•
THE CONFLICT OF RELIGIONS IN
THE EARLY ROMAN EMPIRE
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
LIFE AND LETTERS IN THE FOURTH CENTURY
STUDIES IN VIRGIL
BY
T. R. GLOVER
FELLOW AND CLASSICAL LECTURER OF
ST JOHN'S COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE
-
METHUEN & CO.
36 ESSEX STREET W.C
LONDON
First Published in 7909
17'
GOP-
PREFACE
A LARGE part of this book formed the course of Dale
Lectures delivered in Mansfield College, Oxford, in
the Spring of 1907. For the lecture-room the chapters
lad to be considerably abridged ; they are now restored to
heir full length, while revision and addition have further
changed their character. They are published in accordance
with the terms of the Dale foundation.
To see the Founder of the Christian movement and some
f his followers as they appeared among their contemporaries ;
o represent Christian and pagan with equal goodwill and
equal honesty, and in one perspective ; to recapture some-
hing of the colour and movement of life, using imagination
o interpret the data, and controlling it by them ; to follow
he conflict of ideals, not in the abstract, but as they show
hemselves in character and personality; and in this way to
discover where lay the living force that changed the thoughts
a.nd lives of men, and what it was ; these have been the
lims of the writer, — impossible, but worth attempting. So
ar as they have been achieved, the book is relevant to
he reader.
The work of others has made the task lighter. German
cholars, such as Bousset, von Dobschiitz, Harnack, Pfleiderer
md Wernle ; Professor F. C. Burkitt and others nearer home
vho have written of the beginnings of Christianity ; Boissier,
\lartha and Professor Samuel Dill ; Edward Caird, Lecky, and
Seller; with the authors of monographs, Croiset, de Faye,
ireard, Koziol, Oakesmith, Volkmann ; these and others have
>een laid under contribution. In another way Dr Wilhelm
ierrmann, of Marburg, and Thomas Carlyle have helped the
VI
THE CONFLICT OF RELIGIONS
book. The references to ancient authorities are mostly of
the writer's own gathering, and they have been verified.
Lastly, there are friends to thank, at Cambridge and at I
Woodbrooke, for the services that only friends can render —
suggestion, criticism, approval, correction, and all the other |!
kindly form5 of encouragement and enlightenment.
ST JOHN'S COLLEGE,
CAMBRIDGE,
February igog.
CONTENTS
CHAP.
I. ROMAN RELIGION
II. THE STOICS ....... 33
III. PLUTARCH ....... 75
IV. JESUS OF NAZARETH . . . . . .113
V. THE FOLLOWERS OF JESUS . . . . .141
VI. THE CONFLICT OF CHRISTIAN AND JEW . . .167
VII. "GODS OR ATOMS?" ...... 196
III. CELSUS ........ 239
IX. CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA ..... 262
X. TERTULLIAN ....... 305
INDEX ........ 349
vii
THE CONFLICT OF RELIGIONS
IN THE EARLY ROMAN EMPIRE
CHAPTER I
ROMAN RELIGION
ON the Ides of March in the year 44 B.C. Julius Caesar lay
dead at the foot of Pompey's statue. His body had
twenty three wounds. So far the conspirators had done
their work thoroughly, and no farther. They had made no
preparation for the government of the Roman world. They
had not realized that they were removing the great organizing
intelligence which stood between the world and chaos, and back
into chaos the world swiftly rolled. They had hated personal
government ; they were to learn that the only alternative was
no government at all. "Be your own Senate yourself"1 wrote
Cicero to Plancus in despair. There was war, there were
faction fights, massacres, confiscations, conscriptions. The
enemies of Rome came over her borders, and brigandage
flourished within them.
At the end of his first Georgic Virgil prays for the triumph
of the one hope which the world saw — for the preservation and
he rule of the young Caesar, and he sums up in a few lines the
.orror from which mankind seeks to be delivered. " Right and
rong are confounded ; so many wars the world over, so many
brms of wrong; no worthy honour is left to the plough; the
usbandmen are marched away and the fields grow dirty ; the
ook has its curve straightened into the sword-blade. In the
st, Euphrates is stirring up war, in the West, Germany : nay,
lose-neighbouring cities break their mutual league and draw
he sword, and the war-god's unnatural fury rages over the
hole world ; even as when in the Circus the chariots burst
1 Cic. ad Jam. x, 1 6. 2, Ipse tibi sis senatus.
2 ROMAN RELIGION
from their floodgates, they dash into the course, and pulling
desperately at the reins the driver lets the horses drive him, and
the car is deaf to the curb." l
Virgil's hope that Octavian might be spared to give peace to
the world was realized. The foreign enemies were driven over
their frontiers and thoroughly cowed ; brigandage was crushed,
and finally, with the fall of Antony and Cleopatra, the govern-
ment of the whole world was once more, after thirteen years of
suffering, disorder and death, safely gathered into the hands of
one man. There was peace at last and Rome had leisure to
think cut the experience through which she had passed.
The thirteen years between the murder of Caesar and the
battle of Actium were only a part of that experience ; for a
century there had been continuous disintegration in the State.
The empire had been increased, but the imperial people had
declined. There had been civil war in Rome over and over
again — murder employed as a common resource of politics
reckless disregard of the sacredness of life and property, anc
thorough carelessness of the State. The impression that
England made upon Wordsworth in 1802 was precisely thai
left upon the mind of the serious Roman when he reflected
upon his country. All was " rapine, avarice, expense."
Plain living and high thinking are no more :
The homely beauty of the good old cause
Is gone ; our peace, our fearful innocence,
And pure religion breathing household laws.
Such complaints, real or conventional, are familiar to the
readers of the literature of the last century before Christ. Every-
one felt that a profound change had come over Rome.
Attempts had been made in various ways to remedy this
change ; laws had been passed ; citizens had been banished and
murdered ; armies had been called in to restore ancient
principles ; and all had resulted in failure. Finally a gleam ol
restoration was seen when Julius began to set things in order
when he " corrected the year by the Sun " and gave promise of
as true and deep-going a correction of everything else. His
murder put an end to all this at the time, and it took thirteen
years to regain the lost opportunity — and the years were not
1 Gcorgic i, 505-514 (Conington's translation, with alterations).
THE CAUSE OF ROME'S DECLINE 3
altogether loss for they proved conclusively that there was now
no alternative to the rule of the " Prince."
Accordingly the Prince set himself to discover what was to
be done to heal the hurt of his people, and to heal it thoroughly.
What was the real disease ? was the question that men asked •
where was the root of all the evil ? why was it that in old days
men were honest, governed themselves firmly, knew how to
obey, and served the State ? A famous line of Ennius, written
two centuries before, said that the Roman Commonwealth stood
on ancient character, and on men. —
Moribus antiquis stat res Romana virisque.
Both these bases of the national life seemed to be lost —
were they beyond recall ? could they be restored ? What was
it that had made the " ancient character " ? What was the
ultimate difference between the old Roman and the Roman
of the days of Antony and Octavian ? Ovid congratulated
tiimself on the perfect congruity of the age and his personal
character —
hcsc cetas moribus apta meis —
and he was quite right. And precisely in the measure that
Ovid was right in finding the age and his character in agree-
ment, the age and national character were demonstrably
degenerate. It was the great question before the nation, its
statesmen, patriots and poets, to find why two hundred years
had wrought such a change.
It was not long before an answer was suggested. A reason
was found, which had a history of its own. The decline had
been foreseen. We are fortunately in possession of a forecast
by a Greek thinker of the second century B.C., who knew Rome
well — Polybius, the intimate of the younger Scipio. In the
course of his great summary of the Rome he knew, when he is
explaining her actual and future greatness to the Greek world,
he says : — " The most important difference for the better, which
the Roman Commonwealth appears to me to display, is in their
religious beliefs, for I conceive that what in other nations is
looked upon as a reproach, I mean a scrupulous fear of the
gods, is the very thing which keeps the Roman Common-
wealth together ; (cnWxeti/ ra 'PeoyUcuW Tr/oay/xara). To such an
extraordinary height is this carried among them
4 ROMAN RELIGION
KGU TrapeicrtJKTai) both in private and public business, that
nothing could exceed it. Many people might think this un-
accountable, but in my opinion their object is to use it as a
check upon the common people. If it were possible to form
a state wholly of philosophers, such a custom would perhaps
be unnecessary. But seeing that every multitude is fickle and
full of lawless desires, unreasoning anger and violent passion,
the only resource is to keep them in check by mysterious
terrors and scenic effects of this sort (TO& aSri\ot$ <f>6/3oi$ KOI
ry Totavry rpaywSia). Wherefore, to my mind, the ancients
were not acting without purpose or at random, when they
brought in among the vulgar those opinions about the gods
and the belief in the punishments in Hades : much rather do
I think that men nowadays are acting rashly and foolishly in
rejecting them. This is the reason why, apart from anything
else, Greek statesmen, if entrusted with a single talent, though
protected by ten checking-clerks, as many seals and twice as
many witnesses, yet cannot be induced to keep faith ; whereas
among the Romans, in their magistracies and embassies, men
have the handling of a great amount of money, and yet from
pure respect to their oath keep their faith intact."1 Later on
Polybius limits his assertion of Roman honesty to "the
majority " — the habits and principles of Rome were beginning
to be contaminated.2
This view of the value of religion is an old one among the
Greeks. Critias, the friend of Socrates, embodied it in verses,
which are preserved for us by Sextus Empiricus. In summary
he holds that there was a time when men's life knew no order,
but at last laws were ordained to punish .; and the laws kept
men from open misdeeds, " but they did many things in secret ;
and then, I think, some shrewd and wise man invented a terror
for the evil in case secretly they should do or say or think
aught. So he introduced the divine, alleging that there is a
divinity (Sai/uuav), blest with eternal life, who with his mind sees
and hears, thinks, and marks these things, and bears a divine
nature, who will hear all that is said among men and can see
all that is done, and though in silence thou plan some evil, yet
this shall not escape the gods." This was a most pleasant
1 Polybius, vi, 56, Shuckburgh's Translation.
2 Polybius, xviii, 35.
THE POLITICAL VALUE OF RELIGION 5
lesson which he introduced, "with a false reason covering
truth " ; and he said the gods abode in that region whence
thunder and lightning and rain come, and so "he quenched
lawlessness with laws." l
This was a shallow judgi ment upon religion. That " it
utterly abolished religion altogether" was the criticism of
Cicero's Academic.2 But most of the contemporary views of
the origin of religion were shallow. Euhemerism with its
deified men, and inspiration with its distraught votaries were
perhaps nobler, a little nobler, but in reality there was little
respect for religion among the philosophic. But the practical
people of the day accepted the view of Critias as wise enough.
"The myths that are told of affairs in Hades, though pure
invention at bottom, contribute to make men pious and up-
right," wrote the Sicilian Diodorus at this very time.3 Varro 4
divided religion into three varieties, mythical, physical (on
which the less said in public, he owned, the better) and "civil,"
and he pronounced the last the best adapted for national
purposes, as it consisted in knowing what gods state and
citizen should worship and with what rites. " It is the in-
terest," he said, " of states to be deceived in religion."
So the great question narrowed itself to this : — Was it ,
possible for another shrewd and wise man to do again for
Rome what the original inventor of religion had done for man-
kind ? once more to establish effective gods to do the work
of police? Augustus endeavoured to show that it was still
possible.
On the famous monument of Ancyra, which preserves for
us the Emperor's official autobiography, he enumerates the
temples he built — temples in honour of Apollo, of Julius, of
Quirinus, of Juppiter Feretrius, of Jove the Thunderer, of
Minerva, of the Queen Juno, of Juppiter Liberalis, of the Lares,
of the Penates, of Youth, of the Great Mother, and the shrine
known as the Lupercal ; he tells how he dedicated vast sums
from his spoils, how he restored to the temples of Asia the
ornaments of which they had been robbed, and how he be-
1 Sextus Empiricus, Adv. mathematicos^ ix, 54. - Cicero, N.D. i, 42, 118.
3 Diodorus Siculus, i, 2.
4 Quoted by Augustine, C.D. iv, 27; vi, 5; also referred to by Tertullian, ad
Natt. ii, i.
6 ROMAN RELIGION
came Pontifex Maximus, after patiently waiting for Lepidus
to vacate the office by a natural death. His biographer
Suetonius tells of his care for the Sibylline books, of his in-
creasing the numbers, dignities and allowances of the priests,
and his especial regard for the Vestal Virgins, of his restora-
tion of ancient ceremonies, of his celebration of festivals and
holy days, and of his discrimination among foreign religions,
his regard for the Athenian mysteries and his contempt for
Egyptian Apis.1 His private feelings and instincts had a tinge
of superstition. He used a sealskin as a protection against
thunder ; he carefully studied his dreams, was " much moved
by portents," and " observed days." 2
The most lasting monument (cere perennius] of the restora-
tion of religion by Augustus consists of the odes which Horace
wrote to forward the plans of the Emperor. They were very
different men, but it is not unreasonable to hold that Horace
felt no less than Augustus that there was something wrong
with the state. His personal attitude to religion was his own
affair, and to it we shall have to return, but in grave and
dignified odes, which he gave to the world, he lent himself to
the cause of reformation. He deplored the reckless luxury oi
the day with much appearance of earnestness, and, though in
his published collections, these poems of lament are interleaved
with others whose burden is sparge rosas, he was serious in
some degree ; for his own taste, at least when he came within
sight of middle life, was all for moderation. He spoke gravely
of the effect upon the race of its disregard of all the virtues
necessary for the continuance of a society, Like other poets
of the day, he found Utopias in distant ages and remote lands.
His idealized picture of the blessedness of savage life is not
unlike Rousseau's, and in both cases the inspiration was the
same — discontent with an environment complicated, extrava-
gant and corrupt.
Better with nomad Scythians roam,
Whose travelling cart is all their home,
Or where the ruder Getae spread
From steppes unmeasured raise their bread.
1 Suetonius, Augustus, 31, 75, 93 ; Warde Fowler, Roman Festivals, p. 344.
2 Suet. Aug. 90, 92.
ROME'S DEBT TO THE GODS 7
There with a single year content
The tiller shifts his tenement ;
Another, when that labour ends,
To the self-same condition bends.
The simple step-dame there will bless
With care the children motherless :
No wife by wealth command procures,
None heeds the sleek adulterer's lures.1
Other poets also imagined Golden Ages of quiet ease and
idleness, but the conclusion which Horace drew was more
robust. He appealed to the Emperor for laws, and effective
laws, to correct the " unreined license " of the day, and though
his poem declines into declamation of a very idle kind about
" useless gold," as his poems are apt to decline on the first
hint of rhetoric, the practical suggestion was not rhetorical —
it was perhaps the purpose of the piece. In another famous
poem, the last of a sequence of six, all dedicated to the higher
life of Rome and all reaching an elevation not often attained
by his odes, he points more clearly to the decline of religion
as the cause of Rome's misfortunes.2
The idea that Rome's Empire was the outcome of her piety
was not first struck out by Horace. Cicero uses it in one of his
public speeches with effect and puts it into the mouth of his
Stoic in the work on the Nature of the Gods.3 Later on, one
after another of the Latin Apologists for Christianity, from
Tertullian 4 to Prudentius, has to combat the same idea. It
was evidently popular, and the appeal to the ruined shrine and
the neglected image touched — or was supposed to touch — the
popular imagination.
Mankind are apt to look twice at the piety of a ruler, and
the old question of Satan comes easily, " Doth Job serve God
for naught?" Why does an Emperor wish to be called " the
eldest son of the church ? " We may be fairly sure in the case
of Augustus that, if popular sentiment had been strongly against
1 Horace, Odes, iii, 24, 9-20, Gladstone's version.
2 Horace, Odes, iii, 6, Delicta maiorum.
3 De Haruspicum Responsis, 9, 19 ; N.D. ii, 3, 8.
4 E.g. ApoL 25, with a serious criticism of the contrast between Roman character
before and after the conquest of the world, — before and after the invasion of Rome by
the images and idols of Etruscans and Greeks.
8 ROMAN RELIGION
the restoration of religion, he would have said less about it.
We have to go behind the Emperor and Horace to discover
how the matter really stood between religion and the Roman
people.
We may first of all remark that, just as the French Revolu-
tion was in some sense the parent of the Romantic movement,
the disintegration of the old Roman life was accompanied by
the rise of antiquarianism. Cicero's was the last generation
that learnt the Twelve Tables by heart at school ut carmen
necessarium ; and Varro, Cicero's contemporary, was the first
and perhaps the greatest of all Roman antiquaries. So at
least St Augustine held. Sixteen of his forty-one books of
Antiquities Varro gave to the gods, for " he says he was afraid
they would perish, not by any hostile invasion, but by the
neglect of the Roman citizens, and from this he says they were
rescued by himself, as from a fallen house, and safely stored
and preserved in the memory of good men by books like his ; and
that his care for this was of more service than that which Metellus
is said to have shown in rescuing the sacred emblems of Vesta
from the fire or ^Eneas in saving the penates from the Fall of
Troy." 1 He rescued a good deal more than a later and more
pious age was grateful for ; Augustine found him invaluable, but
Servius, the great commentator on Virgil, called him " every-
where the foe of religion." 2 The poets, too, felt to the full the
charm of antiquity. Propertius 3 and Ovid both undertook to
write of olden days — of sacred things (" rooted out of ancient
annals " 4), and of the names of long ago. Virgil himself was
looked upon as a great antiquary. Livy wrote of Rome's early
history and told how Numa " put the fear of the gods " upon
his people " as the most effective thing for an ignorant and
rough multitude " ; 5 his history abounds in portents and omens,
but he is not altogether a believer. As early as a generation
before Rome was burnt by the Gauls it was remarked, he says,
that foreign religion had invaded the city, brought by prophets
who made money out of the superstitions they roused and the
alien and unusual means they employed to procure the peace of
the gods.6
1 Augustine C.D. vi, 2. 2 On sEneid, xi, 785.
3 Propertius, v, I, 69. 4 Ovid, Fasti, i, 7.
6 Livy, i, 19. 6 Livy, iv, 30.
PRIMITIVE ROMAN RITUAL 9
Nowhere perhaps is antiquarianism more fascinating than in
the sphere of religion. The Lupercalia had once a real meaning.
The sacrifice of goats and young dogs, and of sacred cakes that
the Vestals made of the first ears of the last year's harvest ;
the Luperci, with blood on their brows, naked but for the skins
of the slaughtered goats ; the februa of goatskin, the touch of
which would take sterility from a woman — all this is intelligible
to the student of primitive religion ; but when Mark Antony,
Consul though he was, was one of the runners at the Lupercalia,
it was not in the spirit of the ancient Latin. It was an anti-
quarian revival of an old festival of the countryside, which had
perhaps never died out. At all events it was celebrated as
late as the fifth century A.D., and it was only then abolished
by the substitution of a Christian feast by Pope Gelasfus.1
Augustus took pains to revive such ceremonies. Suetonius
mentions the " augury of safety," the " flaminate of Juppiter," the
" Lupercal rite," and various sacred games.2 Varro in one of
his books, speaks of the Arval Brothers ; and Archaeology and
the spade have recovered for us the acta of ninety-six of the
annual meetings which this curious old college held at the end
of May in the grove of Dea Dia. It is significant that the
oldest of these acta refer to the meeting in 14 A.D., the
year of Augustus' death. The hymn which they sang runs
las follows : —
Enos Lases iuvate
Neve lue rue Marmar sins incurrere in pleores
Satur fu fere Mars limen salt sta berber
Semunis Alternis advocapit conctos
Enos Marmor iuvato
Triumpe.
le first five lines were repeated thrice, and Triumpe five
times.3 Quintilian tells us that " the hymns of the Salii were
lardly intelligible to the priests themselves," 4 yet they found
idmirers who amused Horace with their zeal for mere age and
)bscurity.5
1 Plutarch, Romulus, 21 ; Caesar, 61, Warde Fowler, Roman Festivals, p. 310 f.
2 Suetonius, Aug. 31, Warde Fowler, op. cit. p. 190.
3 Mommsen, History, i, p. 231, who translates the hymn.
4 Quintilian, i, 6, 40. See specimen in Varro, L.L. vii, 26.
6 Epp. ii, i, 20-27, 86.
io ROMAN RELIGION
But an antiquarian interest in ritual is not inconsistent with
indifference to religion. Varro, as we have seen, was criticized
as an actual enemy of religion in spite of the services he claimed
to have rendered to the gods — and the very claim justifies the
criticism. So far as the literature of the last century B.C. and
the stories current about the leading men in Rome allow us to
judge, it is hard to suppose there has ever been an age less
interested in religion. Cicero, for example, wrote — or, perhaps,
compiled — three books "On the Nature of the Gods." He
casts his matter into the form of a dialogue, in which in turn an
Epicurean and a Stoic give their grounds for rejecting and for
accepting the gods, and an Academic points out the inadequacy
of the reasoning in both cases. He has also written on the
immortality of the soul. But Cicero's correspondence is a more
reliable index to his own beliefs and those of the society in
which he moved. No society could be more indifferent to what
we call the religious life. In theory and practice, in character
and instinct, they were thoroughly secular. One sentence will
exhibit Cicero's own feeling. He wrote to his wife from
Brundusium on 3Oth April 58 B.C., when he was on his way to
foreign exile : " If these miseries are to be permanent, I onl;
wish, my dearest (mea vita), to see you as soon as possible anc
to die in your arms, since neither gods, whom you have wor
shipped with such pure devotion, nor men, whom / have alway
served, have made us any return." } Even when his daughte
Tullia died, no sign of any hope of re-union escaped him in hi
letters, nor did Servius Sulpicius, who wrote him a beautifu
letter of consolation, do more than merely hint at such a thing
"If the dead have consciousness, would she wish you to be so
overcome of sorrow ? " Horace, whose odes, as we have seen
are now and then consecrated to the restoration of religion, w«
every whit as secular-minded. He laughed at superstition and
ridiculed the idea of a divine interest in men, when he expresse(
his own feeling. No one was ever more thoroughly Epicurean
in the truest sense of the word ; no one ever urged more
pleasantly the Epicurean theory Carpe diem ; no one ever hac
more deeply ingrained in him the belief Mors ultima linea rerun
est. His candour, his humour, his friendliness, combine to give
him a very human charm, but in all that is associated with th«
1 Cicero, adfam. xiv, 4, i.
THE CHILDHOOD OF A PAGAN n
religious side of man's thought and experience, he is sterile and
insufficient. And Horace, like Cicero, represents a group.
Fuscus Aristius, it is true, declined to rescue the poet from the
bore on the ground that "it was the thirtieth Sabbath — and
Horace could not wish to offend the Jews ? " but we realize that
this scruple was dramatic. Fuscus is said to have been a writer
of comedies.1
But the jest of Fuscus was the earnest of many. If men
were conscious of decay in the sanction which religion had once
given to morality, there was still a great deal of vague religious
feeling among the uneducated and partially educated classes.
Again and again we read complaints of the folly of grand-
mothers and nurses, and it was from them that the first impres-
sions of childhood came. Four centuries la,ter than the period
now under discussion it was still the same. " When once vain
superstition obsessed the heathen hearts of our fathers, un-
checked was its course through a thousand generations. The
tender hope of the house shuddered, and worshipped whatever
venerable thing his hoary grandsires showed him. Infancy drank
in error with its mother's milk. Amid his cries the sacred meal
was put between the baby's lips. He saw the wax dripping
upon the stones, the black Lares trickling with unguent. A little
child he saw the image of Fortune with her horn of wealth, and
the sacred stone that stood by the house, and his mother pale at
her prayers before it. Soon himself too, raised high on his
nurse's shoulders, he pressed his lips to the stone, poured forth
his childish prayers, and asked riches for himself from the blind
rock, and was sure that, whatever one wished, that was where to
ask. Never did he lift his eyes and his mind to turn to the
citadel of reason, but he believed, and held to the foolish
custom, honouring with blood of lambs the gods of his family.
And then when he went forth from his home, how he marvelled
at the public festivals, the holy days and the games, and gazed
at the towering Capitol, and saw the laurelled servants of the
gods at the temples while the Sacred Way echoed to the lowing
of the victims." So wrote Prudentius.2 So too wrote Tibullus
-" Keep me, Lares of my fathers ; for ye bred me to manhood
when a tender child I played at your feet." 3
1 Hor. Sat. i, 9, 69 : Porphyrion is the authority for the comedies.
2 Prudentius, contra Symmachum, i, 197-218. 3 Tibullus, i, 10, 15.
12 ROMAN RELIGION
How crowded the whole of life was with cult and ritual and
usage, how full of divinities, petty, pleasing or terrible, but
generally vague and ill-defined, no one will readily realize with-
out special study, but some idea of the complexity of the
Roman's divine environment can be gained from even a cursory
survey of Ovid's Fasti, for example, or Tertullian's Apology, or
some of the chapters of the fourth book of Augustine's City of
God. " When," asks Augustine, " can I ever mention in one
passage of this book all the names of gods and goddesses, which
they have scarcely been able to compass in great volumes, see-
ing that they allot to every individual thing the special function
of some divinity?" He names a few of the gods of agriculture
— Segetia, Tutilina, Proserpina, Nodutus, Volutina, Patelana,
Lacturnus, Matuta, etc. " I do not mention all." * " Satan and
his angels have filled the whole world," said Tertullian.2
Gods of this type naturally make little figure in literature
though Proserpina, in consequence of her identification with the
Greek Persephone, achieved a great place and is indeed the
subject of the last great poem written under the Roman Empire.
But there were other gods of countryside and woodland, whom
we know better in art and poetry. " Faunus lover of fugitive
Nymphs " is charming enough in Horace's ode, and Fauns,
Pans and Satyrs lend themselves readily to grotesque treat-
ment in statue and gem and picture. But the country people
took them seriously. Lucretius, speaking of echoes among the
hills, says : — " These spots the people round about fancy that
goat-footed Satyrs and nymphs inhabit ; they say that they are
the Fauns, whose noise and sportive play breaks the still silence
of the night as they move from place to place. . . . They tell us
that the country people far and wide full oft hear Pan, when,
nodding the pine-cap on his half-bestial head, he runs over the
gaping reeds with curved lip. . . . And of other like monsters
and marvels they tell us, that they may not be thought to
inhabit lonely places, abandoned even by the gods."3 Cicero
1 C.D. iv, 8. "To an early Greek," says Mr Gilbert Murray, "the earth,;
water and air were full of living eyes : of theoi, of datmones, of Keres. One early
poet says emphatically that the air is so crowded full of them that there is no room to
put in the spike of an ear of corn without touching one. " — Rise of Greek Epic, p. 82.
2 de Sped. 5 ; cf. de Idol 16 ; de cor. mil. 13, gods of the door ; de Ammo, 39,
goddesses of child-birth.
" Lucr. iv. 580 f. Virg. sEn. viii, 314.
FAUNS, TREES, AND WELLS 13
makes his Stoic say their voices are often to be heard.1 Pliny,
in his Natural History, says that certain dogs can actually
see Fauns ; he quotes a prescription, concocted of a dragon's
tongue, eyes and gall, which the Magi recommend for those
who are " harassed by gods of the night and by Fauns " ; 2 for
they did not confine themselves to running after nymphs, but
would chase human women in the dark.
Plutarch has a story of King Numa drugging a spring from
which "two daemons, Picus and Faunus," drank — "creatures
who must be compared to Satyrs or Pans in some respects and
in others to the Idaean Dactyli," beings of great miraculous
)ower.3 A countryside haunted by inhabitants of more or less
han human nature, part beasts and part fairies or devils, is one
hing to an unbeliever who is interested in art or folk-lore, but
uite another thing to the uneducated man or woman who has
card their mysterious voices in the night solitude and has
uttered in crop, or house, or herd from their ill-will.4 What the
jreek called " Panic " fears were attributed in Italy to Fauns.5
" Trees," says Pliny, " were temples of divinities, and in the
•Id way the simple country folk to this day dedicate any re-
narkable tree to a god. Nor have we more worship for images
glittering with gold and ivory than for groves and the very silence
hat is in them." 6 The country people hung rags and other offer-
ngs on holy trees — the hedge round the sacred grove at Aricia is
pecially mentioned by Ovid as thus honoured.7 The river-god of
he Tiber had his sacred oak hung with spoils of fallen foes.8
Holy wells too were common, which were honoured with
•nodels of the limbs their waters healed, and other curious gifts,
hrown into them — as they are still in every part of the Old
World. Horace's fount of Bandusia is the most famous of these
n literature.9 It was an old usage to throw garlands into
prings and to crown wells on October I3th.10 Streams and
1 Cic. N.D. \\, 2, 6: cf. De Div. i, 45, 101. Warde Fowler, Roman Festivals,
>p. 256 ff. on the Fauni.
Pliny, N.H. viii, 151 ; xxx, 84.
Plutarch, Numa, 15 ; de facie in orbe luna, 30 ; Ovid, Fasti, iii, 291.
Horace's ode attests the power of the Fauns over crops and herds.
Dionys. Hal. v, 16. 8 Pliny, N.H. xii, 3.
Ovid, Fasti, iii, 267. Licia dependent longas velantia scepes, et posita est mcritte
multa tabella de&.
• Virgil, &n. x, 423. 9 Horace, Odts, iii, 13.
10 yf Warde Fowler, Raman Festivals, p. 240.
i4 ROMAN RELIGION
wells alike were haunted by mysterious powers, too often
malevolent.1
Ovid describes old charms to keep off vampires, striges,
from the cradles of children.2
In fact the whole of Nature teemed with beings whom we
find it hard to name. They were not pleasant enough, and did
not appeal enough to the fancy, to merit the name " fairies " — at
least since The Midsummer Nights Dream was written. Perhaps
Ithey are nearer " The little People " — the nameless " thim ones." 3
JThey were neither gods nor demons in our sense of the words,
though Greek thinkers used the old Homeric word Saijmcov to
describe them or the diminutive of it, which allowed them to
suppose that Socrates' SCU/ULOVIOV was something of the kind.
But these Nature-spirits, whatever we may call them, were
far frbm being the only superhuman beings that encompassed
man. Every house had its Lares in a little shrine (lararium) on
the hearth, little twin guardian gods with a dog at their feet,
who watched over the family, and to whom something was given
at every meal, and garlands on great days. Legend said that
Servius Tullius was the son of the family Lart The Lares
may have been spirits of ancestors. The Emperor Alexander
Severus set images of Apollonius, Christ, Abraham and Orpheus,
" and others of that sort " in his lararium? Not only houses but
streets and cross-roads had Lares ; the city had a thousand, Ovid
said, besides the genius of the Prince who gave them ; 6 for
Augustus restored two yearly festivals in their honour in Spring
and Autumn. There were also the Penates in every home, whom
it would perhaps be hard to distinguish very clearly from the
Lares. Horace has a graceful ode to "Phidyle" on the suffi-
ciency of the simplest sacrifices to these little gods of home and
hearth.7 The worship of these family gods was almost the only
1 Cf. Tertullian, de Baptismo, 5. Annon et alias sine ullo sacramento immundi
spiritus aquis incubant, adfectantes illam in primordio divini spiritus gestationem ?
Sciunt opaci quique fontes, et avii quique rivi, et in balneis piscina et euripi in
domibus, vel cisterna et putei, qui rapere dicuntur, scilicet per vim spiritus nocentis.
Nympholeptos et lymphaticos et hydrophobes vacant quos aqua necaverunt aut amentia
vel formidine exercuerunt. Quorsum ista retulimus ? Ne quis durius credat
angelum dei sanctum aquis in salutem hominis temperandis adesse.
2 Ovid, Fasti, vi, 155 f.
8 Cf. (Lucian) Asinus, 24. TTOI /3a5£feis dwplq. raXaiirupe ; ovSt ra dai.fji.6via 5^5oi/cas.
4 Pliny, N.H. xxxvi, 204. 6 Lampridius, Alex, Sev. 29. 2.
6 Fasti, v. 145. Cf. Prudentius, adv. Symm. ii, 445 f.
7 Odes, iii, 23. Far re pio.
THE GENIUS 15
part of Roman religion that was not flooded and obscured by
thejnrush of Oriental cults.
" The Ancients," said Servius, " used the name Genius for
the natural god of each individual place or thing or man," l and
another antiquary thought that the genius and the Lar might be
the same thing. For some reason men of letters laid hold upon
the genius, and we find it everywhere. Why there should be
such difference even between twin brothers,
He only knows whose influence at our birth
O'errules each mortal's planet upon earth,
The attendant genius, temper-moulding pow'r,
That stamps the colour of man's natal hour.2
The idea of this spiritual counterpart pervades the ancient world.
It appears in Persia as the fravashi? It is in the Syrian
(Gnostic's Hymn of the Soul, as a robe in the form and likeness
I of a man. —
It was myself that I saw before me as in a mirror;
Two in number we stood, but only one in appearance.4
lit is also probable that the "Angel " of Peter and the " Angels
(of the little children " in the New Testament represent the same
idea. The reader of Horace hardly needs to be reminded of
the birthday feast in honour of the genius, — indulge genio.
:ember, as the month of Larentalia and Saturnalia, is the
lonth welcome to every genius, Ovid says.6
The worship of all or most of these spirits of the country and
>f the home was joyful, an affair of meat and drink. The
>rimitive sacrifice brought man and god near one another in the
>lood and flesh of the victim, which was of one race with them
)th.6 It was on some such ground that the Jews would not
eat with blood," lest the soul of the beast should pass into the
1 On Georgic i, 302, See Varro, ap. Aug. C.D. vii, 13. Also Tert. de Anima, 39,
et omnibus genii deputantur, quod da-monum nomen est. Adeo nulla ferme
'ivitas munda, utique ethnicorum,
2Hor. Ep. ii. 2, 187 f. Howes' translation. Cf. Faerie Queene, II, xii, 47.
3 See J. H. Moulton in Journal oj Theological Studies, III, 514.
4 Burkitt, Early Eastern Christianity, p. 222.
5 Fasti, iii, 57 ; Seneca, Ep. 18. I, December est mensis : cum maxime civitas sudat,
is luxuries publics datum est . . . ut non videatur mihi errasse qui dixit : olim
lensem Decembrem fuisse nunc annum.
8 Cf. Robertson Smith, Religion o the Semites, lect. xi.
1 6 ROMAN RELIGION
man. There were feasts in honour of the dead, too, which the
church found so dear to the people that it only got rid of them
by turning them into festivals of the Martyrs. It was not idly
that St Paul spoke of " meat offered to idols " and said that the
Kingdom of God was not eating or drinking.
In addition to all these spirits of living beings, of actions and
of places, we have to reckon the dead. There were Manes — a
name supposed to mean " the kindly ones," a caressing name
given with a purpose and betraying a real fear. There were
also ghosts, larva and lemures.1 It was the thought of these
that made burial so serious a thing, and all the ritual for
averting the displeasure of the dead. The Parentalia were
celebrated on the I3th of February in their honour,2 and in
May the Lemuria. It is, we are told, for this reason that none
will marry in May.3 Closely connected with this fear of ghosts
and of the dead is that terror of death which Lucretius spends
so much labour in trying to dissipate.
" I see no race of men," wrote Cicero, " however polished
and educated, however brutal and barbarous, which does not
believe that warnings of future events are given and may be
understood and announced by certain persons," 4 and he goes on
to remark that Xenophanes and Epicurus were alone among
philosophers in believing in no kind of Divination.5 " Are we
to wait till beasts speak ? Are we not content with the unan-
imous authority of mankind ? " 6 The Stoics, he says, summed
up the matter as follows : —
"If there are gods and they do not declare the future to
men ; then either they do not love men ; or they are ignorant
of what is to happen ; or they think it of no importance to men to
know it; or they do not think it consistent with their majesty
to tell men ; or the gods themselves are unable to indicate it.
But neither do they not love men, for they are benefactors and
friends to mankind ; nor are they ignorant of what they them-
selves appoint and ordain ; nor is it of no importance to us to
know the future — for we shall be more careful if we do ; nor do
they count it alien to their majesty, for there is nothing nobler
than kindness ; nor are they unable to foreknow. Therefore no
1 Warde Fowler, Roman Festivals, pp. 106 f.
a Ovid, Fasti* ii, 409 f. Warde Fowler, op. cit. pp. 306 f. 3 Ovid, Fasti, v, 490.
4 De Divinatione, i, I, 2. 5 ib. i, 3, 5. 6 ib. i, 39, 84.
OMENS
gods, no foretelling ; but there are gods ; therefore they foretell.
Nor, if they foretell, do they fail to give us ways to learn what
they foretell ; nor, if they give us such ways, is there no
divination ; therefore, there is divination." l
All this reasoning comes after the fact. The whole world
believed in divination, and the Stoics found a reason for it.2
The flight of birds, the entrails of beasts, rain, thunder, lightning,
dreams, everything was a means of Divination. Another passage
from the same Dialogue of Cicero will suffice. Superstition,
says the speaker, " follows you up, is hard upon you, pursues
you wherever you turn. If you hear a prophet, or an omen ;
if you sacrifice ; if you catch sight of a bird ; if you see a
Chaldean or a haruspex; if it lightens, if it thunders, if anything
is struck by lightning; if anything like a portent is born or
occurs in any way — something or other of the kind is bound to
happen, so that you can never be at ease and have a quiet mind.
The refuge from all our toils and anxieties would seem to be
sleep. Yet from sleep itself the most of our cares and terrors
come." 3 How true all this is will be seen by a moment's reflexion
on the abundance of signs, omens and dreams that historians
so different as Livy and Plutarch record. Horace uses them
pleasantly enough in his Odes — like much else such things are
charming, if one does not believe in them.4 But it is abundantly
clear that it took an effort to be rid of such belief. A speaker
in Cicero's Tusculans remarks on the effrontery of philosophers,
who boast that by Epicurus' aid " they are freed from those most
cruel of tyrants, eternal terror and fear by day and by night." 5
When a man boasts of moral progress, of his freedom from
avarice, what, asks Horace, of other like matters?
You're not a miser. Good — but prithee say,
Is every vice with avarice flown away ? . . .
Does Superstition ne'er your heart assail
Nor bid your soul with fancied horrors quail ?
1 DC Divinatione, i, 38, 82, 83. Cf. Tertullian, de Anima, 46. Sed et Stoici deuni
tnalunt providentissimum humantt institutioni t inter cetera prasidia divinairicum
artium et disciplinarum ? somnia quoque nobis indidisse, peculiars solatium naturalis
oraculi.
2 Panaetius and Seneca should be excepted from this charge.
3Cic. de Div. ii, 72, 149, 150. Cf. de Legg. ii, 13, 32. Plutarch also has the
same remark about sleep and superstition.
4 Cf. Odes, iii, 27. 6 Tusculans, i, 21, 48.
2
_.JMAN RELIGION
.
Or can you smile at magic's strange alarms,
Dreams, witchcraft, ghosts, Thessalian spells and charms ? x
Horace's " conversion " is recorded in one of his odes, but
it may be taken too seriously.
That superstition so gross was accompanied by paralysing
•belief in magic, enchantment, miracle, astrology2 and witchcraft
| generally, is not surprising. The historians of the Early Empire
have plenty to say on this. It should be remembered that the
step between magic and poisoning is a very short one. Magic,
says Pliny, embraces the three arts that most rule the human
mind, medicine, religion and mathematics — a triple chain which
enslaves mankind.3
We have thus in Roman society a political life of a highly
developed type, which has run through a long course of evolu-
tion and is now degenerating ; we have a literature based upon
that of Greece and implying a good deal of philosophy and of
intellectual freedom ; and, side by side with all this, a religious
atmosphere in which the grossest and most primitive of savage
conceptions and usages thrive in the neighbourhood of a scepti-
cism as cool and detached as that of Horace. It is hard to
realize that a people's experience can be so uneven, that
development and retardation can exist at once in so remarkable
a degree in the mind of a nation. The explanation is that we
judge peoples and ages too much by their literature, and by
their literature only after it has survived the test of centuries.
In all immortal literature there is a common note ; it deals with
the deathless and the vital ; and superstition, though long
enough and tenacious enough of life, is outlived and outgrown
by " man's unconquerable mind." But the period before us is
one in which, under a rule that robbed men of every liberating
interest in life, and left society politically, intellectually and
morally sterile and empty, literature declined, and as it declined,
it sank below the level of that flood of vulgar superstition, which
rose higher and higher, as in each generation men were less
wishful to think and less capable of thought.
1 Hor. Ep. ii, 2, 208 ; Howes.
2 Tertullian, de Idol. 9, scimus magia et astrologies inter se societatem.
3 Pliny the elder on Magic, N.H. xxx, opening sections; N.H. xxriii, 10, on
incantations, polleantne, aliquid -verba et incantameiita carminum.
UNIVERSAL RELIGIONS 19
But our theme is religion, and so far we have discussed
nothing but what we may call superstition — and even Plutarch
would hardly quarrel with the name. That to people possessed
by such beliefs in non-human powers, in beings which beset
human life with malignity, the restoration of ancient cult and
ritual would commend itself, is only natural. To such minds
the purpose of all worship is to induce the superhuman being to
go peaceably away, and sacrifice implies not human sin, but
divine irritation, which may be irrational. To the religious
temperament, the essential thing is some kind of union, some
communion, with the Divine ; and sacrifice becomes the means
to effect the relation of life to a higher will, — to a holier will,
we might say, if we allow to the word " holy " a width of
significance more congenial to ancient than to modern thought.
And this higher will implies a divinity of wider reach than the
little gods of primitive superstitidn, a power which may even be
less personal if only it is great. Religion asks for the simpli-
fication of man's relations with his divine environment, for
escape from the thousand and one petty marauders of the
spirit-world into the empire of some strong and central authority,
harsh, perhaps, or even cruel, but at least a controlling force in
man's experience. If this power is moral, religion is at once
fused with morality ; if it is merely physical, religion remains
non-moral, and has a constant tendency to decline into super-
stition, or at least to make terms with it.
In the hereditary religion of Rome, the only power that
could possibly have been invested with any such character was
Jupiter Capitolinus, but he had too great a likeness to the
other gods of Italy — the gods with names, that is, for some
of the more significant had none — Bona Dea and Dea Dia
for example. Jupiter had his functions, but on the whole they
were local, and there was very little or nothing in him to
quicken thought or imagination. It was not till the Stoics
made him more or less the embodiment of monotheism, that
he had a chance of becoming the centre of a religion in the
higher sense of the word, and even then it was impossible ;
for first, he was at best little more than an impersonal dogma,
and, secondly, the place was filled by foreign goddesses of far
greater warmth and colour and activity. Stat magni nominis
umbra.
20 ROMAN RELIGION
It was during the second Punic War that Cybele vas
brought from Asia. Minor to Rome and definitely established
as one of the divinities of the City.1 The Great Mother Df
the gods, she represented the principle of life and its repo-
duction, and her worship appealed to every male and femae
being in the world. It inspired awe, and it prompted to jiy
and merriment; it was imposing and it was mysterious,
Lucretius has a famous description of her pageant :—
"Adorned with this emblem (the mural crown), the ima^e
of the divine Mother is carried nowadays through wide lams
in awe-inspiring state. Different nations after old-established
ritual name her Idsean Mother, and give for escort Phrygian
bands. . . . Tight-stretched tambourines and hollow cymbas
thunder all round to the stroke of their open hands, and norm
menace with hoarse-sounding music, and the hollow pipe stirs
their minds with its Phrygian strain. They carry weapons
before them, emblems of furious rage, meet to fill the thank-
less souls and godless breasts of the rabble with terror for
the Divinity of the Goddess. So, when first she rides in pro-
cession through great cities and mutely enriches mortals with
a blessing not expressed in words, they straw all her path
with brass and silver, presenting her with bounteous alms, and
scatter over her a snow-shower of roses, Over-shadowing the
mother and her troops of attendants. Here an armed band,
to which the Greeks give the names of Phrygian Curetes,
join in the game of arms and leap in measure, all dripping
with blood, and the awful crests upon their heads quiver
and shake."2
The invariable features of the worship of Cybele are men-
tioned here, the eunuch priests, the tambourines, the shouting
and leaping and cutting with knives, and the collection of
money.3 There is no indication of any control being exercised
over these priests of Cybele by a central authority, and little
bands of them strolled through the Mediterranean lands, mak-
ing their living by exhibiting themselves and their goddess
and gathering petty offerings. '/ They had a bad name and
they seem to have deserved it. In the book called The Ass,
1 Livy, xxix, 1 1, 14; Ovid, Fasti, iv, 179 f. The goddess was embodied in a
big stone.
2 Lucretius, ii, 608 f. 3 Cf. Strabo, c. 470 ; Juvenal, vi, 511 f.
CYBELE AND HER PRIESTS 21
once ascribed to Lucian, is a short account of such a band.
The ass, who is really a man transformed, is the speaker.
"The next day they packed up the goddess and set her on
my back. Then we drove out of the city and went round
the country. When we entered any village, I, the god-bearer
(a famous word, Qeo^opnro^) stood still, and the crowd of
flutists blew like mad, and the others threw off their caps
and rolled their heads about, and cut their arms with the
swords and each stuck his tongue out beyond his teeth and
cut it too, so that in a moment everything was full of fresh
blood. And, I, when I saw this for the first time, stood
trembling in case the goddess might need an ass' blood too.
When they had cut themselves about in this way, they collected
from the bystanders obols and drachmas ; and one or another
would give them figs and cheeses and a jar of wine, and a
medimnus of wheat and barley for the ass. So they lived
upon these and did service to the goddess who rode on my
back." -
The Attis of Catullus gives a vivid picture of the frenzy
which this worship could excite. Juvenal complains of the bad
influence which the priests of Cybele, among others, had upon
the minds of Roman ladies. St Augustine long afterwards
says that " till yesterday " they were to be seen in the streets of
Carthage "with wet hair, whitened face and mincing walk." It
is interesting to note in passing that the land which introduced
the Mother of the Gods to the Roman world, also gave the name
OeoroKo? (Mother of God) to the church.
Egypt also contributed gods to Rome, who forced themselves
upon the state. The Senate forbade them the Capitol and had
their statues thrown down, but the people set them up again
with violence.* Gabinius, the Consul of 58 B.C., stopped the
erection of altars to them, but eight years later the Senate had
to pass a decree for the destruction of their shrines.y No
1 See Ramsay, Church in the Roman Empire, p. 397. The Latins used the word
divinus in this way — Seneca, de beata vita, 26, 8.
2 (Lucian) Asinus, 37. The same tale is amplified in Apuleius' Golden Ass,
where the episode of these priests is given with more detail, in the eighth book.
Seneca hints that a little blood might make a fair show ; see his picture of the same,
de beata vita, 26, 8.
8 Tertullian, ad Natt. i, 10 ; Apol. 6. He has the strange fancy that Serapis was
originally the Joseph of the book of Genesis, ad Natt. ii, 8.
22 ROMAN RELIGION
workman dared lay hand to the work, so the consul Paullu.
stripped off his consular toga, took an axe and dealt the first
blow at the doors.1 Another eight years passed, and the
Triumvirs, after the death of Caesar, built a temple to Isis and
Serapis to win the goodwill of the masses.2 The large foreign
and Eastern element in the city populace must be remembered-
When Octavian captured Alexandria, he forgave the guilty city
" in honour of Serapis," but on his return to Rome he destroyed
all the shrines of the god within the city walls. In time Isis
laid hold of the month of November, which had otherwise no
festivals of importance.
Isis seems to have appealed to women. Tibullus complains
of Delia's devotion to her, and her ritual. There were baths
and purifications ; the worshippers wore linen garments and
slept alone. Whole nights were spent sitting in the temple
amid the rattling of the sistrum. Morning and evening the
votary with flowing hair recited the praises of the goddess.3
Isis could make her voice heard on occasion, or her snake of
silver would be seen to move its head, and penance was required
to avert her anger. She might bid her worshippers to stand in
the Tiber in the winter, or to crawl, naked and trembling, with
blood-stained knees, round the Campus Martius — the Iseuin
stood in the Campus as it was fordidden within the City Walls ;
or to fetch water from Egypt to sprinkle in the Roman shrine
They were high honours indeed that Anubis claimed, a:
surrounded by shaven priests in linen garments, he scoured the
city and laughed at the people who beat their breasts as he
passed.4 The "barking" Anubis might be despised by Virgil
and others, but the vulgar feared him as the attendant of Isis
and Serapis.5 Isis began to usurp the functions of Juno Lucina,
and women in childbed called upon her to deliver them.6 She
gave oracles, which were familiar perhaps even so early as
Ennius' day,7 and men and women slept in the temples of Isis
and Serapis, as they did in those of ^Esculapius, to obtain in
dreams the knowledge they needed to appease the god, or to
Valerius Maximus, i, 3, 4. 2Dio C. xlvii, 15.
VTibullus, i, 3, 23 f. Cf. Propertius, ii, 28, 45 ; Ovid, A. A, iii, 635.
4 Juvenal, vi, 522 f.
8 Lucan, viii, 831, Isin semideosque canes.
aOvid, Am. ii, 13, 7.
7 Unless Isiaci coniectores is Cicero's own phrase, de Div, i, 58, 132.
ISIS AND SERAPIS 23
recover their health, or what not.1 It is not surprising that the
shrines of Isis are mentioned by Ovid and Juvenal as the
resorts of loose women.2
The devotion of the women is proved by the inscriptions
v/hich are found recording their offerings to Isis. One woman,
a Spaniard, may be taken as an illustration. In honour of her
daughter she dedicated a silver statue to Isis, and she set forth
how the goddess wore a diadem composed of one big pearl, six
little pearls, emeralds, rubies, and jacinths ; earrings of emeralds
and pearls ; a necklace of thirty-six pearls and eighteen
emeralds (with two for clasps) ; bracelets on her arms and legs ;
rings on her fingers ; and emeralds on her sandals.3 There is
evidence to show that the Madonna in Southern Italy is really
Isis re-named. Isis, like the Madonna, was painted and sculp-
tured with a child in her arms (Horus, Harpocrates). Their
functions coincide as closely as this inscription proves that their
offerings do.4
Die Mutter Gottes zu Kevlaar
Tragt heut' ihr bestes Kleid.
At first, it is possible that Egyptian religion, as it spread all
over the world, was little better than Phrygian, but it had a
better future. With Plutarch's work upon it we shall have to
deal later on. Apuleius, at the end of the second century
worshipped an Isis, who identified all the Divinities with her-
self and was approached through the most imposing sacraments.
She was the power underlying all nature, but there was a
spiritual side to her worship. Two centuries or so later, Julian
" the Apostate " looks upon Serapis as Catholics have done
upon St Peter — he is " the kindly and gentle god, who set souls
utterly free from becoming or birth (yei/eVeo)?) and does not,
when once they are free, nail them down to other bodies in
punishment, but conveys them upward and brings them into the
Cicero, Div. ii, 59, 121. For eyKol^-rjo'is or incubatio see Mary Hamilton,
Incubation (1906)
2 Clem. Alex. Pccdag. iii, 28, to the same effect. Tertullian on the temples, de
Pttd. c. 5. Reference may be made to the hierodules of the temples in ancient Asia
and in modern India.
3 Corp. Inscr. Lat. ii, 3386. The enumeration of the jewels was a safeguard
against theft.
4 Flinders Petrie, Religion of Ancient Egypt, p. 44 ; Hamilton, Incubation,
pp. 174, 182 f,
24 ROMAN RELIGION
ideal world." 1 It is possible that some hint of this lurked in
the religion from the first, and, if it did, we need not be surprised
that it escaped Juvenal's notice.
It was not merely gods that came from the East, but a new
series of religious ideas. Here were religions that claimed the
whole of life, that taught of moral pollution and of reconcilia-
tion, that gave anew the old sacramental value to rituals, —
religions of priest and devotee, equalizing rich and poor, save
for the cost of holy rites, and giving to women the consciousness
of life in touch with the divine. The eunuch priests of Cybele
and the monks of Serapis introduced a new abstinence to
Western thought. It is significant that Christian monasticism
and the coenobite life began in Egypt, where, as we learn from
papyri found in recent years, great monasteries of Serapis
existed long before our era. Side by side with celibacy came
vegetarianism.
No polytheistic religion can exclude gods from its pantheon ;
all divinities that man can devise have a right there. Thus
Cybele and Isis made peace with each other and with all the
gods and goddesses whom they met in their travels — and with
all the damonia too. Their cults were steeped in superstition,
and swung to and fro between continence and sensuality. They
orientalized every religion of the West and developed every
superstitious and romantic tendency. In the long run, they
brought Philosophy to its knees, abasing it to be the apologist
of everything they taught and did, and dignifying themselves
by giving a philosophic colouring to their mysticism. But this
is no strange thing. A religion begins in magic with rites and
symbols that belong to the crudest Nature-worship — to agricul-
ture, for instance, and the reproductive organs — and gradually
develops or absorbs higher ideas, till it may reach the unity of
the godhead and the immortality of the soul ; but the ultimate
question is, will it cut itself clear of its past ? And this the
religions of Cybele and Isis never satisfactorily achieved.
In the meantime they promised little towards a moral regen-
eration of society. They offered men and women emotions, but
they scarcely touched morality. To the terrors of life, already
many enough, they added crowning fears, and cramped and'
dwarfed the minds of men.
1 Julian, Or. iv, 136 B.
LUCRETIUS 25
" O hapless race of men ! " cried Lucretius, " when they
attributed such deeds to the gods and added cruel anger there-
to ! what groanings did they then beget for themselves, what
wounds for us, what tears for our children's children ! No act
of piety is it to be often seen with veiled head turning toward a
stone, to haunt every altar, to lie prostrate on the ground with
hands outspread before the shrines of gods, to sprinkle the
altars with much blood of beasts and link vow to vow — no !
rather to be able to look on all things with a mind at peace." l
And a mind at peace was the last thing that contemporary
religion could offer to any one. " Human life," he says, " lay
visibly before men's eyes foully crushed to earth under the
weight of Religion, who showed her head from the quarters of
heaven with hideous aspect lowering upon men," till Epicurus
" dared first to uplift mortal eyes against her face and first to
withstand her. . . . The living force of his soul gained the day ;
on he passed far beyond the flaming walls of the world and
traversed in mind and spirit the immeasurable universe. And
thence he returns again a conqueror, to tell us what can and
what cannot come into being ; in short on what principle each
thing has its powers defined, its deep-set boundary mark. So
Religion is put under our feet and trampled upon in its turn ;
while as for us, his victory sets us on a level with heaven."2
It was the establishment of law which brought peace to
Lucretius. In the ease of mind which we see he gained from
the contemplation of the fixity of cause and effect, in the
enthusiasm with which he emphasizes such words as rationes,
fcedera, leges, with which he celebrates Natura gubernans, we
can read the horrible weight upon a feeling soul of a world
distracted by the incalculable caprices of a myriad of divine or
daemonic beings.3 The force with which he flings himself
against the doctrine of a future life shows that it is a fight for
freedom. If men would rid themselves of "the dread of some-
thing after death " — and they could if they would, for reason
will do it — they could live in " the serene temples of the wise " ;
the gods would pass from their minds ; bereavement would lose
its sting, and life would no longer be brutalized by the cruelties
of terror. Avarice, treachery, murder, civil war, suicide — all
these things are the fruit of this fear of death.4
1 Lucr. v, 1194. 2 Lucr. i, 62-79. * See Patin, La Potsie Latinc, i, 120.
4 Lucr. iii, 60 f.
26 ROMAN RELIGION
Religion, similarly, "often and often has given birth to
sinful and unholy deeds." The illustration, which he uses, is
the sacrifice of Iphigenia, and it seems a little remote. Yet
Pliny says that in 97 B.C. in the consulship of Lentulus and
Crassus, a decree of the Senate forbade human sacrifice — ne
homo immolaretur. " It cannot be estimated," he goes on,
" what a debt is owed to the Romans who have done away (in
Gaul and Britain) with monstrous rites, in which it was
counted the height of religion to kill a man, and a most
healthful thing to eat him." x Elsewhere he hints darkly at his
own age having seen something of the kind, and there is an
obscure allusion in Plutarch's life of Marcellus to " unspeakable
rites, that none may see, which are performed (?) upon Greeks
and Gauls." 2 " At the temple of Aricia," says Strabo, " there
is a barbarian and Scythian practice. For there is there estab-
lished a priest, a runaway slave, who has killed with his own
hand his predecessor. There he is, then, ever sword in hand,
peering round about, lest he should be attacked, ready to
defend himself." Strabo's description of the temple on the
lake and the precipice overhanging it adds to the impressive-
ness of the scene he thus pictures.3 If human sacrifice was rare
in practice, none the less it was in the minds of men.
Tantum religio potuit suadere malorum
concludes Lucretius, and yet it was not perhaps his last
thought.
M. Patin has a fine study of the poet in which he deals with
"the anti-Lucretius in Lucretius." Even in the matter of
religion, his keen observation of Nature frequently suggests
difficulties which are more powerfully expressed and more con-
vincing than the arguments with which he himself tries to refute
them. " When we look up to the heavenly regions of the great
universe, the aether set on high above the glittering stars, and the
1 Pliny, N.H. xxx, 12, 13. Warde Fowler, Roman Festivals, pp. in f. on the
Argei and the whole question of human sacrifice. For Plutarch's explanation of it
as due not to gods but to evil demons who enforced it, see p. 107.
2 Pliny, N.H. xxviii, 12; Plutarch, Marcellus, 3, where, however, the meaning
may only be that the rites are done in symbol ; he refers to the actual sacrifice of
human beings in the past. See Tertullian, Apol. 9 on sacrifice of children in Africa
in the reign of Tiberius.
3 Strabo, c. 239. Strabo was a contemporary of Augustus. Cf. J. G. Frazer,
Adonis Attis Osiris, p. 63, for another instance in this period.
LUCRETIUS 27
thought comes into our mind of the sun and moon and their
courses ; then indeed in hearts laden with other woes that doubt
too begins to wake and raise its head — can it be perchance,
after all, that we have to do with some vast Divine power that
wheels those bright stars each in his orbit? Again who is
there whose mind does not shrink into itself with fear of the
gods, whose limbs do not creep with terror, when the parched
earth rocks under horrible blow of the thunderbolt, and the
roar sweeps over the vast sky ? . . . When too the utmost fury
of the wild wind scours the sea and sweeps over its waters the
admiral with his stout legions and his elephants, does he not in
prayer seek peace with the gods ? . . . but all in vain, since,
full oft, caught in the whirlwind, he is driven, for all his prayers,
• on, on to the shoals of death. Thus does some hidden power
trample on mankind. . . . Again, when the whole earth rocks
under their feet, and towns fall at the shock or hang ready to
collapse, what wonder if men despise themselves, and make over
to the gods high prerogative and marvellous powers to govern
all things ? " l
That Lucretius should be so open to impressions of this
kind, in spite of his philosophy, is a measure of his greatness as
a poet. It adds weight and worth to all that he says — to his
hatred of the polytheism and superstition round about him, and
to his judgment upon their effect in darkening and benumbing
the minds of men. He understands the feelings which he dis-
likes— he has felt them. The spectacle of the unguessed power
that tramples on mankind has moved him ; and he has suffered
the distress of all delicate spirits in times of bloodshed and dis-
order. He knows the effect of such times upon those who still
worship. " Much more keenly in evil days do they turn their
minds to religion." -
1 Lucr. v, 1204-1240. We may compare Brownings' Bp. Blougram on the
instability of unbelief : —
Just when we are safest, there's a sunset-touch,
A fancy from a flower-bell, some one's death,
A chorus-ending from Euripides —
And that's enough for fifty hopes and fears
As old and new at once as nature's self,
To rap and knock and enter in our soul,
Take hands and dance there, a fantastic ring,
Round the ancient idol, on his base again, —
The grand Perhaps ! We look on helplessly.
* Lucr. iii, 53.
28 ROMAN RELIGION
We have now to consider another poet, a disciple ol
Lucretius in his early years, who, under the influence of Natire
and human experience, moved away from Epicureanism, aid
sought reconciliation with the gods, though he was too honest
with himself to find peace in the systems and ideas that were
yet available.
Virgil was born in the year 70 B.C. — the son of a little self-
made man in a village North of the Po. He grew up in the
country, with a spirit that year by year grew more sensitive to
every aspect of the world around him. No Roman poet had a
more gentle and sympathetic love of Nature ; none ever entered
so deeply and so tenderly into the sorrows of men. He lived
through forty years of Civil War, veiled and open. He saw its
effects in broken homes and aching hearts, in coarsened minds
and reckless lives. He was driven from his own farm, and had,
like ^Eneas, to rescue an aged and blind father. Under such
experience his early Epicureanism dissolved — it had always
been too genial to be the true kind. The Epicurean should
never go beyond friendship, and Virgil loved. His love of the
land in which he was born showed it to him more worthy to be
loved than men had yet realized. Virgil was the pioneer who dis-
covered the beauty, the charm and the romance of Italy. He
loved the Italians and saw poetry in their hardy lives and quiet
virtues, though they were not Greeks. His love of his father
and of his land opened to him the significance of all love, and
the deepening and widening of his experience is to be read in
the music, stronger and profounder, that time reveals in his
poetry.
Here was a poet who loved Rome more than ever did
Augustus or Horace, and he had no such speedy cure as they
for "the woes of sorrowful Hesperia." The loss of faith in the
old gods meant more to him than to them, so his tone in speak-
ing of them is quieter, a great deal, than that of Horace. He
took the decline of morals more seriously and more inwardly,
and he saw more deeply into the springs of action ; he could
never lightly use the talk of rapid and sweeping reformation, as
his friend did in the odes which the Emperor inspired. He had
every belief in Augustus, who was dearer to him personally than
to Horace, and he hoped for much outcome from the new
movement in the State. But with all his absorbing interest in
VIRGIL 29
his own times — and how deep that interest was, only long and
minute study of his poems will reveal — he was without scheme
or policy. He came before his countrymen, as prophets and
poets do in all ages — a child in affairs, but a man in inward
experience ; he had little or nothing to offer but the impressions
left upon his soul by human life. He had the advantage over
most prophets in being a " lord of language " ; he drew more
music from Latin words than had ever been achieved before or
was ever reached again.
He told man of a new experience of Nature. It is hardly
exaggeration to say that he stands nearer Wordsworth in this
feeling than any other poet. He had the same " impulses of
deeper birth " ; he had seen new gleams and heard new voices ;
he had enjoyed what no Italian had before, and he spoke in a
new way, unintelligible then, and unintelligible still to those
who have not seen and heard the same things* The gist of it
all he tried to give in the language of Pantheism, which the
Stoics had borrowed from Pythagoras : — " The Deity, they tell
us, pervades all, earth and the expanse of sea, and the deep
vault of heaven ; from Him flocks, herds, men, wild beasts of
every sort, each creature at its birth draws the bright thread
of life; further, to Him all things return, are restored and
reduced — death has no place among them ; but they fly up alive
into the ranks of the stars and take their seats aloft in the sky."
So John Conington did the passage into English. But in such
cases it may be said with no disrespect to the commentator who
has done so much for his poet, the original words stand to the
translation, as Virgil's thought did to the same thought in
a Stoic's brain.
Deum namque ire per omnis
Terrasque tractusque maris c&lumque profundum ;
Hinc pecudes, armenta, viros ', genus omne ferarum^
Quemque sibi tenues nascentem arcessere vitas ;
Scilicet hue reddi deinde ac resoluta referri
Omnia, nee morti esse locum, sed viva volare
Sideris in numerum atque alto succedere c&lo.
(Georgics, iv, 221.)
The words might represent a fancy, or a dogma of the
schools, and many no doubt so read them, because they had no
30 ROMAN RELIGION
experience to help them. But to others it is clear that the
passage is one of the deepest import, for it is the key to Virgil's
mind and the thought is an expression of what we can call by no
other name than religion. Around him men and women were
seeking communion with gods ; he had had communion with
what he could not name — he had experienced religion in a very
deep, abiding and true way. There is nothing for it — at least
for Englishmen — but to quote the "lines composed a few miles
above Tintern Abbey " —
I have felt
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts ; a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean, and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man ;
A motion and a spirit, that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things.
Virgil's experience did not stop here; like Wordsworth, he
found
Nature's self
By all varieties of human love
Assisted.
He had been a son and a brother ; and such relations of men
to men impressed him — they took him into the deepest and
most beautiful regions of life ; and one of the charms of Italy
was that it was written all over with the records of human love
and helpfulness. The clearing, the orchard, the hilltop town,
the bed of flowers, all spoke to him " words that could not be
uttered." His long acquaintance with such scripts brought it
about that he found
in man an object of delight,
Of pure imagination and of love —
and he came to the Roman people with a deep impression of
human worth — something unknown altogether in Roman poetry
before or after. Lucretius was impressed with man's insignifi-
cance in the universe; Horace, with man's folly. Virgil's
VIRGIL 31
poetry throbbed with the sense of man's grandeur and his
sanctity.
This human greatness, which his poetry brought home to
the sympathetic reader, was not altogether foreign to the
thought of the day. Homo sacra res hommi1 was the teaching
of the Stoics, but man was a more sacred thing to the poet than
to the philosopher, for what the philosopher conceived to be a
flaw and a weakness in man, the poet found to be man's chief
significance. The Stoic loudly proclaimed man to be a member
of the universe. The poet found man knit to man by a myriad
ties, the strength of which he realized through that pain against
which the Stoic sought to safeguard him. Man revealed to the
poet his inner greatness in the haunting sense of his limitations
— he could not be self-sufficient (avrdpKtjs) as the Stoic urged ;
he depended on men, on women and children, on the beauty of
grass and living creature, of the sea and sky. And even all
these things could not satisfy his craving for love and fellow-
ship ; he felt a " hunger for the infinite." Here perhaps is the
greatest contribution of Virgil to the life of the age.
He, the poet to whom man and the world were most various
and meant most, came to his people, and, without any articulate
expression of it in direct words, made it clear to them that he
had felt a gap in the heart of things, which philosophy could
never fill. Philosophy could remove this sense of incomplete-
ness, but only at the cost of love ; and love was to Virgil, as his
poetry shows, the very essence of life. Yet he gave, and not
altogether unconsciously, the impression that in proportion as
love is apprehended, its demands extend beyond the present.
The sixth book of the ^Eneid settles nothing and proves
nothing, but it expresses an instinct, strong in Virgil, as the
result of experience, that love must reach beyond the grave.
Further, the whole story of ^Eneas is an utterance of man's
craving for God, of the sense of man's incompleteness without
a divine complement. These are the records of Virgil's life,
intensely individual, but not peculiar to himself. In the litera-
ture of his century, there is little indication of such instincts,
but the history of four hundred years shows that they were
deep in the general heart of man.
These impressions Virgil brought before the Roman world.
1 Seneca, Ep. 95, 33.
32 ROMAN RELIGION
As such things are, they were a criticism, and they meant
change of values. In the light of them, the restoration c
religion by Augustus became a little thing ; the popular super
stition of the day was stamped as vulgar and trivial in itseli,
while it became the sign of deep and unsatisfied craving in thJ
human heart ; and lastly the current philosophies, in the face o^
Virgil's poetry, were felt to be shallow and cold, talk of the lip
and trick of the brain. Of course this is not just to the philoso-
phers who did much for the world, and without whom Virgil
would not have been what he was. None the less, it was
written in Virgil's poetry that the religions and philosophies of
mankind must be thought over anew.
This is no light contribution to an age or to mankind. In
this case it carries with it the whole story that lies before us.
Such an expression of a common instinct gave new force to
that instinct; it added a powerful impulse to the deepest
passion that man knows; and, in spite of the uncertainties
which beset the poet himself, it gave new hope to mankind that
the cry of the human heart for God was one that should receive
an answer.
CHAPTER II
THE STOICS
" T AM entering," writes Tacitus,1 "upon the history of a period,
rich in disasters, gloomy with wars, rent with seditions,
nay, savage in its very hours of peace. Four Emperors
perished by the sword ; there were three civil wars ; there were
more with foreigners — and some had both characters at
once. . . . Rome was wasted by fires, its oldest temples burnt,
the very Capitol set in flames by Roman hands. There was
defilement of sacred rites ; adulteries in high places ; the sea
crowded with exiles ; island rocks drenched with murder. Yet
wilder was the frenzy in Rome ; nobility, wealth, the refusal of
office, its acceptance — everything was a crime, and virtue the
surest ruin. Nor were the rewards of informers less odious
than their deeds; one found his spoils in a priesthood or a
consulate; another in a provincial governorship ; another behind
the throne ; and all was one delirium of hate and terror ; slaves
were bribed to betray their masters, freedmen their patrons.
He who had no foe was destroyed by his friend."
It was to this that Virgil's hope of a new Golden Age had
come — Redeunt Saturnia regna. Augustus had restored the
Republic ; he had restored religion ; and after a hundred years
here is the outcome. Tacitus himself admits that the age was
not "barren of virtues," that it "could show fine illustrations"
of family love and friendship, and of heroic death. It must
also be owned that the Provinces at large were better governed
than under the Republic ; and, further, that, when he wrote
Tacitus thought of a particular period of civil disorder and that
not a long one. Yet the reader of his Annals will feel that the
description will cover more than the year 69 ; it is essentially
true of the reigns of Tiberius, Gaius, Claudius and Nero, and it
was to be true again of the reign of Domitian — of perhaps
eighty years of the first century of our era. If it was not true
1 Hist, i, 2,
\ 33
34 THE STOICS
of the whole Mediterranean world, or even of the whole of
Rome, it was true at least of that half-Rome which gave its
colour to the thinking of the world.
Through all the elaborate pretences devised by Augustus to
obscure the truth, through all the names and phrases and
formalities, the Roman world had realized the central fact of
despotism.1 The Emperors themselves had grasped it with
pride and terror. One at least was insane, and the position
was enough to turn almost any brain. " Monarchy," in
Herodotus' quaint sentence,2 " would set the best man outside
the ordinary thoughts." Plato's myth of Gyges was fulfilled —
of the shepherd, who found a ring that made him invisible, and
in its strength seduced a queen, murdered a king and became a
tyrant. Gaius banished his own sisters, reminding them that
he owned not only islands but swords ; and he bade his grand-
mother remember that he could " do anything he liked and do
it to anybody." 3 Oriental princes had been kept at Rome as
hostages and had given the weaker-minded members of the
Imperial family new ideas of royalty. The very word was
spoken freely — in his treatise " On Clemency " Seneca uses again
and again the word regnum without apology.
But what gave Despotism its sting was its uncertainty.
Augustus had held a curiously complicated set of special powers
severally conferred on him for specified periods, and technically
they could be taken from him. The Senate was the Emperor's
partner in the government of the world, and it was always con-
ceivable that the partnership might cease, for it was not a
definite institution — prince followed prince, it is true, but there
was an element of accident about it all. The situation was
difficult ; Senate and Emperor eyed each other with suspicion
— neither knew how far the other could go, or would go ; neither
knew the terms of the partnership. Tiberius wrote despatches
to the Senate and he was an artist in concealing his meaning.
The Senate had to guess what he wished ; if it guessed wrong,
he would resent the liberty ; if it guessed right, he resented the
appearance of servility. The solitude of the throne grew more
and more uneasy.
1Tac. Ann. iv, 33, sic converse statu neque alia re Romano, t
imperitet.
a Hdt. iii, 80. Cf. Tac. A. vi, 48, 4, vi dominationis convulsus et "
3 Suetonius, Gaius, 29.
THE IMPERIAL COURT 35
Again, the republican government had been in the hands of
free men, who ruled as magistrates, and the imperial govern-
ment had no means of replacing them, for one free-born Roman
could not take service with another. The. Emperor had to fall
back upon his own household. His Secretaries of State were
slaves and freedmen — men very often of great ability, but their
past was against them. If it had not depraved them, none the
less it left upon them a social taint, which nothing could remove.
They were despised by the men who courted them, and they
knew it. It was almost impossible for such men not to be
the gangrene of court and state. And as a fact we find that
the freedman was throughout the readiest agent for all evil that
Rome knew, and into the hands of such men the government
of the world drifted. Under a weak, or a careless, or even an
absent, Emperor Rome was governed by such men and such
methods as we suppose to be peculiar to Sultanates and the
East.
The honour, the property, the life of every Roman lay in the
hands of eunuchs and valets, and, as these quarrelled or made
friends, the fortunes of an old nobility changed with the hour.
