatred for the human race because of its sufferings, changed to the life of an eagle. The soul of Atalanta, drawing a middle lot, seeing great honors of an athletic man, could not pass them by but took them. After this he saw the soul of Epeus son of Panopeus going into the nature of a skilled woman. Far off, among the last, he saw the soul of the buffoon Thersites putting on that of an ape. By chance the soul of Odysseus, drawing the last of all, was to choose; having been relieved of ambition by the memory of former labors, it went about seeking for a long time the life of a private and unmeddling man, and with difficulty found it lying somewhere neglected by the others, and said when it saw it that it would have done the same even if it had drawn first, and chose it gladly.

And from the other beasts likewise to go into men and into each other, the unjust changing into wild animals, the just into tame ones, and all mixtures being mingled." So much Plato said concerning the soul, and it is clear that he is Egyptianizing in his doctrine; for this is not the teaching of the Hebrews, since it is not a friend of truth. But this is not the time to refute it, especially since he himself did not attempt to prove the problem by demonstrations. Yet one might reasonably note this, that it was inconsistent for the same man to say that at death the souls of the impious, departing from here, pay penalties in Hades for what they have done and are punished there endlessly, and again to assert that they choose their lives here according to their own judgment. For he says that they are bound into a body by desire for the corporeal; and that those nurtured in insolence and gluttony become asses and enter the bodies of other beasts, choosing these things according to their own judgment, not by justice; and that the unjust and rapacious become wolves and kites, having come to this willingly. Then that the soul of Orpheus wished to be a swan, that of Thamyris a nightingale, and that Thersites chose the life of an ape.

Where then would be the matters of judgment after departure from here, which in the *On the Soul* he describes, saying: "When the dead have arrived at the place to which each one's daemon conveys them, and those who are judged to have lived moderately, having gone to the Acheron and embarked on the vessels that are there for them, arrive on these to the lake, and there they dwell and, being purified, pay penalties for their injustices, if anyone has committed any wrong, and receive honors for their benefactions, each according to his worth. But those who are judged to be incurable because of the magnitude of their sins, whether they have committed many and great acts of temple-robbery or many unjust and lawless murders or any other such things, these the appropriate fate casts into Tartarus, whence they never emerge." And he went through these things concerning the impious. But concerning the pious, listen to what he says: "But of these same, those who have been sufficiently purified by philosophy live entirely without toils for all subsequent time and arrive at dwellings even more beautiful than these, which it is not easy to describe nor is the time sufficient at present." And in the *Gorgias*, observe what he says: "The one who has passed through life justly and piously, when he dies, goes to the Isles of the Blessed.

depart to dwell in complete happiness free from evils, while the one who has lived unjustly and impiously goes to the prison of retribution and justice, which they call Tartarus. And those who have committed the worst injustices and through such wrongdoings have become incurable, from these the examples are made; and these themselves no longer benefit, since they are incurable, but others benefit, those who see them suffering the greatest and most painful and most fearful sufferings for their sins throughout all time, simply hung up there as examples in Hades in the prison, spectacles and admonitions for those who constantly arrive for judgments." How could these things be consistent with the doctrines concerning the recompense of bodies, which claim that the soul, when passing on, chooses them? For how could the same soul undergo punishments and prisons and such great retribution for all time after the departure from here, and again, as if released and free from bonds, choose whatever lives it wishes? And if it is going to choose again according to pleasure, where then is the prison of retribution and justice? One could, at leisure, take up countless other points of this argument, but it is not the time to prolong the discussion. And the first error of Plato's opinion on these matters has been revealed in this way; the second part of the elaboration of the doctrine, by which he defined that one part of the soul is divine and rational, while another part of it is irrational and passible, has been condemned even by his own associates, as can be learned from the following words:

17. That the nature of the soul is not composed of an impassible and a passible substance. "Concerning the soul according to Plato, which he says was constituted by God from an impassible and a passible substance, as from white and black some intermediate color, we have this to say: that of necessity, when a separation of these occurs in time, it will be destroyed, like the composition of the intermediate color, when each of the elements from which it was composed is naturally separated in time to its own proper nature. If this is so, we will declare the soul perishable, not immortal. For if it is agreed that nothing among the things in nature exists without its opposite, and that the things in the cosmos have been ordered by God from the nature of opposites, He having implanted friendship and communion among them—for example, dry with wet, hot with cold, heavy with light, white with black, sweet with bitter, hard with soft, and all such things—and one other common bond of all, the impassible substance with the passible, then things that have been blended and mixed admit of separation from each other in time by nature. And if the soul is held to have come into being from an impassible and a passible substance, of necessity, like the intermediate color, it too will be destroyed in time by nature, when the opposites in its composition hasten to their own proper nature. For do we not see that even that which is naturally heavy, even if it is borne upward by us or by some external lightness added to it, is likewise forced downward to its own proper nature, and similarly that which is naturally light, when borne downward by similar external causes, is likewise forced upward?

For things composed of two opposites brought together into the same thing cannot always remain in the same state unless some third substance of being is always present in them. But the soul is not some third thing compounded from two opposites; rather, it is simple and, by its own nature, impassible and incorporeal. Hence Plato and his followers declared it to be immortal. Since, however, the common account of all holds that the human being is composed of soul and body, and the affections that occur in us voluntarily and involuntarily apart from the body are said to belong to the soul, the many, inferring from this that its substance is passible, say that it is mortal and corporeal, not incorporeal. But Plato was compelled to weave the passible substance into its naturally impassible nature. That neither view is correct, we shall attempt to demonstrate by setting forth the powers active in us, drawing on what each side—Plato and the others—has said. Let these passages from Severus the Platonist, On the Soul, be set before me. And consider also this in addition to what has been said.

18. On the Heaven and the Luminaries in It. In agreement with the Hebrews, he also sets forth the account concerning heaven and the things that appear in it, according to which they are generated, having been made by the cause of all things, and partake of bodily and perishable substance; but he no longer, like the Hebrews, legislates to worship them or to consider them gods, speaking thus in the Epinomis: "What then, Megillus and Cleinias, do I ever call a god, whom I should revere? Almost the heaven, which it is most just, as all other daimons and gods together, to honor and to pray to especially; and that it has become the cause of all other good things for us, all would agree." Then, proceeding in the same work, he adds these things: "But the visible gods, the greatest and most honorable and seeing most keenly in all directions, we must declare to be the first nature of the stars and whatever we perceive to have come into being along with them; and after these and under these, in turn, daimons, having the airy race as a third and middle seat, the cause of interpretation, whom it is very necessary to honor with prayers for the sake of auspicious passage." Through these things, having said that the gods are those indicated, he, in the Timaeus, discussing their first constitution physically, goes through the following: "What fire is to air, this air is to water, and what air is to water, this water is to earth; it bound together and constituted the heaven, visible and tangible. And on account of these things, from such things and of the number four, the body of the cosmos came to be, having agreed through proportion and having friendship from these, so that, having come together into itself, it became indissoluble by others except by the one who bound it together." Then he adds:

Having placed soul in its center, he stretched it throughout and also enveloped the body with it from outside, and revolving in a circle, he established heaven, one and solitary, as a circle. And again, going on, he adds, saying: From such reason and thought of God for the generation of time, in order that time might come into being, the sun and moon and five other stars, having the additional name planets, came into being for the determination and guardianship of the numbers of time; and the god, having made the bodies of each of them, placed them in the orbits which the revolution of the other traversed. And he adds: And bound by ensouled bonds, bodies became living beings and learned what was commanded. And in the tenth book of the Laws, he declares generally about every soul, speaking thus: All things, however, that partake of soul change, having in themselves the cause of change; and having changed, they are borne according to the order and law of fate. Those that have changed in lesser matters of character move in a lesser way on the level of the region, while those that have fallen into greater and more unjust matters move into depth. If, then, all things that partake of soul change, having in themselves the cause of change, and heaven and sun and moon partake of soul according to Plato himself, then these also would change, having in themselves the cause of change according to his account. How then does he again say that they are eternal and for this reason gods, even though they exist in a perishable body and are capable of being dissolved? He says again, then, in the Timaeus:

Since, then, all those that revolve visibly and those that appear, insofar as they may wish, have had a genesis as gods, the begetter of this whole universe says to them: "Gods of gods, of whom I am the craftsman and father of works, these are indissoluble against my will. Now everything bound is dissoluble; but that which is well fitted and in good condition is unwilling to dissolve evil. Therefore, since you have come into being, you are not entirely immortal nor indissoluble; yet you will not be dissolved nor will you meet with the portion of death, having obtained a bond greater and more authoritative than those with which you were bound when you came into being." Thus Plato. Naturally, then, Moses and the Hebrew oracles forbid revering these as gods and considering them such, but rather refer upward to the all-king God, the very creator of the sun, moon, stars, and the whole heaven and cosmos, who bound and fitted together all things by divine reason, and they legislate to consider only him God and to assign reverent honor to him alone, saying: "Do not, seeing the sun and the moon and the stars and the whole cosmos of heaven, be led astray to worship them." And Philo, educated in Hebrew matters, interprets these things, clarifying at length, speaking somewhere thus word for word: "Some have supposed the sun, moon, and the other stars to be self-ruling gods, to whom they have attributed the causes of all that comes to be. But to Moses the cosmos seemed both to be generated and to be a very great city having rulers and subjects: rulers being all those in heaven, both planets and fixed stars, and subjects being the natures in the air and around the earth after the moon.

The said rulers are not autonomous, but are lieutenants of the one father of all, imitating whose superintendence they succeed when he presides over each of the things that have come to be according to justice and law. Those who do not see the charioteer mounted upon the yoked team as the actual agents of the things that happen in the world ascribe the causes to them. Their ignorance the most holy lawgiver transforms into knowledge, speaking thus: "Do not, seeing the sun and the moon and the stars and the whole cosmos of the heaven, be led astray to worship them." Very aptly and well he called the acceptance of the said things as gods a wandering. For those who have seen the yearly seasons constituted by the advances and retreats of the sun, in which the generations of animals, plants, and fruits are brought to completion in fixed periods of time, and the moon as a servant and successor of the sun having taken up by night the care and protection of those things which the sun has by day, and the other stars according to their sympathy with earthly things effecting and acting countless things for the preservation of the whole, have wandered an endless wandering, suspecting that these alone are gods. But if they had been eager to walk the unerring path, they would have immediately known that, just as sense-perception has become a subordinate servant of mind, in the same way all perceptible things have been constituted as servants of the intelligible. And he adds, saying: "Therefore, passing over by reason the whole visible substance, let us go to the honor of that which is formless and invisible and comprehensible only by the mind, who is not only god of intelligible and perceptible things, but also the creator of all.

If anyone assigns the service due to the eternal and creator to another, younger and generated, let him be recorded as insane and guilty of the greatest impiety. These truly pure and divine teachings of Hebrew piety we have honored before the inflated philosophy. Why need I prolong the matter and bring the other things of Plato to light, when from these it is possible to infer what is now passed over by me in silence? I was not led to say these things for the sake of slander, since I greatly admire the man, indeed I consider and honor him as a friend of all Greeks, as one who has thought things dear and akin to me, even if not entirely the same, but in comparison with Moses and the prophets among the Hebrews I show the deficiency of his thought. Yet it was possible for one prepared to find fault to bring many accusations, such as his solemn and wise arrangements concerning women in the Republic, or his solemnly glorified words about lawless love in the Phaedrus. But you, if you desire to hear these things as well, take his own words and read them.

9. What Plato Ordained Concerning Women: "Perhaps, then," I said, "many things now being spoken might appear ridiculous contrary to custom, if they are done as described." "And indeed," he said. "What," I said, "do you see as the most ridiculous of them? Or is it obviously that women, naked, exercise in the wrestling schools with men, not only the young but also the older, just as old men in the gymnasia, when wrinkled and not pleasant to look at, yet still love to exercise?" And he adds next: "But the man who laughs at women exercising naked for the sake of the best, 'plucking the fruit of wisdom from the ridiculous,' does not know, it seems, at what he laughs." He also says in the seventh book of the Laws: "Thus it will be necessary for boys and girls to learn to dance, clearly, and to exercise;" and: "For boys there would be dancers, for girls there would be dancing girls, not less suitable for exertion." He also sets down in the same work the following: "And our maiden and mistress, rejoicing in the education of the chorus, did not think it right to play with empty hands, but, adorned with full armor, thus completes the dance; which it would be altogether fitting for both youths and maidens to imitate." And he also legislates for women to engage in warfare somewhere as follows:

In all these matters there must be teachers for each subject, hired with pay, living as foreigners, and they must teach all the lessons that pertain to war and all that pertain to music, not only when the father wishes the student to attend, and when he does not, letting the education go, but, as the saying goes, every man and child, as far as possible, must be educated of necessity, as belonging to the city rather than to their parents. The same things indeed concerning females my law would say, that all things just as for males, equally females must train; and I would say this word fearing nothing, neither of horsemanship nor of gymnastics, as though it would be fitting for men but not fitting for women. And again, proceeding further he says: Let us establish gymnasia and all the exercises for the body concerning war, of archery and all throwing and peltast fighting and all armed combat and tactical maneuvers and all marching of camps and encampments and all lessons that pertain to horsemanship. For of all these there must be common teachers, receiving pay from the city, and students of these must be the boys and men and maidens and women in the city, knowledgeable in all these things: maidens while still young having practiced all the dance in arms and battle, and women having taken hold of maneuvers and ranks and position and removal of arms. But the Hebrew word will not assent even to these, but will speak the opposite in every way, attributing success in wars not to the strength of men, let alone of women, but referring everything to God and the alliance from Him. So it says:

If the master does not build the house, those who build it have labored in vain. If the master does not guard the city, the guard has kept watch in vain. And this wonderful philosopher also introduces women into the gymnastic contest, speaking somewhere as follows: "For women, for girls before puberty, the naked stadium, the double course, the horse race, and the long course, as they compete in the race itself; for those from thirteen years of age until marriage, remaining in the community for no longer than twenty years and no less than eighteen, and dressed in appropriate attire, they must descend to the competition of these races. And let these be the matters concerning races for men and women; and for those concerning strength, instead of wrestling and such things as are now heavy, the battle in arms, fighting one against one and two against two." And after saying next, "It is necessary to command that those who summon the experts in armed combat legislate these things," he adds, saying, "And let the same be legislated concerning females, up to the time of marriage." Then, after joining to these the laws concerning peltastic fighting, the pancratium, the bow, the throwing of stones by hand and by sling, and the contest of horses, he again introduces concerning females, saying, "But it is not fitting to force females concerning these things by laws and ordinances of the community; but if, from the external training becoming customary, nature permits and does not object to boys or maidens sharing, let it be allowed and not censured." So much for Plato's statements concerning women. And this wonderful law also belongs to him:

If someone leaves behind female children, returning through brothers and nieces and nephews, first among the males, later among the females in one family; and let a judge, examining the proportion and disproportion of the time of marriages, decide, viewing the males naked, and the females naked as far as the navel. But also in festivals, he says they must dance naked, speaking thus in the sixth book of the Laws: "For the sake of such earnestness, it is necessary to conduct the educations, with boys and girls dancing and dancing, and at the same time both viewing and being viewed, with reason and with some age having suitable pretexts, naked males and females as far as the genitals, each being modest." In addition to all this, listen also to this law in the Republic about women being common: "After these things, I said, follows a law, along with the others, as I think, this one: that these women of these men are all to be common, and no one is to cohabit privately with any one; and the children are to be common, and neither parent is to know his own offspring nor child his parent." And he adds further: "It is likely, then, I said; the lawgiver, having selected the women just as the men, will hand them over as far as possible of the same nature; and since they have houses and common messes in common, and no one possesses anything of this kind privately, they will be together, and with both sexes mingling in gymnasiums and in the rest of their nurture, they will, I think, be led by necessity of innate instinct to intercourse with each other. Or do I not seem to you to speak of necessities?

Not by geometric, but by erotic necessities, which are likely to be more pungent than those for persuading and drawing the common people." But perhaps someone will interpret the meaning of this passage differently, not supposing that it suggests what is commonly thought. For he does not say without distinction that all women are common, so that it is permitted to be licentious with anyone who happens by, but that the distribution of them to men lies at the discretion of the rulers. For they are common in the sense that one might say public funds are common, distributed by those entrusted with them to those to whom they belong. And let this be so. What would you say upon learning that he also commands not to bring to light what is conceived, speaking thus: "A woman, I said, beginning from the age of twenty, is to bear children for the city; and a man, when he has passed the swiftest peak of his course, is to beget for the city from that time until the age of fifty-five." To which he adds: "But when, I suppose, both women and men have passed the age of procreation, we will leave them free to consort with whomever they wish." And he adds:

Having given orders to be especially eager not to bring any offspring to light, if one should be conceived; but if someone should be forced, to expose it as if there were no nourishment for such a child. And such are the matters concerning the training of women. But hear what sort of things are said concerning unlawful love:

20. Concerning Unlawful Love: "When he continues doing this and draws near with touching both in gymnasia and in other associations, then indeed the source of that stream, which Zeus, loving Ganymede, named 'desire,' flows copiously toward the lover; part of it sinks into him, but part, when he is filled, flows outward; and like a breath or an echo rebounding from smooth and solid surfaces and carried back to where it started, so the stream of beauty returns again to the beautiful one through the eyes, going as it is naturally inclined to go to the soul, and having arrived, it waters and stimulates the passages of the wings to grow feathers, and fills the soul of the beloved with love. So he loves, but of whom he is at a loss, and cannot say what he has experienced, but like one who has caught an eye-disease from another, he has no excuse to give." And he adds next: "He desires similarly, but more weakly, to see, to touch, to kiss, to lie together; and, as is likely, he does these things quickly thereafter. So in the act of sleeping together, the licentious horse of the lover has something to say to the charioteer and demands to enjoy small pleasures in return for many labors; but that of the beloved has nothing to say, yet, being full of passion and at a loss, he embraces the lover and kisses him, greeting him as a very well-disposed friend.

When they lie together, what sort of man is he who would not deny his own part to gratify the lover, if he should need it? If, then, the better elements of the mind prevail toward a regulated regimen and philosophy, they will live a blessed and harmonious life here, being self-controlled and orderly. Then after other remarks he adds: "But if they adopt a more vulgar and unphilosophical regimen, yet an ambitious one, perhaps in drunkenness or some other negligence, the two undisciplined beasts of burden, taking the souls off guard, having brought together into the same the choice blessed by the many, they chose and accomplished it; and having accomplished it, they henceforth use it, but sparingly, since they do not do what is not approved by the whole mind. These two are friends, but less so than the former, living together through love and also apart, holding that they have given and received the greatest pledges to each other, which it is not lawful to break and ever come to enmity. At the end, however, they depart from the body wingless, but eager to become winged, so that they carry away no small prize for their erotic madness. For it is not lawful for those who have already begun the journey beneath the heavens to go into darkness and the path under the earth, but having lived a luminous life, they are blessed, journeying together and becoming winged for the sake of love. Such and so divine gifts, O boy, will the friendship from a lover bestow upon you." Such are the words of Plato, but not those of Moses, who explicitly legislates contrary to these, proclaiming with a loud voice the fitting penalty against pederasts. He says, then:

Whoever lies with a male as with a woman, both have committed an abomination; let them be put to death, they are guilty. And: Cursed is everyone who lies with a male as with a woman. Why should I now refute that the most wise one, omitting the pederast—for even in the Laws he did not deign to prescribe the death penalty against pederasts—orders that a slave who does not report a treasure found by someone else be punished by death? But listen also to the following, lest you suppose I am slandering:

21. CONCERNING THE PENAL LAWS IN PLATO: "Whatever the god," he says, "ordains concerning possessions and the one who moved them, the city, serving the oracles, shall do the god's bidding. And if the informer is free, let him acquire a reputation for virtue, but if he does not inform, for vice; if he is a slave, the one who informs would rightly be made free by the city, paying the price to the master; but if he does not inform, let him be punished by death." Here, then, it is not the one who has transgressed any of the forbidden things who is punished by death, but the one who, when another has offended, did not inform. And in another way, he declares a master pure if he kills his own slave in anger. For he says: "If one kills his own slave, let him be purified; but if he kills another's in anger, let him pay double the damage to the owner." And listen also to this from his laws, which he laid down concerning murderers: "If someone kills a free person with his own hand, and the deed was done unintentionally in some anger, let him suffer the other things, just as it is fitting for one who kills without anger to suffer.

Two years he must necessarily flee, chastening his own anger." And to this he adds next another law of this kind: "He who kills in anger, but with premeditation, in other respects according to the former law, but let him flee three years, just as the other fled two, punished with a longer time because of the greater anger." Then next concerning the one who kills a second time he legislates as follows: "If, having returned, either of them, overcome by anger, does this same thing again, let him flee and never return." And again next he says: "If, which happens but rarely, a father or mother kills a son or daughter in anger by blows or some violent means, let them undergo the same purifications as others and be in exile for three years, and when those who killed return, let the wife be separated from the husband and the husband from the wife, and let them never again have children together." And to these he adds: "If a husband kills his wedded wife in anger, or a wife does the same to her husband, let them undergo the same purifications and complete three years of exile. When such a one returns, let him not partake of sacred rites with his own children nor ever be a table-companion. And if a brother kills a brother or a sister a sister in anger, let it be said that the same purifications and exiles as are prescribed for parents and children must be undergone also by those who have deprived brothers of brothers and parents of children; but let him never be a housemate with them nor a participant in sacred rites.

