Oration to the Greeks 31–42

Now I think it proper to show that our philosophy is older than the pursuits of the Greeks. Moses and Homer will serve as our landmarks, since each of them is very ancient, the one the oldest of poets and historians, the other the founder of all barbarian wisdom. Let us now take them for comparison; for we shall find that our teachings are older not only than the culture of the Greeks, but even than the invention of letters. I will not take witnesses from among our own people, but will rather use Greeks as my helpers. The former would be unreasonable, since you would not accept them; but the latter would be a remarkable proof, when I fight you with your own weapons and obtain from you evidence that is beyond suspicion. The oldest writers have inquired into the poetry of Homer, his family, and the time in which he flourished: Theagenes of Rhegium, who lived in the time of Cambyses, Stesimbrotus of Thasos, Antimachus of Colophon, Herodotus of Halicarnassus, and Dionysius of Olynthus; after them Ephorus of Cyme and Philochorus of Athens, and the Peripatetics Megaclides and Chamaeleon; then the grammarians Zenodotus, Aristophanes, Callimachus, Crates, Eratosthenes, Aristarchus, and Apollodorus. Of these, Crates and his school say that Homer flourished before the return of the Heraclids, within eighty years after the Trojan War; Eratosthenes and his school, after the hundredth year from the capture of Troy; Aristarchus and his school, at the time of the Ionian migration, which was 140 years after the Trojan War; Philochorus, after the Ionian migration, when Archippus was archon at Athens, 180 years after the Trojan War; Apollodorus and his school, 100 years after the Ionian migration, which would be 240 years after the Trojan War. Some have said that he lived 90 years before the Olympiads, that is, 317 years after the capture of Troy; others brought the date lower, saying that Homer lived at the same time as Archilochus; and Archilochus flourished about the twenty-third Olympiad, in the time of Gyges the Lydian, 500 years after the Trojan War. Concerning the date of that poet, I mean Homer, his origin, and the disagreement among those who have written about him, let this summary suffice for those able to examine the matter precisely. For it is possible to show that the opinions about his poems are also false: where the record of dates is inconsistent, the historical accounts cannot be true either. For what is the cause of error in writing, if not setting down what is untrue?

Among us there is no longing for vainglory, and we do not deal in a variety of opinions. For having separated ourselves from common and earthly reasoning, obeying the commands of God and following the law of the Father of incorruption, we reject everything that rests on human opinion. Not only the rich among us pursue philosophy; the poor too enjoy our teaching free of charge, for what comes from God surpasses any recompense in worldly gifts. So we admit all who wish to listen, even if they are old women or youths; in short, every age is honored among us, while all licentiousness is kept far away. And when we speak we do not lie. As for your persistence in unbelief, it would be well if it came to an end; but if not, let our teachings stand confirmed by the judgment of God. You laugh, but you will weep. For how is it not absurd that you admire Nestor, who was slow to cut the traces of his horses because of the weakness and sluggishness of his age, for trying to fight on equal terms with the young, while those among us who wrestle with old age and busy themselves with the things of God are laughed at? And who would not laugh when you say that there were Amazons, and Semiramis, and certain other warlike women, while you revile our virgins? Achilles was a youth, and he is believed to have been very noble; Neoptolemus was younger still, but strong; Philoctetes was sick, but the divine power needed him against Troy. What sort of man was Thersites? Yet he was a commander; and if his unbridled tongue had not come from his ignorance, he would not have been mocked as pointy-headed and bald. All of us who wish to pursue philosophy do not judge by appearances, nor do we judge those who come to us by their looks; for we reckon that strength of mind can be found in all, even if they are weak in body. But your ways are full of envy and great stupidity.

