Homilies 6.1–6.26

On the third day I came with my closest companions to the appointed place in Tyre, and found Appion sitting between Anubion and Athenodorus, with many other educated men waiting for us. Not at all dismayed, I greeted them and sat down facing Appion, who soon began to speak: "I wish to begin first and come quickly from here to the question at issue. Before you joined us, my child Clement, Anubion here and Athenodorus, who with the others heard you speaking yesterday, told me how in Rome, in helping you as a lover, I told many lies about the gods, calling them pederasts, licentious, lying with mothers, sisters, and daughters, and giving themselves to countless adulteries. But you ought to have known, my child, that I did not write such things because I thought them of the gods; rather, out of affection for you, I hid the truth from you. If you wish, hear it now from me.

"The wisest of the men of old, who had learned all truth by their own labours, hid their knowledge from the unworthy, who had no longing for divine teaching, so that they should not receive it. For twelve children were not born of Ouranos and his mother Gē, as the myth counts them: the males Oceanus, Coeus, Crius, Hyperion, Iapetus, Kronos; the females Thea, Themis, Mnemosyne, Demeter, Tethys, Rhea. Nor did Kronos cut off the genitals of his father Ouranos with a sickle of adamant, as you say, and fling them into the deep; nor was Aphrodite born from the drops of blood that flowed from Ouranos's wound. Nor again did Kronos lie with Rhea, beget Pluto first, and swallow him, fearing because of an ordinance of Prometheus that a child born of him might grow nobler than he and take his kingdom from him. He did not beget Poseidon second and swallow him likewise. Rhea the mother did not hide Zeus, born after these, and give Kronos something else to swallow when he demanded him. Kronos, when he had swallowed it, was not squeezed and did not cast out those swallowed before, so that first Pluto, swallowed first, came out, after him Poseidon, and third Zeus. Nor, as they say, did Zeus, saved by his mother's forethought, go up to heaven and depose his father from the kingdom. He did not punish his father's brothers. He did not come down in longing for mortal women. He did not have shameful intercourse with sisters or daughters, with his brothers' wives, or with boys. Nor did he beget Metis and swallow her, so as to make Athena spring from his brain, from Metis, and to bear from his thigh Dionysus, who they say was torn to pieces by the Titans. He does not hold a banquet at the wedding of Thetis and Peleus. He did not drive Strife away from the wedding. Strife herself, dishonoured, did not devise battle and discord for the guests. She did not take a golden apple from the gardens of the Hesperides and inscribe on it, 'A gift for the beautiful one.' Then they tell the myth that Hera, Athena, and Aphrodite find the apple and come quarrelling to Zeus; he did not judge them himself, but sent them by Hermes to the shepherd Paris to be judged for beauty. But neither were goddesses judged, nor did Paris give the apple to Aphrodite. Aphrodite, so honoured, did not repay him with marriage to Helen. For the honour paid to a goddess would not have become the pretext for a war of all nations, and that to the ruin of the one who received the honour and who was kin to Aphrodite's own race. But, as I said, my child, such things have a meaning of their own, a philosophical one, that can be expressed by allegory, so that you will be amazed when you hear it." I said, "I beg you, do not torment me by putting it off." He said, "Do not fear; I will not delay, but will begin to speak at once."

"There was a time when there was nothing but chaos, an undifferentiated mixture of disordered elements still heaped together. Nature itself agrees with this, and great men have understood it to be so. As a witness among those great in wisdom I will offer you the greatest, Homer himself, who says of that original confusion: 'But may you all become water and earth,' as though all things had their origin from there and, after the dissolution of the moist and earthy substance, are restored again to their first nature, which is chaos. Hesiod in the Theogony says, 'First of all Chaos came to be.' 'Came to be' clearly means that it was generated, as things that come into being, and not that it always was, as things unbegotten. Orpheus likens chaos to an egg, in which the confusion of the first elements lay. What Hesiod posits as chaos, Orpheus calls an egg, generated, put forth from the infinite mass of matter, and it came to be in this way.

"The fourfold matter was alive, an entire infinite deep, ever flowing and borne along without order, pouring forth countless incomplete mixtures now one way and now another, and therefore dissolving them again by its disorder, gaping, as it were, and unable to be bound together for the birth of a living creature. Then it happened once that this infinite sea, driven round by its own nature with a natural motion, flowed in an orderly way from itself into itself, like a whirlpool, and mixed the substances; and so from all of them the richest part, the most suited for the birth of a living creature, flowed down as into a funnel to the middle of the whole, and by the whirl that carried everything it sank to the depth, drew in the spirit lying around, and, conceived as in a most fertile womb, produced a distinct formation. For as a bubble is apt to form in liquid, so a spherical hollow was conceived, closed on every side. Then, having conceived within itself and being borne upward by the divine spirit it had taken in, this very great offspring came forth into the light, a living creation brought forth, as it were, from the whole infinite deep, like an egg in its roundness and like a bird in the swiftness of its flight.

