Chapter VIII. That His Intended Statements Must Not Be Published to All

[PORPHYRY] ‘And do thou endeavour to avoid publishing these above all things, and casting them even before the profane for the sake of reputation, or gain, or any unholy flattery. For so there would be danger not only to thee for transgressing these injunctions, but also to me for lightly trusting thee who couldst not keep the benefits secret to thyself. We must give them then to those who have arranged their plan of life with a view to the salvation of the soul.’

And further on he adds:

‘These things I beg you to conceal as the most unutterable of secrets, for even the gods did not make a revelation concerning thein openly, but by enigmas.’

Since, then, his discourse adopted such lofty strains, let us now examine, by help of the inspired Pythian oracles, what character we ought to ascribe to the invisible deified powers: for thus may the man also be tested from his own words and practices.

The aforesaid author, then, in his work which he entitled Of the Philosophy to be derived from Oracles, gives responses of Apollo enjoining the performance of animal sacrifices, and the offering of animals not to daemons only, nor only to the terrestrial powers, but also to the etherial and heavenly powers.

But in another work [1] the same author, confessing that all, to whom the Greeks used to offer sacrifices by blood and slaughter of senseless animals, are daemons and not gods, says that it is not right nor pious to offer animal sacrifices to gods.

Hear, therefore, his first utterances, in which, collecting the facts concerning The Philosophy to be derived from Oracles, he shows how Apollo teaches that the gods ought to be worshipped. This he sets forth in writing as follows: