A Plea for the Christians 18

Some say that these are only images, and that the gods are those whom the images represent; that the processions and sacrifices offered to the images are referred to those gods and are made for them; and that there is no other way of approaching the gods (“hard are the gods to see in their true form”); and as proof that this is so they offer the workings of certain idols. Let us, then, examine the power attached to their names. But I must beg you, greatest of emperors, before I speak, to forgive me for offering true arguments. For it is not my purpose to refute the idols, but, clearing away the slanders, to give an account of the way of life we have chosen. You may examine the heavenly kingdom by your own example. For just as all things are subject to you, father and son, who have received your kingdom from above (“for the king's soul is in the hand of God,” says the prophetic Spirit), so all things are subordinated to the one God and to the Word that comes from him, understood as his Son, inseparable from him. Consider this above all. The gods, as they say, did not exist from the beginning; each of them came into being just as we do. And on this they all agree. Homer says: “Ocean, origin of the gods, and mother Tethys.” And Orpheus (who first discovered their names, recounted their births, and told what each of them did, who is believed among them to speak more truly about the gods, and whom Homer follows in most things, especially concerning the gods) also makes their first origin from water: “Ocean, who is the origin of all.” According to him water was the beginning of all things; from water, mud was formed; and from both was born a living creature, a serpent with the head of a lion growing on it, and between them the face of a god, named Heracles and Kronos. This Heracles produced an enormous egg, which, filled by the force of its begetter, broke in two from the friction. The upper part became heaven, and the part that fell down became earth. There came forth also the goddess Earth, with a body; and Heaven, uniting with Earth, begets the females Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos, and the males, the hundred-handed Cottus, Gyges, and Briareus, and the Cyclopes Brontes, Steropes, and Argus. These he bound and cast into Tartarus, having learned that he would be deposed from his rule by his children. For this reason Earth in her anger bore the Titans: “Lady Earth bore the sons of Heaven, whom they call Titans, because they took vengeance on great starry Heaven.”