This is why I was eager to show, from what you yourselves hold in honor, that our ways are sober-minded, while your customs are possessed by great madness. You who say that we talk nonsense among women and youths, virgins and old women, and who mock us for not being with you, hear the nonsense of Greek affairs. The practices of your gods are all the more foolish for being so famous, and you disgrace yourselves through your women's quarters. Lysippus cast in bronze Praxilla, who said nothing useful in her poems; Menestratus cast Learchis; Silanion, Sappho the courtesan; Naucydes, Erinna of Lesbos; Boiscus, Myrtis; Cephisodotus, Myro of Byzantium; Gomphus, Praxigoris; and Amphistratus, Cleito. Why should I speak of Anyte, Telesilla, and Mystis? The makers of the first were Euthycrates and Cephisodotus, of the second Niceratus, of the third Aristodotus. Euthycrates made Mnesiarchis of Ephesus; Silanion, Corinna; Euthycrates, Thalarchis of Argos. I was eager to mention these women so that you will not think that anything strange is done among us, and so that, comparing the practices before your eyes, you will not mock the women among us who pursue philosophy. Sappho was a lewd, love-crazed woman who sings of her own licentiousness; but all our women are chaste, and our virgins at their distaffs speak of the things of God more earnestly than that girl of yours. Be ashamed, then, you who turn out to be disciples of women, yet mock the women who live among us and the assembly they belong to. What noble thing did Glaucippe introduce to you, who gave birth to a monster, as her statue shows, cast in bronze by Niceratus son of Euctemon, an Athenian by birth? If she conceived an elephant, why should Glaucippe enjoy public honor? Praxiteles and Herodotus made Phryne the courtesan for you, and Euthycrates cast in bronze Panteuchis, who conceived by a seducer. Deinomenes by his art saw to it that Besantis, queen of the Paeonians, would be remembered because she bore a black child. I condemn Pythagoras too, who set up Europa on the bull, and you, who have honored the accuser of Zeus because of his art. I laugh too at the skill of Myron, who made a heifer and on it a Victory, because by carrying off Agenor's daughter he won the prize for adultery and lust. Herodotus of Olynthus made Glycera the courtesan and Argeia the harpist. Bryaxis set up Pasiphae, and by commemorating her licentiousness you all but choose that the women of today should be like her. There was a wise woman called Melanippe; for this reason Lysistratus made her statue. And yet you refuse to believe that there are wise women among us!

Very venerable too is the tyrant Phalaris, who feasted on babies at the breast, yet is displayed to this day, through the work of Polystratus of Ambracia, as if he were an admirable man! The people of Acragas dreaded to look at that face of his because of his cannibalism, but those who care about culture boast that they can gaze on him in a statue. How is it not grievous that fratricide is honored among you, who look at the figures of Polynices and Eteocles and do not throw them into a pit along with their maker Pythagoras? Destroy these memorials of wickedness! Why should I think the statue by Periclymenus, of a woman who bore thirty children, a wonder and study it? She who carried off the prize for great incontinence ought to have been loathed, likened to the sow of the Romans, which itself, for the same reason, has been thought worthy, they say, of a rather mystic worship. Ares committed adultery with Aphrodite, and Andron made for you Harmonia, their daughter. Sophron, who handed down trifles and nonsense in his writings, is more famous because of his bronze statue, which exists to this day. And the lying Aesop was made ever-memorable not only by his fables but also by the sculpture of Aristodemus, which made him much sought after. How then are you not ashamed, when you have so many poetesses of no use, and countless prostitutes and wicked men, to slander the modesty of our women? What is the value to me of learning that Euanthe gave birth in the Peripatos, of gaping at the art of Callistratus, or of fixing my eyes on the Neaera of Calliades? She was a courtesan. Lais was a prostitute, and Turnus made her a memorial of her prostitution. Why are you not ashamed of Hephaestion's sexual immorality, even if Philo portrays him with great skill? And why have you honored the effeminate Ganymede, through Leochares, as if you had a precious possession? Praxiteles made a sculpture of a woman being defiled. You ought to reject everything of this kind and seek what is truly worthwhile, and not, while laying claim to the unspeakable inventions of Philaenis and Elephantis, loathe our way of life.