If a brother kills a brother in a civil disturbance or in some such manner, defending himself against one who first raised his hands, let him be pure, as having killed an enemy; and if a citizen kills a citizen, likewise, or a foreigner a foreigner. But if a native kills a foreigner, or a foreigner a native, in self-defense, let him be pure on the same terms; and if a slave kills a slave, likewise. But if a slave kills a free man in self-defense, let him be liable to the same laws as one who kills his father. Whoever intentionally and unjustly kills with his own hand any of his fellow citizens, let him first be excluded from lawful things, polluting neither market, nor temples, nor harbors, nor any other common assembly, whether anyone forbids the doer these things or not; for the law forbids. And he who does not prosecute, when he ought, or does not give notice, let him be excluded from within the degree of cousin. Secondly, let him be liable to anyone who wishes to avenge the deceased. A woman who wounds her own husband with intent to kill, or a man his own wife, let him flee into perpetual exile. Such are the laws of the philosopher. But if it is necessary to compare those of Moses with these, hear what he ordains concerning homicides: "If anyone strikes another and he dies, let him be put to death. But if he did not do it willingly, but God delivered him into his hands, I will give you a place where the slayer shall flee. But if anyone attacks his neighbor to kill him by guile and takes refuge, take him from my altar and put him to death. He who strikes his father or his mother, let him be put to death.

If two men are reviling each other and one strikes his neighbor with a stone or a fist and he does not die, but takes to his bed, if the man rises and walks outside leaning on his staff, the striker shall be guiltless; but he shall pay for his loss of work and the medical expenses. If a man strikes his own son or his own maidservant with a rod and he dies under his hands, he shall be punished by law. But if he lives for a day or two, he shall not be punished; for the slave is his property. If a man strikes the eye of his household slave or the eye of his maidservant and blinds him, he shall send them away free in place of their eye. Such are the laws of Moses. Now listen to how Plato prescribes in what manner and for what offenses a slave is to be flogged with inexorable blows: "When one wishes to gather what is now called the noble grape or the noble figs, if he takes from his own property, let him enjoy the fruit however and whenever he wishes; but if from another's without permission, following the principle 'do not disturb what is not your own,' let him always be fined. If a slave, without persuading the master of the fields, touches any such thing, let him be whipped with as many stripes as there are grapes in a cluster or figs on a fig tree." Such are the regulations concerning these matters, unworthy of Plato's great mind. But how noble and humane are the laws of Moses, you would learn by hearing him speak thus: "If you enter your neighbor's vineyard and eat grapes, enough to fill your soul, but you do not put any into a vessel." And again:

If you enter your neighbor's harvest and gather ears of grain in your hands, you shall not put a sickle to your neighbor's harvest. And again: If you reap your harvest in your field and a sheaf is left behind in your field, you shall not turn back to take it; it shall be for the poor, and the proselyte, and the orphan, and the widow, that the Lord your God may bless you in every work of your hands. If you gather olives, you shall not turn back to glean what is left behind you; it shall be for the proselyte, and the orphan, and the widow. If you harvest your vineyard, you shall not go back to glean what is left behind you; it shall be for the proselyte, and the orphan, and the widow. These are the things in Moses. And the things of Plato are also clear, in which you might find countless blameless things, of which indeed we especially accept the noble and best among them, and bid a long farewell to those that are not such. But now that these matters have been discussed here, and the reason has been given why we have decided not to philosophize according to Plato, it is time to bring the rest of our promise to completion and to survey the other schools of Greek philosophy.

14. The fourteenth book of the Preparation for the Gospel contains the following: 1. Preface concerning the subject matter. 2. Concerning the disagreement and conflict of the philosophers with one another. 3. Concerning the harmony of the Hebrews. 4. How Plato slandered those before him. 5. Concerning the first succession according to Plato. From Numenius the Pythagorean. 6. Concerning Arcesilaus, who established the Second Academy. From the same. 7. Concerning Lacydes, who succeeded Arcesilaus. From the same. 8. Concerning Carneades, who established the Third Academy. From the same. 9. Concerning Philo, who succeeded Clitomachus, who succeeded Carneades. From the same. 10. That there are conjectures, wordy disputes, and much error among the Greek philosophers. From the letter of Porphyry to Nectanebo and others. 11. Concerning geometry, astronomy, and calculations. From Xenophon. 12. Concerning those who boast of natural philosophy. From the same. 13. Concerning gymnastics and music. From Plato’s Republic. 14. Opinions of philosophers concerning principles. From Plutarch. 15. Concerning the opinion of Anaxagoras. From Plato. 16. Opinions of philosophers concerning the gods. From Plutarch. 17. Against those who, like Xenophanes and Parmenides, abolish the senses. From Aristocles. 18. Against the skeptics, also called ephectics, following Pyrrho, who declared that nothing is apprehensible. From Aristocles. 19. Against the philosophers following Aristippus, who say that only the affections are apprehensible, and the rest inapprehensible. From the same. 20.

Against those who, like Metrodorus and Protagoras, say that one must trust only the senses. From the same, 21. Against those who, like Epicurus, define pleasure as the end. From the same, 22. Again against those who define pleasure as the good. From Plato, 23. Against those who, like Epicurus, deny providence but attribute the universe to atomic bodies. From the works of Bishop Dionysius, 24. From examples among human beings. From the same, 25. From the constitution of the universe. From the same, 26. From the nature of man. From the same, 27. That it is not laborious for God to work. From the same.

14.1. Preface concerning the subject matter. All that could be said and heard concerning the philosophy according to Plato and its agreement with the writings of the Hebrews, on account of which we are astonished at the man, and again concerning its disagreement with them, on account of which no one in his right mind would accept him, having gone through in the previous book, I now proceed to the remaining schools of those among the Greeks who are called philosophers. And of these again I will set before the eyes of my readers the slip from the truth, not from myself or on my own authority, but through the testimony of the Greek voices themselves. I do not bear any ill will toward any of these men, for I confess that I hold them in great admiration when I compare them with other men, such as they are.

When, however, it is a question of the Hebrew theologians and prophets, and of the God who through them has made predictions of the future and displays of wonders, and has moreover laid down a teaching of pious doctrines and true learning, I think no one can reasonably find fault if we honour God before men, and truth itself before mortal reasonings and conjectures. And this is what the whole discourse of the present Preparation aims to show, both as an answer and as a defence for those who will ask what good or noble thing we have seen in the writings of the barbarians that we have determined to prefer them to our ancestral and noble philosophy, I mean that of the Greeks. But let the proof now proceed by actual deeds.

2. ON THE DISAGREEMENT AND CONFLICT OF THE PHILOSOPHERS WITH ONE ANOTHER

I think it necessary, first of all, to begin from the very beginning, from the first foundation of the philosophers among the Greeks, and to examine the so-called physical philosophers who lived before Plato, to see who they were and what kind of leaders of their philosophy they had; then to pass on to the succession of Plato, and to see who these were and what were their mutual word-battles; and also to survey the divisions of the other sects and the oppositions of their opinions, in which I shall exhibit the noble men boxing and contending ambitiously, as on a stage, to the spectators.

Let us then observe how Plato mocked his own first principles, how others mocked Plato’s associates and successors, and again how Plato’s companions refuted the clever subtleties of Aristotle’s polymathy, and how those who boasted of Aristotle and the Peripatos showed that the opinions of those who held the opposite view were nothing. And you will see the terrible and precise subtleties of the Stoics’ logic laughed at by others again, and all from every side raising dust against their neighbors and engaging in battle and wrestling most vigorously, as if with hands and tongue, or rather with pen and ink, they were building up their war against each other, almost hurling and being struck with spears and full armor of words. The stadium will contain for us in this gymnastic contest, stripped of all truth, along with those already mentioned, also those who took up arms against all the dogmatic philosophers alike—I mean the followers of Pyrrho, who declared that nothing is comprehensible among men—and those who, following Aristippus, said that only the affections are comprehensible, and again those who, following Metrodorus and Protagoras, asserted that one must trust only the body’s senses. On the other hand, we will strip for combat along with these the followers of Xenophanes and Parmenides, who arrayed themselves on the opposite side and abolished the senses. Nor will we pass over the champions of pleasure, but we will enroll their champion Epicurus together with those mentioned. Against all of them together we will set the refutation with their own weapons.

And I will bring to light the disagreements of all the so-called natural philosophers together, both the discrepancies of their doctrines and the useless erudition of their pursuit, not because I am in any way a hater of Greeks or a hater of reason—far from it—but to clear myself of the charge of slander, since, having had the least to do with Greek wisdom, we have preferred the Hebrew scriptures.

3. ON THE HARMONY AMONG THE HEBREWS

The Hebrews, indeed, from a remote age and, so to speak, from the very first generation of mankind, having investigated true and pious philosophy, have preserved it pure and unadulterated for those who came after, receiving and guarding it as a treasure of true words from father to son, so that no one dared to add or remove anything from what had once been decided. Thus the all-wise Moses, who was shown in the preceding to be the most ancient of all Greeks, and who was the latest in time among the earlier Hebrews, never thought to disturb or alter any of the opinions of his forefathers concerning doctrinal theology, except insofar as he laid down for the people under him a way of life suited to them and a legislation for a kind of middle polity.

Nor have the prophets who came after him, shining forth in countless thousands of years later, ever dared to utter a single discordant word against themselves or against what was deemed by Moses and the ancient God-beloved. Nor does our own teaching, which takes its start from that source and, by divine power, has filled all of Greece and the barbarian world alike, contain anything discordant with what came before—unless one should say that it hands down not only the doctrines of theology but also the same way of life as that of the God-beloved Hebrews before Moses. And our own matters, thus attested by the first, the middle, and the last with one mind and one voice, are sealed with the certainty of true piety and philosophy by all votes, and fill the whole inhabited world, ever young and flourishing, as if just now planted in their first prime; and neither the ordinances of laws, nor the plots of enemies, nor the often-sharpened swords of adversaries have shown themselves stronger than the virtue of the words we have followed. But as for the philosophy of the Greeks, which wavered after a brief time, let us now see what strength it ever displayed, first bringing forward and sending into the contest those called natural philosophers, who are said to have shone before Plato, and how they quarreled with one another can be learned from Plato himself, who exposes the battle of those around Protagoras, Heraclitus, and Empedocles against Parmenides and his followers. For Protagoras, who was a companion of Democritus, acquired an atheistic reputation.

It is said, at any rate, that he employed an opening of this kind in his treatise On the Gods: "Concerning the gods, I know neither that they exist nor that they do not exist, nor of what kind they are in form." Democritus, for his part, declared that the principles of all things are the void and the plenum; the plenum he called being and solid, the void non-being. Hence he also says, "the existent is no more than the non-existent," because "from eternity the things that are move continuously and swiftly in the void." Heraclitus declared that the principle of all things is fire, from which all things come to be and into which they are resolved; for all things are an exchange, and time is determined for the resolution of all things into fire and for their generation from it. These men, then, said that all things are in motion. Parmenides, being of the Eleatic race, held that the all is one, ungenerated, unmoved, and spherical in shape. Melissus was a companion of Parmenides, holding the same opinions as Parmenides. Now hear what Plato says about these matters in the Theaetetus:

4. HOW PLATO HAS DISCREDITED THOSE BEFORE HIM: "But from difference and motion and mixture with one another, all things come to be which we say exist, though we name them incorrectly; for nothing ever is, but always becomes. And on this point all the extraordinary wise men except Parmenides agree—Protagoras, Heraclitus, and Empedocles, and among the poets the foremost of each kind of poetry, Epicharmus of comedy and Homer of tragedy, who, when he said, 'Ocean, the origin of the gods, and mother Tethys,' declared that all things are offspring of flux and motion. Or does he not seem to say this?" "He does to me.

