XVI. To Eusebius of Caesarea - Page 2

opponents; and, like them, as thou saidst, 'they are nowise at one
with each other in their explanations.' For of old some boasted that Hera was
the Air; and some that she signified the love of woman and man; and some that
she was the waters above the Earth; and others that she was the Earth beneath
the waters; and yet others that she was the Night, for that Night is the
shadow of Earth: as if, forsooth, the men who first worshipped Hera had
understanding of these things! And when Hera and Zeus quarrel unseemly (as
Homer declareth), this meant (said the learned in thy days) no more than the
strife and confusion of the elements, and was not in the beginning an idle
slanderous tale.

To all which, most worshipful, thou didst answer wisely: saying that Hera
could not be both night, and earth, and water, and air, and the love of sexes,
and the confusion of the elements ; but that all these opinions were vain
dreams, and the guesses of the learned. And why--thou saidst--even if the Gods
were pure natural creatures, are such foul things told of them in the
Mysteries as it is not fitting for me to declare. 'These wanderings, and
drinkings, and loves, and corruptions, that would be shameful in men, why,'
thou saidst, 'were they attributed to the natural elements; and wherefore did
the Gods constantly show themselves, like the sorcerers called were-wolves, in
the shape of the perishable beasts?' But, mainly, thou didst argue that, till
the philosophers of the heathen were agreed among themselves, not all
contradicting each the other, they had no semblance of a sure foundation for
their doctrine.

To all this and more, most worshipful Father, I know not what the heathen
answered thee. But, in our time, the learned men who stand to it that the
heathen Gods were in the beginning the pure elements, and that the nations,
forgetting their first love and the significance of their own speech, became
confused and were betrayed into foul stories about the pure Gods--these
learned men, I say, agree no whit among themselves. Nay, they differ one from
another, not less than did Plutarch and Porphyry and Theagenes, and the rest
whom thou didst laugh to scorn. Bear with me, Father, while I tell thee how
the new Plutarchs and Porphyrys do contend among themselves; and yet these
differences of theirs they call 'Science'!

Consider the goddess Athene, who sprang armed from the head of Zeus, even
as--among the fables of the poor heathen folk of seas thou never knewest--
goddesses are fabled to leap out from the armpits or feet of their fathers.
Thou must know that what Plato, in the 'Cratylus,' made Socrates say in jest,
the learned among us practise in sad earnest. For, when they wish to explain
the nature of any God, they first examine