Oration to the Greeks 19

But you, who have no understanding of these things, are learning from us who know them, when you say that you despise death and practice self-sufficiency. For your philosophers are so far from practicing it that some of them receive six hundred gold pieces a year from the Roman emperor for nothing useful, so that they may not even wear their long beards for free. Crescens, who made his nest in the great city, surpassed everyone in pederasty and was wholly given to the love of money. He who counseled contempt of death was himself so afraid of death that he schemed to bring Justin, as he did me also, to death as to an evil, because Justin, in preaching the truth, exposed the philosophers as gluttons and cheats. Whom among the philosophers was he in the habit of persecuting, if not you alone? If you say that one should not fear death, then share our teachings: do not die out of a human craving for fame, like Anaxarchus, but become despisers of death for the sake of the knowledge of God. The structure of the world is good, but the way life is lived in it is bad; and one can see those who do not know God rioting as at a festival. What is divination? Why are you led astray by it? It is a servant of your worldly greed. You want to make war, and you take Apollo as your counselor in murder. You want to carry off a girl, and you choose the demon to help you. You are ill through your own fault, and, like Agamemnon with his ten counselors, you want to have gods on your side. A woman drinks water and goes mad, and is driven out of her senses by incense, and you say that she prophesies. Apollo was a foreknower and a teacher of prophets; in the case of Daphne he deceived himself. Tell me, does an oak prophesy, and do birds foretell the future, and are you inferior to animals and plants? Then it would be good for you to become a prophetic tree and to take on the nature of the birds of the air. The one who makes you greedy for money also prophesies to you about getting rich; the one who stirs up factions and battles also foretells victory in war. If you are above the passions, you will despise all things in the world. Do not loathe us for being such people; rather, reject the demons and follow God alone. All things were made by him, and without him not one thing was made. And if there is poison among the things that grow, this came about because of our sinfulness. I can show you the image of these things; only listen, and the one who believes will understand.