Who then, against so great an army and general as Homer, could argue without becoming ridiculous?" Then, proceeding further in his argument, he adds, saying: "We must therefore approach more closely, as the argument concerning Protagoras commanded, and examine this reputed substance, testing it, whether it speaks soundly or unsoundly. Now, the battle concerning it has been neither trivial nor confined to a few. It is indeed far from trivial, but in Ionia it flourishes exceedingly. For the followers of Heraclitus

vigorously supply this argument. Therefore, my dear Theodorus, we must examine it more thoroughly and from the beginning, as they themselves propose. By all means. For, Socrates, concerning these Heraclitean, or as you say Homeric, and even more ancient matters, it is no more possible to converse with those who are experienced in them around Ephesus than with men stung by a gadfly. For they are carried away exactly according to their writings, and to abide by a discourse, a question, and to answer or ask in a measured way, concerns them less than nothing; rather, the absence of any stillness in the men surpasses even nothing. But if one questions them, as if drawing riddling little phrases from a quiver, they shoot them off, and if you seek to get an account of what he has said, he will strike you with another newly named one, and you will never come to any conclusion with any of them, nor do they themselves with each other, but they very well guard that nothing be allowed to be stable either in argument or in their own souls, considering, as it seems to me, that very stability to be something.

They are at war with this in every way, and as far as they are able, they cast it out from all sides. Perhaps, Theodore, you have seen these men fighting, but you have not associated with them when they are at peace, for they are not your companions. But, I think, they say such things to their students in their leisure, those whom they wish to make like themselves. "What students, you strange fellow? No one of such men becomes a student of another, but they spring up spontaneously, each from wherever he happens to be inspired, and one considers the other to know nothing." From these men, then, as I was about to say, you would never get an account, either willingly or unwillingly; but we must take them up and examine them like a problem. And you speak moderately. But we have taken up this problem from the ancients, who concealed the many with poetry, that the generation of all things is Ocean and Tethys, that it is a flux and nothing stands still, and from the later ones, who are wiser, who demonstrate openly, so that even their cobblers may learn their wisdom by hearing and cease foolishly thinking that some things stand still and others move, and learning that all things move, they honor them. I almost forgot, Theodore, that others have declared the opposite to these, such as: "Unmoving is the name for the All," and all that Melissus and Parmenides insist upon, opposing all these, that everything is and stands still in itself, having no place in which it moves. To all these, then, my friend, what use shall we make of them?

For gradually advancing we have unconsciously fallen between both, and unless we defend ourselves and escape, we shall pay the penalty like those who play the line-game in wrestling-schools, when caught by both sides they are dragged in opposite directions. So much in the Theaetetus. Then passing on to the Sophist, he speaks again about the natural philosophers who preceded him as follows: "It seems to me that Parmenides and everyone who ever set out to determine how many and what kind the things that are are, have discoursed to us easily. Each of them appears to me to tell a story, as if we were children. One says that the things that are are three, and that some of them sometimes war with each other, and sometimes become friends and provide marriages, births, and nurture of offspring. Another, saying they are two, wet and dry or hot and cold, unites them and gives them in marriage. The whole Eleatic tribe among us, beginning from Xenophanes and even earlier, goes through the story that the one is of all that are called. And some Ionian and some Sicilian Muses later perceived that it is safer to combine both and say that being is both many and one, and is held together by enmity and friendship. For that which is always at variance is always coming together, say the more intense of the Muses; but the softer ones say that it always holds thus.

they slackened, and in part they sometimes say that the whole is one and friendly under Aphrodite, and sometimes that it is many and at war with itself through some strife. Now whether anyone has truly said all these things or not, it is difficult and improper to censure such great and renowned ancient men in this way." And shortly after he adds: "We have not, then, gone through all those who precisely distinguish between what is and what is not, but let this suffice; we must also consider those who speak otherwise, so that from all we may see that being is no more easy to define than non-being. Therefore we must proceed to these as well. And indeed there seems to be among them a kind of gigantomachy, due to their dispute with each other about substance. How? Some drag everything down from the sky and the invisible to earth, grasping rocks and oaks with their hands, as it were. For they cling to all such things and insist that only that which offers contact and touch is, defining body and substance as the same; and if anyone says that something without body exists, they despise it utterly and will hear nothing else. 'You have described formidable men,' you say; 'for I myself have already encountered many of them.' Therefore those who dispute with them defend themselves very cautiously from some higher place, insisting that certain intelligible and incorporeal forms constitute true substance; and they shatter the bodies of the others and what those call truth into small pieces in their arguments, calling it a kind of becoming instead of substance. And in the midst of these, a vast battle, Theaetetus, always arises between both sides.

True." So through so many words Plato has slandered the natural philosophers before him. What opinion he himself held concerning the matters under investigation we have already discussed before this, when we showed that he agrees with the doctrines of the Hebrews and concurs with the teaching of Moses concerning being. And let us now consider in our account the successors of Plato himself. They say that Plato, having established his school in the Academy, was first called an Academic and founded the so-called Academic philosophy. After Plato, Speusippus, the son of Plato's sister Potone, then Xenocrates, then Polemo, are said to have taken over the school. These, beginning from the hearth, as they say, immediately began to dissolve the Platonic teachings, distorting what had appeared to their teacher by introducing foreign doctrines, so that you might not long hope that the power of those wonderful dialogues would be extinguished together with the man's death, and that the succession of his doctrines would die out with him, since from these a conflict and faction began, which has never ceased to this day, and that there are no admirers who zealously follow what is dear to him, except perhaps one or two in the whole world, or some others exceedingly few in number, and not even these are entirely free from artificial sophistry. For even those who succeeded Plato are slandered as being of such a sort. For they say that Polemo was succeeded by Arcesilaus, who, as the account holds, abandoned the doctrines of Plato and established some foreign school, which they call the second Academy. For he said that one must withhold judgment about everything.

all things are incomprehensible and the arguments on both sides are equally balanced, and that the senses are untrustworthy, as is every argument. At any rate, he praised this saying of Hesiod: "For the gods keep hidden the mind of men." He also attempted to revive certain paradoxical ideas. After Arcesilaus, they say that those around Carneades and Clitomachus, turning away from the opinion of their predecessors, became the founders of the Third Academy. "Some also add a Fourth Academy, that of Philo and Charmidas. And some even enumerate a Fifth Academy, that of Antiochus." Such, then, was the succession of Plato himself. But what sort of men these were in character, take

and read the words of Numenius the Pythagorean, which are set forth in the first book of his work entitled On the Dissension of the Academics with Plato:

5. ON THE FIRST SUCCESSION ACCORDING TO PLATO "Now down to Speusippus, the nephew of Plato, and Xenocrates, the successor of Speusippus, and Polemo, who took over the school from Xenocrates, the character of the doctrines remained almost the same, at least with regard to the not yet famous suspension of judgment and any such other matters. For in other respects, often deviating and distorting, they did not abide by the first succession; but beginning from that point, sooner or later they diverged, whether by choice or ignorance, or perhaps for some other reason not lacking in ambition. And I do not wish to say anything disparaging on account of Xenocrates, but rather I wish to speak in behalf of Plato.

For it distresses me that I did not suffer and do everything to preserve for Plato complete unanimity in all respects on every point. And yet Plato was worthy of them, not better than the great Pythagoras, but perhaps not even inferior to him, following whom and being devoted, his associates became most responsible for causing Pythagoras to be highly honored. The Epicureans, however, did not benefit from this, but having learned, they were in no way seen to set themselves in opposition to Epicurus, and having agreed to be of one mind with the wise man, they themselves accordingly enjoyed the appellation, as was fitting; and it came about that for the most part, even among later Epicureans, no one spoke in opposition either to each other or to Epicurus in any respect worth mentioning; but for them it is a transgression, rather an impiety, and innovation is condemned. Therefore no one even dares this, and in great peace their doctrines rest, due to the constant harmony among them. The school of Epicurus resembles a true polity, most free from faction, having one common mind, one opinion; from which came, and are, and, as it seems, will be, faithful followers. The doctrines of the Stoics, however, have been in turmoil, beginning from their founders and not yet ceasing even now. They are refuted, lovingly, by hostile refutation; some of them still persist, others have already changed their views. The first ones, then, resembled more oligarchic types, who, having split off, became for later generations the cause of much criticism both of their predecessors and of each other; and some are more Stoic than others, and especially those who were seen to be more petty about technical matters.

For these very men, surpassing the others in both meddlesome curiosity and superficial quibbling, were quicker to find fault. Much earlier than these, however, the same thing happened to those who drew away from Socrates and made his discourses divergent: Aristippus in one way, Antisthenes in another, and elsewhere the Megarians and Eretrians, or any others along with them. The reason is that, since Socrates posited three gods and philosophized with them in the rhythms appropriate to each, his hearers were ignorant of this and thought he said everything at random and according to whatever chance happened to be prevailing at the time, blowing as it might. But Plato, having become a Pythagorean, knew that Socrates had said these very things from no other source than that, and that he had spoken them knowingly. Therefore he himself bound the matters together, neither in the customary way nor openly; but, arranging each thing as he thought best, and concealing it in the middle ground between being clear and not clear, he wrote securely, yet he himself provided the cause for the subsequent division and dispersal of the doctrines among those after him—not from envy nor from ill will, but I do not wish to speak inauspicious words about older men. This we must learn, and then refer the matter rather to that

opinion, and just as from the beginning we set out to separate him from Aristotle and Zeno, so also now from the Academy, if God should assist, we shall leave him separated and on his own as a Pythagorean; as now, more madly than befits even some Pentheus, he is torn apart limb by limb, yet as a whole from his whole self he is transferred and never counter-transferred. So then, how a man mediating between Pythagoras and Socrates, having brought down the solemnity of the former to the level of philanthropy, and having raised the clever and playful character of the latter from irony to dignity and gravity, and having blended this very thing with Socrates as Pythagoras, appeared more popular than the one and more solemn than the other. But I did not come to adjudicate these matters, since this is not now the subject of my inquiry, but what was previously determined; and I go there where I seem to have already run off, lest we be somehow turned aside from the path that leads. From Polemon came the disciples Arcesilaus and Zeno; I will mention them again at the end. I remember saying that Zeno attended Xenocrates, then Polemon, and again studied under Crates the Cynic; but now let it be reckoned to him that he also partook of Stilpo and of the Heraclitean doctrines. For when they were fellow students under Polemon and vied with one another, they brought into their mutual battle, on the one hand, Heraclitus and Stilpo together with Crates, under Stilpo becoming a fighter, under Heraclitus austere, and under Crates a Cynic.