It had not been so under Augustus, nor was it so under
Vespasian, nor under Trajan or his successors ; but for the greater
part of the first century A.D. Rome was governed by weak or
vicious Emperors, and they by their servants. The spy and the
informer were everywhere.
To this confusion fresh elements of uncertainty were added
by the astrologer and mathematician, and it became treason to
be interested in " the health of the prince." Superstition ruled
the weakling — superstition, perpetually re-inforced by fresh
hordes of Orientals, obsequious and unscrupulous. Seneca called
the imperial court, which he knew, " a gloomy slave-gaol " (triste
ergastulum). *
Reduced to merely registering the wishes of their rulers,
the Roman nobility sought their own safety in frivolity and
extravagance. To be thoughtful was to be suspected of in-
dependence and to invite danger. We naturally suppose
moralists and satirists to exaggerate the vices of their con-
temporaries, but a sober survey of Roman morals in the first
century — at any rate before 70 A.D. — reveals a great deal that
1 Sen. de ira, iii, 15, 3.
36 THE STOICS
is horrible. (Petronius is not exactly a moralist or a satirist*
and there is plenty of other evidence.) Marriage does not thrive
alongside of terror, nor yet where domestic slavery prevails, and
in Rome both militated against purity of life. The Greek girl's
beauty, her charm and wit, were everywhere available. For
amusements, there were the gladiatorial shows, — brutal, we
understand, but their horrible fascination we fortunately cannot
know. The reader of St Augustine's Confessions will remember
a famous passage on these games. The gladiators were the
popular favourites of the day. They toured the country, they
were modelled and painted. Their names survive scratched by
loafers on the walls of Pompeii. The very children played
at being gladiators, Epictetus said — "sometimes athletes, now
monomachi, now trumpeters." The Colosseum had seats for
80,000 spectators of the games, " and is even now at once the
most imposing and the most characteristic relic of pagan
Rome." i
I Life was terrible in its fears and in its pleasures. If the
poets drew Ages of Gold in the latter days of the Republic,
now the philosophers and historians looked away to a " State of
Nature," to times and places where greed and civilization were
unknown. In those happy days, says Seneca, they enjoyed
Nature in common ; the stronger had not laid his hand upon
the weaker ; weapons lay unused, and human hands, unstained
by human blood, turned all the hatred they felt upon the wild
beasts ; they knew quiet nights without a sigh, while the stars
moved onward above them and the splendid pageant of Night ;
they drank from the stream and knew no water-pipes, and their
meadows were beautiful without art; their home was Nature
and not terrible ; while our abodes form the greatest part of our
terror.2 In Germany, writes Tacitus, the marriage-bond is
strict ; there are no shows to tempt virtue ; adultery is rare ;
none there makes a jest of vice, nee corrumpere et corrumpi
seculum vocatur\ none but virgins marry and they marry to bear
big children and to suckle them, sera iuvenum venus eoque
inexhausta pubertas ; and the children inherit the sturdy frames
of their parents.3
But whatever their dreams of the ideal, the actual was
1 Lecky, European Morals, i, 275 ; Epictetus, D. iii, 15.
8 Seneca, Ep. 90, 36-43. 3 Tacitus, Germany, cc. 18-20.
'' DESPOTISM TEMPERED BY EPIGRAMS" 37
around them, and men had to accommodate themselves to it.
In France before the Revolution, men spoke of the government
as " despotism tempered by epigrams," and the happy phrase is
as true of Imperial Rome. "Verses of unknown authorship
reached the public and provoked " Tiberius,1 who complained
of the " circles and dinner-parties." Now and again the authors
were discovered and were punished sufficiently. The tone of
the society that produced them lives for ever in the Annals of
Tacitus. It is worth noting how men and women turned to
Tacitus and Seneca during the French Revolution and found
their own experience written in their books.2
Others unpacked their hearts with words in tyrannicide
declamations and imitations of Greek tragedy. Juvenal laughs
at the crowded class-room busy killing tyrants, — waiting him-
self till they were dead. The tragedies got nearer the mark.
Here are a few lines from some of Seneca's own : —
Who bids all pay one penalty of death
Knows not a tyrant's trade. Nay, vary it —
Forbid the wretch to die, and slay the happy. (H.F. 515.)
And is there none to teach them stealth and sin ?
Why ! then the throne will ! ( Thyestes 3 1 3.)
Let him who serves a king, fling justice forth,
Send every scruple packing from his heart ;
Shame is no minister to wait on kings. (Phadra 436.)
I
be:
But bitterness and epigram could not heal ; and for healing
d inward peace men longed more and more,3 as they felt
eir own weakness, the power of evil and the terror of life; and
ey found both in a philosophy that had originally come into
ing under circumstances somewhat similar. They needed
some foundation for life, some means of linking the individual
to something that could not be shaken, and this they found in ..
Stoicism. The Stoic philosopher saw a unity in this world of
confusion — it was the " Generative Reason " — the <nrep/uLariKo<{
Ao'yo?, the Divine Word, or Reason, that is the seed and vital
principle, whence all things come and in virtue of which they
1 Tac. A. i, 72. Suetonius ( Tib. 59) quotes specimens.
2 See Boissier, Tacite, 188 f. ; F opposition sous les Cesars, 208-215.
" Persius, v, 73, libertatc opus est.
38 THE STOICS
live. All things came from fiery breath, Trvev/ma Siairvpov, and
returned to it. The whole universe was one polity — TroXireia
TOV Koa-fjiou — in virtue of the spirit that was its origin and its
life, of the common end to which it tended, of the absolute and
universal scope of the laws it obeyed — mind, matter, God, man,
formed one community. The soul of the individual Roman
partook of the very nature of God — divince particula aurce^-—
and in a way stood nearer to the divine than did anything else
in the world, every detail of which, however, was some mani-
festation of the same divine essence. All men were in truth of
one blood, of one family, — all and each, as Seneca says, sacred
to each and all.2 ( Unum me donavit \sc. Natura rerum~\ omnibus,
uni mihi omnes.)
Taught by the Stoic, the troubled Roman looked upon him-
self at once as a fragment of divinity,3 an entity self-conscious
and individual, and as a member of a divine system expressive
of one divine idea, which his individuality subserved. These
thoughts gave him ground and strength. If he seemed to be
the slave and plaything of an Emperor or an imperial freed-
man, none the less a divine life pulsed within him, and he was an
essential part of " the world." He had two havens of refuge —
the universe and his own soul — both quite beyond the reach of
the oppressor. Over and over we find both notes sounded in
the writings of the Stoics and their followers — God within you
and God without you. " Jupiter is all that you see, and all that
lives within you." * There is a Providence that rules human and
all other affairs ; nothing happens that is not appointed ; and
to this Providence every man is related. " He who has once
observed with understanding the administration of the world,
and learnt that the greatest and supreme and most comprehen-
sive community is the system (<rv<m>nu.a) of men and God, and
that from God come the seeds whence all things, and especially
rational beings, spring, why should not that man call himself a
citizen of the world [Socrates' word /coVyouo?], why not a son of
God ? " 5 And when we consider the individual, we find that God
1 Horace, Sat. ii, 2, 79.
2 See Edward Caird, Evolution of Theology in the Greek Philosophers, vol. ii,
lectures xvii to xx, and Zeller, Eclectics, pp. 235-245. Seneca, B, V. 20, 3.
3 Epictetus, D. ii, 8, cri) dTr6ffirao-fj.a ci TOV deov.
4 Lucan, ix, 564-586, contains a short summary of Stoicism, supposed to be spoken
by Cato. ° Epictetus, D. i, 9 (some lines omitted).
=
HARMONY WITH NATURE 39
has put in his power " the best thing of all, the master thing " —
the rational faculty. What is not in our power is the entire
external world, of which we can alter nothing, but the use we
make of it and its " appearances " 1 is our own. Confine yourself
to "what is in your power" (ra eVt <rof)> and no man can hurt
you. If you can no longer endure life, leave it ; but remember
in doing so to withdraw quietly, not at a run ; yet, says the
sage, " Men ! wait for God ; when He shall give you the signal
and release you from this service, then go to Him ; but for the
present endure to dwell in this place where He has set you." 2
To sum up ; the end of man's being and his true happiness is
what Zeno expressed as " living harmoniously," a statement
which Cleanthes developed by adding the words " with Nature."
Harmony with Nature and with oneself is the ideal life ; and
this the outside world of Emperors, freedmen, bereavements and
accidents generally, can neither give nor take away. "The
end," says Diogenes Laertius, "is to act in conformity with
nature, that is, at once with the nature which is in us and with
the nature of the universe, doing nothing forbidden by that
common law which is the right reason that pervades all things,
and which is, indeed, the same in the Divine Being who
administers the universal system of things. Thus the life
according to nature is that virtuous and blessed flow of exist-
ce, which is enjoyed only by one who always acts so as to
maintain the harmony between the daemon (SalfjLwv) within tha
individual and the will of the power that orders the universe." 3
This was indeed a philosophy for men, and it was also
ngenial to Roman character, as history had already shown.
t appealed to manhood, and whatever else has to be said of
toics and Stoicism, it remains the fact that Stoicism inspired
early all the great characters of the early Roman Empire, and
rved almost every attempt that was made to maintain the -
reedom and dignity of the human soul.4 The government was
not slow to realise the danger of men with such a trust in them-
selves and so free from fear.
On paper, perhaps, all religions and philosophies may at first
glance seem equally good, and it is not till we test them in life
, impressions left on the mind by things or events.
2 Epictetus, D. i, 9.
3 Diogenes Laertius, vii, i, 53 ; see Caird, op. dt. vol. ii, p. 124.
4 See Lecky, European Morals ; i, 128, 129,
40 THE STOICS
that we can value them aright. And even here there is a wide
field for error. Every religion has its saints — men recognizable
to everyone as saints in the beauty, manhood and tenderness of
their character — and it is perhaps humiliating to have to acknow-
ledge that very often they seem to be so through some happy
gift of Nature, quite Independently of any effort they make, or
of the religion to which they themselves generally attribute
anything that redeems them from being base. We have to
take, if possible, large masses of men, and to see how they are
affected by the religion which we wish to study — average men,
as we call them — for in this way we shall escape being led to
hasty conclusions by happy instances of natural endowment, or
of virtues carefully acquired in favourable circumstances of
retirement or helpful environment. Side by side with such
results as we may reach from wider study, we have to set our
saints and heroes, for while St Francis would have been tender
and Thrasea brave under any system of thought, it remains
that the one was Christian and the other Stoic. We need the
' individual, if we are to avoid mere rough generalities ; but we
must be sure, that he is representative in some way of the class
and the system under review.
As representatives of the Stoicism of the early Roman
Empire, two men stand out conspicuous — men whose characters
may be known with a high degree of intimacy. The one was a
Roman statesman, famous above all others in his age, and a
man of letters — one of those writers who reveal themselves in
every sentence they write and seem to leave records of every
mood they have known. The other was an emancipated slave,
who lived at Nicopolis in Epirus, away from the main channels
of life, who wrote nothing, but whose conversations or mono-
logues were faithfully recorded by a disciple.
" Notable Seneca," writes Carlyle, " so wistfully desirous to
stand well with Truth and yet not ill with Nero, is and remains
only our perhaps niceliest proportioned half-and-half, the plausi-
blest Plausible on record ; no great man, no true man, no man
at all ... ( the father of all such as wear shovel-hats.' " This
was in the essay on Diderot written in 1833 ; and we find in his
diary for loth August 1832, when Carlyle was fresh from reading
Seneca, an earlier judgment to much the same effect — "He is
father of all that work in sentimentality, and, by fine speaking
SENECA'S EARLY LIFE 41
and decent behaviour, study to serve God and mammon, to
stand well with philosophy and not ill with Nero. His force
had mostly oozed out of him, or corrupted itself into benevolence,
virtue, sensibility. Oh ! the everlasting- clatter about virtue !
virtue ! ! In the Devil's name be virtuous and no more about it."
Even in his most one-sided judgments Carlyle is apt to
speak truth, though it is well to remember that he himself said
that little is to be learnt of a man by dwelling only or mainly
on his faults. That what he says in these passages is in some
degree true, every candid reader must admit ; but if he had
written an essay instead of a paragraph we should have seen that
a great deal more is true of Seneca. As it is, we must take what
Carlyle says as representing a judgment which has often been
passed upon Seneca, though seldom in such picturesque terms.
It is in any case truer than Mommsen's description of Cicero.
Seneca was born at Cordova in Spain about the Christian
era — certainly not long before it. His father was a rich man of
equestrian rank, a rhetorician, who has left several volumes of
rhetorical compositions on imaginary cases. He hated philo-
sophy, his son tells us.1 Seneca's mother seems to have been
a good woman, and not the only one in the family; for his
youth was delicate and owed much to the care of a good aunt
at Rome; and his later years were spent with a good wife
Pompeia Paulina, who bore him two little short-lived boys.
In one of his letters (108) Seneca tells us of his early life in
Rome. He went to the lectures of Attalus, a Stoic teacher,
who laid great stress on simplicity of life and independence of
character and was also interested in superstition and soothsaying.
The pupil was a high-minded and sensitive youth, quick then,
as he remained through life, to take fire at an idea.2 " I used to
be the first to come and the last to go ; and as he walked I
would lead him on to further discussions, for he was not only
ready for those who would learn, but he would meet them."
"When I heard Attalus declaim against the vices, errors and
evils of life, I would often pity mankind ; and as for him I
thought of him as one on high, far above human nature's
highest. He himself used to say he was a king [a Stoic
1 Ep. 108, 22, philosophiam oderat.
2 With these passages compare the fine account which Persius gives (Sal. v) of
his early studies with the Stoic Cornutus.
42 THE STOICS
paradox at which Horace had laughed] ; but he seemed to me
more than king, — the judge of kings. When he began to
commend poverty, and to show that whatever is more than
need requires, is a useless burden to him that has it, I often
longed to leave the room a poor man. When he attacked our
pleasures and praised the chaste body, the sober table, the pure
mind, I delighted to refrain, not merely from unlawful pleasures,
but from needless ones too. Some of it has stuck by me, Lucilius,
for I made a good beginning." All his life long, in fact, he
avoided the luxuries of table and bath, and drank water. He
continues, "Since I have begun to tell you how much more
keenly I began philosophy in my youth than I persevere
with it in my old age, I am not ashamed to own what love of
Pythagoras Sotion waked in me." Sotion recommended vege-
tarianism on the grounds which Pythagoras had laid down.
" But you do not believe," he said, " that souls are allotted to
one body after another, and that what we call death is trans-
migration ? You don't believe that in beasts and fishes dwells
the mind (animuni] that was once a man's ? . . . Great men
have believed it ; so maintain your own opinion, but keep the
matter open. If it is true, then to have abstained from animal
food will be innocence ; if it is false, it will still be frugality." 1
So for a year Seneca was a vegetarian with some satisfaction
and he fancied that his mind was livelier than when he was " an
eater of beef." 2 It is as well not to quote some contemporary
methods of preparing meat.3 However, after a while some
scandal arose about foreign religions, and vegetarianism was
counted a " proof of superstition," and the old rhetorician, more
from dislike of philosophy than from fear of calumny, made it
an excuse to put a little pressure on his philosophic son, who
obediently gave up the practice. Such is the ardour of youth,
he concludes, — a good teacher finds idealists ready to his hand.
The fault is partly in the teachers, who train us to argue and not
to live, and partly in the pupils too, whose aim is to have the wits
trained and not the mind. " So what was philosophy becomes
philology — the love of words."4
There is a certain gaiety and good humour about these
1 Plutarch, de esu carnium, ii, 5.
2 Plutarch, de esu carnium, i, 6, on clogging the soul by eating flesh. Clem. Alex.
Peed, ii, 16, says St Matthew lived on seeds, nuts and vegetables, and without meat.
3 Plutarch, de esu carnium, ii, I. 4 Sen. Ep. 108, 3, 13-23.
SENECA'S EARLY LIFE 43
confessions, which is closely bound up with that air of tolerance
and that sense of buoyant ease1 which pervade all his work.
Here the tone is in keeping with the matter in hand, but it is
not always. Everything seems so easy to him that the
reader begins to doubt him and to wonder whether he is
not after all "The plausiblest Plausible on record." We
associate experience with a style more plain, more tense, more
inevitable ; and the extraordinary buoyancy of Seneca's writing
suggests that he can hardly have known the agony and bloody
sweat of the true teacher. Yet under the easy phrases there
lay a real sincerity. From his youth onward he took life
seriously, and, so far as is possible for a man of easy good
nature, he was in earnest with himself.
Like other youths of genius, he had had thoughts of suicide,
but on reflexion, he tells us, he decided to live, and his reason
was characteristic. While for himself he felt equal to dying
bravely, he was not so sure that his " kind old father " would
be quite so brave in doing without him. It was to philosophy,
he says, that he owed his resolution.2
Apart from philosophy, he went through the ordinary course
of Roman education. He " wasted time on the grammarians," 3
whom he never forgave, and at whom, as " guardians of Latin
speech"4 he loved to jest, — and the greatest of all Roman
Grammarians paid him back in the familiar style of the peda-
gogue. Rhetoric came to him no doubt by nature, certainly
by environment ; it conspicuously haunted his family for three
generations.5 He duly made his appearance at the bar — making
more speeches there than Virgil did, and perhaps not disliking
it so much. But he did not like it, and, when his father died,
he ceased to appear, and by and by found that he had lost
the power to plead as he had long before lost the wish.0
On the accession of Claudius to the Imperial throne in 41
A.D., Seneca, now in middle life, was for some reason banished
to Corsica, and there for eight weary years he remained, till
the Empress Messalina fell. A little treatise, which he wrote
1 This is a quality that Quintilian notes in his style for praise or blame. Others
(Gellius, N.A. xii, 2) found in him levis et quasi dicax argutia.
2 Ep. 78, 2, 3, patris me inditlgentissimi senectus retinuit.
'J£p- 58,5- 4 -£>. 95.65-
5 His nephew Lucan, Quintilian severely says, was "perhaps a better model for
orators than for poets."' 6 Ep. 49, 2. Virgil made one spe«ch,
44 THE STOICS
to console his mother, survives — couched in the rhetoric she knew
so well. If the language is more magnificent than sons usually
address to their mothers, it must be remembered that he wrote
to console her for misfortunes which he was himself enduring.
The familiar maxim that the mind can make itself happy and at
home anywhere is rather like a platitude, but it loses something
of that character when it comes from the lips of a man actually
in exile. Another little work on the subject, which he addressed
later on to Polybius, the freedman of Claudius, stands on a
different footing, and his admirers could wish he had not written
it. There is flattery in it of a painfully cringing tone. " The
Emperor did not hurl him down so utterly as never to raise him
again ; rather he supported him when evil fortune smote him
and he tottered ; he gently used his godlike hand to sustain him
and pleaded with the Senate to spare his life. . . . He will see to
his cause. . . . He best knows the time at which to show favour.
. . . Under the clemency of Claudius, exiles live more peacefully
than princes did under Gaius." l But a little is enough of this.
It is clear that Seneca was not what we call a strong man.
A fragile youth, a spirit of great delicacy and sensibility, were
no outfit for exile. Nor is it very easy to understand what
exile was to the educated Roman. Some were confined to
mere rocks, to go round and round them for ever and never
leave them. Seneca had of course more space, but what he
endured, we may in some measure divine from the diaries and
narratives that tell of Napoleon's life on St Helena. The
seclusion from the world, the narrow range, the limited number
of faces, the red coats, the abhorred monotony, told heavily on
every temper, on gaoler and prisoner alike, even on Napoleon ;
and Seneca's temperament was not of stuff so stern. We may
wish he had not broken down, but we cannot be surprised that
he did. It was human of him. Perhaps the memory of his
own weakness and failure contributed to make him the most
sympathetic and the least arrogant of all Stoics.
At last Messalina reached her end, and the new Empress,
Agrippina, recalled the exile in 49 A.D., and made him tutor of
her son, Nero ; and from now till within two years of his death
Seneca lived in the circle of the young prince. When Claudius
died in 54, Seneca and Burrus became the guardians of the
1 ad Polybium, 13, 2, 3.
NERO 45
Emperor and virtually ruled the Empire. It was a position of
great difficulty. Seneca grew to be immensely rich, and his
wealth and his palaces and gardens l weakened his influence,
while they intensified the jealousy felt for a minister so power-
ful. Yet perhaps none of his detractors guessed the limits of his
power as surely as he came to feel them himself. Some measure of
the situation may be taken from what befell when the freedwoman
Claudia Acte became the mistress of Nero. " His older friends did
not thwart him," says Tacitus, " for here was a girl, who, without
harm to anyone, gratified his desires, since he was utterly
estranged from his wife Octavia."2 Later on, we learn, Seneca
had to avail himself of Acte's aid to prevent worse scandals.
In February 55 A.D. the young prince Britannicus was
poisoned at Nero's table. He was the son of Claudius and the
brother of Octavia — a possible claimant therefore to the Imperial
throne. Nero, not more than eighteen years old, told the com-
pany quite coolly that it was an epileptic seizure, and the feast
went on, while the dead boy was carried out and buried there
and then in the rain — in a grave prepared before he had entered
the dining-hall.3 Ten months later Seneca wrote his tractate
on Clemency. Nero should ask himself " Am I the elected of
the gods to be their vice-gerent on earth ? The arbiter of life
and death to the nations ? " and so forth. He is gently reminded
of the great light that fronts the throne ; that his anger would
be as disastrous as war ; that " Kings gain from kindness a
greater security, while their cruelty swells the number of their
enemies." Seneca wanders a good deal, but his drift is clear —
and the wretchedness of his position.
That Burrus and he had no knowledge of Nero's design to
do away with his mother, is the verdict of Nero's latest historian,
but to Seneca fell the horrible task of writing the explanatory
letter which Nero sent to the Senate when the murder was done.
Perhaps to judge him fairly, one would need to have been a
Prime Minister. It may have been a necessary thing to do, in
order to maintain the world's government, but the letter imposed
on nobody, and Thrasea Paetus at once rose from his seat and
walked conspicuously out.
From the year 59 Nero was more than ever his own master.
1 Juvenal, x, 1 6, magnos Sentccz pradivitis hortos.
Ann. xiii, 12, 2. * Tac. Ann. xiii, 15-17.
46 THE STOICS
His guardians' repeated condonations had set him free, and the
lad, who had " wished he had never learned writing " when he
had to sign his first death-warrant, began from now to build up
that evil fame for which the murders of his brother and his
mother were only the foundation. For three years Seneca and
Burrus kept their places — miserably enough. Then Burrus
found a happy release in death, and with him died the last of
Seneca's influence.1 Seneca begged the Emperor's leave to
retire from the Court, offering him the greater part of his wealth,
and it was refused. It had long been upon his mind that he
was too rich. In 58 a furious attack was made upon him by
"one who had earned the hate of many," Publius Suillius ; this
man asked in the Senate " by what kind of wisdom or maxims
of philosophy " Seneca had amassed in four years a fortune equal
to two and a half millions sterling ; and he went on to accuse
him of intrigue with princesses, of hunting for legacies, and of
" draining Italy and the provinces by boundless usury." 2 There
was probably a good deal of inference in these charges, if one
may judge by the carelessness of evidence which such men show
in all ages. Still Seneca felt the taunt, and in a book " On the
Happy Life," addressed to his brother Gallic, he dealt with the
charge. He did not claim to be a sage (17, 3); his only hope
was day by day to lessen his vices — he was still in the thick of
them; perhaps he might not reach wisdom, but he would at
least live for mankind " as one born for others," 3 would do
nothing for glory, and all for conscience, would be gentle and
accessible even to his foes ; as for wealth, it gave a wise man
more opportunity, but if his riches deserted him, they would
take nothing else with them ; a philosopher might have wealth,
"if it be taken forcibly from no man, stained with no man's
blood, won by no wrong done to any, gained without dishonour ;
if its spending be as honest as its getting, if it wake no envy but
in the envious."4 The treatise has a suggestion of excitement,
and there is a good deal of rhetoric in it. Now he proposed to
the Emperor to put his words into action, and Nero would not
permit him — he was not ready for the odium of despoiling his
guardian, and the old man's name might still be of use to cover
deeds in which he had no share. Seneca was not to resign his
1 Tac. Ann. xiv, 51. 2 Tac. Ann. xiii, 42.
3 B. V. 20, 3. 4 B. V. 23, i.
SENECA'S LAST DAYS 47
wealth nor to leave Rome. Nero's words as given by Tacitus
are pleasant enough, but we hardly need to be told their value.1
It was merely a reservation of the death sentence, and Seneca
ust have known it. The only thing now was to wait till he
lould receive the order to die, and Seneca occupied the time in
riting. If what he wrote has a flushed and excited air, it is
ot surprising. The uncertainity of his position had preyed
)on him while he was still Minister — " there are many," he had
ritten, " who must hold fast to their dizzy height ; it is only
y falling that they can leave it." 2 He had fallen, and still he
ad to live in uncertainty ; he had always been a nervous man.
The end came in 65, in connexion with the conspiracy of
iso. Tacitus is not altogether distinct as to the implication of
eneca in this plot, but modern historians have inclined to
elieve in his guilt — if guilt it was.3 Mr Henderson, in par-
cular, is very severe on him for this want of " gratitude " to his
enefactor and pupil, but it is difficult to see what Nero had
one for him that he would not have preferred undone.4 Perhaps
the time, and certainly later on, Seneca was regarded as a
ossible substitute for Nero upon the throne ; 5 but he was well
rer sixty and frail, nor is it clear that the world had yet decided
at a man could be Emperor without being a member of the
ulian or Claudian house. Seneca, in fact any man, must have
It that any one would be better than Nero, but he had himself
nspicuously left the world, and, with his wife, was living the
lilosophic life — a vegetarian again, and still a water-drinker.6
eneca was ready for the death-summons and at once opened
veins. Death came slowly, but it came; and he died,
oquent to the last — novissimo quoque momenta suppeditante
oquentia.
Such is the story of Seneca. Even in bare outline it shows
>mething of his character — his kindliness and sensibility, his
eakness and vanity ; but there are other features revealed in
s books and his many long letters to Lucilius. No Roman,
erhaps, ever laid more stress on the duty of gentleness and
rgiveness.7 " Look at the City of Rome," he says, " and the
1 Tac. Ann. xiv, 52-56. 2 de tranqu. animi, 10, 6.
8Tac. Ann. xiv, 65 ; xv, 45-65. 4 B. W. Henderson, Nero, pp. 280-3.
6 Tac. Ann. xv, 65 ; Juvenal, viii, 212. KTac. Ann. xv, 45, 6.
'This is emphasized by Zeller, Eclectics, 240, and by Dill, Roman Society from
'ero to Marcus, 324, 326.
48 THE STOICS
crowds unceasingly pouring through its broad streets — what a
solitude, what a wilderness it would be, were none left but
whom a strict judge would acquit. We have all done wrong
(peccavimus), some in greater measure, some in less, some on
purpose, some by accident, some by the fault of others ; we have
not stood bravely enough by our good resolutions ; despite our
will and our resistance, we have lost our innocence. Nor is it
only that we have acted amiss ; we shall do so to the end." l He
is anxious to make Stoicism available for his friends ; he tones
down its gratuitous harshness, accommodates, conciliates. He
knows what conscience is ; he is recognized as a master in dealing
with the mind at variance with itself, so skilfully does he analyse
and lay bare its mischiefs. Perhaps he analyses too much — the
angel, who bade Hermas cease to ask concerning sins and ask
of righteousness, might well have given him a word. But he
is always tender with the man to whom he is writing. If he
was, as Quintilian suggests, a " splendid assailant of the faults
of men," it is the faults of the unnamed that he assails ; his
friends' faults suggest his own, and he pleads and sympathizes.
His style corresponds with the spirit in which he thinks. " You
complain," he writes to Lucilius, " that my letters are not very
finished in style. Who talks in a finished style unless he wishes
to be affected ? What my talk would be, if we were sitting or
walking together, unlaboured and easy, that is what I wish my
letters to be, without anything precious or artificial in them." -
And he has in measure succeeded in giving the air of talk toj
his writing— its ease, its gaiety, even its rambling and discursive-
ness. He always sees the friend to whom he writes, and talks
to him — sometimes at him — and not without some sugges-
tion of gesticulation. He must have talked well— though one
imagines that, like Coleridge on Highgate Hill, he probably
preferred the listener who sat "like a passive bucket to be
pumped into." Happily the reader is not obliged to be quite so
passive.
But we shall not do him justice if we do not recognize his
high character. In an age when it was usual to charge every
one with foulness, natural and unnatural, Dio Cassius alone
among writers suggests it of Seneca; and, quite apart from
his particular bias in this case, Dio is not a high authority,—
. i 6
EPICTETUS 49
more especially as he belonged to a much later generation. If
his talk is of " virtue ! virtue ! " Seneca's life was deliberately
directed to virtue. In the midst of Roman society, and set
in the highest place but one in the world, he still cherished
ideals, and practised self-discipline, daily self-examination.
" This is the one goal of my days and of my nights : this is my
task, my thought — to put an end to my old faults."1 His
whole philosophy is practical, and directed to the reformation of
morals. The Stoic paradoxes, and with them every part of philo-
sophy which has no immediate bearing upon conduct, he threw
aside. His language on the accumulation of books recalls the
amusement of St Francis at the idea of possessing a breviary.
And further, we may note that whatever be charged against
him as a statesman, not his own master, and as a writer, not
always quite in control of his rhetoric, Seneca was funda-
mentally truthful with himself. He never hid his own weak-
ness ; he never concealed from himself the difficulty of his
ideals ; he never tried to delude himself with what he could not
believe. The Stoics had begun long since to make terms with
popular religion, but Seneca is entirely free from delusions as
to the gods of popular belief. He saw clearly enough that
there was no truth in them, and he never sought help from any-
thing but the real. He is a man, trained in the world,2 in touch
with its problems of government, with the individual and his
questions of character, death and eternity, — a man tender, pure
and true — too great a man to take the purely negative stand of
Thrasea, or to practise the virtue of the schools in " arrogant
indolence." But he has hardly reached the inner peace which
he sought. \/
The story of Epictetus can be more briefly told, for there
is very little to tell.3 He was born at Hierapolis in Phrygia : —
he was the slave of Nero's freedman Epaphroditus, and some-
how managed to hear the lectures of the Stoic Musonius.
Eventually he was set free, and when Domitian expelled the
philosophers from Rome, he went to Nicopolis in Epirus,4
riiere he lived and taught — lame, neat, poor and old. How
Ep. 61, i.
Lucian, Nigrinus, 19, says there is no beti_- school for virtue, no truer test of
strength, than life in the city of Rome.
Gellius, N.A. ii, 1 8, 10. 4 Gell. N.A. xv, u, 5.
4
50 THE STOICS
he taught is to be seen in the discourses which Arrian took
down in the reign of Trajan,—" Whatever I heard him say, I
tried to write down exactly, and in his very words as far as
I could— to keep them as memorials for myself of his mind
and of his outspokenness. So they are, as you would expect,
very much what a man would say to another on the spur of
the moment— not what he would write for others to read
afterwards His sole aim in speaking was to move the
minds of his hearers to the best things. If then these dis-
courses should achieve this, they would have the effect which
I think a philosopher's words should have. But if they do not,
let my readers know that, when he spoke them, the hearer
could not avoid being affected as Epictetus wished him to be.
If the discourses do not achieve this, perhaps it will be my
fault, or perhaps it may be inevitable. Farewell."
Such, save for a sentence or two omitted, is Arrian's
preface,— thereafter no voice is heard but that of Epictetus. To
place, time or persons present the barest allusions only are
made. "Someone said . . . And Epictetus spoke." The
four books of Arrian give a strong impression of fidelity. We
hear the tones of the old man, and can recognize " the mind
and the outspokenness," which Arrian cherished in memory —
we understand why, as we read. The high moral sense of the
teacher, his bursts of eloquence, his shrewdness, his abrupt
turns of speech, his apostrophes — "Slave!" he cries, as he
addresses the weakling — his diminutives of derision, produce
the most lively sense of a personality. There is wit, too, but
like Stoic wit in general it is hard and not very sympathetic ;
it has nothing of the charm and delicacy of Plato's humour,
nor of its kindliness.
Here and there are words and thoughts which tell of his
life. More than once he alludes to his age and his lameness —
" A lame old man like me." But perhaps nowhere in literature
are there words that speak so loud of a man without experience
of woman or child. " On a voyage," he says, " when the ship
calls at a port and you go ashore for water, it amuses you to.
pick up a shell or a plant by the way ; but your thoughts ought
to be directed to the ship, ard you must watch lest the captain
call, and then you must throw away all those things, that you
may not be flung aboard, tied like the sheep. So in life, sup-
EPICTETUS ON CHILDREN AND WOMEN 51
pose that instead of some little shell or plant, you are given some-
thing in the way of wife or child (avrl j3o\/3ap!ov KOI Kox^iSiov
ywaiKctpiov KOI iratSlov) nothing need hinder. But, if the captain
call, run to the ship letting them all go and never looking
round. If you are old, do not even go far from the ship, lest
you fail to come when called."1 He bids a man endure
hunger ; he can only die of it. " But my wife and children also
suffer hunger, (ol ejmoi Treivijcrovcri). What then? does their
hunger lead to any other place? Is there not for them the
same descent, wherever it lead ? Below, is it not the same for
them as for you ? "2 " If you are kissing your child, or brother,
or friend, never give full licence to the appearance (rrjv <pavra<riav) ;
check your pleasure . . . remind yourself that you love a mortal
thing, a thing that is not your own (ovSev rwv vavrov). . . .
What harm does it do to whisper, as you kiss the child, ' To-
morrow you will die ' ? " This is a thought he uses more than
once,3 though he knows the attractiveness of lively children.4 He
recommends us to practise resignation — beginning on a broken
jug or cup, then on a coat or puppy, and so up to oneself and
one's limbs, children, wife or brothers.6 " If a man wishes his
son or his wife not to do wrong, he really wishes what is
another's not to be another's."6
As to women, a few quotations will show his detachment.
He seems hardly to have known a good woman. " Do not
admire your wife's beauty, and you are not angry with the
adulterer. Learn that a thief and an adulterer have no place
among the things that are yours, but among those which are
not yours and not in your power,"7 and he illustrates his
philosophy with an anecdote of an iron lamp stolen from him,
which he replaced with an earthenware one. From fourteen
years old, he says, women think of nothing and aim at nothing
1 Manual^ 7. I have constantly used Long's translation, but often altered it. It
is a fine piece of work, well worth the English reader's study.
2 D. iii, 26. Compare and contrast Tertullian, flfc Idol, iz^Jidesfatnem nontimct.
Scit enim famem non minus sibi contemnendam propter Deuni quam onme mortis
genus. The practical point is the same, perhaps ; the motive, how different !
*D. iii, 24; iv, i; M. ii, 26.
4 D. ii, 24. He maintains, too, against Epicurus the naturalness of love for
children ; once born, we cannot help loving them, D. i, 23.
5 D. iv, I. 6 D. iv, 5, 0£\€t T& d.\\&rpia /J.T) elvai aXXorpta.
7 D. i, 18. This does not stop his condemning the adulterer, D. ii, 4 (man, he
said, is formed for fidelity), IO. Seneca on outward goods, ad Marc ia»it 10.
52 THE STOICS
but lying with men.1 Roman women liked Plato's Republic
for the licence they wrongly supposed it gave.2 He constantly
speaks of women as a temptation, nearly always using a
diminutive Kopda-iov, Kopaa-lSiov— little girls — and as a temptation
hardly to be resisted by young men. He speaks of their
" softer voices." 3 A young philosopher is no match for a
" pretty girl " ; let him fly temptation.4 " As to pleasure with
women, abstain as far as you can, before marriage ; but if you
do indulge in it, do it in the way conformable to custom. Do
not, however, be disagreeable to those who take such pleasures,
nor apt to rebuke them or to say often that you do not." 5 All
this may be taken as the impression left by Rome and the
household of Epaphroditus upon a slave's mind. It may be
observed that he makes nothing like Dio Chrysostom's con-
demnation of prostitution — an utterance unexampled in pagan
antiquity.
It is pleasanter to turn to other features of Epictetus. He
has a very striking lecture on personal cleanliness.6 In propor-
tion as men draw near the gods by reason, they cling to purity
of soul and body. Nature has given men hands and nostrils ;
so, if a man does not use a handkerchief, " I say, he is not
fulfilling the function of a man." Nature has provided water.
" It is impossible that some impurity should not remain in the
teeth after eating. ' So wash your teeth,' says Nature. Why ?
' That you may be a man and not a beast — a pig.' " If a man
would not bathe and use the strigil and have his clothes washed
-"either go into a desert where you deserve to go, or live
alone and smell yourself." He cannot bear a dirty man,
" who does not get out of his way ? " It gives philosophy a
bad name, he says ; but it is quite clear that that was not his
chief reason. He would sooner a young man came to him
with his hair carefully trimmed than with it dirty and rough ;
such care implied " some conception of the beautiful," which it
was only necessary to direct towards the things of the mind ;
"but if a man comes to me filthy and dirty, with a moustache
down to his knees— what can I say to him ? " " But whence
am I to get a fine cloak ? Man ! you have water ; wash it ! "
^•40. 2Fragmentj53
D. m, 12, classing the KopavlSiov with wine and cake
8 D. iv, ii.
FAME OF EPICTETUS 53
Pupils gathered round him and he became famous, as we can
see in the reminiscences of Aulus Gellius.1 Sixty or seventy
years after his death a man bought his old earthenware lamp for
three thousand drachmas.'2 Even in his lifetime men began to
come about " the wonderful old man " who were hardly serious
students. They wished, he says, to occupy the time while wait-
ing to engage a passage on a ship — they happened to be pass-
ing (xa/oo^o? earnv) and looked in to see him as if he were a
statue. "We can go and see Epictetus too. — Then you go
away and say ; Oh ! Epictetus was nothing ! he talked bad
Greek — oh ! barbarous Greek ! " 3 Others came to pick up a
little philosophic language for use in public. Why could they
not philosophize and say nothing ? he asked. " Sheep do not
vomit up their grass to show the shepherd how much they have
eaten — no ! they digest it inside, and then produce wool and
milk outside." 4 He took his teaching seriously as a matter of
life, and he looked upon it as a service done to mankind — quite
equivalent to the production of "two or three ugly-nosed
children." 5 He has a warm admiration for the Cynic philoso-
pher's independence of encumberments — how can he who has
to teach mankind go looking after a wife's confinement — or
" something to heat the water in to give the baby a bath ? " 6
These then are the two great teachers of Stoicism, the out-
standing figures, whose words and tones survive, whose characters
are familiar to us. They are clearly preachers, both of them,
intent on the practical reformation of their listeners or correspon-
dents. For them conduct is nine-tenths of life. Much of their
teaching is of course the common property of all moral teachers
— the deprecation of anger, of quarrelsomeness, of self-indulgence,
of grumbling, of impurity, is peculiar to no school. Others have
emphasized that life is a campaign with a general to be obeyed,
if you can by some instinct divine what he is .signalling.7 But
1 Cell. N.A. i, 2, 6 ; xvii, 19, I. - Lucian, adv. Indoct. 13.
3 D. iii, 9. 4 M. 46.
5 D. iii, 22, KaKOpvyxa TreuSi'a.
6 D. iii, 22. Lucian says Epictetus urged Demonax to take a wife and leave some
one to represent him in posterity. " Very well, Epictetus," said Demonax, "give
me one of your own daughters " (v. Demon. 55).
7 Epict. D. iii, 24. ffTpareia rfs ionv 6 /Sfos etcdo-Tov, KO.L avrij fiaKpa xal iroiKlXr).
ffe Set TO TOV ffTpariuTov irp6(rvev/j.a /cai TOV ffTparrjyov jrpdffffeiv eVaara, el ol6v
54 THE STOICS
perhaps it was a new thing in the Western World, when so
much accent was laid on conduct. The terror of contemporary
life, with its repulsiveness, its brutality and its fascination, drove
men in search of the moral guide. The philosopher's school
was an infirmary, not for the glad but for the sorry.1 "That
man," says Seneca, "is looking for salvation— ^ salutem
spectat."
Men sought the help of the philosopher, and relapsed,
thinks he wishes reason. He has fallen out with luxury, but he
will soon make friends with her. But he says he is offended
with his own life ! I do not deny it ; who is not ? Men love
their vices and hate them at the same time." - So writes Seneca
of a friend of Lucilius and his fugitive thoughts of amendment,
and Epictetus is no less emphatic on the crying need for earnest-
ness. The Roman world was so full of glaring vice that every
serious man from Augustus onward had insisted on some kind
of reformation, and now men were beginning to feel that the
reformation must begin within themselves. The habit of daily
self-examination became general among the Stoics, and they
recommended it warmly to their pupils. Here is Seneca's
account of himself.
"When the day was over and Sextius had gone to his
night's rest, he used to ask his mind (animum) : ' what bad
habit of yours have you cured to-day? what vice have you
resisted ? in what respect are you better ? ' Anger will cease
and will be more moderate, when it knows it must daily face
the judge. Could anything be more beautiful than this habit of
examining the whole day ? What a sleep is that which follows
self-scrutiny ! How calm, how deep and free, when the mind
is either praised or admonished, when it has looked into itself,
and like a secret censor makes a report upon its own moral state.
I avail myself of this power and daily try my own case. When
the light is removed from my sight, and my wife, who knows
my habit, is silent, I survey my whole day and I measure my
words again. I hide nothing from myself ; I pass over nothing.
For why should I be afraid of any of my errors, when I can
say : ' See that you do it no more, now I forgive you. In that
discussion, you spoke too pugnaciously; after this do not
engage with the ignorant ; they will not learn who have never
1 Epict. D. iii, 23. 2 Sen Ept ,I2> 3
SELF-EXAMINATION 55
learned. That man you admonished too freely, so you did him
no good; you offended him. For the future, see not only
whether what you say is true, but whether he to whom it is said
will bear the truth.' " 1
Similar passages might be multiplied. " Live with yourself
and see how ill-furnished you are," wrote Persius (iv, 52) the
pupil of Cornutus. " From heaven comes that word ' know
thyself,' " said Juvenal. A rather remarkable illustration is the
letter of Serenus, a friend of Seneca's, of whose life things are
recorded by Tacitus that do not suggest self-scrutiny. In
summary it is as follows : —
" I find myself not quite free, nor yet quite in bondage to
faults which I feared and hated. I am in a state, not the worst
indeed, but very querulous and uncomfortable, neither well nor
ill. It is a weakness of the mind that sways between the two,
that will neither bravely turn to right nor to wrong. Things
disturb me, though they do not alter my principles. I think of
public life ; something worries me, and I fall back into the
life of leisure, to be pricked to the will to act by reading some
brave words or seeing some fine example. I beg you, if you
have any remedy to stay my fluctuation of mind, count me
worthy to owe you peace. To put what I endure into a simile,
it is not the tempest that troubles me, but sea-sickness."2
Epictetus quotes lines which he attributes to Pythagoras —
Let sleep not come upon thy languid eyes
Ere thou has scanned the actions of the day —
Where have I sinned ? What done or left undone ?
From first to last examine all, and then
Blame what is wrong, in what is right, rejoice.3
These verses, he adds, are for use, not for quotation. Else-
where he gives us a parody of self-examination — the reflections of
one who would prosper in the world — " Where have I failed in
flattery ? Can I have done anything like a free man, or a
noble-minded ? Why did I say that ? Was it not in my power
to lie ? Even the philosophers say nothing hinders a man from
telling a lie." 4
1 de ira, iii, 36, 1-4. 3 Sen. de tranqu. animi% I.
3 Epict. D. iii, 10. I have here slightly altered Mr Long's rendering.
*J). iv, 6.
56 THE STOICS
But self-examination may take us further1 We come into
the world, he says, with some innate idea (e'n<J>vTos cvvoia) of
good and evil, as if Nature had taught us ; but we find other men
with different ideas —Syrians and Egyptians, for instance. It
is by a comparison of our ideas with those of other men that
philosophy comes into being for us. " The beginning of philo-
sophy—with those at least who enter upon it aright— by the
door is a consciousness of one's own weakness and insufficiency
in necessary things (curOwelas Kal aSwaftias)." We need rules or
canons, and philosophy determines these for us by criticism.2
This reference to Syrians and Egyptians is probably not idle.
The prevalence of Syrian and Egyptian religions, inculcating
ecstatic communion with a god and the soul's need of preparation
for the next world, contributed to the change that is witnessed
in Stoic philosophy. The Eastern mind is affecting the Greek,
and later Stoicism like later Platonism has thoughts and ideals
not familiar to the Greeks of earlier days. It was with religions,
as opposed to city cults, that Stoicism had now to compete for
the souls of men ; and while it retains its Greek characteristics
in its intellectualism and its slightly-veiled contempt for the
fool and the barbarian, it has taken on other features. It was
avowedly a rule of life rather than a system of speculation ;
and it was more, for the doctrine of the Spermaticos Logos
(the Generative Reason) gave a new meaning to conduct and
opened up a new and rational way to God. Thus Stoicism,
while still a philosophy was pre-eminently a religion, and even
a gospel — Good News of emancipation from the evil in the
world and of union with the Divine.
Stoicism gave its convert a new conception of the relation
of God and man. One Divine Word was the essence of both —
Reason was shared by men and gods, and by pure thought men
came into contact with the divine mind. Others sought com-
munion in trance and ritual — the Stoic when he was awake, at
his highest and best level, with his mind and not his hand, in
thoughts, which he could understand and assimilate, rather than
in magical formulae, which lost their value when they became
1 Cf. Persius, iii, 66-72, causas cognoscite rerum, quid sumus aut quidnam victuri
gignimur . . . quern te deus esse iussit et humana qua parte locatus es in re.
1 D. ii, 1 1 . See Davidson, Stoic Creed, pp. 69, 81, on innate ideas. Plutarch, de coh.
ira, 15, on Zeno's doctrine, TO <nrtpna fftipfuyfjia Kal /cfyaoywi T&V rfjs ^i/x^s Swafduv
THE TRUE WORSHIP OF THE GODS 57
intelligible. God and men formed a polity, and the Stoic was
the fellow-citizen of the gods, obeying, understanding and
adoring, as they did, one divine law, one order — a partaker of
the divine nature, a citizen of the universe, a free man as no one
else was free, because he knew his freedom and knew who
shared it with him. He stood on a new footing with the gods,
and for him the old cults passed away, superseded by a new
worship which was divine service indeed.
" How the gods are to be worshipped, men often tell us.
Let us not permit a man to light lamps on the Sabbath, for the
gods need not the light, and even men find no pleasure in the
smoke. Let us forbid to pay the morning salutation and to sit
at the doors of the temples ; it is human interest that is courted
by such attentions : God, he worships who knows Him. Let us
forbid to take napkins and strigils to Jove, to hold the mirror
to Juno. God seeks none to minister to him ; nay ! himself he
ministers to mankind ; everywhere he is, at the side of every
man. Let a man hear what mode to keep in sacrifices, how far
to avoid wearisomeness and superstition : never will enough be
done, unless in his mind he shall have conceived God as he
ought, as in possession of all things, as giving all things freely.
What cause is there that the gods should do good ? Nature.
He errs, who thinks they can not do harm ; they will not.
They cannot receive an injury nor do one. To hurt and to be
hurt are one thing. Nature, supreme and above all most
beautiful, has exempted them from danger and from being
dangerous. The beginning of worship of the gods is to believe
gods are ; then to attribute to them their own majesty, to
attribute to them goodness, without which majesty is not, to
know it is they who preside over the universe, who rule all
things by their might, who are guardians of mankind, at times 1
thoughtful of individuals. They neither give nor have evil ;
but they chastise, they check, they assign penalties and
sometimes punish in the form of blessing. Would you pro-
pitiate the gods ? Be good ! He has worshipped them enough
who has imitated them." 2
1 The qualification may be illustrated from Cicero's Stoic, de Nat. Deor. ii, 66,
167, Magnet di cur ant parva neglegunt.
3 Ep. 95, 47-50. Cf. Ep. 41 ; de Prov. i, 5. A very close parallel, with a strong
Stoic tinge, in Minucius Felix, 32, 2, 3, ending Sic apttd nos religiosior cst Hie qui
iustior.
58 THE STOICS
This is not merely a statement of Stoic dogma ; it was a
proclamation of freedom. Line after line of this fine passage
directly counters what was asserted and believed throughout
the world by the adherents of the Eastern religions. Hear
Seneca once more.
" We understand Jove to be ruler and guardian of the whole,
mind and breath of the Universe (animum spiritumque mundi],
lord and artificer of this fabric. Every name is his. Would you
call him fate ? You will not err. He it is on whom all things
depend, the cause of causes. Would you call him Providence ?
You will speak aright. He it is whose thought provides for the
universe that it may move on its course unhurt and do its part.
Would you call him Nature ? you will not speak amiss. He it
is of whom all things are born, by whose breath (spiritu) we
live. Would you call him Universe ? You will not be deceived.
He himself is this whole that you see, fills his own parts,
sustains himself and what is his."1
Some one asked Epictetus one day how we can be sure that
all our actions are under the inspection of God. " Do you
think," said Epictetus, "that all things are a unity?" (i.e. in
the polity of the cosmos). " Yes." " Well then, do you not think
that things earthly are in sympathy (a-vfj-TraQelv} with things
heavenly?" "Yes." Epictetus reminded his listener of the
harmony of external nature, of flowers and moon and sun.
" But are leaves and our bodies so bound up and united with
the whole, and are not our souls much more ? and are our souls
so bound up and in touch with God (crvvafais TW Oeia) as parts of
Him and portions of Him, and can it be that God does not
perceive every motion of these parts as being His own motion
cognate with Himself (arv^vov^ ? "2 He bade the man reflect
upon his own power of grasping in his mind ten thousand things
at once under divine administration ; " and is not God able to
oversee all things, and to be present with them, and to receive
from all a certain communication ? " The man replied that he
could not comprehend all these things at once. " And who tells
you this— that you have equal power with Zeus ? Nevertheless,
he has placed by every man a guardian (eTrtrpoTrov), each man's
1 Nat. Quasi, ii, 45. Cf. Tertullian, Apol. 21, on Zeno's testimony to the Logos,
as creator, fate, God, animus lovis and nccessitas omnium rerum.
2 Cf. Sen. Ep. 41, I. Prope est a te deus, tecum est, intus est. Ita dico, Lucili,
s&er infra nos spiritus stdet malorum bonorumque nostrorum observator et custos.
PROVIDENCE 59
Daemon, to whom he has committed the care of the man, a
guardian who never sleeps, is never deceived. For to what
better and more careful watch (<J>v\aKi) could He have entrusted
each of us ? When then you (plural) have shut your doors and
made darkness within, remember never to say that you are
alone, for you are not ; but God is within and your Daemon
(o v/uerepos Sal/mew) ; and what need have they of light to see
what you are doing? " l
Here another feature occurs — the question of the daemons.
Seneca once alludes to the idea — " for the present," he writes to
Lucilius,^' set aside the view of some people, that to each in-
dividual one of us a god is given as a pedagogue, not indeed of
the first rank, but of an inferior brand, of the number of those
whom Ovid calls ' gods of the lower order ' (dk plebe decs) ; yet
remember that our ancestors who believed this were so far Stoics,
for to every man and woman they gave a Genius or a Juno.
Later on we shall see whether the gods have leisure to attend
to private people's business."2 But before we pursue a side
issue, which we shall in any case have to examine at a later
point, let us look further at the central idea.
The thoughtful man finds himself, as we have seen, in a
polity of gods and men, a cosmos, well-ordered in its very
essence. " In truth," says Epictetus, " the whole scheme of
things (ru oXa) is badly managed, if Zeus does not take care
of his own citizens, so that they may be like himself, happy." :;
The first lesson of philosophy is that " there is a God and that
he provides for the whole scheme of things, and that it is not
possible to conceal from him our acts — no, nor our intentions
or thoughts."4 "God," says Seneca, "has a father's mind
towards the good, and loves them stoutly — ' let them,' he says,
'be exercised in work, pain and loss, that they may gather true
strength.' " It is because God is in love with the good (bonoruiu
amantissimus] that he gives them fortune to wrestle with. " There
is a match worth God's sight (par deo (lignum) — a brave man paired
with evil fortune — especially if he is himself the challenger."*
He goes on to show that what appear to be evils are not so ;
that misfortunes are at once for the advantage of those whom
1 Epict. D. i, 14. See Clem. Alex. Strom, vii, 37, for an interesting account of
how (f>0di>fi r) Oela 8vva/j.is, Ka.66.irfp <£ws, Sudew TT}V "fyvxrp.
2 Ep. no, I, pccdagogum dari deum. ;i D. iii, 24.
4 /?. ii, 14. 5 de providenlia, 2, 6-9.
6o THE STOICS
they befall and of men in general or the universe (universis),
" for which the gods care more than for individuals " ; that those
who receive them are glad to have them — " and deserve evil if
they are not " ; that misfortunes come by fate and befall men by
the same law by which they are good. " Always to be happy
and to go through life without a pang of the mind (sine morsu
animi) is to know only one half of Nature." l " The fates lead
us: what time remains for each of us, the hour of our birth
determined. Cause hangs upon cause. ... Of old it was
ordained whereat you should rejoice or weep ; and though the
lives of individuals seem marked out by a great variety, the sum
total comes to one and the same thing — perishable ourselves we
receive what shall perish." 2 " The good man's part is then to
r commit himself to fate — it is a great comfort to be carried along
with the universe. Whatever it is that has bidden us thus to
live and thus to die, by the same necessity it binds the gods.
An onward course that may not be stayed sweeps on human
and divine alike. The very founder and ruler of all things has
written fate, but he follows it : he ever obeys, he once com-
manded."3 To the good, God says, "To you I have given
blessings sure and enduring ; all your good I have set within
you. Endure ! herein you may even out-distance God ; he is
outside the endurance of evils and you above it.4 Above all I
have provided that none may hold you against your will ; the
door is open ; nothing I have made more easy than to die ; and
death is quick."5
Epictetus is just as clear that we have been given all we need.
"What says Zeus? Epictetus, had it been possible, I would
have made both your little body and your little property free,
and not exposed to hindrance. . . . Since I was not able to do
this, I have given you a little portion of us, this faculty of
pursuing or avoiding an object, the faculty of desire and
1 de Prov. 4, I.
a dt Prov. 5, 7. See Justin Martyr's criticism of Stoic fatalism, Apol. ii, 7. It
involves, he says, either God's identity with the world of change, or his implication
in all vice, or else that virtue and vice are nothing— consequences which are alike
contrary to every sane Zvvoia, to Xcryos and to voGs.
3 de Prov. 5, 8.
4 Plutarch, adv. Stoicos, 33 on this Stoic paradox of the equality of God and the
sage.
8 de Prov. 6, 5-7. This Stoic justification of suicide was repudiated alike by
Christians and Neo-Platonists.
THE HOLY SPIRIT WITHIN US 61
aversion and in a word the faculty of using the appearances of
things." l " Must my leg then be lamed ? Slave ! do you then
on account of one wretched leg find fault with the cosmos ?
Will you not willingly surrender it for the whole? . . . Will
you be vexed and discontented with what Zeus has set in order,
with what he and the Moirae, who were there spinning thy
nativity (yeveartv), ordained and appointed ? I mean as regards
your body ; for so far as concerns reason you are no worse than
the gods and no less."2
In language curiously suggestive of another school of thought,
Seneca speaks of God within us, of divine help given to human
effort. "God is near you, with you, within you. I say it,
Lucilius; a holy spirit sits within us (sacer intra nos spiritus
sedet), spectator of our evil and our good, and guardian. Even
as he is treated by us, he treats us. None is a good man
without God.3 Can any triumph over fortune unless helped
by him? He gives counsel, splendid and manly; in every
good man,
What god we know not, yet a god there dwells." 4
" The gods," he says elsewhere, " are not scornful, they are not
envious. They welcome us, and, as we ascend, they reach us
their hands. Are you surprised a man should go to the gods ?
God comes to men, nay ! nearer still ! he comes into men. No
mind (mens) is good without God. Divine seeds are sown in
human bodies," and will grow into likeness to their origin if <
rightly cultivated.5 It should be noted that the ascent is by
the route of frugality, temperance and fortitude. To this we
must return.
Man's part in life is to be the " spectator and interpreter "
of "God"6 as he is the "son of God";7 to attach himself to
God ; 8 to be his soldier, obey his signals, wait his call to
* D. i, i.
2 D. i, 12. See also D.\ i, 16 " We say ' Lord God ! how shall I not be anxions ? '
Fool, have you not hands, did not God make them for you ? Sit down now and pray
that your nose may not run."
3 Cf. Cicero's Stoic, N.D. ii, 66, 167, Nemo igitur vir magnus sine aliquo afflatu
divino unquamfuit.
4 Ep. 41, i, 2. (The line is from Virgil, Aen. viii, 352.) The rest of the letter
develops the idea of divine dependence. Sic animus magiius ac sacer et in hoc
demissus ut propius quidem divina nossfmus, conversatur quidem nobiscum sed
haret origini sue?, etc.
5 Ep. 73, 15, 16. 6 Epictetus, D. i, 6. 7 D. i, 9. »Z>. iv, i.
62 THE STOICS
retreat ; or (in the language of the Olympian festival) to " join
with him in the spectacle and the festival for a short time"
(fTVfjLTrofJ.'jreixrovTa CLVTW KOU wveopTCKTOVTa TT/OO? 6\iyov), to watch
the pomp and the panegyris, and then go away like a grateful
and modest man ; l to look up to God and say " use me hence-
forth for what thou will. I am of thy mind ; I am thine." 2
" If we had understanding, what else ought we to do, but,
together and severally, hymn God, and bless him (cvQrjfjLeiv*) and
tell of his benefits? Ought we not, in digging or ploughing or
eating, to sing this hymn to God ? ' Great is God who has
given us such tools with which to till the earth ; great is God
who has given us hands, the power of swallowing, stomachs, the
power to grow unconsciously, and to breathe while we sleep.'
. . . What else can I do, a lame old man, but hymn God? If
I were a nightingale, I would do the part of a nightingale . . .
but I am a rational creature, and I ought to hymn God ; this
is my proper work ; I do it ; nor will I quit my post so long as
it is given me ; and you I call upon to join in this same song."8
Herakles in all his toils had nothing dearer to him than God,
and " for that reason he was believed to be the son of God and
he was."4 "Clear away from your thoughts sadness, fear,
desire, envy, avarice, intemperance, etc. But it is not possible
to eject all these things, otherwise than by looking away to
God alone (717)09 povov TOV 6eov cnropXeTrovTa) by fixing your
affections on him only, by being dedicated to his commands." 5
This is " a peace not of Caesar's proclamation (for whence could
he proclaim jt?) but of God's— through reason."6
The man, who is thus in harmony with the Spermaticos,
Logos, who has " put his ' I ' and ' mine ' " 7 in the things of
the will, has no quarrel with anything external. He takes a
part in the affairs of men without aggression, greed or mean-
ness. He submits to what is laid upon him. His peace none
can take away, and none can make him angry. There is a
fine passage in Seneca's ninety-fifth letter, following his account
of right worship already quoted, in which he proceeds to de-
duce from this the right attitude to men. A sentence or two
1 D, iv, i.
* D. ii, 16 end, with a variant between <r6s eiju and has «>, the former of which,
Long says, is certain.
3 D. i, 16. Contrast the passage of Clement quoted on p. 286
'
HUMANITY 63
must suffice. " How little it is not to injure him, whom you
>ught to help! Great praise forsooth, that man should be
dnd to man ! Are we to bid a man to lend a hand to the
hipwrecked, point the way to the wanderer, share bread with
he hungry? . . . This fabric which you see, wherein are
divine and human, is one. We are members of a great body.
Mature has made us of one blood, has implanted in us mutual
ove, has made us for society (sociabiles). She is the author of
ustice and equity. . . . Let that verse be in your heart and on
'our lip.
Homo sum, humani nihil a me altenum puto" 1
Unhappy man ! will you ever love ? (ecquando amabis) " he
says to the irritable.2 A little before, he said, " Man, a sacred
thing to man, is slain for sport and merriment ; naked and un-
irmed he is led forth ; and the mere death of a man is
spectacle enough." 8 This was the Stoic's condemnation of the
gladiatorial shows. Nor was it only by words that Stoicism
worked for humanity, for it was Stoic lawyers who softened
and broadened and humanized Roman law.4
Yet Stoicism in Seneca and Epictetus had reached its
zenith. From now onward it declined. Marcus Aurelius, in
some ways the most attractive of all Stoics, was virtually the
ast. With the second century Stoicism ceased to be an
effective force in occupying and inspiring the whole mind of
men, though it is evident that it still influenced thinkers. Men
studied the Stoics and made fresh copies of their books, as
they did for a thousand years; they borrowed and adapted ;
but they were not Stoics. Stoicism had passed away as a
system first and then as a religion ; and for this we have to
find some reason or reasons.
It may well be true that the environment of the Stoics was not
lit for so high and pure a philosophy. The broad gulf between
the common Roman life and Stoic teaching is evident enough.
The intellectual force of the Roman world moreover was ebbing,
and Stoicism required more strength of mind and character
than was easily to be found. That a religion or a philosophy
1 Ep> 95. 5J-53- 2 & tra, Hi, 28, I.
s Rp. 95, 33, homo sacra res homini.
4 See Lecky, European Morals^ i, 294 S. : Maine, Ancient Law, p. 54 f.
64
THE STOICS
fails to hold its own is not a sure sign that it is unfit or untrue ;
it may only be premature, and it may be held that at another
stage of the world's history Stoicism or some similar scheme of
thought, — or, better perhaps, some central idea round which a
system and a life develop — may yet command the assent of
better men in a better age. At the same time, it is clear that
when Stoicism re-emerges,— if it does,— it will be another thing.
Already we have seen in Wordsworth, and (so far as I under-
stand him) in Hegel, a great informing conception which seems
to have clear affinity with the Spermaticos Logos of the Stoics.
The passage from the " Lines written above Tintern Abbey "
(quoted in the previous chapter) may be supplemented by
many from the " Prelude " and other poems to illustrate at
once the likeness and the difference between the forms the
thought has taken. It is, however, a certain condemnation of
a philosophic school when we have to admit that, whatever
its apprehension of truth, it failed to capture its own genera-
tion, either because of some error of presentment, or of some
fundamental misconception. When we find, moreover, that
there is not only a refusal of Stoicism but a reaction from it,
conscious or unconscious, we are forced to inquire into the
cause.
We shall perhaps be right in saying, to begin with, that
the doctrine of the Generative Reason, the Spermaticos Logos,
is not carried far enough. The immense practical need, which
the Stoic felt, of fortifying himself against the world, is not
unintelligible, but it led him into error. He employed his
doctrine of the Spermaticos Logos to give grandeur and
sufficiency to the individual, and then, for practical purposes,
cut him off from the world. He manned and provisioned the
fortress, and then shut it off from supplies and from relief. It
was a necessary thing to assert the value and dignity of the
mere individual man against the despotisms, but to isolate the
man from mankind and from the world of nature was a fatal
mistake. Of course, the Stoic did not do this in theory, for he
insisted on the polity of gods and men, the " one city," 1 and the
duty of the "citizen of the universe" (/coV/ouo?) — a man is not an
independent object ; like the foot in the body he is essenti-
1 See, by the way, Plutarch's banter on this " polity "—the stars its tribesmen, the
sun, doubtless, councillor, and Hesperus prytanis or astynotnus, adv. Sto. 34.
THE INDIVIDUAL WILL 65
ally a " part." l In practice, too, Stoics were human. Seneca
tells us to show clemency but not to feel pity, but we may be
sure that the human heart in him was far from observing
the distinction — he " talked more boldly than he lived," he
says — he was " among those whom grief conquered," 2 and,
though he goes on to show why he failed in this way, he is
endeared to us by his failure to be his own ideal Stoic. Yet
it remains that the chapters, with which his book on Clemency
ends, are a Stoic protest against pity, and they can be re-in-
forced by a good deal in Epictetus. If your friend is unhappy,
"remember that his unhappiness is his own fault, for God has
made all men to be happy, to be free from perturbations."8
Your friend has the remedy in his own hands; let him " purify
his dogmata." 4 Epictetus would try to heal a friend's sorrow
"but not by every means, for that would be to fight against God
($eoyuaxe*V)>" and would involve daily and nightly punishment to
himself5 — and "no one is nearer me than myself."6 In the
Manual the same thought is accentuated. " Say to yourself
1 It is the opinion about this thing that afflicts the man.' So far
as words go, do not hesitate to show sympathy, and even, if it so
happen, to lament with him. Take care, though, that you do
not lament internally also (//^ /ecu earwOev crreva^}" 1 We have
seen what he has to say of a lost child. In spite of all his
fine words, the Stoic really knows of nothing between the in-
dividual and the cosmos, for his practical teaching deadens, if
it does not kill, friendship and family love.
Everything with the Stoic turns on the individual. Ta eiri
orot, " the things in your own power," is the refrain of Epictetus'
teaching. All is thrown upon the individual will, upon "the
universal " working in the individual, according to Stoic theory,
"upon me" the plain man would say. If the gods, as Seneca
says, lend a hand to such as climb, the climber has to make his
own way by temperance and fortitude. The " holy spirit within
us" is after all hardly to be distinguished from conscience,
intellect and will.8 God, says Epictetus, ordains "if you wish
good, get it from yourself."9 Once the will (Trpoalpecris) is right,
1 Epict. D. ii, 5 ; M. Aurelius, viii, 34. 2 Ep. 63, 14.
8 D. iii, 24. 4 D. iv, i. 8 ib. 8 D. iv, 6. 7 M. 16.
8 Cf. Theophilus (the apologist of about 160 A.D.), ii, 4, who, though not
always to be trusted as to the Stoics, remarks this identification of God and
conscience. 9 D. i, 29.
5
66 THE STOICS
all is achieved.1 " You must exercise the will (OcXqa-at)— and
the thing is done, it is set right ; as on the other hand, only fall
a nodding and the thing is lost. For from within (aro>0ei/) comes
ruin, and from within comes help."2 "What do you want
with prayers?" asks Seneca, "make yourself happy."3 The
old Stoic paradox about the "folly" of mankind, and the
worthlessness of the efforts of all save the sage, was by now
chiefly remembered by their enemies.4
All this is due to the Stoic glorification of reason, as the
embodiment in man of the Spermaticos Logos. Though Nous
with the Stoics is not the pure dry light of reason, they tended
in practice to distinguish reason from the emotions or passions
(TrdOrj), in which they saw chiefly " perturbations," and they held
up the ideal of freedom from them in consequence (aTrdOeia)?
To be godlike, a man had to suppress his affections just as he
suppressed his own sensations of pain or hunger. Every human
instinct of paternal or conjugal love, of friendship, of sympathy,
of pity, was thus brought to the test of a Reason, which had
two catch-words by which to try them — the " Universe " and
"the things in your own power" — and the sentence was swift
and summary enough. They did not realize that for most men
— and probably it is truest of the best men — Life moves onward
with all its tender and gracious instincts, while Analysis limps
behind. The experiment of testing affection and instinct by
reason has often been tried, and it succeeds only where the
reason is willing to be a constitutional monarch, so to say,
instead of the despot responsible only to the vague concept of
the Universe, whom the Stoics wished to enthrone. They
talked of living according to Nature, but they were a great deal
too quick in deciding what was Nature. If the centuries have
taught us anything, it is to give Nature more time, more study
and more respect than even yet we do. There are words
1 Cf. D. i, I ; iii, 19 ; iv, 4 ; iv, 12, and very many other passages.
2 D. iv, 9, end. 3 Ep. 31, 5.
4 Plutarch, Progress in Virtue, c. 2, 76 A, on the absurdity of there being no
difference between Plato and Meletus. Cf. also de repugn. Stoic, u, 1037 D.
8 " Unconditional eradication," says Zeller, Eclectics, p. 226. " I do not hold with
those who hymn the savage and hard Apathy (rty Aypiov Kal aK\ypa.v)" wrote
Plutarch. Cons, ad Apoll. 3, 102 C. See Clem. Alex. Str. ii, no, on ird8i) as
produced by the agency of spirits, and note his talk of Christian Apathy. Str. vi,
71-76.
SIN AND SALVATION 67
at the beginning of the thirteenth book of the "Prelude"
wiser and truer than anything the Stoics had to say of her
with their " excessive zeal " and their " quick turns of intellect."
Carried away by their theories (none, we must remember as
we criticize them, without some ground in experience and
observation), the Stoics made solitude in the heart and called it ^
peace. The price was too high ; mankind would not pay it,
and sought a religion elsewhere that had a place for a man's
children.
Again, in their contempt for the passions the Stoics under-
estimated their strength. How strong the passions are, no man
can guess for another, even if he can be sure how strong his
own are. Perhaps the Stoics could subordinate their passions
to their reason ; — ancient critics kept sharp eyes on them and
said they were not always successful.1 But there is no question
that for the mass of men, the Stoic account of reason is absurd.
" I see another law in my members," said a contemporary of
Seneca's, " warring against the law of my mind and bringing me
into captivity." Other men felt the same and sought deliverance
in the sacraments of all the religions. That Salvation was not
from within, was the testimony of every man who underwent
the taurobolium. So far as such things can be, it is established
by the witness of every religious mind that, whether the feeling >
is just or not, the feeling is invincible that the will is inadequate |
and that religion begins only when the Stoic's ideal of saving j
oneself by one's own resolve and effort is finally abandoned.
Whether this will permanently be true is another question, <
probably for us unprofitable. The ancient world, at any rate, '
and in general the modern "world, have pronounced against Stoic
Psychology — it was too quick, too superficial. The Stoics did
not allow for the sense of Sin.2 They^recognized the presence
of evil in the world ; they felt that " it has its seat within us, in
our inward part " ; 3 and they remark the effect of evil in the
blunting of the faculties — let the guilty, says Persius, " see virtue,
and pine that they have lost her forever." * While Seneca finds
himself " growing better and becoming changed," he still feels
there may be much more needing amendment.5 He often
1 Justin Martyr (ApoL ii, 8) praises Stoic morality and speaks of Stoics who
suffered for it.
2 Cf. Epict. D. iii, 25. 3 Sen. Ep. 50, 4.
4 Persius, iii, 38. 5 Ep. 6, i.
68 THE STOICS
expresses dissatisfaction with himself.1 But the deeper realiza-
tion of weakness and failure did not come to the Stoics, and
what help their teaching of strenuous endeavour could have
brought to men stricken with the consciousness of broken will-
power, it is hard to see. " Filthy Natta," according to Persius,
was "benumbed by vice" (stupet hie vitio)? "When a man is
hardened like a stone (aTroXiOwOjj), how shall we be able to deal
with him by argument?" asks Epictetus, arguing against the
Academics, who "opposed evident truths"— what are we to do
with necrosis of the soul?3 But the Stoics really gave more
thought to fancies of the sage's equality with God and occasional
superiority — so confident were they in the powers of the
individual human mind. Plutarch, indeed, forces home upon
them as a deduction from their doctrine of " the common nature "
of gods and men the consequence that sin is not contrary to the
Logos of Zeus — and yet they say God punishes sin.4
Yet even the individual, much as they strove to exalt his <
capabilities, was in the end cheapened in his own eyes.5 As
men have deepened their self-consciousness, they have yielded
to an instinctive craving for the immortality of the soul.6
Whether savages feel this or not, it is needless to argue. No
religion apart from Buddhism has permanently held men which
had no hopes of immortality ; and how far the corruptions of
Buddhism have modified its rigour for common people, it is not
easy to say. In one form or another, in spite of a terrible
want of evidence, men have clung to eternal life. The Stoics
themselves used this consensus of opinion as evidence for the
truth of the belief.7 " It pleased me," writes Seneca, " to inquire
of the eternity of souls (de ceternitate animaruni] — nay ! to
believe in it. I surrendered myself to that great hope." 8
1 e.g. Ep. 57, 3, he is not even homo tolerabilis. On the bondage of the soul
within the body, see Ep. 65, 21-23.
2 Cf. Seneca, Ep. 53, 7, 8 — quo quis peius habet minus sentit. " The worse one
is, the less he notices it."
3 D. i, 5-
•* Plut. de repugn. Stoic. 34, 1050 C. Cf. Tert. de exh. castit. 2.