"So understand Kronos, I beg you, as Chronos, Time, and Rhea as the flowing of the moist substance: for all matter, carried along by time, brought forth heaven, which encloses everything, spherical like an egg. At first the elements united it, full of fertile marrow and able to bring forth colours of every kind; and yet, from one substance and one colour, it bore the appearance of every kind. For as in the egg of the peacock the colour seems one, but in potency holds in itself countless colours of the bird that is to be completed, so too the living egg brought forth from infinite matter, moved by the underlying and ever-flowing matter, displays changes of every kind. For within its circumference a living being, male and female, is formed by the providence of the divine spirit within it, whom Orpheus calls Phanes, because when he appeared the whole universe shone out from him, by the brightness of fire, the most splendid of the elements, brought to completion in the moist substance. Nor is this incredible, since in glow-worms too nature has given us, as an example, a moist light to see.

"Then the first-formed egg, warmed by the living being within, breaks open, and the being, now formed, comes out, as Orpheus too says: '... when the capacious egg was split.' And so, when the one who came forth had appeared with great power, the hollow received its harmony and took on its ordered arrangement, while he himself sits enthroned as on the summit of heaven, shining in unspeakable places over the infinite age. The fertile matter left within the hollow, over a long time, as the natural heat seethed beneath it, separated the substances of all things. For its lowest part, first, like a sediment, sank down by its weight; because of its dragging, its heaviness, and the great mass of the underlying substance they called it Pluto, and declared it king of Hades and of the dead.

"This first, abundant, filthy, and rough substance, then, they say was swallowed by Kronos, that is Time, in a natural sense, because it sank down below. After the first sediment, the water that flowed together and floated on the first deposit they called Poseidon. The remaining third, the purest and highest, being transparent fire, they named Zēn because of the seething nature in it; for fire, since it tends upward, was not swallowed by Time, Kronos, into the depths; but, as I said, the fiery substance, being life-giving and tending upward, flew up into the air itself, which is also most intelligent because of its purity. So by his own heat Zeus, that is, the seething substance, draws up what was left in the underlying moisture, the finest and divine spirit, which they called Metis.

"This spirit, reaching the summit of the aether itself and being drunk in by it, like moisture mixed with heat, produced a constant throbbing, and so begets understanding, which they also call Pallas because of its throbbing: it is most skilful wisdom, by which the craftsman of the aether fashioned the whole world. From Zeus himself, the hottest aether that pervades all, the air reaches down to the places here; they call it Hera. And since it falls below the purest substance of the aether, being female, as it were, in purity when compared with the stronger, it was reasonably considered the sister of Zeus, as born of the same substance, but his wife because it lies beneath him as a woman does.

"Hera is taken for the temperate mixture of the air, which is why she is most fertile; while Athena, whom they also call Pallas, since she cannot produce offspring because of her extreme heat, was held to be a virgin. So too Artemis is interpreted; they take her for the lowest recess of the air, and since she is barren through extreme cold they likewise called her a virgin. Dionysus, as the one who troubles the mind, is their name for the turbid and intoxicating compound formed from the vapours above and below. The water beneath the earth, which is one by nature, but runs through all the passages of the land and is divided into many parts, as if cut to pieces, they called Osiris. They take Adonis for the seasons of ripeness, Aphrodite for mixing and generation, Demeter for the earth, Kore for seeds, and some take Dionysus for the vine.

"Understand all such things, I beg you, as having a similar allegory. Consider Apollo to be the sun as it goes round, the offspring of Zeus, whom they also called Mithras, as he completes the circuit of the year. The many transformations of Zeus, who pervades everything, are to be understood as changes, and his countless wives as years or generations. For the power that comes from the aether itself and passes through the air, uniting with each year and generation, changes it in different ways, and so begets or destroys the fruits of the seasons. The ripe fruits are called his children, and the barren seasons that come at certain times are the signs he gives to the foolish.

While Appion was giving these allegories, I was lost in thought and seemed not to be following what he said. So he broke off his speech and said to me, "If you are not following what I say, why am I speaking at all?" I answered: "Do not suppose that I have no grasp of what you are saying. I understand it perfectly, since this is not the first time I have heard it. And so that you may know that I am not ignorant of what you are saying, I will summarize what you have said, and I will complete, in order, the allegories you left out, as I heard them from others." Appion said, "Do as you say."