Arcesilaus holds Theophrastus and Crantor the Platonist and Diodorus, then Pyrrho, of whom by Crantor he was made a plausible speaker, by Diodorus a sophist, and by Pyrrho all-various and a wanderer and nothing. Hence a certain sung verse, diverting and insulting, was said about him: "Plato in front, Pyrrho behind, Diodorus in the middle." Timon says that he also took the eristic from Menedemus and was equipped, if indeed he says about him: "Having under his breast the lead of Menedemus, he will run either to Pyrrho, the whole flesh, or to Diodorus." So, weaving together the reasonings of Pyrrho and the skeptical with the subtleties of Diodorus, who was a dialectician, he adorned with the rhetorical skill of Plato some babbling nonsense, and he spoke and contradicted and rolled back and forth from here to there, from both sides, wherever it happened, revocable and hard to judge and at once changeable and hazardous, knowing nothing, as he himself said, being noble; then somehow he turned out like those who know, having been imagined as all-various by the shadow-painting of his arguments.

6. Concerning Arcesilaus, Who Established the Second Academy. Just as the Homeric son of Tydeus did not know on which side he was fighting, whether he was with the Trojans or with the Achaeans, so Arcesilaus was no less ignorant. For it was impossible for him ever to say one and the same thing, nor did he at all consider such a thing worthy of a clever man. He was therefore called a clever sophist, a slayer of the untrained. For like the Empusae in apparitions, by preparation and practice he bewitched and beguiled in arguments, and he himself could know nothing nor allow others to know. He terrified and confounded, and, carried away by theft of sophisms and arguments, he rejoiced exceedingly in the reproach and prided himself wonderfully, because he knew neither what is shameful or noble, nor what is good or evil, but whichever fell into his mind, after saying this, he would then change and overturn it in as many or more ways than he had established it. He was therefore like a hydra, cutting himself and being cut by himself, both things being indistinguishable from each other, and

heedless of what was proper, yet he satisfied his hearers, who at the same time saw him as a fair presence in their audience; he was therefore most delightful both to hear and to see, since they had become accustomed to accepting his words as coming from a beautiful face and mouth, not without the friendliness in his eyes. But these things must be heard not simply; rather, it happened thus from the beginning: for in his youth he encountered Theophrastus, a gentle man and not unskilled in erotic matters, and because he was handsome while still in his prime, he gained Crantor the Academic as a lover; he attached himself to this man, but being by nature not without talent, and using it readily and hotheadedly out of contentiousness, he partook of Diodorus’s cunning sophistries, those clever arguments, and also associated with Pyrrho—and Pyrrho had started from Democritus, from some source or other. Thus equipped from that quarter, yet apart from the name, he persisted in the Pyrrhonian abolition of all things. At any rate, Mnasias, Philomelus, and Timon, the Sceptics, call him a Sceptic, as they themselves were, since he too abolished the true, the false, and the plausible. Therefore, though he would have been called a Pyrrhonian on account of his affiliation with the Pyrrhonians, out of respect for his lover he allowed himself still to be called an Academic. So he was a Pyrrhonian, except in name; and he was not an Academic, except in being so called.

For I am not persuaded by Diocles of Cnidus when he asserts in his so-called Diatribes that Arcesilaus, out of fear of the followers of Theodorus and of Bion the sophist, who attacked those who philosophized and shrank from nothing in their refutations, became cautious, so as to avoid trouble, and set forth no apparent doctrine, but like the ink of the cuttlefish cast the suspension of judgment before himself as a screen. This, then, I am not persuaded of. But those who started from this point, both Arcesilaus and Zeno, with such supporters, with arguments fighting on both sides, forget the beginning from which they set out from Polemo; and having separated and armed themselves, they cast their raw hides, their spears, and the might of bronze-armored men; and the bossed shields clashed against each other, and a great din arose. Shield pressed against shield, helmet against helmet, and man against man staggered. There was both wailing and prayer of men slaying and being slain among the Stoics; for the Academics were not struck by them, being unknown as they were more capable of being captured. But they were being captured when their foundation was shaken, if they had neither a beginning nor a starting point for battle. The beginning was to refute them for not speaking Platonically; and the lack of a starting point was, if they had changed only one thing by removing from the definition of the cataleptic impression. This it is not now timely for me to indicate, but I will mention it again when I am about to deal with this very matter. Having separated, then, they openly attacked each other, not the two of them, but Arcesilaus attacked Zeno.

Zeno had something solemn and weighty in his combat, and no better than Cephisodorus the rhetorician. This Cephisodorus, seeing that his teacher Isocrates was being attacked by Aristotle, was ignorant and inexperienced of Aristotle himself, and supposing, from the fact that Plato's works were held in high repute, that Aristotle philosophized in opposition to Plato, he waged war on Aristotle, but attacked and accused Plato, beginning with the Ideas and ending with the other matters, which he did not even know himself, but misunderstood the common opinions about them as they are reported. So Cephisodorus, in fighting with the one he was not fighting, fought with the one he did not wish to fight. Zeno himself, when he let go of Arcesilaus, if he was not also fighting Plato, then he philosophized, in my judgment, in a most worthy manner, because of this peace. But if he was not ignorant, perhaps, of the views of Arcesilaus, while being ignorant of those of Plato, as is proved by what he wrote against him, then he too acted inconsistently, striking not the one he knew, but the one he ought not, and insulting him most dishonorably and shamefully, and doing this much worse than befits a dog. Yet he showed magnanimity in refraining from Arcesilaus. For either through ignorance of the latter's views or through fear of the great mouth of the Stoic war, he turned aside to another, to Plato. But concerning the things that were badly and in no way reverently innovated by Zeno against Plato, I will speak again at some other time, if I should have leisure for philosophy; but may I never have such great leisure, for this reason, unless it be in jest.

Arcesilaus, seeing that Zeno was a rival and formidable opponent, would dismantle the arguments brought forth by him and hesitated at nothing. And concerning the other points on which he had contended with him, I perhaps cannot speak, nor was there any need now to mention them; but seeing that this doctrine—the cataleptic impression—which Zeno first discovered, and the name itself, were gaining repute in Athens, he used every device against it. Zeno, being in a weaker position and keeping quiet, unable to be wronged, let Arcesilaus go—though he could have said much, but did not wish to, perhaps rather otherwise—and instead shadow-boxed against Plato, who was no longer among the living, and made a clamor over the whole procession from the cart, saying that Plato would not have defended himself, nor would anyone else care to defend him, and if Arcesilaus did care, he himself thought he would gain by diverting Arcesilaus from himself. This was the very sophism that Agathocles the Syracusan had used against the Carthaginians. The Stoics listened, astounded; for their Muse was not even then fond of discourse or productive of graces, by which Arcesilaus, partly chipping away, partly cutting short, and partly tripping up, would outtalk them and was persuasive. Therefore, among those he argued against, they were defeated, and in matters where he spoke, they were confounded; it was somehow demonstrated to the people of that time that there was neither word nor passion nor deed, not one small or useless thing, that could ever appear otherwise, if it did not seem so to Arcesilaus of Pitane; but to him, nothing seemed so, nor did he declare anything, any more than that these were mere verbal trifles and fears.

7. Concerning Lacydes, who succeeded Arcesilaus. I wish to relate something pleasant about Lacydes. Now Lacydes was somewhat parsimonious and, in a certain way, what is called a household manager, one who was esteemed by the many, himself opening the storehouse and himself locking it. And he would take out what he needed and do all such other things by his own labor, not because he praised self-sufficiency nor because he was otherwise constrained by poverty or lack of slaves, for he had slaves, at least some; the reason one may guess. But I will relate the pleasant thing I promised. For managing his own stores, he did not think it necessary to carry the key about with him, but after locking up he would place it in a hollow writing tablet; and sealing it with his signet ring, he would let the ring roll down through the keyhole into the house, so that later, when he came again and opened with the key, he would be able, after taking up the ring, to lock up again, then seal, then throw the ring back inside through the keyhole. This clever device the slaves observed, and when Lacydes went out for a walk or elsewhere, they would open up and then, as their appetite prompted, eat some things, drink others, and take away others, doing this repeatedly; they would lock up, seal, and, laughing at him greatly, let the ring into the house through the keyhole. So Lacydes, full of

leaving behind, but finding the vessels empty, and being at a loss at what had happened, since he heard that the doctrine of inapprehensibility was philosophized by Arcesilaus, he thought that this very thing was happening to him concerning his storeroom. And beginning from that point, he philosophized under Arcesilaus, holding that nothing is seen or heard clearly or soundly. And once, having drawn one of his associates into his house, he insisted to him vehemently, as it seemed, on suspension of judgment, and said: "This I can state to you as indisputable, having learned it myself, not from the experience of another." And then, beginning, he went through the whole incident that had happened to him concerning the storeroom. "What then," he said, "would Zeno still say in the face of such an inapprehensibility, manifest to me through all things in such cases? For I who locked it with my own hands, who myself sealed it, who myself put the ring inside, and then coming back and opening it, I see the ring inside, but not the other things—how shall I not justifiably distrust matters? For I will not say, for instance, that someone came and stole these things while the ring was inside." And the listener, who was a mocker, taking the whole story as he heard it, barely restraining himself even before, burst into loud laughter, and laughing and guffawing, he at once exposed his vanity. So that from then on, Lacydes, beginning, no longer put the ring inside, no longer used inapprehensibility concerning the storeroom, but apprehended what was left behind, and had philosophized in vain.

But the boys were indeed clever and not to be caught by the other side, such as these comic characters, both Getae and Dacians, who were tongue-tied from speaking the Dacian prattle, since they had heard the sophisms of the Stoics, or else having learned them otherwise, they immediately went to the daring deed and loosened his seal, and sometimes they placed another in its place, sometimes not even another, because they thought that for him at least things would be inapprehensible, both in this way and in that. And he, entering, examined it; seeing the document unsealed or sealed with a different seal, he was indignant; and when they said that it was sealed, and that at least they saw his own seal on it, he would argue precisely and demonstrate; and when those worsted by the demonstration said that if nothing else, perhaps he himself had forgotten and not sealed it, he himself said that he remembered sealing it, and he demonstrated and went around with his argument and spoke vehemently to them, thinking he was being mocked, and he swore oaths. And they, taking up his attacks, themselves thought they were being mocked by him, since it had seemed good to the wise Lacydes to be without opinion and even without memory; for memory is opinion; at any rate, they said they had recently heard this from him to his friends. And when he turned their arguments back against them and said that they, not being Academics, but attending some Stoic, learned their own arguments for themselves, and beginning from there they countered with sophisms and were rival thieves, Academic ones; and he made Stoic accusations; and the boys dissolved the accusations for him by inapprehensibility, not without some mockery.

There were, then, debates and arguments and counter-arguments of all there, and not a single thing was left in the middle—neither a vessel, nor anything placed in a vessel, nor all that contributes to the furnishing of houses. And Lacydes for a time was at a loss, seeing no assistance for his own doctrines that was profitable to him, and thinking that if he did not refute everything, everything would be overturned for him; falling into perplexity, he cried out to his neighbors and to the gods, and "ioù ioù" and "pheû pheû" and "by the gods" and "by the goddesses" and all such artless assurances of those who speak vehemently in moments of disbelief—all these were said with both shouting and an air of credibility. Finally, since he had a disputed battle in his house, he himself, of course, played the Stoic towards the boys, while the boys insisted on the Academic arguments; so that he might have no further trouble, a friend of his was house-guard, sitting by the treasury. But perceiving that he was helping nothing at all, he uncovered where his wisdom came to him: "Otherwise," he said, "are these things spoken by us in the schools, O boys, and otherwise do we live." So much for Lacydes. Many became hearers of this man, among whom one was conspicuous, Aristippus of Cyrene. Of all his disciples, Evander succeeded to his school, and those after him. After them, Carneades, having taken over the school, established the third Academy. He employed a method of argumentation like that of Arcesilaus; for he himself practiced the attack on both sides and refuted everything said by others. He differed from him only in the argument concerning suspension of judgment, declaring that it is impossible for a human being to suspend judgment about all things.