6 Cf. Plutarch, non suaviter, 1104 F. KaraQpovovvTes eavruv u>s f^^pwv are—of
the Epicureans.
6 Cf. Plutarch, non suaviter, 1 104 C. TT?S dt5t6r7?ros <?\7rJs KO.\ 6 7r60os TOV efrai
vdvrwv tpwrwv 7r/3c<r/9i/raTos &v Ko.1 ptyiffTos. Cf. ib, 1093 A.
7 Sen. Ep. 1 17, 6.
8 Ep. 102, 2.
IMMORTALITY 69
" How natural it is ! " he says, " the human mind is a great and
generous thing ; it will have no bounds set to it unless they are
shared by God." 1 " When the day shall come, which shall
part this mixture of divine and human, here, where I found it,
I will leave my body, myself I will give back to the gods.
Even now I am not without them." He finds in our birth into
this world an analogy of the soul passing into another world,
and in language of beauty and sympathy he pictures the " birth-
day of the eternal," the revelation of nature's secrets, a world of
light and more light. " This thought suffers nothing sordid to
dwell in the mind, nothing mean, nothing cruel. It tells us
that the gods see all, bids us win their approval, prepare for
them, and set eternity before us." 2 Beautiful words that wake
emotion yet!
But is it clear that it is eternity after all ? In the Consola-
tion which Seneca wrote for Marcia, after speaking of the future
life of her son, he passed at last to the Stoic doctrine of the
first conflagration, and described the destruction of the present
scheme of things that it may begin anew. " Then we also,
happy souls who have been assigned to eternity (felices animce
et (zterna sortita], when God shall see fit to reconstruct the
universe, when all things pass (labentibus\ we too, a little
element in a great catastrophe, shall be resolved into our
icient elements. Happy is your son, Marcia, who already
lows this." 3 Elsewhere he is still less certain. " Why am I
jted for desire of him, who is either happy or non-existent ?
tt aut beatus aut nullus est)" 4
That in later years, in his letters to Lucilius, Seneca should
in to belief in immortality, is natural enough. Epictetus'
language, with some fluctuations, leans in the other direction.
" When God does not supply what is necessary, he is sounding
the signal for retreat — he has opened the door and says to you,
Come ! But whither ? To nothing terrible, but whence you
came, to the dear and kin [both neuters], the elements. What
in you was fire, shall go to fire, earth to earth, spirit to spirit
[perhaps, breath ocrov Trvev/nariov e<V Tri/eu/xaTfoy], water to water;
1 Ep. 1 02, 21 ; the following passages are from the same letter. Note the Stoic
significance of naturale,
2 Compare Cons, ad Marc. 25, I, integer ille, etc.
3 The last words of the " Consolation." Plutarch on resolution into irup voepov,
non suaviter, 1 107 B. 4 ad Polyb. 9, 3.
;o THE STOICS
no Hades, nor Acheron, nor Cocytus, nor Pyriphlegethon ; but
all things full of gods and daemons. When a man has such
things to think on, and sees sun and moon and stars, and enjoys
earth and sea, he is not solitary or even helpless." J " This is
death, a greater change, not from what now is into what is not,
but into what now is not. Then shall I no longer be? You
will be, but something else, of which now the cosmos has no
need. For you began to be (eyeVou), not when you wished, but
when the cosmos had need." 2
On the whole the Stoic is in his way right, for the desire
for immortality goes with the instincts he rejected — it is nothing
without the affections and human love.3 But once more logic
failed, and the obscure grave witnesses to man's instinctive
rejection of Stoicism, with its simple inscription taurobolio in
(sternum renatus.
Lastly we come to the gods themselves, and here a double
question meets us. Neither on the plurality nor the personality
of the divine does Stoicism give a certain note. In the passages
already quoted it will have been noticed how interchangeably
"God," "the gods" and "Zeus" have been used. It is even a
question whether " God " is not an identity with fate, providence,
Nature and the Universe.4 Seneca, as we have seen, dismisses
the theory of daemons or genii rather abruptly — " that is what
some think." Epictetus definitely accepts them, so far as any-
thing here is definite, and with them, or in them, the ancestral
gods. Seneca, as we have seen, is contemptuous of popular
ritual and superstition. Epictetus inculcates that " as to piety
about the gods, the chief thing is to have right opinions about
them," but, he concludes, " to make libations and to sacrifice
according to the custom of our fathers, purely and not meanly,
nor carelessly, nor scantily, nor above our ability, is a thing
which belongs to all to do.5 "Why do you," he asks, "act the
part of a Jew, when you are a Greek ? "6 He also accepts the
1 D. iii, 13. Plutarch (nan snaviter, 1106 E) says Cocytus, etc., are not the chief
terror but TJ TOV AIT? tvros dretXr}.
3 D. iii, 24.
1 See Plutarch on this, non suaviter, 1 105 E. 4 Seneca, N. Q. ii, 45.
5 Manual, 31. Plutarch, de repugn. Stoic. 6, 1034 B, C, remarks on Stoic incon-
sistency in accepting popular religious usages.
8 D. ii, 9. In D. iv, 7, he refers to " Galilaeans," so that it is quite possible he has
Christians in view here.
THE QUESTION OF THE GODS 71
fact of divination.1 Indeed, aside perhaps from conspicuous
extravagances, the popular religion suffices. Without enthusiasm
and without clear belief, the Stoic may take part in the ordinary
round of the cults. If he did not believe himself, he pointed
out a way to the reflective polytheist by which he could reconcile
his traditional faith with philosophy — the many gods were like
ourselves manifestations of the Spermaticos Logos ; and he
could accept tolerantly the ordinary theory of daemons, for
Chrysippus even raised the question whether such things as the
disasters that befall good men are due to negligence on the part
of Providence, or to evil daemons in charge of some things.2
While for himself the Stoic had the strength of mind to shake
off superstition, the common people, and even the weaker
brethren of the Stoic school, remained saddled with polytheism
and all its terrors and follies. Of this compromise Seneca is
guiltless.3 It was difficult to cut the connexion with Greek
tradition — how difficult, we see in Plutarch's case. The Stoics,
however, fell between two stools, for they had not enough
feeling for the past to satisfy the pious and patriotic, nor the
resolution to be done with it. After all, more help was to be
had from Lucretius than from Epictetus in ridding the mind
of the paralysis of polytheism.
But the same instinct that made men demand immortality
for themselves, a feeling, dim but strong, of the value of
personality and of love, compelled them to seek personality in
the divine. Here the Stoic had to halt, for after all it is a thing
;yond the power of reason to demonstrate, and he could not
;re allege, as he liked, that the facts stare one in the face. So,
rith other thinkers, impressed at once by the want of evidence,
id impelled by the demand for some available terms, he
ivered between a clear statement of his own uncertainty, and
use of popular names. "Zeus" had long before been
lopted by Cleanthes in his famous hymn, but this was an
lement of weakness ; for the wall-paintings in every great house
gave another account of Zeus, which belied every attribute with
which the Stoics credited him. The apologists and the Stoics
1 M. 32 ; D. iii, 22.
2 Plut. de repugn. Stoic. 37, 1051 C.
3Tertullian, Apol. 12, idem estis qui Senecam aliqucm pluribus et antaHoribus de
vestra superstitione perorantem reprehendistis.
72 THE STOICS
explained the legends by the use of allegory, but, as Plato says,
children cannot distinguish between what is and what is not
allegory— nor did the common people. The finer religious
tempers demanded something firmer and more real than
allegory. They wanted God or Gods, immortal and eternal ;
and at best the Stoic gods were to " melt like wax or tin " in
their final conflagration, while Zeus too, into whom they were
to be resolved, would thereby undergo change, and therefore
himself also prove perishable.1
" I put myself in the hands of a Stoic," writes Justin Martyr,
" and I stayed a long time with him, but when I got no further
in the matter of God — for he did not know himself and he used to
say this knowledge was not necessary — I left him."2 Other
men did not, like Justin, pursue their philosophic studies, and
when they found that, while the Stoic's sense of truth would not
let him ascribe personality to God, all round there were definite
and authoritative voices which left the matter in no doubt, they
made a quick choice. What authority means to a man in such a
difficulty, we know only too well.
The Stoics in some measure felt their weakness here. When
they tell us to follow God, to obey God, to look to God, to live
as God's sons, and leave us not altogether clear what they mean
by God, their teaching is not very helpful, for it is hard to
follow or look to a vaguely grasped conception. They realized *
that some more definite example was needed. " We ought to
choose some good man," writes Seneca, " and always have him
before our eyes that we may live as if he watched us, and do <
everything as if he saw."3 The idea came from Epicurus.
" Do everything, said he, as if Epicurus saw. It is without
doubt a good thing to have set a guard over oneself, to whom
you may look, whom you may feel present in your thoughts." 4
" Wherever I am, I am consorting with the best men. To them,
in whatever spot, in whatever age they were, I send my mind."6
He recommends Cato, Laelius, Socrates, Zeno. Epictetus has
the same advice. What would Socrates do ? is the canon he
recommends.6 "Though you are not yet a Socrates, you
1 See Plutarch, de comm. not. adv. Stoicos, c. 31, and de def. orac. 420 A, c. 19 ;
Justin M. Apol. ii, 7.
2 Dial. c. Tryphone, 2.
» Sen. Ep.ii, 8. « Ep, ^ $ . ^ ^ cf 2J
M. 33, rl av tTTolrjffcv tv TOVTQ 2wKpd.Ti)s $
PLUTARCH'S CRITICISM 73
ought to live as one who wishes to be a Socrates." 1 " Go
away to Socrates and see him . . . think what a victory he felt
he won over himself." 2 Comte in a later day gave somewhat
similar advice. It seems to show that we cannot do well with-
out some sort of personality in which to rest ourselves.
When once this central uncertainty in Stoicism appeared, all
the fine and true words the Stoics spoke of Providence lost
their meaning for ordinary men who thought quickly. The re-
ligious teachers of the day laid hold of the old paradoxes of
the school and with them demolished the Stoic Providence.
" Chrysippus," says Plutarch, "neither professes himself, nor
any one of his acquaintances and teachers, to be good (<nrovSalov\
What then do they think of others, but precisely what they say
—that all men are insane, fools, unholy, impious, transgressors,
that they reach the very acme of misery and of all wretched-
ness? And then they say that it is by Providence that our
concerns are ordered — and we so wretched! If the Gods were
to change their minds and wish to hurt us, to do us evil, to
overthrow and utterly crush us, they could not put us in a worse
condition ; for Chrysippus demonstrates that life can admit no
greater degree either of misery or .unhappiness." 3 Of course,
this attack is unfair, but it shows how men felt. They de-
manded to know how they stood with the gods — were the gods
many or one ? were they persons or natural laws 4 or even
natural objects ? did they care for mankind ? for the individual
man ? This demand was edged by exactly the same experience
of life which made Stoicism so needful and so welcome to its
followers. The pressure of the empire and the terrors of living
drove some to philosophy and many more to the gods
wnr imfjaf^VT .j\nA t^ g rrtlllrl nr>
It is easy, but not so profitable as it seems, to fihdfauTts
in the religion of other men. Their generation rejected the
Stoics, but they may not have been right. If the Stoics were
too hasty in making reason into a despot to rule over the
1 M. 50.
2 D. ii, 1 8. The tone of Tertullian, eg. in de Anima, I, on the Ph<zdoy suggests
that Socrates may have been over-preached. What too (ib. 6) of barbarians and
their souls, who have no " prison of Socrates," etc?
3 Plut. de Stoic, repugnantiis, 31, 1048 E. Cf. de comm. not. 33.
4 Plutarch, A mat. 13, 757 C. opgs STJTTOI; rov viro\o.^d.vovTa. fivdov
dy ets irdOr) /cat Suvd^ieu *al dperds diaypd<f>u/j.fv HKOLGTOV
74 THE STOICS
emotions, their contemporaries were no less hasty in deciding,^
on the evidence of emotions and desires, that there were gods,
and these the gods of their fathers, because they wished for
inward peace and could find it nowhere else. The Stoics
I were at least more honest with themselves, and though their
school passed away, their memory remained and kept the
respect of men who differed from them, but realized that they /
had stood for truth.
CHAPTER III
PLUTARCH
STOICISM as a system did not capture the ancient world,
and even upon individuals it did not retain an undivided \
hold. To pronounce with its admirers to-day that it
failed because the world was not worthy of it, would be a
judgment, neither quite false nor altogether true, but at best not
very illuminative. Men are said to be slow in taking in new
thoughts, and yet it is equally true that somewhere in nearly
every man there is something that responds to ideas, and even to
theories ; but if these on longer acquaintance fail to harmonize
with the deeper instincts within him, they alarm and annoy, and
the response comes in the form of re-action.
In modern times, we have seen the mind of a great people
surrendered for a while to theorists and idealists. The thinking
part of the French nation was carried away by the inspiration
of Rousseau into all sorts of experiments at putting into hasty
operation the principles and ideas they had more or less learnt
from the master. Even theories extemporized on the moment,
it was hoped, might be made the foundations of a new and ideal
social fabric. The absurdities of the old religion yielded place
to Reason — embodied symbolically for the hour in the person
of Mme Momoro — afterwards, more vaguely, in Robespierre's
Supreme Being, who really came from Rousseau. And then
— " avec ton Etre Supreme tu commences a m'embeter," said
Billaud to Robespierre himself. Within a generation Chateau-
briand, de Maistre, Bonald, and de la Mennais were busy re-
founding the Christian faith. "The rites of Christianity,"
wrote Chateaubriand, " are in the highest degree moral, if for no
other reason than that they have been practised by our fathers,
that our mothers have watched over our cradles as Christian
women, that the Christian religion has chanted its psalms over
our parents' coffins and invoked peace upon them in their
graves."
75
76 PLUTARCH
Alongside of this let us set a sentence or two of Plutarch,
" Our father then, addressing Pemptides by name, said, ' You
seem to me, Pemptides, to be handling a very big matter and a
risky one — or rather, you are discussing what should not be
discussed at all (ra aKivrjra. Kiveiv), when you question the
opinion we hold about the gods, and ask reason and demon-
stration for everything. For the ancient and ancestral faith is
enough (apKel yap y Trdrpios KOI TraXcua Tr/cm?), and no clearer
proof could be found than itself —
Not though man's wisdom scale the heights of thought —
but it is a common home and an established foundation for all
piety ; and if in one point its stable and traditional character
(TO /3e/3aiov avTrjs KOI vevojuLKT/mevov) be shaken and disturbed, it
will be undermined and no one will trust it. ... If you demand
proof about each of the ancient gods, laying hands on everything
sacred and bringing your sophistry to play on every altar, you
will leave nothing free from quibble and cross-examination
(ovSev a<rvKo<j>dvTt]TOv ovS' d/3a<rdvi(TTOv). . . . Others will say that
Aphrodite is desire and Hermes reason, the Muses crafts and
Athene thought. Do you see, then, the abyss of atheism that
lies at our feet, if we resolve each of the gods into a passion or
a force or a virtue ? ' " 1
Such an utterance is unmistakeable — it means a conserva- <
tive re-action, and in another place we find its justification in
religious emotion. " Nothing gives us more joy than what we
see and do ourselves in divine service, when we carry the
emblems, or join in the sacred dance, or stand by at the sacri-
fice or initiation. ... It is when the soul most believes and
perceives that the god is present, that she most puts from her
pain and fear and anxiety, and gives herself up to joy, yes, even
as far as intoxication and laughter and merriment. ... In
sacred processions and sacrifices not only the old man and the
old woman, nor the poor and lowly, but
The thick-legged drudge that sways her at the mill,
and household slaves and hirelings are uplifted by joy and
triumph. Rich men and kings have always their own banquets
and feasts— but the feasts in the temples and at initiations,
when men seem to touch the divine most nearly in their thought,
13, 756 A, D ; 757 B. The quotation is from Euripides, Baccha, 203.
CONTINUITY IN RELIGION 77
with honour and worship, have a pleasure and a charm far more
exceeding. And in this no man shares who has renounced
belief in Providence. For it is not abundance of wine, nor the
roasting of meat, that gives the joy in the festivals, but also a
good hope, and a belief that the god is present and gracious,
and accepts what is being done with a friendly mind." l
One of Chateaubriand's critics says that his plea could be
advanced on behalf of any religion ; and Plutarch had already
made it on behalf of his own. He looks past the Stoics, and
he finds in memory and association arguments that outweigh
anything they can say. The Spermaticos Logos was a m&re «
£tre Supreme — a sublime conception perhaps, but it had no
appeal to emotion, it waked no memories, it touched no chord
of personal association. We live so largely by instinct, memory
and association, that anything that threatens them seems to
strike at our life,
So was it when my life began ;
So is it now I am a man
So be it when I shall grow old,
Or let me die !
The Child is father of the Man ;
And I could wish my days to be
Bound each to each by natural piety.
Some such thought is native to every heart, and the man who
does not cling to his own past seems wanting in something
essentially human. The gods were part of the past of the
ancient world, and if Reason took them away, what was left?
There was so much, too, that Reason could not grasp ; so much
to be learnt in ritual and in mystery that to the merely thinking
mind had no meaning, — that must be received. Reason was <
invoked so lightly, and applied so carelessly and harshly, that
it could take no account of the tender things of the heart.
Reason destroyed but did not create, questioned without •
answering, and left life without sanction or communion. It was
too often a mere affair of cleverness. It had its use and place,
no doubt, in correcting extravagances of belief, but it was by no
means the sole authority in man's life, and its function was
essentially to be the handmaid of religion. "We must take
1 Non snaviter, 21, noi E — 1102 A.
78 PLUTARCH
Reason from philosophy to be our mystagogue and then in holy
reverence consider each several word and act of worship." 1
Plutarch is our representative man in this revival of
religion, and some survey of his life and environment will
enable us to enter more fully into his thought, and through him
to understand better the beginnings of a great religious move-
ment, of which students too often have lost sight.
For centuries the great men of Greek letters were natives of
every region of the eastern Mediterranean except Greece, and
Plutarch stands alone in later literature a Hellen of the mother-
land — Greek by blood, birth, home and instinct, proud of his
race and his land, of their history, their art and their literature.
When we speak of the influence of the past, it is well to
remember to how great a past this man looked back, and from
what a present. Long years of faction and war, as he himself
says, had depopulated Greece, and the whole land could hardly
furnish now the three thousand hoplites that four centuries
before Megara alone had sent to Platsea. In regions where
oracles of note had been, they were no more ; their existence
would but have emphasized the solitude — what good would an
oracle be at Tegyra, or about Ptoum, where in a day's journey
you might perhaps come on a solitary shepherd ? 2 It was not
only that wars and faction fights had wasted the life of the
Greek people, but with the opening of the far East by
Alexander, and the development of the West under Roman
rule, Commerce had shifted its centres, and the Greeks had
left their old homes for new regions. Still keen on money,
philosophy and art, they thronged Alexandria, Antioch and
Rome, and a thousand other cities. The Petrie papyri have
revealed a new feature of this emigration, for the wills of the
settlers often mention the names of their wives, and these were
Greek women and not Egyptian, as the names of their fathers
and homes prove.3 Julius Caesar had restored Corinth a
century after Mummius destroyed it, and Athens was still as
she had been and was to be for centuries, the resort of every
one who loved philosophy and literature.4 These were the two
1 de hide, 68, 378 A. 2 de de^
3 Mahaffy, Silver Age of Greek World, p. 45.
4 Horace is the best known of Athenian students. The delightful letters of
Synesius show the hold Athens still retained upon a very changed world in 400 A.D.
HIS FAMILY CIRCLE 79
cities of Greece ; the rest were reminders of what had been. In
one of these forsaken places Plutarch was born, and there he
was content to live and die, a citizen and a magistrate of
Chaeronea in Bceotia.
His family was an old one, long associated with Chaeronea.
From childhood his life was rooted in the past by the most
natural and delightful of all connexions. His great-grand-
father, Nicarchus, used to tell how his fellow-citizens were
commandeered to carry wheat on their own backs down to
Anticyra for Antony's fleet — and were quickened up with the
whip as they went ; and " then when they had taken one con-
signment so, and the second was already done up into loads and
ready, the news came that Antony was defeated, and that
saved the city ; for at once Antony's agents and soldiers fled,
and they divided the grain among themselves." l The grand-
father, Lamprias, lived long and saw the grandson a grown
man. He appears often in Plutarch's Table Talk — a bright old
man and a lively talker — like incense, he said, he was best when
warmed up.2 He thought poorly of the Jews for not eating
pork — a most righteous dish, he said.8 He had tales of his own
about Antony, picked up long ago from one Philotas, who had
been a medical student in Alexandria and a friend of one of the
royal cooks, and eventually medical attendant to a son of
Antony's by Fulvia.4 Plutarch's father was a quiet, sensible
man, who maintained the practice of sacrificing,6 kept good
horses,6 knew his Homer, and had something of his son's
curious interest in odd problems. It is perhaps an accident
that Plutarch never mentions his name, but, though he often
speaks of him, it is always of "my father" or "our father" —
the lifelong and instinctive habit. There were also two
brothers. The witty and amiable Lamprias loved laughter
and was an expert in dancing — a useful man to put things
right when the dance went with more spirit than music.7 Of
Timon we hear less, but Plutarch sets Timon's goodness of
heart among the very best gifts Fortune has sent him.8 He
emphasizes the bond that brothers have in the family sacrifices,
1 Life of Antony, 68. 2 Symp. i, 5, I. 8 Symp. iv, 4, 4.
4 v. Ant. 28. 6 Symp. iii, 7, I. 6 Symp. ii, 8, I.
7 Symp. viii, 6, 5, v'/Spto-Trjs Ssv Kal 0iXo7Aws 0y<r«. Symp. ix, 15, I.
8 de fraterno amore, 1 6, 487 E. Volkmann, Plutarch, i, 24, suggests he was the
Timon whose wife Pliny defended on one occasion, Epp. i, 5, 5.
80 PLUTARCH
ancestral rites, the common home and the common grave.1
That Plutarch always had friends, men of kindly nature and
intelligence, and some of them eminent, is not surprising.
Other human relationships, to be mentioned hereafter, com-
pleted his circle. He was born, and grew up, and lived, in a
network of love and sympathy, the record of which is in all his
books.
Plutarch was born about the year 50 A.D., and, when Nero
went on tour through Greece in 66 A.D., he was a student at
Athens under Ammonius.2 He recalls that among his fellow-
students was a descendant of Themistocles, who bore his
ancestor's name and still enjoyed the honours granted to him
and his posterity at Magnesia.3 Ammonius, whom he honoured
and quoted throughout life, was a Platonist 4 much interested in
Mathematics.5 He was a serious and kindly teacher with a
wide range of interests, not all speculative. Plutarch records a
discussion of dancing by "the good Ammonius."6 He was
thrice " General " at Athens,7 and had at any rate once the
experience of an excited mob shouting for him in the street,
while he supped with his friends indoors.
Plutarch had many interests in Athens, in its literature, its
philosophy and its ancient history — in its relics, too, for he
speaks of memorials of Phocion and Demosthenes still extant.
But he lingers especially over the wonders of Pericles and
Phidias, " still fresh and new and untouched by time, as if a
spirit of eternal youth, a soul that was ageless, were in the work
of the artist" 8 Athens was a conservative place, on the whole,
and a great resort for strangers. The Athenian love of talk is
noticed by Luke with a touch of satire, and Dio Chrysostom
admitted that the Athenians fell short of the glory of their city
and their ancestors.9 Yet men loved Athens.10 Aulus Gellius in
memory of his years there, called his book of collections Attic
Nights, and here and there he speaks of student life—" It was
from ^Egina to Piraeus that some of us who were fellow-
students, Greeks and Romans, were crossing in the same ship.
1 defrat. am. J, 481 D. « de E. I, 385 B. * ». Them. 32, end.
4 Zeller, Eclectics, 334.
5 <** £• 17, 391 E. Imagine the joys of a Euclid, says Plutarch, in non suaviter,
ii, 1093 E.
Rhodiaca, Or. 31, 117. 10 Cf> the NiRrinuSt
HIS TRAVELS Si
It was night. The sea was calm. It was summertime and the
sky was clear and still. So we were sitting on the poop, all of
us together, with our eyes upon the shining stars," and fell to
talking about their names.1
When his student days were over, Plutarch saw something
of the world. He alludes to a visit to Alexandria,2 but, though
he was interested in Egyptian religion, as we shall see, he does
not speak of travels in the country. He must have known
European Greece well, but he had little knowledge, it seems, of
Asia Minor and little interest in it. He went once on official
business for his city to the pro-consul of Illyricum — and had a
useful lesson from his father who told him to say " We " in his
report, though his appointed colleague had failed to go with
him.3 He twice went to Italy in the reigns of Vespasian and
Domitian, and he seems to have stayed for some time in Rome,
making friends in high places and giving lectures. Of the
great Latin writers of his day he mentions none, nor is he
mentioned by them. But he tells with pride how once Arulenus
Rusticus had a letter from Domitian brought him by a soldier
in the middle of one of these lectures and kept it unopened till
the end.4 The lectures were given in Greek. He confesses to
his friend Sossius Senecio that, owing to the pressure of political
business and the number of people who came about him for
philosophy, when he was in Rome, it was late indeed in life that
he attempted to learn Latin ; and when he read Latin, it was
the general sense of a passage that helped him to the meaning
of the words. The niceties of the language he could not
attempt, he says, though it would have been a graceful and
pleasant thing for one of more leisure and fewer years.5 That
this confession is a true one is shown by the scanty use he makes
of Roman books in his biographies, by his want of acquaintance
with Latin literature, poetry and philosophy, and by blunders in
detail noted by his critics. Sine patris is a poor attempt at
Latin grammar for a man of his learning, and in his life of
Lucullus he has turned the streets of Rome into villages through
inattention to the various meanings of vicus?
1 Gellius, N.A. ii, 21, I, vos opici, says Gellius to his friends — Philistines.
2 Symp. v, 5, i. 3 Polit. prccc. 20, 816 D. 4 de curiositatc, 15.
5 Demosthenes , 2.
6 See Volkmann, i, 35, 36 ; Rom. Qu. 103 ; Lucullus, 37, end.
6
82
PLUTARCH
But, as he says, he was a citizen of a small town, and he did
not wish to make it smaller,1 and he went back to Chaeronea
and obscurity. A city he held to be an organism like a living
being,2 and he never cared for a man on whom the claims of his
city sat loosely— as they did on the Stoics.3 The world was
full of Greek philosophers and rhetoricians, lecturing and
declaiming, to their great profit and glory, but Plutarch was
content to stay at home, to be magistrate and priest. If men
laughed to see him inspecting the measurement of tiles and the
carrying of cement and stones — " it is not for myself, I say, that
I am doing this but for my native-place." 4 This was when he
was Telearch — an office once held by Epameinondas, as he
liked to remember. Pliny's letters show that this official
inspection of municipal building operations by honest and
capable men was terribly needed. But Plutarch rose to higher
dignities, and as Archon Eponymos he had to preside over
feasts and sacrifices.5 He was also a Bceotarch. The Roman
Empire did not leave much political activity even to the free
cities, but Plutarch loyally accepted the new era as from God,
and found in it many blessings of peace and quiet, and some
opportunities still of serving his city. He held a priesthood at
Delphi, with some charge over the oracle and a stewardship at
the Pythian games. He loved Delphi, and its shrine and
antiquities,6 and made the temple the scene of some of his best
dialogues. " The kind Apollo (o 0/Xo?)," he says, " seems to
heal the questions of life, and to resolve them, by the rules he
gives to those who ask ; but the questions of thought he
himself suggests to the philosophic temperament, waking in the
soul an appetite that will lead it to truth." 7
He does not seem to have gained much public renown, but
he did not seek it. The fame in his day was for the men of
rhetoric, and he was a man of letters. If he gave his time to
municipal duties, he must have spent the greater part of his days
in reading and writing. He says that a biographer needs a
great many books and that as a rule many of them will not be
readily accessible— to have the abundance he requires, he ought
really to be in some " famous city where learning is loved and
1 Demosthenes, 2. * dc sera, 15, 559 A. « de Stoic, rep. 2, 1033 B, C.
«/W. Pmc. 15, 811 C. *Sympt ii} I0j , . vi> 8> lm
8 Reference to Polemo's hand-book to them, Symp. v, 2, 675 B. 7 de E. 384 F.
HIS STYLE 83
men are many " ; though, he is careful to say, a man may be
happy and upright in a town that is " inglorious and humble." l
He must have read very widely, and he probably made
good use of his stay in Rome. In philosophy and literature it is
quite probable that he used hand-books of extracts, though
this must not imply that he did not go to the original works of
the greater writers. But his main interest lay in memoirs and
travels. He had an instinct for all that was characteristic, or
curious, or out-of-the-way ; and all sorts of casual references
show how such things attached themselves to his memory.
Discursive in his reading, as most men of letters seem to be,
with a quick eye for the animated scene, the striking figure, the
strange occurrence, he read, one feels, for enjoyment — he would
add, no doubt, for his own moral profit ; indeed he says that he
began his Biographies for the advantage of others and found
them to be much to his own.2 He was of course an inveterate
moralist ; but unlike others of the class, he never forgets the
things that have given him pleasure. They crowd his pages in
genial reminiscence and apt allusion. There is always the quiet
and leisurely air of one who has seen and has enjoyed, and sees
and enjoys again as he writes. It is this that has made his
Biographies live. They may at times exasperate the modern
historian, for he is not very systematic — delightful writers rarely
are. He rambles as he likes and avowedly passes the great
things by and treasures the little and characteristic. " I am not
writing histories but lives," he says, " and it is not necessarily in
the famous action that a man's excellence or failure is revealed.
But some little thing — a word or a jest — may often show
character better than a battle with its ten thousand slain." 3
But, after all, it is the characteristic rather than the character
that interests him. He is not among the greatest who have
drawn men, for he lacks the mind and patience to go far below
the surface to find the key to the whole nature. When he has
shown us one side of the hero, he will present another and a very
different one, and leave us to reconcile them if we can. The con-
tradictions remain contradictions, and he wanders pleasantly on.
The Lives of Pericles and Themistocles, for instance, are little
more than mere collectanea from sources widely discrepant,
and often quite worthless. Of the mind of Pericles he had little
1 Demosthenes, 2; and I. ^'limoleon, prcf. 3 Alexander, i.
84 PLUTARCH
conception ; he gathered up and pleasantly told what he had read
in books. He had too little of the critical instinct and took
things too easily to weigh what he quoted.
Above all, despite his "political" energy and enthusiasm, it
was impossible for a Greek of his day to have the political
insight that only comes from life in a living state. How could
the Telearch of Chaeronea under the Roman Empire under-
stand Pericles? Archbishop Trench contrasts his enthusiasm
about the gift of liberty to Greece by Flamininus with the
reflection of Wordsworth that it is a thing
which is not to be given
By all the blended powers of Earth and Heaven.
Plutarch really did not know what liberty is ; Wordsworth on the
other hand had taken part in the French Revolution, and watched
with keen and sympathetic eyes the march of events throughout
a most living epoch. It is worth noting that indirectly Plutarch
contributed to the disasters of that epoch, for his Lycurgus
had enormous influence with Rousseau and his followers who
took it for history. Here was a man who made laws and
constitutions in his own head and imposed them upon his
fellow-countrymen. So Plutarch wrote and believed, and so
read and believed thinking Frenchmen of the eighteenth
century, like himself subjects of a despotism and without
political experience.
Besides Biographies he wrote moral treatises — some based
on lectures, others on conversation, others again little better
than note-books — pleasant and readable books, if the reader
will forgive a certain want of humour, and a tendency to ramble,
and will surrender his mind to the long and leisurely sentences,
for Plutarch is not to be hurried. Everything he wrote had some
moral or religious aim. He was a believer, in days of doubt and
perplexity. The Epicurean was heard at Delphi. Even in the
second century, when the great religious revival was in full
swing, Lucian wrote and found readers. Men brought their
difficulties to Plutarch and he went to meet them — ever glad to
do something for the ancestral faith. Nor was he less ready to
discuss — or record discussions of — questions much less serious.
Was the hen or the egg first ? Does a varied diet or a single dish
help the digestion more ? Why is fresh water better than salt for
HIS WIFE AND CHILDREN 85
washing clothes? Which of Aphrodite's hands did Diomed
wound ?
It is always the same man, genial, garrulous, moral and
sensible. There are no theatricalities in his style — he is not a
rhetorician even on paper.1 He discards the tricks of the school,
adoxography, epigram and, as a rule, paradox. His simplicity
is his charm. He is really interested in his subject whatever it
is ; and he believes in its power of interesting other men, too
much to think it worth while to trick it out with extraneous
prettinesses. Yet after he hasdiscussed his theme, with excursions
into its literary antecedents and its moral suggestions, we are
not perhaps much nearer an explanation of the fact in question,2
nor always quite sure that it is a fact. Everything interests
him, but he is in no hurry to get at the bottom of anything ;
just as in the Lives he is occupied with everything except the
depths of his hero's personality. It remains that in his various
works he has given us an unexampled pageant of antiquity over
a wide reach of time and many lands, and always bright with
the colour of life — the work of a lover of men. " I can hardly
do without Plutarch," wrote Montaigne; "he is so universal and
so full, that upon all occasions, and what extravagant subject
soever you take in hand, he will still intrude himself into your
business, and holds out to you a liberal and not to be exhausted
hand of riches and embellishments." What Shakespeare thought
of him is written in three great plays.3
But so far nothing has been said of Plutarch's own home.
The lot of the wife of a great preacher or moralist is not
commonly envied; and the tracts which Plutarch wrote upon
historic women and their virtues, and on the duties of married
life, on diet and on the education of the young, suggest that
Timoxena must have lived in an atmosphere of high moral
elevation, with a wise saw and an ancient^ instance for every
occurrence of the day. But it is clear that he loved her, and his
affection for their four little boys must have been as plain to
her as to his readers — and his joy when, after long waiting, at
last a little girl was born. "You had longed for a daughter
1 de tranqu. antmi, i, 464 F, OVK d/cpoaVews eVexa 6t)pwfj.trr)s KaXXtypaQiav — a
profession often made, but in Plutarch's case true enough as a rule.
2 See, e.g. , variety of possible explanations of the E at Delphi, in tract upon it.
8 Stapfer, Shakespeare and Classical Antiqiiity (tr. ), p. 299. " It may be safely said
he followed Plutarch far more closely than he did even the old English chroniclers."
86 PLUTARCH
after four sons," he writes to her, "and I was glad when she
came and I could give her your name." The little Timoxena
lived for two years, and the letter of consolation which Plutarch
wrote her mother tells the story of her short life. "She
had by nature wonderful good temper and gentleness. So
responsive to affection, so generous was she that it was a
pleasure to see her tenderness. For she used to bid her nurse
give the breast to other children and not to them only, but even
to toys and other things in which she took delight. She was
so loving that she wished everything that gave her pleasure
to share in the best of what she had. I do not see, my dear
wife, why things such as these, which gave us so much happiness
while she lived, should give us pain and trouble now when we
think of them." l He reminds her of the mysteries of Dionysus
of which they were both initiates. In language that recalls
Wordsworth's great Ode on the Intimations of Immortality,
he suggests that old age dulls our impressions of the soul's
former life, and that their little one is gone from them, before
she had time to fall in love with life on earth. " And the truth
about this is to be seen in the ancient use and wont of our
fathers," who did not observe the ordinary sad rites of burial
for little children, "as if they felt it not right in the case
of those who have passed to a better and diviner lot and place.
. . . And since to disbelieve them is harder than to believe, let
us comply with the laws in outward things, and let what is
within be yet more stainless, pure and holy." 2
Two of the sons had previously died — the eldest Soclaros,
and the fourth, " our beautiful Chaeron " — the name is that of
the traditional founder of Chaeronea. The other two, Auto-
bulus and Plutarch grew up. Some of these names appear in
the Table Talk, while others of his works were written at the
suggestion of his sons.
From the family we pass to the slaves, and here, as we
should expect, Plutarch is an advocate of gentleness. In the
tract On Restraining Anger a high and humane character is
drawn in Fundanus, who had successfully mastered a naturally
passionate temper. It has been thought that Plutarch was draw-
1 Cons, ad Ux. 2-3, 608 C, D.
- Cons, ad Ux. 1 1, 612 A, B. Cf. non stiaviter, 26, 1 104 C, on the loss of a child
or a parent.
HIS SLAVES 87
ing his own portrait over his friend's name. A naYve tendency to
idealise his own virtues he certainly shares with other moralists.
Fundanus urges that, while all the passions need care and
practice if they are to be overcome, anger is the failure to which
we are most liable in the case of our slaves. Our authority
over them sets us in a slippery place ; temper here has nothing
to check it, for here we are irresponsible and that is a position
of danger. A man's wife and his friends are too apt to call
gentleness to the slaves mere easy-going slackness (aroviav KOI
paOv/miav). " I used to be provoked by such criticism myself
against my slaves. I was told they were going to pieces for
want of correction. Later on I realized that, first of all, it is
better to let them grow worse through my forbearance than by
bitterness and anger to pervert oneself for the reformation of
others. And, further, I saw that many of them, through not
being punished, began to be ashamed of being bad, and that
forgiveness was more apt than punishment to be the beginning
of a change in them — and indeed that they would serve some
men more readily for a silent nod than they would others for
blows and brandings. So I persuaded myself that reasoning
does better than temper." * It will be remarked that Fundanus,
or his recording friend, does not here take the Stoic position
that the slave is as much a son of God as the master,2 nor does
he spare the slave for the slave's sake but to overcome his own
temper. So much for theory ; but men's conduct does not
always square with their theories, and in life we see men guilty
of kind-heartedness and large-mindedness not at all to be
reconciled with the theories which they profess, when they
remember them.
It is curious that one of the few stories of Plutarch that come
from outside sources should concern this very tract and the
punishment of a slave. Gellius heard it from the philosopher
Taurus after one of his classes. Plutarch, Taurus said, had a
worthless slave and ordered him a flogging. The man loudly
protested he had done no wrong, and at last, under the stimulus of
the lash, taunted his master with inconsistency — what about the
fine book on controlling Anger ? he was angry enough now.
1 de coh. ira. 1 1, 459 C ; cf. Progress in Virtue, 80 B, 8 1 C, on tvitlwa and
T/^OTTJS as signs of moral progress.
8 Cf. Sen. Ep. 47 ; Clem. Alex. Pad. iii, 92.
88 PLUTARCH
" Then Plutarch, slowly and gently " asked what signs of anger
he showed in voice or colour or word ? " My eyes, I think, are
not fierce ; nor my face flushed ; I am not shouting aloud ;
there is no foam on my lip, no red in my cheek ; I am saying
nothing to be ashamed of ; nothing to regret ; I am not excited
nor gesticulating. All these, perhaps you are unaware, are the
signs of anger." l Then turning to the man who was flogging
the slave, he said, " In the meantime, while I and he are debat-
ing, you go on with your business."2 The story is generally
accepted, and it is certainly characteristic. The philosopher,
feeling his pulse, as it were, to make sure that he is not angry,
while his slave is being lashed, is an interesting and suggestive
picture, which it is well to remember.
How long Plutarch lived we do not know. He refers to
events of the year 104 or 105, and in his Solon he speaks of
Athens and Plato each having an unfinished masterpiece, so
that he cannot have known of the intention of the Emperor
Hadrian to finish the temple of Zeus Olympics.3 All that this
need imply is that the Solon was written before 125 A.D. As
to his death, it is certainly interesting when we recall how full
of dreams and portents his Biographies are, to learn from
Artemidorus' great work on the Interpretation of Dreams
(written some forty years later) that Plutarch, when ill, dreamed
that he was ascending to heaven, supported by Hermes. Next
day he was told that this meant great happiness. " Shortly
after he died, and this was what his dream and the interpretation
meant. For ascent to heaven means destruction to a sick man,
and the great happiness is a sign of death." 4 Plutarch might
well have accepted this himself.
Such was Plutarch's life — the life of a quiet and simple-
minded Greek gentleman, spent amid scenes where the past
predominated over the present, — nullum sine nomine saxum^
where Antiquity claimed him for her own by every right that it
has ever had upon man. The land of his fathers, the literature,
the art, the philosophy, the faith, and the reproduction of the
1 A curious parallel to this in Tert. de Patientia, 15, where Tertullian draws the
portrait of Patience— perhaps from life, as Dean Robinson suggests— after Perpetua
the martyr.
'Gellius, N.A. i, 26.
"Solon, 32.
4 Artemidorus, Oneirocritica, iv, 72. On this author see chapter vii.
PLUTARCH NOT A PHILOSOPHER 89
good old life in the pleasant household l — everything conspired
to make him what he was. We now come to his significance in
the story of the conflict of religions in the Roman Empire.
A good deal has been written about Plutarch's philosophy.
His works are full of references to philosophy and philosophers,
and he leaves us in no doubt as to his counting himself a
disciple of Plato ; his commentaries on Platonic doctrines give
him a place in the long series of Plato's expositors. But no
one would expect a writer of the first century to be a man of
one allegiance, and Plutarch modifies the teaching of Plato with
elements from elsewhere. It has then been debated whether he
should, or should not, be called an Eclectic, but not very
profitably. The essential thing to note is that he is not properly
a philosopher at all, much as the statement would have
astonished him.2 His real interest is elsewhere ; and while he,
like the Greeks of his day, read and talked Philosophy inter-
minably, as men in later ages have read and talked Theology,
it was not with the philosophic spirit. Philosophy is not the
mistress — rather, he avows, the servant of something else ; and
that means that it is not Philosophy. His test of philosophic
thought and doctrine was availability for the moral and religious
life — a test which may or may not be sound, as it is applied.
But Plutarch was an avowed moralist, didactic in every fibre ;
and everything he wrote betrays the essential failure of the
practical man and the moralist — impatience, the short view.
From his experience of human life in its manifold relations of
love and friendship, he came to the conclusion that " the ancient
faith of our fathers suffices." It is also plain that he was afraid
of life without religion. So far as a man of his training would —
a man familiar with the history of philosophy, but without
patience or depth enough to be clear in his own mind, he
associated truth with his religion ; at all events it was
"sufficient," for this he had found in his course through the
world. Definite upon this one central point, he approached
philosophy, but not with the true philosopher's purpose of
examining his experience, in accordance with the Platonic
1 See non suaviter, 17, 1098 D, on the unspeakably rich joy of such a life of
friendly relations with gods and men.
2 Progress in Virtue, 4, 77 C, Love of Philosophy compared to a lover's passion,
to "hunger and thirst."
9o PLUTARCH
suggestion * ; rather, with the more practical aim of profiting
by every serviceable thought or maxim which he could find.
And he certainly profited. If he started with preconceptions, <
which he intended to keep, he enlarged and purified them — in a
sense, we may say, he adorned and enriched them. For where-
ever he found a moving or suggestive idea, a high thought, he
adopted it and found it a place in his mind, though without
inquiring too closely whether it had any right to be there. In
the end, it is very questionable whether the sum of his ideas
will hold together at all, if we go beyond the quick test of a
rather unexamined experience. We have already seen how he
protested against too curious examination. " There is no
philosophy possible," wrote John Stuart Mill, "where fear of
consequences is a stronger principle than love of truth."
But to such criticisms a reply is sometimes suggested, which
is best made in the well-known words of Pascal — "the heart
has its reasons which the reason does not know."2 The ex-
perience which led Plutarch to his conclusion was real and
sound. There is an evidential value in a good father, in wife
and children — even in a telearchy with its tiles and cement —
which is apt to be under-estimated. For with such elements
in life are linked passions and emotions, which are deeply
bound up with human nature, and rule us as instincts — blind
reasons of the heart. Like all other things they require study
and criticism if they are not to mislead, and those who most
follow them are sometimes the worst judges of their real
significance. On the other hand the danger of emotion, in- *
stinct and intuition as guides to truth is emphasized enough,—
it was emphasized by the Stoics ; and a contribution is made
to human progress, when the value of these guides to truth is
re-asserted, even to the extent of obvious exaggeration, by j
some one, who, like Plutarch, has had a life rich in various
human experience. It remains however, in Plutarch's case as
in all such cases, the fundamental question, whether the sup-
posed testimony of instinct and intuition is confirmed. If it
is not confirmed, it may be taken to have been misunderstood.
Keeping the whole life of this man in view, and realizing
its soundness, its sweetness and its worth, we must see what
1 Plato, Apology, 38 A, it 61 d^rao-ros p'ua ou jStwros AvBpt!nrtf.
2 Ptntfes, Art. xxiv, 5.
THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD 91
he made of the spiritual environment of man's life in general —
jlaying stress on what in his system, or his attempt at a system, <
is most significant, and postponing criticism. It should be
isaid once for all that a general statement of Plutarch's views
cannot be quite faithful, for he was a man of many and wander-
ing thoughts, and also something of an Academic ; and what-
kver he affirmed was with qualifications, which in a short
summary must be understood rather than repeated.
Our knowledge of God and of things divine comes to us, <
(according to Plutarch, from various sources. There is the
(consensus of mankind. " Of all customs first and greatest is
belief in gods. Lycurgus, Numa, Ion and Deucalion, alike
isanctified men, by prayers and oaths and divinations and oracles
(bringing them into touch with the divine in their hopes and fears.
i You might find communities without walls, without letters,
without kings, without houses, without money, with no need of
(coinage, without acquaintance with theatres and gymnasia ; but <
a community without holy rite, without a god, that uses not
prayer nor oath, nor divination, nor sacrifice to win good or
avert evil — no man ever saw nor will see. . . . This is what
[holds all society together and is the foundation and buttress of
|all law." i
This evidence from the consensus of mankind is brought to
la higher point in the body of myth inherited from the past, and
mi custom and law — and is so far confirmed by reason. But
we can go further and appeal to the highest and best minds of
antiquity, who in their own highest moments of inspiration con-
firmed the common view. " In the matter of belief in gods, and
an general, our guides and teachers have been the poets and the
lawgivers, and, thirdly, the philosophers — all alike laying down
chat there are gods, though differing among themselves as to
pie number of the gods and their order, their nature and function.
Those of the philosophers are free from pain and death ; toil
they know not, and are clean escaped the roaring surge of
1 Adv. Coloten (the Epicurean), 31, 1 125 D, E. For this argument from consensus,
Usee Seneca, Ep. 117, 6, Multum dare solcmus prcesumptioni omnium hominum et
yapitd nos veritatis argument urn est aliquid omnibus videri : tanquam deos esse inter
Vi/ia hoc colligimus, quod omnibus imita de dis opinio est, nee ttlla gens usquam est
nidfo extra leges moresque projecta ut non aliquos deos credat. This consensus rests
(with the Stoics) on the common preconceptions of the mind, which are natural.
tor ridicule of the doctrine of consensus, see Lucian, Zeus Tragccdus, 42.
92 PLUTARCH
Acheron." l " It is likely that the word of ancient poets and
philosophers is true," he says.2 Plutarch was a lover of poetry
and of literature, and he attributed to them a value as evidence
to truth, which is little intelligible to men who have not the same
passion.3 Still the appeal to the poets in this connexion was
very commonly made.
But men are not only dependent on the tradition of their
fathers and the inspiration of poets and philosophers, much as
they should, and do, love and honour these. The gods make
themselves felt in many ways. There was abundant evidence
of this in many established cases of theolepsy, enthusiasm
(evOeos) and possession. Again there were the oracles, in which
it was clear that gods communicated with men and revealed
truths not otherwise to be gained — a clear demonstration of the
spiritual. Men were " in anguish and fear lest Delphi should
lose its glory of three thousand years," but Delphi has not failed ;
for " the language of the Pythian priestess, like the right line of
the Mathematicians — the shortest between two points, makes
neither declension nor winding, has neither double meaning nor
ambiguity, but goes straight to the truth. Though hard to believe
and much tested, she has never up to now been convicted of
error, — on the contrary she has filled the shrine with offerings
and gifts from barbarians and Greeks, and adorned it with the
beautiful buildings of the Amphictyons." 4 The revival of Delphi
in Plutarch's day, " in so short a time," was not man's doing—
but " the God came here and inspired the oracle with his divinity."
And Delphi was not the only oracle. The Stoics perhaps had
pointed the way here with their teaching on divination, but as
it stands the argument (such as it is) is said to be Plutarch's
own.6 Lastly in this connexion, the mysteries offered evidence,,
but here he is reticent. " As to the mysteries, in which we may
receive the greatest manifestations and illuminations of the truth
1 Amatorius, 18, 763 C. Cf. view of Celsus ap. Orig. c. Cels. vii, 41.
z Consol. ad A poll. 34, 120 B.
•! Quomodo Poetas, i, 15 E, F, poetry a preliminary study to philosophy,
7r/Jo0iXocro077r^oj' rots Troir]fj.a<nv.
4 de Pyth. orac. 29, 408 F. Cf. the pagan's speech in Minucius Felix, 7, 6,
pleni et mixti deo vales futura praccrpunt . . . etiam per quietem deos
videmus. . . .
0 So Volkmann, Plutarch, ii, 290 n. Cf. a passage f Celsus, Orig. c. Cels. viii,
45-
ABSOLUTE BEING 93
i concerning daemons — like Herodotus, I say, 'Be it un-
spoken.'"1
Philosophy, poetry, tradition, oracles and mysteries- bring '
I Plutarch to belief in gods. "There are not Greek gods and
(barbarian, southern or northern; but just as sun, moon, sky,
I earth and sea are common to all men and have many names, so
likewise it is one Reason that makes all these things a cosmos ;
it is one Providence that cares for them, with ancillary powers
appointed to all things; while in different people, different
) honours and names are given to them as customs vary. Some
1 use hallowed symbols that are faint, others symbols more clear,
as they guide their thought to the divine." 3 This one ultimate
I Reason is described by Plutarch in terms borrowed from all the
I great teachers who had spoken to the Greeks of God. The
I Demiurge, the One and Absolute, the World-Soul and the rest
I all contribute features.4
" We," he says, " have really no share in Being, but every
| mortal nature, set between becoming and perishing, offers but
a show and a seeming of itself, dim and insecure " ; and he
quotes the famous saying of Heraclitus that it is impossible to
(descend into the same river twice, and develops the idea of
! change in the individual. " No one remains, nor is he one,
I but we become many as matter now gathers and now slips away
I about one phantasm and a common form (or impress). . . .
Sense through ignorance of Being is deceived into thinking
I that the appearance is. What then indeed is Being? The
| eternal, free from becoming, free from perishing, for which
1 no time brings change. ... It is even impious to say * Was '
or ' Will be ' of Being ; for these are the varyings and passings
and changings of that which by nature cannot abide in Being.
But God zs, we must say, and that not in time, but in the aeon
that knows no motion, time or variation, where is neither former
1 de def. or. 14, 417 C, e>0acms and 5ta</>d(reis.
2 Tertullian sums up the pagan line of argument and adds a telling criticism in his
j book advcrsus Nation es, ii, I : adversus fuec igitur nobis negotiutn est, adversus
J institutiones maiorum, auctoritates rcceptorum, leges dominantium, argumentationes
ij prudent ium, adversus vetustatem consuetudinem necessitate™, adversus exempla pro-
digia miracula, qua omnia adulterinam istam divinitatem corroboraverint. . . .
\ Maior in huiusmodi penes vos auctoritas litterarum quam rerum est.
' de hide, 67, 377 F-37« A
4 Oakesmith, Religion of Plutarch, p. 88 — a book which I have found of great
94
PLUTARCH
nor latter, future nor past, older nor younger ; but God is one,
and with one Now he has filled Always, and is alone therein
the one that Is." l
The symbol E at Delphi affords him a text here. It is one of
" the kind Apollo's " riddles to stimulate thought. Plutarch read
it as Epsilon and translates it " Thou Art," and from this as from
the very name of Apollo he draws a lesson as to the nature of
real Being. The name 'A-7roXX-o> means of itself the "Not-
Many," and the symbol E is the soul's address to God — God
is, and God is one. Not every one understands the nature of
the divine ; men confuse God with his manifestations. " Those
who suppose Apollo and the sun to be one and the same, we
should welcome and love for their pious speech, because they
attach the idea (e-jrivoia) of God to that thing which they honour
most of all they know and crave for," but we should point
them higher, " bid them go upward and see the truth of their
dream, the real Being (rrjv ovcriav)" They may still honour the
image — the visible sun. But that a god should do the work of
the sun, that there should be changes and progressions in a
god, that he should project fire from himself and extend
himself into land, sea, winds and animals, and into all the
strange experiences of animals and plants (as the Stoics taught)
— it is not holy even to hear such things mentioned. No, God
is not like Homer's child playing on the sand, making and un-
making ; all this belongs to another god, or rather daemon,
set over nature with its becomings and perishings.2 To confuse
gods and daemons is to make disorder of everything.
It is here that the real interest of Plutarch's theology begins ;
for, as Christian apologists were quick to point out, all the
philosophers were in the last resort monotheists. But the'
ultimate One God is by common consent far from all direct
contact with this or any other universe of becoming and perish-
ing. For it was questioned how many universes (KOCTJULOL) there
might be l — some conjecturing there would be one hundred and
eighty-three — and if there were more than one, the Stoics
asked what became of Fate and Destiny, and would there not be
many "Zeuses or Zenes"? Why should there be? asked
1 de E. 18-20. Cf. Clem. Alex. Protr. 84. The true To-day of God is eternity.
Also Tert. ad Natt. ii, 6, on the axiom of no change in God.
'• 3Cf. Plato, Timcsus, 55 D.
THE DEPUTIES OF THE SUPREME 95
Plutarch ; why not in each universe a guide and ruler with
mind and reason, such as he who in our universe is called lord
and father of all ? What hinders that they should all be subjects
of the Fate and Destiny that Zeus controls; that he should
appoint to each several one of them his own realm, and the
seeds and reasons of everything achieved in it ; that he should
survey them, and they be responsible to him? That in the
whole scheme of things there should be ten universes, or fifty,
or a hundred, all governed by one Reason, all subordinate to
one rule, is not impossible. The Ultimate God rules through <
deputies.1
These deputies are Plutarch's chief concern in theology.
The Stoics and he were at one about the Supreme and Ultimate^
God, waiving the matter of personality, which he asserted and
which they left open. But when the Stoics turned the deputy
gods into natural forces, which we might call laws of nature, <
or, still worse, into natural objects like wine and grain,2 Plutarch
grew angry and denounced such teaching as atheism. "We
must not as it were turn them into queen-bees who can never
go out, nor keep them shut up in the prison of matter, or rather
packed up, as they (the Stoics) do, when they turn the gods
into conditions of the atmosphere and mingled forces of water
1 Plutarch, de. def. orac. 29, 425 F — 426 A. Celsus has the same view ; (Origen, c.
Cels, v, 25 ; vii, 68) : the world's regions are severally allotted to epoptai under Provid-
ence ; so that local usages may well be maintained in such form as pleases them ; to alter
these would be impious, while to worship the daemons is to honour God, who is not
jealous of them. Cf. Plutarch, de fortuna Romanorum, 1 1, 324 B, 6 'Pt^ua/ow /i^yas
Sai/j.u}v . . . T-Q Tro'Xet ffvvrjflriffas Kal ffvvav^rjdels, KTC — the tract is a poor and rhetorical
one, and the phrase may be merely a synonym for "luck." See also Celsus (Orig.
c. Cels. viii, 58) on the Egyptian attribution of the human body to thirty-six " daemons
or gods of aether," so that by prayer to the right one disease in any part of the
body may be cured ; Celsus gives some of their names. The Christians assumed a
somewhat similar scheme with a rather different development. Athenagoras, an
apologist of the second century, gives the following account in his Presbeia, 24-27.
A system of angels under Providence existed, some good and some bad, enjoying
free-will as men also do ; " the ruler of matter and of the forms in it" lusted after
virgins and succumbed to flesh, and neglected the administration entrusted to him ;
others fell with him ; they cannot regain heaven but meantime occupy the air ; their
children by mortal women were giants and the souls of these are the daemons ; the
ruler of matter directs all things against God ; with matter are connected the soul's
worse impulses. See also Clem. Alex. Strom, vi, 157, on angelic governance of
individual nations and cities ; and Lactantius, Instit. ii, 8, 14, whose account fairly
resembles that of Athenagoras. Tertullian, however, suggests (Apol. 11) that the
Creator had no need of ancillary gods to complete his work.
3 For a summary of Stoic teaching here, see Cicero, N.D. ii, 60-70.
96 PLUTARCH
and fire, and thus beget them with the universe and again burn1
them up with it; they do not leave the gods at liberty and
free to move, as if they were charioteers or steersmen ; no ! like
images they are nailed down, even fused to their bases, when
they are thus shut up into the material, yes, and riveted to it,
by being made partakers with it in destruction and resolution
and change." l This is one of many assertions of the existence
of ancillary gods, who are not metaphors, nor natural laws,
but personal rulers of provinces, which may very well be each
a universe, free and independent. " The true Zeus " has a far
wider survey than " the Homeric Zeus " who looked away
from Troy to Thrace and the Danube, nor does he contemplate
a vacant infinite without, nor yet (as some say) himself and
nothing else. To judge from the motions of the heavens, the
divine really enjoys variety, and is glad to survey movement,
the actions of gods and men, the periods of the stars.2
Thus under the Supreme is a hierarchy of heavenly powers
or gods, and again between them and men is another order of
beings, the daemons.3 These, unlike the gods, are of mixed
nature, for while the gods are emanations or Logoi of the
Supreme, the daemons have something of the perishable. " Plato
and Pythagoras and Xenocrates and Chrysippus, following the
ancient theologians, say that daemons are stronger than men and
far excel us in their natural endowment ; but the divine element
in them is not unmixed nor undiluted, but partakes of the soul's
nature and the body's sense-perception, and is susceptive of
pleasure and pain, while the passions which attend these
mutations affect them, some of them more and others less. For
there are among dsemons, as among men, differences of virtue
and wickedness." 4 " It can be proved on the testimony of wise
and ancient witnesses that there are natures, as it were on the
frontiers of gods and men, that admit mortal passions and
inevitable changes, whom we may rightly, after the custom of
1 de def. orac. 29, 426 B. Cf. de hide, 66, 377 D, E. " You might as well give
the name of steersman to sails, ropes or anchor."
2 de def. orac. 30, 246 D, E.
3 This triple government of the Universe is worked out in defato (a tract whose
authorship is questioned), but from one passage and another of Plutarch's undoubted
works it can be established, though every statement has a little fringe of
uncertainties.
4 de hide, 25, 360 E.
DAEMONS 97
our fathers, consider to be daemons, and so calling them,
worship them."1 If the atmosphere were abolished between
the earth and the moon (for beyond air and moon it was
generally supposed that the gods lived 2), the void would
destroy the unity of the universe ; and in precisely the same
way "those who do not leave us the race of daemons, destroy all
intercourse and contact between gods and men, by abolishing
what Plato called the interpretive and ancillary nature, or else
they compel us to make confusion and disorder of everything,
by bringing God in among mortal passions and mortal affairs,
fetching him down for our needs, as they say the witches in
Thessaly do with the moon." 3 And " he, who involves God in
human needs, does not spare his majesty, nor does he maintain
the dignity and greatness of God's excellence."4 The Stoic
teaching that men are " parts of God " makes God responsible
for every human act of wickedness and sin — the common weak-
ness of every pantheistic system.5
Thus the daemons serve two purposes in religious philos- ^
ophy. They safeguard the Absolute and the higher gods from
contact with matter, and they relieve the Author of Good from
responsibility for evil. At the same time they supply the means
of that relation to the divine which is essential for man's higher
life — " passing on the prayers and supplications of men thither-
ward, and thence bringing oracles and gifts of blessing." 6
" They say well, who say that when Plato discovered the element
underlying qualities that are begotten — what nowadays they
call matter and nature — he set philosophers free from many great
difficulties ; but to me they seem to solve more difficulties and
greater ones, who set the race of daemons between gods and
1 de dcf^orac. 12, 416 C.
2 Cf. Athenagoras, Presb. 24 (quoted in note I on p. 95); and Apuleius,
de deo Socr. 6, 132, cited on p. 232.
3 de def. orac. 13, 416 F. * de def. orac. 9, 414 F.
5 See de comm. not. adv. Stoicos, 33, and de Stoicorum repugn. 33, 34 — three very
interesting chapters. Clement of Alexandria has the same tone in criticizing this
idea — OVK old' STTWS dv^eral TIS tircuwv TOVTOV Oeov tyvwK&s aTriSwi/ eis TOV (3iov TOV
Tjntrepov tv Sffois <f>vp6fj.e0a /ca/cots. efy yap av otfrws, 5 /j.i)5' direlv floats, (j.epiKUS
dfj-aprdvuv 6 6eos, KT£. Strom, ii, 74.
6 de hide, 26, 361 C. Cf. Plato, Sympos. 202 E, 203 A (referred to above), for the
functions of TO 6a.ifj.6viot>, which is /u.£ra£u deov re /cat dvrp-ov . . . tpfjnjvevov KO.I
5tairop6[j.evoi> 0eois rd trap* avOpunruv KO.I dvdpwirois rd Trapd 6euv KTC . . . decs 8£
a.v6p&ir(f ov /jilyvvrai . . . OVTOI 677 oi 5cu'/iOJ>es vroXXoi Kal Travrodairoi fiffu>t els 8£
rovruv fffrl /cat d "Epws.
7
98 PLUTARCH
men and discovered that in some such way it made a community
of us and brought us together, whether the theory belongs to
the Magians who follow Zoroaster, or is Thracian and comes
from Orpheus, or is Egyptian, or Phrygian." * Homer, he adds,
still uses the terms " gods " and " daemons " alike ; " it was
Hesiod who first clearly and distinctly set forth the four classes
of beings endowed with reason, gods, daemons, heroes and
finally men."
The daemons, then, are the agents of Providence, of the One
Reason, which orders the universe ; they are the ministers of
the divine care for man. And here perhaps their mediation is
helped by the fact that the border lines between themselves
and the gods above on the one hand, and men below on the
other, are not fixed and final. Some daemons, such as Isis,
Osiris, Herakles and Dionysos, have by their virtue risen to be
gods,2 while their own numbers have been recruited from the
souls of good men.3 " Souls which are delivered from becoming
(yevea-ecos) and thenceforth have rest from the body, as being
utterly set free, are the daemons that care for men, as Hesiod
says" ; 4 and, just as old athletes enjoy watching and encourag-
ing young ones, " so the daemons, who through worth of soul
are done with the conflicts of life," do not despise what they
have left behind, but are kindly minded to such as strive for the
same goal,— especially when they see them close upon their hope,
struggling and all but touching it. As in the case of a shipwreck
those on shore will run out into the waves to lend a hand to the
sailors they can reach (though if they are out on the sea, to
watch in silence is all that can be done), so the daemons help
us " while the affairs of life break over us (/JaTrrif o/xe'i/oi/s- VTTO T£>V
-irpa-ynaTwv) and we take one body after another as it were
carriages." Above all they help us if we strive of our own
virtue to be saved and reach the haven.5
But this is not all, for in his letter written to console
Apollonios Plutarch carries us further. There was, he says, a
1 <fe def. orac. 10, 414 F— 415 A.
2 <fe hide, 27, 361 E ; de def. orac. 10, 415 C ; cf. Tert. ad Natt. ii, 2.
3 Romulus, 28 ; de def. orac. 10, 415 B.
4 Hesiod, Works and Days, 121. « But," asks Tatian (c. 16), " why should they
get ^a*rur*rtpai Suvd/zews after death ? " See the reply given by Plutarch de def.
era*- 39, 43 l E- Compare also views of Apuleius (de deo Socr. 15) cited on p. 233.
5 de genio Socratis, 24, 593 D-F. He is thinking of the series of rebirths.
DAEMONS 99
man who lost his only son — he was afraid, by poison. It per-
haps adds confidence to the story that Plutarch gives his name
and home ; he was Elysios of Terina in Southern Italy. The
precision is characteristic. Elysios accordingly went to a
psychomanteion, a shrine where the souls of the dead might be
consulted.1 He duly sacrificed and went to sleep in the temple.
He saw in a dream his own father with a youth strikingly like
the dead son, and he was told that this was " the son's daemon," 2
and that the death had been natural, and right for the lad and
for his parents. Elsewhere Plutarch quotes the lines of
Menander —
By each man standeth, from his natal hour,
A daemon, his kind mystagogue through life — 3
but he prefers the view of Empedocles that there are two such
beings in attendance on each of us.4 The classical instance of
a guardian spirit was the " daimonion " of Socrates, on which
both Plutarch and Apuleius wrote books.5 Plutarch discusses
many theories that had been given of it, but hardly convinces
the reader that he really knew what Socrates meant.
In a later generation it was held that if proper means were
taken the guardian spirit would come visibly before a man's
eyes. So Apuleius held, and Porphyry records that when an
Egyptian priest called on the daemon of Plotinus to manifest
himself in the temple of Isis (the only " pure " spot the Egyptian
1 On such places and on necromancy in general see Tertullian, de am'ma, 57, who
puts it down to illusion of the evil one — nee magnum ilh extcriores oculos circum-
scribere cut interiorem mentis aciem exccecare ferfacile est.
2 Cf. p. 15 on the genius and ihefravasAi.
3 de tranqu. animi, 15, 474 B.
4 Cf. the story of the appearance to Brutus of his evil genius — 6 cro's, w Bpoyre,
SaLfj.wv KO.KOS, Brutus, 36. Basilides the Gnostic (the father of Isidore) is credited
with describing Man as a sort of Wooden Horse with a whole army of different
spirits in him (Clem. Alex. Strom, ii, 113). Plutarch makes a similar jibe at the
Stoic account of arts, virtues, vices, etc., as corporeal or even animate and rational
beings — making a man "a Paradise, or a cattle-pen, or a Wooden Horse," de
commun, notit. adv. Stoicos, 45, 1084 B. There was a tendency in contemporary
psychology to attribute all feelings, etc., to daemonic influence ; cf. Clem. Alex. Strom.
ii, no, who suggests that all irdd-rj are imprints (as of a seal) made on the soul by
the spiritual powers against which we have to wrestle. Cf. Tert. de Anima, 41, the
evil of soul in part due to evil spirit.
5 Clement says (Strom, vi, 53) that Isidore the Gnostic "in the first book of the
expositions of Parchor the Prophet " dealt with the daemon of Socrates and quoted
Aristotle's authority for such tutelary spirits. For the book of Apuleius, see ch. vii.
I00 PLUTARCH
could find in Rome), there came not a daemon but a god ; so great
a being was Plotinus.1 Plutarch discusses the question of such
bodily appearances in connexion with the legend of Numa and
Egeria. He can believe that God would not disdain the society
of a specially good and holy man, but as for the idea that god
or daemon would have anything to do with a human £body—
"that would indeed require some persuasion." "Yet the
Egyptians plausibly say that it is not impossible for the spirit
of a god to have intercourse with a woman and beget some
beginnings of life," though Plutarch finds a difficulty in such a
union of unequals.2
Plutarch has comparatively little to say of visible appear-
ances of tutelary or other daemons. To what lengths of credulity
men went in this direction will be shown in a later chapter.
Yet a guardian who does not communicate in some way with
the person he guards, and a series of daemonic and divine
powers content to be inert and silent, would be futile ; and in
fact there was, Plutarch held, abundance of communication
between men and the powers above them. It was indeed one
of the main factors of his religion that man's life is intimately
related to the divine.
Plutarch, of course, could know nothing of the language in
use to-day, but it is clear that he was familiar with some or all
of the phaenomena, which in our times have received a vocabu-
lary of their own, for the moment very impressive. Psycho-
pathic, auto-suggestion, telepathy, the subliminal self — the words
may tell us something ; whether what they tell us is verifiable,
remains to be seen. Plutarch's account of the facts, for the
description of which this language has been invented, seems
even more fantastic to a modern reader, but it must be re-
membered that he and his contemporaries were led to it at
once by observation of psychical phaenomena, still to be observed,
and by philosophic speculation on the transcendence of God.
As a body of theories, the ancient system holds together as well
as most systems in the abstract. It was not in theory that it
broke down. Plutarch as usual presents it with reservations.
1 Porphyry, v. Plotini, 10. Cf. Origen, c. Cels. vii, 35, for Celsus' views on the
visibility of daemons, e.g. in the cave of Trophonius.
2 Life of Numa, 4— a most interesting chapter, when it is remembered what other
works were being written contemporaneously.
THE M ANTIC ART 101
The daemons are not slow to speak ; it is we who are slow to
hear. " In truth we men recognize one another's thoughts, as it
were feeling after them in the dark by means of the voice. But
the thoughts of the daemons are luminous and shine for those
who can see ; and they need no words or names, such as men
use among themselves as symbols to see images and pictures of
what is thought, while, as for the things actually thought, those
they only know who have some peculiar and daemonic light.
The words of the daemons are borne through all things, but
they sound only for those who have the untroubled nature and
the still soul — those, in fact, whom we call holy and happy
(Sai/uLoviou^)" 1 Most people think the daemon only comes to *
men when they are asleep, but this is due to their want of
harmony. " The divine communicates immediately (8t avrov)
with few and but rarely ; to most men it gives signs, from **
which rises the so-called Mantic art"2 — prophecy or sooth-
saying. All souls have the "mantic" faculty — the capacity
for receiving impressions from daemons — though not in an equal
degree. A daemon after all is, from one point of view, merely
a disembodied soul, and it may meet a soul incorporated in a
body ; and thus, soul meeting soul, there are produced " im-
pressions of the future," 3 for a voice is not needed to convey
thought.
But if a disembodied soul can foresee the future, why should
not a soul in a body also be able? In point of fact, the soul
has this power, but it is dulled by the body. Memory is a
parallel gift. Some souls only shake off the influence of the
body in dreams, some at the approach of death.4 The mantic
element is receptive of impressions and of anticipations by
means of feelings, and without reasoning process (acruXXoy/o-ro)?)
it touches the future when it can get clear of the present. The
state, in which this occurs, is called " enthusiasm," god-
possession — and into this the body will sometimes fall of
itself, and sometimes it is cast into it by some vapour or ex-
halation sent up by the earth. This vapour or whatever it is
(TO /ULCLVTIKOV pev/ma KOI TrvevfAa) pervades the body, and produces
1 ofe genie Socr. 20, 588 D, 589 D. 2 de gen. Socr. 24, 593 D.
* de def. orac. 38, 431 C, <pavTa.<rias TOV /iAXovros.
4 Cf. Clem. Alex. Strom, vi, 46, on preaching of Christ in Hades, where souls,
rid of the flesh, see more clearly.
,02 PLUTARCH
in the soul a disposition, or combination (KpavLv), unfamiliar
and strange, hard to describe, but from what is said it may
be divined. "Probably by heat and diffusion it opens pores
[or channels] whereby impressions of the future may be re-
ceived." l Such a vapour was found to issue from the ground
at Delphi — the accidental discovery of a shepherd, Coretas
by name, who spoke " words with God in them " ((fxavas
€v6ov<riu)Seis) under its influence ; and it was not till his words
proved true that attention was paid to the place and the
vapour. There is the same sort of relation between the soul
and the mantic vapour as between the eye and light.
But does not this vapour theory do away with the other
theory that divination is mediated to us by the gods through
the daemons ? Plutarch cites Plato's objection to Anaxagoras
who was " entangled in natural causes " and lost sight of better
causes and principles beyond them. There are double causes
for everything. The ancients said that all things come from
Zeus ; those who came later, natural philosophers (<j>vfriKol),
on the contrary " wandered away from the fair and divine
principle," and made everything depend on bodies, impacts,
changes and combinations (/e/oacn?) ; and both miss something of
the truth. " We do not make Mantic either godless or void of
reason, when we give it the soul of man as its material, and
the enthusiastic spirit and exhalation as its tool or plectron.
For, first, the earth that produces these exhalations — and the
sun, who gives the earth the power of combination (icpaa-ii) and
change, is by the tradition of our fathers a god ; and then we
leave daemons installed as lords and warders and guards of
this combination (Kpdareco$\ now loosening and now tightening
(as if it were a harmony), taking away excessive ecstasy and
confusion, and gently and painlessly blending the motive
power for those who use it. So we shall not seem guilty of
anything unreasonable or impossible." 2
1 df def. orac. 40, 432 C-E, dep^r-qri yap Kal 5ia%y<7ei nbpovs rival avoiyeiv
<po.vT&ffTLKQvs Tov /iAXoxTos eiV6j effTiv. For these irfyoi cf. Clem. Alex. Strom, vii,
36, with J. B. Mayor's note.
2 de def. orac. 46-48, 435 A— 437 A (referring to Pfuedo, 97 D). The curious mix-
ture of metaphors, the double suggestion of Kpacrts, the parallel from music, and the
ambiguity of rb tvQovffiaffTiKov iritevpa (characteristic of the confusion of spiritual and
material then prevalent) make a curious sentence in English, On the relation of
demons to oracles, see also defade in orbe /««<?, 30, 944 D ; also Tertullian, de Anima,
THE FRIENDSHIP OF THE GODS 103
Plutarch gives an interesting account of a potion, which
will produce the same sort of effect. The Egyptians compound
it in a very mystical way of sixteen drugs, nearly all of which
are fragrant, while the very number sixteen as the square of a
square has remarkable properties or suggestions. The mixture
is called Kyphi, and when inhaled it calms the mind and re-
duces anxiety, and " that part of us which receives impressions
(<f>avTa<rriKov') and is susceptive of dreams, it rubs down and
cleans as if it were a mirror." l
The gods, he says, are our first and chiefest friends.2 Not •
every one indeed so thinks — " for see what Jews and Syrians
think of the gods!"3 But Plutarch insists that there is no
joy in life apart from them. Epicureans may try to deliver us
from the wrath of the gods, but they do away with their kindness
at the same moment ; and Plutarch holds it better that there
should even be some morbid element (TTCI^O?) of reverence and
fear in our belief than that, in our desire to avoid this, we
should leave ourselves neither hope, nor kindness, nor courage
in prosperity, nor any recourse to the divine when we are in
trouble.4 Superstition is a rheum that gathers in the eye of
faith, which we do well to remove, but not at the cost of
knocking the eye out or blinding it.5 In any case, its incon-
venience is outweighed " ten thousand times " by the glad
and joyous hopefulness that counts all blessing as coming from
the gods. And he cites in proof of this that joy in temple-
service, to which reference has already been made. Those who
abolish Providence need no further punishment than to live
without it.6
46, who gives a lucid account of daemons as the explanation of oracles, and Apol. 22
— daemons inhabiting the atmosphere have early knowledge of the weather, and by
their incredible speed can pass miraculously quickly from one end of the earth to the
other, and so bring information — strange, he adds (c. 25), that Cybele took a week
to inform her priest of the death of Marcus Aurelius — o somniculosa diplomata !
("sleepy post").
1 de hide, 80, 383 E. Clem. Alex. Strom, i, 135, says Greek prophets of old were
' ' stirred up by daemons, or disordered by waters, fragrances or some quality of the
air/' but the Hebrews spoke " by the power and mind of God."
- Prtcc. Conj. 19. Cf. Plato, Laws, 906 A, fftj/j./j.axoi 8t rjfuv 0eof re a/ia coi
ocu/xovej, i]fj.fis 8' a? KTrjfj.a 0euv KO.I 5a.ifj.bvuv.
3 de repugn. Stoic. 38, 1051 E. 4 ntn suaviter, 20, noi B.
3 non suaviter 21, noi C. Clem. Alex. Pad. ii, I, says it is "peculiar to man
to cleanse the eye of the soul."
6 non suaviter, 22, 1 102 F.
I04 PLUTARCH
But the pleasures of faith are not only those of imagination
or emotion. For while the gods give us all blessings, there is
none better for man to receive or more awful for God to bestow
than truth. Other things God gives to men, mind and thought
he shares with them, for these are his attributes, and " I think
that of God's own eternal life the happiness lies in his knowledge
being equal to all that comes; for without knowledge and
thought, immortality would be time and not life." ] The very
name of Isis is etymologically connected with knowing (eiSevcu) "r
and the goal of her sacred rites is " knowledge of the first and
sovereign and intelligible, whom the goddess bids us seek and
find in her." 2 Her philosophy is " hidden for the most part in
myths, and in true tales (Xoyoc?) that give dim visions and
revelations of truth." 3 Her temple at Sais bears the inscription :
" I am all that has been and is and shall be, and my veil no
mortal yet has lifted." 4 She is the goddess of " Ten Thousand
Names." 5
Plutarch connects with his belief in the gods "the great
hypothesis " of immortality. " It is one argument that at one
and the same time establishes the providence of God and the
continuance of the human soul, and you cannot do away with
the one and leave the other." 6 If we had nothing divine in usy
nothing like God, if we faded like the leaves (as Homer said),
God would hardly give us so much thought, nor would he, like
women with their gardens of Adonis, tend and culture " souls
of a day," growing in the flesh which will admit no "strong
root of life." The dialogue, in which this is said, is supposed
to have taken place in Delphi, so Plutarch turns to Apollo,
" Do you think that, if Apollo knew that the souls of the dying
perished at once, blowing away like mist or smoke from their
bodies, he would ordain so many propitiations for the dead, and
ask such great gifts and honours for the departed— that he
would cheat and humbug believers ? For my part, I will never
let go the continuance of the soul, unless some Herakles shall
come and take away the Pythia's tripod and abolish and destroy
the oracle. For as long as so many oracles of this kind are
given even in our day, it is not holy to condemn the soul to
1 dt hide, i, 351 D. 2 de Isidet 2> 352 A
3 de hide, 9, 354 C, e>0a<ras Kal 5ia0d<reis. 4 de hide, 9, 354 C.
6 de hide, 53, 372 E, Mupic^/xos. 6 de ser^ num^ vindt lg> $6o F
EVIL 105
death." l And Plutarch fortifies his conviction with stories of
oracles, and of men who had converse with daemons, with
apocalypses and revelations, among which are two notable
Descents into Hades,2 and a curious account of daemons in the
British Isles.3
The theory of daemons lent itself to the explanation of the
origin of evil, but speculation in this direction seems not to
have appealed to Plutarch. He uses bad daemons to explain
the less pleasant phases of paganism, as we shall see, but the
question of evil he scarcely touches. In his book on Isis and
Osiris he discusses Typhon as the evil element in nature, and
refers with interest to the views of " the Magian Zoroaster who,
they say, lived about five hundred years before the Trojan War."
Zoroaster held that there were two divine beings, the better being
a god, Horomazes (Ormuzd), the other a daemon Areimanios
(Ahriman), the one most like to light of all sensible things, the
other to darkness and ignorance, " and between them is Mithras,
for which reason the Persians call Mithras the Mediator." But
the hour of Mithras was not yet come, and in all his writings
Plutarch hardly alludes to him more than half a dozen times.*
It should be noted that, whatever his interest in Eastern dual-
ism with its Western parallels, Plutarch does not abandon his
belief in the One Ultimate Good God.
This then in bare outline is a scheme of Plutarch's religion, «
though, as already noted, the scheme is not of his own making,
but is put together from incidental utterances, all liable to
qualification. It is not the religion of a philosopher ; and the
qualifications, which look like concessions to philosophic
hesitation, mean less than they suggest. They are entrench-,,
ments thrown up against philosophy. He is an educated Greek
who has read the philosophers, but he is at heart an apologist —
a defender of myth, ritual, mystery and polytheism. He has
1 de ser. num. vind. 17, 560 B-D. Justin, Apology, i, 18, appeals to the belief in the
continuance of the soul, which pagans derive from necromancy, dreams, oracles and
persons " dcemoniolept."
2 In de seranuminum vindicta and de genio Socratis. Cf. also the account of the
souls of the dead given in de facie in orbe !un&, c. 28 ff.
3 de def. orac. 1 8, 419 E. Another curious tale of these remote islands is in Clem.
Alex. Strom, vi, 33.
4 Cumont, Mysteries of Mithra (tr.), p. 35. Mithraism began to spread under the
Flavians, but (p. 33) "remained for ever excluded from the Hellenic world."
•
,06 PLUTARCH
compromised where Plato challenged. His front (to carry out
the military metaphor) extends over a very long line — a line in
places very weakly supported, and the daemons form its centre.
It is the daemons who link men to the gods, and through them
to the Supreme, making the universe a unity ; who keep the
gods immune from contact with matter and from the suggestion
of evil ; and what is more, they enable Plutarch to defend the
myths of Greek and Egyptian tradition from the attack of
philosopher and unbeliever. And this defence of myth was
probably more to him than the unity of the universe. Every <
kind of myth was finding a home in the eventual Greek religion,
many of them obscene, bestial and cruel — revolting to the purity
and the tenderness developing more and more in the better
minds of Greece. They could not well be detached from the ,
religion, so they had to be defended.
There are, for example, many elements in the myth of Isis
and Osiris that are disgusting. Plutarch recommends us first
of all, by means of the preconceptions supplied by Greek
philosophy upon the nature of God, to rule out what is objec-
tionable as unworthy of God, but not to do this too harshly.
Myth after all is a sort of rainbow to the sun of reason,1 and
should be received " in a holy and philosophic spirit." 2 We
must not suppose that this or the other story " happened so and
was actually done." Many things told of Isis and Osiris, if
they were supposed to have truly befallen "the blessed and j
incorruptible nature" of the gods, would be "lawless and
barbarous fancy " which, as ^Eschylus says—
You must spit out and purify your mouth.3
But, all the same, myth must be handled tenderly and not in
too rationalistic a spirit— for that might be opening the doors to
" the atheist people." Euhemerus, by recklessly turning all the
gods into generals and admirals and kings of ancient days, has
covered the whole world with atheism,4 and the Stoics, as we
have seen, are not much better, who turn the gods into their
own gifts. No, we may handle myth far too freely—" ah ! yet
I de hide, 20, 358 F. 2 de Iside^ Mj 35S C
1 de hide, 20, .358 E. Cf. the language of Clement in dealing with expressions in
Bible that seem to imply an anthropomorphic conception of God. See p 291.
4 de hide, 23, 360 A.
EVIL DAEMONS 107
consider it again ! " There are so many possibilities of acceptance.
And " in the rites of Isis there is nothing unreasonable, nothing
fictitious, nor anything introduced by superstition, but some
things have an ethical value, others a historical or physical
suggestion." l
In the second place, if nothing can be done for the myth or
the rite — if it is really an extreme case — Plutarch falls back upon
the daemons. There are differences among them as there are
among men, and the elements of passion and unreason are
strong in some of them ; and traces of these are to be found in
rites and initiations and myths here and there. Rituals in
which there is the eating of raw flesh, or the rending asunder
of animals, fasting or beating of the breast, or again the narra-
tion of obscene legends, are to be attributed to no god but to
evil daemons. How many such rituals survived, Plutarch does
not say and perhaps he did not know ; but the Christain
apologists were less reticent, and Clement of Alexandria and
Firmicus Maternus and the rest have abundant evidence about
them. Some of these rites, Plutarch says, must have been
practised to avert the attention of the daemons. " The human
sacrifices that used to be performed," could not have been welcome
to the gods, nor would kings and generals have been willing to
sacrifice their own children unless they had been appeasing the
anger of ugly, ill-tempered, and vengeful spirits, who would
bring pestilence and war upon a people till they obtained what
they sought. " Moreover as for all they say and sing in myth
and hymn, of rapes and wanderings of the gods, of their hiding,
of their exile and of their servitude, these are not the experi-
ences of gods but of daemons." It is not right to say that
Apollo fought a dragon for the Delphic shrine.2
But some such tales were to be found in the finest literature
of the Greeks, and they were there told of the gods.3 In reply
to this, one of Plutarch's characters quotes the narrative of a
hermit by the Red Sea.4 This holy man conversed with men
once a year, and the rest of the time he consorted with wander-
1 de hide, 8, 353 E.
a de def. orac. 14, 15, 417 B-F. Cf. Clem. Alex. Proir. 42, dirdvdpuiroi Kal
fjLiffAvOpuTroi 8ai(jioi>es enjoying avOpwrroKTOvias.
3 So Tertullian urges, ad Natt. ii, 7.
4 This man, or somebody very like him, appears as a Christian hermit in Sulpicius
Severus, Dial, i, 17 ; only there he is reported to consort with angels.
io8 PLUTARCH
ing nymphs and daemons — "the most beautiful man I ever saw,
and quite free from all disease." He lived on a bitter fruit
which he ate once a month. This sage declared that the
legends told of Dionysus and the rites performed in his honour
at Delphi really pertained to a daemon. "If we call some
daemons by the names that belong to gods, — no wonder," said
this stranger, " for a daemon is constantly called after the god, to
whom he is assigned, and from whom he has his honour and his
power " — just as men are called Athenaeus or Dionysius — and
many of them have no sort of title to the gods' names they
bear.1
With Philosophy so ready to be our mystagogue and to lead
us into the true knowledge of divine goodness, and with so
helpful a theory to explain away all that is offensive in traditional
religion, faith ought to be as easy as it is happy and wholesome.
But there is another danger beside Atheism — its exact opposite, *
superstition; and here — apart from philosophical questions —
lay the practical difficulty of Plutarch's religion. He accepted *
almost every cult and mythology which the ancient world had
handed down ; Polytheism knows no false gods. But to guide
one's course aright, between the true myth and the depraved, to
distinguish between the true and good god and the pseudo-
nymous daemon, was no easy task. The strange mass of
Egyptian misunderstandings was a testimony to this— some in
their ignorance thought the gods underwent the actual experi-
ence of the grain they gave men to sow, just as untaught Greeks
identified the gods with their images; and some Egyptians
worshipped the animals sacred to the gods; and so religion
was brought into contempt, while "the weak and harmless"
fell into unbounded superstition, and the shrewder and bolder
into " beastly and atheistic reflections." 2 And yet on second
thoughts Plutarch has a kindly apology for animal-worship.3
Plutarch himself wrote a tract on superstition in which
some have found a note of rhetoric or special pleading, for he *
decidedly gives the atheist the superiority over the superstitious, *
1 de def. orac. 21,421 A-E. Cf. Tert. de Sped. 10. The names of the dead and
heir images are nothing, but we know qui sub istis nominibus institutis simulacris
opertntur ct gaudtant et divinitattm mentiantur, nequam spiritus scilicet, dcemones.
He holds the gods to have been men, long deceased, but agrees in believing in
daemonic operations in shrines, etc.
'-' de hide, 70, 71, 379 B-E.
SUPERSTITION 109
a view which Amyot, his great translator, called dangerous, for
" it is certain that Superstition comes nearer the mean of true
Religion than does Atheism." l Perhaps it did in the sixteenth
century, but in Plutarch's day superstition was the real enemy
to be crushed. Nearly every superstitious practice he cites
appears in other writers.
Superstition, the worst of all terrors, like all other terrors
kills action. It makes no truce with sleep, the refuge from
other fears and pains. It invents all kinds of strange practices,
immersions in mud, baptisms,2 prostrations, shameful postures,
outlandish worships. He who fears " the gods of his fathers
and his race, saviours, friends and givers of good " — whom will
he not fear ? Superstition adds to the dread of death " the
thought of eternal woes." The atheist lays his misfortunes
down to accident and looks for remedies. The superstitious
makes all into judgments, "the strokes of God," and will have
no remedies lest he should seem " to fight against God "
(Oeojmaxew)- " Leave me, Sir, to my punishment ! " he cries,
" me the impious, the accursed, hated of Gods and daemons "
— so he sits in rags and rolls in the mud, confessing his sins
and iniquities, how he ate or drank or walked when the
dremonion forbade. " Wretched man ! " he says to himself,
" Providence ordains thy suffering ; it is God's decree." The
atheist thinks there are no gods ; the superstitious wishes there
were none. It is they who have invented the sacrifices of
children that prevailed at Carthage 3 and other things of the
kind. If Typhons and Giants were to drive out the gods and
become our rulers, what worse could they ask ?
A hint from the Conjugal Precepts may be added here, as it
suggests a difficulty in practice. " The wife ought not to have
men friends of her own but to share her husband's; and the
gods are our first and best friends. So those gods whom the
the husband acknowledges, the wife ought to worship and own,
and those alone, and keep the great door shut on superfluous
devotions and foreign superstitions. No god really enjoys the
1 See discussion in Oakesmith, Religion of Plutarch, p. 185. Greard, de la Morale
de Plutarque, p. 269, ranks it with the best works that have come down to us from
Antiquity.
'2 Tertullian on pagan baptisms — Isis and Mithras, de Baptismo, 5 ; de Pr&scr.
Har. 40.
3 Cf. Tert. Apol. 9, on these sacrifices, in Africa, and elsewhere, and see p. 26.
no PLUTARCH
stolen rites of a woman in secret." l This is a counsel of peac I,
but if "ugly, ill-tempered and vengeful spirits" seem to the motheJ
to threaten her children, who will decide what are superfluous
devotions ?
The religion of Plutarch is a different thing from his
morality. For his ethics rest on an experience much more eas >
to analyse, and like every elderly and genial person he has muc J
that he can say of the kindly duties of life. Every reader will]
own the beauty and the high tone of much of his teaching,!
though some will feel that its centre is the individual, and thad
it is pleasant rather than compulsive and inevitable. After a\
nearly every religion has, somewhere or other, what are callecJ
"good ethics," but the vital question is, "What else? " In thai
last resort is ecstasy, independently of morality, the main thing 1
Are words and acts holy as religious symbols which in a societ I
are obviously vicious ? What propellent power lies behind the
morals ? And where are truth and experience ?
What then is to be said of Plutarch's religion ? Here his'
experience was not so readily intelligible, and every inherited
and acquired instinct within him conspired to make him cling
to tradition and authority as opposed to independent judgment
His philosophy was not Plato's, in spite of much that he
borrowed from Plato, for its motive was not the love of truth.!
The stress he lays upon the pleasure of believing shows that his
ultimate canon is emotion. He does not really wish to find
truth on its own account, though he honestly would like its
support. He wishes to believe, and believe he will — sit pro
ratione voluntas. "There is something of the woman in
Plutarch," says Mr Lecky. Like men of this temperament in
every age, he surrenders to emotion, and emotion declines into
sentimentalism. He cannot firmly say that anything, with
which religious feeling has ever been associated, has ceased to
be useful and has become false. He may talk bravely of
shutting the great door against Superstition, but Superstition
has many entrances — indeed, was indoors already.
We have only to look at his treatise on Isis and Osiris to
see the effects of compromise in religion. He will never take a ••
firm stand ; there are always possibilities, explanations, parallels,
suggestions, symbolisms, by which he can escape from facing
1 Conju!>. Prcec. 19.
APOLOGY OR TRUTH ? in
definitely the demand for a decisive reformation of religion.
As a result, in spite of the radiant mist of amiability, which he
diffuses over these Egyptian gods, till the old myths seem
^capable of every conceivable interpretation, and everything a
> symbol of everything else, and all is beautiful and holy — the
't foolish and indecent old stories remain a definite and integral
part of the religion, the animals are still objects of worship and
•the image of Osiris stands in its original naked obscenity.1
' And the Egyptian is not the only religion, for, as Tertullian
points out, the old rites are still practised everywhere, with
unabated horrors, symbol or no symbol.2 Plutarch emphasizes
the goodness and friendliness of the gods, but he leaves the evil
daemons in all their activity. Strange and awful sacrifices of
the past he deprecates, but he shows no reason why they should
not continue. God, he says, is hardly to be conceived by man's
mind as in a dream; and he thanks heaven for its peculiar
grace that the oracles are reviving in his day ; he believes in
necromancy, theolepsy and nearly every other grotesque means
of intercourse with gods and daemons. He calls himself a
Platonist ; he is proud of the great literature of Greece ; but
nearly all that we associate in religious thought with such names
as Xenophanes, Euripides and Plato, he gently waves aside on
the authority of Apollo. It raises the dignity of Seneca when
we set beside him this delightful man of letters, so full of charm,
so warm with the love of all that is beautiful, so closely knit to
the tender emotions of ancestral piety — and so unspeakably
inferior in essential truthfulness.
The ancient world rejected Seneca, as we have seen, and
chose Plutarch. If Plutarch was not the founder of Neo-
Platonism, he was one of its precursors and he showed the path.
Down that path ancient religion swung with deepening emotion
into that strange medley of thought and mystery, piety, magic
and absurdity, which is called the New Platonism and has
nothing to do with Plato. Here and there some fine spirit
emerged into clearer air, and in some moment of ecstasy
1 Cf. de hide, 55, 373 C ; 18, 358 B ; the image of Osiris, 36, 365 B. Origen (c.
Cels. v, 39) remarks that Celsus is quite pleased with those who worship crocodiles
" in the ancestral way."
2 If the legend is mere fable, he asks, cur rapitur saccrdos Ccreris, si non tale Ceres
passa est ? cur Saiurno alieni liberi immolantur . . . cur Idceae masculus amputatur ?
ad Natt. ii, 8.
ii2 PLUTARCH
achieved " by a leap " some fleeting glimpse of Absolute Beiig,
if there is such a thing. But the mass of men remained bel»w '
in a denser atmosphere, prisoners of ignorance and of fancy— in
an atmosphere not merely dark but tainted, full of spiritual aid
intellectual death.
CHAPTER IV
JESUS OF NAZARETH
When we hear any other speaker, even a very good one, he produces absolutely
no effect upon us, or not much, whereas the mere fragments of you and your words,
even at second-hand, and however imperfectly repeated, amaze and possess the souls
of every man, woman and child who comes within hearing of them. — Plato,
Symposium, 215 D (Jowett).
Dominus noster Chris f us veritatcm se non consuetudinent cognominavit. —
Tertullian, devirg. vcl. I.
TOWARDS the end of the first century of our era, there
began to appear a number of little books, written in the
ordinary Greek of every-day life, the language which
the common people used in conversation and correspondence.
It was not the literary dialect, which men of letters affected — a
mannered and elaborate style modelled on the literature of
ancient Greece and no longer a living speech. The books
were not intended for a lettered public, but for plain people
who wanted a plain story, which they knew already, set down
in a handy and readable form. The writers did their work very
faithfully — some of them showing a surprising loyalty to the
story which they had received. Like other writers they were
limited by considerations of space and so forth, and this in-
volved a certain freedom of choice in selecting, omitting,
abridging and piecing together the material they gathered.
Four only of the books survive intact ; of others there are
scanty fragments ; and scholars have divined at least one
independent work embodied in two that remain. So far as
books can, three of them represent very fairly the ideas of an
earlier generation, as it was intended they should, and tell their
common story, with the variations natural to individual writers,
but with a general harmony that is the pledge of its truth.
At an early date, these books began to be called Gospels 1
and by the time they had circulated for a generation they were
1 Justin, Apology, i, 66.
8 "3
u4 JESUS OF NAZARETH
very widely known and read among the community for which
they were written. Apart from a strong instinct which would
allow no conscious change to be made in the lineaments of the
central figure of the story, there was nothing to safeguard the
little books from the fate of all popular works of their day.
Celsus, at the end of the second century, maintained that a
good deal of the story was originally invention ; and he added
that the " believers " had made as free as drunk men with it
and had written the gospel over again — three times, four times,
many times — and had altered it to meet the needs of contro-
versy.1 Origen replied that Marcion's followers and two other
schools had done so, but he knew of no others. It may to-day <
be taken as established that the four gospels, as we know them,
stand substantially as near the autograph of their authors as
most ancient books which were at all widely read, though here
and there it is probable, or even certain, that changes on a
slight scale have been made in the wording to accommodate
the text to the development of Christian ideas.2 This is at
first sight a serious qualification, but it is not so important as it
seems. By comparison of the first three gospels with one
another, with the aid of the history of their transmission in the
original Greek and in many versions and quotations, it is not
very difficult to see where the hand of a later day has touched
the page and to break through to something in all probability
very near the original story.
This is the greatest problem of literary and historical
criticism to-day. All sorts of objections have been raised
against the credibility of the gospels from the time of Celsus —
they were raised even earlier ; for Celsus quotes them from
previous controversialists — and they are raised still. We are
sometimes told that we cannot be absolutely certain of the
authenticity of any single saying of Jesus, or perhaps of any
recorded episode in his life. A hypertrophied conscience
might admit this to be true in the case of any word or deed of
Jesus that might be quoted, and yet maintain that we have not
lost much. For, it is a commonplace of historians that an
anecdote, even if false in itself, may contain historical truth ; it
1 Quoted by Origen, contra Celsuin, ii, 26, 27.
* Cf. Mr F. C. Conybeare's article on the remodelling of the baptismal formula,
in Matthew xxviii after the Council of Niccea, Hibbert Journal, Oct. 1902.
THE GOSPELS 115
may be evidence, that is, to the character of the person of whom
it is told ; for a false anecdote depends, even more than a true
story, upon keeping the colour of its subject. It may be added
that, as a rule, false anecdotes are apt to be more highly
coloured than true stories, just as a piece of colour printing is
generally a good deal brighter than nature. The reader, who,
by familiarity with books, and with the ways of their writers,
has developed any degree of literary instinct, will not be
inclined to pronounce the colours in the first three gospels at
least to be anything but natural and true. However, even if
one were to concede that all the recorded sayings and doings of
Jesus are fabrications (a wildly absurd hypothesis), there 4
remains a common element in them, a unity of tone and
character, which points to a well-known and clearly marked
personality behind them, whose actual existence is further '
implied by the Christian movement. In other words, whether
true or false in detail, the statements of the gospels, if we know
how to use them aright, establish for us the historicity of Jesus
and leave no sort of doubt as to his personality and the
impression he made upon those who came into contact with
him.
We may not perhaps be able to reconstruct the life of Jesus
as we should wish — it will not be a biography, and it will have
no dates and hardly any procession of events. We shall be
able to date his birth and death, roughly in the reigns of
Augustus and Tiberius, more exactly fixing in each case a
period of five years or so within which it must have happened.
Of epochs and crises in his life we can say little, for we do not
know enough of John the Baptist and his work to be able to
make clear his relations with Jesus, nor can we speak with
much certainty of the development of the idea of Messiahship
in the mind of Jesus himself. But we can with care re-
apture something of the experience of Jesus; we can roughly
ofloutline his outward life and environment. What is of more
Ot [consequence, we can realize that, whatever the particular facts
an|of his own career which opened the door for him, he entered
itjinto the general experience of men and knew human life deeply -
d intimately. And, after all, in this case as in others, it is
ot the facts of the life that matter, but the central fact that
li:'Jthis man did know life as it is before he made judgment upon
ii6 JESUS OF NAZARETH
it. It is this alone that makes his judgment — or any other
man's__0f consequence to us. It is not his individual life, full
of endless significance as that is, but his realization thereby of
man's life and his attitude toward it that is the real gift of the
great man — his thought, his character, himself in fact And
here our difficulty vanishes, for no one, who has cared to study
the gospels with any degree of intelligent sympathy, has failed
to realize the personality there revealed and to come in some
way or other under its influence.
So far in dealing with the religious life of the ancient world,
\ve have had to do with ideas and traditions — with a wel]
thought-out scheme of philosophy and with an ancient and
impressive series of mysteries and cults. The new force that
now came into play is something quite different. The centre in
the new religion is not an idea, nor a ritual act, but a person-
ality. As its opponents were quick to point out, — and they
still find a curious pleasure in rediscovering it — there was little
new in Christian teaching. Men had been monotheists before,
they had worshipped, they had loved their neighbours, they had
displayed the virtues of Christians — what was there peculiar in
Christianity ? Plato, says Celsus, had taught long ago every-
thing of the least value in the Christian scheme of things. The
Talmud, according to the modern Jew, contains a parallel to
everything that Jesus said — (" and how much else ! " adds
Wellhausen). What was new in the new religion, in this
" third race " of men ? The Christians had their answer ready.
In clear speech, and in aphasia, they indicated their founded
He was new. If we are to understand the movement, we must
in some degree realize him — in himself and in his influencj
upon men.
In every endeavour made by any man to reconstruct
another's personality, there will always be a subjective and
imaginative element. Biography is always a work of thd
imagination. The method has its dangers, but without imagiJ
nation the thing is not to be done at all. A great man
impresses men in a myriad of different ways — he is as various
and as bewiideringly suggestive as Nature herself — and no two
men will record quite the same experience of him. Where the
imagination has to penetrate an extraordinary variety of im-
pressions, to seize, not a series of forces each severally making
CELSUS ON -COARSENESS" OF JESUS 117
its own impression, but a single personality of many elements
and yet a unity, men may well differ in the pictures they make.
Even the same man will at different times be differently
impressed and not always be uniformly able to grasp and
order his impressions. Hence it is that biographies and
portraits are so full of surprises and disappointments, while
even the writer or the painter will not always accept his own
interpretation — he outgrows it and detests it. And if it is
possible to spend a life in the realization of the simplest human
nature, what is to be said of an attempt to make a final picture
of Jesus of Nazareth? Still the effort must be made to appre-
hend what he was to those with whom he lived, for from that
comes the whole Christian movement.
Celsus denounced Jesus in language that amazes us ; but
when he was confronted with the teaching of Jesus, the moral
worth of which a mind so candid could not deny, he admitted
its value, but he attributed it to the fact that Jesus plagiarized
largely from Greek philosophy and above all from Plato. He
did not grasp, Celsus adds, how good what he stole really was,
and he spoiled it by his vulgarity of phrase. In particular,
Celsus denounced the saying "Whosoever shall smite thee on
the right cheek, turn to him the other also." The idea came
from the Crito, where Socrates compels Crito to own that we
must do evil to no one — not even by way of requital. The
passage is a fine one, and Celsus quoted it in triumph and
asked if there were not something coarse and clownish in the
style of Jesus.1
Celsus forgot for the moment that the same sort of criticism
had been made upon Socrates. " ' You had better be done/
said Critias, ' with those shoemakers of yours, and the carpenters
and coppersmiths. They must be pretty well down at the heel
by now — considering the way you have talked them round.'
'Yes,' said Charicles, 'and the cowherds too.'"2 But six
centuries had made another man of Socrates. His ideas, inter-
preted by Plato and others, had altered the whole thinking of
the Greek world ; his Silenus-face had grown beautiful by
1 Origen, c. Cels. vii, 58, dypoiKorepov.
2 Xen. Mem, i, 2, 37. Cf. Plato, Symp. 221 E. Gorgias, 491 A. See Forbes,
Socrates, 128 ; Adam, Religious Teachers of Greece, i, 338.
u8 JESUS OF NAZARETH
association ; the physiognomy of his mind and speech was no
longer so striking ; he was a familiar figure, and his words and
phrases were current coin, accepted without question. But to
Celsus Jesus was no such figure ; he had not the traditions and
preconceptions which have in turn obscured for us the features
of Jesus ; there was nothing in Jesus either hallowed or familiar,
and one glance revealed a physiognomy. That he did not like
it is of less importance.
Taking the saying in question, we find, as Celsus did,
absurdity upon the face of it, and, as he also did, something
else at the heart of it — a contrast between surface and inner
value broad as the gulf between the common sense which men
gather from experience and the morality which Jesus read
beneath human nature. Among the words of Jesus there are
many such sayings, and it is clear that he himself saw and
designed the contrasts which we feel as we read them. This
sense of contrast is one of the ground-factors of humour
generally, perhaps the one indispensable factor ; it is always
present in the highest humour. If we then take the words oC
Jesus, as they struck those who first heard them — or as they
struck Celsus — we cannot help remarking at once a strong
individual character in them, one element in which is humour,
— always one of the most personal and individual of all marks
of physiognomy.
Humour, in its highest form, is the sign of a mind at peace
[with itself, for which the contrasts and contradictions of life
have ceased to jar, though they have not ceased to be, — which
accepts them as necessary and not without meaning, indeed as
adding charm to life, when they are viewed from above. It is
the faculty which lets a man see what Plato called " the whole
tragedy and comedy of life" l — the one in the other. Is it not
humour that saw the Pharisee earnestly rinsing, rubbing and
polishing the outside of his cup, forgetful of the fact that he
drank from the inside ? that saw the simple-minded taking their
baskets to gather the grape-harvest from bramble-bushes?
That pleaded with a nation, already gaining a name for being
sordid, not to cast peails before swine, and to forsake caring for
the morrow, because such care was the mark of the Gentile
world — the distinguishing sign between Gentile and Jew?
1 Plato, Philcbus, 50 B.
THE WORDS OF JESUS 119
That told the men he knew so well — men bred in a rough
world — to " turn the other cheek," — to yield the cloak to him
who took the coat, not in irony, but with the brotherly feeling
that " his necessity is greater than mine " — to go when
" commandeered " not the required mile, making an enemy by
sourness of face, but to go two — " two additional," the Syriac
version says — and so soften the man and make him a friend ? x
What stamps the language of Jesus invariably is its delicate ""
ease, implying a sensibility to every real aspect of the matter
in hand — a sense of mastery and peace. Men marvelled at the „
charm of his words — Luke using the Greek xapi<s to express it.2
The homely parable may be in other hands coarse enough, but
the parables of Jesus have a quality about them after all these
years that leaves one certain he smiled as he spoke them.
There is something of the same kind to be felt in Cowper's
letters, but in the stronger nature the gift is of more significance.
At the cost of a little study of human character, and close
reading of the Synoptists, and some careful imagination, it is
possible to see him as he spoke, — the flash of the eye, the smile
on the lip, the gesture of the hand, all the natural expression
of himself and his thought that a man unconsciously gives in
speaking, when he has forgotten himself in his matter and his
hearer — his physiognomy, in fact. We realize very soon his'
complete mastery of the various aspects of what he says.
That he realizes every implication of his words is less likely,
for there is a spontaneity about them — they are "out of the
abundance of his heart " ; the form is not studied ; they are for
the man and the moment. But they imply the speaker and his
whole relation to God and man — they cannot help implying this,
and that is their charm. Living words, flashed out on the spur
of the moment from the depths of him, they are the man. It
was not idly that the early church used to say " Remember the
words of the Lord Jesus." On any showing, it is of importance
to learn the mind of one whose speech is so full of life, and it is
happily possible to do this from even the small collections we
possess of his recorded sayings.
1 On "playfulness" in the words of Jesus, seeBurkitt, the Gospel History t p. 142.
See also Life of Abp Temple, ii. 681 (letter to his son 18 Dec. 1896), on the "beam
in the eye " and the " eye of the needle "— " that faint touch of fun which all Oriental
teachers delight in."
2 Luke iv, 22, tdaij/j.a.fov CTTI rots \6yois
120 JESUS OF NAZARETH
Quite apart from the human interest which always clings
about the childhood of a significant man, the early years of
Jesus have a value of their own, for it was to them that he
always returned when he wished to speak his deepest thought
on the relations of God and man. In the life and love of the
home he found the truest picture of the divine life. This we
shall have to consider more fully at a later point. Very little
is said by the evangelists of the childhood and youth at
Nazareth, but in the parables we have Jesus' own reminis-
cences, and the scenes and settings of the stories he tells fit
in easily and pleasantly with the framework of the historical
and geographical facts of his life at Nazareth.
The town lies in a basin among hills, from the rim of
which can be seen the historic plain of Esdraelon toward the
South, Eastward the Jordan valley and the hills of Gilead, and
to the West the sea. " It is a map of Old Testament history." *
On great roads North and South of the town's girdle of hills
passed to and fro, on the journey between Egypt and Meso-
potamia, the many-coloured traffic of the East — moving no
faster than the camel cared to go, swinging disdainfully on,
with contempt on its curled lip for mankind, its work and
itself. Traders, pilgrims and princes — the kingdoms of the
world and the glory of them — all within reach and in no great
hurry, a panorama of life for a thoughtful and imaginative
boy.
The history of his nation lay on the face of the land at
his feet, and it was in the North that the Zealots throve.
Was it by accident that Joseph the carpenter gave all his
five sons names that stood for something in Hebrew history?
Jesus himself says very little, if anything, of the past of his
people, and he does not, like some of the Psalmists, turn to
the story of Israel for the proof of his thoughts upon God.
But it may be more than a coincidence that his countrymen
were impressed with his knowledge of the national literature ;
and traces of other than canonical books have been found in
his teaching. It implies a home of piety, where God was in
all their thoughts.
The early disappearance of the elder Joseph has been ex-
plained by his death, which seems probable. The widow was
1 George Adam Smith, Historical Geography of the Holy Land, ad loc.
HIS EARLY LIFE 121
left with five sons and some daughters.1 The eldest son was,
according to the story, more than twelve years old, and he
had probably to share the household burden. The days were
over when he played with the children in the market at
weddings and at funerals, and while he never forgot the games
and kept something of the child's mind throughout, he had
to learn what it was to be weary and heavy-laden. His
parables include pictures of home-life — one of a little house,
where the master in bed can argue with an importunate friend
outside the door, who has come on a very homely errand.2
In a group of stories, parables of the mother, we see the
woman sweeping the house till she finds a lost drachma, the
recovery of which is joyful enough to be told to neighbours.
We see her hiding leaven in three measures of meal, while
the eldest son sat by and watched it work. He never forgot
the sight of the heaving, panting mass, the bubbles swelling and
bursting, and all the commotion the proof of something alive
and at work below ; and he made it into a parable of the
Kingdom of God — associated in the minds of the weary with
broken bubbles, and in the mind of Jesus with the profoundest
and most living of realities. It was perhaps Mary, too, who
explained to him why an old garment will not tolerate a new
patch. Whatever is the historical value of the fourth Gospel,
it lays stress on the close relation between Jesus and his
mother.
One of the Aramaic words, which the church cherished from .
the first as the ipsissima verba of Jesus, was Abba. It was
what Mary had taught him as a baby to call Joseph. The fact
that in manhood he gave to God the name that in his childhood
he had given to Joseph, surely throws some light upon the
homelife. To this word we shall return.
Jesus had always a peculiar tenderness for children. <
" Suffer little children to come unto me," is one of his most
familiar sayings, though in quoting it we are apt to forget that
" come " is in Greek a verb carrying volition with it, and that
Mark uses another noticeable word, and tells us that Jesus put
his arms round the child.3 Little children, we may be sure,
came to him of their own accord and were at ease with him ;
1 Matthew xiii, 56 says 7ra<rat, and Mark uses a plural.
2 Luke xi, 5. 3 Mark ix, 36, tvayica\t<rd/j.ei>os.
i22 JESUS OF NAZARETH
and it has been suggested that the saying goes back to the
Nazareth days, and that the little children came about their
brother in the workshop there. Mr Burkitt has recently
remarked l that we may read far and wide in Christian Literature
before we find any such feeling for children as we know so well
in the words of Jesus ; and in Classical Literature we may look
as far. To Jesus the child is not unimportant — to injure a child
was an unspeakable thing. Indeed, if the Kingdom of God
meant anything, it was that we must be children again — God's
little children, to whom their Father is the background of
everything. The Christian phrase about being born again may
be Jesus' own, but if so, it has lost for us something of what he
intended by it, which survives in more authentic sayings. We
have to recover, he said, what we lost when we outgrew the
child ; we must have the simplicity and frankness of children
— their instinctive way of believing all things and hoping
all things. All things are new to the child; it is only for
grown-up people that God has to " make all things new." Paul
has not much to say about children, but he has this thought —
" if any man be in Christ, it is a new creation, all things are
made new." Probably the child's habit of taking nothing for
granted — except the love that is all about it — is what Jesus
missed most in grown men. Every idealist and every poet is a
child from beginning to end — and something of this sort is the
mark of the school of Jesus.
The outdoor life of Jesus lies recorded in his parables.
Weinel has said that Paul was a man of a city — Paul said so
himself. But Jesus is at home in the open air. The sights
and sounds of the farm are in his words — the lost sheep, the
fallen ox, the worried flock, the hen clucking to her chickens.
This last gave a picture in which his thought instinctively
clothed itself in one of his hours of deepest emotion. It is
perhaps a mark of his race and land that to " feed swine " is
with him a symbol of a lost life, and that the dog is an unclean
animal — as it very generally is elsewhere. He speaks of
ploughing, clearly knowing how it should be done ; and like
other teachers, he uses the analogies of sowing and harvest.
The grain growing secretly, and the harvest, over-ripe and
spilling its wheat, were to him pictures of human life.
1 Gospel History, p. 285.
JESUS AND NATURE 123
Wild nature, too, he knew and loved. The wild lily, which
the women used to burn in their ovens never thinking of its
beauty, was to him something finer than King Solomon, and he
probably had seen Herodian princes on the Galilean roads.
(It is a curious thing that he has more than one allusion to
royal draperies.) He bade men study the flowers (Kara^av
Odvetv). It is perhaps worth remark that flower-poetry came
into Greek literature from regions familiar to us in the life of
Jesus ; Meleager was a Gadarene. The Psalmist long ago had
said of the birds that they had their meat from God; but Jesus
brought them into the human family — " Your Heavenly Father
feedeth them." Even his knowledge of weather signs is
recorded. Not all flowers keep in literature the scent and
colour of life ; they are a little apt to become " natural objects."
But if they are to retain their charm in print, something is
wanted that is not very common — the open heart and the open
eye, to which birds and flowers are willing to tell their secret.
There are other things which point to the fact that Jesus had
this endowment, — and not least his being able to find in the
flower a link so strong and so beautiful between God and man.
Here as elsewhere he was in touch with his environment, for he
loved Nature as Nature, and was true to it. His parables are
not like ^Esop's Fables. His lost sheep has no arguments ;
his lily is not a Solomon, though it is better dressed ; and his
sparrows are neither moralists nor theologians — but sparrows,
which might be sold at two for a farthing, and in the meantime
are chirping and nesting. And all this life of Nature spoke to
him of the character of God, of God's delight in beauty and
God's love. God is for him the ever-present thought in it all —
real too, to others, whenever he speaks of him.
An amiable feeling for Nature is often to be found in senti-
mental characters. But sentimentalism is essentially self-
deception; and the Gospels make it clear that of all human
sins and weaknesses none seems to have stirred the anger of
Jesus as did self-deception. When the Pharisees in the
synagogue watched to see whether Jesus would heal on the
Sabbath, he "looked round about upon them all with anger,"
says Mark. This gaze of Jesus is often mentioned in the
Gospels — almost unconsciously — but Luke and Matthew drop
the last two words in quoting this passage, and do so at the cost
i24 JESUS OF NAZARETH
of a most characteristic touch. Matthew elsewhere, in accord-
ance with his habit of grouping his matter by subject, gathers
together a collection of the utterances of Jesus upon the
Pharisees, with the recurring refrain "Scribes and Pharisees,
actors." The Mediterranean world was full of Greek actors ;
we hear of them even among the Parthians in 53 B.C., and in
Mesopotamia for centuries ; and as there had long been Greek
cities in Palestine, and a strong movement for generations to-
ward Greek ways of life, the actor cannot have been an un-
familiar figure. To call the Pharisees " actors " was a new and
strong thing to say, but Jesus said such things. Of the grosser
classes of sinners he was tolerant to a point that amazed his
contemporaries and gave great occasion of criticism to such
enemies as Celsus and Julian. He had apparently no anger for
the woman taken in adultery ; and he was the " friend of
publicans and sinners " — even eating with them.
The explanation lies partly in Jesus' instinct for reality and
truth. Sensualist and money-lover were at least occupied with
a sort of reality ; pleasure and money in their way are real,
and the pursuit of them brings a man, sooner or later, into
contact with realities genuine enough. Whatever illusions
/publican and harlot might have, the world saw to it that they
did not keep them long. The danger for such people was that
they might be disillusioned overmuch. But the Pharisee lied
with himself. If at times he traded on his righteousness to
over-reach others, his chief victim was himself, as Jesus saw,
and as Paul found. Paul, brought up in their school to practise
righteousness, gave the whole thing up as a pretence and a lie
—he would no longer have anything to do with "his own
righteousness." But he was an exception ; Pharisees in general
believed in their own righteousness ; and, by tampering with
their sense of the proportions of things, they lost all feeling for
reality, and with it all consciousness of the value and dignity of
man and the very possibility of any conception of God.
Jesus had been bred in another atmosphere, in a school of
realities. When he said " Blessed are ye poor, for yours is the
Kingdom of heaven," his words were the record of experience —
the paradox was the story of his life. He had known poverty
and hand-labour ; he had been " exposed to feel what wretches
feel." Whatever criticism may make of the story of his feeding
HIS SENSE OF THE REAL
'25
multitudes, it remains that he was markedly sensitive to the
idea of hunger — over and over he urged the feeding of the poor,
the maimed and the blind ; he suggested the payment of a
day's wage for an hour's work, where a day's food was needed
and only an hour's work could be had ; he even reminded a too
happy father that his little girl would be the better of food. No
thinker of his day, or for long before and after, was so deeply
conscious of the appeal of sheer misery, and this is one of the
things on which his followers have never lost the mind of Jesus.
Poverty was perhaps even for himself a key to the door into the
Kingdom of God. At any rate, he always emphasizes the
advantage of disadvantages, for they at least make a man in
earnest with himself.
There is a revelation of the seriousness of his whole mind
bnd nature in his reply to the follower who would go away and
•return. " No man, having put his hand to the plough and
looking back, is// for the Kingdom of God." This every one
knows who has tried to drive a furrow, and all men of action
know only too well that the man, whom Jesus so describes, is
fit for no kind of Kingdom. It is only the sentimentalism of
the church that supposes the flabby-minded to be at home in
the Kingdom of God. Jesus did not. The same kind of energy
is in the parables. The unjust steward was a knave, but he
Iras in earnest ; and so was the questionably honest man who
•bund treasure in a field. The merchant let everything go for
the one pearl of great price. Mary chose " the one thing need-
|pil." We may be sure that in one shop in Nazareth benches
prere made to stand on four feet and doors to open and shut,
[the parables from nature, as we have seen, are true to the
|acts of nature. They too stand on four feet. The church
laid hold of a characteristic word, when it adopted for all time
Jesus' Amen — "in truth." Jesus was always explicit with his
followers — they should know from the first that their goal was
•he cross, and that meantime they would have no place where
jto lay their heads. They were to begin with hard realities, and
to consort with him on the basis of the real.
The world in the age of Jesus was living a good deal upon
:s past, looking to old books and old cults, as we see in
Plutarch and many others. The Jews no less lived upon their
great books. Even Philo was fettered to the Old Testament,
i26 JESUS OF NAZARETH
except when he could dissolve his fetters by allegory, and ev(
then he believed himself loyal to the higher meaning of the t(
But nothing of the kind is to be seen in Jesus. His knowledge!
of Psalmist and Prophet excited wonder ; but in all his quota-?
tions of the Old Testament that have reached us, there is no!
trace of servitude to the letter and no hint of allegory. Ho[
does not quote Scripture as his followers did. Here too hi
spoke as having authority. If sometimes he quoted words foJ
their own sake, it was always as an argmnentum ad hominewm
But his own way was to grasp the writer's mind — a vejj
difficult thing in his day, and little done — and to go straight to
the root of the matter, regardless of authority and tradition!
Like draws to like, and an intensely real man at once grasped
his kinship with other intensely real men ; and he found in th^
prophets, not reeds shaken with the wind, courtiers of king or of
people, but men in touch with reality, with their eyes open for
God, friends and fore-runners, whose experience illumined hiA
own. This type of manhood needed no explanation for him.
The other sort perplexed him — "Why can you not judge foA
yourselves ? " how was it that men could see and yet not seofl
From his inner sympathy with the prophetic mind, came his
freedom in dealing with the prophets. He read and understood!
and decided for himself. No sincere man would ever wish his
word to be final for another. Jesus was conscious of his own
right to think and to see and to judge, and for him, as for the
modern temper, the final thing was not opinion, nor scripture^
nor authority, but reality and experience. There lay the road *
to God. Hence it is that Jesus is so tranquil, — he does " not
strive nor cry " — for the man who has experienced in himself
the power of the real has no doubts about it being able ta
maintain itself in a world, where at heart men want nothinJj
else.
When so clear an eye for reality is turned upon the greaft
questions of man's life and of man's relations with God, it il
apt here too to reach the centre. From the first, men lingered
over the thought that Jesus had gone to the bottom of humai
experience and found in this fact his power to help them. Hi
was made like to his brethren ; he was touched with the feeling
of our infirmities; he was "able to sympathize" (Svvd/u.evoi
for he was " tempted in all respects like us." Ir
THE TEMPTATION OF JESUS 127
the Gospel, as it is handed down to us, the temptation of Christ
is summed up in three episodes set at the beginning of the story
and told in a symbolic form, which may or may not have been
given to them by Jesus himself. Then " the devil left him "-
Luke adding significantly " till a time." The interpretation is
not very clear. Strong men do not discuss their own feelings
very much, but it is possible now and then to divine some
experience from an involuntary tone, or the unconscious
sensitiveness with which certain things are mentioned; or, more
rarely, emotion may open the lips for a moment of self-revela-
tion, in which a word lays bare a lifetime's struggle. It will
add to the significance of his general attitude toward God and
man's life, if we can catch any glimpse of the inner mind of
Jesus.
We have records of his being exhausted and seeking quiet. "
Biographers of that day concealed such things in their heroes,
out the Gospels freely reveal what contemporary critics counted
weaknesses in Jesus. He weeps, he hungers, he is worn out.
He has to be alone — on the mountain by night, in a desert-place
Defore dawn. Such exhaustion is never merely physical or
merely spiritual ; the two things are one. Men crowded upon
Jesus, till he had not leisure to eat ; he came into touch with a
ceaseless stream of human personalities ; and those who have
Deen through any such experience will understand what it cost
lim. To communicate an idea or to share a feeling is exhaust-
ng work, and we read further of deeds of healing, which, Jesus
limself said, took " virtue " (Svva/unv) out of him, and he had to
withdraw. When the Syro-Phcenician woman called for his aid,
it was a question with him whether he should spend on a
foreigner the "virtue" that could with difficulty meet the claims
of Israel, for he was not conscious of the " omnipotence " which
has been lightly attributed to him. It was the woman's
brilliant answer about the little dogs eating the children's crumbs
that gained her request. The turn of speech showed a vein of
humour, and he consented "for this saying."1 If human
experience goes for anything in such a case, contact with a
spirit so delicate and sympathetic gave him something of the
1 I believe that the allusion to dogs has been thrown back into Jesus' words from
the woman's reply, and that she was the first to mention them. Note Mark's
emphatic phrase 5td TOITOV TOP \byov ; vii, 29.
128 JESUS OF NAZARETH
strength he spent. The incident throws light upon the " fluxes
and refluxes of feeling " within him, and the effect upon him of
a spirit with something of his own tenderness and humour.
For the moment, though, his sense of having reached his limits
should be noticed.
The church has never forgotten the agony in the garden, but
that episode has lost some of its significance because it has not
been recognized to be one link in a chain of experience, which
we must try to reconstruct. It has been assumed that Jesus
never expected to influence the Pharisees and scribes ; but this
is to misinterpret the common temper of idealists, and to miss
the pain of Jesus' words when he found his hopes of the
Pharisees to be vain. Gradually, from their pressure upon his
spirit, he grew conscious of the outcome — they would not be
content with logomachies ; the end might be death. Few of us*
have any experience to tell us at what cost to the spirit such a
discovery is made. The common people he read easily enough
and recognized their levity. And now, in exile, as Mr Burkitt
has lately suggested,2 he began to concentrate himself upon
the twelve. It was not till Peter, by a sudden flash of insight,
grasped his Messiahship — a character, which Jesus had realized *'
already, though we do not know by what process, and had for4
reasons of his own concealed, — it was not till then that Jesusl
disclosed his belief that he would be killed at last. From thatl
moment we may date the falling away of Judas, and what this
man's constant presence must have meant to Jesus, ordinary
experience may suggest. Shrewd, clever and disappointed, he
must have been a chill upon his Master at all hours. His
influence upon the rest of the group must have been consciously
and increasingly antipathetic. Night by night Jesus could read
in the faces which of them had been with Judas during the day.
The sour triumph of Judas when the Son of man was told to go
on to another village after a day's journey, and the uncomfort- I
able air of one or more of the others, all entered into Jesus' j
experience ; and night by night he had to undo Judas' work.
He "learnt by what he suffered " from the man's tone and look |
that there would be desertion, perhaps betrayal. The daily
suffering involved in trying to recapture the man, in going to
seek the lost sheep in the wilderness of bitterness, may be
1 Gospel History -, p. 93 f. (with map).
JESUS AND HIS FRIENDS 129
imagined. Side by side, King, Pharisee and disciple are against
him, and the tension, heightened by the uncertainty as to the
how, when and where of the issue must have been great. Luke's
graphic word says his face was " set " for Jerusalem — it would
be, he knew, a focus for the growing forces of hatred.
Day by day the strain increased. Finally Jesus spoke.
The where and how of the betrayal he could not determine ; the
when he could. At the supper, he looked at Judas and then he
spoke.1 " What thou doest, do quickly." The man's face as
he hurried out said " Yes " to the unspoken question — and for
the moment it brought relief. This is the background of the
garden-scene. What the agony moant spiritually, we can
hardly divine. The physical cost is attested by the memory of
his face which haunted the disciples. The profuse sweat that
goes with acute mental strain is a familiar phenomenon, and its
traces were upon him — visible in the torchlight. Last of all,
upon the cross, Nature reclaimed her due from him. Jesus had
drawn, as men say, upon the body, and in such cases Nature
repays herself from the spirit. The worn-out frame dragged the
spirit with it, and he died with the cry — " My God, my God,
why hast thou forsaken me ? "
Turning back, we find in Luke2 that Jesus said to his
disciples " Ye are they that have continued with me in my
temptations." Dr John Brown 3 used to speak of Jesus having
" a disposition for private friendships." A mind with the genius
for friendliness is not only active but passive. We constantly
find in history instances of men with such a gift failing in great
crises because of it — they yield to the friendly word ; it means
so much to them. Thus when Peter, a friend of old standing
and of far greater value since his confession at Philippi, spoke
and reinforced the impressions made on Jesus' mind by his
prevision of failure and death, the temptation was of a terrible
kind. The sudden rejoinder, in which Jesus identifies the man
he loved with Satan, shows what had happened. But, if friend-
ship carried with it temptation, yet when physical exhaustion
brought spiritual exhaustion in its train, the love and tenderness
1 The steady gaze and the pause are mentioned by the Gospels, in more than one
place, as preceding utterance. There are of course great variations in the accounts of
the last supper.
2 xxii, 28. 3 The author of Rab and his Friends.
9
I3o JESUS OF NAZARETH
of his friends upheld him. But, more still, their belief in him
and in his ideas, their need of him, drove the tempter away.
He could not disappoint them. The faces that softened to
him,— all that came to his mind as he thought of his friends
name by name— gave him hope and comfort, though the body
might do its worst. It was perhaps in part this experience of
the friendship of simple and commonplace men that differ-
entiated the teaching of Jesus from the best the world had yet
had. No other teacher dreamed that common men could *
possess a tenth part of the moral grandeur and spiritual power,
which Jesus elicited from them— chiefly by believing in them.
Here, to any one who will study the period, the sheer originality
of Jesus is bewildering. This belief in men Jesus gave to his
followers and they have never lost it.
It was in the new life and happiness in God that he was <
bringing to the common people that Jesus saw his firmest
credentials. He laid stress indeed upon the expulsion of devils
and the cure of disease — matters explained to-day by "sugges-
tion." But the culmination was " the good news for the poor." <
"Gospel" and "Evangelical" have in time become technical
terms, and have no longer the pulse of sheer happiness which
Jesus felt in them, and which the early church likewise experi-
enced. "Be of good cheer!" is the familiar English rendering
of one of the words of Jesus, often on his lips — " Courage ! " he
said. One text of Luke represents him as saying it even on the
cross, when he spoke to the penitent thief.
Summing up what we have so far reached, we may remark
the broad contrast between the attitude of Jesus to human life
and the views of the world around him. A simple home with
an atmosphere of love and truth and intelligence, where life
was not lost sight of in its refinements, where ordinary needs
and common duties were the daily facts, where God was a
constant and friendly presence — this was his early environment.
Later on it was the carpenter's bench, the fisherman's boat, wind
on the mountain and storm on the lake, leaven in the meal and
wheat in the field. Everywhere his life is rooted in the normal 1
and the natural, and everywhere he finds God filling the^
meanest detail of man's life with glory and revelation.
Philosophers were anxious to keep God clear of contact
with matter ; Marcus Aurelius found " decay in the substance
MAN'S RELATIONS WITH GOD 131
of all things — nothing1 but water, dust, bones, stench."1 Jesus ^
saw life in all things — God clothing the grass and watching
over little birds. To-day the old antithesis of God and matter
is gone, and it comes as a relief to find that Jesus anticipated
its disappearance. The religious in his day looked for God in
trance and ritual, in the abnormal and unusual, but for him, as
for every man who has ever helped mankind, the ordinary and
the commonplace were enough. The Kingdom of God is £:
among you, or even within you — in the common people, of
whom all the other teachers despaired.
We come now to the central question of man's relation -
with God, never before so vital a matter to serious people in the
Mediterranean world. Jew and Greek and Egyptian were all
full of it, and men's talk ran much upon it. Men were anxious
to be right with God, and sought earnestly in the ways of their
fathers for the means of communion with God and the attain-
ment of some kind of safety in their position with regard to him.
Jew and Greek alike talked of heaven and hell and of the ways
to them. They talked of righteousness and holiness — " holy " is
one of the great words of the period — and they sought these
things in ritual and abstinence. Modern Jews resent the
suggestion that the thousand and one regulatious as to cere-
monial purity, and the casuistries, as many or more, spun out of
the law and the traditions, ranked with the great commandments
of neighbourly love and the worship of the One God. No
doubt they are right, but it is noticeable that in practice the
common type of mind is more impressed with minutiae than
with principles. The Southern European to-day will do murder
on little provocation, but to eat meat in Lent is sin. But,
without attributing such conspicuous sins as theft and adultery
and murder to the Pharisees, it is clear that in establishing
their own righteousness they laid excessive stress on the details
of the law, on Sabbath-keeping (a constant topic with the
Christian apologists), on tithes, and temple ritual, on the
washing of pots and plates — still rigorously maintained by the
modern Jew — and all this was supposed to constitute holiness.
Jesus with the clear incisive word of genius dismissed it all as
"acting." The Pharisee was essentially an actor — playing to
himself the most contemptible little comedies of holiness.
1 ix, 36.
1 32 JESUS OF NAZARETH
Listen, cries Jesus, and he tells the tale of the man fallen among
thieves and left for dead, and how priest and Levite passed by
on the other side, fearing the pollution of a corpse, and how they
left mercy, God's own work — " I will have mercy and not
sacrifice " was one of his quotations from Hosea, — to be done by
one unclean and damned — the Samaritan. Whited sepulchres !
he cries, pretty to look at, but full of what ? of death, corruption
and foulness. " How can you escape from the judgment of
hell ? " he asked them, and no one records what they answered
or could answer.
It is clear, however, that, outside Palestine, the Jews in the
great world were moving to a more purely moral conception of
religion — their environment made mere Pharisaism impossible,
and Greek criticism compelled them to think more or less in the
terms of the fundamental. The debt of the Jew to the Gentile
is not very generously acknowledged. None the less, the
distinctive badge of all his tribe was and remained what the
Greeks called fussiness (TO ^o^o&re'?).1 The Sabbath, circum-
cision, the blood and butter taboos remained — as they still
remain in the most liberal of " Liberal Judaisms " — tribe marks
with no religious value, but maintained by patriotism. And
side by side with this lived and lives that hatred of the
Gentile, which is attributed to Christian persecution, but which
Juvenal saw and noted before the Christian had ceased to be
persecuted by the Jew. The extravagant nonsense found in
Jewish speculation as to how many Gentile souls were equivalent
in God's sight to that of one Jew is symptomatic. To this
day it is confessedly the weakness of Judaism that it offers
no impulse and knows no enthusiasm for self-sacrificing love
where the interests of the tribe are not concerned.2
The great work of Jesus in this matter was the final and
decisive cleavage with antiquity. Greek rationalism had long
since laughed at the puerilities of the Greek cults ; but
rationalism and laughter are unequally matched against Re-
ligion, and it triumphed over them, and, as we see in Plutarch
1 Cf. ad Diognetum, cited on p. 177.
2 I quote this from a friend to whom a Jew said as much ; of course every general
statement requires modification. Still the predominantly tribal character of Judaism
implies contempt for the spiritual life of the Gentile Christian and pagan. If the
knowledge of God was or is of value to the Jew, he has made little effort to
share it.
JESUS THE LIBERATOR 133
and the Neo-Platonists, it imposed its puerilities— yes, and its
obscenities — upon Philosophy and made her in sober truth
"procuress to the lords of hell." It was a new thing when^
Religion, in the name of truth and for the love of God, abolished
the connexion with a trivial past. Jesus cut away at once every
vestige of the primitive and every savage survival — all natural
growths perhaps, and helpful too to primitive man and to the
savage, but confusing to men on a higher plane, — either mere
play-acting or the " damnation of hell." Pagan cults he summed
up as much speaking. Once for all he set Religion free from
all taboos and rituals. Paul, once, on the spur of the moment,
called Jesus the "Yes" of all the promises of God — a most
suggestive name for the vindicator and exponent of God's
realities. It is such a man as this who liberates mankind,
cutting us clear of make-believes and negations and taboos, and
living in the open-air, whether it is cloud or sun. That Jesus
shocked his contemporaries with the abrupt nakedness of his
religious ideas is not surprising. The church made decent haste
to cover a good many of them up, but not very successfully. A
mind like that of Jesus propagates itself, and reappears with
startling vitality, as history in many a strange page can reveal.
We must now consider what was the thought of Jesus upon
God and how he conceived of the relation between God and
man. He approached the matter originally from the stand-
point of Judaism, and no attempt to prove the influence of
Greek philosophy is likely to succeed. The result of Greek
speculation upon God — where it did not end in pure pantheism
— was that of God nothing whatever could be predicated — not
even being, but that he was to be expressed by the negation
of every idea that could be formed of him. To this men had
been led by their preconception of absolute being, and so
strong was the influence of contemporary philosophy that
Christian thinkers adopted the same conclusion, managing what
clumsy combinations they could of it and of the doctrine of
incarnation. Clement of Alexandria is a marked example of
this method.
To the philosophic mind God remains a difficult problem,
but to the religious temper things are very different. To it
God is the one great reality never very far away, and is con-
ceived not as an abstraction, nor as a force, but as a personality.
i34 JESUS OF NAZARETH
It has been and is the strength and redemption of Judaism,
that God is the God of Israel — " Oh God, thou art my God ! "
How intuition is to be reconciled with philosophy has been the
problem of Christian thinkers in every age, but it may be
remarked that the varying term is philosophy. To the intuition
of Jesus Christians have held fast— though Greeks and others
have called it " folly " ; and in the meantime a good many
philosophies have had their day.
The central thought of Jesus is the Fatherhood of God.^
For this, as for much else, parallels have been founcPm the
words of Hebrew thinkers, ancient and contemporary, and we
may readily concede that it was not original with Jesus to call
God Father. The name was given to God by the prophets,
but it was also given to him by the Stoics — and by Homer; so
that to speak of God's Fatherhood might mean anything between
the two extremes of everything and nothing. Christian theology,
for instance, starting with the idea of the Fatherhood of God,
has not hesitated to speak in the same breath of his " vindicating
his majesty " — a phrase which there is no record or suggestion
that Jesus ever used. There may be fathers who vindicate their
x majesty, as there are many other kinds, but until we realize the
connotation of the word for men who speak of God as Father,
it is idle to speak of it being a thought common to them. The
name may be in the Old Testament and in Homer, but the
meaning which Jesus gave to it is his own.
Jesus never uses the name Father without an air of gladness. v
Men are anxious as to what they shall eat, and what they
shall drink, and wherewithal they shall be clothed — "your
heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things."
Children ask father and mother for bread — will they receive
a stone ? The women had hid the leaven in the three measures
of meal long before the children began to feel hungry. And
as to clothes— God has clothed the flower far better than
Solomon ever clothed himself, "and shall he not much more
clothe you, O ye of little faith ? " The picture is one of the <
strong and tender parent, smiling at the child's anxiety with
no notion of his own majesty or of anything but love. So
incredibly simple is the relation between God and man — simple,^
unconstrained, heedless and tender as the talk round a table in
Nazareth. Jesus is greater than the men who have elaborated
THE FATHERHOOD OF GOD 135
his ideas, and majesty is the foible of little minds. The great
man, if he thinks of his dignity, lets it take care of itself; he is
more interested in love and truth, and he forgets to think of
what is due to himself. Aristotle said that his " magnificent
man " would never run ; but, says Jesus, when the prodigal son
was yet a great way off, "his father saw him, and ran, and fell
on his neck, and kissed him." This contrast measures the
distance between the thought of Jesus and some Christian
theologies. It is worth noting that in the two parables, in
which a father directly addresses his son, it is with the tender
word reKvov, which is more like a pet name. It adds to the
meaning of the parable of the prodigal, when the father calls
the elder brother by the little name that has come down from
childhood. It was a word which Jesus himself used in speaking
to his friends.1 The heavenly Father does not cease to be a
father because his children are ungracious and bad. He sends
rain and sun — and all they mean — to evil and to good. The
whole New Testament is tuned to the thought of Jesus — "the
philanthropy of God our saviour." 2
Plato had long before defined the object of human life as
"becoming like to God." Jesus finds the means to this likeness
to God in the simplest of every day's opportunities. "Love
your enemies and do good, and ye shall be sons of the
Highest, for he is good and pitiful." " Blessed are the peace-
makers," he said, "for they shall be called children of God."
This is sometimes limited to the reconciliation of quarrels, but
the worst of quarrels is the rift in a man's own soul, the
"division of his spiritual substance against itself" which is the
essence of all tragedy. There are some whose least word, or
whose momentary presence, can somehow make peace wherever
they go, and leave men stronger for the rest they have found
in another's soul. This, according to Jesus, is the family like-
ness by which God's children are recognized in all sorts of
company. To have the faculty of communicating peace of
mind — and it is more often than not done unconsciously, as
most great things are — is no light or accidental gift
Jesus lays a good deal more stress upon unconscious instinct
than most moralists do. Once only he is reported to have
spoken of the Last Judgment, which was a favourite theme
1 e.g. Mark x, 24. 2 Titus iii, 4.
136 JESUS OF NAZARETH
with the eschatologists of his period, Jewish, pagan, and
Christian. He borrowed the whole framework of the scene,
but he changed, and doubly changed, the significance of it.
For lie-discarded the national or_nolitical criterion which the
Jew preferred, and he did not Jiave recourse to^the rather
individualistic moral test which Greek thinkers proposed, in
imfialtoffoTTlato ;~strH"4ess did it occur to him to suggest a
Credo. With him the ultimate standard was one of sheer kind-
ness and good-heartedness — " inasmuch as ye did it to one of
the least of these my brethren." But it is still more interesting
to note how this standard is applied. Every one at the Last
Judgment accepts it, just as every one accepts the propositions
of moralists in general. But the real cleavage between the
classes of men does not depend on morality, as the chilly
suggestion of the mere word reminds us. Men judge other
men not by their morality, professed or practised, so much as
by their unconscious selves — by instinct, impulse and so forth,
the things that really give a clue to the innermost man. The
most noticeable point then in Jesus' picture of the Last Judg-
ment is that, when " sheep " and " goats " are separated, neither
party at once understands the reasons of the decision. These
are conscious of duties done ; the others have no very clear
idea about it. Elsewhere Jesus suggests that, when men have
done all required of them, they may still have the feeling that
they are unprofitable servants ; and it is precisely the peace-
makers and the pure in heart who do not realize how near they
come to God. The priest and the Levite in the parable were
conscious of their purity, but Jesus gives no hint that they
saw God. The Samaritan lived in another atmosphere, but it
was natural to him and he breathed it unconsciously. The
cultivation of likeness to God by Greek philosophers and their
pupils was very different. Plutarch has left a tract, kindly and
sensible, on " How a man may recognize his own progress in
virtue," but there is no native Christian product of the kind.
From what Jesus directly says of God, and from what he
says of God's children, we may conclude that he classes God
with the strong and sunny natures ; with the people of bright
eyes who see through things and into things, who have the
feeling for reality, and love every aspect of the real. God has
that sense which is peculiar to the creative mind — the keen joy
THE KINGDOM OF GOD 137
in beauty, that loves star and bird and child. God has the
father's instinct, a full understanding of human nature, and a
heart open for the prodigal son, the publican and the woman
with seven devils. " In his will is our peace," wrote the
great Christian poet of the middle ages. " Doing the will we
find rest," said a humble and forgotten Christian of the second
century.1 They both learnt the thought from Jesus, who set
it in the prayer beginning with Abba which he taught his
disciples, and who prayed it himself in the garden with the
same Abba in his heart. " In the Lord's prayer," said Tertullian,
" there is an epitome of the whole Gospel." 2
At this point two questions rise, which are of some historical
importance, and bear upon Jesus' view of God. It is clear,
first of all, that the expression " the Kingdom of God " was
much upon the lips of Jesus, at least in the earlier part of his
ministry. It was not of his own coining, and scholars have
differed as to what he really meant. Such controversy always
rises about the terms in which a great mind expresses itself.
The great thinker, even the statesman, has to use the best
language he can find to convey his ideas, and if the ideas are
new, the difficulty of expression is sometimes very great. The
words imply one thing to the listener, and another to the
speaker who is really trying (as Diogenes put it) to " re-mint the
currency," and how far he succeeds depends mostly upon his
personality. To-day " the Kingdom," or more accurately " the
Kingship of God," is in some quarters interpreted rather
vigorously in the sense which the ordinary Jew gave to the
phrase in the age of Jesus; but it is more than usually un-
sound criticism to take the words of such a man as meaning
merely what they would in the common talk of unreflective
persons, who use words as' counters and nothing else. There
was a vulgar interpretation of the " Kingship of God," and
there was a higher one, current among the better spirits ; and
it is only reasonable to interpret this phrase, or any other, in
the light of the total mind of the man who uses it. It is clear
then that, when Jesus used "the Kingship of God," he must
have subordinated it to his general idea of God ; and what
1 Second Clement (so-called), 6, 7.
8 Tert. de Or. I (end). Cf. also c. 4, on the prayer in the Garden ; and de
, 8.
138 JESUS OF NAZARETH
that was, we have seen. To-day the phrase is returning into
religious speech to signify the permeation of society by the
mind of Christ, which cannot be far from what it meant to the
earliest disciples. It is significant that the author of the fourth
gospel virtually dropped the phrase altogether, that Paul pre-
ferred other expressions as a rule, and that it was merged and
lost in the idea of the church.
Closely bound up with the " Kingdom of God " is the name
Messiah, with a similarly wide range of meanings. The question
has also been raised as to how far Jesus identified himself with
the Messiah. It might be more pertinent to ask with which
Messiah. On the whole, the importance of the matter can be
gauged by the fate of the word. It was translated into Greek,
and very soon Christos, or Chrestos, was a proper name and
hardly a title at all except in apologetics, where alone the
conception retained some importance. The Divine Son and
the Divine Logos — terms which Jesus did not use — superseded
the old Hebrew title, at any rate in the Gentile world, and this
could hardly have occurred if the idea had been of fundamental
moment in Jesus' mind and speech. If he used the name, as
seems probable, it too must have been subordinated to his
master-thought of God's fatherhood. It would then imply at
most a close relation to the purposes of God, and a mission to
men, the stewardship of thoughts that would put mankind on
a new footing with God. The idea of his being a mediator in
the Pauline sense is foreign to the gospels, and the later con-
ception of a purchase of mankind from the devil, or from the
justice of God, by the blood of a victim is still more alien to
Jesus' mind.
These are some of the features of the founder of the new
religion as revealed in the Gospels — features that permanently
compel attention, but after all it was not the consideration of
these that conquered the world. Of far more account in winning*
the world was the death of this man upon the cross. It was
the cross that gave certainty to all that Jesus had taught about
God. The church sturdily and indignantly repudiated any
suggestion, however philosophic, that in any way seemed likely
to lessen the significance of the cross. That he should taste
the ultimate bitterness of death undisguised, that he should
refuse the palliative wine and myrrh (an action symbolic of his
THE CROSS 139
whole attitude to everything and to death itself), that with
open eyes he should set his face for Jerusalem, and with all the
sensitiveness of a character, so susceptive of impression and so
rich in imagination, he should expose himself to our experience
— to the foretaste of death, to the horror of the unknown, and
to the supreme fear — the dread of the extinction of personality ;
and that he should actually undergo all he foresaw, as the last
cry upon the cross testified — all this let the world into the real
meaning of his central thought upon God. It was the pledge
of his truth, and thus made possible our reconciliation with God.
If we may take an illustration from English literature,
Shakespeare's Julius Ccesar may suggest something here. It
has been noticed how small a part Caesar plays in the drama —
how little he speaks ; what weakness he shows — epilepsy, deaf-
ness, arrogance, vacillation ; and how soon he disappears.
Would not the play have been better named Brutust Yet
Shakespeare knew what he was doing ; for the whole play is
Julius Caesar, from the outbreak of Cassius at the beginning-
Why ! man he doth bestride the narrow world
Like a colossus,
to the bitter cry of Brutus at the end —
O Julius Caesar, thou art mighty yet!
Caesar determines everything in the story. Every character in
it is a mirror in which we see some figure of him, and the life
of every man there is made or unmade by his mind toward
Caesar. Caesar is the one great determining factor in the story ;
living and dead, he is the centre and explanation of it all.
What was written in the Gospels of the life and death of
Jesus, might by now be ancient history, if the Gospels had told
the whole story. But they did not tell the whole story ; and
they neither were, nor are, the source of the Christian move-
ment, great as their influence is and has been. The Jesus who
has impressed himself upon mankind is not a character, how-
ever strong and beautiful, that is to be read about in a book.
Before the Gospels were written, men spoke of the " Spirit of
| Jesus" as an active force amongst them. We may criticize
I their phrase and their psychology as we like, but they were
speaking of something they knew, something they had seen
v
i4o JESUS OF NAZARETH
and felt, and it is that " something " which changed the course
of history. Jesus lives for us in the pages of the Gospels, but
we are not his followers on that account, nor were the Christians
of the first century. They, like ourselves, followed him under
the irresistible attraction of his character repeating itself in the
lives of men and women whom they knew. The Son of God,
they said, revealed himself in men, and it was true. Of his
immediate followers we know almost nothing, but it was they
who passed him on the next generation, consciously in their
preaching, which was not always very good ; and unconsciously
in their lives, which he had transformed, and which had gained
from him something of the power of his own life. The church
was a nexus of quickened and redeemed personalities, — men and
women in whom Christ lived. So Paul wrote of it. A century
later another nameless Christian spoke of Christ being "new
born every day over again in the hearts of believers," and it
would be hard to correct the statement. If we are to give a
true account of such men as Alexander and Caesar, we consider
them in the light of the centuries through which their ideas
lived and worked. In the same way, the life, the mind and the
personality of Jesus will not be understood till we have realized
by some intimate experience something of the worth and beauty
of the countless souls that in every century have found and
still find in him the Alpha and Omega of their being. For the
Gospels are not four but "ten thousand times ten thousand,
and thousands of thousands," and the last word of every one of
them is " Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the
world."
CHAPTER V
THE FOLLOWERS OF JESUS
TWO things stand out, when we study the character of the
early church — its great complexity and variety, and its
unity in the personality of Jesus of Nazareth. In spite
of the general levelling which Greek culture and Roman govern-
ment had made all over the Mediterranean world, the age-long
influences of race and climate and cult were still at work.
Everywhere there was a varnish of Greek literature ; every-
where a tendency to uniformity in government, very carefully
managed with great tenderness for local susceptibilities, but
none the less a fixed object of the Emperors ; everywhere cult
was blended with cult with the lavish hospitality of polytheism ;
and yet, apart from denationalized men of letters, artists and
dilettanti, the old types remained and reproduced themselves.
And when men looked at the Christian community, it was as
various as the Empire — " Thou wast slain," runs the hymn in
the Apocalypse, " and thou hast redeemed us to God by thy
blood out of every kindred and tongue and people and nation."
There soon appeared that desire for uniformity which animated
the secular government, and which appears to be an ineradicable
instinct of the human mind. Yet for the first two centuries — the
period under our discussion — the movement toward uniformity
had not grown strong enough to overcome the race-marks and
the place-marks. There are great areas over which in Christian
life and thought the same general characteristics are to be seen,
which were manifested in other ways before the Christian era.
There is the great West of Italy, Gaul and Africa, Latin in
outlook, but with strong local variations. There is the region
of Asia Minor and Greece, — where the church is Hellenistic in
every sense of the word, very Greek upon the surface and less
Greek underneath, again with marked contrasts due to geo-
graphy and race-distribution. Again there is the Christian
South — Alexandria, with its Christian community, Greek and
1 42 THE FOLLOWERS OF JESUS
Jewish, and a little known hinterland, where Christian thought
spread, we do not know how. There was Palestine with a group
of Jewish Christians, very clearly differentiated. And Eastward
there rose a Syrian Christendom, which as late as the fourth
century kept a character of its own.1
Into all these great divisions of the world came men eager
to tell " good news " — generally quite commonplace and un-
important people with a "treasure in earthen vessels." Their
message they put in various ways, with the aphasia of ill-
educated men, who have something to tell that is far too big
for any words at their command. It was made out at last that
they meant a new relation to God in virtue of Jesus Christ.
From a philosophic point of view they talked " foolishness," and
they lapsed now and then, under the pressure of what was
within them, into inarticulate and unintelligible talk, from which
they might emerge into utterance quite beyond their ordinary
range. Such symptoms were familiar enough, but these people
were not like the usual exponents of " theolepsy " and " enthu-
siasm." They were astonishingly upright, pure and honest ;
they were serious; and they had in themselves inexplicable
reserves of moral force and a happiness far beyond anything
that the world knew. They were men transfigured, as they
owned. Some would confess to wasted and evil lives, but
something had happened,2 which they connected with Jesus or
a holy spirit, but everything in the long run turned upon
Jesus.
Clearer heads came about them, and then, as they put it,
the holy spirit fell upon them also. These men of education
and ideas were " converted," and began at once to analyse their
experience, using naturally the language with which they
were familiar. It was these men who gave the tone to the
groups of believers in their various regions, and that tone varied
with the colour of thought in which the more reflective converts
had grown up. A great deal, of course, was common to all regions
of the world, — the new story and the new experience, an un-
philosophized group of facts, which now, under the stimulus of
man's unconquerable habit of speculation, began to be interpreted
1 See Burkitt's Early Eastern Christianity.
2 See Justin, Apology, i, 14, a vivid passage on the change of character that has
been wrought in men by the Gospel. Cf. Tert. ad Scap. 2, nee aliunde noscibilcs
quani de emendatione vitiorum pristinorum.
THE RECRUITS
and to be related in all sorts of ways to the general experience
of me h. No wonder there was diversity. It took centuries to
achieve a uniform account of the Christian faith.
The unity of the early church lay in the reconciliation with
God, ,m the holy spirit, and Jesus Christ, — a unity soon felt and
treasured. " There is one body and one spirit, even as ye are
called in one hope of your calling; one Lord, one faith, one
baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all and
throuj fh all and in you all." l The whole body of Christians was
conscious of its unity, of its distinctness and its separation. It
was a " peculiar people " 2 — God's own ; a " third race," as the
heathen said.3
To go further into detail we may consider the recruits and
thei : experience, their explanations of this experience, and the
new life in the world.
The recruits came, as the Christians very soon saw, from
every race of mankind, and they brought with them much that
was of value in national preconceptions and characteristics.
The presence of Jew, Greek, Roman, Syrian and Phrygian,
made it impossible for the church to be anything but universal ;
and if at times her methods of reconciling somewhat incom-
patible contributions were unscientific, still in practice she
achieved the task and gained accordingly. Where the Empire
failed in imposing unity by decree, the church produced it
instinctively.
It was on Jewish ground that Christianity began, and it was
from its native soil and air that it drew, transmuting as it drew
them, its passionate faith in One God, its high moral standard
and its lofty hopes of a Messianic age to come. For no other
race of the Mediterranean world was the moral law based on
the " categoric imperative." Nowhere else was that law written
in the inward parts, in the very hearts of the people,4 and
nowhere was it observed so loyally. The absurdity and scrupu-
losity which the Greek ridiculed in the Jew, were the outcome
of his devotion to the law of the Lord ; and, when once the law
| was reinterpreted and taken to a higher plane by Jesus, the
1 Ephesians iv, 4. 2 i Peter ii, 7.
3 Tertullian, ad Naf tones, i, 8, Plane, tertium genus dicimur . . . verum recogitate
quos tertium genus dicitis principem locum obtineant, siquidem non ulla gens non
I Christiana.
4Cf. Jeremiah xxxi, 31 — a favourite passage with Christian apologists.
THE FOLLOWERS OF JESUS
old passion turned naturally to the new morality. It \*/as the
Jew who brought to the common Christian stock the cone eption •
of Sin, and the significance of this is immense in the history
of trie religion. It differentiated Christianity from all the
o »
religious and philosophical systems of the ancient world.
'Tis the faith that launched point-blank her dart
At the head of a lie — taught Original Sin,
The Corruption of Man's Heart.
Seneca and the Stoics played with the fancy of man's being
equal, or in some points superior, to God — a folly impossible
for a Jewish mind. It was the Jews who gave the world the
"oracles of God" in the Old Testament, who invested Chris-
tianity for the moment with the dignity of an ancient history
and endowed it for all time with a unique inheritance of
religious experience. Nor is it only the Old Testament that
the church owes to the Jew ; for the Gospels are also his gift
— anchors in the actual that have saved Christianity from all
kinds of intellectual, spiritual and ecclesiastical perils. And,
further, at the difficult moment of transition, when Christian
ideas passed from the Jewish to the Gentile world, there were
Jews of the Hellenistic type ready to mediate the change.
They of all men stood most clearly at the universal point of
view ; they knew the grandeur and the weakness of the law ;
they understood at once the Jewish and the Greek mind. ' It
is hard to exaggerate what Christianity owes to men of this
school — to Paul and to "John," and to a host of others,
Christian Jews of the Dispersion, students of Philo, and
followers of Jesus. On Jewish soil the new faith died ; it was
transplantation alone that made Christianity possible ; for if:
was the true outcome of the teaching of Jesus, that the new
faith should be universal.
The chief contribution of the greek was his demand for this
very thing — that Christianity must be universal. He made no
secret of his contempt for Judaism, and he was emphatic in
insisting on a larger outlook than the Jewish. No man could
seem more naturally unlikely to welcome the thoughts of Jesus
than the "little Greek" (Graculus] of the Roman world ; yet
he was won ; and then by making it impossible for Christianity
to remain an amalgam of the ideas of Jesus and of Jewish law.
TATIAN 145
the Greek really secured the triumph of Jesus. He eliminated
the tribal and the temporary in the Gospel as it came from
purely Jewish teachers, and, with all his irregularities of
conduct and his flightiness of thought, he nevertheless set
Jesus before the world as the central figure of all history
and of all existence.1 Even the faults of the Greek have
indirectly served the church ; for the Gospels gained their
place in men's minds and hearts, because they were the
real refuge from the vagaries of Greek speculation, and
offered the ultimate means of verifying every hypothesis.
The historic Jesus is never of such consequence to us as when
the great intellects tell us that the true and only heaven
is Nephelococcygia. For Aristophanes was right — it was the
real Paradise of the Greek mind. What relief the plain
matter-of-fact Gospel must have brought men in a world,
where nothing throve like these cities of the clouds, would
be inconceivable, if we did not know its value still. While
we recognize the real contribution of the Greek Christians,
it is good to see what Christianity meant to men who were
not Greeks.
There was one Christian of some note in the second century,
whose attitude toward everything Greek is original and inter-
esting. Tatian was "born in the land of the Assyrians."2
He travelled widely in the Graeco-Roman world,3 and studied
rhetoric like a Greek ; he gave attention to the great collections
of Greek art in Rome — monuments of shame, he called them.
He was admitted to the mysteries, but he became shocked at
the cruelty and licentiousness tolerated and encouraged by
paganism. While in this mind, seeking for the truth, "it
befel that I lit upon some barbarian writings, older than the
dogmata of the Greeks, divine in their contrast with Greek
error ; and it befel too that I was convinced by them, because
their style was simple, because there was an absence of artifice -
in the speakers, because the structure of the whole was in-
telligible, and also because of the fore-knowledge of future
1 Professor Percy Gardner (Growth of Christianity^. 49) illustrates this by
comparison of earlier and later stages in Christian Art. On some early Christian
ircophagi Jesus is represented with markedly Jewish features ; soon however he is
idealized into a type of the highest humanity.
2 Tatian, 42. 3 Id. 35.
146 THE FOLLOWERS OF JESUS
events, the excellence of the precepts and the subordination of
the whole universe to One Ruler (TO TUJV oXwv /jLovap-^tKov). My
soul was taught of God, and I understood that while Greek
literature (TO. /xey) leads to condemnation, this ends our slavery
in the world and rescues us from rulers manifold and ten
thousand tyrants." 1 He now repudiated the Greeks and all
their works, the grammarians who " set the letters of the
alphabet to quarrel among themselves," 2 the philosophers with
their long hair and long nails and vanity,3 the actors, poets and
legislators ; and " saying good-bye to Roman pride and Attic
pedantry (\lsvxpo\oyta) I laid hold of our barbarian philo-
sophy." 4 He made the first harmony of the Gospels — an
early witness to the power of their sheer simplicity in a world
of literary affectations.
Another famous Syrian of the century was Ignatius of
Antioch, whose story is collected from seven letters he wrote,
in haste and excitement, as he travelled to Rome to be thrown
to the beasts in the arena — his guards in the meantime being as
fierce as any leopards. The burden of them all is that Jesus
Christ truly suffered on the cross. Men around him spoke of a
phantom crucified by the deluded soldiers amid the deluded
Jews. — No ! cries Ignatius, over and over, he truly suffered, he
truly rose, ate and drank, and was no daemon without a body
(Sai/u.6viov ao-to/xaroi/) — none of it is seeming, it is all truly, truly,
truly.5 He has been called hysterical, and his position might
make any nervous man hysterical — death before him, his Lord's
reality denied, and only time for one word — Truly. Before we
pass him by, let us take a quieter saying of his to illustrate the
deepest thought of himself and his age — " He that hath the
word of Jesus truly can hear his silence also."6
The Roman came to the Church as he came to a new
province. He gravely surveyed the situation, considered the
existing arrangements, accepted them, drew up as it were a lex
provincice to secure their proper administration, and thereafter
interpreted it in accordance with the usual principles of Roman
1 Tatian, 29. Cf. the account Theophilus gives of the influence upon him of the
study of the prophets, i, 14.
» 26. 3 25. 4 35<
6 Ignatius, Magn. 1 1 ; Trail. 9, 10 ; Smyrn. I, 2, 3, 12.
' Ignatius, Eph. 15, 6 \6yov 'iT/trot KCKTIJ^VOS a\T)8us dtvarai KCU r^j
airroO cUodeiv.
FREEDOM FROM DAEMONS 147
law, and, like the procurator in Achaea, left the Greeks to
discuss any abstract propositions they pleased. Tertullian and
Cyprian were lawyers, and gave Latin Christendom the lan-
guage, in which in later days the relations of man with his
Divine Sovereign were worked out by the great Latin Fathers.
The confession of Tatian, above cited, emphasizes as one of
the great features of the barbarian literature — its " monarchic "
teaching — " it sets man free from ten thousand tyrants " — and
this may be our starting-point in considering the new experi-
ence. To be rid of the whole daemon-world, to have left the
daemons behind and their " hatred of men," * their astrology,2
their immorality and cruelty, their sacrifices, and the terror of
" possession " and theolepsy and enchantment,3 was happiness
in itself. " We are above fate," said Tatian, " and, instead of
daemons that deceive, we have learnt one master who deceiveth
not."4 "Christ," wrote an unknown Christian of a beautiful
spirit — " Christ wished to save the perishing, and such mercy
has he shown us that we the living do not serve dead gods, but
through him we know the Father of truth." 5 " Orpheus sang
to beguile men, but my Singer has come to end the tyranny of
daemons," said Clement.6 The perils of " meats offered to
idols " impressed some, who feared that by eating of them they
would come under daemoniac influence. With what relief
they must have read Paul's free speech on the subject — " the
earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof" — "for us there is
one God, the Father, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom
are all things, and we through him."7 " Even the very name of
Jesus is terrible to the daemons " 8 — the " name that is above
every name." In no other name was there salvation from
daemons, for philosophy had made terms with them.
No one can read the Christian Apologists without remarking
the stress which they lay upon the knowledge of God, which the
new faith made the free and glad possession of the humblest.
1 Tatian, 16, 17. Cf. Plutarch (cited on p. 107) on malignant daemons. See
Tertullian, Apol. 22 ; Justin, Apol. ii. 5 ; Clem. Alex. Protr. 3, 41, on the works of
daemons.
1 Tatian, 7, 8.
3 See Tertullian, de Idol. 9, on the surprising case of a Christian who wished to
pursue his calling of astrologer — a claim Tertullian naturally will not allow.
4 Tatian, 9. 6 The so-called second letter of Clement of Rome, c. 3.
• Clem. Alex. Protr. 3. 7 I Cor. vi, etc. 8 Justin, Dial. c. Tryph. 30.
'
148 THE FOLLOWERS OF JESUS
" They say of us that we babble nonsense among females, half-
grown people, girls and old people. No! all our women are
chaste and at their distaffs our maidens sing of things divine,"
said Tatian, and rejoined with observations on famous Greek
women, Lais, Sappho and others. Justin, always kindlier,
speaks of Socrates who urged men to seek God, yet owned that
" it would be a hard task to find the father and maker of this
All, and when one had found him, it would not be safe to
declare him to all,"1 but, he goes on, " our Christ did this by his
power. No man ever believed Socrates so much as to die for
his teaching. But Christ, who was known to Socrates in part,
(for he was and is the Word that is in everything . . . ) — on
Christ, I say, not only philosophers and scholars (<j>i\6\oyoi)
believed, but artisans, men quite without learning (iStwrai), and
despised glory and fear and death." " There is not a Christian
workman but finds out God and manifests him," said Tertullian.2
This knowledge of God was not merely a desirable thing in
theory, for it is clear that it was very earnestly sought. To
Justin's quest for God, allusion has been made — " I hoped I
should have the vision of God at once (/caro^ co-flat )" he says.
" Who among men had any knowledge of what God was, before
he came ? " 3 " This," wrote the fourth evangelist, " is eternal
life — that they may know thee, the one true God and Jesus
Christ whom thou hast sent."
But it is one thing to be a monotheist, and another to be a
child of "Abba Father," and this is one of the notes of the
early Christian. It is impossible to over-emphasize the signifi-
cance of Christian happiness amid the strain and doubt of the
early Empire. Zeno and Isis each had something to say, but
who had such a message of forgiveness and reconciliation and
of the love of God ? " God is within you," said Seneca ; but he
knew nothing of such an experience as the Christian summed
up as the " grace of God," " grace sufficient " and " grace abound-
1 Tatian, 33 ; Justin, ApoL ii, 10. It may be noted that Justin quotes the famous
passage in the Timceus (28 C) not quite correctly. Such passages "familiar in his
mouth as household words " are very rarely given with verbal accuracy. Tertullian,
ApoL 46, and Clement, Strom, v, 78, 92, also quote this passage.
2 Apol. 46. Compare Theophilus, i, 2 ; "If you say 'Show me your God,' I
would say to you, ' Show me your man and I will show you my God,' or show me
the eyes of your soul seeing, and the ears of your heart hearing."
3 ad Diogn. 8, I.
THE HOLY SPIRIT 149
ing." It is hard to think of these familiar phrases being new
and strange — the coining of Paul to express what no man had
said before — and this at the moment when Seneca was writing
his " moral letters " to Lucilius. Verbal coincidences may be
found between Paul and Seneca, but they are essentially verbal.
The Stoic Spermaticos Logos was a cold and uninspiring dogma
compared with "Abba Father" and the Spirit of Jesus — it was
not the same thing at all. The one doctrine made man self-
sufficient — in the other, "our sufficiency (iKavoTw) ls of God."
It was the law of nature, contrasted with the father of the
prodigal son — " our kind and tender-hearted father " as Clement
of Rome calls him l — the personal God, whose " problem is ever
to save the flock of men ; that is why the good God has sent
the good shepherd." 2
The more lettered of Christian writers like to quote Plato's
saying that man was born to be at home with God (OIKCIW cxeiv
TT/QO? Oeov) and that he was " a heavenly plant." Falsehood,
they say, and error obscured all this, but now "that ancient
natural fellowship with heaven " has " leapt forth from the dark-
ness and beams upon us." 3 " God," says Clement, " out of his
great love for men, cleaves to man, and as when a little bird has
fallen out of the nest, the mother-bird hovers over it, and if
perchance some creeping beast open its mouth upon the little
thing,
Wheeling o'er his head, with screams the dam
Bewails her darling brood ;
so God the Father seeks his image, and heals the fall, and
chases away the beast, and picks up the little one again." 4
God has " anointed and sealed " his child and given him a
pledge of the new relation — the holy spirit. This is distinctly
said by St Paul,5 and the variety of the phenomena, to which he
refers, is a little curious. Several things are covered by the
phrase, and are classed as manifestations with a common origin.
There are many allusions to " speaking with tongues " ; Paul,
however, clearly shows that we are not to understand a miracu-
lous gift in using actual languages, reduced to grammar and
1 Clem. R. 29, I, TOV eiria/c?} KO! etfffTrXayxvov rrarfpa T)/JIUI>.
- Clem. Alex. Protr. 116. 3 Clem. Alex. Protr. 25, £a0vros dpxaia Koivwvia.
4 Clem. Alex. Protr. 91, citing Iliad, 2, 315 (Cowper). 5 2 Cor. i, 22 : v, 5.
150 THE FOLLOWERS OF JESUS
spoken by men, as the author of the Acts suggests with a
possible reminiscence of a Jewish legend of the law-giving from
Sinai. The " glossolaly " was inarticulate and unintelligible ;
it was a feature of Greek " mantic," an accompaniment of over-
strained emotion, and even to be produced by material agencies,
as Plutarch lets us see. Paul himself is emphatic upon its real
irrelevance to the Christian's main concern, and he deprecates
the attention paid to it. Other " spiritual " manifestations were
visions and prophecies. With these Dr William James has
dealt in his Varieties of Religious Experience, showing that in
them, as in " conversion," there is nothing distinctively Christian.
The content of the vision and the outcome of the conversion are
the determining factors. Where men believe that an ordinary
human being can be temporarily transformed by the presence
within him of a spirit, the very belief produces its own evidence.
If the tenet of the holy spirit rested on nothing else, it would
have filled a smaller place in Christian thought.
But when Paul speaks of the holy spirit whereby the
Christians are sealed, calling it now the spirit of God and now
the spirit of Jesus, he is referring to a profounder experience.
Explain conversion as we may, the word represents a real thing.
Men were changed, and were conscious of it. Old desires
passed away and a new life began, in which passion took a new
direction, finding its centre of warmth and light, not in morality,
not in religion, but in God as revealed in Jesus Christ. " To
me to live is Christ," cried Paul, giving words to the experience
of countless others. Life had a new centre ; and duty, pain and
death were turned to gladness. The early Christian was con-
scious of a new spirit within him. It was by this spirit that they
could cry " Abba, Father " ; it was the spirit that guided them
into all truth ; it was the spirit that united them to God,1 that
set them free from the law of sin and death, that meant life
and peace and joy and holiness. Paul trusted everything to
what we might call the Christian instinct and what he called the
holy spirit, and he was justified. No force in the world has
done so much as this nameless thing that has controlled and
guided and illumined — whatever we call it. Any one who has
breathed the quiet air of a gathering of men and women con-
sciously surrendered to the influence of Jesus Christ, with all its
1 Cf. Tatian, 15.
JESUS THE SAVIOUR 151
sobering effect, its consecration, its power and gladness, will
know what Paul and his friends meant. It is hardly to be
known otherwise. In our documents the spirit is closely as-
sociated with the gathering of the community in prayer.
Freedom from daemons, forgiveness and reconciliation with
God, gladness and moral strength and peace in the holy spirit
— of such things the early Christians speak, and they associate
them all invariably with one name, the living centre of all.
"Jesus the beloved" is a phrase that lights up one of the
dullest of early Christian pages.1 " No ! you do not so much
as listen to anyone, if he speaks of anything but Jesus Christ
in truth," says Ignatius.2 " What can we give him in return ?
He gave us light ... he saved us when we were perishing . . .
We were lame in understanding, and worshipped stone and
wood, the works of men. Our whole life was nothing but
death. . . . He pitied us, he had compassion, he saved us, for he
saw we had no hope of salvation except from him ; he called
us when we were not, and from not being he willed us to be." s
" The blood of Jesus, shed for our salvation, has brought to all
the world the grace of repentance."4 "Ye see what is the
pattern that has been given us ; what should we do who by
him have come under the yoke of his grace ? " 5 " Let us be
earnest to be imitators of the Lord."6 These are a few words
from Christians whose writings are not in the canon. Jesus
is pre-eminently and always the Saviour; the author of the
new life ; the revealer of God ; the bringer of immortality. It
made an immense impression upon the ancient world to see
the transformation of those whom it despised, — women, artisans,
slaves and even slave-girls. Socrates with the hemlock cup
and the brave Thrasea were figures that men loved and
honoured. But here were all sorts of common people doing
the same thing as Socrates and Thrasea, cheerfully facing
torture and death " for the name's sake " — and it was a name
of contempt, too. " Christ's people " — Christianoi — was a base-
Latin improvisation by the people of Antioch, who were
notorious in antiquity for impudent wit : 7 it was a happy shot
1 Barnabas, 4, 8. 2 Ign. Eph. 6, 2.
3 II. Clem, i, 3-7 (abridged a little). 4 Clem. R. 7, 4.
8 Clem. R. 16, 17. 6 Ign. Eph. 10, 3.
7 Cf. Socr. e.h. iii, 17, 4, the Antiochenes mocked the Emperor Julian,
1 52 THE FOLLOWERS OF JESUS
and touched the very centre of the target. " The name " and
" his name," are constantly recurring phrases. But it was not
only that men would die for the name — men will die for any-
thing that touches their imagination or their sympathy — but
they lived for it and showed themselves to be indeed a " new
creation." "Our Jesus"1 was the author of a new life, and a
very different one from that of Hellenistic cities. That
Christianity retained its own character in the face of the most
desperate efforts of its friends to turn it into a philosophy con-
genial to the philosophies of the day, was the result of the
strong hold it had taken upon innumerable simple people, who '
had found in it the power of God in the transformation of their
own characters and instincts, and who clung to Jesus Christ—
to the great objective facts of his incarnation and his death
upon the cross — as the firm foundations laid in the rock against
which the floods of theory might beat in vain. For now we
have to consider another side of early Christian activity — the
explanation of the new experience.
The early Christian community found "the unexamined
life " as impossible as Plato had, and they framed all sorts of
theories to account for the change in themselves. Of most
immediate interest are the accounts which they give of the
holy spirit and of Jesus. Here we must remember that in all
definition we try to express the less known through the more
known, and that the early Christians necessarily used the best
language available to them, and tried to communicate a new
series of experiences by means of the terms and preconceptions
of the thinking world of their day — terms and preconceptions
long since obsolete.
Much in the early centuries of our era is unintelligible until
we form some notion of the current belief in spiritual beings,
evidence of which is found in abundance in the literature of the
day, pagan and Christian. A growing consensus among philo-
sophers made God more and more remote, and emphasized the
necessity for intermediaries. We have seen how Plutarch pro-
nounced for the delegation of rule over the universe and its
functions to ministering spirits. The Jews had a parallel belief
in angels, and had come to think of God's spirit and God's in-
telligence as somehow detachable from his being. In abstract
1 II. Clem. 14, 2.
THE HOLY SPIRIT 153
thought this may be possible just as we think of an angle
without reference to matter. The great weakness in the specu-
lation of the early Empire was this habit of supposing that
men can be as certain of their deductions as of their premisses ;
and God's Logos, being conceivable, passed into common re-
ligious thought as a separate and proven existence.
At the same time there was abundant evidence of devil-
possession as there is in China to-day. Modern medicine dis-
tinguishes four classes of cases which the ancients (and their
modern followers) group under this one head : — Insanity,
Epilepsy, Hysteria major and the mystical state. To men
who had no knowledge of modern medicine and its distinctions,
the evidence of the " possessed " was enough, and it was apt to
be quite clear and emphatic as it is in such cases to-day. The
man said he " had a devil " — or even a " legion of devils." The
priestess at the oracle said that a god was within her (ei/0eo?).
In both cases the ocular evidence was enough to convince the
onlookers of the truth of the explanation, for the persons con-
cerned were clearly changed and were not themselves.1 Plato
played with the idea that poetry even might be, as poets said,
a matter of inspiration. The poet could not be merely himself
when he wrote or sang words of such transforming power. The
Jews gave a similar account of prophecy — the Spirit of the
Lord descended upon men, as we read in the Old Testament.
The Spirit, says Athenagoras to the Greeks, used the Hebrew
prophets, as a flute-player does a flute, while they were in
ecstasy (/car' eKa-rao-iv) 2 — the holy spirit, he adds, is an effluence
(aTroppoia) of God.3
The Christians, finding ecstasy, prophecy, trance, and
glossolaly among their own members, and having before them the
parallel of Greek priestesses and Hebrew prophets, and making
moreover the same very slight distinction as their pagan
1 See Tertullian, Apol. 22. 2 Athenagoras, Presbeia, 9.
3 See a very interesting chapter in Philo's de migr. Abr. 7 (441 M), where he
gives a very frequent experience of his own (/u/ptct/as iraQuv) as a writer. Sometimes,
though he " saw clearly " what to say, he found his mind " barren and sterile " and
went away with nothing done, with " the womb of his soul closed." At other times
he " came empty and suddenly became full, as thoughts were imperceptibly sowed
and snowed upon him from above, so that, as if under Divine possession (ACOTOX^S
tvdtov), he became frenzied (KopvpavTiav) and utterly knew not the place, nor those
present, nor himself, nor what was said or written." See Tert. de Anima, n, on the
spirits of God and of the devil that may come upon the soul.
i54 THE FOLLOWERS OF JESUS
neighbours between matter and spirit, and, finally, possessing
all the readiness of unscientific people in propounding theories, —
they assumed an " effluence " from God, a spirit which entered
into a man, just as in ordinary life evil demons did, but here it
was a holy spirit. This they connected with God after the
manner familiar to Jewish thinkers, and following the same lead,
began to equate it with God, as a separate being. It is not at
first always quite clear whether it is the spirit of God or of Jesus
— or even a manifestation of the risen Jesus.1
When we pass to the early explanations of Jesus, we come
into a region peculiarly difficult. A later age obscured the
divergences of early theory. Some opinions the church
decisively rejected — Christians would have nothing to do with
a Jesus who was an emanation from an absolute and inconceiv-
able Being, a Jesus who in that case would be virtually
indistinguishable from Asclepios the kindly-natured divine
healer. Nor would they tolerate the notion of a phantom- Jesus
crucified in show, while the divine Christ was far away — like
Helen in Euripides' play.2 " Spare," says Tertullian, " the one
hope of all the world." 3 They would not have a " daimonion
without a body." But two theories, one of older Jewish, and
the other of more recent Alexandrian origin, the church
accepted and blended, though they do not necessarily belong
to each other.
The one theory is esjp£cially.Paul's — sacred to all who lean
with him to the Hebrew viewoTTm"ngs, to all who, like him, are
touched with the sense of sin and feel the need of another's
righteousness, to all who have come under the spell of the one
great writer of the first century. A Jew, a native of a Hellenistic
city — and " no mean one"4 — a citizen of the Roman Empire, a
man of wide outlooks, with a gift for experience, he passed from
1 It may be remarked, in passing, that the contemporary worship of the Emperor
is to be explained by the same theory of the possibility of an indwelling daimonion.
It was helped out by the practice, which had never so far died out in the East and
in Egypt, of regarding the King and his children as gods incarnate. See J. G.
Frazer, Early History of Kingship.
2 Tertullian, adv. Marc, iii, 8, nihil solidum abinani, nihil plenum a vacua perfici
licuit . . . imaginarius operator ; imaginaria opera.
:{ Tertullian, de came Christi, 5.
4 His Tarsiot feeling is perhaps shown by his preference that women should be
veiled. Dio Chrysostom (Or. 33, 48) mentions that in Tarsus there is much con-
servatism shown in the very close veiling of the women's faces.
PAUL 155
Pharisaism to Christ. The mediating idea was righteousness.
He knew his own guilt before God, and found that by going
about to establish his own righteousness he was achieving
nothing.
At the same time a suffering Messiah was a contradiction
in terms, unspeakably repulsive to a Jew. We can see this
much in the tremendous efforts of the Apologists to overcome
Jewish aversion by producing Old Testament prophecies that
Christ was to suffer. Ila&rroV (subject to suffering) was a word
that waked rage and contempt in every one, who held to con-
temporary views of God, or even had dabbled in Stoic or
similar conceptions of human greatness. But it seems that
the serenity and good conscience of Christian martyrs impressed
their persecutor, who was not happy in his own conscience ; and
at last the thought came — along familiar lines — that Christ's
sufferings might be for the benefit of others. And then he
saw Jesus on the road to Damascus. What exactly happened
is a matter of discussion, but Paul was satisfied — he was " a
man in Christ."
Much might be said in criticism of Paul's Christology — if it
were not for Paul and his followers. They have done too much
and been too much for it to be possible to dissect their great
conception in cold blood. Paul's theories are truer than
another man's experiences — they pulse with life, they have (in
Luther's phrase) hands and feet to carry a man away. The
man is so large and so strong, so simple and true, so various in
his knowledge of the world, so tender in his feeling for men —
"all things to all men" — such a master of language, so
sympathetic and so open — he is irresistible. The quick move-
ment of his thought, his sudden flashes of anger and of tenderness,
his apostrophes, his ejaculations — one feels that pen and paper
never got such a man written down before or since. Every
sentence comes charged with the whole man — half a dozen
Greek words, and not always the best Greek — and the
Christian world for ever will sum up its deepest experience in
" God forbid that I should glory save in the cross of our Lord
Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me and I
unto the world."
Close examination reveals a good^deal of
in Paul, — a curious way of playing with the text of Scripture,
156 THE FOLLOWERS OF JESUS
odd reminiscences of old methods, and deeper infiltrations of a
Jewish thought which is not that of Jesus. Yet it does not
affect our feeling for him — he stands too close to us as a man,
too much over us as the teacher of Augustine, Calvin and
Luther — a man, whom it took more genius to explain than the
church had for fifteen centuries, and yet the man to whom the
church owes its universal reach and unity, its theology and the
best of the language in which it has expressed its love for his
master.
Paul went back to the Jewish conception of a Messiah.
modified, in the real spirit of Jesus, by the thought of suffering.
But when we put side by side the Messiah of Jesus and the
Messiah of Paul, we become conscious of a difference. The
latter is a mediator between God and man, making atonement,
transferring righteousness by a sort of legal fiction, and implying
a conception of God's fatherhood far below that taught by Jesus.
At the same time Paul has other thoughts of a profounder and
more permanent value. It is hard, for instance, to imagine that
any change, which time and thought may bring, can alter a
word in his statement that " God was in Christ, reconciling the
world to himself" — here there is no local or temporal element
even in the wording. It may be noted that Paul has his own
names for Jesus, for while he uses " Messiah " (in Greek) and
" Son of God," he is the first to speak of " the Lord " and " the
Saviour." Paul held the door open for the other great theory
of the early church, when he emphasized the pre-existence of
the heavenly Christ and made him the beginning, the centre and
the end of all history.
s, as we have seen, was not an original idea of the
Christian world. It was long familiar to Greek philosophy, and
Philo and the Stoics base much of their thought upon it. It
must have come into the church from a Greek or Hellenistic
source, perhaps as a translation of Paul's "heavenly Christ."
As it stands, it is a peculiarly bold annexation from Philosophy.
No Stoic would have denied that the Spermaticos Logos was in
Jesus, but the bold identification of the Logos with Jesus must
have been " foolishness to the Greek." Still in contemporary
thought there was much to dispose men to believe in such an
incarnation of the Logos in a human being, though there is no
suggestion that a spiritual being of any at all commensurate
EXPLANATIONS OF JESUS 157
greatness was ever so incarnated before. But the thought
appealed to the Christian mind, when once the shock to Greek
susceptibilities was overcome. Once accepted, it " solved all
questions in the earth and out of it." It permitted the congenial
idea of Greek theology to remain — the transcendence of God
being saved by this personification of his Thought. It was a
final blow to all theories that made Jesus an emanation, a
phantom or a demi-god, and it kept his historic personality well
in the centre of thought, though leaving it now comparatively
much less significance.
Surveying the two accounts, Jewish and Greek, we cannot
help remarking that they belong to other ages of thought than
our own. Columbus, Copernicus and Darwin were neither
philosophers nor theologians, but they have changed the
perspectives of philosophy and theology, and we think to-day
with a totally different series of preconceptions from those of
Jew and Greek of the first century. The Greek himself never
thought much of the " chosen race," and it was only when he "
realized that Jesus was not a tribal hero, that he accepted him.
To the Greek the Messiah was as strange a thought as to
ourselves. To us the Logos is as strange as the Messiah was
to the Greek. We have really at present no terms in which to
express what we feel to be the permanent significance of Jesus,
and the old expressions may repel us until we realize, first, that
they are not of the original essence of the Gospel, and second,
that they represent the best language which Greek and Jew
could find for a conviction which we share — that Jesus of^
Nazareth does stand in the centre of human history, that he
has brought God and man into a new relation, that he is the
personal concern of everyone of us, and that there is more in
him than we have yet accounted for.
Into the question of the organization adopted by the early
Christians and the development of the idea of the church, it is
not essential to our present purpose to inquire. Opinion varies
as to how far we should seek the origin of the church in the-
teaching and work of Jesus. If his mind has been at all rightly
represented in this book, it seems to follow that he was not
responsible either for the name or the idea of the church.
Minds of the class to which his belongs have as a rule little or
no interest in organizations and arrangements, and nothing can
158 THE FOLLOWERS OF JESUS
be more alien to the tone and spirit of his thinking than the
ecclesiastical idea as represented by Cyprian and Ignatius.
That out of the group of followers who lived with Jesus, a
society should grow, is natural ; and societie^_Jnstinctiyely
organize themselves^ The Jew offered the pattern of a
theocracy, and the Roman of a hierarchy of officials, but it took
two centuries to produce the church of Cyprian. The series of
running fights with Greek speculation in the second century
contributed to the natural and acquired instincts for order and
system, — particularly in a world where such instincts had little
opportunity of exercise in municipal, and less in political, life.
The name was, as Harnack says, a masterly stroke — the
" ecclesia of God " suggested to the Greek the noble and free
life of a self-governing organism such as the ancient world had
known, but raised to a higher plane and transfigured from a
Periclean Athens to a Heavenly Jerusalem. Fine conceptions
and high ideals clung about the idea of the church in the best
minds,1 but in practice it meant the transformation of the
gospel into a code, the repression of liberty of thought, and the
final extinction of prophecy. For the view that every one of
these results was desirable, reason might be shown in the
vagaries of life and speculation which the age knew, but it
was obviously a departure from the ideas of Jesus.
The rise of the church was accompanied by the rise of
There is a growing consensus of opinion among
independent scholars that Jesus instituted no sacraments, yet
Paul found the rudiments of them among the Christians and
believed he had the warrant of Jesus for the heightening which
he gave to them. Ignatius speaks of the Ephesians " breaking
one bread, which is the medicine of immortality (0a/o/za/coi/
aOavaaiai) and the antidote that we should not die " — the
former phrase reappearing in Clement of Alexandria.2 That
such ideas should emerge in the Christian community is natural
enough, when we consider its environment — a world without
natural science, steeped in belief in every kind of magic and
enchantment, and full of public and private religious societies,
every one of which had its mysteries and miracles and its
blood-bond with its peculiar deity. It was from such a world
1 Tert. Apol. 39, Corpus sumus de conscientia religionis et discipline unitatt et
speifoedere. 2 Ign- £#&• 20 ; Clem. Alex. Protr. 106.
THE NEW LIFE 159
and such societies that most of the converts came and brought
with them the thoughts and instincts of countless generations,
who had never conceived of a religion without rites and
mysteries. Baptism similarly took on a miraculous colour — men
were baptized for the dead in Paul's time — and before long
it bore the names familiarly given by the world to all such
rituals of admission — enlightenment (0amo7>io9) and initiation ;
and with the names came many added symbolic practices in its
administration. The Christians readily recognized the parallel
between their rites and those of the heathen, but no one seems
to have perceived the real connexion between them. Quite
naively they suggest the exact opposite — it was the daemons,
who foresaw what the Christian rites (fepd) would be, and fore-
stalled them with all sorts of pagan parodies.1
But, after all, the force of the Christian movement lay neither
in church, nor in sacrament, but in men. "Jrlp\v,fljcl .CJucLstiaP't
rise and spread-among men ? " asks Carlyle, " was it by institute
and establishments, and well arranged systems of mechanic
No ! . . . It arose in the mystic deeps of man's soul ; and •
spread by the ' preaching of the word,' by simple, altogel
natural and individual efforts ; and flew, like hallowed fire, fi
heart to heart, till all were purified and illuminated by it. H
was no Mechanism ; man's highest attainment was accomplish
Dynamically, not Mechanically."2 Nothing could be more ji
The Gospel set fire to men's hearts, and they needed to do not
ing but live to spread their faith. The ancient evidence i
abundant for this. The Christian had an " insatiable passion for
doing good " 3 — not as yet a technical term — and he " did good "
in the simplest kind of ways. " Even those things which you
do after the flesh are spiritual," says Ignatius himself, " for you
do all things in Jesus Christ."4 "Christians," says a writer
whose name is lost, " are not distinguishable from the rest of
mankind in land or speech or customs. They inhabit no
special cities of their own, nor do they use any different form of
speech, nor do they cultivate any out-of-the-way life. . . . But
while they live in Greek and barbarian cities as their lot may be
1 Justin, ApoL i, 66, the use of bread and cup in the mysteries of Mithras ;
Tertullian, de Bapt. 5, on baptism in the rites of Isis and Mithras, the mysteries of
Eleusis, etc.
2 Carlyle, Signs of the Times. (Centenary edition of Essays, ii, p. 70.)
3 Clem. R. 2, 2, &K6peffTos w60os ets dyaOoTrodav. 4 Ign. Eph. 8, 2.
160 THE FOLLOWERS OF JESUS
cast, and follow local customs in dress and food and life
generally, . . . yet they live in their own countries as sojourners
only ; they take part in everything as citizens and submit to
everything as strangers. Every strange land is native to them,
and every native land is strange. • They marry and have
children like everyone else — but they do not expose their
children. They have meals in common, but not wives. They
are in the flesh, but they do not live after the flesh. They
continue on earth, but their citizenship is in heaven. They
obey the laws ordained, and by their private lives they overcome
the laws. ... In a word, what the soul is in the body, that is
what Christians are in the world." 1
" As a rule," wrote Galen, " men need to be educated in
parables. Just as in our day we see those who are called
Christians2 have gained their faith from parables. Yet they
^"ictimes ac^ exactly as true philosophers would. That they
pise death is a fact we all have before our eyes ; and by
le impulse of modesty they abstain from sexual intercourse
,ome among them, men and women, have done so all their
s. And some, in ruling and controlling themselves, and in
ir keen passion for virtue, have gone so far that real philo-
jhers could not excel them." 3 So wrote a great heathen, and
isus admits as much himself. In life at least, if not in theory,
, Christians daily kept to the teaching of their Master.
•Vhich is ampler ? " asks Tertullian, " to say, Thou shalt not
;ill ; or to teach, Be not even angry ? Which is more perfect,
to forbid adultery or to bid refrain from a single lustful look ? "
There was as yet no flight from the world, though Christians
had no illusions about it or about the devil who played so large
a part in its affairs. They lived in an age that saw Antinous
deified.5 They stood for marriage and family life, while all around
" holy " men felt there was an unclean and daemonic element in
marriage.6 One Christian writer even speaks of women being
1 Auctor ad Diognetum, 5-6.
2 He apologizes for the use of the name, as educated people did in his day, when
it was awkward or impossible to avoid using it. It was a vulgarism.
3 Galen, extant in Arabic in hist, anteislam. Abulfedee (ed. Fleischer, p. 109),
quoted by Harnack, Expansion of Christianity ', i, p. 266.
4 Tertullian, Apol. 45 ; cf. Justin, Apol. i, 15. 5 Cf. Justin, ApoL i, 29.
6 The feeling referred to is associated with the primitive sense of the mystery of
procreation and conception surviving, it is said, among the Arunta of Australia, and
very widely in the case of twins ; see P^ndel Harris, Cult of the Dioscuri.
THE NEW LIFE 161
saved by child-bearing.1 Social conditions they accepted —
even slavery among them — but they brought a new spirit into
all ; love and the sense of brotherhood could transform every
thing. Slavery continued, but the word "slave "is not found
in Christian catacombs.2
Above all, they were filled with their Master's own desire to
save men. " I am debtor," wrote Paul, " both to Greeks and to
barbarians, wise and unwise."3 If modern criticism is right in
detaching the " missionary commission " (in Matthew) from the
words of Jesus, the fact remains that the early Christians were
" g°mg i11*0 all the world " and " preaching the gospel to every
creature " for half a century before the words were written.
Why? "He that has the word of Jesus truly can hear his
silence," said Ignatius ; and if Jesus did not speak these words,
men heard his silence to the same effect. Celsus, like Julian
long after him, was shocked at the kind of people to whom
the gospel was preached.4
The Christian came to the helpless and hopeless, whom men
despised, and of whom men despaired, with a message of the
love and tenderness of God, and he brought it home by a new
type of love and tenderness of his own. Kindness to friends
the world knew; gentleness, too, for the sake of philosophic
calm ; clemency and other more or less self-contained virtues.
The " third race " had other ideas — in all their virtues there
was the note of " going out of oneself," the unconsciousness
which Jesus loved — an instinctive habit of negating self
(aTrapvy'ia-aaOat eauroV), which does not mean medieval asceticism,
nor the dingy modern virtue of self-denial. There was no
sentimentalism in it ; it was the spirit of Jesus spiritualizing
and transforming and extending the natural instinct of brother-
liness by making it theocentric. Christians for a century or two
never thought of ataraxia or apathy, and, though Clement of
Alexandria plays with them, he tries to give them a new turn.
Fortunately the Gospels were more read than the Stromateis
and " Christian apathy " never succeeded. The heathen re-
cognized sympathy as a Christian characteristic — " How these
1 Tim. 2, 15. Cf. Tert. adv. Marc, iv, 17, nihil impudtntius si ilk not sibifilios
facitt qui nobis filios facerc non permisit auferendo conubium.
a de Rossi, cited by Harnack, Expansion, i, 208 n.
» Romans 1, 14. 4 See p. 241 ; and cf. Justin, Apol. i, 15.
II
1 62 THE FOLLOWERS OF JESUS
Christians love each other ! " they said. Lucian bears the same
testimony to the mutual care and helpfulness of Christians. " You
see," wrote Lucian, " these poor creatures have persuaded them-
selves that they are immortal for all time and will live for ever,
which explains why they despise death and voluntarily give them-
selves up, as a general rule ; and then their original law-giver
persuaded them that they are all brothers, from the moment
that they cross over and deny the gods of Greece and
worship their sophist who was gibbeted, and live after his laws.
All this they accept, with the result that they despise all worldly
goods alike and count them common property." In a later
century Julian, perhaps following Maximin Daza, whom he
copied in trying to organize heathenism into a new catholic
church, urged benevolence on his fellow-pagans, if they wished
to compete with the Christians. It was the only thing, he
felt, that could revive paganism, and his appeal met with
no response. " Infinite love in ordinary intercourse " is the
Christian life, and it must come from within or nowhere. No
organization can produce it, and, however much we may have
to discount Christian charity in some directions as sometimes
mechanical, the new spirit of brotherhood in the world pre-
supposed a great change in the hearts of men.
It was not Stoic cosmopolitanism. The Christian was not
" the citizen of the world " nor " the Friend of Man " ; he was a
plain person who gave himself up for other people, cared for
the sick and the worthless, had a word of friendship and hope
for the sinful and despised, would not go and see men killed in
the amphitheatre, and — most curious of all — was careful to have
indigent brothers taught trades by which they could help them-
selves. A lazy Christian was no Christian, he was a " trader in
Christ." 1 If the Christians' citizenship was in heaven, he had a
social message for this world in the meantime.
Every great religious movement coincides with a new
discovery of truth of some kind, and such discoveries induce a
new temper. Men inquire more freely and speak more freely
the truth they feel. Mistakes are made and a movement begins
* DidachC) 12. fl 8£ OVK ?xet T^X*''?I'> fard. T^f\v ffvveffiv V/JLUV Trpovorjaare,
dpyos fj,ed' vfj.uv frjcreTai xpia"riav^- fl 8e ov 6e\ei ourw Troietv, xpicrre {juropfa ^.^
•K-pofffXtre b™ T&v TOIOVTUV. See Tert. ApoL 39, on provision for the needy and the !i
orphan, the shipwrecked, ami those in jails and mines.
WOMAN
for " quenching the spirit." But the gains that have been mi
by the liberated spirits are not lost. Thus the early Christian
rose quickly to a sense of the value of woman. Dr Verrall
pronounces that " the radical disease, of which, more than of
anything else, ancient civilization perished " was " an imperfect
ideal of woman." l In the early church woman did a good many
things, which in later days the authorities preferred not to
mention. Thekla's name is prominent in early story, and the
prophetesses of Phrygia, Prisca and Maximilla, have a place in
Church History. They were not popular ; but the church was
committed to the Gospel of Luke and the ministry of women to
the Lord. And whatever the Christian priesthood did or said,
Jesus and his followers had set woman on a level with man.
" There is neither male nor female." The same freedom of
spirit is attested by the way in which pagan prophets and
their dupes classed Christians with Epicureans 2 — they saw and
understood too much. The Christians were the only people
(apart from the Jews) who openly denounced the folly of
worshipping and deifying Emperors. Even Ignatius, who is
most famous for his belief in authority, breaks into independence
when men try to make the Gospel dependent on the Old
Testament — " for me the documents (TO. apxeia) are Jesus
Christ ; my unassailable documents are his cross, and his death
and resurrection, and the faith that is through him ; in which
things I hope with your prayers to be saved." 3 " Where the
spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty," as Paul said.
God and immortality were associated in Christian thought.
Christians, said a writer using the name of Peter, are to be
" partakers of the divine nature." " If the soul," says Tatian,
" enters into union with the divine spirit, it is no longer help-
less, but ascends to regions whither the spirit guides it ; for
the dwelling-place of the spirit is above, but the origin of the
soul is from beneath." 4 " God sent forth to us the Saviour and
Prince of immortality, by whom he also made manifest to us
the truth and the heavenly life."5 The Christian's life is
" hid with Christ in God," and Christ's resurrection is to the
1 Euripides the Rationalist, p. 1 1 1 n.
2 Lucian, Alexander, 38, Alexander said : " If any atheist, or Christian, or
Epicurean comes as a spy upon our rites let him flee ! " He said !£w xPlffTLayofa, and
the people responded e£w 'EiriKOvpelovs.
8 Ignatius, Philad. 8. 4 Tatian, 13. 6 II. Clem. 20, 5.
THE FOLLOWERS OF JESUS
iy church the pledge of immortality — "we shall be ever^
\vith the Lord." For the transmigration of souls and " eternal
re-dying," life was substituted.1 " We have believed," said
Tatian, " that there will be a resurrection of our bodies, after
the consummation of all things — not, as the Stoics dogmatize,
that in periodic cycles the same things for ever come into being
and pass out of it for no good whatever, — but once for all," and
this for judgment. The judge is not Minos nor Rhadamanthus,
but " God the maker is the arbiter." 2 " They shall see him
(Jesus) then on that day," wrote the so-called Barnabas, " wearing
the long scarlet robe upon his flesh, and they will say ' Is this not
he whom we crucified, whom we spat upon, and rejected ? ' " 3
Persecution tempted the thought of what " that day " would mean
for the persecutor. But it was a real concern of the Christian him-
self. " I myself, utterly sinful, not yet escaped from temptation,
but still in the midst of the devil's engines, — I do my diligence
to follow after righteousness that I may prevail so far as at
least to come near it, fearing the judgment that is to come."4
Immortality and righteousness — the two thoughts go together,
and both depend upon Jes'ulf Christ. He is emphatically called
" our Hope " — a favourite phrase with Ignatius.5
Some strong hope was needed — some ''anchor of the soul,
sure and steadfast." 6 Death lay in wait for the Christian at
every turn, never certain, always probable. The daemons whom
he had renounced took their revenge in exciting his neighbours
against him.7 The whim of a mob 8 or the cruelty of a governor9
might bring him face to face with death in no man knew what
horrible form. One writer spoke of " the burning that came
for trial," 10 and the phrase was not exclusively a metaphor.
1 See Tertullian, de Testim. Animce, 4, the Christian opinion much nobler than the
Pythagorean.
2Tatian,6. Cf. Justin, ApoL i, 8; and Tertullian, de Spectaculis, 30, quoted on p. 305.
3 Barnabas, 7, g. Cf. Rev. i, 7. Behold he cometh with the clouds and every eye
shall see him — and they that pierced him. Cf. Tertullian, de Sped. 30, once more.
4 II. Clem. 18, 2. 5 Ignatius, Eph. 21 ; Magn. II ; Trail, int. 2, 2 ; Philad. II.
6 Hebrews 6,19.
7 Justin, Apol. i, 5, the daemons procured the death of Socrates, /cat o'/iotas e0* TJ^V
TO avTo tvepyovffi : 10, they spread false reports against Christians ; Apol. ii, 12 ;
Minucius Felix, 27, 8.
8 The mob, with stones and torches, Tert. Apol. 37 ; even the dead Christian was
dragged from the grave, de asylo quodam mortis, and torn to pieces.
9 Stories of governors in Tert. ad Scap. 3, 4, 5 ; one provoked by his wife becoming
a Christian. 10I. Peter 4, 12.
MARTYRDOM AND HAPPINx
" Away with the atheists — where is Polycarp ? " was a
shout at Smyrna — the mob already excited with sight 01
right noble Germanicus fighting the wild beasts in a sik.
way." The old man was sought and found — with the ^orcL
" God's will be done " upon his lips. He was pressed t^/ curse
Christ. " Eighty-six years I have been his slave/'- -lie said,
"and he has done me no wrong. How can I blaspheme my
King who saved me?"1 The suddenness of these attacks,
and the cruelty, were enough to unnerve anyone who was not
" built upon the foundation." Nero's treatment of the Christians
waked distaste in Rome itself. But it was the martyrdoms that"
made the church. Stephen's death captured Paul. " I delighted
in Plato's teachings," says Justin, "and I heard Christians
abused, but I saw they were fearless in the face of death and
all the other things men count fearful." 2 Tertullian and others
with him emphasize that " the blood of martyrs is the seed of
the church." It was the death of Jesus over again — the last
word that carried conviction with it.
With " the sentence of death in themselves " the early
Christians faced the world, and astonished it by more than their
" stubbornness." They were the most essentially happy people
of the day — Jesus was their hope, their sufficiency was of God,
their names were written in heaven, they were full of love for all
men — they had " become little children," as Jesus put it, glad
and natural. Jesus had brought them into a new world of
possibilities. A conduct that ancient moralists dared not ask, the
character of Jesus suggested, and the love of Jesus made actual.
" I can do all things," said Paul, " in him that strengtheneth
me." They looked to assured victory over evil and they achieved '
it. " This is the victory that has overcome the world — our
faith." Very soon a new note is heard in their words. Stoicism
was never "essentially musical " ; Epictetus announces a hymn to
Zeus,3 but he never starts the tune. Over and over again there
is a sound of singing in Paul — as in the eighth chapter of the
Romans, and the thirteenth of First Corinthians* and it repeats
itself. " Children of joy " is Barnabas' name for his friends.5
1 Martyrium Polycarpi, 3, 7-11. 2 Justin, ApoL ii, 12.
3 D. i, 16, the hymn he proposes is quoted on p. 62. It hardly sings itself, and
he does not return to it. The verbal parallel of the passage with that in Clement,
Strom, vii, 35, heightens the contrast of tone.
4 See Norden, Kunstprosa, ii, 509. 5 Barnabas, 7, I.
HE FOLLOWERS OF JESUS
V
f the will of Christ we shall find rest," wrote the unknown
/r of " Second Clement." x " Praising we plough ; and
.ging we sail," wrote the greater Clement.2 " Candidates for
angelhood, even here we learn the strain hereafter to be raised
to God, the function of our future glory," said Tertullian.3
" Clothe thyself in gladness, that always has grace with God
and is welcome to him — and revel in it. For every glad man
does what is good, and thinks what is good. . , . The holy
spirit is a glad spirit . . . yes, they shall all live to God, who
put away sadness from themselves and clothe themselves in all
gladness." So said the angel to Hermas,4 and he was right.
The holy spirit was a glad spirit, and gladness — joy in the holy
spirit — was the secret of Christian morality. Nothing could
well be more gay and happy than Clement's Protrepticus.
Augustine was attracted to the church because he saw it non
dissolute hilaris. Such happiness in men is never without a
personal centre, and the church made no secret that this centre
was "Jesus Christ, whom you have not seen, but you love him ;
whom yet you see not, but you believe in him and rejoice with
joy unspeakable and glorified."5
1 II. Clem. 6, 7. 2 Strom, vii, 35. 3 de orat. 3.
4 Hermas, M. 10, 31, — the word is IXapos ; which Clement (I.e. ) also uses, con-
joining it with o-e/wj's.
8 i Peter, 1, 8. ,
CHAPTER VI
THE CONFLICT OF CHRISTIAN AND JEW
IT is a much discussed question as to how far Jesus
realized the profound gulf between his own religious
position and that of his contemporaries. Probably, since
tradition meant more to them, they were quicker to see de-
clension from orthodox Judaism than a mind more open and
experimental ; and when they contrived his death, it was
with a clear sense of acting in defence of God's Law and
God's Covenant with Israel. From their own point of view
they were right, for thej-nmpph nf the j(jg^g of Jesiis^ was 1;he
abolition of tribal religions and their supersession byj_ajQgw
m ind or^ spirit _wjthjQc^ingTocaI or racial about it.
The death of Jesus meant to the little community, which
he left behind him, a final cleavage with the system of their
fathers, under which they had been born, and with which was
associated every religious idea they had known before their
great intimacy began. It was a moment of boundless import
in the history of mankind. Slowly and reluctantly they
moved out into the great unknown, — pilgrim fathers, uncon-
scious of the great issues they carried, but obedient to an
impulse, the truth of which history has long since established.
Once again it was their opponents who were the quickest to
realize what was involved, for affection blinded their own eyes.
The career of Paul raised the whole question between
Judaism and Christianity. He was the first to speak de-
cisively of going to the Gentiles. The author of the Acts
cites precedents for his action ; and, as no great movement
in man's affairs comes unheralded, it is easy to believe that
even before Paul " the word " reached Gentile ears. None
the less the leader in the movement was Paul ; and whatever
we may imagine might have been the history of Christianity
without him, it remains that he declared, decisjyeJ^jmjJHfor
all time, the church's independence of the synagogue. It is
< . . — 167
1 68 CONFLICT OF CHRISTIAN AND JEW
not unlikely that, even before his conversion, he had grasped
the fact that church and synagogue were not to be reconciled,
and that, when " it pleased God to reveal his Son in him," he
knew at once that he was in " a new creation " and that he
was to be a prophet of b. new dispensation.
There is no doubt that the hostile Jews very quickly x
realised Paul's significance, but the Christians were not so
quick. Paul was a newcomer and very much the ablest
man among them — they were "not many wise, not many
learned," and Paul, though he does not mention it, was both.
He was moreover proposing to take them into regions far
beyond their range ; he had not personally known " the Lord "
and they had ; and there was no clear word of Jesus on the Gentile
question. There was a conference. What took place, Paul
tries in the Galatians to tell ; but he is far too quick a thinker
to be a master of mere narrative ; the question of Christian
freedom was too hot in his heart to leave him free for re-
miniscence, and the matter is not very clear. The author of the
Acts was not at the council, and, whatever his authorities may
have been, there is a constant suggestion in his writing that
he has a purpose in view — a purpose of peace between
parties. Whether they liked the result or not, the Christian
community seem loyally to have submitted themselves to
" the Spirit of Jesus." " It seemed good to the holy spirit
and to us " tells the story of their deliberations, whether they
put the phrase at the top of a resolution or did not. Paul
came to the personal followers of Jesus with a new and
strange conception of the religion of their Master. They
laid it alongside of their memories of their Master, and they
heard him say " Go ye into all the world " ; and they went.
The natural outcome of this forward step at once became
evident. Paul did not go among the Gentiles to " preach
circumcision," and there quickly came into being, throughout
Asia Minor and in the Balkan provinces, many groups of
Christians of a new type — Gentile in mind and tradition, and
in Christian life no less Gentile. They remained uncircum-
cised, they did not observe the Sabbath nor any other
distinctive usage of Judaism — they were a new people, a
"third race." Their very existence put Judaism on the de-
fensive ; for, if their position was justified, it was hard to see
THE JEWISH HERITAGE 169
what right Judaism had to be. It was not yet quite clear
what exactly the new religion was, nor into what it might
develop^ ; but if, as the Gentile Christians and their Apostle
claimed, they stood in a new relation to God, a higher and a
more tender than the greatest and best spirits in Israel had
known, and this without the seal of God's covenant with
Israel and independently of his law, then it was evident that
the unique privileges of Israel were void, and that, as Paul put
it, " there is neither Jew nor Greek."
That part of the Jewish race, and it was the larger part,
which did not accept the new religion, was in no mind to
admit either Paul's premisses or his conclusions. They stood '
for God's covenant with Israel. Nor did they stand alone, for
it took time to convince even Christian Jews that the old
dispensation had yielded to a new one, and that the day of
Moses was past. To the one class the rise of the Christian
community was a menace, to the other a problem. The one
left no means untried to check it. By argument, by appeals
to the past, by working on his superstitions, they sought to
make the Christian convert into a Jew ; and, when they failed, '
they had other methods in reserve. Themselves everywhere
despised and hated, as they are still, for their ability and their
foreign air, they stirred up their heathen neighbours against
the new race. Again and again, in the Acts and in later
documents, we read of the Jews being the authors of pagan
persecution.1 The " unbelieving Jew " was a spiritual and a
social danger to the Christian in every city of the East. The
converted Jew was, in his way, almost as great a difficulty
within the community.
It is not hard to understand the feeling of the Jews within •
or without the Church. Other races had their ancient histories,
and the Jew had his — a history long and peculiar. From the
day of Abraham, the friend of God, the chosen race had been
the special care of Jehovah. Jehovah had watched over them ;
he had saved them from their enemies ; he had visited them
for their iniquities ; he had sent them prophets ; he had given
them his law. In a long series of beautiful images, which
move us yet, Jehovah had spoken, through holy men of old,
of his love for Israel. To Israel belonged the oracles of God
1 Justin, Trypho, c. 17; Tert. adv.Jud. 13.
iyo CONFLICT OF CHRISTIAN AND JEW
and his promises. For here again the national consciousness of
Israel differed from that of every other race. It was something
that in the past God had spoken to no human family except
the seed of Abraham ; it was more that to them, and to them
alone, he had assured the future. Deeply as Israel felt the
trials of the present, the Roman would yet follow the Persian
and the Greek, and the day of Israel would dawn. The
Messiah was to come and restore all things.
" He shall destroy the ungodly nations with the word of his
mouth, so that at his rebuke the nations may flee before him,
and he shall convict the sinners in the thoughts of their
hearts.
" And he shall gather together a holy people whom he shall
lead in righteousness ; and shall judge the tribes of his people
that hath been sanctified by the Lord his God.
"And he shall not suffer iniquity to lodge in their
midst, and none that knoweth wickedness shall dwell with
them. . . .
" And he shall possess the nations of the heathen to serve
him beneath his yoke ; and he shall glorify the Lord in a place
to be seen of the whole earth ;
" And he shall purge Jerusalem and make it holy, even as
it was in the days of old.
" So that the nations may come from the ends of the
earth to see his glory, bringing as gifts her sons that had
fainted,
" And may see the glory of the Lord, wherewith God hath
glorified her."
So runs one of the Psalms of Solomon written between
70 and 40 B.C.1 Parallel passages might be multiplied,
but one may suffice, written perhaps in the lifetime of
Jesus.
" Then thou, O Israel, wilt be happy, and thou wilt mount
upon the neck of the eagle, and [the days of thy mourning]
will be ended,
" And God will exalt thee, and he will cause thee to
approach to the heaven of the stars, and he will establish thy
habitation among them.
"And thou wilt look from on high, and wilt see thine
1 Psalm. Solom. xvii, 27-35. Ed- RYle and James.
THE JEWISH HERITAGE 171
enemies in Ge[henna], and thou wilt recognize them and
rejoice, and wilt give thanks and confess thy Creator." l
No people in the Mediterranean world had such a past
behind them, and none a future so sure and so glorious before
them — none indeed seems to have had any great hope of the
future at all ; their Golden Ages were all in the past, or far
away in mythical islands of the Eastern seas or beyond the
Rhine. And if the Christian doctrine was true, that great
past was as dead as Babylon, and the Messianic Kingdom was
a mockery — Israel was "feeding on the east wind," and the
nation was not Jehovah's chosen. At one stroke Israel was
abolished, and every national memory and every national
instinct, rooted in a past of suffering and revelation, and
watered with tears in a present of pain, were to wither
like the gardens of Adonis. No man with a human heart
but must face the alternative of surrendering national for
Christian ideals, or hating and exterminating the enemy of
his race.
So much for the nation, and what Christianity meant for
it, but much beside was at stake. There was the seal of
circumcision, the hereditary token of God's covenant with
Abraham, a sacrament passed on from father to son and
associated with generations of faith and piety. Week by
week the Sabbath came with its transforming memories — the
11 Princess Sabbath," for Heine was not the first to feel the
magic that at sunset on Friday restores the Jew to the " halls
of his royal father, the tents of Jacob." Every one of their
religious usages spoke irresistibly of childhood. " When your
children shall say unto you ' What mean ye by this service,'
ye shall say . . . ," so ran the old law, binding every Jew to
his father by the dearest and strongest of all bonds. To
become a Christian was thus to be alienated from the
commonwealth of Israel, to renounce a father's faith and his
home. If the pagan had to suffer for his conversion, the
Jew's heritage was nobler and holier, and the harder to forego.
Even the friendly Jew pleads, " Cannot a man be saved who
trusts in Christ and also keeps the law — keeps it so far as he
1 Assumption of Moses, x, 8-10, tr. R. H. Charles. "Gehenna" is a restoration
which seems probable, the Latin in terrain representing what was left of the word in
Greek. See Dr Charles' note.
172 CONFLICT OF CHRISTIAN AND JEW
can under the conditions of the dispersion, — the Sabbath,
circumcision, the months, and certain washings ? " 1
But this was not all. Israel had stood for monotheism
and that not the monotheism of Greek philosophy, a dogma
of the schools consistent with the cults of Egypt and Phrygia,
with hierodules and a deified Antinous. The whole nation
had been consecrated to the worship of One God, a personal
God, who had, at least where Israel was concerned, no hint
of philosophic Apathy. The Jew was now asked by the
Christian to admit a second God — a God beside the Creator
0eo? Trapa TOV Troirjrrjv TWV oXcov 2) — and such a God !
J°WR kn°w a^ ahnnt J«*g]]ff of Nazareth — it was absurd to
try to pass him off even as the Messiah. " Sir," said Trypho,
" these scriptures compel us to expect one glorious and great,
who receives from ' the Ancient of Days ' the * eternal
Kingdom ' as ' Son of Man ' ; but this man of yours — your
so-called Christ — was unhonoured and inglorious, so that he
actually fell under the extreme curse that is in the law of
God ; for he was crucified." 3 The whole thing was a paradox,
incapable of proof.4 " It is an incredible thing, and almost
impossible that you are trying to prove — that God endured to
be begotten and to become a man."5
The Jews had a propaganda of their own about Jesus.
They sent emissaries from Palestine to supply their country-
men and pagans with the truth.6 Celsus imagines a Jew
disputing with a Christian, — a more life-like Jew, according to
Harnack, than Christian apologists draw, — and the arguments
he uses came from Jewish sources. Jesus was born, they said,
in a village, the bastard child of a peasant woman, a poor
person who worked with her hands, divorced by her hushand
(who was a carpenter) for adultery.7 The father was a soldier
called Panthera. As to the Christian story, what could have
attracted the attention of God to her? Was she pretty?
The carpenter at all events hated her and cast her out.8
1 Justin, Trypho, 46, 47. The question is still asked ; I have heard it asked.
2 Justin, Trypho, 50. 3 Justin, Trypho, 32 ; the quotations are from Daniel.
4 Justin, Trypho, 48. 5 Justin, Trypho, 68.
6 Justin, Trypho> 17, 108.
7 Cf. Tert. de Spect. 30, fabri aut qucestuaricB filius.
8 Origen, c. Cels. i, 28, 32, 39. The beauty of the woman is an element in the
stories of Greek demi-gods.
THE JEWISH ATTACK ON JESUS 173
(" I do not think I need trouble about this argument," is all
Origen says.) Who saw the dove, or heard the voice from
heaven, at the baptism ? Jesus suffered death in Palestine for
the guilt he had committed (TrX^/x/xeXr/arat/rci). He convinced
no one while he lived ; even his disciples betrayed him — a
thing even brigands would not have done by their chief—
so far was he from improving them, and so little ground is
there for saying that he foretold to them what he should suffer.
He even complained of thirst on the cross. As for the
resurrection, that rests on the evidence of a mad woman
(Tra/oofo-T/oo?) — or some other such person among the same
set of deceivers, dreaming, or deluded, or " wishing to startle
the rest with the miracle, and by a lie of that kind to give
other impostors a lead." Does the resurrection of Jesus at all
differ from those of Pythagoras or Zamolxis or Orpheus or
Herakles — " or do you think that the tales of other men both
are and seem myths, but that the catastrophe of your play is a
well-managed and plausible piece of invention — the cry upon
the gibbet, when he died, and the earthquake and the
darkness ? " l The Christians systematically edited and
altered the Gospels to meet the needs of the moment ; 2 but
Jesus did not fulfil the prophecies of the Messiah — " the
prophets say he shall be great, a dynast, lord of all the earth
and all its nations and armies." 3 There are ten thousand
other men to whom the prophecies are more applicable than
to Jesus, 4 and as many who in frenzy claim to " come from
God." 5 In short the whole story of the Christians rests on no
evidence that will stand investigation.
Even men who would refrain from the hot-tempered
method of controversy, which these quotations reflect, might
well feel the contrast between the historic Jesus and the ex-
pected Messiah — between the proved failure of the cross and
the world-empire of a purified and glorious Israel. And when
it was suggested further that Jesus was God, an effluence
coming from God, as light is lit by light — even if this were
true, it would seem that the Jew was asked to give up the
worship of the One God, which he had learnt of his fathers,
and to turn to a being not unlike the pagan gods around him
in every land, who also, their apologists said, came from the
1 c. Cels. ii, 55. 2 ii, 27. s ii, 29. * ii, 28. 5 i, 50.
174 CONFLICT OF CHRISTIAN AND JEW
Supreme, and were his emanations and ministers and might
therefore be worshipped.
Thus everything that was distinctive of their race and their
religion — the past of Israel, the Messiah and the glorious
future, the beautiful symbols of family religion, and the One
God Himself — all was to be surrendered by the man who*,
became a Christian. We realize the extraordinary and com-
pelling force of the new religion, when we remember that, in
spite of all to hold them back, there were those who made the
surrender and " suffered the loss of all things to win Christ and
be found in him." Paul however rested, as he said, on revela-
tion, and ordinary men, who were not conscious of any such
distinction, who mistrusted themselves and their emotions, and
who rested most naturally upon the cumulative religious ex-
perience of their race, might well ask whether after all they
wf»tY»jicr|if in VHrafcinor^with a sacred past — whether, apart from
subjective grounds, there were any clear warrant from outside
to enable them to go forward. The Jew had of course oracles
of God given by inspiration (OeoTrveva-ros 1), written by " holy
men of God, moved by the holy spirit." These were his
warrant. Here circumcision, the Sabbath, the Passover, and '
all his religious life was definitely and minutely prescribed in
what was almost, like the original two tables, the autograph of
the One God. The law had its own history bound up with
that of the race, and the experience and associations of every
new generation made it more deeply awful and mysterious.
