Chapter VI. That What They Call the Temples of Their Gods Are the Tombs of Dead Men

[CLEMENT] ‘Naturally therefore superstition, having somewhere found a beginning, has become a fountain of senseless wickedness; and afterwards, as it was not checked, but gained increase and rushed on in full flood, it has created a multitude of daemons, sacrificing hecatombs, celebrating public festivals, setting up statues, and building temples, which indeed----for I will not keep silence even on this, but will convict them----were called euphemistically temples, but were in reality tombs, that is to say, tombs which had got the name of temples. But now, I pray you, forget at length your superstition, and be ashamed to worship tombs.

‘In the temple of Athena at Larissa in the Acropolis is the tomb of Acrisius, and at Athens in the Acropolis the tomb of Cecrops, as Antiochus says in the ninth book of his Histories. And what of Erichthonius? Is he not buried in the temple of Athena Folias? And Ismarus the son of Eumolpus and Daeira, is he not buried in the precincts of the Eleusinium, which lies under the Acropolis? And the daughters of Celeus, are they not buried at Eleusis?

‘Why should I tell you of the women who came from the Hyperboreans? There are two called Hyperoche and Laodice, who are buried in the precinct of Artemis at Delos, which is in the temple of the Delian Apollo.

‘Leander says that Cleomachus is buried at Miletus in the Didyrnaeum. Here, if we follow Zeno of Myndus, it would not be right to pass over the monument of Leucophryne, who is buried in the temple of Artemis in Magnesia, nor yet the altar of Apollo in Telmessus, which also, the story says, is the monument of Telmesseus the soothsayer.

‘Ptolemy too, the son of Agesarchus, in his first book concerning Philopator says that Cinyras and the descendants of Cinyras are buried in Paphos in the temple of Aphrodite.

‘Were I, however, to go over all the tombs which are worshipped by you, “all time would not suffice for me to tell”; [Homer, Od. xx. 351] while you, if no shame for these audacities steals over you, may wander round with your faith in the dead, utterly dead yourselves:

“Ah! wretched men, what evil doom is this?” [1]

A little further on he says: [2]

‘Another new god the Roman Emperor has deified with great solemnity in Egypt, and almost in Greece; his favourite Antinous, who was extremely beautiful, was deified by him, as Ganymede was by Zeus.

‘For lust, when free from fear, is not easily restrained: and men now celebrate the sacred nights of Antinous, the shame of which was known to the lover who shared his vigils.’

He also adds:

‘And now the favourite’s tomb is the temple and city of Antinous: for just as temples are held in reverence, so, I suppose, are tombs, pyramids, mausoleums, and labyrinths----other temples these of the dead, as those before mentioned were tombs of the gods.’

And again, a little further on: [3]

‘Come then, let us also briefly make the round of your games, and put an end to these great sepulchral festivals, the Isthmian, Nemean, and Pythian, and besides these the Olympian. At Pytho the Pythian dragon is worshipped, and the festival of the serpent is proclaimed as the Pythia. At the Isthmus the sea cast up a miserable carcass, and the Isthmian games are a lamentation for Melicertes: at Nemea another child Archemorus is buried, and the boy’s funeral games are called Nemea. Pisa is the tomb in your midst, O Panhellenes, of a Phrygian charioteer, and the Zeus of Phidias claims as his own the Olympian games, which are the funeral libations of Pelops.’

So speaks our author.

Now take thou up our argument again from the beginning, and observe the downfall of superstitious error. By nature and by our self-taught ideas, or rather ideas taught by God, there is a something noble and salutary that indicates the name and being of God: for all men had taken this for granted in their common reasonings, since the Creator of all things had implanted this conviction by innate ideas in every rational and intelligent soul.

They had not, however, chosen the course which accords with reason. For only some one or two perchance, or at most a very few others, whose memory is recorded in the oracles of the Hebrews, could not adapt their idea of God to any of the things that are seen, but with unperverted reasonings led up their thoughts from visible things to the Creator of the whole world and the great Maker of the universe; and with purified eyes of the understanding perceived that He alone is God, the Saviour of all, and sole giver of good gifts. But the rest wandered about in all kinds of mental blindness, and were carried into an abyss of ungodliness, so that like wild beasts they limited the beautiful, and useful, and good to the pleasure of the eyes and the flesh.

And in this way, as I have said before, the discoverers of the things supposed to be good and useful to the body, or certain governors, or tyrants, or even sorcerers and poisoners, though of mortal nature and subjected to the misfortunes of humanity, were called saviours and gods as givers of good things, and men transferred, the august conception which was implanted in them by nature to those whom they supposed to be benefactors.

And accordingly so great a mental paralysis possessed them, that they took no account of the iniquities of those whom they regarded as gods, nor blushed at the shameful tales reported of them, but in all these things admired the men because of the benefits provided by them, or because of the governments and tyrannies which were then first established.

For example, as I said before, since at that time no laws were yet administered, nor punishment suspended over evil deeds, they recorded as rightful and brave deeds, adulteries and sodomy, and incestuous and unlawful marriages, and bloodshed and parricides, and murders of children and brethren, and moreover, wars and seditions actually carried on by their own champions, whom they both accounted and called gods, and bequeathed the remembrance of them as worshipful and brave to later generations.

Such was the ancient theology which was transformed by certain moderns of yesterday’s growth, who boasted of having a more reasonable philosophy, and introduced what they called the more physical view of the history of the gods, by devising more respectable and ingenious explanations for the legends: yet they neither escaped altogether the fault of their forefathers’ impiety, nor, on the other hand, could endure the self-manifested wickedness of their so-called gods.

So, in their eagerness to palliate the fault of their fathers, they changed the legends into physical narratives and theories, and boasted, as the more mystical view, that the things which give nourishment and increase to the nature of the body are those which the legends set forth.

Going on from this point, these men also gave the title of gods to the elements of the world, not just merely to sun and moon and stars, but also to earth and water, and air and fire, and their combinations and resultants, and moreover to the seasonable fruits of the earth, and all other produce of food both dry and liquid: and these very things, regarded as causes of the life of the body, they called Demeter, and Kore, and Dionysus, and other like names, and, by making gods of them, introduced a forced and untrue embellishment of their legends.

But it was in a later age that these men, as if ashamed of the theologies of their forefathers, added respectable explanations, which each invented of himself, to the legends concerning their gods; for no one dared to disturb the customs of their ancestors, but paid great honour to antiquity, and to the familiar training which had grown with them from their boyhood.

Their elders, however, besides their deifications of men, gave equal rank to their consecrations of brute animals, because of the benefit derived from them also for the causes previously assigned; and they devoted equal religious worship to the brutes, and with libations, sacrifices, mystic rites, and hymns, and songs, exalted the honours paid to them, in the same manner as to the men who had been deified. And so they marched on to such a pitch of evil, that, through excess of unbridled lust, they consecrated with divine honours those parts of the body that lead to impurity, and the unrestrained passions of mankind, while their so-called theologians declared that in these things there is no need at all to use solemn phrases. We must, then, hold it to have been proved on the highest testimony, that the oldest generations knew nothing more at all than the history, but adhered to the legends only. Since, however, we have once begun to glance at the august and recondite doctrines of the noble philosophers, let us go on and examine these also more fully, that we may not seem to be ignorant of their wonderful physical theories.

But before we make our exposition of these doctrines, we must first indicate the mutual contradiction even here of these admirable philosophers themselves. For some of them make random statements, and set forth their opinions according to what comes into the mind of each individually: for they do not agree one with another even in their physical theories. While others more candidly sweep away the whole system, and banish from their own republic not only the indecent stories about the gods, but also the interpretations given of them; though sometimes they speak softly of the legends through fear of the punishment threatened by the laws.

Listen then to the Greeks themselves speaking by the mouth of the one noblest of them all, now banishing and now again adopting the legends. Thus their admirable Plato, when he lays bare his own preference, with great boldness forbids altogether the thinking or saying such things concerning the gods, as had been said by them of old, whether they contained anything latent indicated in allegorical meanings, or were spoken without any allegorical meaning at all. But at other times he speaks softly of the laws, and says that we ought to believe the legends about the gods, though there is nothing indicated by them in allegorical meanings.

But when at last he has dissociated his own theology from the ancient legends, and has stated his physical theories about the heaven, and sun, and moon, and stars, and moreover about the whole cosmos, and the parts of it severally, he again specially and separately goes through the ancient genealogical accounts of the gods just as follows word for word in the Timaeus.