There was, then, a difference between the unclear and the incomprehensible, and all things are incomprehensible, but not all are unclear. This man also participated in the Stoic discourses, against which he stood contentiously and grew all the more, aiming at what appears plausible to the many, but not at truth; hence he caused much annoyance to the Stoics. Now Numenius also writes about him as follows:

8. CONCERNING CARNEADES, WHO ESTABLISHED THE THIRD ACADEMY: "Carneades, having received from Hegesinus the duty to preserve what was unmoved and what was moved, neglected this, but referring back to Arcesilaus, whether for better or for worse, he renewed the battle after a long interval." And he adds further: "So this man also led and carried off contradictions, and he brought together subtle turns for the battle, varying it, being both negative and affirmative and contradictory on both sides; and if ever there was need of something even of wondrous arguments, he would rise up violently like a rushing river, flowing vehemently, filling everything here and there, and he would fall upon and sweep away his hearers through uproar. Therefore, while leading others astray, he himself remained undeceitful, which was not the case with Arcesilaus. For that man, going about and bewitching those who shared his frenzy, first deceived himself without perceiving it, being persuaded that what he said was true, through the abolition of all things. But it was an evil piled upon an evil, Carneades upon Arcesilaus, not relaxing even a little, by which they were not to be left inactive, according to the affirmative and negative impressions of the plausible that he spoke of, as to whether this or that is a living being or not.

He then yielded ground, like wild beasts that retreat and then rush more violently and hurl themselves upon the spears, and having given way he attacked more powerfully. And whenever he would withstand and succeed, then he would willingly neglect and not remember what had been previously conceded. For allowing that truth and falsehood exist in things, as if cooperating in the inquiry, like a skilled wrestler he would give a hold and then prevail from that position. For according to the inclination of the probable, he would present each side and affirm that neither could be firmly grasped. He was, then, a more clever robber and sorcerer. For taking a falsehood similar to truth, and a comprehensible impression similar to a comprehensible one, and bringing them to equality, he allowed neither truth nor falsehood to exist, or not one more than the other, or rather from the probable. So there were dreams in place of dreams, because false impressions are similar to true ones, as a wax egg is to a real egg. Thus evils and more followed. And indeed Carneades, by speaking, charmed and enslaved his audience. He was

stealing unseen, appearing as a robber, taking by both deceit and force even those who were very thoroughly prepared. Every thought of Carneades, then, prevailed, and none of the others at all, since even those he fought against were more unable to speak. Antipater, at least, who lived at the same time, intended to write something in contention, but against the arguments brought forth daily from Carneades he never made public, not in his discourses, not in his walks, nor did he say or utter anything, nor did anyone hear from him, they say, not even a grunt; but he threatened counter-writings and, taking a corner, left behind books written for later generations, which are now unable and were then even more unable against so great a man who appeared and was considered by the people of that time to be Carneades. Nevertheless, although he himself, stirred up by Stoic contentiousness into the open, yet to his own companions in private he would confess and speak truth and declare what any chance person might. Then he says next: "A pupil of Carneades becomes known, Mentor first, but not his successor; but while Carneades was still alive, having found him in adultery with a concubine, not from a plausible impression nor as if not having comprehended, but as one most trusting in sight and having comprehended, he dismissed him from the school. He, having withdrawn, practiced sophistry in turn and was a rival craftsman, refuting his lack of comprehension in arguments." And again he adds, saying: "Carneades, philosophizing in a reversed manner, prided himself on falsehoods and under them concealed the truth. He used falsehoods as screens and spoke truth within, hiding more like a huckster.

He therefore suffered the affliction of legumes, of which the empty ones float on the water and rise above, while the good ones are below and hidden. These things are also said about Carneades. His successor as head of the school was Clitomachus, after whom came Philo, of whom Numenius makes mention in these words:

9. Concerning Philo: "Now this Philo, having just taken over the school, was filled with joy and, showing gratitude, he cultivated and magnified the doctrines of Clitomachus and armed himself against the Stoics with flashing bronze. But as time went on and their suspension of judgment grew faint through familiarity, he no longer thought consistently with himself, but the evidence and agreement of the affections turned him around. Having by then a great awareness, he greatly desired, you know, to meet with those who would refute him, so that he might not seem, 'turning his back,' to flee of his own accord. Antiochus became a pupil of Philo, and founded another Academy. Having studied under the Stoic Mnesarchus, he thought contrary to his teacher Philo and attached many strange doctrines to the Academy." These and countless similar things are recorded concerning the succession of Plato.

It is time, then, to take up the argument from above and examine the false opinions and conflicting opinions of the natural philosophers, who wandered over much of the earth and, having made the discovery of truth their highest concern, and having been conversant with the opinions of all the ancients, and having accurately studied the precise theology that existed long before among all peoples, both Phoenicians and Egyptians and the Greeks themselves, it is worth hearing what fruit of their labors they found from these sources, so that we might learn whether anything worthy of God came down to them from their predecessors. For previously, from ancient times, polytheistic superstition prevailed among the nations, and temples, shrines, and mysteries of the gods were customarily maintained in every city and country by all. There was therefore no need of human philosophy, if indeed the knowledge of God had already taken precedence; nor was there any necessity for the wise to innovate, if the traditions of their ancestors were sound; nor would the noble philosophers have been at odds and in disagreement, if the ancestral opinion about the gods had been proven to be harmonious and true. Why, then, should they war with each other and fight, or run the long road up and down, wandering and plundering the writings of barbarians, when they ought to have stayed at home and learned from the gods, if indeed there were any gods, or from the theologians, the true and infallible accounts concerning the subjects of inquiry in philosophy, about which they labored so much and disagreed, yet fell far short of the discovery of truth?

Why should one dare to seek newer doctrines about the gods, or to quarrel and fight with one another, if indeed a secure and certain discovery of the gods and a true knowledge of piety were contained in the initiations and mysteries and in the rest of the most ancient theology, and it were possible to observe that very theology, unmoved and agreed upon, in harmony? But if these men should appear to have learned nothing true about God from their predecessors, but to have applied their own notions to the investigation of nature, and to have used conjectures rather than comprehension, what remains but to agree that the ancient theology of the nations contains nothing more than the account given in the writings before this? That among the Greeks philosophy arose from human conjectures and much word-fighting and error, and not from any accurate comprehension, you may learn from the letter of Porphyry to Anebo the Egyptian, hearing him confess this very thing in these words:

10. THAT CONJECTURES, WORD-FIGHTING, AND MUCH ERROR ARE FOUND AMONG THE PHILOSOPHERS OF THE GREEKS. "I shall begin my friendship with you from the gods and good daimons and the philosophical teachings akin to them, concerning which very many things have been said also by the philosophers of the Greeks, but they have been said for the most part from conjecture, having their beginnings from belief." And further on he adds, saying: "For among us there is much word-fighting, since the good is conjectured from human reasonings.

For those for whom intercourse with the higher power has been contrived, if this part is left unexamined, their wisdom has been practiced in vain." And also in what he wrote against Boethus On the Soul, the same author confesses verbatim as follows: "... that while the concepts and the historical evidence incontrovertibly establish that the soul is immortal, the arguments brought for proof by the philosophers seem easily refutable because of the inventiveness of the contentious in all matters. For what argument in philosophy is not disputable by the heterodox, when even concerning things that seem evident some of them thought it right to withhold judgment?" And in the work he entitled On the Philosophy from Oracles, he explicitly confesses that the Greeks have gone astray, calling his own god to witness that Apollo himself declared through oracles that the discovery of truth was attested to barbarians rather than Greeks, and indeed even mentioned the Hebrews among those attested. After the citation of the oracle, he then uses the following concluding words: "You have heard how much labor it takes to offer purificatory sacrifices for the body, not to mention to discover the salvation of the soul. For the path to the gods is bound with bronze, steep and rough, of which the barbarians discovered many paths, but the Greeks went astray, and those who now hold power have corrupted them; and the god testified that the discovery was made by Egyptians, Phoenicians, and Chaldeans, for the Assyrians

These are for Lydians and Hebrews." So says the philosopher, or rather his god. Are we then to be blamed after this for having left the misguided Greeks and chosen the Hebrews, who are testified to have grasped the truth? What is there to expect to learn from philosophers? Or what hope of benefit from them, if indeed what they say "derives its grounds of belief for the most part from conjectures and guesses"? And what is the fruit of wordy strife, if indeed all the arguments of the philosophers are "easily overturned because of the ingenuity found in all of them"? For these things were not said by us just now, but were heard from them. Therefore I think we have done well and with considered judgment, not unreasonably, to have despised such things and to have loved those of the Hebrews, not because they are testified to by the demon, but because they are shown to partake of divine virtue and power. And so that you may learn from the very facts themselves the wordy strife of the wonderful philosophers and their disagreements concerning principles, concerning gods, and concerning the constitution of the universe, I will set forth their own words a little later.

First, since they constantly parade and prattle about the sciences, insisting that those who are to experience the apprehension of truth must by all means pursue astronomy, arithmetic, geometry, and music—these very things having been shown to have come to them from the barbarians—for without these, they claim, a learned and philosophical man cannot be perfected, nor can he even touch the truth of reality unless the knowledge of these has been prefigured in his soul; and then, having been raised up by the study of these subjects, they think they are walking almost on the aether itself, borne aloft, as if they were carrying god himself in numbers; and they consider us, because we do not emulate the same things, to differ in no way from cattle, and they say that by this means we can know neither god nor anything venerable. Let us first correct this erroneous position, setting the true account before them like a light. This will show that countless Panhellenes and countless barbarian races, some with the aforementioned sciences, have known neither god nor a temperate life nor anything of the best and most beneficial, while others, entirely outside the sciences, have become most pious and most philosophical. For example, Socrates, who is celebrated among all of them, how he thought about these matters you could learn by trusting Xenophon, who records something like this in his Memorabilia:

11. On Geometry, Astronomy, and Calculations "He taught also to what point one ought to be experienced in each matter who is rightly educated. For instance, he said that geometry should be learned only up to the point where one becomes capable, if ever it should be necessary, of correctly taking over, handing over, dividing, or marking out land by measure. And he said that this is so easy to learn that one who pays attention to measurement knows at once both how much land there is and how it is measured, and then proceeds. But he rejected learning geometry up to the point of incomprehensible diagrams; for he said he did not see what benefit those things bring—though he was not inexperienced in them. He said that they are sufficient to consume a person's life and to hinder many other useful studies. He also urged becoming experienced in astronomy, but only to the point of being able to know the hour of the night, the month, and the year, for the sake of travel, sailing, guard duty, and all other things that are done by night, month, or year, and to use these as indicators for the times of

en is able to discern the things that have been said. And these things are easy to learn from night-hunters and pilots and many others to whom it is a concern to know them. But to learn astronomy only up to the point of knowing the stars that are not in the same orbit, and the planets and the fixed stars, and their distances from the earth, and their periods, and to wear oneself out seeking their causes, he strongly discouraged. For he said he saw no benefit even in these things, although he was not ignorant of them either. He said that these things too are sufficient to wear out a man's life and to hinder many useful things. In general, he discouraged becoming a student of how the god contrives each of the heavenly things; for he considered that these things are neither discoverable by men, nor would he think that the one who seeks them gratifies the gods, since the gods did not wish to make them clear. And he said that the one who busies himself with these things runs the risk of going mad no less than Anaxagoras went mad, who prided himself greatly on explaining the contrivances of the gods. For that man, while saying that fire and the sun are the same thing, was ignorant that men easily look upon fire, but cannot look directly at the sun; and that those illuminated by the sun have darker complexions, but not by fire. He was also ignorant that of the things that grow from the earth, nothing can grow well without the light of the sun, but everything heated by fire perishes; and while claiming that the sun is a fiery stone, he was ignorant of this too, that a stone in fire neither shines nor endures for long, but the sun, being the brightest of all, endures for all time.

He also commanded them to learn calculations, and likewise in these matters, as in others, he bade them beware of useless study; but as far as what was beneficial, he himself examined and went through everything together with his companions. These things Xenophon says in his Memorabilia. And in a letter, the same author, in his letter to Aeschines concerning Plato and those who pride themselves on the physiology of the universe, writes as follows:

12. CONCERNING THOSE WHO PRIDE THEMSELVES ON PHYSIOLOGY. "For that divine matters are beyond us is clear to everyone; it suffices for the better part of our power to revere them; but what they are is neither easy to discover nor lawful to seek. For it is not fitting for slaves to know the nature or conduct of their masters beyond their service. And, most importantly, to the degree that human affairs must be labored over with toil, to that same degree do those who grasp at glory from many untimely and empty things bear a burden. For when, O Aeschines, has anyone heard Socrates speaking about heavenly matters or urging the learning of lines for correction? For we know that he understood music only as far as the ears; and he continually told them what is noble and what is courage, justice, and the other virtues. At any rate, he called these human goods, and the rest he said were either impossible for humans to grasp or akin to myths, the playthings of sophists who speak with raised brows. And he did not merely say these things, but he also acted accordingly. But to write what was done, since you know it, although it would not be unpleasant, I have time and have recorded it elsewhere. Therefore, let them cease being refuted, or let them come to what is reasonable, those to whom Socrates was not pleasing, to whom, while he lived, the god bore witness to his wisdom, but those who killed him found no purification from their repentance.

But the beautiful, then, they fell in love with Egypt and the monstrous wisdom of Pythagoras, whose excess and instability Socrates refuted by his love of tyranny and, instead of a simple diet, the Sicilian table of immoderate appetite." Xenophon says this, hinting at Plato. And Plato in the Republic, concerning gymnastics and music, records Socrates as saying:

13. CONCERNING GYMNASTICS AND MUSIC "What then, Glaucon, would be a study that draws the soul from the realm of becoming to that of being? I have this in mind as I say it: did we not say that these men must be athletes of war when they are young? We did. Therefore, the study we seek must also be attended to in addition to that. What kind? That it not be useless for men of war. It must be, if possible. They were educated by us before in gymnastics and music. That is so, he said. And gymnastics, I suppose, is concerned with what comes to be and passes away; for it presides over the growth and decay of the body. So it seems. This, then, would not be the study we seek. No. But what about music, as much as we went through before? But that, he said, was the counterpart of gymnastics, if you recall, educating the guardians in habits, imparting a certain harmony through harmony, and a certain rhythm through rhythm, and having in speeches other kindred habits, both in the mythical and the more truthful speeches; but a study leading to something like what you seek was not in it. Most precisely, I said, you remind me; for indeed it had nothing of the sort. But, my good Glaucon, what could be such a study?

All the crafts, then, were considered vulgar. How could they not be?" Then, proceeding further, he adds: "Let them never attempt to learn for us anything incomplete of these things, whom we shall nurture, and it is not fitting that they always go there where all must come, as we were just saying about astronomy. Or do you not know that they do something similar concerning harmony? For they measure audible concords and notes against each other, toiling endlessly like the astronomers. 'By the gods,' he said, 'and quite ridiculously, naming certain densities and applying their ears, as if hunting sound from neighbors, some say they still hear some echo in the middle and that this interval is very small by which it must be measured, others disputing as if they were already uttering alike, both setting ears before the mind.' 'You,' I said, 'mean the worthy ones who trouble the strings and torture them, twisting them on the pegs. But so that the image may not become too long, with blows from the plectrum and accusations and denials and boastings of the strings, I stop the image and I do not say that these are the ones I mean, but those whom we just now said were spoken of concerning harmony. For they do the same as those in astronomy. For they seek the numbers in these audible concords, but they do not rise to consider the problems: which numbers are concordant and which are not, and why each is so.' But let these things also lie before us as we defend ourselves, that we did not neglect such useless learning without right reason.

Let us then consider, beginning from above, the doctrinal disagreements of the natural philosophers mentioned with one another. Plutarch, in his work entitled "On the Opinions of the Philosophers concerning Natural Doctrines," has collected together the opinions of all the Platonists and Pythagoreans, as well as those called the older natural philosophers, and again the younger Peripatetics, Stoics, and Epicureans. From these I will set forth the following:

14. OPINIONS OF PHILOSOPHERS CONCERNING PRINCIPLES. "Thales of Miletus," one of the seven sages, "declared that the principle of existing things is water. This man seems to have begun philosophy, and from him the Ionian school was named; for there were many successions. Having studied philosophy in Egypt, he came to Miletus as an older man. He says that all things are from water and that all things are resolved into water. He conjectures this, first, because the seed of all animals is a principle, a moist substance; thus it is likely that all things have their beginning from moisture. Second, all plants are nourished and bear fruit by moisture, but when deprived of it they wither. Third, even fire itself, that of the sun and the stars, is nourished by the exhalations of waters, and so is the cosmos itself. For this reason Homer also suggests this opinion concerning water: 'Ocean, which is the origin of all things.'" So much for Thales. "Anaximander of Miletus says that the principle of existing things is the infinite; for from this all things come to be and into this all things are destroyed; hence infinite worlds are generated and again destroyed into that from which they come to be.

He says, then, that the infinite exists so that nothing may be lacking and generation may subsist. But he also errs in not stating what the infinite is, whether it is air or water or earth or some other bodies; he errs, then, in declaring matter, but doing away with the efficient cause. For the infinite is nothing other than matter; but matter cannot be in actuality unless the efficient cause is posited. Anaximenes of Miletus declared air to be the principle of existing things; for from this all things come to be and into it they are again resolved. For example, the soul, he says, our soul, is air; for it holds us together; and the whole cosmos is encompassed by breath and air; and air and breath are spoken of synonymously. But he also errs in thinking that living beings are composed of simple and uniform air and breath. For it is impossible for a single principle, matter, to underlie existing things; but the efficient cause must also be posited. For example, silver is not sufficient for a cup to come into being, unless the efficient cause exists, that is, the silversmith; and similarly in the case of bronze and wood and other matter. Heraclitus and Hippasus of Metapontum say that the principle of all things is fire. For they say that all things come to be from fire and all things end in fire; and when it is extinguished, all things are cosmogonically formed. For first its most condensed part, contracting into itself, becomes earth; then, the earth being loosened by fire naturally becomes water, and being vaporized becomes air. And again the cosmos and all bodies are consumed by fire in a conflagration. Fire, then, is the principle, because all things are from it, and the end, because all things are resolved into it.

Democritus, whom Epicurus followed more than anyone else, held that the principles of existing things are atomic bodies, perceptible by reason, devoid of void, ungenerated, indestructible, and incapable of being broken, neither able to receive a shape from their parts nor to be altered, and that they are perceptible by reason. These, however, move in the void and through the void; and both the void itself and the bodies are infinite. Three attributes belong to the bodies: shape, size, and weight. But Democritus spoke of size and shape, while Epicurus added a third, weight, to these. For it is necessary, he says, that bodies be moved by the impact of weight, since otherwise they will not be moved. The shapes of the atoms are limited, not infinite; for there are neither hook-shaped nor trireme-shaped nor ring-shaped ones, for these shapes are easily broken, but atoms are impassive and unbreakable; they have their own shapes perceptible by reason. And it is called an atom not because it is the smallest, but because it cannot be cut, being impassive and devoid of void; so that when one says atom, one means unbreakable, impassive, devoid of void. That an atom exists is clear; for there are elements and void-free animals, and the monad. Empedocles, son of Meton, an Acragantine from the city of Sicily, held four elements—fire, air, water, earth—and two principles,

powers, Love and Strife, of which the former is unitive and the latter divisive. He speaks thus: "Hear first the four roots of all things: Zeus, bright Hera, life-bearing Hades, and Nestis, who moistens the mortal spring with tears." For by Zeus he means the boiling and the aether, by life-bearing Hera the air, by Hades the earth, and by Nestis and the mortal spring, as it were, seed and water." Such is the disagreement among the first natural philosophers, and such their opinion concerning principles, positing in their principles no god, no maker, no creator, nor any cause of the whole, nor gods, nor incorporeal powers, nor intellectual natures, nor rational substances, nor anything at all beyond sense perception. Only Anaxagoras, first among the Greeks, is recorded as having declared in his discourses on principles that Mind is the cause of all things. They say, then, that he especially, beyond those before him, admired natural philosophy; he even left his own land to be grazed by sheep for its sake, and he was the first among the Greeks to articulate the account of principles. For he not only declared concerning the substance of all things, as those before him did, but also concerning the cause that moves it. "For in the beginning," he says, "things were all mixed together, and Mind entering brought them from disorder into order." It is remarkable that this man, having first among the Greeks theologized in this manner, was considered by the Athenians to be an atheist because he did not deify the sun but rather the maker of the sun, and he narrowly escaped being stoned to death. It is said that not even he preserved the doctrine intact.

For he posits Mind as the cause of all things, but no longer gives a natural explanation of beings in accordance with mind and reason. Listen, then, to what Socrates in Plato's On the Soul charges against the man in these words:

15. ON THE DOCTRINE OF ANAXAGORAS "But having once heard from some book, as he said, of Anaxagoras reading and stating that Mind is the orderer and cause of all things, I was delighted with this cause and it seemed to me in a way to be well that Mind is the cause of all things, and I thought that if this is so, then Mind, ordering all things, orders them and places each thing where it would be best. Therefore, if one wished to find the cause concerning each thing, how it comes to be or perishes or exists, one must find this about it, namely, how it is best for it either to be or to undergo or do anything else whatsoever. From this argument, then, it follows that it is fitting for a man to consider nothing else concerning himself and other things but the best and the most excellent. And necessarily this same man must also know the worse; for the knowledge concerning them is the same. Reasoning thus, I thought I had gladly found a teacher of the cause concerning beings according to my own mind, Anaxagoras, and that he would first tell me whether the earth is flat or round, and then, having told me, would go on to explain the cause and the necessity, stating the better and that it was better for it to be such; and if he said it was in the middle, he would go on to explain how it was better for it to be in the middle; and if he declared these things to me, I was prepared no longer to desire any other kind of cause.

