Anf-01 viii.i Pg 6
He quotes Plato’s reference, e.g., to the X.; but the Orientals delighted in such conceits. Compare the Hebrew critics on the ה (in Gen. i. 4), on which see Nordheimer, Gram., vol. i. p. 7, New York, 1838.
If Plato had left us nothing but the Timæus, a Renan would doubtless have reproached him as of feeble intellectual power. So a dancing-master might criticise the movements of an athlete, or the writhings of St. Sebastian shot with arrows. The practical wisdom of Justin using the rhetoric of his times, and discomfiting false philosophy with its own weapons, is not appreciated by the fastidious Parisian. But the manly and heroic pleadings of the man, for a despised people with whom he had boldly identified himself; the intrepidity with which he defends them before despots, whose mere caprice might punish him with death; above all, the undaunted spirit with which he exposes the shame and absurdity of their inveterate superstition and reproaches the memory of Hadrian whom Antoninus had deified, as he had deified Antinous of loathsome history,—these are characteristics which every instinct of the unvitiated soul delights to honour. Justin cannot be refuted by a sneer.