I have set out these things not from hearsay but from what I learned myself, having traveled over much of the earth. I taught your learning as a sophist, I came across many arts and ideas, and finally I stayed in the city of the Romans and studied the many kinds of statues brought there from your lands. For I do not try, as many do, to strengthen my own views with other people's opinions; I wish to set down a record of what I have myself come to understand about everything I am going to reject. So, having said goodbye both to the arrogance of the Romans and to the frigid talk of the Athenians, incoherent teachings as they are, I laid hold of our barbarian philosophy. I had begun to write how it is older than your pursuits, but put this aside because of the more urgent explanation; now that the time has come, I will try to speak about its teachings. Do not be annoyed at our instruction, and do not work up a rebuttal against us full of nonsense and buffoonery, saying, “Tatian, setting himself above the Greeks and above the countless multitude of philosophers, is bringing in the novel teachings of barbarians.” For what is so hard about people who have shown themselves ignorant being refuted now by a man with the same nature as theirs? And what is absurd, as your own sage says, about growing old while always learning everything?

But let it be granted that Homer was not later than the Trojan War; let him be supposed to have lived at the very time of the war, and even to have served in the army with Agamemnon, and, if anyone wishes, to have lived before the invention of letters. For the Moses I spoke of will be shown to be older by very many years than the capture of Troy itself, and far more ancient than the founding of Troy and than Tros and Dardanus. For proof I will use as witnesses Chaldeans, Phoenicians, and Egyptians. And why should I say more? One who undertakes to persuade must give his hearers rather brief accounts of the facts. Berossus, a Babylonian, priest of their god Bel, who lived in the time of Alexander, composed for Antiochus, the third after him, the history of the Chaldeans in three books; and in setting out the history of the kings he tells of one of them named Nebuchadnezzar, who made war on the Phoenicians and the Jews. We know that these events were proclaimed by our prophets; they happened much later than the age of Moses, seventy years before the rule of the Persians. Berossus is a most reliable man; proof of this is Juba, who, writing On the Assyrians, says that he learned the history from Berossus. He has two books On the Assyrians.

After the Chaldeans, the Phoenician evidence is as follows. There were among them three men, Theodotus, Hypsicrates, and Mochus; their books were translated into Greek by Chaetus, who also wrote a careful account of the lives of the philosophers. The histories of these men show that the rape of Europa took place under one of the kings, and also the arrival of Menelaus in Phoenicia, and the story of Hiram, who gave his daughter in marriage to Solomon, king of the Jews, and presented him with timber of every kind for building the temple. Menander of Pergamum also wrote an account of the same things. The time of Hiram comes somewhere near the Trojan War; and Solomon, Hiram's contemporary, is much later than the age of Moses.

The Egyptians have accurate chronicles; and the interpreter of their history is Ptolemy, not the king, but a priest of Mendes. Setting out the deeds of the kings, he says that the Jews made their journey out of Egypt, to the regions they went to, under the leadership of Moses, in the time of Amosis, king of Egypt. He speaks thus: “Amosis lived in the time of King Inachus.” After him Apion the grammarian, a most highly esteemed man, in the fourth book of his Egyptian History (he wrote five books), says, among much else, that “Amosis destroyed Avaris, living in the time of Inachus of Argos, as Ptolemy of Mendes wrote in his Chronicles.” The time from Inachus to the capture of Troy fills twenty generations. And that is how the proof stands.