Had the Christian any Jaw ? had he any oracles, apart from the
unintelligible glossolalies of men possessed (evOova-iwvres)?
When Justin spoke of the gifts of the Spirit, Trypho interjected,
" I should like you to know that you are talking nonsense." 2
Not unnaturally then did men say to Ignatius (as we have
seen), " If I do not find it in the ancient documents, I do not
believe it in the gospel." And when Ignatius rejoined, "It is
written " ; " That is the problem," said they.3 It was their
problem, though it was not his. For him Judaism is "a leaven
old and sour," and " to use the name of Jesus Christ and yet
observe Jewish customs is absurd (aroirov) " or really " to con-
fess we have not received grace." 4 His documents were
1 2 Tim. 3, 15. 2 Trypho, 39.
5 Ign. PhUad. 8, 2. 4 Ign. Magn. 10, 3 ; 8, i.
THE PROBLEM 175
Jesus Christ, his cross and death and resurrection, and faith
through him.
" That is the problem " — can it be shown from the in-
fallible Hebrew Scriptures that the crucified Jesus is the
Messiah of prophecy, that he is a " God beside the Creator,"
that Sabbath and Circumcision are to be superseded, that
Israel's covenant is temporary, and that the larger outlook of
the Christian is after all the eternal dispensation of which the
Jewish was a copy made for a time? If this could be shown,
it might in some measure stop the mouths of hostile Jews, and
calm the uneasy consciences of Jews and proselytes who had
become Christians. And it might serve another and a distinct
purpose. It was one of the difficulties of the Christian that
his religion was a new thing in the world. Around him were
men who gloried in ancient literatures and historic cults. All
the support that men can derive from tradition and authority,
or even from the mere fact of having a past behind them, was
wanting to the new faith, as its opponents pointed out. If, by
establishing his contention against the Jew, the Christian could
achieve another end, and could demonstrate to the Greek that
he too had a history and a literature, that his religion was no
mere accident of a day, but was rooted in the past, that it had
been foretold by God himself, and was part of the divine
scheme for the destiny of mankind, then, resting on the sure
j ground of Providence made plain, he could call upon the Greek
in his turn to forsake his errors and superstitions for the first
I of all religions, which should also be the last — the faith of
| Jesus Christ.
The one method thus served two ends. Justin addressed
Ian Apology to Antoninus Pius, and one-half of his book is
occupied with the demonstration that every major characteristic
of Christianity had been prophesied and was a fulfilment The
thirty chapters show what weight the sheer miracle of this had
with the apologist, though, if the Emperor actually read the
\Apology > it was probably his first contact with Jewish scripture.
Some difference of treatment was necessary, according as the
| method was directed to Jew or Gentile. For the Jew it was
txiomatic that Scripture was the word of God, and, if he did
grant the Christian's postulate of allegory, he was with-
Iding from an opponent what had been allowed to Philo.
1 76 CONFLICT OF CHRISTIAN AND JEW
The Greek would probably allow the allegory, and the first task
in his case was to show by chronological reckoning that the
greater prophets, and above all Moses, antedated the bloom of
Greek literature, and then to draw the inference that it
was from Hebrew sources that the best thoughts of Hellas had
been derived. Here the notorious interest of early Greek
thinkers in Egypt helped to establish the necessary, though
rather remote, connexion. When once the priority of the
Hebrew prophets had been proved, and, by means of allegory,
a coincidence (age by age more striking) had been established
between prophecy and event, the demonstration was complete.
There could be only one interpretation of such facts.
A number of these refutations of the Jew survive from
early times. Justin's Dialogue with Trypho is the most
famous, as it deserves to be. It opens in a pleasant Platonic
style with a chance meeting one morning in a colonnade at
Ephesus.1 Trypho accosts the philosopher Justin — " When I
see a man in your garb, I gladly approach him, and that is
why I spoke to you, hoping to hear something profitable from
you." When Trypho says he is a Jew, Justin asks in what
he expects to be more helped by philosophy than by his own
prophets and law-giver. Is not all the philosophers' talk
about God ? Trypho asks. Justin then tells him of his own
wanderings in philosophy, — how he went from school to
school, and at last was directed by an old man to read the
Jewish prophets, and how " a fire was kindled in my soul,
and a passion seized me for the prophets and those men who
are Christ's friends ; and so, discussing their words with
myself, I found this philosophy alone to be safe and helpful.
And that is how and why I am a philosopher." 2 Trypho
smiled, but, while approving Justin's ardour in seeking after
God, he added that he would have done better to philosophize
with Plato or one of the others, practising endurance, con-
tinence and temperance, than " to be deceived by lies and to
follow men who are worthless." Then the battle begins, and it
is waged in a courteous and kindly spirit, as befits philosophers,
till after two days they part with prayers and goodwill for
each other — Trypho unconvinced. Other writers have less
1 So says Eusebius, E. H. iv, 18. Justin does not name the city.
* Trypho, 8.
THE LETTER TO DIOGNETUS H
skill, and the features of dialogue are sadly whittled away.
Others again abandon all pretence of discussion and frankly
group their matter as a scheme of proof- texts. In what
follows, Justin shall be our chief authority.
We may start with the first point that Trypho raises.
" If you will listen to me (for I count you a friend already),
first of all be circumcised, and then keep, in the traditional
way, the Sabbath and the feasts and new moons of God, and,
in a word, do all that is written in the law, and then perhaps
God will have mercy upon you. As for Christ, if indeed he
has been born and already exists, he is unknown — nay ! he
does not even know himself yet, nor has he any power, till
Elijah come and anoint him and make him manifest to all
men. You people have accepted an empty tale, and are
imagining a Christ for yourselves, and for the sake of him
you are perishing quite aimlessly." l
Salvation, according to the Jew, was inconceivable outside
the pale of Judaism. " Except ye be circumcised, ye cannot
be saved," men had said in Paul's time. Paul's repudiation of
this assertion is to be read in his Epistle to the Galatians — in
his whole life and mind. But genius such as Paul's was not
to be found in the early church, and men looked outside of
themselves for arguments to prove what he had seen and
known of his own experience and insight.
Some apologists merely laughed at the Jew. Thus the
brilliant and winsome writer known only by his Epistle to
Diognetus has a short and ready way of dealing with Jewish
usages, which is not conciliatory. " In the next place I think
you wish to hear why Christians do not worship in the same
way as the Jews. Now the Jews do well in abstaining from
the mode of service I have described [paganism], in that they
claim to reverence One God of the universe and count Him
their master ; but, in offering this worship to Him in the
same way as those I have mentioned, they go far astray. For
the Greeks offer those things to senseless and deaf images
and so give an exhibition of folly, while the Jews — con-
sidering they are presenting them to God as if He had need
of them — ought in all reason to count it foolery and not
piety. For He that made the heaven and the earth and all
1 Justin, Trypho, 8.
12
1 76 CONFLICT OF CHRISTIAN AND JEW
that is in them, and gives freely to every one of us what we
need, could not Himself need any of the things which He
Himself actually gives to those who imagine they are giving
them to Him. . . .
" But again of their nervousness (\[so<f>o8ee$) about meats, and
their superstition about the Sabbath, and the quackery (aXafot/e/a)
of circumcision, and the pretence (eiptweia) of fasts and new
moons — ridiculous and worthless as it all is, I do not suppose
you wish me to tell you. For to accept some of the things
which God has made for man's need as well created, and to
reject others as useless and superfluous, is it not rebellion
(a0efju<TTov) ? To lie against God as if He forbade us to do
good on the Sabbath day, is not that impiety ? To brag that
the mutilation of the flesh is a proof of election — as if God
specially loved them for it — ridiculous ! And that they
should keep a look-out on the stars and the moon and so
observe months and days and distinguish the ordinances of
God and the changes of the seasons, as their impulses prompt
them to make some into feasts and some into times of mourn-
ing— who would count this a mark of piety towards God and
not much rather of folly ?
" That Christians are right to keep aloof from the general
silliness and deceit of the Jews, their fussiness and quackery,
I think you are well enough instructed. The mystery of
their own piety towards God you must not expect to be able
to learn from man." 1
This was to deal with the distinctive usages of Judaism on*'
general principles and from a standpoint outside it. It would
doubtless be convincing enough to men who did not need to
be convinced, but of little weight with those to whom the
Scriptures meant everything. Accordingly the Apologists
went to the Scriptures and arrayed their evidence with spirit
and system.
We may begin, as the writer to Diognetus begins, with
sacrifices. Here the Apologists could appeal to the Prophets,
who had spoken of sacrifice in no sparing terms. Tertullian's
fifth chapter in his book Against the Jews presents the evidence
shortly and clearly. I will give the passages cited in a tabular
form : —
1 ad Diogn. 3, 4.
SACRIFICE, CIRCUMCISION, SABBATH 179
Malachi 1, 10: I will not receive sacrifice from your hands,
since from the rising sun to the setting my name is
glorified among the Gentiles, saith the Lord Almighty,
and in every place they offer pure sacrifices to my name.
Psalm 96, 7 : Offer to God glory and honour, offer to God
the sacrifices of his name ; away with victims (tollite) and
enter into his court.
Psalm 51, 17 : A heart contrite and humbled is a sacrifice for
God.
Psalm 50, 14: Sacrifice to God the sacrifice of praise and
render thy vows to the Most High.
Isaiah 1, 1 1 : Wherefore to me the multitude of your sacrifices ?
.... Whole burnt offerings and your sacrifices and the
fat of goats and the blood of bulls I will not . . . Who
has sought these from your hands ?
Justin has other passages as decisive. Does not God say by
Amos (5, 21) "I hate, I loathe your feasts, and I will not
smell [your offerings] in your assemblies. When ye offer me
your whole burnt offerings and your sacrifices, I will not receive
them," and so forth, in a long passage quoted at length. And
again
Jeremiah 7, 21-22 : Gather your flesh and your sacrifices and
eat, for neither concerning sacrifices nor drink offerings
did I command your fathers in the day that I took them
by the hand to lead them out of Egypt.1
Next as to circumcision and the Sabbath. " You need a
second circumcision," says Justin, " and yet you glory in the
flesh ; the new law bids you keep a perpetual Sabbath, while
you idle for one day and suppose you are pious in so doing ;
you do not understand why it was enjoined upon you. And,
if you eat unleavened bread, you say you have fulfilled the will
of God." * Even by Moses, who gave the law, God cried " You
shall circumcise the hardness of your hearts and stiffen your
necks no more " ; 3 and Jeremiah long afterwards said the same
more than once.4 On the Sabbath question, Tertullian and
the others distinguished two Sabbaths, an eternal and a
temporal,5 citing : —
1 Trypho, 22. 2 Ibid. 12. 3 Deut. 10, 16, 17 ; Trypho, 16.
4 fcrtm. 4, 4; 9, 25 ; Trypho, 28. 6 Tert. adv.Jud. 4.
i8o CONFLICT OF CHRISTIAN AND JEW
Isaiah 1, 14 : My soul hates your sabbaths.
Ezekiel 22, 8 : Ye have profaned my sabbath.
The Jew is referred back to the righteous men of early days —
Was Adam circumcised, or did he keep the Sabbath ? or Abel,
or Noah, or Enoch, or Melchizedek ? Did Abraham keep the
Sabbath, or any of the patriarchs down to Moses ? 1 " But,"
rejoins the Jew, " was not Abraham circumcised ? Would not
the son of Moses have been strangled, had not his mother
circumcised him ? " 2
To this the Christian had several replies. Circumcision
was merely given for a sign, as is shown by the fact that a
woman cannot receive it, " for God has made women as well
able as men to do what is just and right." There is no
righteousness in being of one sex rather than of the other.3
Circumcision then was imposed upon the Jews " to mark you
off from the rest of the nations and from us, that you alone
might suffer what now you are suffering, and so deservedly
suffering — that your lands should be desolate and your cities
burnt with fire, that strangers should eat your fruits before
your faces, and none of you set his foot in Jerusalem. For in
nothing are you known from other men apart from the circum-
cision of your flesh. None of you, I suppose, will venture to
say that God did not foresee what should come to pass. And
it is all deserved ; for you slew the Righteous one and his
prophets before him ; and now you reject and dishonour — so
far as you can — those who set their hopes on him and on the
Almighty God, maker of all things, who sent him ; and in your
synagogues you curse those who believe on Christ."4 The
Sabbath was given to remind the Jews of God ; and restrictions
were laid on certain foods because of the Jewish proclivity to
forsake the knowledge of God.5 In general, all these com-
mands were called for by the sins of Israel,6 they were signs
of judgment.
On the other hand the so-called Barnabas maintains that
the Jews never had understood their law at all. Fasts, feasts
Austin, Trypho, 19; Tert. adv.Jud. 2; Cyprian, Testim. I, 8. Tertullian had
to face a similar criticism of Christian life — was Abraham baptized! de Bapt. 13.
2 Tert. adv.Jud. 3. 3 Trypho, 23; Cyprian, Testim. I, 8.
4 Trypho, 1 6 (slightly compressed).
6 Trypho, 19, 20; cf. Tert. adv.Jud. 3. 6 Trypho, 22.
OLD LAW OR NEW COVENANT 181
and sacrifices were prescribed, not literally, but in a spiritual
sense which the Jews had missed. The taboos on meats
were not prohibitions of the flesh of weasels, hares and hyaenas
and so forth, but were allegoric warnings against fleshly lusts,
to which ancient zoologists and modern Arabs have supposed
these animals to be prone.1 Circumcision was meant, as the
prophets showed, to be that of the heart ; evil daemons had
misled the Jews into practising it upon the flesh.2 The whole
Jewish dispensation was a riddle, and of no value, unless it is
understood as signifying Christianity.
This line of attack was open to the criticism that it robbed
the religious history of Israel of all value whatever, and the
stronger Apologists do not take it. They will allow the Jews
to have been so far right in observing their law, but they
insist that it had a higher sense also, which had been over-
looked except by the great prophets. The law was a series
of types and shadows, precious till the substance came, which
the shadows foretold. That they were mere shadows is shown
by the fact that Enoch walked with God and Abraham was
the friend of God. For this could not have been, if the
Jewish contention were true that without Sabbath and circum-
cision man cannot please God. Otherwise, either the God of
Enoch was not the God of Moses — which was absurd ; or else
God had changed his mind as to right and wrong — which was
equally absurd.3 No, the legislation of Moses was for a people
and for a time ; it was not for mankind and eternity. It was
a prophecy of a new legislator, who should repeal the carnal
code and enact one that should be spiritual, final and eternal.4
Here, following the writer to the Hebrews, the Apologists
quote a great passage of Jeremiah, with the advantage (not
always possible) of using it in the true sense in which it was
written. " Behold ! the days come, saith the Lord, when I
will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with
the house of Judah ; not that which I made with their fathers
in the day when I took them by the hand to lead them out
of Egypt ; which my covenant they brake, although I was an
1 Barnabas, 10 ; cf. Pliny, N.H. 8, 218, on the hare ; and Plutarch, de hide et
Osiride, 353 F, 363 F, 376 E, 381 A (weasel), for similar zoology and symbolism.
Clem. Alex. Str. ii, 67 ; v, 51 ; refers to this teaching of Barnabas (cf. id. ii, 105).
2 Barnabas, 9. s Trypho> 23. 4 Ibid. II.
1 82 CONFLICT OF CHRISTIAN AND JEW
husband unto them, saith the Lord. But this shall be the
covenant that I will make with the house of Israel : After
those days, saith the Lord, I will put my law in their inward
parts and write it in their hearts, and I will be their God and
they shall be my people."1
With the law, the privilege of Israel passes away and the
day of the Gentiles comes. It was foretold that Israel would
not accept Christ — " their ears they have closed " ; 2 " they
have not known nor understood " ; 3 " who is blind but my
servants ? " 4 " all these words shall be unto you as words of a
book that is sealed." 5 " By Isaiah the prophet, God, knowing
beforehand what you would do, cursed you thus " ; 6 and Justin
cites Isaiah 3, 9-15, and 5, 18-25. Leah is the type of the
synagogue and of the Jewish people and Rachel of "our
church " ; the eyes of Leah were weak, and so are the eyes of
your soul — very weak.7 No less was it prophesied that the
Gentiles should believe on Christ — " in thee shall all tribes of
the earth be blest " ; " Behold ! I have manifested him as a
witness to the nations, a prince and a ruler to the races.
Races which knew thee not shall call upon thee and peoples
who were ignorant of thee shall take refuge with thee." 8
" By David He said ' A people I knew not has served me,
and hearkened to me with the hearing of the ear.' Let us,
the Gentiles gathered together, glorify God," says Justin,
" because he has visited us ... for he is well pleased with
the Gentiles, and receives our sacrifices with more pleasure
than yours. What have I to do with circumcision, who have
the testimony of God ? What need of that baptism to me,
baptized with the holy spirit ? These things, I think, will
persuade even the slow of understanding. For these are not argu-
ments devised by me, nor tricked out by human skill, — nay !
this was the theme of David's lyre, this the glad news Isaiah
brought, that Zechariah proclaimed and Moses wrote. Do
you recognize them, Trypho ? They are in your books — no !
not yours, but ours — for we believe them — and you, when you
ljerem. 31, 31 ; Trypho, 1 1 ; Tert. adv. fud. 3.
2 Is. 6, 10 ; Trpyho 12 ; Cyprian, Testim. i, 3.
3 Ps. 82, 5; Trypho, 124; Cyprian, Testim. i, 3.
4 Is. 42, 19 ; Trypho, 123, where the plural is used.
5 Is. 29, II ; Cyprian, Testim. i, 4. 6 Trypho, 133. 7 Trypho, 134.
8 Cyprian, Testim. i, 21 ; Justin, Trypho, 12 ; Tert. adv. Marc, iii, 20.
JESUS THE MESSIAH 183
read, do not understand the mind that is in them."1 And
with that Justin passes on to discuss whether Jesus is the
Messiah. Such a passage raises the question as to how far
he is reporting an actual conversation. In his 8oth chapter
he says to Trypho that he will make a book (<nWa£y) of their
conversation — of the whole of it — to the best of his ability,
faithfully recording all that he concedes to Trypho. Probably
he takes Plato's liberty to develop what was said — unless
indeed the dialogue is from beginning to end merely a literary
form imposed upon a thesis. In that case, it must be owned
that Justin manages to give a considerable suggestion of life
to Trypho's words.
But, even if the law be temporary, and the Sabbath
spiritual, if Israel is to be rejected and the Gentiles chosen, we
are still far from being assured on the warrant of the Old
Testament that Jesus is the Messiah, who shall accomplish
this great change. Why he rather than any of the "ten
thousand others" who might much more plausibly be called
the Messiah ? 2
To prove the Messiahship of Jesus, a great system of Old
Testament citations was developed, the origins of which are
lost to us. Paul certainly applied Scripture to Jesus in a free
way of his own, though he is not more fanciful in quotation
than his contemporaries. But he never sought to base the
Christian faith on a scheme of texts. Lactantius, writing
about 300 A.D., implies that Jesus is the author of the system.
" He abode forty days with them and interpreted the Scriptures,
which up to that time had been obscure and involved." 3
Something of the kind is suggested by Luke (24, 27). But it
is obvious that the whole method is quite alien to the mind
and style of Jesus, in spite of quotations in the vein of the
apologists which the evangelists here and there have attributed
to him.
We may discover two great canons in the operations of
the Apologists. In the first place, they seek to show that all
things prophesied of the Messiah were fulfilled in Jesus of
N azareth ; ari'd, se(!6|lllly> Llial everytfting which befel Jesus was
prophesied of^the Messiah. Ihese canoiTS need only to be
stated to show the sheer impossibility of the enterprise to any-
1 Trypho, 29. a c. Celt, ii, 28. * Lactantiui, dt mart, ftrstc. 2.
1 84 CONFLICT OF CHRISTIAN AND JEW
one who attaches meaning to words, But in the early centuries
of our era there was little disposition with Jew or Greek to do
this where those books were concerned, whose age and beauty
gave them a peculiar hold upon the mind. In each case the
preconception had grown up, as about the myths of Isis, for
example, that such books were in some way sacred and
inspired. The theory gave men an external authority, but it
presented some difficulties ; for, both in Homer and in Genesis
as in the Egyptian myths, there were stories repugnant to
every idea of the divine nature which a philosophic mind could
entertain. They were explained away by the allegoric
method. Plutarch shows how the grossest features of the Isis
legend have subtle and spiritual meanings and were never
meant to be taken literally — that the myths are logoi in fact ;
and Philo vindicates the Old Testament in the same way.1
The whole procedure was haphazard and unscientific ; it closely
resembled the principles used by Artemidorus for the interpreta-
tion of dreams — a painful analogy. But, in the absence of
any kind of historic sense, it was perhaps the only way in
which the continuity of religious thought could then be main-
tained. It is not surprising in view of the prevalence of
allegory that the Christians used it — they could hardly do
anything else. Thus with the fatal aid of allegory, the double
.thesis of the Apolo^ists'BeTanie^a^TeT^nd easier to maintain.
The most accessible illustration of this line of apology is
to be found in the second chapter of Matthew. We may set
out in parallel columns the events in the life of Jesus and the
prophecies which they fulfil.
(a) The Virgin-Birth. Isaiah 7, 14 : Behold a virgin
shall conceive.
(b) Bethlehem. Micah 5, 2 : And thou, Bethle-
hem, etc.
(c) The Flight into Egypt. Hosea 11, I : Out of Egypt
have I called my son.
(cT) The Murder of the children. Jerem. 31, 15: Rachel weeping.
(e) Nazareth. Judges 13, 5 : A Nazarene.
1 Tertullian lays down the canon (adv. Marc, iii, 5) pleraque figurate portenduntur
per cenigmata et alle^orias et parabolas, aliter intelligenda quam scripta sunt ; but
(de resurr. carnis, 20) non omnia imagines sed et veritates> nee omnia umbra sed et
corpora, e.g. the Virgin-birth is not foretold in figure.
THE ARGUMENT FROM PROPHECY 185
It is hardly unfair to say that the man who cited these
passages in these connexions had no idea whatever of their
original meaning, even where he quotes them correctly.
Here is a fuller scheme taken from the Apology which
Justin addressed to the Emperor Antoninus Pius. (The
numbers on the left refer to the chapter in the first Apology?)
32. Jesus Christ foretold by Gen. 49, lof: (the blessing of
Moses. Judah).
Numbers 24, 17: There shall
dawn a star, etc.
Jesus Christ foretold by Isaiah 11, I : the rod of Jesse,
Isaiah. etc.
33. Jesus Christ to be born Is. 7, 14: (the sign to
of a virgin. Ahaz).
34. Jesus Christ to be born at Micah 5, 2 : Thou, Bethlehem,
Bethlehem. etc.
35. The triumphal entry into
Jerusalem.
The Crucifixion: the Cross.
The Crucifixion : the
mockery.
The Crucifixion : the nails
and the casting of lots.
38. The Crucifixion : the
scourging.
The Crucifixion : the
mocking.
The Crucifixion : the
resurrection.
Zech. 9, 9 : Thy king cometh
riding on an ass, etc.
Is. 9, 6 : The government upon
his shoulders.
Is. 65, 2 : I have stretched out
my hands, etc.
Is. 58, 2 : They ask me for
judgment, etc.
Psalm 22, 16, 18: They
pierced my feet and my
hands ; they cast lots upon
my raiment.
Is. 50, 6-8 : I gave my back
to the lashes and my cheeks
to blows, etc.
Ps. 22, 7 : they wagged the
head, saying, etc.
Ps. 3, 5 : I slept and slumbered
and I rose up (oyforv) be-
cause the Lord laid hold of
me.
1 86 CONFLICT OF CHRISTIAN AND JEW
39. The sending of the twelve
Apostles.
40. The proclamation of the
Gospel.
Christ, Pilate, the Jews
and Herod.
41. Christ to reign after the
Crucifixion.
45. The Ascension.
47. The desolation of Jeru-
salem.
48. The miracles of Christ.
Christ's death.
49. The Gentiles to find Christ
but not the Jews.
50. Christ's humiliation and
the glorious second
advent.
51. His sufferings, origin,
reign and ascension.
His second coming.
Is. 2, 3 f.: Out of Sion shall go
forth the law.
Ps. 19, 2-5 : Day unto day,
etc.
Psatms I and 2 : cited in
extenso.
i Chron. 16, 23, 25-31 : (a
psalm). Cf. Ps. 96, I, 2,
4-10, with ending: "The
Lord hath reigned from the
tree."
Ps. 110, 1-3 : Sit thou at my
right hand, etc.
Is. 64, i o- 1 2 : Sion has become
desert, etc.
Is. 1, 7, and Jer. 50, 3 : Their
land is desert.
Is. 35, 5, 6: The lame shall
leap . . . the dead shall rise
and walk, etc.
Is. 57, i f.: Behold, how the
• Just Man has perished, etc.
Is. 65, 1-3 : I was visible to
them that asked not for me
... I spread out my hands
to a disobedient people.
Is. 53, 12 : For that they gave
his soul to death ... he
shall be exalted.
Is. 52, 13-53, 8 : ... he was
wounded, etc.
Is. 53, 8-12.
"Jeremiah " = Daniel 7, 13, as
it were a son of man cometh
upon the clouds and his
angels with him.
THE GOD BESIDE THE CREATOR" 187
52. The final resurrection.
53. More Gentiles than Jews
will believe.
60. The Cross foretold in the
brazen serpent.
6 1. Baptism.
Ezek. 37, 7-8 : Bone shall be
joined to bone.
Is. 45, 23 : Every knee shall
bow to the Lord.
Is. 66, 24 : The worm shall
not sleep nor the fire be
quenched.
Also a composite quotation
with phrases mingled from
Isaiah and Zechariah, at-
tributed to the latter.
Is. 54, i : Rejoice, O barren,
etc.
" Isaiah '
Israel
heart.
Num. 21, S: If ye look at this
type(rir7rft>) I believe ye shall
be saved in it («/ aurw),
Is. 1, 16: Wash you ... I
will whiten as wool.
= Jerem. 9, 26 :
uncircumcised in
What in the Apology is a bare outline, is developed at
great length and with amazing ingenuity in the dialogue
with Trypho. We may begin with the question of a " God
beside the Creator."
When Moses wrote in Genesis (1, 26) " And God said, ' Let
us make man in our image after our likeness,'" and again
(3, 22) " And the Lord God said, ' Behold the man is become
as one of us,' " * why did he use the plural, unless there is a
God beside God ? Again, when Sodom is destroyed why does
the holy text say " The Lord rained upon Sodom and Gomorrha
sulphur and fire from the Lord from heaven " ? 2 And again
in the Psalms (110) what is meant by " The Lord said unto
my Lord " ? 3 and by " Thy throne, O God, is for ever and
ever . . . therefore God, thy God, hath anointed thee with the
oil of gladness above thy fellows ? " 4
The Old Testament abounds in theophanies, which are
1 Trypho, 62, 129 ; Barnabas, 5, 5 ; Tert. adv. Prax. 12.
a Trypho, 56. 3 Ibid. 56. * Ibid. 56.
1 88 CONFLICT OF CHRISTIAN AND JEW
brought up in turn. Justin cites the three men who appeared
to Abraham — " they were angels," says Trypho, and a long
argument follows to show from the passage that one of them
is not to be explained as an angel,1 nor of course as the Creator
of all things. Trypho owns this. Justin pauses at his sugges-
tion to discuss the meal which Abraham had served, but is
soon caught up with the words : " Now, come, show us that
this God who appeared to Abraham and is the servant of God,
the Maker of all, was born of a virgin, and became, as you
said, a man of like passions with all men." But Justin has
more evidence to unfold before he reaches that stage. Without
following the discussion as it sways from point to point, we may
take the passage in which he recapitulates this line of argument.
" I think I have said enough, so that, when my God says ' God
went up from Abraham/ or ' The Lord spoke to Moses,' or
' The Lord descended to see the tower which the sons of men
had built,' or ' The Lord shut the ark of Noah from without,'
you will not suppose the unbegotten God Himself went down
or went up. For the ineffable Father and Lord of all neither
comes anywhere, nor ' walks ' [as in the garden of Eden], nor
sleeps, nor rises, but abides in his own region wherever it is,
seeing keenly and hearing keenly, but not with eyes or ears,
but by power unspeakable ; and he surveys all things and
knows all things, and none of us escapes his notice ; nor does
he move, nor can space contain him, no, nor the whole
universe, him, who was before the universe was made." 2
Who then was it who walked in the garden, who wrestled with
Jacob, who appeared in arms to Joshua, who spoke with Moses and
with Abraham, who shut Noah into the ark, who was the fourth
figure in the fiery furnace ? Scripture gives us a key. Can the'.
Jew say, who it is whom Ezekiel calls the "angel of great counsel,"
and the " man " ; whom Daniel describes " as the Son of man " ;
whom Isaiah called " child," and David " Christ " and " God
adored"; whom Moses called "Joseph" and "Jacob" and
" the star " ; whom Zechariah called " the daystar " ; whom
1 Trypho, 56, 57.
2 Trypho, 127. Tert. adv. Marc, ii, 27. Qucecunque cxigitis deo digna, habebuntut
in patre invisibili incongressibilique et placido et, ut ita dixerim, philosophorum deo.
Qu&cunque autem ut indigna reprehenditts, deputabunturinfilio, etc. Cf. on the dis-
tinction Tert. adv. Prax. 14 ff. Cf. the language of Celsus on God "descending," see
p. 248.
THE VIRGIN- BIRTH 189
Isaiah again called the " sufferer " (iraOrjTos), " Jacob " and
" Israel " ; whom others have named " the Rod," " the Flower,"
" the Chief Corner-stone " and " the Son of God " ? l The
answer is more clearly given by Solomon in the eighth chapter
of Proverbs — it is the Divine Wisdom, to whom all these
names apply. When it is said " Let us make man," it is to be
understood that the Ineffable communicated his design to his
Wisdom, his Logos or Son, and the Son made man. The Son
rained upon Sodom the fire and brimstone from the Father. It
was the Son who appeared to men in all the many passages
cited — the Son, Christ the Lord, God and Son of God — insepar-
able and unseverable from the Father, His Wisdom and His
Word and His Might (Suva/mis).2
But, while all this might be accepted by a Jew, it still seemed
to Trypho that it was " paradoxical, and foolish, too," to say
that Christ could be God before all the ages, and then tolerate
to be born a man, and yet " not a man of men." The offence
of the Cross also remained. The Apologist began by explain-
ing the mysteries of the two comings of Christ, first in humilia-
tion, and afterwards in glory, as Jacob prophesied in his last
words.3 For the First Coming Tertullian quotes Isaiah — " he
is led as a sheep to the slaughter " ; and the Psalms — " made
a little lower than the angels," " a worm and not a man " ;
while the Second Coming is to be read of in Daniel and the
forty-fifth Psalm, and in the more awful passage of Zechariah
" and then they shall know him whom they pierced." 4 The
paschal lamb is a type of the First Coming — especially as it was
to be roasted whole and trussed like a cross ; and the two goats
of Leviticus (16) are types of the two Comings.5
" And now," says Justin, u I took up the argument again to
show that he was born of a virgin, and that it had been pro-
phesied by Isaiah that he should be born of a virgin ; and I
again recited the prophecy itself. This is it : ' And the Lord
said moreover unto Ahaz, saying : ' Ask for thyself a sign from
the Lord thy God in the depth or in the height. And Ahaz
1 Trypho, 126. Other titles are quoted by Justin, Trypho, 61.
2 Trypho, 128. Cf. Tertullian, adv. Marc, ii, 27, Jlle cst qui descendit, ille qui
interrogat, ille qui postulat, ille qui jurat ; adv. Prax. 15, Filius itaque est q ui. . . .
8 Gen. 49, 8-12 ; Trypho, 52, 53 ; Apol. i, 32 ; Cyprian, Tcstim. i, 21.
4 Tert. adv.Jud. 14. 5 Trypho, 40 ; Tert. adv.Jud. 14 ; Barnabas, 7.
1 90 CONFLICT OF CHRISTIAN AND JEW
said : I will not ask nor tempt the Lord. And Isaiah said :
Hear ye then, O house of David ! Is it a little thing with you
to strive with men ? and how will ye strive with the Lord ?
Therefore shall the Lord himself give you a sign. Behold, the
virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his
name Emmanuel. Butter and honey shall he eat. Before he
shall either have knowledge or choose evil, he shall choose
good ; because, before the child knows evil or good, he refuses
evil to choose good. Because, before the child knows to call
father or mother, he shall take the power of Damascus and the
spoils of Samaria before the King of the Assyrians. And the
land shall be taken, which thou shalt bear hardly from before
the face of two kings. But God will bring upon thee, and
upon thy people, and upon the house of thy father, days which
have never come, from the day when Ephraim removed from
Judah the King of the Assyrians.' And I added, ' That, in the
family of Abraham according to the flesh, none has ever yet
been born of a virgin, or spoken of as so born, except our
Christ, is manifest to all.' " It may be noted that the passage
is not only misquoted, but is a combination of clauses from
two distinct chapters.1 The explanation is perhaps that Justin
found it so in a manual of proof-texts and did not consult the
original. Similar misquotations in other authors have suggested
the same explanation.
" Trypho rejoined : ' The scripture has not : Behold the
virgin shall conceive and bear a son ; but : Behold the young
woman shall conceive and bear a son : and the rest as you
said. The whole prophecy was spoken of Hezekiah and was
fulfilled of him. In the myths of the Greeks it is said that
Perseus was born of Danae, when she was a virgin — after their
so-called Zeus had come upon her in the form of gold. You
ought to be ashamed to tell the same story as they do. You
would do better to say this Jesus was born a man of men, and
— if you show from the Scriptures that he is the Christ — say
that it was by his lawful and perfect life that he was counted
worthy of being chosen as Christ. Don't talk miracles of that
kind, or you will be proved to talk folly beyond even that of
the Greeks.'"2
Trypho has the Hebrew text behind him, which says
) 66. Isaiah vii and viii. 2 Trypho, 67.
THE VIRGIN-BIRTH 191
nothing about a virgin, though the Septuagint has the word.
The sign given to Ahaz has a close parallel in a prophecy of
Muhammad. Before he became known, an old man foretold
that a great prophet should come, and on being challenged for a
sign he pointed to a boy lying in rugs by the camp-fire — " That
boy should see the prophet " ; and he did. Isaiah's sign is
much the same ; a young woman shall conceive and have a son,
and before that son is two or three years old, Damascus and
Syria will fall before the King of Assyria.
But Justin and the Apologists are not to be diverted. As
for Danae, the Devil (StdftoXos) has there anticipated the fulfil-
ment of God's prophecy, as in many other instances, e.g. : —
Dionysus rode an ass, he rose from the dead and ascended to
heaven ; Herakles is a parody of the verse in Psalm xix — the
strong man rejoicing to run a race, a Messianic text ;
iEsculapius raised the dead ; and the cave of Mithras is
Daniel's " stone cut without hands from the great mountains."
" I do not believe your teachers ; they will not admit that the
seventy elders of Ptolemy, King of Egypt, translated well, but
they try to translate for themselves. And I should like you to
know that they have cut many passages out of the versions made
by Ptolemy's elders which prove expressly that this man, who was
crucified, was prophesied of as God and man, crucified and
slain. I know that all your race deny this ; so, in discussions
of this kind I do not quote those passages, but I have recourse
to such as come from what you still acknowledge."1 The
objection to the rendering " young woman " is that it completely
nullifies the sign given to Ahaz, for children are born of young
women every day — " what would really be a sign and would
give confidence to mankind, — to wit, that the firstborn of all
creations should take flesh and really be born a child of a virgin
womb — that was what he proclaimed beforehand by the pro-
phetic spirit." 2
The whole story is parable. It would be absurd to suppose
that an infant could be a warrior and reduce great states. The
spoils are really the gifts of the Magi, as is indicated by
passages in Zechariah (" he shall gather all the strength of the
jpeoples round about, gold and silver," 14, 14) and the seventy
(second Psalm (" Kings of the Arabs and of Saba shall bring
1 Trypho, 71. - Trypho, 84. Cf. Tert. adv. Jud. 9 = adv. Marc, iii, 13.
1 92 CONFLICT OF CHRISTIAN AND JEW
gifts to him ; and to him shall be given gold from the
East"). Samaria again is a common synonym with the pro-
phets for idolatry. Damascus means the revolt of the Magi
from the evil daemon who misdirected their arts to evil. The
King of Assyria stands, says Justin, for King Herod, and so
says Tertullian, writing against Marcion, though in the tract
Against the Jews (if it is Tertullian's) he says the devil is
intended.1 The usual passages from Micah and Jeremiah are
cited to add Bethlehem and the Murder of the infants to the
prophetic story.
" At this Trypho, with some hint of annoyance,
but overawed by the Scriptures, as his face showed,
said to me : ' God's words are holy, but your expositions
[or translations] are artificial — or blasphemous, I should
say.' " 2
To complete the proof, it is shown that the very name of
Jesus was foretold. When Moses changed the name of his
successor from Auses to Jesus, it was a prophecy, as Scripture
shows. " The Lord said unto Moses : Say to this people, Behold
I send my angel before thy face that he may guard thee in
the way, that he may lead thee into the land that I have
prepared for thee. Give heed unto him ... for he will not
let thee go, for my name is in him."3 This is confirmed by
Zechariah's account of the High Priest Joshua. Furthermore,
the chronology of the book of Daniel, when carefully worked
out, proves to have contained the prediction of the precise date
at which Christ should come, and at that precise date Christ
came.
Barnabas discovers another prophecy of Jesus in an un-
likely place. " Learn, children of love," he says, " that Abraham,
who first gave circumcision, looked forward in spirit unto Jesus,
when he circumcised, for he received dogmata in three letters.
For it saith : And Abraham circumcised of his house men 18
and 300. What then was the knowledge given unto him?
Mark that it says 18 first, and then after a pause 300. 18
[IH in Greek notation] there thou hast Jesus. And because ;
the cross in T [=300 in Greek notation] was to have grace, it i
1 Trypho, 77: Tert. adv. Jud, 9 = adv. Marc, iii, 13; both referring to
Psalm 71.
3 Trypho, 79. s Trypho, 75 ; Exodus 23, 20.
THE CROSS 193
saith 300 as well. It shows Jesus in the two letters, and in
the one the cross." l
We now reach ''he prophecies of the cross, and, as the
method is plain, a few references may suffice, taken this time
from Tertullian (c. 10) : —
Genesis 22, 6 : Isaac carrying the wood for the sacrifice of
himself.
Genesis 37, 28 : Joseph sold by his brethren.
Deuteronomy 33, 17 : Moses' blessing of Joseph. (The unicorn's
horns, with some arrangement, form a cross : cf. Psalm 22).
Exodus 1 7, ii : Moses with his arms spread wide.
Numbers 21, 9 : The brazen serpent.
Psalm 96, 10 : The Lord hath reigned from the tree, e ligno
(though the Jews have cut out the last words).
Isaiah 9, 6 : The government upon his shoulder.
Jeremiah 11, 19 : Let us cast wood (lignum) into his bread.
Isaiah 53, 8, 9 : For the transgression of my people is he
stricken . . . and his sepulture is taken from the midst
(i.e. the resurrection).
Amos 8, 9 : I will cause the sun to go down at noon.
For a long time before Justin was done with his exposition,
Trypho was silent — the better part, perhaps, in all controversy.
At last, writes Justin, " I finished. Trypho said nothing for a
while, and then he said, ' You see, we came to the controversy
unprepared. Still, I own, I am greatly pleased to have met
you, and I think my friends have the same feeling. For we
have found more than we expected, — or anyone could have
expected. If we could do it at more length, we might be
better profited by looking into the passages themselves. But,
since you are on the point of sailing and expect to embark every
day now, — be sure you think of us as friends, if you go.' " 2
So, with kindly feelings, Trypho went away unconvinced.
And there were others, as clear of mind, who were as little
convinced, — Marcion, for instance, and Celsus. " The more
reasonable among Jews and Christians," says Celsus, " try to
allegorize them [the Scriptures], but they are beyond being
1 Barnabas, 9, 8 (the subject of ' saith ' may in each case be ' he '). Clement of
Alexandria cites this and adds a mystic and mathematical account of this suggestive
figure 318, Strom, vi, 84. 2 Trypho, 142.
13
i94 CONFLICT OF CHRISTIAN AND JEW
allegorized and are nothing but sheer my] hology of the silliest
type. The supposed allegories that have been made are more
disgraceful than the myths and more absivd, in their endeavour
to string together what never can in any way be harmonized —
it is folly positively wonderful for its utter want of perception." l
The modern reader may not be so ready as Origen was to
suggest that Celsus probably had Philo in mind.2
It is clear that, in the endeavour to give Christianity a
historical background and a prophetic warrant, the Apologists
lost all perspective.3 The compelling personality of Jesus
receded behind the vague figure of the Christ of prophecy ; and,
in their pre-occupation with what they themselves called
" types and shadows," men stepped out of the sunlight into
the shade and hardly noticed the change. Yet there is still
among the best of them the note of love of Jesus — " do not
speak evil of the crucified," pleads Justin, " nor mock at his
stripes, whereby all may be healed, as we have been healed." *
And after all it was an instinct for the truth and universal
significance of Jesus that carried them away. He must be
eternal ; and they, like the men of their day, thought much
of the beginning and the end of creation, and perhaps found
it easier than we do, — certainly more natural, — to frame
schemes under which the Eternal Mind might manifest itself.
Eschatology, purpose, foreknowledge, pervade their religious
thought, and they speak with a confidence which the centuries
since the Renaissance have made more and more impossible
for us, who find it hard enough to be sure of the fact without
adventuring ourselves in the possibilities that lie around it.
None the less the centre of interest was the same for them as
for us — what is the significance of Jesus of Nazareth ? For
them the facts of his life and of his mind had often less
value than the fancy that they fulfilled prophecy ; Celsus said
outright that the Christians altered them, and there is some
evidence that, in the accommodation of prophecy and history,
1 Celsus ap. Orig. c. Cels.\v, 50, 51.
2 Especially when he finds Celsus referring to the dialogue of Jason and Papiscus i
as " more worthy of pity and hatred than of laughter " ; c. Cels. iv, 52.
3 Porphyry (cited by Euseb. E.H. vi, 19), says they made riddles of what was
perfectly plain in Moses, their expositions would not hang together, and they cheated
their own critical faculty, TO KPLTIKOV rrjs
4 Trypho, 137.
RESULTS 195
the latter was sometimes over-developed. For us, the danger
is the opposite ; we risk losing sight of the eternal significance
in our need of seeing clearly the historic lineaments.
In the conflict of religions, Christianity had first to face
Judaism, and, though the encounter left its record upon the
conquering faith, it secured its freedom from the yoke of
the past. It gained background and the broadening of the
historic imagination. It made the prophets and psalmists of
Israel a permanent and integral part of Christian literature —
and in all these ways it became more fit to be the faith of
mankind, as it deepened its hold upon the universal religious
experience. Yet it did so at the cost of a false method which
las hampered it for centuries, and of a departure (for too
ong a time) from the simplicity and candour of the mind of
[esus. In seeking to recover that mind to-day we commit
ourselves to the belief that it is sufficient, and that, when we
lave rid ourselves of all that in the course of ages has obscured
he great personality, in proportion as we regain his point of
view, we shall find once more (in the words of a far distant
age) that his spirit will guide us into all truth.
CHAPTER VII
"GODS OR ATOMS?5'
IN the first two centuries of our era a great change came
over the ancient world. A despised and traditional
religion, under the stimulus of new cults coming from
the East, revived and re-asserted its power over the minds of
men. Philosophy, grown practical in its old age, forsook its
youthful enthusiasm for the quest of truth, and turned aside to ,
the regulation of conduct, by means of maxims now instead of
inspiration, and finally, as we have seen, to apology for the
ancient faith of the fathers. Its business now was to reconcile
its own monotheistic dogma with popular polytheistic practice.
It was perhaps this very reconciliation that threw open the
door for the glowing monotheism of the disciples of Jesus ;
but, whatever the cause, Christianity quickly spread over the
whole Roman Empire. We are apt to wonder to-day at the
great political and national developments that have altered the
whole aspect of Europe since the French Revolution, and to
reflect rather idly on their rapidity. Yet the past has its own
stories of rapid change, and not the least striking of them is
the disappearance of that world of thought which we call
Classical. By 180 A.D. nearly every distinctive mark of
classical antiquity is gone — the old political ideas, the old
philosophies, the old literatures, and much else with them.
Old forms and names remain — there are still consuls and
archons, poets and philosophers, but the atmosphere is another,
and the names have a new meaning, if they have any at all.
But the mere survival of the names hid for many the fact that
they were living in a new era.
In the reign of Marcus Aurelius, however, the signs of
change became more evident, and men grew conscious that
some transformation of the world was in progress. A great
plague, the scanty records of which only allow us to speak in
196
MARCUS AURELIUS 197
vague terms of an immense reduction in population1 — barbarism
active upon the frontier of an Empire not so well able as it had
fancied to defend itself — superstitions, Egyptian and Jewish,
diverting men from the ordinary ways of civic duty — such
were some of the symptoms that men marked. Under the
weight of absurdity, quietism and individualism, the state
seemed to be sinking, and all that freedom of mind which was
the distinctive boast of Hellenism was rapidly being lost.
It happens that, while the historical literature of the period
has largely perished, a number of authors survive, who from
their various points of view deal with what is our most
immediate subject — the conflict of religions. Faith, doubt,
irritation and fatalism are all represented. The most con-
spicuous men of letters of the age are undoubtedly the Emperor
Marcus Aurelius himself and his two brilliant contemporaries,
Lucian of Samosata and Apuleius of Madaura.2 Celsus, a man
of mind as powerful as any of the three, survives in fragments,
but fragments ample enough to permit of re-construction.
Among the Christians too there was increased literary activity,
but Tertullian and Clement will suffice for our purpose.
Though not in his day regarded as a man of letters, it is
yet in virtue of his writing that Marcus Aurelius survives.
His journal, with the title that tells its nature — " To Himself,"
is to-day perhaps the most popular book of antiquity with
those whose first concern is not literature. It is translated
again and again, and it is studied. The peculiar mind of the
solitary Emperor has made him, as Mr F. W. H. Myers put it,
" the saint and exemplar of Agnosticism." Meditative, tender
and candid, yet hesitant and so far ineffectual, he is sensitive
to so much that is positive and to so much that is negative,
that the diary, in which his character is most intimately
revealed, gives him a place of his own in the hearts of men
perplext in the extreme. He is a man who neither believes,
nor disbelieves, — " either gods or atoms " 3 seems to be the
necessary antithesis, and there is so much to be said both for
1 On the other hand see a very interesting passage in Tertullian, de Anima, 30, on
the progress of the world in civilization, and population outstripping Nature, while
plague, famine, war, etc., are looked on as tonsura insolescentis generis humani.
- Marcus Aurelius was born about 12 1 A. D. and died in 180. The other two were
born in or about 125.
;? e.g. viii, 17.
198 -GODS OR ATOMS?"
and against each of the alternatives that decision is impossible.
He is attracted by the conception of Providence, but he
hesitates to commit himself. There are arguments — at least
of the kind that rest on probability — in favour of immortality,
but they are insufficient to determine the matter. In his
public capacity he became famous for the number and magnific-
ence of his sacrifices to the gods of the state ; he owns in his
journal his debt to the gods for warnings given in dreams, but
he suspects at times that they may not exist. Meanwhile he
persecutes the Christians for their disloyalty to the state.
Their stubborn convictions were so markedly in contrast with
his own wavering mind that he could not understand them —
perhaps their motive was bravado, he thought ; they were too
theatrical altogether ; their pose recalled the tragedies com-
posed by the pupils of the rhetoricians — large language with
nothing behind it.1
In the absence of any possibility of intellectual certainty,
Marcus fell back upon conduct. Here his want of originality
and of spiritual force was less felt, for conduct has tolerably
well-established rules of neighbourliness, purity, good temper,
public duty and the like. His Stoic guides, too, might in this
region help him to follow with more confidence the voice of his
own pure and delicate conscience — the conscience of a saint
and a quietist rather than that of a man of action. Yet even
in the realm of conduct he is on the whole ineffectual. Pure,
truthful, kind, and brave he is, but he does not believe enough
to be great. He is called to be a statesman and an adminis-
trator ; he does not expect much outcome from all his energies,
and he preaches to himself the necessity of patience with his
prospective failure to achieve anything beyond the infinitesimal.
" Ever the same are the cycles of the universe, up and
down, for ever and for ever. Either the intelligence of the
Whole puts itself in motion for each separate effect — in which
case accept the result it gives ; or else it did so once for all,
and everything is sequence*, one thing in another . . . [The
text is doubtful for a line] ... In a word, either God, and all
goes well ; or all at random — live not thou at random.
" A moment, and earth will cover us all ; then it too in its
turn will change ; and what it changes to, will change again
1 The one passage is in *i, 3.
MARCUS AURELIUS 199
and again for ever ; and again change after change to infinity.
The waves of change and transformation — if a man think of
them and of their speed, he will despise everything mortal.
" The universal cause is like a winter torrent ; it carries all
before it. How cheap then these poor statesmen, these who
carry philosophy into practical affairs, as they fancy — poor
diminutive creatures. Drivellers. Man, what then ? Do
what now Nature demands. Start, if it be given thee, and
look not round to see if any will know. Hope not for Plato's
Republic ; l but be content if the smallest thing advance ; to
compass that one issue count no little feat.
" Who shall change one of their dogmata [the regular word
of Epictetus] ? And without a change of dogmata, what is
there but the slavery of men groaning and pretending to obey ?
Go now, and talk of Alexander, and Philip and Demetrius of
Phalerum ; whether they saw the will of Nature and schooled
themselves, is their affair ; if they played the tragic actor, no
one has condemned me to copy them. Simplicity and modesty
are the work of philosophy ; do not lead me astray into vanity.
" Look down from above on the countless swarms of men,
their countless initiations, and their varied voyage in storm and
calm, their changing combinations, as they come into being,
meet, and pass out of being. Think too of the life lived by
others of old, of the life that shall be lived by others after
thee, of the life now lived among the barbarian nations ; and
of how many have never heard thy name, and how many will
at once forget it, and how many may praise thee now perhaps
but will very soon blame thee ; and how neither memory is of
any account, nor glory, nor anything else at all. . . .
"The rottenness of the material substance of every individual
thing — water, dust, bones, stench. . . . And this breathing
element is another of the same, changing from this to
that. . . .
" Either the gods have no power, or they have power. If
they have not, why pray? If they have, why not pray for
deliverance from the fear, or the desire, or the pain, which the
thing causes, rather than for the withholding or the giving of
the particular thing ? For certainly, if they can co-operate with
men, it is for these purposes they can co-operate. But perhaps
1 Or, the English equivalent, Utopia.
200 " GODS OR ATOMS ? "
thou wilt say, The gods have put all these in my own power.
Then is it not better to use what is in thine own power and be
free, than to be set on what is not in thy power — a slave and
contemptible ? And who told thee that the gods do not help us
even to what is in our own power ? " l
This handful of short passages all from the same place, with
a few omitted, may be taken as representing very fairly the
mind of Marcus Aurelius. The world was his to rule, and he
felt it a duty to remember how slight a thing it was. This
was not the temper of Alexander or of Caesar, — of men who
make mankind, and who, by their belief in men and in the
power of their own ideas to lift men to higher planes of life,
actually do secure that advance is made, — and that advance not
the smallest. Yet he speaks of Alexander as a " tragic actor." * *"
For a statesman, the attitude of Marcus is little short of betrayal.
He worked, he ruled, he endowed, he fought — he was pure, he
was conscientious, he was unselfish — but he did not believe, and
he was ineffectual. The Germans it might have been beyond
any man's power to repel at that day, but even at home Marcus
was ineffectual. His wife and his son were by-words. He
had almost a morbid horror of defilement from men and women
of coarse minds, — a craving too for peace and sympathy ; he
shrank into himself, condoned, ignored. Among his bene-
factors he does not mention Hadrian, who really gave him the
Empire — and it is easy to see why. In everything the two
are a contrast. Hadrian's personal vices and his greatness as
a ruler, as a man handling men and moving among ideas 3-
these were impossible for Marcus.
Nor was the personal religion of this pure and candid spirit
a possible one for mankind. " A genuine eternal Gospel,"
wrote Renan of this diary of Marcus, " the book of the Thoughts
will never grow old, for it affirms no dogma. The Gospel has
grown old in certain parts ; Science no longer allows us to
admit the naive conception of the supernatural which is its base.
. . . Yet Science might destroy God and the soul, and the book
of the Thoughts would remain young in its life and truth."
1 Marcus Aurelius, ix, 28-40, with omissions. Phrases have been borrowed from
the translations of Mr Long and Dr Kendall.
2 This sheds some light on his comparison of the Christians to actors, xi, 3.
3 Cf. Tertullian, ApoL 5, Hadrianus omnium curiositatum explorator.
LUCIAN 201
Renan is right ; when Science, or anything else, " destroys God
and the soul," there is no Gospel but that of Marcus ; and yet for
men it is impossible ; and it is not young — it is senile. Duty
without enthusiasm, hope or belief — belief in man, of course,
for " God and the soul " are by hypothesis " destroyed " — duty,
that is, without object, reason or result, it is a magnificent fancy,
and yet one recurs to the criticism that Marcus passed upon
the Christians. Is there not a hint of the school about this ?
Is it not possible that the simpler instincts of men, — instincts
with a history as ludicrous as Anthropologists sometimes sketch
for us, — may after all come nearer the truth of things than
semi-Stoic reflexion ? At all events the instincts have ruled the
world so far with the co-operation of Reason, and are as yet
little inclined to yield their rights to their colleague. They
have never done so without disaster.
The world did not accept Marcus as a teacher. Men readily
recognized his high character, but for a thousand years and
more nobody dreamed of taking him as a guide — nobody, that
is, outside the schools. For the world it was faith or unbelief,
and the two contemporaries already mentioned represent the
two poles to which the thoughts of men gravitated, who were
not yet ready for a cleavage with the past.
" I am a Syrian from the Euphrates," l wrote Lucian of him-
self ; and elsewhere he has a playful protest against a historian
of his day, magnificently ignorant of Eastern geography, who
'• has taken up my native Samosata, and shifted it, citadel,
walls and all, into Mesopotamia," and by this new feat of
colonization has apparently turned him into a Parthian or
Mesopotamian.2 Samosata lay actually in Commagene, and
there Lucian spent his boyhood talking Syriac, his native
language.3 He was born about 125 A.D. His family were
poor, and as soon as he left school, the question of a trade was
at once raised, for even a boy's earnings would be welcome.
At school he had had a trick of scraping the wax from his
tablets and making little figures of animals and men, so his
father handed him over to his mother's brother, who was one of
a family of statuaries. But a blunder and a breakage resulted
in his uncle thrashing him, and he ran home to his mother. It
was his first and last day in the sculptor's shop, and he went to
1 Piscator, 19. '- Quomodo historia, 24. 3 Bis atcusattts, 27.
202 "GODS OR ATOMS?"
bed with tears upon his face. In later life he told the story of
a dream which he had that night — a long and somewhat
literary dream modelled on Prodicus' fable of the Choice of
Herakles. He dreamed that two women appeared to him, one
dusty and workmanlike, the other neat, charming and noble.
They were Sculpture and Culture, and he chose the latter. He
tells the dream, he says, that the young may be helped by his
example to pursue the best and devote themselves to Culture,
regardless of immediate poverty.1 He was launched somehow
on the career of his choice and became a rhetorician. It may be
noted however that an instinctive interest in art remained with
him, and he is reckoned one of the best art-critics of antiquity.
Rhetoric, he says, " made a Greek of him," went with him
from city to city in Greece and Ionia, " sailed the Ionian sea
with him and attended him even as far as Gaul, scattering
plenty in his path." 2 For, as he explains elsewhere, he was
among the teachers who could command high fees, and he
made a good income in Gaul.3 But, about the age of forty, he
resolved " to let the gentlemen of the jury rest in peace —
tyrants enough having been arraigned and princes enough
eulogized." 4 From now onward he wrote dialogues — he had
at last found his proper work.
Dialogue in former days had been the vehicle of speculation
— " had trodden those aerial plains on high above the clouds,
where the great Zeus in heaven is borne along on winged car."
But it was to do so no more, and in an amusing piece Lucian
represents Dialogue personified as bringing a suit against him
for outrage. Had Lucian debased Dialogue, by reducing him
to the common level of humanity and making him associate
with such persons as Aristophanes and Menippus, one a light-
hearted mocker at things sacred, the other a barking, snarling
dog of a Cynic, — thus turning Dialogue into a literary Centaur,
neither fit to walk nor able to soar ? Or was Dialogue really
a musty, fusty, superannuated creature, and greatly improved
now for having a bath and being taught to smile and to go
genially in the company of Comedy ? Between the attack and
the defence, the case is fairly stated.5 Lucian created a new
1 Somntum, 1 8. 2 Bis Accusatus, 30, 27. 3 Apology, 15.
4 Bis Ace. 32. Cf. Juvenal, 7, 151, perimit scevos classis numerosa tyrannos.
5 Bis Ace. 33, 34.
LUCIAN'S DIALOGUES 203
mode in writing — or perhaps he revived it, for it is not very
clear how much he owes to his favourite Menippus, the Gadarene
Cynic and satirist of four centuries before.
Menippus however has perished and Lucian remains and is
read ; for, whatever else is to be said of him, he is readable.
He has not lost all the traces of the years during which he
consorted with Rhetoric ; at times he amplifies and exaggerates,
and will strain for more point and piquancy than a taste more
sure would approve. Yet he has the instinct to avoid travesty,
and his style is in general natural and simple, despite occasional
literary reminiscences. His characters talk, — as men may talk
of their affairs, when they are not conscious of being overheard, —
with a naive frankness not always very wise, with a freedom and
common sense, and sometimes with a folly, that together reveal
the speaker. They rarely declaim, and they certainly never
reach any high level of thought or feeling. The talk is slight
and easy — it flickers about from one idea to another, and gives
a strong impression of being real. If it is gods who are talk-
ing, they become surprisingly human — and even bourgeois, they
are so very much at home among themselves. Lucian's skill
is amazing. He will take some episode from Homer and
change no single detail, and yet, as we listen to the off-hand
talk of the gods as they recount the occurrence, we are startled
at the effect — the irony is everywhere and nowhere ; the
surprises are irresistible. Zeus, for instance, turns out to have
more literary interests than we suppose ; he will quote Homer
and make a Demosthenic oration to the gods, though alas ! his
memory fails him in the middle of a sentence ; l he laments that
his altars are as cold as Plato's Laws or the syllogisms of
Chrysippus. He is the frankest gentleman of heaven, and so
infinitely obliging !
In short, for sheer cleverness Lucian has no rival but
Aristophanes in extant Greek literature. His originality, his
wit, his humour (not at all equal, it may be said, to his wit),
his gifts of invention and fancy, his light touch, and his genius
for lively narrative, mark him out distinctively in an age when
literature was all rhetoric, length and reminiscence. But as we
read him, we become sensible of defects as extraordinary as
his gifts. For all his Attic style, he belongs to his age. He
1 Zeus Tragcedtts, i$.
204 " GODS OR ATOMS ? "
may renounce Rhetoric, but no man can easily escape from his
past. The education had intensified the cardinal faults of his
character, impatience, superficiality, a great lack of sympathy
for the more tender attachments and the more profound interests
of men — essential unbelief in human grandeur. An expatriated
adventurer, living for twenty years on his eloquence, with the
merest smattering of philosophy and no interest whatever in
nature and natural science or mathematics, with little feeling
and no poetry, — it was hardly to be expected that he should
understand the depths of the human soul, lynx-eyed as he is
for the surface of things. He had a very frank admiration for
his own character, and he drew himself over and over again
under various names. Lykinos, for example, is hardly a dis-
guise at all. " Free-Speech, son of True-man, son of Examiner,"
he calls himself in one of his mock trials, "hater of shams,
hater of impostors, hater of liars, hater of the pompous, hater
of every such variety of hateful men — and there are plenty of
them " ; conversely, he loves the opposites, when he meets them,
which, he owns, is not very often.1
With such a profession, it is not surprising that a man of
more wit than sympathy, found abundance of material in the
follies of his age. Men were taking themselves desperately
seriously, — preaching interminable Philosophy, saving their
souls, and communing with gods and daemons in the most
exasperating ways. Shams, impostures, and liars — so Lucian
summed them up, and he did not conceal his opinion. Granted
that the age had aspects quite beyond his comprehension, he
gives a very vivid picture of it from the outside. This is what
men were doing and saying around him — but why ? Why,
but from vanity and folly ? Gods, philosophers, and all who
take human life seriously, are deluged with one stream of
badinage, always clever but not always in good taste. He has
no purpose, religious or philosophic. If he attacks the gods,
it is not as a Sceptic — the Sceptics are ridiculed as much as
any one else in the Sale of Lives — men who know nothing,
doubt of their own experience, and avow the end of their
knowledge to be ignorance.2 If he is what we nowadays
loosely call sceptical; it is not on philosophic grounds. We
should hardly expect him in his satirical pamphlets really to
1 Piscator, 19, 20. - Vit. atictio, 2"j.
LUCIAN AND PHILOSOPHY 205
grapple with the question of Philosophy, but he seems not to
understand in the least why there should be Philosophy at all.
He is master of no single system, though he has the catch-
words of them all at his finger-ends.
His most serious dialogue on Philosophy is the Hermotimus.
" Lykinos " meets Hermotimus on his way to a lecture — a
man of sixty who for many years has attended the Stoics.
Into their argument we need not go, but one or two points
may be noted. Hermotimus is a disciple, simple and per-
severing, who owns that he has not reached the goal of Happi-
ness and hardly expects to reach it, but he presses bravely on,
full of faith in his teachers. Under the adroit questions of
Lykinos, he is forced to admit that he had chosen the Stoics*
rather than any other school by sheer intuition — or because of
general notions acquired more or less unconsciously — like a
man buying wine, he knew a good thing when he tasted it, and
looked no further. Yes, says Lykinos, take the first step and
the rest is easy — Philosophy depends on a first assumption —
take the Briareus of the poets with three heads and six hands,
and then work him out, — six eyes, six ears, three voices talking
at once, thirty fingers — you cannot quarrel with the details as
they come ; once grant the beginning, and the rest comes
flooding in, irresistible, hardly now susceptible of doubt. So
in Philosophy, your passion, like the longing of a lover, blinded
you to the first assumptions, and the structure followed.1 " Do
not think that I speak against the Stoics, through any special
dislike of the school ; my arguments hold against all the
schools." 2 The end is that Hermotimus abandons all
Philosophy for ever — not a very dramatic or probable end, as
Plato and Justin Martyr could have told Lucian.
The other point to notice is the picture of Virtue under
the image of a Celestial City, and here one cannot help
wondering whether the irony has any element of personal
reminiscence. Virtue Lykinos pictures as a City, whose
citizens are happy, wise and good, little short of gods, as the
Stoics say. All there is peace, unity, liberty, equality. The
citizens are all aliens and foreigners, not a native among them
— barbarians, slaves, misformed, dwarfs, poor ; for wealth and
birth and beauty are not reckoned there. "In good truth, we
1 Hermot. 74. a Ibid. 85.
206 " GODS OR ATOMS ? "
should devote all our efforts to this, and let all else go. We
should take no heed of our native-land, nor of the clinging and
weeping of children or parents, if one has any, but call on them
to take the same journey, and then, if they will not or cannot
go with us, shake them off, and march straight for the city of
all bliss, leaving one's coat in their hands, if they won't let go,
— for there is no fear of your being shut out there, even if you
come without a coat." Fifteen years ago an old man had
urged Lykinos to go there with him. " If the city had been
near at hand and plain for all to see, long ago, you may be
sure, with never a doubt I would have gone there, and had my
franchise long since. But as you tell us, it lieth far away "
and there are so many professed guides and so many roads,
that there is no telling whether one is travelling to Babylon or
to Corinth.1 " So for the future you had better reconcile
yourself to living like an ordinary man, without fantastic and
vain hopes." 2
Lucian never ceases to banter the philosophers. When he
visits the Islands of the Blest, he remarks that, while Diogenes
and the Epicureans are there, Plato prefers his own Republic
and Laws, the Stoics are away climbing their steep hill of
Virtue, and the Academics, though wishful to come, are still
suspending their judgment, uncertain whether there really is
such an island at all and not sure that Rhadamanthus himself
is qualified to give judgment.3 Diogenes in the shades, Pan
in his grotto, Zeus in heaven, and the common man in the
streets, are unanimous that they have had too much Philosophy
altogether. The philosophers have indeed embarked on an
impossible quest, for they will never find Truth. Once Lucian
represents Truth in person, and his portrait is characteristic.
She is pointed out to him — a female figure, dim and indistinct
of complexion ; " I do not see which one you mean," he
says, and the answer is, " Don't you see the unadorned one
there, the naked one, ever eluding the sight and slipping
away ? " 4
But still more absurd than Philosophy was the growth of
belief in the supernatural. Lucian's Lover of Lies is a most
illuminating book. Here are gathered specimens of the various
1 Hermot. 22-28. 2 Ibid. 84.
3 V.H. ii, 1 8. 4 Piscator, 16.
LUCIAN S LOVER OF LIES 207
types of contemporary superstition — one would suspect the
author of the wildest parody, if it were not that point by point
we may find parallels in the other writers of the day.
Tychiades (who is very like Lucian himself) tells how he has
been visiting Eucrates and has dropped into a nest of
absurdities. Eucrates is sixty and wears the solemn beard of
student of philosophy. He has a ring made of iron from
gibbets and is prepared to believe everything incredible. His
house is full of professed philosophers, Aristotelian, Stoic, and
Platonic, advising him how to cure the pain in his legs, by
wrapping round them a lion's skin with the tooth of a field
mouse folded within it.1 Tychiades asks if they really believe
that a charm hung on outside can cure the mischief within, and
they laugh at his ignorance. The Platonist tells a number of
stories to prove the reasonableness of the treatment, — how a
vine-dresser of his father's had died of snake-bite and been re-
covered by a Chaldaean, and how the same Chaldaean charmed
[like the Pied Piper) all the snakes off their farm. The Stoic
narrates how he once saw a Hyperborean flying and walking on
water — " with those brogues on his feet that his countrymen
habitually wear " — a man whose more ordinary feats were raising
spirits, calling the dead from their graves, and fetching down
the moon. Ion, the Platonist, confirms all this with an account
of another miracle-worker — " everybody knows the Syrian of
Palestine " who drives daemons out of men ; " he would stand
t)y the patient lying on the ground and ask whence they have
come into the body ; and, though the sick person does not
speak, the daemon answers in Greek, or in some barbarian
tongue, or whatever his own dialect may be, and explains how
lie entered into the man and whence he came. Then the
Syrian would solemnly adjure him, or threaten him if he were
obstinate, and so drive him out. I can only say I saw one, of a
black smoky hue, in the act of coming out." 2 The Syrian's
treatment was expensive, it appears. Celsus, as we shall see
later on, has some evidence on this matter. The nationality
of the magicians quoted in the book may be remarked —
they are Libyan, Syrian, Arab, Chaldaean, Egyptian, and
" Hyperborean."
Other tales of magical statues, a wife's apparition, an
1 Philopseudes, 7. 2 Ibid. 16.
208 " GODS OR ATOMS ? "
uneasy ghost,1 a charm for bringing an absent lover, and the
familiar one of the man who learns the spell of three syllables
to make a pestle fetch water, but unhappily not that which will
make it stop, and who finds on cutting it in two that there are
now two inanimate water-carriers and a double deluge — these
we may pass over. We may note that this water- fetching
spell came originally from a sacred scribe of Memphis, learned
in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, who lived underground in
the temple for three and twenty years and was taught his
magic there by Isis herself.2 Interviews with daemons are so
common that instances are not given.3
More significant are the stories of the other world, for here
we come again, from a different point of approach, into a region
familiar to the reader of Plutarch. Eucrates himself, out in
the woods, heard a noise of barking dogs ; an earthquake
followed and a voice of thunder, and then came a woman more
than six hundred feet high, bearing sword and torch, and
followed by dogs " taller than Indian elephants, black in colour."
Her feet were snakes — here we may observe that Pausanias the
traveller pauses to dismiss " the silly story that giants have
serpents instead of feet," for a coffin more than eleven ells long
was found near Antioch and " the whole body was that of a
man." * So the snake-feet are not a mere fancy of Lucian's.
The woman then tapped the earth with one of these feet of
hers, and disappeared into the chasm she made. Eucrates,
peeping over the edge, " saw everything in Hades, the river of
fire and the lake, Cerberus and the dead " — what is more, he
recognized some of the dead. " Did you see Socrates and
Plato ? " asks Ion. Socrates he thought he saw, " but Plato I
did not recognize ; I suppose one is bound to stick to the
exact truth in talking to one's friends." Pyrrhias the slave
confirms the story as an eye-witness.5 Another follows with
a story of his trance in illness, and how he saw the world below,
Fates, Furies, and all, and was brought before Pluto, who dis-
1 This ghost appears rather earlier in a letter of Pliny's, vii, 27, who says he
believes the story and adds another of his own.
2 Philopseudes, 34. 3 Ibid. 17.
4 Pausanias, viii, 29, 3. Cf. Milton's Ode on Nativity ', 25, "Typhon huge, ending
in snaky twine. " References to remains of giants, in Tertullian, dc resurr. carnis, 42 ;
Pliny, N.H. vii, 16, 73.
5 Philopseudes, 22-24.
LUCIAN AND THE GODS 209
missed him with some irritation, as not amenable yet to his
Court, and called for the smith Demylos ; he came back to life
and announced that Demylos would shortly die, and Demylos
did die. "Where is the wonder?" says another — the physician, "I
know a man raised from the dead twenty days after his burial, for
I attended him both before his death and after his resurrection." l
In all this, it is clear that there is a strong element of
mockery. Mockery was Lucian's object, but he probably kept
in all these stories a great deal nearer to what his neighbours
would believe than we may imagine. ^Elian, for example, has
a story of a pious cock, which made a point of walking grate-
fully in the processions that took place in honour of ^Esculapius ;
and he does not tell it in the spirit of the author of the Jack-
daiv of Rheims.
As one of the main preoccupations of his age was with the
gods, Lucian of course could not leave them alone. His
usual method is to accept them as being exactly what tradition
made them, and then to set them in new and impossible situa-
tions. The philosopher Menippus takes " the right wing of an
eagle and the left of a vulture," and, after some careful practice,
flies up to heaven to interview Zeus. He has been so terribly
distracted by the arguments of the schools, that he wants to
see for himself — " I dared not disbelieve men of such thunder-
ing voices and such imposing beards." Zeus most amiably
allows him to stand by and watch him at work, hearing prayers
as they come up through tubes, and granting or rejecting them,
then settling some auguries, and finally arranging the weather
— " rain in Scythia, snow in Greece, a storm in the Adriatic, and
about a thousand bushels of hail in Cappadocia." 2 Zeus asks
rather nervously what men are saying about him nowadays —
mankind is so fond of novelty. " There was a time," he says,
" when I was everything to them —
Each street, each market-place was full of Zeus —
and I could hardly see for the smoke of sacrifice " ; but other
gods, Asklepios, Bendis, Anubis and others, have set up shrines
and the altars of Zeus are cold — cold as Chrysippus. 3
Altogether the dialogue is a masterpiece of humour and irony.
In another piece, we find Zeus and the other gods in
1 Philopseudes, 25, 26. l Icaromcnippus, 24-26. 2 Icaromen. 24.
210 -GODS OR ATOMS?"
assembly listening to an argument going on at Athens. An
Epicurean, Damis, and a singularly feeble Stoic are debating
whether gods exist, and whether they exercise any providence
for men. Poseidon recommends the prompt use of a thunder-
bolt " to let them see," but Zeus reminds him that it is Destiny
that really controls the thunderbolts — and, besides, " it would
look as if we were frightened." So the argument goes on, and
all the familiar proofs from divine judgments, regularity of sun
and season, from Homer and the poets, from the consensus of
mankind and oracles, are produced and refuted there and
then, while the gods listen, till it becomes doubtful whether
they do exist. The Stoic breaks down and runs away.