I answered: "I pass over, for now, a precise account of the living egg brought forth from infinite matter by a lucky mixture, from which, when it broke, according to some, Phanes leapt out, male and female. I cut short all of that, up to the point where the broken hollow received its harmony, with its marrow-like matter left behind; and I run briefly over the account of what came into being within it, summarizing it with what follows. For there were born, as you say, of Kronos and Rhea, that is, of time and matter, first Pluto, the sediment that sank below; second Poseidon, the moist substance that floated on the heaviest nature below; and third, the highest, which is aether, that is Zeus. It was not swallowed, but, being hot and strong and upward-tending by nature, flew up, as if by some impulse, into the highest and most commanding aether.

"The bonds of Kronos are the binding together of heaven and earth, as I have heard others also interpret; the cutting off of the parts is the separation and distinction of the elements, since all things were cut off and separated by their own nature, so that each was set in its own place; and time no longer begets, but the things begotten through it make their successions by the law of nature. Aphrodite, who rose up out of the deep, is the fertile substance from the moisture; the warm spirit mixing with it produces the love of union and brings to completion the beauty of the world.

"The wedding banquet, at which Zeus gave the dinner for Thetis the Nereid and the handsome Peleus, has this allegory, so that you may know, Appion, that we have heard such things even without you. The banquet is the world; the twelve are the heavenly supports of its divisions, which they call the signs of the zodiac; Prometheus is forethought, by which all things came to be; Peleus is the clay (pēlos) taken from the earth, devised for the making of man and mixed with the Nereid, that is, with water. From the mixing of the two, water and earth, the first man, not begotten but formed complete, was called Achilles, because he did not put his lips to breasts. He is also the prime of life, which, if it desires Polyxena, as being alien and foreign to the truth, is slain by the venom of a serpent, death creeping in by an arrow at the heel and footstep.

"So Hera, Athena, Aphrodite, Strife, the apple, Hermes, the judgment, and the shepherd hint at a meaning of this kind. Hera is dignity; Athena, courage; Aphrodite, pleasures; Hermes, the reason that interprets; the shepherd Paris, irrational and barbarous impulse. If, then, in the prime of life, the reason that shepherds the soul happens to be barbarous, neglects what is beneficial, thrusts aside courage and self-control, and chooses pleasures alone, giving the victory to desire alone in the hope of receiving delights from it in return, then the one who did not judge rightly will get his delight to the ruin of himself and his own. Strife is the vice that loves contention. The golden apple of the Hesperides would be wealth, which sometimes draws even the self-controlled, like Hera, into idleness, makes the courageous, like Athena, more contentious over things that do not befit them, and, like Aphrodite, destroys the soul's beauty under the pretext of luxury. To put it briefly, wealth provokes everyone to evil strife.

"Heracles, who killed the serpent that ruled and guarded wealth, is the genuine and philosophical mind, which, stripped of every vice, travels round the world, visiting souls and bringing to their senses those it meets, I mean men who are like bold lions, or cowardly deer, or wild boars, or many-shaped hydras. Likewise all the other labours Heracles is said to have performed are riddles of intellectual virtue. Let what has been said suffice for now; to speak of each one, all time would not be enough.

"Yet I am amazed that those who hid these things in crooked riddles and covered them with evil myths, when they could have been made known clearly, piously, and usefully in plain, straightforward speech, are called prudent and wise by you, though they, as if led on by an evil demon, have ensnared almost all mankind. For either these are not riddles but real sins of the gods, and one ought not to have exposed them, nor to have set them before human beings for imitation at all; or else what was falsely said to have been done by the gods was expressed in riddles, and then, Appion, those whom you call wise have sinned, because by covering things holy with unholy myths they encouraged human beings to sin, and that while outraging those whom they themselves held to be gods.

"So do not think such men wise; they are demons, who put forward evil stories as coverings of good deeds, so that those who wish to imitate their betters might emulate the deeds of the so-called gods. Those deeds I did not conceal when I spoke on the day before this: I mean parricides, child-murders, impious unions with mothers, daughters, and sisters, indecent adulteries, unions of males with males, and foul unspeakable acts, besides countless other such lawless unions. More impious than these are those who wish such things to be thought true, so that they may not be ashamed when they do the same. If they wished to be pious, then, as I said just now, even if the gods had really done the evil things sung about them, they ought, out of honour for the gods, to have covered what was unseemly with more becoming myths, and not the reverse, as you say: throwing evil and unseemly coverings over deeds that were good, which, when allegorized, can barely be understood even with toil. And when some did understand them, they gave those people, in return for much labour, the benefit of not being led astray, though they could have been spared the labour; while those who were led astray they utterly destroyed. Still, I approve of those who allegorize toward the more dignified sense, such as those who expressed in a riddle that wisdom sprang from the head of Zeus. But perhaps this seems more likely to me: that those outrages were dared by wicked men who robbed the gods of their honour."