And indeed, concerning the sun, I had prepared myself in the same way, intending to inquire likewise about the moon and the other stars, about their speeds relative to one another, and about their turnings and other affections, to what end each of these is better to act and to suffer what it suffers. For I never would have thought that he, who declared that all things are ordered by Mind, would assign any other cause to them than that it is best for them to be exactly as they are. So I expected that, in giving the cause of each thing and the common good for all, he would explain what is best for each and what is good for all in common. And I would not have sold my hopes for a great price, but with great eagerness I took his books and began to read as quickly as I could, so that I might learn as soon as possible what is best and what is worse. But from a wonderful hope, my friend, I was carried away, for as I proceeded and read, I saw that the man made no use of Mind at all, nor did he assign any causes to the ordering of things, but instead blamed airs and aethers and waters and many other absurd things. And it seemed to me that he had suffered something very similar to what would happen if someone said that Socrates does everything he does by mind, and then, attempting to give the causes of each of my actions, should say first that I am now sitting here because my body is composed of bones and sinews, and that the bones are hard and have joints separate from one another, while the sinews are such as to be stretched and relaxed, enveloping the bones together with the flesh and skin which holds them together.

The bones, then, being suspended in their joints, the sinews slackening and tightening cause the limbs to bend somewhere, and it is possible for me now to move my limbs; and for this reason, having been bent together, I sit here. And again, concerning my conversing with you, one might give other such causes, alleging sounds and air and hearings and countless other such things, while neglecting to state the true causes: that, since the Athenians decided it was better to condemn me, for these reasons it has also seemed better to me to sit here and, more justly, to remain and undergo the penalty they command. For, by the dog, as I think, these sinews and bones would long ago have been in Megara or among the Boeotians, carried by the opinion of the best, if I had not thought it more just and more noble to undergo this penalty for the city rather than to flee and run away. But to call such things causes is quite absurd. If someone were to say that without having such things—bones and sinews and all else I have—I would not be able to do what I have decided, he would speak the truth. However, to say that I do what I do because of these things, and that I do them by mind, but not by the choice of the best, would be a great and long negligence of reason. Then he adds: "Therefore, one man, placing a whirl around the earth, makes the earth remain under the heaven; another, as if for a broad kneading-trough, props up the air as a base.

But the power by which these things are placed as best as possible, and are now so disposed, they neither seek nor think to have any divine force, but consider that they might discover someone stronger than Atlas and more capable of holding everything together, and truly they think that the good and the fitting bind and hold nothing together." So much from Socrates concerning the opinion of Anaxagoras. Now Anaxagoras' successor in both his school and his doctrine was Archelaus, and Socrates is said to have been a hearer of Archelaus. Nevertheless, there were also other natural philosophers, Xenophanes and Pythagoras, who flourished at the same time as Anaxagoras, and philosophized about the incorruptibility of God and the immortality of the soul. From these and after them, the schools of Greek philosophy arose, some following these, others following different thinkers, and some even devising their own opinions. Again, then, Plutarch writes the suppositions concerning the gods of these same men in the following manner:

16. OPINIONS OF PHILOSOPHERS CONCERNING GODS. "Some of the philosophers, such as Diagoras of Melos, Theodorus of Cyrene, and Euhemerus of Tegea, say outright that there are no gods. And Euhemerus is also alluded to by Callimachus of Cyrene in his iambics. – And Euripides the tragic poet, though he did not wish to reveal himself openly, fearing the Areopagus, intimated

of this: for he introduced Sisyphus as a champion of this opinion and argued in support of his view." After this, he introduces Anaxagoras, claiming that he was the first to think correctly about God. He speaks as follows: "Anaxagoras says that the bodies stood still at the beginning, and that Mind of God arranged them and produced the generations of all things. But Plato did not suppose the primary bodies to be stationary, but moving in disorder; therefore God, he says, having observed that order is better than disorder, arranged them." To which he adds: "Both err, because they made God concerned with human affairs and for this reason constructing the cosmos; for the blessed and imperishable living being, filled with all goods and incapable of receiving any evil, being wholly occupied with the maintenance of its own happiness and imperishability, is unconcerned with human affairs. It would be miserable, like a laborer and craftsman, burdened and anxious over the construction of the cosmos. And again, the God they speak of either did not exist in the previous age, when the bodies were motionless or when they moved in disorder, or he was asleep or awake or neither of these. And neither the first can be accepted—for how could God be eternal?—nor the second; for if God had been asleep from eternity, he would be dead; for eternal sleep is death; but God is incapable of sleep; for the immortal is separated from sleep, which is near to death. And if God had been awake, he either fell short of happiness or was filled with blessedness. And in the first case, God is not blessed; for that which falls short of happiness is not blessed.

neither according to the second: for lacking nothing, he was not about to attempt empty deeds. But how, if God exists and human affairs are administered by his care, does the counterfeit prosper while the noble suffers the opposite? For Agamemnon, both a good king and a mighty spearman, was defeated by an adulterer and an adulteress and was treacherously murdered; and his kinsman Heracles, after cleansing many of the things that plague human life, was poisoned by Deianira and treacherously murdered. Thales: the cosmos is God. Anaximander: the heavenly stars are gods. Democritus: God is a spherical fire, the soul of the cosmos. Pythagoras: of the principles, the monad is God and the Good, which is the nature of the One, Intellect itself; the indefinite dyad is both a daimon and evil, about which is the material multitude. After these, hear how those later in time held their opinions: "Socrates and Plato: the one is of a single nature, the monadic, the really existing Good; all these names hasten toward Intellect; therefore God is Intellect, a separate form, that is, unmixed with any matter and entangled with nothing passible. Aristotle: the highest God is a separate form, set upon the sphere of the universe, which is an aetherial body, the fifth element as he calls it; this being divided according to spheres, which are connected in nature but separated in account, he thinks each of the spheres is a living being composed of body and soul, of which the body is aetherial, moving in a circular motion, and the soul is a perpetually moving reason, the cause of motion in actuality.

The Stoics declare God to be intelligent, a creative fire proceeding methodically to the generation of the world, encompassing all the seminal principles according to which each thing comes to be by fate; and a spirit pervading the whole world, receiving its names as it passes through the whole of matter, through which it has penetrated. They also call the world, the stars, and the earth God, and the highest mind of all in the aether. Epicurus holds that the gods are human in form, but all are perceptible only to reason because of the fineness of the nature of their images. The same philosopher also posits four indestructible natures in kind: atoms, void, the infinite, and the likenesses; these are called homoeomeries and elements.

Such, then, are the divisions and blasphemies concerning God among the natural philosophers, among whom reason first establishes those around Pythagoras, Anaxagoras, Plato, and Socrates as setting mind and God over the world. These are shown to have been quite young in time, occurring in the periods when the latest events of Hebrew antiquity are recorded. Therefore, the knowledge of the God of the universe, which Anaxagoras and his followers first brought forth among the Greeks, was not the most ancient among all Greeks and among those who long before introduced polytheistic superstition among the Phoenicians and Egyptians. Indeed, the polytheistic superstition prevailed among all nations; but it seems that it did not contain the true theology, but rather that which the Egyptians and Phoenicians were first attested to have established among all peoples.

This was teaching not gods at all nor any divine powers, but men already long lying among the dead, as the word of truth long ago demonstrated. So then, let us take up the argument again. Since among the natural philosophers some referred everything to the senses, while others on the contrary drew back against them, like those around Xenophanes of Colophon and Parmenides of Elea, who indeed abolished the senses, asserting that nothing among things in sensation is apprehensible, and therefore one must trust only in reason, let us examine the objections raised against them.

17. AGAINST THOSE AROUND XENOPHANES AND PARMENIDES WHO ABOLISH THE SENSES, FROM THE EIGHTH BOOK OF ARISTOCLES' ON PHILOSOPHY: "But others arose who uttered the opposite voice to these. For they think that one must reject the senses and the impressions, and trust only in reason itself. Such things, for instance, were said earlier by Xenophanes, Parmenides, Zeno, and Melissus, and later by those around Stilpo and the Megarians. Hence these men insisted that being is one and the other is not, and that nothing is generated, nothing perishes, and nothing moves at all. Now we will learn the fuller argument against these when we philosophize, but for the present this much must be said: for we might say that reason is the most divine thing in us; nevertheless, one must also have sensation, just as indeed one must have a body. And that sensation is by nature capable of truth is clear; for it is not possible that one who perceives does not undergo something; and undergoing, he would know the affection; therefore sensation too is a kind of knowledge.

But if perception is a kind of being affected, and everything that is affected is affected by something, then the agent and the patient would certainly be different. So first, what is called "other" would exist, such as color and sound; then, the One would not exist; nor, indeed, would it be unmoved, for perception is motion. And everyone naturally desires to have their senses in good condition, since they trust, I think, healthy senses more than diseased ones. So naturally a certain powerful love for them is ingrained in us. For no one who is not mad would ever choose to lose a single sense, even if all other goods were to befall him. Those who disparage them ought, if they are convinced that they possess them in vain, to say what Pandarus says in Homer about his own bows: "Straightway then may another man cut off my head, if I do not put these bows in the bright fire, breaking them with my hands, for they are useless to me," and then proceed to destroy all their own senses. For thus one would believe them, teaching by deed that they have no need of them. But as it is, this is the most absurd thing: while declaring them useless in argument, they continue to use them most of all in practice. For instance, Melissus, wishing

to show that none of the things that appear and are in sight truly exist, he demonstrates this through the things that appear. For he says: "For if there is earth and water and air and fire and iron and gold, and the living and the dead, and black and white, and all the other things that men say truly exist, and we see and hear correctly, then that which is ought to be such as it first seemed to us to be, and not to change nor become other, but each thing should remain similar to what it is. But now we say we see and hear and understand correctly; yet it seems to us that hot becomes cold and cold becomes hot, and hard becomes soft and soft becomes hard." When he says these and many other such things, one might reasonably ask: "Did you not know, by perception, that something is hot and then becomes cold? And similarly for the other cases." For as I said, it would be found that he does nothing but abolish and refute the senses, precisely because he trusts them most. But such arguments have already given sufficient account; they have become obsolete, as if they had never been uttered at all. Now, however, we confidently say that those who employ both the senses and reason for the knowledge of things philosophize correctly. Such then are the followers of Xenophanes, who is said to have flourished at the same time as those around Pythagoras and Anaxagoras. Xenophanes had as his student Parmenides; his student was Melissus; his student was Zeno; his student was Leucippus; his student was Democritus; his student was Protagoras and Nessas; and of Nessas, Metrodorus; his student was Diogenes; his student was Anaxarchus.