Bad Advertisement?
Are you a Christian?
Online Store:Visit Our Store
| Chapter I.—Justin justifies his departure from Greek customs.
PREVIOUS SECTION - NEXT SECTION - HELP 
Chapter I.—Justin justifies his
departure from Greek customs.
Do not suppose, ye Greeks, that
my separation from your customs is unreasonable and unthinking; for I
found in them nothing that is holy or acceptable to God. For the very
compositions of your poets are monuments of madness and intemperance. For
any one who becomes the scholar of your most eminent instructor, is more
beset by difficulties than all men besides. For first they say that
Agamemnon, abetting the extravagant lust of his brother, and his madness
and unrestrained desire, readily gave even his daughter to be sacrificed,
and troubled all Greece that he might rescue Helen, who had been ravished
by the leprous2493
| 2493 Potter
would here read λιπαροῦ,
“elegant” [ironically for effeminate]; but the above reading
is defended by Sylburg, on the ground that shepherds were so greatly
despised, that this is not too hard an epithet to apply to Paris.
| shepherd. But when in the course of the war they took captives,
Agamemnon was himself taken captive by Chryseis, and for Briseis’
sake kindled a feud with the son of Thetis. And Pelides himself, who
crossed the river,2494
| 2494 Of the
many attempts to amend this clause, there seems to be none
satisfactory. | overthrew Troy, and subdued Hector, this your
hero became the slave of Polyxena, and was conquered by a dead Amazon;
and putting off the god-fabricated armour, and donning the hymeneal robe,
he became a sacrifice of love in the temple of Apollo. And the Ithacan
Ulysses made a virtue of a vice.2495
And indeed his sailing past the Sirens2496
| 2496 That is, the manner in which he
did it, stopping his companions’ ears with wax, and having himself
bound to the mast of his ship. | gave evidence that he was
destitute of worthy prudence, because he could not depend on his prudence
for stopping his ears. Ajax, son of Telamon, who bore the shield of
sevenfold ox-hide, went mad when he was defeated in the contest with
Ulysses for the armour. Such things I have no desire to be instructed in.
Of such virtue I am not covetous, that I should believe the myths of
Homer. For the whole rhapsody, the beginning and end both of the Iliad
and the Odyssey is—a woman.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
|