"Nor do we find the poets' allegory of all the gods consistent. For example, on the ordering of the universe, the poets sometimes say that nature, sometimes that mind, was the author of the whole creation. They say the first motion and mixing of the elements came from nature, but that they were set in order by the providence of mind. Some declare that the universe was made by nature, but since they cannot prove this beyond objection, because of the skill shown in the making, they weave in the providence of mind as well, as if they could carry off even the very wise. But we say to them: if the world came from spontaneous nature, how did it acquire proportion and order, which can come only from surpassing wisdom and can be grasped only by knowledge, which alone can examine such things precisely? And if all things received their blending and ordering by wisdom, as must be the case, how could they still have come about by chance?

"So those who wished to allegorize divine things in a shameful way, such as Metis being swallowed by Zeus, have fallen into a difficulty. They do not understand that those who have given crooked physical explanations of the gods have done away with the very existence of the gods, dissolving their forms by allegory into the substances of the world. It is more plausible, then, to say that the gods of whom they sing were certain evil magicians, wicked men who, transforming themselves by magic, broke up marriages and corrupted lives, and who, to people of old who did not know what magic is, seemed to be gods because of what they did. Their deaths and their tombs are shown in various cities.

"For example, as I said on another occasion, in the Caucasus mountains is shown the grave of a certain Kronos, a man, a savage tyrant who killed his children. His son, named Zeus, became worse still; having appeared by the power of magic as ruler of the world, he broke up many marriages and punished his father along with his uncles; and when he died in this way, the Cretans show his tomb. In Mesopotamia there lie a certain Helios at Patrae and a Selene at Carae; Hermes, a man, in Egypt; Ares in Thrace; Aphrodite in Cyprus; Asclepius at Epidaurus; and the tombs of many others like them are to be seen.

"So, plainly, to those who understand rightly, they are agreed to have been men. Their contemporaries, perceiving that they were mortal, paid little attention to them when they died, but the long lapse of time surrounded them with the reputation of gods. Do not be surprised that those who lived in the time of Asclepius and Heracles, or of Dionysus or any other of that age, were deceived, since the people there worship Hector at Ilium and Achilles on the island of Leuke, the Opuntians worship Patroclus, and the Rhodians Alexander of Macedon.

"Indeed, among the Egyptians even now a man is worshipped as a god before his death. This is a lesser impiety, that the Egyptians assign divine honours to a living man; but the most ridiculous of all is that they worship birds, reptiles, and all kinds of animals. For most people neither think nor act with judgment. But look at the most shameful thing of all: the one whom they themselves call father of gods and men they depict in intercourse with Leda, and many paint him, label him Zeus, and set him up publicly on a panel. To avenge this outrage, I could wish that they would paint their present king in a shameful embrace, as they have dared to do with Zeus, and set it up publicly, so that at least from the anger of a king who reigns for a time, and he a mere man, they might learn by punishment that due honour must be paid. I say this to you not as one who already knows the true God; but I candidly confess that, even if I do not know who God is, I think I know clearly what God is.

"For example, the first four elements cannot be God, since they came from another; nor the mixing, nor the blending, nor the generation; nor the visible hollow that contains everything; nor the sediment that flows together in Hades; nor the water floating on it; nor the seething substance; nor the air that reaches from it down to the places here. For the four elements, if they had been separated from one another, could not have mixed for the generation of a living creature without some great craftsman; or if they were always joined to one another, even so they are fitted together by a craftsman mind to suit the limbs and parts of the living creature, so that it may preserve the proportion of each to each, may have a well-defined form, and so that all within may receive the fitting harmony. Likewise the craftsman mind fixes precisely the proper places of each with all beauty of form. To put it briefly: nothing else that a living creature must have was lacking to this great living creature of the whole revolving universe.

"So we must conceive of an unbegotten craftsman who either brought together the elements when they were apart, or, when they were together, blended them skilfully for the generation of a living creature and completed one work out of them all. For it is impossible for a very wise work to be completed without some greater mind. Nor can love be the craftsman of all things, nor desire, nor strength, nor anything else of that kind, since such things are by nature passive, coming and going. Nor is that which is carried along by another God, nor that which is changed by time or nature and dissolved into non-existence."

While I was discussing these things with Appion, Peter arrived from Caesarea, and crowds gathered in Tyre, hurrying to meet him and to thank him for his coming. Appion withdrew with only Anubion and Athenodorus, while all the rest of us hurried out to meet Peter. I was the first to receive him before the gates, and I led him to his lodging. When we had arrived, we dismissed the crowds, and when he asked me to tell what had happened I concealed nothing. I reported Simon's slanders and the monstrous apparitions he had produced, the diseases he had sent after the feast from the sacrifice of oxen, and that of the sick some had stayed there in Tyre, while others had gone with Simon to Sidon, at the time I came, to be healed by him, and that I had learned that none of them had obtained healing from him. I also told Peter about the discussion I had had with Appion. He praised and blessed me for my affection and my encouragement, took some salt, and because of the fatigue of the journey gave himself up to the rest of sleep that he so much needed.