Chapter XV. That They Also by Their Oracles Confirm the Theories of the Philosophers by Allegories Opposed to the Legends About Themselves

WHEN poets therefore, as they say, invent legends concerning the gods, while philosophers give physical explanations, we ought, I suppose, rightly to despise the former, and admire the latter as philosophers, and to accept the persuasive arguments of this better class rather than the triflings of the poets. But when on the other hand gods and philosophers enter into competition, and the former, as likely to know best, state exactly the facts concerning themselves in their oracles, while the latter twist their guesses about things which they do not know into discordant and undemonstrable subtleties, which does reason persuade us to believe? Or rather is this not even worth asking?

If therefore the gods are to speak true in certifying the human passions attributed to them, they who set these aside must be false; but if the physical explanations of the philosophers are true, the testimonies of the gods must be false.

But even Apollo himself, it may be said, somewhere in an oracle, when asked about himself who he was, replied:

‘Osiris, Horus, Sun, Apollo, Zeus-born king, Ruler of times and seasons, winds and showers. Guiding the reins of dawn and starry night, King of the shining orbs, eternal Fire.’

So then the same witnesses agree both with the poets’ legends and with the philosophers’ guesses, allying themselves with both sides in the battle. For if they ascribe to themselves mortal mothers, and acknowledge their native places upon earth, how can they be such as the physicists describe them?

Grant that Apollo is the sun----for their argument will again be caught running backwards and forwards and round to the same place----how then could Delos, the island which is now still seen at sea, be the native place of the sun, and Leto his mother? For this is what his own oracles just now certified as being true. And how could the sun become the father of Asclepius, a mortal man by nature, having begotten him of a mortal woman? But let us put this subject aside.