" What are we to do ? " asks Zeus. Hermes quotes a comic
poet in Hamlet's vein — " there is nothing either good or bad,
but thinking makes it so " — and what does it matter, if a few
men are persuaded by Damis ? we still have the majority —
" most of the Greeks and all the barbarians." l
In Zeus Cross-examined the process is carried further.
Cyniscus questions Zeus, who is only too good-natured and
falls into all the questioner's traps. He admits Destiny to be
supreme, and gets entangled in a terrible net of problems
about fore-knowledge, the value of sacrifice and of divination,
divine wrath, sin and so forth, till he cries " You leave us
nothing ! — you seem to me to despise me, for sitting here and
listening to you with a thunderbolt on my arm." " Hit me
with it," says Cyniscus, " if it is so destined, — I shall have no
quarrel with you for it, but with Clotho." At last Zeus rises
and goes away and will answer no more. But perhaps, reflects
Cyniscus, he has said enough, and it was " not destined for me
to hear any more."2 The reader feels that Zeus has said
more than enough.
From the old gods of Greece, we naturally turn to the new-
comers. When Zeus summoned the gods to discuss the ques-
tion of atheism at Athens, a good many more came than under-
stood Greek, and it was they who had the best seats as they
were made of solid gold — Bendis, Anubis, Attis and Mithras for
example. Elsewhere Momus (who is a divine Lucian) complains
to Zeus about them — " that Mithras with his Persian robe and
tiara, who can't talk Greek, nor even understand when one drinks
1 Zeus Tragcedus, 2 Zeus Elenchomenos.
LUCI AN'S ALEXANDER 2 1 1
to him " — what is he doing in heaven ? And then the dog-faced
Egyptian in linen — who is he to bark at the gods ? " Of course,"
says Zeus, " Egyptian religion — yes ! but all the same there are
hidden meanings, and the uninitiated must not laugh at them."
Still Zeus is provoked into issuing a decree — on second thoughts,
he would not put it to the vote of the divine assembly, for he
felt sure he would be outvoted. The decree enacts that, whereas
heaven is crowded with polyglot aliens, till there is a great rise in
the price of nectar, and the old and true gods are being crowded
out of their supremacy, a committee of seven gods shall be
appointed to sit on claims ; further, that each god shall attend
to his own function, Athene shall not heal nor Asklepios give
oracles, etc. ; that philosophers shall talk no more nonsense ;
and that the statues of deified men shall be replaced by those
of Zeus, Hera, etc., the said men to be buried in the usual way.1
More than one reference has been made to new gods and
new oracles. Lucian in his Alexander gives a merciless
account of how such shrines were started. He came into
personal contact — indeed into conflict — with Alexander, the
founder of the oracle of Abonoteichos, and his story is full of
detail. The man was a quack of the vulgarest type, and, yet
by means of a tame snake and some other simple contrivances,
he imposed himself upon the faith of a community. His
renown spread far and wide. By recognizing other oracles he
secured their support. Men came to him even from Rome.
Through one of these devotees, he actually sent an oracle to
Marcus Aurelius among the Marcomanni and Quadi, bidding
him throw two lions with spices into the Danube, and there
should be a great victory. This was done, Lucian says ; the
lions swam ashore on the farther side, and the victory fell to
the Germans.2 Lucian himself trapped the prophet with some
cunningly devised inquiries, which quite baffled god, prophet,
snake and all. He also tried to detach an eminent adherent.
Alexander realized what was going on, and Lucian got a guard
of two soldiers from the governor of Cappadocia. Under their
protection he went to see the prophet who had sent for him.
The prophet, as he usually did with his followers, offered him
1 Dear. Eccles. 14-18.
2 Alexander, 48. The reader of Marcus will remember that his first book is dated
"Among the Quadi."
212 -GODS OR ATOMS?"
his hand to kiss, and Lucian records with satisfaction that he
bit the proffered hand and nearly lamed it. Thanks to his
guard, he came away uninjured. Alexander, however, after
this tried still more to compass his death, which is not sur-
prising.1 There is other evidence than Lucian's, though it is
not unnaturally slight, for the existence of this remarkable
impostor.
Lucian has one or two incidental references to Christians.2
Alexander warned them, in company with the Epicureans, to
keep away from his shrine. But we hear more of them in
connexion with Proteus Peregrinus. Lucian is not greatly
interested in them ; he ridicules them as fools for being taken
in by the impostor ; for Peregrinus, he tells us, duped them
with the greatest success. He became a prophet among them,
a thiasarch, a ruler of the synagogue, everything in fact ; he
interpreted their books for them, and indeed wrote them a lot
more ; and they counted him a god and a lawgiver. " You
know," Lucian explains, " they still worship that great man of
theirs, who was put on a gibbet in Palestine, because he added
this new mystery (reXer^) to human life." In his mocking
way he gives some interesting evidence on the attention and
care bestowed by Christians on those of their members who
were thrown into prison. He details what was done by the
foolish community for " their new Socrates " when Peregrinus
was a prisoner. When he was released, Peregrinus started
wandering again, living on Christian charity, till " he got into
trouble with them, too, — he was caught eating forbidden meats."3
Lucian differs from Voltaire in having less purpose and no
definite principles. He had no design to overthrow religion
in favour of something else ; it is merely that the absurdity of
it provoked him, and he enjoyed saying aloud, and with all the
vigour of reckless wit, that religious belief was silly. If the
effect was scepticism, it- was a scepticism founded, not on
1 Alexander, 53-56.
2 Keim, Celsus1 Wahres Wort, p. 233, suggests that Lucian was not quite clear as
to the differences between Judaism and Christianity. The reference to forbidden
meat lends colour to this.
3 De morte Peregrini, 1 1, 1 6 ; cf. the Passio Perpetuie, 3 and 1 6, on attention to
Christians in prison. Tertullian, de Jejtmio, 12, gives an extraordinary account of
what might be done for a Christian in prison, though the case of Pristinus, which he
quotes, must have been unusual, if we are to take all he says as literally true.
LUCIAN AND PEREGRINUS 213
philosophy, but on the off-hand judgment of what is called
common-sense. Hidden meanings and mysteries were to him
nonsense. How little he was qualified to understand mysticism
and religious enthusiasm, can be seen in his account of the
self-immolation of Peregrinus on his pyre at the Olympian
games l — perhaps the most insufficient thing he ever wrote, full
of value as it is. Peregrinus was a wanderer among the
religions of the age. Gellius, who often heard him at Athens,
calls him a man gravis atque constans, and says he spoke much
that was useful and honest. He quotes in his way a paragraph
of a discourse on sin, which does not lack moral elevation.2
To Lucian the man was a quack, an advertiser, a mountebank,
who burnt himself to death merely to attract notice. Lucian
says he witnessed the affair, and tells gaily how, among other
jests, he imposed a pretty miracle of his own invention upon
the credulous. He had taken no pains to understand the man
— nor did he to understand either the religious temper in
general, or the philosophic, or anything else. His habit of
handling things easily and lightly did not help him to see what
could not be taken in at a glance.
What then does Lucian make of human life ? On this he
says a great deal. His most characteristic invention perhaps
is the visit that Charon pays to the upper world to see what
it really is that the dead regret so much. It is indeed, as
M. Croiset points out, a fine stroke of irony to take the opinion
of a minister of Death upon Life. Charon has left his ferry
boat and comes up to light. Hermes meets him and they
pile up some mountains — Pelion on Ossa, and Parnassus on
top, from the two summits of which they survey mankind — a
charm from Homer removing Charon's difficulty of vision. He
sees many famous people, such as Milo, Polycrates and Cyrus ;
and he overhears Crcesus and Solon discussing happiness, while
Hermes foretells their fates. He sees a varied scene, life full
of confusion, cities like swarms of bees, where each has a sting
and stings his neighbour, and some, like wasps, harass and
plunder the rest ; over them, like a cloud, hang hopes and fears
1 Cf. Tertullian, ad Martyras, 4, Peregrinus qui non olim se rogo tmmisit.
Athenagoras, Presb. 26, Ilpwrews, rovrov 5' OVK ayvoeire pL\favra eavTov ets TO irvp irepl
TTJV 'OXv/nrtaj'.
- Gellius, N.A. xii, II ; and summary of viii, 3.
2i4 "GODS OR ATOMS?"
and follies, pleasures and passions and hatreds. He sees the
Fates spinning slender threads, soon cut, from which men hang
with never a thought of how quickly death ends their dreams ;
and he compares them to bubbles, big and little inevitably
broken. He would like to shout to them " to live with Death
ever before their eyes " — why be so earnest about what they
can never take away ? — but Hermes tells him it would be
useless. He is amazed at the absurdity of their burial rites, and
he astonishes Hermes by quoting Homer on the subject. Last
of all he witnesses a battle and cries out at the folly of it.
" Such," he concludes, " is the life of miserable men — and n<
a word about Charon." l
In the same way and in the same spirit Menippus visits tl
Lower World, where he sees Minos judging the dead. Mine
too seems to have been interested in literature, for he reduce
the sentence upon Dionysius, the tyrant of Syracuse, on the vei
proper ground of his generosity to authors. But the genen
picture has less humour. " We entered the Acherusian plain,
and there we found the demi-gods, and the heroines, and the
general throng of the dead in nations and tribes, some ancient
and mouldering, ' strengthless heads ' as Homer says, others
fresh and holding together — Egyptians these in the main, so
thoroughly good is their embalming. But to know one from
another was no easy task ; all become so much alike when the
bones are bared ; yet with pains and long scrutiny we began
to recognize them. They lay pell-mell in undistinguishable
heaps, with none of their earthly beauties left. With so many
skeletons piled together, all as like as could be, eyes glaring
ghastly and vacant, teeth gleaming bare, I knew not to tell
Thersites from Nireus the fair. . . . For none of their ancient
marks remained, and their bones were alike, uncertain, un-
labelled, undistinguishable. When I saw all this, the life of
man came before me under the likeness of a great pageant,
arranged and marshalled by Chance," who assigns the parts
and reassigns them as she pleases ; and then the pageant ends,
every one disrobes and all are alike. " Such is human life,
as it seemed to me while I gazed." 2 Over and over again with
every accent of irony the one moral is enforced — sometimes
with sheer brutality as in the tract on Mourning.
1 Charon is the title of the dialogue. 2 Menippus, 15, 16.
CRITICISM OF LUCIAN 2T$
Menippus asked Teiresias in the shades what was the best
life. " He was a blind little old man, and pale, and had a
weak voice." He said : " The life of ordinary people is best, and
wiser ; cease from the folly of metaphysics, of inquiry into
origins and purposes ; spit upon those clever syllogisms and
count all these things idle talk ; and pursue one end alone,
how you may well arrange the present and go on your way
with a laugh for most things and no enthusiasms." l In fact,
" the unexamined life " is the only one, as many a weary
thinker has felt — if it were but possible.
Goethe's criticism on Heine may perhaps be applied to
Lucian — " We cannot deny that he has many brilliant qualities,
but he is wanting in love . . . and thus he will never produce
the effect which he ought."2 Various views have been held
of Lucian's contribution to the religious movement of the
age ; it has even been suggested that his Dialogues advanced
the cause of Christianity. But when one reflects upon the
tender hearts to be found in the literature of the century, it is
difficult to think that Lucian can have had any effect on the
mass of serious people, unless to quicken in them by repulsion
the desire for something less terrible than a godless world of
mockery and death, and the impulse to seek it in the ancestral
faith of their fathers. He did not love men enough to under-
stand their inmost mind. The instincts that drove men back
upon the old religion were among the deepest in human
nature, and of their strength Lucian had no idea. His
admirers to-day speak of him as one whose question was
always " Is it true? " We have seen that it was a question
lightly asked and quickly answered. It is evident enough
that his mockery of religion has some warrant in the follies
and superstitions of his day. But such criticism as his, based
upon knowledge incomplete and sympathy imperfect, is of
little value. If a man's judgment upon religion is not to be
external, he must have felt the need of a religion, — he must
have had at some time the consciousness of imperative cravings
and instincts which only a religion can satisfy. Such cravings
are open to criticism, but men can neither be laughed out of
them, nor indeed reasoned out of them ; and however absurd
a religion may seem, and however defective it may be, if it is
1 Menippus, 21. 2 Eckermann, 25th Dec. 1825.
216 "GODS OR ATOMS?"
still the only available satisfaction of the deepest needs of
which men are conscious, it will hold its own, despite mockery
and despite philosophy — as we shall see in the course of the
chapter, though two more critics of religion remain to be
noticed.
Lucian was not the only man who sought to bring the age
back to sound and untroubled thinking. There was a physician,
Sextus — known from the school of medicine to which he
belonged as Sextus Empiricus — who wrote a number of books
about the end of the second century or the beginning of the
third in defence of Scepticism. A medical work of his, and a
treatise on the Soul are lost, but his Pyrrhonean Sketches and
his books Against the Dogmatists remain — written in a Greek
which suggests that he was himself a Greek and not a foreigner
using the language. Physicists, mathematicians, grammarians,
moralists, astrologers, come under his survey, and the particular
attention which he gives to the Stoics is a material fact in
fixing his date, for after about 200 A.D. they cease to be of
importance. His own point of view a short extract from
his sketches will exhibit fully enough for our present purpose.
" The aim of the Sceptic is ataraxia [freedom from mental
perturbation or excitement] in matters which depend on
opinion, and in things which are inevitable restraint of the
feelings (/merpioTrdOciav). For he began to philosophise in order
to judge his impressions (^can-curias) and to discover which of
them are true and which false, so as to be free from perturba-
tion. But he came to a point where the arguments were at
once diametrically opposite and of equal weight ; and then, as
he could not decide, he suspended judgment (ejr«rx«>), anc^ as
soon as he had done so, there followed as if by accident this very
freedom from perturbation in the region of opinion. For if a
man opines anything to be good or bad in its essential nature,
he is always in perturbation. When he has not the things that
appear to him to be good, he considers himself tortured by the
things evil by nature, and he pursues the good (as he supposes
them to be) ; but, as soon as he has them, he falls into even
more perturbations, through being uplifted out of all reason
and measure, and from fear of change he does everything
not to lose the things that seem to him to be good. But the
man, who makes no definitions as to what is good or bad by
SEXTUS EMPIRICUS 217
nature, neither avoids nor pursues anything with eagerness,
and is therefore unperturbed. What is related of Apelles the
painter has in fact befallen the Sceptic. The story goes that
he was painting a horse and wished to represent the foam of
its mouth in his picture ; but he was so unsuccessful that he
gave it up, and took the sponge, on which he used to wipe the
colours from his brush, and threw it at the picture. The
sponge hit the picture and produced a likeness of the horse's
foam. The Sceptics then hoped to gain ataraxia by forming
some decision on the lack of correspondence between things as
they appear to the eye and to the mind ; they were unable to
do it, and so suspended judgment (cir&rxov) ; and then as if
by accident the ataraxia followed — just as a shadow follows a
body. We do not say that the Sceptic is untroubled in every
way, but we own he is troubled by things that are quite
inevitable. For we admit that the Sceptic is cold sometimes,
and thirsty, and so forth. But even in these matters the
uneducated are caught in two ways at once, viz. : by the
actual feelings and (not less) by supposing these conditions to
be bad by nature. The Sceptic does away with the opinion
that any one of these things is evil in its nature, and so he gets off
more lightly even in these circumstances." l
A view of this kind was hardly likely to appeal to the temper
of the age, and the influence of Scepticism was practically none.
Still it is interesting to find so vigorous and clear an exponent
of the system flourishing in a period given over to the beliefs
that Lucian parodied and Apuleius accepted. Sextus, it may
be added, is the sole representative of ancient Scepticism whose
works have come down to us in any complete form.
One very obscure person of this period remains to be
noticed, who in his small sphere gave his views to mankind in
a way of his own.
In 1884 two French scholars, MM. Holleaux and Paris were
exploring the ruins of Oinoanda, a Greek city in Lycia, and
they came upon a number of inscribed stones, most of them
built in a wall. What was unusual was that these were neither
fragments of municipal decrees nor of private monuments, but
all formed part of one great inscription which dealt apparently
with some philosophic subject. In June 1895 two Austrian
1 Sextus Empiricus, Hypotyposts, i, 25-30.
2i8 "GODS OR ATOMS?"
scholars, MM. Heberdey and Kalinka, re-collated the inscription
and found some further fragments, and now the story is tolerably
clear, and a curious one it is.1
It appears that the fragments originally belonged to an
inscription carved on the side of a colonnade, and they fall
into three series according to their place on the wall — one above
another. The middle series consists of columns of fourteen
lines, the letters I J to 2 centimetres high, fifteen or sixteen in
a line, — each column forming a page, as it were ; and it extends
over some twenty-one or two yards. The lowest series is in
the same style. On top is a series of columns added later (as
the inscription shows) and cut in letters of 2^-3 centimetres,
generally ten lines to the column — the larger size to compensate
for the greater height above the ground, for it was all meant
to be read. The inscription begins : —
" Diogenes to kinsmen, household and friends, this is my
charge. Being so ill that it is critical whether I yet live or live
no longer — for an affection of the heart is carrying me off — if
I survive, I will gladly accept the life yet given to me ; if I do
not survive, AO . . ."
There ends a column, and a line or two has been lost at the
top of what seems to be the next, after which come the words
" a kindly feeling for strangers also who may be staying here,"
and the incomplete statement which begins " knowing assuredly,
that by knowledge of the matters relating to Nature and feelings,
which I have set forth in the spaces below. ..." It is evident
that Diogenes had something to say which he considered it a
duty to make known. This proves to have been the Epicurean
theory of life ; and here he had carved up for all to read a
simple exposition of the philosophy of his choice.
The uppermost row contains his account of his purpose and
something upon old age — very fragmentary. There follow a
letter of Epicurus to his mother, and another letter from some one
unidentified to one Menneas, and then a series of apophthegms
and sentences. Thus fragment 27 is a column of ten lines to
this effect : " Nothing is so contributive to good spirits, as not
to do many things, nor take in hand tiresome matters, nor force
oneself in any way beyond one's own strength, for all these
things perturb nature." Another column proclaims : " Acute
1 See Rhcinisehes Museum, 1892, and Bulletin de Corrcspondance Hclltnique, 1897.
DIOGENES OF OINOANDA 219
pains cannot be long ; for either they quickly destroy life and
are themselves destroyed with it, or they receive some abate-
ment of their acuteness." These platitudes are, as we may
guess, an afterthought.
The middle row, the first to be inscribed, deals with the
Epicurean theory of atoms — not by apophthegm or aphorism,
but with something of the fulness and technicality of a treatise.
" Herakleitos of Ephesus, then, said fire was the element ;
Thales of Miletus water ; Diogenes of Apollonia and Anaxi-
menes air ; Empedocles of Agrigentum both fire and air and
water and earth ; Anaxagoras of Clazomenae the homceomeries
of each thing in particular ; those of the Stoa matter and God.
But Democritus of Abdera said atomic natures — and he did
well ; but since he made some mistakes about them, these will
be set right in our opinions. So now we will accuse the persons
mentioned, not from any feeling of illwill against them, but
wishing the truth to be saved (crwOfjvai)." So he takes them in
turn and argues at leisure. The large fragment 45 discusses
astronomy in its four columns — in particular, the sun and its
apparent distance and its nature. Fr. 48 (four columns) goes on
to treat of civilization, — of the development of dress from
leaves to skins and woven garments, without the intervention
" of any other god or of Athena either." Need and time did
all. Hermes did not invent language. In fr. 50, we read that
Protagoras " said he did not know if there are gods. That is
the same thing as saying he knew there are not." Fr. 5 I deals
with death — " thou hast even persuaded me to laugh at it. For
I am not a whit afraid because of the Tityos-es and Tantalus-es,
whom some people paint in Hades, nor do I dread decay,
reflecting that the [something] of the body . . . [three broken
lines] . . . nor anything else." At the end of the row another
letter begins (fr. 56) " [Diogen]es to Anti[pater] greeting."
He writes from Rhodes, he says, just before winter begins, to
friends in Athens and elsewhere, whom he would like to see.
Though away from his country, he knows he can do more for
it in this way than by taking part in political life. He wishes
to show that " that which is convenient to Nature, viz. Ataraxia
is the same for all." He is now " at the sunset of life," and all
but departing ; so, since most men, as in a pestilence, are
diseased with false opinion, which is very infectious, he wishes
220 "GODS OR ATOMS?"
" to help those that shall be after us ; for they too are ours, even
if they are not yet born " ; and strangers too. " I wished to
make use of this colonnade and to set forth in public the
medicine of salvation " (TO. rtjs crwr/y/o/a? TrpoOeivat 0a/>/xaKa, fr.
58). The idle fears that oppressed him, he has shaken off; as
to pains — empty ones he has abolished utterly, and the rest are
reduced to the smallest compass. He bewails the life of men,
wasted as it is, and weeps for it ; and he has " counted it a
good man's part " to help men as far as he can. That is why he
has thought of this inscription which may enable men to obtain
" joy with good spirits " (r^[? JULCT evOv]fjilas xa/°"H)> rather than
of a theatre or a bath or anything else of the kind,
such as rich men would often build for their fellow-citizens
(fr- 59)-
The discussion which follows in the third series of columns
need not here detain us. Diogenes appeals for its considera-
tion— that it may not merely be glanced at in passing (fr. 61,
col. 3) ; but it will suffice us at present to note his statement
that his object is " that life may become pleasant to us " (fr. 63,
col. i ), and his protest — " I will swear, both now and always,
crying aloud to all, Greeks and barbarians, that pleasure is the
objective of the best mode of life, while the virtues, which these
people now unseasonably meddle with (for they shift them
from the region of the contributive to that of the objective) are
by no means an objective, but contributive to the objective "
(fr. 67 col. 2, 3). Lastly we may notice his reference to the
improvement made in the theory of Democritus by the dis-
covery of Epicurus of the swerve inherent in the atoms
(fr. 8 1).
Altogether the inscription is as singular a monument of
antiquity as we are likely to find. What the fellow-citizens of
Diogenes thought of it, we do not know. Perhaps they might
have preferred the bath or other commonplace gift of the
ordinary rich man. It is a pity that Lucian did not see the
colonnade.
Side by side with Lucian, Sextus and Diogenes it is
interesting to consider their contemporaries who were not of
their opinion.
Perhaps, while the stone-masons were day by day carving
up the long inscription at Oinoanda, others of their trade were
MARCUS JULIUS APELLAS 221
busy across the ^gaean with one of another character. At
any rate, the inscription which M. Julius Apellas set up in the
temple of Asklepios in Epidauros, belongs to this period.
Like Diogenes, he is not afraid of detail.
" In the priesthood of Poplius ^Elius Antiochus.
" I, Marcus Julius Apellas of Idrias and Mylasa, was sent
for by the God, for I was a chronic invalid and suffered from
dyspepsia. In the course of my journey the God told me in
^Egina not to be so irritable. When I reached the Temple,
he directed me to keep my head covered for two days ; and for
these two days it rained. I was to eat bread and cheese, parsley
with lettuce, to wash myself without help, to practise running,
to drink citron-lemonade, to rub my body on the sides of the
bath in the bath-room, to take walks in the upper portico, to
use the trapeze, to rub myself over with sand, to go with bare
feet in the bath-room, to pour wine into the hot water before I
got in, to wash myself without help, and to give an Attic
drachma to the bath-attendant, to offer in public sacrifices to
Asklepios, Epione and the Eleusinian goddesses, and to take
milk with honey. When for one day I had drunk milk
alone, the god said to put honey in the milk to make it
digestible.
" When I called upon the god to cure me more quickly, I
thought it was as if I had anointed my whole body with
mustard and salt, and had come out of the sacred hall and
gone in the direction of the bath-house, while a small child was
going before holding a smoking censer. The priest said to
me : ' Now you are cured, but you must pay up the fees for
your treatment.' I acted according to the vision, and when
I rubbed myself with salt and moistened mustard, I felt the pain
still, but when I had bathed, I suffered no longer. These
events took place in the first nine days after I had come to
the Temple. The god also touched my right hand and my
breast.
" The following day as I was offering sacrifice, a flame
leapt up and caught my hand, so as to cause blisters. Yet
after a little my hand was healed.
" As I prolonged my stay in the Temple, the god told me
to use dill along with olive-oil for my head-aches. Formerly I
had not suffered from head-aches, but my studies had brought
222 -GODS OR ATOMS?"
on congestion. After I used the olive-oil, I was cured of
head-aches. For swollen glands the god told me to use a
cold gargle, when I consulted him about it, and he ordered the
same treatment for inflamed tonsils.
" He bade me inscribe this treatment, and I left the Temple
in good health and full of gratitude to the god." l
Pausanias speaks of " the buildings erected in our time by
Antoninus a man of the Conscript Senate " — a Roman
Senator in fact,2 — in honour of Asklepios at Epidauros, a bath,
three temples, a colonnade, and " a house where a man may
die, and a woman lie in, without sin," for these actions were
not " holy " within the sanctuary precincts, and had had to be
done in the open air hitherto.
A more conspicuous patient of Asklepios is ^Elius Aristides,
the rhetorician. This brilliant and hypochondriacal person
spent years in watching his symptoms and consulting the god
about them. Early in his illness the god instructed him to
record its details, and he obeyed with zest, though 'in after
years he was not always able to record the minuter points with
complete clearness. He was bidden to make speeches, to rub
himself over with mud, to plunge into icy water, to ride, and,
once, to be bled to the amount of 120 litres. As the human
body does not contain anything like that amount of blood,
and as the temple servants knew of no one ever having been
" cut " to that extent — " at least except Ischyron, and his was
one of the most remarkable cases," the god was not taken
literally.3 The regular plan was to sleep in the Temple, as
already mentioned, and the god came. " The impression was
that one could touch him, and perceive that he came in person ;
as if one were between asleep and awake, and wished to look
out and were in an agony lest he should depart too soon, — as
if one held one's ear and listened — sometimes as in a dream, and
then as in a waking vision — one's hair was on end, and tears
of joy were shed, and one felt light-hearted. And who among
1C.I.G. iv, 955. Translation of Mary Hamilton, in her Incubation, p. 41
(1906).
2 1 agree with the view of Schubart quoted by J. G. Frazer on the passage (Pausan.
ii, 27, 6) that this man was neither the Emperor Antoninus Pius nor Marcus. It is
perhaps superfluous to call attention to the value of Dr Frazer's commentary, here
and elsewhere.
* Sacred Speech^ ii, § 47, p 301, \irpas fiicocri Kal e/cardv.
PAUSANIAS 223
men could set this forth in words ? Yet if there is one of
the initiated, he knows and recognises [what I say]." 1
None of the cases yet quoted can compare with the miracles
of ancient days to be read in the inscriptions about the place —
stories of women with child for three and five years, of the
extraordinary surgery of the god, cutting off the head of a
dropsical patient, holding him upside down to let the water run
out and putting the head on again, — a mass of absurdities
hardly to be matched outside The Glories of Mary. They
make Lucian's Philopseudes seem tame.
There were other gods, beside Asklepios, who gave oracles
jin shrine and dream. Pausanias the traveller has left a book
on Greece and its antiquities, temples, gods and legends of
| extraordinary value. " A man made of common stuff and cast
in a common mould," as Dr Frazer characterizes him, — and
i therefore the more representative — he went through Greece
with curious eyes and he saw much that no one else has
recorded. At Sparta stood the only temple he knew of which
had an upper story. In this upper story was an image of
! Aphrodite Morpho fettered2 — a silly thing he thought it
to fetter a cedar-wood doll. He particularly visited Phigalea,
because of the " Black Demeter " — a curious enough image she
i had been, though by then destroyed.3 He was initiated in the
Eleusinian mysteries.4 He tells us that the stony remnants of
the lump of clay from which Prometheus fashioned the first
man were still preserved,6 and that the sceptre which Hephaistos
| made for Agamemnon received a daily sacrifice in Chaeronea,
Plutarch's city — " a table is set beside it covered with all sorts
of flesh and cakes." 6 He has many such stories. He tells us
|too about a great many oracles of his day, of which that of
Amphilochus at Mallus in Cilicia "is the most infallible"7 — a
furiously suggestive superlative (a\jsevS ea-rar ov). He is greatly
1 Sacred Speech, ii, § 33, p. 298. For Aristides see Hamilton, Incubation, pt. i.
Ich. 3, and Dill, Roman Society from Nero to Marcus Aurelius, bk. iv. ch. I. See also
plichard Caton, M.D., The Temples and Ritual of Asklepios (1900).
2 Paus. iii, 15, n. 3 Paus. viii, 42, n. 4 Paus. i, 37, 4 ; 38, 7.
8 Paus. x, 4, 4 ; they smell very like human flesh. e Paus. ix, 40, 1 1.
7 Paus. i, 34, 3. Cf. Tertullian, de Anima, 46, a list of dream-oracles. Strabo, c.
^61-2, represents the practice as an essential feature of Judaism, e'-y/cot/«i<r0at Si *al
avTOL'S virtp tavruv icai i)ir£p TUV aXXwj' aXXous TOI)S evovclpovs ; he compares Moses to
[Amphiaraus, Trophonius, Orpheus, etc.
224 "GODS OR ATOMS?"
interested in Asklepios, but for our present purpose a few
sentences from his elaborate account of the ceremony with
which Trophonius is consulted at Lebadea must suffice.
After due rites the inquirer comes to the oracle, in a linen
tunic with ribbons, and boots of the country. Inside bronze
railings is a pit of masonry, some four ells across and eight
deep, and he goes down into it by means of a light ladder
brought for the occasion. At the bottom he finds a hole, a
very narrow one. " So he lays himself on his back on the
ground, and holding in his hand barley cakes kneaded with
honey, he thrusts his feet first into the hole, and follows him-
self endeavouring to get his knees through the hole. When
they are through, the rest of his body is immediately dragged
after them and shoots in, just as a man might be caught
and dragged down by the swirl of a mighty and rapid river.
Once they are inside the shrine the future is not revealed to
all in one and the same way, but to one it is given to see and
to another to hear. They return through the same aperture
feet foremost. . . . When a man has come up from Trophonius,
the priests take him in hand again, and set him on what is
called the chair of Memory, which stands not far from the
shrine ; and, being seated there, he is questioned by them as
to all he saw and heard. On being informed, they hand him
over to his friends who carry him, still overpowered with fear,
and quite unconscious of himself and his surroundings, to the
building where he lodged before, the house of Good Fortune
and the Good Daemon. Afterwards, however, he will have all
his wits as before, and the power of laughter will come back to
him. I write not from mere hearsay : I have myself consulted
Trophonius and have seen others who have done so. All who
have gone down to Trophonius are obliged to set up a tablet
containing a record of all they heard and saw." l
A man who has been through such an experience may be
excused for believing much. While Pausanias kept his Greek
habit of criticism and employs it on occasional myths and
traditions, and particularly on stories of hell — though the fact
of punishment after death he seems to accept — yet his travels
and his inquiries made an impression on him. " When I began
this work, I used to look on these Greek stories as little better
1 Paus. ix, 39, 5-14, Frazer's translation.
ARTEMIDORUS OF DALDIA 225
than foolishness ; but now that I have got as far as Arcadia,
my opinion about them is this : I believe that the Greeks who
were accounted wise spoke of old in riddles, and not straight
out ; and, accordingly, I conjecture that this story about
Cronos [swallowing a foal instead of his child] is a bit of
Greek philosophy. In matters of religion I will follow
tradition." l
Pausanias mentions several oracles and temples of Apollo
in Greece and Asia Minor — one obscure local manifestation of
the god he naturally enough omitted, but a fellow-citizen of the
god preserves it. " It was in obedience to him, the god of my
land, that I undertook this treatise. He often urged me to it,
and in particular appeared visibly to me (evapyux; eTricrravTi)*
since I knew thee, and all but ordered me to write all this.
No wonder that the Daldian Apollo, whom we call by the
ancestral name of Mystes, urged me to this, in care for thy
worth and wisdom, for there is an old friendship between
Lydians and Phoenicians, as they tell us who set forth the
legends of the land."3 So writes Artemidorus to his friend
Cassius Maximus of his treatise on the scientific interpretation
of dreams — a work of which he is very proud. " Wonder not,"
he says, " at the title, that the name stands Artemidorus
Daldianus, and not ' of Ephesus,' as on many of the books I
have already written on other subjects. For Ephesus, it happens,
is famous on her own account, and she has many men of note
to proclaim her. But Daldia is a town of Lydia of no great
renown, and, as she has had no such men, she has remained
unknown till my day. So I dedicate this to her, my
native-place on the mother's side, as a parent's due
Marcus Aurelius records his gratitude " that remedies have
been shown to me by dreams, both others, and against blood-
spitting and giddiness."5 Plutarch, Pausanias, Aristides —
1 Paus. viii, 8, 3 (Frazer). TWV ptv 5rj ^j r& dtiov T\^VTU>V rots
8 The word of Luke 2, 9.
3 Artemidorus Dald. ii, 70. 4 Artem. Dald. iii, 66.
5 Marcus, i, 17 ; George Long's rendering, here as elsewhere somewhat literal,
ibut valuable as leaving the sharp edges on the thought of the Greek, which get
pnbbed off in some translations. See Tertullian, >& Anima, cc. 44 and following, fora
idiscussion of dreams, referring to the five volumes of Hermippus of Berytus for the
(whole story of them.
15
2a6 <(GODS OR ATOMS?"
dreams come into the scheme of things divine with all the
devout of our period. Artemidorus is their humble brother
— not the first to give a whole book to dreams, but
proud to be a pioneer in the really scientific treatment of
them — " the accuracy of the judgments, that is the thing
for which, even by itself, I think highly of myself." l The
critic may take it " that I too am quite capable of neo-
logisms and persuasive rhetoric (evpea-iXoyeiv KOI TriOavevecrOai),
but I have not undertaken all this for theatrical effect
or to please the speech-mongers ; I appeal throughout to
experience, as canon and witness of my words," and he begs
his readers neither to add to his books nor take anything
away.2 His writing is, as he says, quite free from " the
stage and tragedy style."
Artemidorus takes himself very seriously. " For one thing,
there is no book on the interpretation of dreams that I have
not acquired, for I had great enthusiasm for this ; and, in the
next place, though the prophets (/ULOLVTCWV) in the market-place
are much slandered, and called beggars and quacks and
humbugs by the gentlemen of solemn countenance and lifted
eye-brows, I despised the slander and for many years I have
associated with them — both in Greece, in cities and at festivals,
and in Asia, and in Italy, and in the largest and most
populous of the islands, consenting to hear ancient dreams and
their results." 3 This patient research has resulted in principles
of classification.4 There are dreams that merely repeat what
a man is doing (evinrvia} ; and others (oveipoi) which are
prophetic. These last fall into two classes — theorematic
dreams, as when a man dreams of a voyage, and wakes to go
upon a voyage, and allegoric dreams. The latter adjective ha?
a great history in regions more august, but the allegoric
method is the same everywhere, as an illustration will show.
A man dreamed he saw Charon playing at counters with
another man, whom he called away on business ; Charon grew
angry and chased him, till he ran for refuge into an inn called
1 Artem. Dald. ii, pref., fdya Qpovw.
8 Artem. Dald. ii, 70. Cf. v. pref., Avev ffKrjvijs Kal Tpay(f)5ias.
8 Artem. Dald. i, pref.
4 A very different classification in Tertullian, <fc Anima, 47, 48. Dreams may be
due to demons, to God, the nature of the soul or ecstasy.
APULEIUS 227
" The Camel," and bolted the door, whereupon " the daemon "
went away, but one of the man's thighs sprouted with
grass. Shortly after this dream he had his thigh broken
— the one and sole event foretold. For Charon and the
counters meant death, but Charon did not catch him, so
it was shown that he would not die ; but his foot was
threatened, since he was pursued. The name of the inn
hinted at the thigh, because of the anatomy of a camel's
thigh ; and the grass meant disuse of the limb, for grass
only grows where the earth is left at rest.1 The passage
is worth remembering whenever we meet the word allegory
and its derivatives in contemporary literature. Artemidorus
has five books of this stuff — the last two dedicated to
his son, and containing instances " that will make you a
better interpreter of dreams than all, or at least inferior to
none ; but, if published, they will show you know no more
than the rest"2 The sentence suggests science declining
into profession.
Far more brilliant, more amusing and more attractive than
any of these men, whom we have considered since we left
Lucian, is Apuleius of Madaura. Rhetorician, philosopher
and man of science, a story-teller wavering between Boccaccio
and Hans Andersen, he is above all a stylist, a pietist and a
humorist For his history we depend upon himself, and this
involves us in difficulties ; for, while autobiography runs
through two of his works, one of these is an elaboration of a
defence he made on a charge of magic and the other is a
novel of no discoverable class but its own, and through both
runs a vein of nonsense, which makes one chary of being too
literal.
The novel is the Golden Ass — that at least is what St
Augustine tells us the author called it.3 Passages from this
have been seriously used as sources of information as to the
author. But there is another Ass, long attributed to Lucian
though probably not Lucian's, and in each case the hero tells
the tale in the first person, and the co-incidences between the
Greek and the Latin make it obvious that there is some
1 Artem. Dald. i, 4. 2 Artem. Dald. iv, pref.
3 See Augustine, C.D. xviii, 18, Apuleius in libris quos Asini aurci titulo
inscripsit. In the printed texts, it is generally called the Metamorphoses.
228 -GODS OR ATOMS?"
literary connexion between them, whatever it is. The scene
is Greece and Thessaly, but not the Greece and Thessaly of
geography, any more than the maritime Bohemia of
Shakespeare. Yet in the last book Apuleius seems to have
forgotten " Lucius of Patrae " and to be giving us experiences
of his own which have nothing to do with the hero of the Ass,
Greek or Latin.
In the Apology he comes closer to his own career and he
tells us about himself. Here he does not venture on the
delightful assertion that he is the descendant of the great
Plutarch, as the hero of the Ass does, but avows that, as his
native place is on the frontiers of Numidia and Gaetulia, he
calls himself " half Numidian and half Gaetulian " — just as
Cyrus the Greater was " half Mede and half Persian." His
city is " a most splendid colony," and his father held in turn
all its magistracies, and he hopes not to be unworthy of him.1
He and his brother inherited two million sesterces, though he
has lessened his share " by distant travel and long studies and
constant liberalities." 2 Elsewhere he tells us definitely that he
was educated at Athens.3 Everybody goes to the litterator
for his rudiments, to the grammarian next and then to the
rhetorician — " but I drank from other vessels at Athens," so
" Empedocles frames songs, Plato dialogues, Socrates hymns,
Epicharmus measures, Xenophon histories, Xenocrates satires ;
your Apuleius does all these and cultivates the nine
Muses with equal zeal — with more will, that is, than
skill."4
Like many brilliant men of his day he took to the strolling
life of the rhetorician, going from city to city and giving
displays of his powers of language, extemporizing wonderful
combinations of words. Either he himself or some other
admirer made a collection of elegant extracts from these
exhibition-speeches, still extant under the title of Florida.
His fame to-day rests on other works. In the course of his
travels he came to Oea in his native-land, and there married
the widowed mother of a fellow-student of his Athenian days.
Her late husband's family resented the marriage ; and
affecting to believe that her affections had been gained by
1 ApoL 24. 2 Apol. 23. * Apol. 72 ; Flor. 1 8. 4 Flor. 20.
THE APOLOGY OF APULEIUS 229
some sort of witchcraft, they prosecuted Apuleius on a charge
of magic. The charge was in itself rather a serious one,
though Apuleius made light of it. His defence is an interest-
ing document for the glimpses it gives into North African
society, with its Greek, Latin and Punic elements. The
younger stepson has fallen into bad hands ; " he never speaks
except in Punic, — a little Greek, perhaps, surviving from what
he learnt of his mother ; Latin he neither will nor can speak." l
On family life, on marriage customs, on the registration of
births (c. 89) ; — on the personal habits of the defendant, his
toothpowder (and a verse he made in its praise) and his
looking-glass, we gain curious information. Above all the
speech sheds great light on the inter-relations of magic and
religion in contemporary thought. A few points may be
noticed.
What, asks the prosecution, is the meaning of this curious
interest Apuleius has in fish ? It is zoological, says Apuleius ;
I have written books on fish, both in Greek and Latin, — and
dissected them. That curious story, too, of the boy falling
down in his presence ? As to that, Apuleius knows all about
divination by means of boys put under magical influence ; he
has read of it, of course, but he does not know whether to
believe or not ; " I do think with Plato," he owns to the
court (or to his readers), " that between gods and men, in nature
and in place intermediary, there are certain divine powers, and
these preside over all divinations and the miracles of magicians.
Nay, more, I have the fancy that the human soul, particularly
the simple soul of a boy, might, whether by evocation of
charm or by mollification of odour, be laid to sleep, and
so brought out of itself into oblivion of things present, and
for a brief space, all memory of the body put away, it
might be restored and returned to its own nature, which is
indeed immortal and divine, and thus, in a certain type of
slumber, foretell the future."2 As for the boy in question,
however, he is so ricketty that it would take a magician
to keep him standing.
Then those mysterious " somethings " which Apuleius keeps
1 ApoL 98. Cf. Passio Pcrpctua^ c. 13, et ccepit Perpetua Greece cum eis loqui, says
Saturus ; Perpetua uses occasional Greek words herself in recording her visions.
2 ApoL 43. Cf. Plutarch cited on p. 101.
23o " GODS OR ATOMS ? "
wrapped up in a napkin ? "I have been initiated in many
of the mysteries of Greece. Certain symbols and memorials
of these, given to me by the priests, I sedulously preserve. I
say nothing unusual, nothing unknown. To take one instance,
those among you who are mystcz of Father Liber [Bacchus]
know what it is you keep laid away at home, and worship in
secret, far from all profane eyes. Now, I, as I said, from
enthusiasm for truth and duty toward the gods, I have learnt
many sacred mysteries, very many holy rites, and divers
ceremonies " — the audience will remember he said as much
three years ago in his now very famous speech about
^Esculapius — "then could it seem strange to anyone, who
has any thought of religion, that a man, admitted to so
many divine mysteries, should keep certain emblems of those
holy things at home, and wrap them in linen, the purest
covering for things divine ? " Some men — the prosecutor
among them — count it mirth to mock things divine ; no, he
goes to no temple, has never prayed, will not even put his
hand to his lips when he passes a shrine, — why ! he has not
so much as an anointed stone or a garlanded bough on his
farm.1
One last flourish may deserve quotation. If you can prove,
says Apuleius, any material advantage accruing to me from
my marriage, " then write me down the great Carmendas or
Damigeron or his . . . Moses or Jannes or Apollobeches or
Dardanus himself, or anyone else from Zoroaster and Ostanes
downwards who has been famous among magicians."2
Several of these names occur in other authors,3 but the
corruption is more interesting. Has some comparative fallen
out, or does his conceal another name ? Is it ihst in fact, —
a reference to Jesus analogous to the suggestion of Celsus
that he too was a magician ?
The philosophical works of Apuleius need not detain us,
but a little space may be spared to his book On the God of
Socrates, where he sets forth in a clear and vivid way that
doctrine of daemonic beings, which lies at the heart of ancient
1 Apol. 55, 56. Cf. Florida, I, an ornamental passage on pious usage.
2 Apol. 90. Many restorations have been attempted.
3 e.g. Tertullian, de Anima, 57, Ostanes et Typhon el Dardanus et Damigeron et
Nectabis et Berenice.
APULEIUS ON THE GODS 231
religion, pre-eminently in this period, from Plutarch onwards.
His presentment is substantially the same as Plutarch's, but
crisper altogether, and set forth in the brilliant rhetoric, to
which the Greek did not aspire, and from which the African
could not escape, nor indeed wished to escape.
Plato, he says, classifies the gods in three groups, dis-
tinguished by their place in the universe.1 Of the celestial
gods some we can see — sun, moon and stars 2 (on which, like
a true rhetorician, he digresses into some fine language, which
can be omitted). Others the mind alone can grasp (intellectu
eos rimabundi contemplamur} — incorporeal natures, animate, with
neither beginning nor end, eternal before and after, exempt
from contagion of body ; in perfect intellect possessing
supreme beatitude ; good, but not by participation of any
extraneous good, but from themselves. Their father, lord and
author of all things, free from every nexus of suffering or
doing — him Plato, with celestial eloquence and language
commensurate with the immortal gods, has declared to be, in
virtue of the ineffable immensity of his incredible majesty,
beyond the poverty of human speech or definition — while
even to the sages themselves, when by force of soul they have
removed themselves from the body, the conception of God
comes, like a flash of light in thick darkness — a flash only,
and it is gone.3
At the other extremity of creation are men — "proud in
reason, loud in speech, immortal of soul, mortal of member,
in mind light and anxious, in body brute and feeble, divers
in character, in error the same, in daring pervicacious, in hope
pertinacious, of vain toil, of frail fortune, severally mortal,
generally continuous, mutable in the succession of offspring,
time fleeting, wisdom lingering, death swift and life querulous,
so they live."4 Between such beings and the gods, contact
cannot be. " To whom then shall I recite prayers ? to whom
tender vows ? to whom slay victim ? on whom shall I call, to
1 Much of this material Apuleius has taken from the Timaeus, 40 D to 43 A.
2 Cf. Lactantius, Instil, ii, de origine crroris, c. 5. Tertullian, ad Natt. ii, 2.
Cicero, N.D. ii, 15, 39-44.
8 de deo Socr. 3, 124. Cf. the account (quoted below) of what was experienced
in initiation, which suggests some acquaintance with mystical trance — the confines
of death and the sudden bright light look very like it.
4 de deo Socr. 4, 126.
232 "GODS OR ATOMS?"
help the wretched, to favour the good, to counter the evil?
. . . . What thinkest thou ? Shall I swear 'by Jove the
stone ' (per lovem lapidem] after the most ancient manner of
Rome? Yet if Plato's thought be true, that never god and
man can meet, the stone will hear me more easily than
Jupiter." *
" Nay, not so far — (for Plato shall answer, the thought is
his, if mine the voice) not so far, he saith, do I pronounce the
gods to be sejunct and alienate from us, as to think that not
even our prayers can reach them. Not from the care of
human affairs, but from contact, have I removed them. But
there are certain mediary divine powers, between aether above
and earth beneath, situate in that mid space of air, by whom
our desires and our deserts reach the gods. These the Greeks
call daemons, carriers between human and heavenly, hence of
prayers, thence of gifts ; back and forth they fare, hence with
petition, thence with sufficiency, interpreters and bringers of
salvation." 2 To cut short this flow of words, the daemons are,
as is familiar to us by now, authors of divination of all kinds,
each in its province. It would ill fit the majesty of the gods
to send a dream to Hannibal or to soften the whetstone for
Attius Navius — these are the functions of the intermediate
spirits.3 Justin's explanation of the theophanies of the
Old Testament may recur to the reader's mind, and not
unjustly.4
The daemons are framed of a purer and rarer matter than
we, " of that purest liquid of air, of that serene element,"
invisible therefore to us unless of their divine will they choose
to be seen.5 From their ranks come those " haters and lovers "
of men, whom the poets describe as gods — they feel pity and
indignation, pain and joy and "every feature of the human
mind"; while the gods above "are lords ever of one state in
eternal equability," and know no passions of any kind. The
daemons share their immortality and our passion. Hence we
may accept the local diversities of religious cult, rites nocturnal
or diurnal, victims, ceremonies and ritual sad or gay, Egyptian
1 dedeo Socr. 5, 130132.
2 de deo Socr. 6, 132. Cf. Tert. Apol. 22, 23, 24, on nature and works of demons^
on lines closely similar.
3 de deo Socr. 7, 136. 4 See chapter vi. p. 188. 8 de deo Socr. II, 144.
THE GOLDEN ASS 233
or Greek, — neglect of these things the daemons resent, as we
learn in dream and oracle.
The human soul, too, is " a daemon in a body " — the Genius
of the Latins. From this we may believe that after death
souls good and bad become good and bad ghosts — Lares and
Lemures — and even gods, such as " Osiris in Egypt and
jEsculapius everywhere." 1 Higher still are such daemons as
Sleep and Love, and of this higher kind Plato supposes our
guardian spirits to be — " spectators and guardians of individual
men, never seen, ever present, arbiters not merely of all acts,
but of all thoughts," and after death witnesses for or against
us. Of such was Socrates' familiar daemon. Why should not
we too live after the model of Socrates, studying philosophy
and obeying our daemon ?
The Golden Ass is the chief work of Apuleius. Lector
intende ; lataberis, he says in ending his short preface, and he
judged his work aright. The hero, Lucius, is a man with an
extravagant interest in magic, and he puts himself in the
way of hearing the most wonderful stories of witchcraft and
enchantment. Apuleius tells them with the utmost liveliness
and humour. Magical transformations, the vengeance of
witches, the vivification of waterskins — one tale comes crowding
after another, real and vivid, with the most alarming and the
most amusing details. For example, we are told by an
eye-witness (like everybody else in the book he is a master-
hand at story-telling) how he saw witches by night cut
the throat of his friend, draw out the heart and plug
the hole with a sponge ; how terrified he was of the hags
to begin with, and then lest he should himself be accused
of the murder ; how the man rose and went on his journey
—somewhat wearily, it is true ; and how, as they rested,
he stooped to drink, the sponge fell out and he was
dead.
Lucius meddles with the drugs of a witch, and, wishing to
I transform himself to a bird, by the ill-luck of using the wrong
box he becomes an ass. He is carried off by robbers, and,
I while he has the most varied adventures of his own, he is
ibled to record some of the most gorgeous exploits that
1 dedfo Socr. 15.
234 "GODS OR ATOMS?"
brigands ever told one another in an ass's hearing.1 What
is more, a young girl is captured and held to ransom, and
to comfort her for a little, the old woman who cooks the
robbers' food — " a witless and bibulous old hag " — tells her a
story — " such a pretty little tale," that the ass, who is listening,
wishes he had pen and paper to take it down. For, while
in aspect Lucius is an ass, his mind remains human — human
enough to reflect sometimes what " a genuine ass " he is—
and his skin has not, he regrets, the proper thickness of true
ass-hide. The tale which he would like to write down is
Cupid and Psyche. " Erant in quadam civitate" begins the old
woman — " There were in a certain city a king and a
queen."
The old and universal fairy-tales of the invisible husband,
the cruel sisters, and the impossible quests are here woven
together and brought into connexion with the Olympic
pantheon, and through all runs a slight thread, only here and
there visible, of allegory. But if Psyche is at times the soul,
and if the daughter she bears to Cupid is Pleasure, the fairy-
tale triumphs gloriously over the allegory, and remains the most
wonderful thing of the kind in Latin. Here, and in the
Golden Ass in general, the extraordinarily embroidered language
of Apuleius is far more in keeping than in his philosophic
writings. His hundreds of diminutives and neologisms, his
antitheses, alliterations, assonances, figures and tropes, his
brilliant invention, his fun and humour, here have full scope
and add pleasure to every fresh episode of the fairy-tale and of
the larger and more miscellaneous tale of adventure in which
it is set — in the strangest setting conceivable. Cupid and
Psyche is his own addition to the story of the Ass — quite
irrelevant, and like many other irrelevant things in books an
immense enrichment.
Another development of the original story which is similarly
due to Apuleius alone is the climax in the last book. The
ass, in the Greek story, becomes a man by eating roses. In
the Latin, Lucius, weary of the life of an ass, finds himself by
moonlight on the seashore near Corinth, and amid " the silent
1 The story of Lamachus "our high-souled leader," now "buried in the entire
element," would make anyone wish to become a brigand, Sainte-Beuve said. Here
one must regretfully omit the robbers' cave altogether.
ISIS
235
secrets of opaque night," he reflects that " the supreme goddess
rules in transcendent majesty and governs human affairs by her
providence." So he addresses a rather too eloquent prayer to
the Queen of Heaven under her various possible names, Ceres,
Venus, Diana and Proserpine. He then falls asleep, and at
once " lo ! from mid sea, uplifting a countenance venerable
even to gods, emerges a divine form. Gradually the vision,
gleaming all over, and shaking off the sea, seemed to stand
before me." A crown of flowers rests on her flowing hair.
Glittering stars, the moon, flowers and fruits, are wrought into
her raiment, which shimmers white and yellow and red as the
light falls upon it. In one hand is a sistrum, in the other a
golden vessel shaped like a boat, with an asp for its handle.1
She speaks.
" Lo ! I come in answer, Lucius, to thy prayers, I mother
of Nature, mistress of all the elements, initial offspring of ages,
chief of divinities, queen of the dead, first of the heavenly ones,
in one form expressing all gods and goddesses. I rule with
my rod the bright pinnacles of heaven, the healthful breezes of
the sea, the weeping silence of the world below. My sole
godhead, in many an aspect, with many a various rite, and
many a name, all the world worships." Some of these names
she recites, and then declares her "true name, Queen Isis."2
The next day is her festival, she says, and her priest, taught
by her in a dream, will tender Lucius the needful roses ; he
will eat and be a man again. But hereafter all his life
must be devoted to the goddess, and then in the Elysian fields
he shall see her again, shining amid the darkness of Acheron,
propitious to him.
The next day all falls as predicted. The procession of Isis
is elaborately described.3 The prelude of the pomp is a series
of men dressed in various characters, — one like a soldier,
another like a woman, others like a gladiator, a philospher and
so forth. There is a tame bear dressed like a woman, and a
monkey " in a Phrygian garment of saffron." Then come
women in white, crowned with flowers, some with mirrors
hanging on their backs, some carrying ivory combs. Men
and women follow with torches and lamps ; then a choir of
1 Afetam. xi, 3, 4. Apuleius had a fancy for flowing hair.
2 Metam. xi, 5. u Mctam. xi, 8 ff.
236 " GODS OR ATOMS ? "
youths in white, singing a hymn, and fluteplayers dedicated to
Serapis. After this a crowd of initiates of both sexes, of
every age and degree, dressed in white linen and carrying
sistra, — the men with shaven heads. Then came five chief
priests with emblems, and after them the images of the gods
borne by other priests — Anubis with his dog's head, black and
gold — after him the figure of a cow " the prolific image of the
all-mother goddess " (" which one of this blessed ministry bore
on his shoulder, with mimicking gait ") — then an image of
divinity, like nothing mortal, an ineffable symbol, worthy of all
veneration for its exquisite art. At this point came the priest
with the promised roses — " my salvation " — and Lucius ate
and was a man again. The priest, in a short homily, tells
him he has now reached the haven of quiet ; Fortune's
blindness has no more power over him ; he is taken to
the bosom of a Fortune who can see, who can illuminate
even the other gods. Let him rejoice and consecrate his
life to the goddess, undertake her warfare and become her
soldier.1
The pomp moves onward till they reach the shore, and
there a sacred ship is launched — inscribed with Egyptian
hieroglyphics, purified with a burning torch, an egg, and
sulphur, on her sail a vow written in large letters. She is
loaded with aromatics ; and " filled with copious gifts
and auspicious prayers " she sails away before a gentle
breeze and is lost to sight. The celebrants then return
to the temple, but we have perhaps followed them far
enough.
From now on to the end of the book the reformed Lucius
lives in the odour of sanctity. He never sleeps without a
vision of the goddess. He passes on from initiation to
initiation, though the service of religion is difficult, chastity
arduous, and life now a matter of circumspection — it had not
been before. The initiations are, he owns, rather expensive.-
" Perhaps, my enthusiastic reader, thou wilt ask — anxiously
enough — what was said, what done. I would speak if it were
1 Metam. xi, 15, da nomcn sancta huic militia cuius . . . Sacramento, etc.
'- Tertullian remarks that pagan rituals, unlike Christian baptism, owe much to
pomp and expense ; de Baft. 2. Mentior si non e contrario idolorum sollemnia vel
arcana de suggestu et apparaiu deque sumptu /Idem et auctoritatem sidi extruunt.
APULEIUS AND HIS INITIATIONS 237
lawful to speak, thou shouldst know if it were lawful to
hear. . . . Hear then, and believe, for it is true. I drew near
to the confines of death ; I trod the threshold of Proserpine ;
I was borne through all the elements and returned. At
midnight I saw the sun flashing with bright light. Gods of
the world below, gods of the world above, into their presence I
came, I worshipped there in their sight." Garments, emblems,
rites, purifications are the elements of his life now. Nor does
he grudge the trouble and expense, for the gods are blessing
him with forensic success. In a dream, Osiris himself " chief
among the great gods, of the greater highest, greatest of the
highest, ruler of the greatest," appears in person, and promises
him — speaking with his own awful voice — triumphs at the
bar, with no need to fear the envy his learning might rouse.
He should be one of the god's own Pastophori, one of " his
quinquennial decurions." So " with my hair perfectly shaved,
I performed in gladness the duties of that most ancient college,
established in Sulla's times, not shading nor covering my bald-
ness, but letting it be universally conspicuous." And there
ends the Golden Ass.
Was it true — this story of the ass ? Augustine says that
Apuleius " either disclosed or made up " these adventures.
Both he and Lactantius had to show their contemporaries that
there was a difference between the miracles of Apuleius and
those of Christ.1 The Emperor Septimius Severus, on the
other hand, sneered at his rival Albinus for reading " the Punic
Milesian-tales of his fellow-countryman Apuleius and such
literary trifles."2
Between these two judgments we may find Apuleius. He
is a man of letters, but he has a taste for religion. Ceremony,
mystery, ritual, sacraments, appeal to him, and there he stands
with his contemporaries. But a man, in whose pages bandit
and old woman, ass and Isis, all talk in one Euphuistic strain,
was possibly not so pious as men of simpler speech. Yet his
giving such a conclusion to such a tale is significant, and there
is not an absurdity among all the many, in which he so gaily
revels, but corresponded with something that men believed.
1 Augustine, C.D. xviii, 18; andcf. ib. viii, 14 (on the de deo Socr. ) ; and Lactantius,
v, 3-
* Capitolinus v. Albini, 12.
238 "GODS OR ATOMS!"
In conclusion, we may ask what Lucian of Samosata and
Diogenes of Oinoanda had to offer to Aristides and Pausanias
and Apuleius ; and what they in turn could suggest to men
whose concern in religion goes deeper than the cure of physical
disease, trance and self-conscious revelling in ceremony. Some
spiritual value still clung about the old religion, or it could
not have found supporters in a Plotinus and a Porphyry,
but (to quote again a most helpful question) " how much
else ? "
CHAPTER VIII
CELSUS
Deliquit, opinor, divina doctrina exjudaapotius quant ex Gratia orient. Erravit
tt Christus piscatorcs citius quam sophistam ad praconium emittens* — TERTULLIAN,
de Anirna, 3.
AT the beginning of the last chapter reference was made
to the spread of Christianity in the second century, and
then a brief survey was given of the position of the
old religion without reference to the new. When one realizes
the different habits of mind represented by the men there
considered, the difficulties with which Christianity had to
contend become more evident and more intelligible. Lucian
generally ignored it, only noticing it to laugh at its folly and
to pass on — it was too inconspicuous to be worth attack. To
the others — the devout of the old religion, whose fondest
thoughts were for the past, and for whom religion was largely
a ritual, sanctified by tradition and by fancy, — the Christian
faith offered little beyond the negation of all they counted dear.
We are happily in possession of fragments of an anti-Christian
work of the day, written by a man philosophic and academic
in temperament, but sympathetic with the followers of the
religion of his fathers — fragments only, but enough to show
how Christianity at once provoked the laughter, incensed the
patriotism, and offended the religious tastes of educated people.
It was for a man called Celsus that Lucian wrote his book
upon the prophet Alexander and his shrine at Abonoteichos,
and it has been suggested that Lucian's friend and the Celsus,
who wrote the famous True Word, may have been one and the
same. The evidence is carefully worked out by Keim,1 but it
is not very strong, especially as some two dozen men of the
name are known to the historians of the first three centuries of
our era. Origen himself knew little of Celsus — hardly more
than we can gather from the quotations he made from the book
1 Keim, Celsus' Wahrcs Wort (1873).
239
24o CELSUS
in refuting it. From a close study of his occasional hints at
contemporary history, Keim puts Celsus' book down to the
latter part of the reign of Marcus Aurelius, or, more closely, to
the year 178 A.D.1 Celsus' general references to Christianity
and to paganism imply that period. He writes under the
pressure of the barbarian inroads on the Northern frontier, of
the Parthians in the East and of the great plague. His main
concern is the Roman State, shaken by all these misfortunes,
and doubly threatened by the passive disaffection of Christians
within its borders.2 From what Turk and Mongol meant to
Europe in the Middle Ages and may yet mean to us, we may-
divine how men of culture and patriotism felt about the white
savages coming down upon them from the North.
Of the personal history of Celsus nothing can be said, but
the features of his mind are well-marked. He was above all
a man of culture, — candid, scholarly and cool. He knew and
admired the philosophical writings of ancient Greece, he had
some knowledge of Egypt, and he also took the pains to read
the books of the Jews and the Christians. On the whole he
leant to Plato, but, like many philosophic spirits, he found
destructive criticism more easy than the elaboration of a system
of his own. Yet here we must use caution, for the object he
had set before him was not to be served by individual specula-
tion. It was immaterial what private opinions he might hold,
for his great purpose was the abandonment of particularism and
the fusion of all parties for the general good. Private judgment
run mad was the mark of all Christians, orthodox and heretical,
— " men walling themselves off and isolating themselves from
mankind " 3 — and his thesis was that the whole spirit of the
movement was wrong. A good citizen's part was loyal
acceptance of the common belief, deviation from which was now
shown to impair the solidarity of the civilized world. Of course
such a position is never taken by really independent thinkers ;
but it is the normal standpoint of men to whom practical
1 Keim, pp. 264-273.
2 Tertullian, Apol. 38, nee ulla res aliena magis quam publica. Elsewhere
Tertullian explains this : Icedimus Romanos nee Romani habemur qui non
Ronianorum deum cotimus, Apol. 24.
3 Apud Origen, c. Cels. viii, 2. References in what follows will be made to the
book and chapter of this work without repetition of Origen's name. The text used
is that of Koetschau.
THE CHRISTIAN PROPAGANDA 241
affairs are of more moment than speculative precision — men,
who are at bottom sceptical, and have little interest in problems
which they have given up as insoluble. Celsus was satisfied
with the established order, alike in the regions of thought
and of government. He mistrusted new movements — not
least when they were so conspicuously alien to the Greek mind
as the new superstition that came from Palestine. He has
all the ancient contempt of the Greek for the barbarian, and,
while he is influenced by the high motive of care for the State,
there are traces of irritation in his tone which speak of personal
feeling. The folly of the movement provoked him.
This, he says, is the language of the Christians : " ' Let no
cultured person draw near, none wise, none sensible ; for all
that kind of thing we count evil ; but if any man is ignorant,
if any is wanting in sense and culture, if any is a fool, let him
come boldly.' Such people they spontaneously avow to be
worthy of their God ; and, so doing, they show that it is only
the simpletons, the ignoble, the senseless, slaves and women-
folk and children, whom they wish to persuade, or can
persuade." l Those who summon men to the other initiations
(reXera?), and offer purification from sins, proclaim : " Who-
soever has clean hands and is wise of speech," or " Whosoever
is pure from defilement, whose soul is conscious of no guilt,
who has lived well and righteously." " But let us hear what
sort these people invite ; ' Whosoever is a sinner, or unin-
telligent, or a fool, in a word, whosoever is god-forsaken
(KaKoSal/uujDv), him the kingdom of God will receive.' Now
whom do you mean by the sinner but the wicked, thief, house-
breaker, poisoner, temple- robber, grave-robber? Whom else
would a brigand invite to join him ? " 2 But the Christian pro-
paganda is still more odious. " We see them in our own houses,
wool dressers, cobblers, and fullers, the most uneducated and
vulgar persons, not daring to say a word in the presence of
their masters whp are older and wiser ; but when they get hold
of the children in private, and silly women with them, they are
wonderfully eloquent, — to the effect that the children must not
listen to their father, but believe them and be taught by them ;
. . . that they alone know how to live, and if the children will
listen to them, they will be happy themselves, and will make
1 c. Cels. iii, 44. >J Ibid, iii, 59.
16
242 CELSUS
their home blessed. But if, while they are speaking, they see
some of the children's teachers, some wiser person or their
father coming, the more cautious of them will be gone in a
moment, and the more impudent will egg on the children to
throw off the reins — whispering to them that, while their father
or their teachers are about, they will not and cannot teach
them anything good . . . they must come with the women,
and the little children that play with them, to the women's
quarters, or the cobbler's shop, or the fuller's, to receive perfect
knowledge. And that is how they persuade them." l They are
like quacks who warn men against the doctor — " take care that
none of you touches Science (e-Trto-nyjui;) ; Science is a bad
thing ; knowledge (yi/toorf?) makes men fall from health of
soul." 2 They will not argue about what they believe — " they
always bring in their ' Do not examine, but believe,' and ' Thy
faith shall save thee ' " 3 — " believe that he, whom I set forth to
you, is the son of God, even though he was bound in the most
dishonourable way, and punished in the most shameful, though
yesterday or the day before he weltered in the most disgraceful
fashion before the eyes of all men — so much the more believe! " *
So far all the Christian sects are at one.
And the absurdity of it ! " Why was he not sent to the
sinless as well as to sinners ? What harm is there in not
having sinned?"5 Listen to them! "The unjust, if he
humble himself from his iniquity, God will receive ; but the
just, if he look up to Him with virtue from beginning to end,
him He will not receive."6 Celsus' own view is very different
— " It must be clear to everybody, I should think, that those,
who are sinners by nature and training, none could change,
1 iii, 55* I have omitted a clause or two.
Clem. A. Strom, iv, 67, on the other hand, speaks of the difficult position of wife or
slave in such a divided household, and (68) of conversions in spite of the master of the
house. Tert. ad Scap. 3, has a story of a governor whose wife became a Christian,
and who in anger began a persecution at once.
2 iii, 75-
3 i, 9. Cf. Clem. Alex. Strom, i, 43, on some Christians who think themselves
cv<t>veis and "ask for faith — faith alone and bare." In Paed. i, 27, he says much the
same himself, TO Trtcrrei/crat fj,bi>ov ical dvayevvridTJvai reXe^wcri's ICTTIV £v farj.
4 vi, 10. Clem. Alex. Strom, ii, 8, " The Greeks think Faith empty and barbarous,
and revile it," but (ii, 30) " if it had been a human thing, as they supposed, it would
have been quenched."
8 iii, 62. 6 iii, 62.
THE ECCLESIA OF WORMS 243
not even by punishment — to say nothing of doing it by pity !
For to change nature completely is very difficult ; and those
who have not sinned are better partners in life." l Christians
in fact make God into a sentimentalist — " the slave of pity for
those who mourn " * to the point of injustice.
Jews and Christians seem to Celsus " like a swarm of bats
— or ants creeping out of their nest — or frogs holding a
symposium round a swamp — or worms in conventicle
(€KK\t]a-id£ov(ri) in a corner of the mud 3 — debating which of
them are the more sinful, and saying ' God reveals all things
to us beforehand and gives us warning ; he forsakes the whole
universe and the course of the heavenly spheres, and all this
great earth he neglects, to dwell with us alone ; to us alone he
despatches heralds, and never ceases to send and to seek how
we may dwell with him for ever/ " " God is," say the worms,
" and after him come we, brought into being by him (vir avrov
yeyoi/o're?), in all things like unto God ; and to us all things
are subjected, earth and water and air and stars ; for our sake
all things are, and to serve us they are appointed." " Some
of us," continue the worms (" he means us," says Origen) —
" some of us sin, so God will- come, or else he will send his son,
that he may burn up the unrighteous, and that the rest of us
may have eternal life with him." *
The radical error in Jewish and Christian thinking is that
it is anthropocentric. They say that God made all things for
man,5 but this is not at all evident. What we know of the
world suggests that it is not more for the sake of man than
of the irrational animals that all things were made. Plants and
trees and grass and thorns — do they grow for man a whit
more than for the wildest animals ? " * Sun and night serve
mortals,' says Euripides — but why us more than the ants or
the flies ? For them, too, night comes for rest, and day for sight
and work." If men hunt and eat animals, they in their turn
hunt and eat men ; and before towns and communities were
formed, and tools and weapons made, man's supremacy was
even more questionable. "In no way is man better in God's
1 iii, 65, roi>s a/j.apT<ii>eii> ire<f>vKbras re Kal elOifffdvovt. * Hi, Jl.
a Clement of Alexandria, Protr. 92, uses this simile of worms in the mud of swamps,
applying it to people who live for pleasure.
4 iv. 23. 5 ir, 74-
244 CELSUS
sight than ants and bees " (iv. 8 1 ). The political instinct cf
man is shared by both these creatures — they have constitutions,
cities, wars and victories, and trials at law — as the drones
know. Ants have sense enough to secure their corn stores
from sprouting : they have graveyards ; they can tell one
another which way to go — thus they have Xoyo? and ewoiai like
men. If one looked from heaven, would there be any marked
difference between the procedures of men and of ants ? 1 But
man has an intellectual affinity with God ; the human mind
conceives thoughts that are essentially divine (Oe/a? ei/i/o/a?).2
Many animals can make the same claim — " what could one
call more divine than to foreknow and foretell the future ?
And this men learn from the other animals and most of all
from birds ; " and if this comes from God, " so much nearer
divine intercourse do they seem by nature than we, wiser and
more dear to God." Thus " all things were not made for man,
just as they were not made for the lion, nor the eagle, nor the
dolphin, but that the universe as a work of God might be complete
and perfect in every part. It is for this cause that the pro-
portions of all things are designed, not for one another (except
incidentally) but for the whole. God's care is for the whole,
and this Providence never neglects. The whole does not grow
worse, nor does God periodically turn it to himself. He is not
angry on account of men, just as he is not angry because of
monkeys or flies ; nor does he threaten the things, each of
which in measure has its portion of himself." 3
Celsus held that Christians spoke of God in a way that
was neither holy nor guiltless (ovx oo-iw ovS' ei/ayo>9, iv, I o) ;
and he hinted that they did it to astonish ignorant listeners.4
For himself, he was impressed with the thought, which Plato
has in the Timczus, — a sentence that sums up what many of the
most serious and religious natures have felt and will always
feel to be profoundly true : " The maker and father of this
1 So Lucian Icaromenippus> 19, explicitly.
3 iv, 88. Cf. Clem. Alex. Padag. i, 7, TO <f>i\rpov tvSov ^.arlv iv r£ avOpuiry
rou0' owep tfj.QtiffijiJ.a X^yercu 6eov.
3 c. Cels. iv, 74-99. Cf. Plato, Laws, 903 B, ws T$ TOV iravrbs 4irifjie\ovfji.fr<p irpfo
TT)v ffUTrjplav KO.I dperrjv TOV o\ov Trdrr' cffri ffwreTay^va KTC, explicitly developing
the idea of the part being for the whole. Also Cicero, N.D. ii, 13, 34-36.
4 Cf. M. Aurelius, xi, 3, the criticism of the theatricality of the Christians.
See p. 198.
THE GOD OF THE PHILOSOPHERS 245
whole fabric it is hard to find, and, when one has found him,
it is impossible to speak of him to all men." l Like the men
of his day, a true and deep instinct led him to point back to
" inspired poets, wise men and philosophers," and to Plato " a
more living (cvepyea-repov) teacher of theology " 2 — " though I
should be surprised if you are able to follow him, seeing that
you are utterly bound up in the flesh and see nothing clearly." 3
What the sages tell him of God, he proceeds to set forth.
" Being and becoming, one is intelligible, the other visible
(vorjTov, oparov). Being is the sphere of truth ; becoming, of
error. Truth is the subject of knowledge ; the other of
opinion. Thought deals with the intelligible ; sight with the
visible. The mind recognizes the intelligible, the eye the visible.
" What then the Sun is among things visible, — neither eye,
nor sight — yet to the eye the cause of its seeing, to sight the
cause of its existing (o-vvtorTao-Qai) by his means, to things
visible the cause of their being seen, to all things endowed with
sensation the cause of their existence (yiveo-Ocu) and indeed the
cause himself of himself being seen ; this HE is among things
intelligible (vorjra), who is neither mind, nor thought, nor know-
ledge, but to the mind the cause of thinking, to thought of its
being by his means, to knowledge of our knowing by his means,
to all things intelligible, to truth itself, and to being itself, the
cause that they are — out beyond all things (TTO.VTWV e-TrcKeiva a>v),
intelligible only by some unspeakable faculty.
