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| The Gods of the Mythic Class. The Poets a Very Poor Authority in Such Matters. Homer and the Mythic Poets. Why Irreligious.
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Chapter VII.—The
Gods of the Mythic Class. The Poets a Very Poor Authority in Such
Matters. Homer and the Mythic Poets. Why Irreligious.
But to pass to the mythic class of gods,
which we attributed to the poets,881
| 881 See above, c. i. [Note
19, p. 129.] | I hardly know
whether I must only seek to put them on a par with our own human
mediocrity, or whether they must be affirmed to be gods, with proofs of
divinity, like the African Mopsus and the Bœotian Amphiaraus. I
must now indeed but slightly touch on this class, of which a fuller
view will be taken in the proper place.882
| 882 See The
Apology, especially cc. xxii. and xxiii. |
Meanwhile, that these were only human beings, is clear from the fact
that you do not consistently call them gods, but heroes. Why then
discuss the point? Although divine honours had to be ascribed to dead
men, it was not to them as such, of course. Look at your own practice,
when with similar excess of presumption you sully heaven with the
sepulchres of your kings: is it not such as are illustrious for
justice, virtue, piety, and every excellence of this sort, that you
honour with the blessedness of deification, contented even to incur
contempt if you forswear yourselves883
for such
characters? And, on the other hand, do you not deprive the impious and
disgraceful of even the old prizes of human glory, tear up884
their decrees and titles, pull down their
statues, and deface885
their images on the
current coin? Will He, however, who beholds all things, who approves,
nay, rewards the good, prostitute before all men886
the attribute of His own inexhaustible grace and mercy? And shall men
be allowed an especial mount of care and righteousness, that they may
be wise887
in selecting and multiplying888
their deities? Shall attendants on kings and
princes be more pure than those who wait on the Supreme God?889
| 889 An allusion to
Antinous, who is also referred to in The Apology, xiii.
[“Court-page.” See, p. 29, Supra.] | You turn your back in horror, indeed, on
outcasts and exiles, on the poor and weak, on the obscurely born and
the low-lived;890
| 890 Inhoneste
institutos. | but yet you honour,
even by legal sanctions,891
| 891 By the
“legibus” Tertullian refers to the divine honours
ordered to be paid, by decrees of the Senate, to deceased emperors.
Comp. Suetonius, Octav. 88; and Pliny, Paneg. 11
(Oehler). | unchaste men,
adulterers, robbers, and parricides. Must we regard it as a subject of
ridicule or indignation, that such characters are believed to be gods
who are not fit to be men? Then, again, in this mythic class of yours
which the poets celebrate, how uncertain is your conduct as to purity
of conscience and the maintenance thereof! For whenever we hold
up to execration the wretched, disgraceful and atrocious (examples) of
your gods, you defend them as mere fables, on the pretence of poetic
licence; whenever we volunteer a silent contempt892
of this said893
poetic
licence, then you are not only troubled with no horror of it,
but you go so far as894
to show it respect,
and to hold it as one of the indispensable (fine) arts; nay,895
you carry out the studies of your higher
classes896
by its means, as the very foundation897
of your literature. Plato was of opinion that
poets ought to be banished, as calumniators of the gods; (he would even
have) Homer himself expelled from his republic, although, as you are
aware,898
he was the crowned head of them all.
But while you admit
and retain them thus, why should you not believe them when they
disclose such things respecting your gods? And if you do believe your
poets, how is it that you worship such gods (as they describe)?
If you worship them simply because you do not believe the poets, why do
you bestow praise on such lying authors, without any fear of giving
offence to those whose calumniators you honour? A regard for
truth899
is not, of course, to be expected of
poets. But when you say that they only make men into gods after
their death, do you not admit that before death the said gods were
merely human? Now what is there strange in the fact, that they who were
once men are subject to the dishonour900
of human
casualties, or crimes, or fables? Do you not, in fact, put faith
in your poets, when it is in accordance with their rhapsodies901
that you have arranged in some instances your
very rituals? How is it that the priestess of Ceres is ravished, if it
is not because Ceres suffered a similar outrage? Why are the children
of others sacrificed to Saturn,902
| 902 Comp. The
Apology, ix. [See, p. 25, Supra.] | if it is not because
he spared not his own? Why is a male mutilated in honour of the
Idæan goddess Cybele, unless it be that the (unhappy) youth
who was too disdainful of her advances was castrated, owing to her
vexation at his daring to cross her love?903
| 903 Comp. Minucius
Felix, Octav. xxi.; Arnobius, adv. Nat. v. 6, 7;
Augustine, Civ. Dei, vi. 7. | Why
was not Hercules “a dainty dish” to the good ladies of
Lanuvium, if it was not for the primeval offence which women gave to
him? The poets, no doubt, are liars. Yet it is not because of their
telling us that904
| 904 This is the force
of the subjunctive verb. | your gods did such
things when they were human beings, nor because they predicated divine
scandals905
| 905 By divine
scandals, he means such as exceed in their atrocity even human
scandals. | of a divine state,
since it seemed to you more credible that gods should exist, though not
of such a character, than that there should be such characters,
although not gods.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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