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| Other shameful actions ascribed to heathen deities. All prove that they are but men of former times, and not even good men.
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§12. Other shameful
actions ascribed to heathen deities. All prove that they are but men of
former times, and not even good men.
For, to mention a few instances out of many to
avoid prolixity, who that saw his lawless and corrupt conduct toward
Semele, Leda, Alcmene, Artemis, Leto, Maia, Europe, Danae, and Antiope,
or that saw what he ventured to take in hand with regard to his own
sister, in having the same woman as wife and sister, would not scorn
him and pronounce him worthy of death? For not only did he commit
adultery, but he deified and raised to heaven those born of his
adulteries, contriving the deification as a veil for his lawlessness:
such as Dionysus, Heracles, the Dioscuri, Hermes, Perseus, and Soteira.
2. Who, that sees the so-called gods at irreconcileable strife among
themselves at Troy on account of the Greeks and Trojans, will fail to
recognise their feebleness, in that because of their mutual jealousies
they egged on even mortals to strife? Who, that sees Ares and Aphrodite
wounded by Diomed, or Hera and Aïdoneus from below the earth, whom
they call a god, wounded by Heracles, Dionysus by Perseus, Athena by
Arcas, and Hephæstus hurled down and going lame, will not
recognise their real nature, and, while refusing to call them gods, be
assured (when he hears that they are corruptible and passible) that
they are nothing but men128
| 128 This
explanation of gods as deified men is known as Euhemerism, from
Euhemerus, who broached the theory in the third century, b.c. (supra, 10, note 1); but ‘there were
Euhemerists in Greece before Euhemerus’ (Jowett’s Plato, 2.
101). The Fathers very commonly adopt the theory, for which, however,
there are very slight grounds. Such cases as those of Antinous and the
Emperors, as well as the legends of heroes and demigods, gave it some
plausibility (see Döllinger; Gentile and Jew, vol. i. p.
344, Eng. Tr.). | , and feeble men too,
and admire those that inflicted the wounds rather than the wounded? 3.
Or who that sees the adultery of Ares with Aphrodite, and
Hephæstus contriving a snare for the two, and the other so-called
gods called by Hephæstus to
view the adultery, and coming and seeing their licentiousness, would
not laugh and recognise their worthless character? Or who would not
laugh at beholding the drunken folly and misconduct of Heracles toward
Omphale? For their deeds of pleasure, and their unconscionable loves,
and their divine images in gold, silver, bronze, iron, stone, and wood,
we need not seriously expose by argument, since the facts are
abominable in themselves, and are enough taken alone to furnish proof
of the deception; so that one’s principal feeling is pity for
those deceived about them. 4. For, hating the adulterer who tampers
with a wife of their own, they are not ashamed to deify the teachers of
adultery; and refraining from incest themselves they worship those who
practise it; and admitting that the corrupting of children is an evil,
they serve those who stand accused of it and do not blush to ascribe to
those they call gods things which the laws forbid to exist even among
men.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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