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| Chapter VI.—Other Opinions of the Philosophers.
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Chapter VI.—Other Opinions of the Philosophers.
And regarding lawless conduct, those who have
blindly wandered into the choir of philosophy have, almost to a man,
spoken with one voice. Certainly Plato, to mention him first who seems
to have been the most respectable philosopher among them, expressly,
as it were, legislates in his first book,642
| 642 Not in the first, but the fifth book of the
Republic, p. 460. | entitled The Republic,
that the wives of all be common, using the precedent of the son643
of Jupiter
and the lawgiver of the Cretans, in order that under this pretext there
might be an abundant offspring from the best persons, and that those
who were worn with toil might be comforted by such intercourse.644
| 644 As this sentence cannot
be intelligibly rendered without its original in Plato, we subjoin
the latter: “As for those youths who excel either in war or other
pursuits, they ought both to have other rewards and prizes given them; and
specially this, of being allowed the freest intercourse with women, that,
at the same time, under this pretext the greatest number of children may
spring from such parents.” | And Epicurus himself, too,
as well as teaching atheism, teaches along with it incest with mothers
and sisters, and this in transgression of the laws which forbid it;
for Solon distinctly legislated regarding this, in order that from a
married parent children might lawfully spring, that they might not be
born of adultery, so that no one should honour as his father him who
was not his father, or dishonour him who was really his father, through
ignorance that he was so. And these things the other laws of the Romans
and Greeks also prohibit. Why, then, do Epicurus and the Stoics teach
incest and sodomy, with which doctrines they have filled libraries,
so that from boyhood645
| 645
[This statement reflects light upon some passages of Hermas, and shows
with what delicacy he has reproved the gross vices with which Christians
could not escape familiarity.] | this lawless intercourse is
learned? And why should I further spend time on them, since even of
those they call gods they relate similar things?E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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