The kings of Argos were these: Inachus, Phoroneus, Apis, Criasus, Triopas, Argeius, Phorbas, Crotopas, Sthenelaus, Danaus, Lynceus, Proetus, Abas, Acrisius, Perseus, Sthenelaus, Eurystheus, Atreus, Thyestes, and Agamemnon, in the eighteenth year of whose reign Troy was taken. A sensible person must understand with all precision that, according to the Greeks' own tradition, they had no written record of history at all. For Cadmus, who handed down the letters to them, came to Boeotia many generations later. After Inachus, under Phoroneus, the savage and nomadic way of life barely came to an end, and people were given a new order. So if Moses has been shown to have lived in the time of Inachus, he is four hundred years older than the Trojan War. This is shown to be so from the succession of the Attic kings [and of the Macedonian and Ptolemaic, and also the Antiochene]. Hence, if the more notable deeds among the Greeks were recorded and are known only after Inachus, it is clear that they also come after Moses. In the time of Phoroneus, who came after Inachus, Ogyges is remembered among the Athenians, in whose time came the first flood; in the time of Phorbas, Actaeus, from whom Attica was called Actaea; in the time of Triopas, Prometheus, Epimetheus, Atlas, Cecrops of the double form, and Io; in the time of Crotopas, the burning in the days of Phaethon and the deluge in the days of Deucalion; in the time of Sthenelus, the reign of Amphictyon, the coming of Danaus to the Peloponnese, the founding of Dardania by Dardanus, and the carrying off of Europa from Phoenicia to Crete; in the time of Lynceus, the rape of Kore, the founding of the precinct at Eleusis, the farming of Triptolemus, the coming of Cadmus to Thebes, and the reign of Minos; in the time of Proetus, the war of Eumolpus against the Athenians; in the time of Acrisius, the crossing of Pelops from Phrygia, the arrival of Ion at Athens, the second Cecrops, the deeds of Perseus and Dionysus, and Musaeus the disciple of Orpheus; and in the reign of Agamemnon Troy was taken.

So Moses has been shown, from what has been said, to be older than the ancient heroes, wars, and demons. And we ought to believe the one who has the precedence in age, rather than the Greeks, who drew his teachings from the source without understanding them. For many of their sophists, in their meddling curiosity, tried to counterfeit whatever they learned from Moses and from those who philosophized as he did: first, so that they might be thought to be saying something original; second, so that by veiling what they did not understand with a fabricated rhetoric they might pass off the truth as mythology. Concerning our way of life, the history according to our laws, what the learned among the Greeks have said about it, and how many and who they are that have mentioned it, will be shown in my work Against Those Who Have Discoursed on Divine Things.

But the main point must be made clear with all precision: that Moses is older not only than Homer but also than the writers before him: Linus, Philammon, Thamyris, Amphion, Musaeus, Orpheus, Demodocus, Phemius, the Sibyl, Epimenides of Crete who came to Sparta, Aristeas of Proconnesus who wrote the Arimaspea, Asbolus the Centaur, Isatis, Drymon, Euclus of Cyprus, Horus of Samos, and Pronapides of Athens. Linus was the teacher of Heracles, and Heracles is shown to have lived one generation before the Trojan War; this is clear from his son Tlepolemus, who fought against Troy. Orpheus lived at the same time as Heracles; moreover, they say that the works attributed to him were composed by Onomacritus of Athens, who lived under the rule of the Pisistratids, about the fiftieth Olympiad. Musaeus was a disciple of Orpheus. Amphion, who lived two generations before the Trojan War, spares us from writing more for those who love learning. Demodocus and Phemius lived at the time of the Trojan War itself, for the one lived among the suitors and the other among the Phaeacians. Thamyris and Philammon are not much older than these. So concerning the works of each, and their dates and records, we have written for you, I think, with all precision. But to fill in what is still missing, I will also give the proof concerning those considered wise. Minos, who was thought to excel in every kind of wisdom, shrewdness, and lawgiving, lived in the time of Lynceus, who reigned after Danaus, in the eleventh generation after Inachus. Lycurgus, born long after the capture of Troy, gave laws to the Lacedaemonians one hundred years before the Olympiads. Draco is found to have lived about the thirty-ninth Olympiad; Solon about the forty-sixth; Pythagoras about the sixty-second. We have shown that the Olympiads began 407 years after the Trojan War. With these things proved, let us write briefly about the age of the seven sages too. Since Thales, the oldest of them, lived about the fiftieth Olympiad, what concerns those after him has also, more or less, been briefly told you.

These things, men of Greece, I, Tatian, who pursue philosophy in the manner of the barbarians, have composed for you. I was born in the land of the Assyrians, and was educated first in your learning, and afterwards in what I now profess to proclaim. Knowing now who God is and what his creation is, I present myself to you ready to be examined on my teachings, while my way of life according to God remains one I will never deny.