" So have spoken men of mind ; and if you can understand
anything of it, it is well for you. If you suppose a spirit
descends from God to proclaim divine matters, it would be the
spirit that proclaims this, that spirit with which men of old
were filled and in consequence announced much that was good.
But if you can take in nothing of it, be silent and hide your
own ignorance, and do not say that those who see are blind,
and those who run are lame, especially when you yourselves
are utterly crippled and mutilated in soul, and live in the body
— that is to say, in the dead element."4
Origen says that Celsus is constantly guilty of tautology,
and the reiteration of this charge of ignorance and want of
1 <:. Cels. vii, 42, rbv ^v ofo Tron}T^v Kal irartpa rovSf rov iravros tvpeiv re fpyor
Kal evpovTa efs Trdrros iMvarov \tyciv : Timceus, 28 C — often cited by Clement too.
2 vii, 42. * vii, 42. 4 vii, 45.
246 CELSUS
culture is at least frequent enough. Yet if the Christian move-
ment had been confined to people as vulgar and illiterate as he
suggests, he might not have thought it worth his while to attack
the new religion. His hint of the propagation of the Gospel by
slaves in great houses, taken with the names of men of learning
and position, whom we know to have been converted, shows
the seriousness of the case. But to avoid the further charge
which Origen brings against Celsus of " mixing everything up,"
it will be better to pursue Celsus' thoughts of God.
" I say nothing new, but what seemed true of old (TraXai
ScSoy/uieva). God is good, and beautiful, and happy, and is in
that which is most beautiful and best. If then he ' descends
to men,' it involves change for him, and change from good to
bad, from beautiful to ugly, from happiness to unhappiness,
from what is best to what is worst. Who would choose such
a change ? For mortality it is only nature to alter and be
changed ; but for the immortal to abide the same forever.
God would not accept such a change." l He presents a
dilemma to the Christians ; " Either God really changes, as
they say, to a mortal body, — and it has been shown that this
is impossible ; or he himself does not change, but he makes
those who see suppose so, and thus deceives and cheats them.
Deceit and lying are evil, taken generally, though in the single
case of medicine one might use them in healing friends who are
sick or mad — or against enemies in trying to escape danger.
But none who is sick or mad is a friend of God's ; nor is God
afraid of any one, so that he should use deceit to escape
danger." - God in fact " made nothing mortal ; but God's
works are such things as are immortal, and they have made
the mortal. The soul is God's work, but the nature of the
body is different, and in this respect there is no difference
between the bodies of bat, worm, frog, and man. The matter
is the same and the corruptible part is alike." *
The Christian conception of the " descent of God " is
repulsive to Celsus, for it means contact with matter. " God's
anger," too, is an impious idea, for anger is a passion ; and
2 iv, 1 8. See Tertullian's argument on this question of God changing, in de Came
Christi, 3. See Plato, Rep. ii, 381 B.
* iv, 52. See Timaus, 34 B ff. on God making soul.
GOD'S ANGER 247
Celsus makes havoc of the Old Testament passages where God
is spoken of as having human passions (avOpwrroTraQw), closing
with an argumentum ad hominem — " Is it not absurd that a man
[Titus], angry with the Jews, slew all their youth and burnt
their land, and so they came to nothing ; but God Almighty,
as they say, angry and vexed and threatening, sends his son
and endures such things as they tell ? " 1 Furthermore, the
Christian account of God's anger at man's sin involves a pre-
sumption that Christians really know what evil is. " Now the
origin of evil is not to be easily known by one who has no
philosophy. It is enough to tell the common people that evil
is not from God, but is inherent in matter, and is a fellow-
citizen (e/jiTroXiTeuerai) of mortality. The circuit of mortal
things is from beginning to end the same, and in the appointed
circles the same must always of necessity have been and be and
be again." 2 " Nor could the good or evil elements in mortal
things become either less or greater. God does not need to
restore all things anew. God is not like a man, that, because
he has faultily contrived or executed without skill, he should
try to amend the world."3 In short, " even if a thing seems to
you to be bad, it is not yet clear that it is bad ; for you do not
know what is of advantage to yourself, or to another, or to the
whole." 4 Besides would God need to descend in order to
1 iv, 73. See Clem. Alex. Paed. i, ch. 10, on God threatening ; and Strom, ii, 72 ;
iv, 151 ; vii, 37, for the view that God is without anger, and for guidance as to the
understanding of language in the O.T. which seems to imply the contrary. For a
different view, see Tertullian, de Ttstim. Animce, 2, unde igitur naturalis timer
animts in deum, si deus non novit irasci? adv. Marc, i, 26, 27, on the necessity for
God's anger, if the moral law is to be maintained ; and adv. Marc, ii, 16, a further
account of God's anger, while a literal interpretation of God's "eyes" and "right
hand " is excluded.
2iv, 65. 8iv,69.
4 iv, 70. Long before (about 500 B.C.) Heraclitus had said (fragm. 61): "To
God all things are beautiful and good and just ; but men have supposed some things
to be unjust and others just." For this doctrine of the relativity of good and bad to
the whole, cf. hymn of Clean thes to Zeus : —
dXXd <ru Kal ra irepiffffd r' tiriffra.ffa.1 apria Oclvai,
ical Kofffj.f^v raKOfffia, icai ov <f>i\a ffol <f>L\a
<55e yap efs (v iravra. ffvvr)p/j.OKas £<r6\a.
GiffO' eva. yiyveffdai TT&VTWV \6yov attv thro..
Cf. also the teaching of Chrysippus, as given by Gellius, N.A. vii, I : cum bona malts
contraria sint, utraque mcessum est opposita inter sese et quasi mutuo adverse quaque
fulta nisu consisterc ; nullum ideo contrarium est sine contrario altero . . . si tultris
248 CELSUS
learn what was going on among men ? l Or was he dissatisfied
with the attention he received, and did he really come down
" to show off like a nouveau riche (ot veoTrAouTO*) ? " Then
why not long before ? 3
Should Christians ask him how God is to be seen, he has
his answer : " If you will be blind to sense and see with the
mind, if you will turn from the flesh and waken the eyes of
the soul, thus and thus only shall you see God." 4 In words
that Origen approves, he says, " from God we must never and
in no way depart, neither by day nor by night, in public or in
private, in every word and work perpetually, but, with these
and without, let the soul ever be strained towards God."5 "If
any man bid you, in the worship of God, either to do impiety,
or to say anything base, you must never be persuaded by him.
Rather endure every torture and submit to every death, than
think anything unholy of God, let alone say it." 6
Thus the fundamental conceptions of the Christians are
shown to be wrong, but more remains to be done. Let us
assume for purposes of discussion that there could be a
" descent of God " — would it be what the Christians say it
was ? " God is great and hard to be seen," he makes the
Christian say, " so he put his own spirit into a body like ours
and sent it down here that we might hear and learn from it."7
If that is true, he says, then God's son cannot be immortal,
since the nature of a spirit is not such as to be permanent ;
nor could Jesus have risen again in the body, " for God would
not have received back the spirit which he gave when it was
polluted with the nature of the body."8 "If he had wished
to send down a spirit from himself, why did he need to breathe
it into the womb of a woman ? He knew already how to
unum abstuleris utrumque. See also M. Aurelius in the same Stoic vein, viii, 50 ;
ix, 42. On the other side see Plutarch's indignant criticism of this attribution of the
responsibility for evil to God, de comm. not. adv. Sto. 14, 1065 D, ff. In opposition
to Marcion, Tertullian emphasizes the worth of the world ; his position, as a few
words will show, is not that of Celsus, but Stoic influence is not absent : adv. Marc.
i, 13, 14; Ergo nee mundus deo indignus : nihil etenim deus indignum se fecit, etsi
munduni homini non sibi fecit, etsi omne opus inferius est suo artifice ; see p. 317.
1 iv, 3. 2 iv, 6. 3 iv, 7. 4 vii, 36. c viii, 63. 6 viii, 66.
7 vi, 69. " Men, who count themselves wise," says Clement (Strom, i, 88),
"count it a fairy tale that the son of God should speak through man, or that God
should have a son, and he suffer."
8 vi, 72.
THE IGNOMINY OF JESUS 249
make men, and he could have fashioned a body about this
spirit too, and so avoided putting his own spirit into such
pollution."1 Again the body, in which the spirit was sent,
ought to have had stature or beauty or terror or persuasion,
whereas they say it was little, ugly and ignoble.2
Then, finally, " suppose that God, like Zeus in the Comedy,
waking out of long sleep, determined to rescue mankind from
evil, why on earth did he send this spirit (as you call it) into
one particular corner? He ought to have breathed through
many bodies in the same way and sent them all over the
world. The comic poet, to make merriment in the theatre,
describes how Zeus waked up and sent Hermes to the
Athenians and Lacedaemonians ; do you not think that your
invention of God's son being sent to the Jews is more laugh-
able still ? " 3 The incarnation further carried with it stories of
" God eating " — mutton, vinegar, gall. This revolted Celsus,
and he summed it all up in one horrible word.4
The ignominy of the life of Jesus was evidence to Celsus
of the falsity of his claim to be God's son. He bitterly taunts
Christians with following a child of shame — " God's would not
be a body like yours — nor begotten as you were begotten,
Jesus ! " 6 He reviles Jesus for the Passion — " unhelped by
his Father and unable to help himself." 6 He goes to the
Gospels (" I know the whole story," he says 7) and he cites
incident after incident. He reproaches Jesus with seeking to
escape the cross,8 he brings forward " the men who mocked
him and put the purple robe on him, the crown of thorns, and
*• l vi, 73. Cf. the Marcionite view ; cf. Tert. adv. Marc, iii, II ; iv, 21 ; v, 19,
cuius ingeniis tarn longe abest veritas nostra ut . . . Christum ex vulva virginis
natum non crubcscat, ridentibus philosophis et hareticis el ethnicis ipsis. See also de
came Christi, 4, 5, where he strikes a higher note ; Christ loved man, born as man
is, and descended for him.
2 vi, 75. Cf. Tert. de carne Christi, 9, adeo nee humana honcstatis corpus fuit ;
adv. Jud. 14, ne aspectu quidem honestus.
3 vi, 78. Cf. Tert. adv. Marc, iii, z, atquin nihtl putem a deo subitum quia
nihil a deo non dispositum.
4 vii, 13, ffKaro^xiyeiv. Origen's reply is absurd — 'iva yap *ral So'£fl 6ri ^rtfiec, <ij
(rwjta <f>opwv 6 'ITJO-OUS -ffffdiev. So also said Clement (Sirom. vi, 71). Valentinus had
l another theory no better, Strom, iii. 59. Marcion, Tertullian says (adv. Marc, iii,
10), called the flesh terrenam et stercoribus infusam. They are all filled with the
| tame contempt for matter— not Tertullian, however.
*i, 69. 8i, 54. 7i, 12. «ii, 23, 24.
25o CELSUS
the reed in his hand " ; l he taunts him with being unable to
endure his thirst upon the cross — " which many a common
man will endure." 5 As to the resurrection, " if Jesus wished
really to display his divine power, he ought to have appeared
to the actual men who reviled him, and to him who condemned
him and to all, for, of course, he was no longer afraid of any
man, seeing he was dead, and, as you say, God, and was not
originally sent to elude observation." 3 Or, better still, to show
his Godhead, he might have vanished from the gibbet.4
What befel Jesus, befals his followers. " Don't you see, my
dear sir ? " Celsus says, " a man may stand and blaspheme your
daemon ; and not that only, he may forbid him land and sea,
and then lay hands on you, who are consecrated to him like a
statue, bind you, march you off and impale you ; and the
daemon, or, as you say, the son of God, does not help you." 5
" You may stand and revile the statues of the gods and laugh.
But if you tried it in the actual presence of Dionysus or
Herakles, you might not get off so comfortably. But your
god in his own person they spread out and punished, and those
who did it have suffered nothing. . . . He too who sent his
son (according to you) with some message or other, looked
on and saw him thus cruelly punished, so that the message
perished with him, and though all this time has passed he has
never heeded. What father was ever so unnatural (ai/oVfo?) ?
Ah ! but perhaps he wished it, you say, and that was why he
endured the insult. And perhaps our gods wish it too, when
you blaspheme them."6
Celsus would seem to have heard Christian preaching, for
beside deriding " Only believe " and " Thy faith will save thee,"
he is offended by the language they use about the cross.
" Wide as the sects stand apart, and bitter as are their quarrels
and mutual abuse, you will hear them all say their ' To me the
world is crucified and I to the world.' " 7 In one great passage
he mixes, as Origen says, the things he has mis-heard, and
quotes Christian utterances about "a soul that lives, and a
heaven that is slain that it may live, and earth slain with the
Jii, 34- 2n, 37-
3 ii, 66, 67. Tertullian meets this in Apol. 21. Nam nee ille se in vulgus eduxit \
ne impii errore liberarentur, ut et fides, non mediocri praemio destinata, difficulcate
constant.
4 ii, 68. 5 viii, 39. 6 viii, 41. 7 v, 65.
THE CROSS AND THE MIRACLES 251
sword, and ever so many people being slain to live ; and death
taking a rest in the world when the sin of the world dies ; and
then a narrow way down, and gates that open of themselves.
And everywhere you have the tree of life and the resurrection
of the flesh from the tree — I suppose, because their teacher
was nailed to a cross and was a carpenter by trade. Exactly
as, if he had chanced to be thrown down a precipice, or pushed
into a pit, or choked in a noose, or if he had been a cobbler,
or a stone-mason, or a blacksmith, there would have been above
the heavens a precipice of life, or a pit of resurrection, or a rope
of immortality, or a happy stone, or the iron of love, or the holy
hide." l
The miracles of Jesus Celsus easily explains. " Through
poverty he went to Egypt and worked there as a hired
labourer ; and there he became acquainted with certain powers
[or faculties], on which the Egyptians pride themselves, and he
came back holding his head high on account of them, and
because of them he announced that he was God."2 But,
granting the miracles of healing and of raising the dead and
feeding the multitudes, he maintains that ordinary quacks will
do greater miracles in the streets for an obol or two, " driving
devils out of men,3 and blowing away diseases and calling up
the souls of heroes, and displaying sumptuous banquets and
tables and sweetmeats and dainties that are not there ; " —
" must we count them sons of God ? " 4 There are plenty of
prophets too, " and it is quite an easy and ordinary thing for
each of them to say * I am God — or God's son — or a divine
spirit. And I am come ; for already the world perisheth,
and ye, oh men, are lost for your sins. But I am willing to
1 vi, 34. Cf. a curious passage of Clem. Alex. Protr. \ 14, o&ros r^v 5foii> et't
a.va.To\T)v /j.eT'fiya.yfjr KO.I rbv Qa.va.rov et's £<aT]v a.ve<TTatfp<t}ffei> ffapiraaas St rijs dwwXefaT
TOV &.vOpuirov irpoaeKp^affev aldtpi, and so forth. Cf. Tert. adv. Valent. 20, who
suggests that the Valentinians had "nut-trees in the sky" — it is a book in which he
allows himself a good deal of gaiety and free quotation.
2 i, 28.
3 M. Aurelius, i, 6, " From Diognetus I learnt not to give credit to what was said
by miracle-workers and jugglers (yoriruv) about incantations and the sending away of
daemons and such things." Cf. Tertullian, adv. Marc, iii, 2-4, on inadequacy of proof
from miracles alone, without that from prophecy ; also de Anima, 57, on these con-
jurers, where he remarks, nee magnum illi exteriorcs oculos circumscribere, an
interiorem mentis aciem excalcare ferfacile est. See also Apol. 22, 23.
* i, 68.
252 CELSUS
save you ; and ye shall see me hereafter coming with heavenly
power. Blessed is he that has worshipped me now ; but upon
all the rest I will send eternal fire, and upon their cities and
lands. And men who do not recognize their own guilt shall
repent in vain with groans ; and them that have believed me, I
will guard for ever.' " J Jesus was, he holds, an obvious quack
and impostor. In fact, there is little to choose between
worshipping Jesus and Antinous, the favourite of Hadrian, who
had actually been deified in Egypt.2
The teaching of Jesus, to which Christians pointed, was
after all a mere medley of garbled quotations from Greek
literature. Thus when Jesus said that it is easier for a camel
to go through a needle's eye than for a rich man to go into
the kingdom of God, he was merely spoiling the Platonic
saying that it is impossible for a man to be exceedingly good
and exceedingly rich at the same time.3 The kingdom of
heaven itself comes from the " divinely spoken " words of
Plato ; it is the " supercelestial region " of the Phadrus?'
Satan is a parody of Heraclitus' conception of War.5 The
Christian resurrection comes from metempsychosis.6 The idea
that " God will descend, carrying fire (like a torturer in a
law-court) " comes from some confused notion of the teaching
of the Greeks upon cycles and periods and the final conflagra-
tion.7 Plato has this advantage that he never boasted and
never said that God had " a son who descended and talked
with me." 8 The " son of God " itself was an expression
borrowed in their clumsy way by the Christians from the
ancients who conceived of the universe as God's offspring.9
Christians lay great stress on the immortality, " but it is
silly of them to suppose that when God — like a cook — brings
the fire, the rest of mankind will be roasted and they them-
selves will alone remain, not merely the living, but even those
who died long ago, rising from the earth with the identical
flesh they had before. Really it is the hope of worms ! For
what soul of a man would any longer wish for a body that
1 vii, 9. 2 iii, 36.
J vi, 1 6. Cf. Plato, Laws, v, 12, p. 743 A.
4 vi, 17-19; Phcedrus, 247 C. 5 vi, 42.
6 vii, 32; cf. Min. Felix. 1 1, 9. 7 iv, n. 8 vi, 8.
* ri, 47. Cf. Plato, Timceus (last words), 92 C, e?s oJ/aavoy 55e
RESURRECTION 253
had rotted ? " 1 The loathsomeness of the idea, he says,
cannot be expressed, and besides it is impossible. " They have
nothing to reply to this, so they fly to the absurdest refuge, and
say that all is possible with God. But God cannot do what is
foul, and what is contrary to nature he will not do. Though you
in your vulgarity may wish a loathsome thing, it does not follow
that God can do it, nor that you are right to believe at once
that it will come to pass. For it is not of superfluous desire
and wandering disorder, but of true and just nature that God
is prince (apxiyerrjs). He could grant immortal life of the
soul ; but ' corpses,' as Heraclitus says, ' are less useful than
dung.' The flesh is full of — what it is not beautiful even to
mention — and to make it immortal contrary to all reason
(•Tra/oaXo'yw?), is what God neither will nor can do. For he is
the reason of all things that are, so that he cannot do anything
contrary to reason or contrary to himself." 2 And yet, says
Celsus, " you hope you will see God with the eyes of your
body, and hear his voice with your ears, and touch him with
the hands of sense."3 If they threaten the heathen with
eternal punishment, the exegetes, hierophants, and mystagogues
of the temples hurl back the same threat, and while words are
equal, they can show proofs in daemonic activities and oracles.4
" With those however who speak of the soul or the mind
(whether they choose to call it spiritual, or a spirit intelligent,
holy and happy, or a living soul, or the supercelestial and
incorruptible offspring of a divine and bodyless nature — or
whatever they please) — with those who hope to have this
eternally with God, with such I will speak. For they are right
in holding that they who have lived well will be happy and
the unjust will be held in eternal woes. From this opinion
((Soy/xaTo?) let not them nor any one else depart." 5
In this way Celsus surveys the main points of Christian
history and teaching. They have no real grounds beneath
them. The basis of the church is " faction (Wacn?) and the
profit it brings, and fear of those without ; — those are the
things that establish the faith for them."6 Faction is their
keynote, taken from the Jews at first ; and faction splits them
up into innumerable sects beside the " great church," 7 — " the
1 v, 14. ~ v, 14. 3 vii, 34. 4 viii. 48.
5 viii, 49. • iii, 14- 7 v. 59-
254 CELSUS
one thing they have in common, if indeed they still have it, is
the name ; and this one thing they are ashamed to abandon." 1
When they all say " ' Believe, if you wish to be saved, or
else depart ' ; what are those to do who really wish to be
saved ? Should they throw the dice to find out to whom
to turn ? " 2 In short, faction is their breath of life, and
" if all mankind were willing to be Christian, then they
would not."3
But Celsus is not content merely to refute ; he will point
out a more excellent way. " Are not all things ruled accord-
ing to the will of God ? is not all Providence from him ?
Whatever there is in the whole scheme of things, whether the
work of God, or of angels, or other daemons, or heroes, all these
have their law from the greatest God ; and in power over each
thing is set he that has been counted fit." 4 " Probably the
various sections are allotted to various rulers (eTroTrrcu?) and
distributed in certain provinces, and so governed. Thus
among the various nations things would be done rightly if done
as those rulers would have them. It is then not holy to break
down what has been from the beginning the tradition of one
and another place." 5 Again, the body is the prison of the soul ;
should there not then be warders of it — daemons in fact ? 6
Then " will not a man, who worships God, be justified in
serving him who has his power from God ? " 7 To worship
them all cannot grieve him to whom they all belong.8 Over
and over Celsus maintains the duty of " living by the ancestral
usages," " each people worshipping its own traditional deities." 8
To say with the Christians that there is one Lord, meaning
God, is to break up the kingdom of God and make factions
there (arraa-idfav), as if there were choices to be made, and one
were a rival of another.10
Ammon is no worse than the angels of the Jews ; though
here the Jews are so far right in that they hold by the ways of
their ancestors — an advantage which the Jewish proselytes have
1 iii, 12. 2 vi, II.
3 iii, 9. Tertullian speaks in a somewhat similar way of heretics, especially of the
Gnostics: de prescriptions haret. c. 42.
4 vii, 68. 5 v, 25. 6 viii, 53, 58.
7 vii, 68. 8 viii, 2. 9 Cf. v, 34, 35.
10 viii, II. Cf. Tert. adv. Prax. 3, where it is argued that God's monarchy is not
impaired tot angelorutn numero, nor by the oucof o/xt'a of the Trinity.
GODS AND DAEMONS 255
forfeited.1 If the Jews pride themselves on superior knowledge
and so hold aloof from other men, Herodotus is evidence that
their supposed peculiar dogma is shared by the Persians ; and
" I think it makes no difference whether you call Zeus the
Most High, or Zeus, or Adonai, or Sabaoth, or Amun, like the
Egyptians, or Papaios like the Scythians." z
The evidence for the ancillary daemons and gods he finds in
the familiar places. " Why need I tell at length how many
things prophets and prophetesses at the oracles have foretold,
and other men and women possessed by a voice of a god
within them ? the marvels heard from shrines ? revelations from
sacrifices and victims, and other miraculous tokens ? And some
have been face to face with visible phantoms. The whole of
life is full of these things." Cities have escaped plague and
famine through warnings from oracles, and have suffered for
neglecting them. The childless have gained children, and the
crippled have been healed, while those who have treated sacred
things with contempt have been punished in suicide and
incurable diseases.3 Let a man go to the shrine of Trophonius
or Amphiaraus or Mopsus, and there he may see the gods in
the likeness of men, no feigned forms tycvSofjLevov?) but clear to
see, " not slipping by them once, like him who deceived these
people [the Christians], but ever associating with those who
will." 4 "A great multitude of men, Greeks and barbarians^
testify that they have often seen and still do see Asklepios, and
not merely a phantom of him, but they see himself healing men,
and doing them good, and foretelling the future." 5 Is it not
likely that these " satraps and ministers of air and earth " could
do you harm, if you did them despite?6 Earthly rulers too
deserve worship, since they hold their positions not without
daemonic influence.7 Why should not the Christians worship
them, daemons and Emperors ? If they worshipped no other
but one God, they might have some clear argument against other
men ; but, as it is, they more than worship the person who lately
appeared, and reckon that God is not wronged by the service
done to his subordinate,8 — though in truth he is only a corpse.9
In any case, " if idols are nothing, what harm is there in taking
part in the festival ? but if there are daemons, it is clear they too
1 v, 41. 2 v, 41. * viii, 45. 4 vii, 35. 5 iii, 24. Cf. p. 222.
6 v"i» 35- " T»'> 63. * viii, 12. 9 vii, 68.
256 CELSUS
are of God, and in them we must trust, and speak them fair,
according to the laws, and pray that they may be propitious." 1
It is characteristic of the candour of Celsus that he lets slip
a caution or two about the service of daemons. Christians are
as credulous, he says in one place, as " those who lightly
(aXo'y&>?) believe in the roaming priests of Cybele (/u.t]TpayupTais)
and wonder-seers, Mithras and Sabadios and the like — phantoms
of Hecate or some other female daemon or daemons." 2 Again,
he has a word of warning as to magic, and the danger and
injury into which those fall who busy themselves with it —
" One must be on one's guard, that one may not, by being
occupied with these matters, become entangled in the service of
them [literally ; fused with them, o-w/ra/qj], and through love of
the body and by turning away from better things be overcome
by forgetfulness. For perhaps we should not disbelieve wise men,
who say (as a matter of fact) that of the daemons who pervade
the earth the greater part are entangled in ' becoming ' (yevevei
o-wrer^/coV) — fused and riveted to it — and being bound to blood
and smoke and chantings and other such things can do no
more than heal the body and foretell future destiny to man and
city ; and the limits of their knowledge and power are those of
human affairs."3
At the last comes his great plea. Human authority is of
divine ordinance. " To the Emperor all on earth is given ;
and whatever you receive in life is from him." 4 " We must
not disbelieve one of old, who long ago said —
Let one be king, to whom the son of wise Kronos has given it.
If you invalidate this thought (SoyjULo), probably the
Emperor will punish you. For if all men were to do as you
do, nothing will prevent the Emperor being left alone and
deserted,6 and all things on earth falling into the power of the
1 viii, 24. 2 i, 9, Mldpais nal Za|3a5ioiy.
3 viii, 60. See note on ch. iii, p. 107. 4 viii, 67.
3 Cf. Tert. de cor. mil. n, if a soldier is converted, aut dcscrendum statim ut a
multis actum, aut, etc. The chapter is a general discussion whether military service
and Christianity are compatible. Cf. also Tert. de idol. 19, Non convenit sacra-
mento divino et huniano, signo Christi et signo diaboliy castris lucis et castris
tenebrarum . . . quomodo autevi bellabit immo quomodo etiam in pace militabit sine
gladio quern dominus abstulit? .... omnem postea militem dominus in Fetro
exarmando disdnxit. Tertullian, it may be remembered, was a soldier's son.
THE RESCUE OF THE EMPIRE 257
most lawless and barbarous savages, with the result that
neither of your religion nor of the true wisdom would there be
left among men so much as the name.1 You will hardly
allege that if the Romans were persuaded by you and forsook
all their usages as to gods and men, and called upon your
* Most High ' or whatever you like, he would descend and
fight for them and they would need no other help. For before
now that same God promised (as you say) this and much
more to those who served him, and you see all the good he
has done them and you. As for them [the Jews], instead
of being masters of all the earth, they have not a clod nor a
hearthstone left them ; while you — if there is any of you left
in hiding, search is being made for him to put him to death." 2
The Christian sentiment that it is desirable for all who inhabit
the Empire, Greeks and barbarians, Asia, Europe and Libya,
to agree to one law or custom, is foolish and impracticable.3
So Celsus calls on the Christians " to come to the help of the
Emperor with all their might and labour with him as right
requires, fight on his behalf, take the field with him, if he call
on you, and share the command of the legions with him *—
yes, and be magistrates, if need be, and to do this for the
salvation of laws and religion." 5
It will be noted that, so far as our fragments serve us,
Celsus confines himself essentially to the charges of folly,
perversity, and want of national feeling. An excessive opinion
of the value of the human soul and an absurd fancy of
God's interest in man are two of the chief faults he sees in
Christianity.6 He sees well, for the love of God our Father
and the infinite significance of the meanest and commonest
and most depraved of men were after all the cardinal doctrines
of the new faith. There can be no compromise between the
Christian conception of the Ecclesia of God and Celsus'
contempt for an " ecclesia of worms in a pool " ; nor between
the "Abba Father" of Jesus and the aloof and philosophic
God of Celsus " away beyond everything." These two
1 viii, 68. The Greeks used /3a<riXei>s as Emperor.
2 viii, 69. For this taunt against the Jews, cf. Cicero, pro Flcuco, 28, 69.
3 viii, 72. 4 viii, 73. 8 viii, 75.
6 Cf. Clem. Alex. Stroni. i, 55, who says that hardly any words could be to the
many more absurd than the mysteries of the faith.
I?
258 CELSUS
contrasts bring into clear relief the essentially new features of
Christianity, and from the standpoint of ancient philosophy
they were foolish and arbitrary fancies. That standpoint was
unquestioned by Celsus.
Confident in the truth of his premisses and the conclusions
that follow from them, Celsus charged the Christians with
folly and dogmatism. ' Yet it would be difficult to maintain
that they were more dogmatic than himself; they at least had
ventured on the experiment of a new life, that was to bring
ancient Philosophy to a new test. They were the researchers
in spiritual things, and he the traditionalist. As to the charge
of folly, we may at once admit a comparatively lower standard
of education among the Christians ; yet Lucian's book
Alexander, with its curious story of the false prophet who
classed them with the Epicureans as his natural enemies,
suggests that, with all their limitations, they had an emancipa-
tion of mind not reached by all their contemporaries. If they
did not accept the conclusions of Greek thinkers as final, they
were still less prepared to accept sleight-of-hand and hysteria
as the ultimate authority in religious truth.1 PI tarch, we
may remember, based belief in immortality on the >racles of
Apollo ; and Celsus himself appeals to the evidence of shrines
and miracles. If we say that pagans and Christians alike
believed in the occurrence of these miracles and in daemonic
agency as their cause, it remains that the Christians put
something much nearer the modern value upon them, while
Celsus, who denounced the Christians as fools, tendered this
contemptible evidence for the religion he advocated.
His Greek training was in some degree the cause of this.
The immeasurable vanity of the Greeks did not escape the
Romans. A sense of indebtedness to the race that has given
us Homer, Euripides and Plato leads us to treat all Greeks
kindly — with more kindness than those critics show them
whose acquaintance with them has been less in literature and
more in life. The great race still had gifts for mankind, but
it was now mainly living upon its past. In Plutarch the
pride of race is genial and pleasant ; in Celsus it takes another
form — that of contempt for the barbarian and the unlettered.
1 Clem. Alex. Protr. 56 (on idols), ov yap /AOI 0^/us ^urio-
rdj TTjy
THE FAILURE OF CELSUS 259
The truism may be forgiven that contempt is no pathway
to understanding or to truth ; and in this case contempt cut
Celsus off from any real access to the mind of the people he
attacked. He read their books ; he heard them talk ; but,
for all his conscious desire to inform himself, he did not
penetrate into the heart of the movement — nor of the men.
He missed the real motive force — the power of the life and^
personality of Jesus, on which depended the two cardinal
doctrines which he assailed.
The extraordinary blunders, to which the very surest
critics in literature are liable, may prepare us for anything.
But to those who have some intimate realization of the mind
of Jesus, the portrait which Celsus drew of him is an amazing
caricature — the ignorant Jewish conjuror, who garbles Plato,
and makes no impression on his friends, is hardly so much
as a parody. It meant that Celsus did not understand the
central thing in the new faith. The " godhead " of Jesus was
as absurd as he said, if it was predicated of the Jesus whom
he drew ; and there he let it rest. How such a dogma could
have grown in such a case he did not inquire ; nor, finding it
grown, did he correct his theory by the fact. Thus upon the
real strength of Christianity he had nothing to say. This was
not the way to convince opponents, and here the action of the
Christians was sounder and braver. For they accepted the
inspiration of the great men of Greece, entered into their
spirit (as far as in that day it was possible), and fairly did
their best to put themselves at a universal point of view.1
They had the larger sympathies.
Yet for Celsus it may be pleaded that his object was perhaps
less the reconversion of Christians to the old faith than to
prevent the perversion of pagans to the new. But here too he
failed, for he did not understand even the midway people with
whom he was dealing. They were a large class — men and
women open to religous ideas from whatever source they might
come — Egypt, Judaea, or Persia, desirous of the knowledge of
1 This was at all events the view of Clement, Strom, i, 19. ovSt Kara^ijt^iffffffai
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26o CELSUS
God and of communion with God, and in many cases conscious
of sin. In none of these feelings did Celsus share — his interests
are all intellectual and practical. Plutarch before him, and
the Neo-Platonists after him, understood the religous instincts
which they endeavoured to satisfy, and for the cold, hard out-
lines of Celsus' hierarchy of heavenly and daemonic beings they
substituted personalities, approachable, warm and friendly
(o 0/Ao? ' ATToXXwi/). Men felt the need of gods who were
Saviours, — of gods with whom they might commune in sacra-
ments— as the rise of Mithra-worship shows. They sought
for salvation from sin, for holiness — the word was much on
their lips — and for peace with God. To Celsus these seem
hardly to have been necessities ; and whether we say that he
made no effort to show that they were provided for in the old
religion, or that he suggested, tacitly or explicitly, that the
scheme he set forth had such a provision, the effect is the
same. He really had nothing to offer.
Celsus did not bring against the Christians the charges of
" CEdipodean unions and Thyestean banquets " familiar to the
reader of the Apologists l — and to the student of the events
that preceded the Boxer movement in China. While he
taunted Jesus with being a bastard and a deceiver, and roundly
denounced Christians generally for imposing upon the ignor-
ance of men with false religion and false history, he did not
say anything of note against ordinary Christian conduct. At
least the fragments do not show anything of the kind. Later
on the defenders and apologists of paganism had to own with
annoyance that Christians set their fellow-citizens an example ;
Maximin Daza and Julian tried vigorously to raise the tone of
pagan society. Here lies an argument with which Celsus
could not deal. The Fatherhood of God (in the sense which
Jesus gave to the words) and the value of the individual soul,
even the depraved and broken soul, are matters of argument,
and on paper they may be very questionable ; but when the
people, who held or (more truly) were held by these beliefs,
managed somehow or other to show to the world lives trans-
formed and endowed with the power of transforming others,
the plain fact outweighed any number of True Words. What-
1 It is regrettable that Clement should have flung one of these against the school
of Carpocrates, Strom, iii, 10.
THE VICTORY OF THE CHRISTIANS 261
ever the explanation, the thing was there. Christians in the
second century laid great stress on the value of paper and
argument, and to-day we feel with Celsus that among them,
orthodox and heretical, they talked and wrote a great deal
that was foolish — " their allegories were worse than their
myths" — but the sheer weight of Christian character carried
off allegories and myths, bore down the school of Celsus and
the more powerful school of Plutarch, Porphyry and Plotinus,
and abolished the ancient world, and then captured and trans-
formed the Northern nations.
Celsus could not foresee all that we look back upon. But
it stands to his credit that he recognised the dangers which
threatened the ancient civilization, dangers from German
without and Christian within. He had not the religious
temperament ; he was more the statesman in his habit of mind,
and he clearly loved his country. The appeal with which he
closes is a proposal of peace — toleration, if the Christians will
save the civilized world. It was not destined that his hopes
should be fulfilled in the form he gave them, for it was the
Christian Church that subdued the Germans and that carried
over into a larger and more human civilization all that was of
value in that inheritance of the past for which he pleaded.
So far as his gifts carried him, he was candid ; and if sharp of
tongue and a little irritable of temper, he was still an honour-
able adversary. He was serious, and, if he did not understand
religion, he believed in the state and did his best to save it.
CHAPTER IX
CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA
Viderint qui Stoicum et Platonicum et dialecticum Christianismum protulerunt. —
TERTULLIAN, de prcescr. haret. 7.
No one can allege that the Bible has failed to win access for want of metaphysics
being applied to it. — MATTHEW ARNOLD, Literature and Dogma, p. 121.
THOUGH Celsus had much to say upon the vulgar and
servile character of the members of the Christian com-
munity, he took the trouble to write a book to refute
Christianity ; and this book, as we have seen, was written from
a more or less philosophical point of view. He professed him-
self doubtful as to whether his opponents would understand his
arguments ; but that he wrote at all, and that he wrote as he
did, is evidence that the new faith was making its way upward
through society, and was gaining a hold upon the classes of
wealth and education.
It is not hard to understand this. Though conditions of
industry were not what they are to-day, it is likely that con-
version was followed by the economic results with which we
are familiar. The teaching of the church condemned the vices
that war against thrift ; and the new life that filled the convert
had its inevitable effect in quickening insight and energy. The
community insisted on every man having a trade and working
at it. With no such end in view, the church must have num-
bered among its adherents more and more people of wealth and
influence in spite of all defections, just as to-day Protestantism
in France has power and responsibility out of all proportions
to mere numbers. The Emperor Hadrian is said to have made
the observation that in Egypt, whether men worshipped Christ
or Serapis, they all worshipped money.1 The remark had pro-
bably as much truth as such sayings generally have, but we
may probably infer that many Christians were punctual in
1 See the letter of Hadrian quoted by Vopiscus, SatHrninus, 8 (Script. Hist.
Aug.}
262
THE RISE OF THE CHURCH 263
their observance of the duty laid on them to be " not slothful
in business."
The first four or five generations of Christians could not,
on the whole, boast much culture — so far as their records
permit us to judge. " Not many wise," said Paul, and their
fewness has left an impress on the history of the church. A
tendency to flightiness in speculation on the one hand, and a
stolid refusal to speculate at all on the other, are the marks of
second century Christianity. The early attempts made to
come to terms with " human wisdom " were not happy, either
at the centre or on the circumference of the body. The
adjustment of the Gospel story to Old Testament prophecy was
not a real triumph of the human mind, nor were the efforts at
scientific theology any better. Docetism, with its phantom
Christ, and Gnosticism with its antithesis of the just God and the
good God, were not likely to satisfy mankind. Simple people
felt that these things struck at their life, and they rejected them,
and began to suspect the intellect. The century saw the
growth of ecclesiastical system, episcopal order and apostolic
tradition. Men began to speak of the "old church," the
" original church " and the " catholic church," and to cleave to
its " rule of faith " and " tradition of sound words." By 200
A.D. the church was no longer a new thing in the world ; it
had its own " ancient history " without going back to Judaism
and the old covenant ; it had its legends ; and it could now
speak like the Greeks of " the old faith of our fathers."
As it rose in the world, the church came into contact with
new problems. As long as men were without culture, they
were not troubled by the necessity of reconciling culture with
faith, but the time had come when it must be done in earnest.
Wealth was bringing leisure, and refinement, and new intel-
lectual outlooks and interests. Could the church do with them ?
was the urgent question. Was it possible for a man to be at
once a Greek gentleman of wealth and culture and a simple
Christian like the humble grandfathers of his fellow-believers—
or like his own slaves, the fuller and the cobbler of his house-
hold ? We shall understand the problem better if we can
make some acquaintance with the daily life and environment
of these converts of the better classes.
In the second and third books of his Pedagogue Clement of
264 CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA
Alexandria deals with the daily round and deportment of
Christians, for whom extravagance and luxury might be a real
temptation. A few points, gathered here and there from the
two books, will suffice. He recommends simplicity of diet
with health and strength as its objects — the viands, which the
Gospels suggest, fish and the honeycomb, being admirable for
these purposes.1 Wine provokes the passions — " I there-
fore admire those who have chosen the austere life and are
fond of water, the medicine of temperance." " Boys and girls
should as a general rule abstain from the [other] drug " — wine.2
Good manners at table — no noisy gulping, no hiccupping, no
spilling, no soiling of the couch, no slobbering of hand or chin
— " how do you think the Lord drank, when he became man
for us ? " 3 Vessels of silver and gold, furniture of rare woods
inlaid with ivory, rugs of purple and rich colours, are hardly
necessary for the Christian — " the Lord ate from a cheap bowl
and made his disciples lie on the ground, on the grass, and he
washed their feet with a towel about him — the lowly-minded
God and Lord of the universe. He did not bring a silver
foot-bath from heaven to carry about with him. He asked the
Samaritan woman to give him to drink in a vessel of clay as
she drew it up from the well, — not seeking the royal gold, but
teaching us to quench thirst easily." " In general as to
food, dress, furniture and all that pertains to the house, I say
at once, it should all be according to the institutions of the
Christian man, fitting appropriately person, age, pursuits and
time." 4
Clement passes from the table to a general discussion of
manners and habits. Man is a " laughing animal," but he
should not laugh all the time. Humour is recommended
rather than wit (xapievTio-reov ov ye\(aT07roit]T€ov, 45, 4).
" The orderly relaxation of the face which preserves its
harmony " is a smile (46, 3) — giggling and excessive laughter
are perversions. Care should be taken in conversation to
avoid low talk, and the scoff that leads the way to insolence,
and the argument for barren victory — " man is a creature of
peace," as the greeting " Peace with you " shows us. Some
talkers are like old shoes — only the tongue left for mischief.
1 Padag. ii, 2 ; 13 ; 14. 2 Peed, ii, 20, 2, 3.
3 Pad, ii, 32, 2. 4 Pad. ii, 38, 1-3.
CHRISTIAN MANNERS 265
There are many tricks unfit for a Christian gentleman — spit-
ting, coughing, scratching and other things ; and he would do
well to avoid whistling and snapping his fingers to call the
servants. Fidgetting is the mark of mental levity (a-v/jLJ3o\ov
In the care of one's person, oil may be used ; it is a sign
of the luxury of the times that scents and unguents are so
universally applied to such various purposes. The heathen
crowned their heads with flowers and made it a reproach that
Christians gave up the practice. But, as Tertullian said, they
smelt with their noses ; and Clement urges that on the head
flowers are lost to sight and smell, and chill the brain. A
flower-garden in spring, with the dew upon all its colours,
and all the natural scents of the open air, is another thing.
The Christian too will remember — Tertullian also has this
thought — that it was another crown that the Lord wore2 —
ex spinis opinor, et tribulis. The real objection was that the
custom was associated with idol-worship.
Silk and purple and pearls are next dealt with — and ear-
rings, " an outrage on nature " — if you pierce the ear, why
not the nose too ? 3 All peculiarity of dress should be avoided,
and so should cosmetics — or else you may remind people of
the Egyptian temple, outside all splendour, inside a priest
singing a hymn to a cat or a crocodile.4 " Temperance in
drink and symmetry in food are wonderful cosmetics and quite
natural." :> Let a woman work with her hands, and health
will come and bring her beauty. She should go veiled to
church, like Eneas' wife leaving Troy.6 Men may play at
ball, take country walks, and try gardening and drawing water
and splitting billets.7 Finger-rings are allowed for them—
gold rings, to be used as seals for security against the slaves.
1 Pad. ii, 45-60.
2 Pad. ii, 61-73 > Tertullian, de corona militis, 5, flowers on the head are against
nature, etc. ; ib. 10, on the paganism of the practice ; ib. 13 (end), a list of the
heathen gods honoured if a Christian hang a crown on his door.
3 Pad. ii, 129, 3 ; iii, 56, 3 ; Tertullian ironically, de cultufcm. ii, 10, scrupulosa
deus et auribiis vulnera intidit.
4 iii, 4, 2. Cf. Erman, Handbook of Egyptian Religion^ p. 22 : "In the temple of
Sobk there was a tank containing a crocodile, a cat dwelt in the temple of Bast.'
The simile also in Lucian, Imag. n, and used by Celsus ap. Orig. c. Cels. iii, 17.
s iii, 64, 2. « iii, 79, 5. 7 iii, 50.
266 CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA
" Let our seals be a dove, or a fish, or a ship running before
the wind, or a lyre, or a ship's anchor " — not an idol's face,
or a sword or a cup or something worse.1 Men should wear
their hair short (unless it is curly), grow their beards and keep
their moustaches trimmed with the scissors.2 Our slaves we
should treat as ourselves, for they are men as we ; " God "
(as a verse, perhaps from Menander, puts it) " is the same for
all, free or slave, if you think of it." 3
All these admonitions imply an audience with some
degree of wealth. The Christian artisan of Celsus had no
temptation to use a silver foot-bath or to plaster himself with
cosmetics. It may also be remarked that the man who gives
the advice shows himself well acquainted with the ways of
good society — and perhaps of society not so well gifted
with taste. With all this refinement went education.
The children , of Christian parents were being educated,
and new converts were being made among the cultured
classes, and the adjustment of the new faith and the old
culture was imperative. The men to make it were found
in a succession of scholars, learned in all the wisdom of
Greece, enthusiastic for philosophy and yet loyal to the
Gospel tradition.
The first of these, whose name we know, was Pantaenus ;
but beyond his name there is little to be known of him.
Eusebius says that he began as a*. Stoic philosopher and
ended as a Christian missionary to India.4 His pupil,
Clement, is of far greater importance in the history of Christian
thought.
Of Clement again there is little to be learnt beyond what
can be gathered from his own writings. He alludes himself
to the death of the Emperor Commodus as being " 194 years,
I month and 13 days" after the birth of Christ (it was in 192
A.D.); and Eusebius quotes a passage from a contemporary
letter which shows that Clement was alive in 2 1 1 A.D., and
another written in or about 215, which implies that he
was dead.5 We have also an indication from Eusebius that
his activity as a teacher in Alexandria lasted from 180
1 iii, 59, 2. 2 iii, 60, 61.
3 iii, 92. Cf., in general, Tertullian, de Cultu Feminarum.
4 Euseb. E.ff. v, 10. 5 Euseb. E.H. vi, II, 6 ; vi, 14, 8.
HIS CLASSICAL TRAINING 267
to 202 or 2O3.1 We may then assume that Clement was
born about the middle of the century.
Epiphanius says that Clement was either an Alexandrine
or an Athenian. A phrase to be quoted below suggests that
he was not an Alexandrine, and it has been held possible
that he came from Athens.2 It also seems that he was born
a pagan.3 Perhaps he says this himself when he writes :
" rejoicing exceedingly and renouncing our old opinions we
grow young again for salvation, singing with the prophecy
that chants ' How good is God to Israel.' " 4
It is obvious that he had the usual training of a Greek of
his social position. If his code of manners is lifted above
other such codes by the constant suggestion of the gentle
spirit of Jesus, it yet bears the mark of his race and of his
period. It is Greek and aristocratic, and it would in the
main command the approval of Plutarch. He must have been
taught Rhetoric like every one else, — his style shows this as
much as his protests that he does not aim at eloquence
bJyAarrr/a), that he has not studied and does not practise
" Greek style " (eXA^/feti/).5 He has the diffuse learning of
his day — wide, second-hand and uncritical ; and, like other
contemporary writers, he was a devotee of the note-book. No
age of Greek literature has left us so many works of the
kind he wrote — the sheer congeries with no attempt at
structure, no " beginning, middle and end," — easy, accumula-
tive books of fine miscellaneous feeding, with titles that play-
fully confess to their character. Like other authors of this
class, Clement preserves for us many and many a fragment of
more interest and value than any original piece of literature
could have been. He clearly loved the poetry of Greece, and
it comes spontaneously and irresistibly to his mind as he
writes, and the sayings of Jesus are reinforced by those of
Menander or Epicharmus. The old words charm him, and
1 Euseb. E.H. vi, 6 ; see de Faye, Cltment <f Alexandria, pp. 17 to 27, for the
few facts of his life— a book I have used and shall quote with satisfaction.
- Epiphanius, Hacr. I, ii, 26, p. 213 ; de Faye, CUment <f Alcxandrit, p. 17,
quoting Zahn.
:1 Euseb. Prcepar. £v. ii, 2, 64. KXTJ/MJS . . . iravruv i&v 5ici relpat e'X0u
0aTToi/ 7e iiT)v T7?5 irXdi'T?? dpaveuVas, ws to trpbs TOV ffurrjplov \6yov ical
fVayyf\(.KTJs StSacr/caXtas TUIV KO.K.U>V \f\vr puptvos.
4 Pad. i, i, I. 6 Strom, i, 48, I ; ii, 3, I.
268 CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA
he cannot reject them. His Stromateis are "not like orna-
mental paradises laid out in rows to please the eye, but
rather resemble some shady and thickly-wooded hill, where
you may find cypress and plane, bay and ivy, and apple trees
along with olives and figs " 1 — trees with literary connotations.
Such works imply some want of the creative instinct, of
originality, and they are an index to the thinking of the age,
impressed with its great ancestry. It is to be remarked that
the writers of our period care little for the literature of the
past two or three centuries ; they quote their own teachers
and the great philosophers and poets of ancient Greece 2 Few
of them have any new thoughts at all, and those who have
are under the necessity of clothing them in the hallowed
phrases of their predecessors. This was the training in which
Clement shared. Later on, he emancipated himself, and
spoke contemptuously of the school — " a river of words and
a trickle of mind " ; 3 but an education is not easily shaken
off. He might quarrel with his teachers and their lessons,
but he still believed in them. It may be noted that in his
quotations of Greek literature his attention is mainly given to
the thought which he finds in the words — or attaches to them
— that he does not seem to conceive of a work of art as a
whole, nor does he concern himself with the author. He
used the words as a quotation, and it is not unlikely
that many of the passages he borrowed he knew only as
quotations.
In philosophy his training must have been much the same,
but here he had a more living interest. Philosophy touched
him more nearly, for it bore upon the two great problems of
the human soul — conduct and God. Like Seneca and Plutarch
he was not interested in Philosophy apart from these issues —
epistemology, psychology, physics and so forth were not
practical matters. The philosophers he judged by their
theology. With religious men of his day he leant to the
Stoics and " truth-loving Plato " — especially Plato, whom he
1 Strom, vii. III. Such hills are described in Greek novels ; cf. /Elian, Varia
Historia, xiii, I, Atalanta's bower.
2 One may perhaps compare the admiration of the contemporary Fausanias for
earlier rather than later art ; cf. Frazer, Pausanias and other Sketches, p. 92.
3 Strom. i, 22, 5.
CLEMENT AND THE MYSTERIES 269
seems to have read for himself — but he avows that Philosophy
for him means not the system of any school or thinker, but the
sum of the unquestionable dogmata of all the schools, " all that
in every school has been well said, to teach righteousness with
pious knowledge — this eclectic whole I call Philosophy." l
To this Philosophy all other studies contribute — they are " the
handmaidens, and she the mistress" — and she herself owns
the sway of Theology.
At some time of his life Clement acquired a close acquaint-
ance with pagan mythology and its cults. It may be that he
was initiated into mysteries ; in his Protrepticus he gives an
account of many of them, which is of great value to the
modern student. It is probable enough that an earnest man
in search of God would explore the obvious avenues to the
knowledge he sought — avenues much travelled and loudly
vaunted in his day. Having explored them, it is again not
unlikely that a spirit so pure and gentle should be repelled by
rituals and legends full of obscenity and cruelty. It is of
course possible that much of his knowledge came from books,
perhaps after his conversion, for one great part of Christian
polemic was the simple exposure of the secret rites of paganism.
Yet it remains that his language is permanently charged with
technical terms proper to the mysteries, and that he loves to
put Christian knowledge and experience in the old language —
" Oh ! mysteries truly holy ! Oh ! stainless light ! The
daduchs lead me on to be the epopt of the heavens and of
God ; I am initiated and become holy ; the Lord is the
hierophant and seals the mystes for himself, himself the
photagogue." 3 It is again a little surprising to hear of " the
[Saviour " being "our mystagogue as in the tragedy —
He sees, we see, he gives the holy things (opyia) ;
land if thou wilt inquire
1 Strom, i, 37, 6 ; and vi, 55, 3.
2 Strom, i, 29, 10 (the phrase is Philo's) ; Truth in fact has been divided by the philo-
Isophic schools, as Fentheus was by the Maenads, Strom, i, 57. Cf. Milton, Areopagitica,
3 Protr. 1 2O, I ; u> TWV ayiuv ws dXTjfluj fjLVffrrjpluv^ u> 0orrds dicrjpdTov. S^Sovxovfiai
rote ofyai/otfj KCU rbv Bebv tiroirTevffOn, crytos yivofJLai /j.vovfjLevos, lepoQavrfi dt 6 KI//HOJ *al
irbv fj.tffTi)i> <T<t>payt£eTai <f>a>Tay(i)yuv. Strange as the technical terms seem to-day, yet
jwhen Clement wrote, they suggested religious emotion, and would have seemed less
strange than the terms modern times have kept from the Greek— bishop, deacon,
j liturgy, diocese, etc.
2 70 CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA
These holy things — what form have they for thee ?
thou wilt hear in reply
Save Bacchus' own initiate, none may know." l
It is inconceivable that a Hebrew, or anyone but a Greek,
could have written such a passage with its double series of
allusions to Greek mysteries and to Euripides' Baechce.
Clement is the only man who writes in this way, with an
allusiveness beyond Plutarch's, and a fancy as comprehensive
as his charity and his experience of literature and religion.
He had the Greek's curious interest in foreign religions,
and he speaks of Chaldaeans and Magians, of Indian hermits
and Brahmans — " and among the Indians are those that follow |
the precepts of Buddha (Boi/rra), whom for his exceeding
holiness they have honoured as a god " — of the holy women
of the Germans and the Druids of the Gauls.2 Probably in
each of these cases his knowledge was soon exhausted, but it
shows the direction of his thoughts. Egypt of course furnished
a richer field of inquiry to him as to Plutarch. He has i
passages on Egyptian symbolism,3 and on their ceremonial,4 j
which contain interesting detail. It was admitted by the
Greeks — even by Celsus — that barbarians excelled in the dis-
covery of religious dogma, though they could not equal the
Greeks in the philosophic use of it. Thus Pausanias says the
Chaldaeans and Indian Magians first spoke of the soul's im-
mortality, which many Greeks have accepted, " not least Plato
son of Ariston." 5
In the course of his intellectual wanderings, very possibly
before he became a Christian, Clement investigated Jewish ;
thought so far as it was accessible to him in Greek, for Greeks
did not learn barbarian languages. Eusebius remarks upon
his allusions to a number of Jewish historians.6 His debt to
1 Strom, iv, 162, 3.
2 Strom, i, 71, 4. The Brahmans also in iii, 60.
3 Strom, v, 20, 3 ; 31, 5 ; etc. 4 Strom, vi, ch. iv, § 35 f.
5 Origen, c. Cels. i, 2. Celsus' words : t/cavote evpeiv 56-y/iara TOI)S fiapfidpovs, and j
then Kpwai 8£ ical f3e[3ai<i)ffao-0at. Kal a<rKT)<rai irpos dperTjv TO. VTTO fiapfiapuv evpeQtvra !
d/ietVcWy elcru> "EXX^yes. Pausanias, iv, 32, 4, tyw Se XaXSat'ows /cat 'IvSwv TOI)J fj.dyovs i
irpurovs olSa etVfWas ws aQdvaros effTiv avdpATrov fax1*!' Ka'<- o^i^i /cat 'EXXrjvuv dtXXot
re fTrelffdrjffav Kal oi/x ^KLVTO. IIXctTWJ' 6 '
6 Euseb. E.H. vi, 13.
HIS TEACHERS 271
iPhilo is very great, for it was not only his allegoric method in
general and some elaborate allegories that he borrowed, but
the central conception in his presentment of Christianity comes
originally from the Jewish thinker, though Clement was not the
first Christian to use the term Logos.
Clement does not tell us that he was born of pagan •
parents, nor does he speak definitely of his conversion. It is
an inference, and we are left to conjecture the steps by which
it came, but without the help of evidence. One allusion to his
Christian teachers is dropped when he justifies his writing the
\Stromateis — " memoranda treasured up for my old age, an
iantidote against forgetfulness, a mere semblance and shadow-
picture of those bright and living discourses, those men happy
and truly remarkable, whom I was counted worthy to hear."
And then the reading is uncertain, but, according to Dr
jStahlin's text he says : " Of these, one was in Greece — the
(Ionian; the next (pi.) in Magna Graecia (one of whom was
jfrom Coele Syria and the other from Egypt) ; others in the
I East ; and in this region one was an Assyrian, and the other in
Palestine a Hebrew by descent. The last of all (in power he
I was the first) I met and found my rest in him, when I had
i caught him hidden away in Egypt. He, the true Sicilian bee,
! culling the flowers of the prophetic and apostolic meadow,
I begot pure knowledge in the souls of those who heard him.
(These men preserved the true tradition of the blessed teaching
j direct from Peter and James, John and Paul, the holy apostles,
son receiving it from father (' and few be sons their fathers'
I peers '), and reached down by God's blessing even to us, in us
to deposit those ancestral and apostolic seeds." l It is supposed
jthat the Assyrian was Tatian, while the Sicilian bee hidden
away in Egypt was almost certainly Pantaenus.
Clement's education had been wide and superficial, his
reading sympathetic but not deep, his philosophy vague and
eclectic, and now from paganism with its strange and indefinite
| aggregation of religions based on cult and legend, he passed
| to a faith that rested on a tradition jealously maintained and
| a rule beginning to be venerable. He met men with a definite
(language in which they expressed a common experience — who
ihad moreover seen a good many efforts made to mend the
1 Strom, i, n. The quotation is roughly from Homer, Od. ii, 276.
272 CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA
language and all of them ending in " shipwreck concerning the
faith " ; who therefore held to the " form of sound words " as
the one foundation for the Christian life.
It says a great deal for Clement's character — one might
boldly say at once that it is an index to his personal experience
— that he could sympathize with these men in the warm and
generous way he did. Now and again he is guilty of directing
a little irony against the louder-voiced defenders of " faith only,
bare faith " 1 and " straight opinion " — " the orthodoxasts, as
they are called."2 (The curious word shows that the terms
" orthodox " and " orthodoxy " were not yet quite developed.)
But he stands firmly by the simplest Christians and their
experience. If he pleads for a wider view of things — for what
he calls " knowledge," it is, he maintains, the development of
the common faith of all Christians. It is quite different from
the wisdom that is implanted by teaching ; it comes by grace.
" The foundation of knowledge is to have no doubts about God,
but to believe ; Christ is both — foundation and superstructure
alike ; by him is the beginning and the end. . . . These, I
mean faith and love, are not matters of teaching." 3 As Jesus
became perfect by baptism and was hallowed by the descent
of the spirit, " so it befals us also, whose pattern is the Lord.
Baptized, we are enlightened ; enlightened, we are made sons ;
made sons we are perfected ; made perfect we become im-
mortal [all these verbs and participles are in the present]. ' I,'
he saith, ' said ye are gods and sons of the Most High, all of
you.' This work has many names ; it is called gift [or grace,
Xa/ofo-ytta], enlightenment, perfection, baptism. . . . What is
wanting for him who knows God ? It would be strange indeed
if that were called a gift of God which was incomplete ; the
Perfect will give what is perfect, one supposes. . . . Thus they
that have once grasped the borders of life are already perfect ;
we live already, who are separated from death. Salvation is
following Christ. ... So to believe — only to believe — and to
be born again is perfection in life." 4 He praises the poet of
1 Strom, i, 43, I. Some who count themselves evQveis, fj,6vrjv /cat \f/L\T)v rty irlanv
araiTovcri.
2 Strom, i, 45, 6, ol 6pOo8o£a<rTal. 3 Strom, vii, 55.
4 Padag. i, 26; 27. Perhaps for "he saith," we should read "it saith," viz.
Scripture,
"THE REAL POLYMETIS" 273
Agrigentum for hymning faith, which his verses declare to be
hard ; " and that is why the Apostle exhorts ' that your faith
may not be in the wisdom of men ' — who offer to persuade —
1 but in the power of God ' — which alone and without proofs
can by bare faith save." x
It was this strong sympathy with the simplest view of the
Christian faith that made the life- work of Clement possible. He
was to go far outside the ordinary thoughts of the Christian com-
munity round about him — inevitably he had to do this under
the compulsion of his wide experience of books and thinkers —
but the centre of all his larger experience he found where his
unlettered friends, " believing without letters," found their
centre, and he checked his theories, original and borrowed — or
he aimed at checking them — by life. " As in gardening and
in medicine he is the man of real learning (x/^o-TO/ua&yy), who has
had experience of the more varied lessons . . . ; so, I say, here
too, of him who brings everything to bear on the truth. . . .
We praise the pilot of wide range, who ' has seen the cities
of many men ' ... so he who turns everything to the
right life, fetching illustrations from things Greek and things
barbarian alike, he is the much-experienced (TroXvireipos) tracker
of truth, the real polymetis ; like the touchstone — the Lydian
stone believed to distinguish between the bastard and the true-
born gold, he is able to separate, — our polyidris and man of
knowledge (yvcoa-riKos) as he is, — sophistic from philosophy, the
cosmetic art from the true gymnastic, cookery from medicine,
rhetoric from dialectic, magic and other heresies in the barbarian
philosophy from the actual truth."2 This, in spirit and letter,
is a very characteristic utterance. Beginning with the Lord
as " the vine " — from which some expect to gather clusters of
grapes in the twinkling of an eye — he ranges into medicine and
sea-faring, from Odysseus " of many wiles, who saw the cities
of many men and learnt their mind," to Plato's Gorgias, and
brings all to bear on the Christian life. What his simple friends
made of such a passage — if they were able to read at all, or
had it read to them — it is not easy to guess, but contact
must have shown them in the man a genuine and tender
Christian as Christocentric as themselves, if in speech he
^ Strom, v, 9. 2 Strom, 43,3—44*2.
IS
274 CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA
was oddly suited, — a gay epitome of Greek literature in every
sentence.
This, then, is the man, a Greek of wide culture and open
heart, who has dipped into everything that can charm the fancy
and make the heart beat, — curious in literature, cult, and
philosophy, and now submitted to the tradition of the church
and the authority of Hebrew prophet and Christian apostle,
but not as one bowing to a strange and difficult necessity.
Rather, with the humblest of God's children — those "tender,
simple and guileless" children on whom God lavishes all the
little names which he has for his only Son, the " lamb " and
the " child " l — he finds in Christ " thanksgiving, blessing,
triumph and joy," while Christ himself bends from above, like
Sarah, to smile upon their " laughter." 2 Such was the range
of Clement's experience, and now, under the influence of the
great change that conversion brought, he had to re-think every-
thing and to gather it up in a new unity. Thus in one man
were summed up all the elements of import in the general
situation of the church of his day. He was representative
alike in his susceptibility to the ancient literature and philosophy
and his love of Scripture — " truth-loving Isaiah " and " St
Paul " — in his loyalty to the faith, and, not less, in his deter-
mination to reach some higher ground from which the battle
of the church could be fought with wider outlook, more intelli-
gent grasp of the factors in play, and more hope of winning
men for God.
Clement did not come before his time. Philosophy had
begun to realize the significance of the church. The repression
of the " harmful superstition " was no longer an affair of police ;
it was the common concern of good citizens. The model
Emperor himself, the philosopher upon the throne, had openly
departed from the easy policy laid down by Trajan and
continued by his successors. He had witnessed, or had
received reports of, executions. Writing in his diary of death,
he says : " What a soul is that which is ready, if the moment
has come for its separation from the body, whether it is to
be extinguished, or dissolved, or to continue a whole. This
readiness — see that it come from your own judgment, not in
mere obstinacy, as with the Christians, but reflectively and
1 Peed, i, 14, 2 ; 19. Cf. Blake's poem. 8 Peed, i, 22, 3.
FAITH AND PHILOSOPHY 275
with dignity, in a way to persuade another, with nothing of
the actor in it." l This sentence betrays something of the limita-
tions of a good man — a beautiful spirit indeed, but not a little
over-praised by his admirers in modern days. Celsus at once
taunts his Christian opponents with their prospects of painful
death and demonstrates the absurdity of their tenets from
the point of view of philosophy. The Apologists say, too,
that the philosophers lent themselves (as did also the daemons)
to inciting the mob to massacre. But after all the dialectical
weapons of Philosophy were the more dangerous, for they
shook the faith of the Christian which death did not
shake.
Again, the candid and inquiring temper of some notable
converts and friends had led them to question the tradition of
the church and to examine their Christian experience with a
freedom from prejudice, at least in the evangelic direction, which
had resulted in conclusions fatal, it seemed, to the Christian
movement. Their philosophy had carried them outside the
thoughts of Jesus — they had abandoned the idea of the Abba
Father, of the divine love, of the naturalness and instinctive-
ness of Christian life. Incarnation and redemption they
rejected, at least in the sense which made the conceptions of
value to men. Jesus they remodelled into one and another
figure more amenable to their theories — a mere man, a demi-
god, a phantom, into anything but the historic personality
that was and could remain the centre and inspiration of
Christian life. Of all this mischief philosophy, men said, was
the cause.'2
" I know quite well," writes Clement, " what is said over
and over again by some ignorantly nervous people who insist
that we should confine ourselves to the inevitable minimum, to
what contains the faith, and pass over what is outside and
superfluous, as it wears us out to no purpose and occupies us
with what contributes nothing to our end. Others say philo-
sophy comes of evil and was introduced into life for the ruin of
1 Marcus Aurelius, xi, 3. He may have had in mind some who courted
martyrdom.
2 Euseb. E.H. v, 28, quotes a document dealing with men who study Euclid,
Aristotle and Theophrastus, and all but worship Galen, and have "corrected " the
Scriptures. For the vievr of Tertullian on this, see p. 337.
276 CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA
men by an evil inventor." l They were afraid of philosophy,
as children might fear a ghost, in case it should take them away 2
— but this, as Clement saw, was no way to meet the danger.
The Christian must not philosophize, they said — Tertullian
said it too ; but how could they know they must not philo-
sophize unless they philosophized?3 Whether philosophy is
profitable or not, " you cannot condemn the Greeks on the
basis of mere statements about their opinions, without going
into it with them till point by point you discover what they
mean and understand them. It is the refutation based upon
experience that is reliable." 4
So Clement has first of all to fight the battle of education
inside the church, to convince his friends that culture counts,
that philosophy is inevitable and of use at once for the refuta-
tion of opponents and for the achievement of the full signifi-
cance of faith. Then he has to show how philosophy at its best
was the foe of superstition and the champion of God's unity
and goodness — a preparation for the Gospel. Lastly he has
to restate the Christian position in the language of philosophy
and to prove that the Gospel is reaffirming all that was best in
the philosophic schools and bringing it to a higher point, indeed
to the highest ; that the Gospel is the final philosophy of the
universe, the solution of all the problems of existence, the
revelation of the ultimate mind of God.
Clement boldly asserts the unity of all knowledge. Every-
thing contributes, everything is concentric. " Just as every
family goes back to God the Creator, so does the teaching of
all good things go back to the Lord, the teaching that makes
men just, that takes them by the hand and brings them that
way." 5 And again : — " When many men launch a ship,
pulling together, you could not say there are many causes, but
one consisting of many — for each of them is not by himseif
the cause of its being launched but only in conjunction with
others ; so philosophy, which is a search for truth, contributes
to the perception (KarccX^*?) of truth, though it is not the
1 Strom, i, 18, 2. 2 Strom, vi, 80, 5. :! Strom, vi, 162, 5.
4 Strom, i, 19, 2. ^1X77 TT; irepl r&v 8oyfj,a.Tiffd£vT(t)v a^rots
eis Trjv Kara
5 Strom, vi, 59, I. The exact rendering of the last clause is doubtful ; the sense
fairly clear.
HIS DEFENCE OF PHILOSOPHY 277
cause of perception, except in conjunction and co-operation
with other things. Yet perhaps even a joint-cause we might
call a cause. Happiness is one, and the virtues more than one
which are its causes. The causes of warmth may be the sun,
the fire, the bath and the clothing. So, truth is one and many
things co-operate in the search for it, but the discovery is by
the Son. . . . Truth is one, but in Geometry we have geomet-
rical truth, in Music musical ; so in Philosophy — right
Philosophy — we should have Greek truth. But alone the
sovereign Truth is unassailable, which we are taught by the Son
of God." l Elsewhere, when challenged to say what use there is
in knowing the causes that explain the sun's motion,2 geometry
and dialectics, when Greek philosophy is merely man's under-
standing, he falls back upon the mind's instinctive desire for
such things, its free will (rrjv Trpoaipca-iv rov vov), and quickly
marshals a series of texts from the Book of Wisdom on the
divine source of wisdom and God's love of it, concluding with
an allegory drawn from the five barley loaves and the two
fishes on which the multitude were fed, the former typifying
the Hebrew Law (" for barley is sooner ripe for harvest than
wheat ") and the fishes Greek philosophy " born and moving
amid Gentile billows." (" If you are curious, take one of the
fishes as signifying ordinary education and the other the
philosophy that succeeds it. ...
A choir of voiceless fish came sweeping on,
the Tragic muse says somewhere " 3). His appeal to the mind is
a much stronger defence than any such accumulation of texts, but
for the people he had in view the texts were probably more
convincing.
The impulse to Philosophy is an inevitable one, native to
the human mind, and he shows that it is to the Divine Reason
working in all things, to Providence, that we must attribute it.
1 Strom, i, 97, 1-4.
2 Spherical astronomy. A curious passage on this at the beginning of Lucan's
Pharsalia, vii.
3 Strom, vi, 93, 94. The line comes from a play of Sophocles, fr. 695. It may
be noted that Clement has a good many such fragments, and the presence of some
very doubtful ones among them, which are also quoted in the same way by other
Christian writers (e.g. in Strom, v, 111-113), raises the possibility of his borrowing
other men's quotations to something near certainty. Probably they all used books of
extracts. See Justin, Coh. ad. Gent. 1 8 ; Athenagoras, Presb. 5, 24.
278 CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA
" Everything, so far as its nature permits, came into being, and
does so still, advancing to what is better than itself. So that
it is not out of the way that Philosophy too should have been
given in Divine Providence, as a preliminary training towards
the perfection that comes by Christ. . . . ' Your hairs are
numbered ' and your simplest movements ; can Philosophy be
left out of the account ? [An allegory follows from Samson's
hair.] Providence, it says, from above, from what is of first
importance, as from the head, reaches down to all men, as ' the
myrrh,' it says, * that descends upon Aaron's beard and to the
fringe of his garment ' — viz. : the Great -High Priest, ' by whom
all things came into being, and without him nothing came '-
not, that is, on to the beauty of the body ; Philosophy is outside
the people [possibly Israel is meant] just as raiment is. The
philosophers then, who are trained by the perceptive spirit for
their own perception, — when they investigate not a part of
Philosophy, but Philosophy absolutely, they testify in a truth-
loving way and without pride to truth by their beautiful sayings
even with those who think otherwise, and they advance to under-
standing (crvveviv), in accordance with the divine dispensation,
that unspeakable goodness which universally brings the nature
of all that exists onward toward the better so far as may be." 1
Thought (<j>p6vr]an$} takes many forms, and it is diffused
through all the universe and all human affairs, and in each sphere
it has a separate name — Thought, Knowledge, Wisdom or
Faith. In the things of sense it is called Right Opinion ; in
matters of handicraft, Art ; in the logical discussion of the
things of the mind, it is Dialectic. " Those who say that
Philosophy is not from God, come very near saying that God
cannot know each several thing in particular and that He is
not the cause of all good things, if each of them is a particular
thing. Nothing that is could have been at all without God's
will ; and, if with His will, then Philosophy is from God, since
He willed it to be what it is for the sake of those who would
not otherwise abstain from evil."
" He seeth all things and he heareth all 2
1 Strom, vi, 152, 3—154, I. Cf. Strom, iv, 167, 4, "the soul is not sent from
heaven hither for the worse, for God energizes all things for the better." — If the
English in some of these passages is involved and obscure, it perhaps gives the better
impression of the Greek. 2 Cf. Iliad, 3, 277.
HIS DEFENCE OF PHILOSOPHY 279
and beholds the soul naked within, and he has through all
eternity the thought (eirlvota) of each several thing in particular,"
seeing all things, as men in a theatre look around and take all
in at a glance. " There are many things in life that find their
beginning in human reason, though the spark that kindles them
is from God.1 Thus health through medicine, good condition
through training, wealth through commerce, come into being
and are amongst us, at once by Divine Providence and human
co-operation. And from God comes understanding too. And
the free will (Tr/oocu/oecn?) of good men most of all obeys God's
will. . . . The thoughts (rrowcu) of virtuous men come by
divine inspiration (eV/Ti/oia), the soul being disposed so ^and
the divine will conveyed (SiaSiSojmevov) to human souls, the
divine ministers taking part in such services ; for over all
nations and cities are assigned angelic governances — perhaps
even over individuals." 2 Philosophy makes men virtuous, so
it cannot be the product of evil — that is, it is the work of God.
As it was given to the best among the Greeks, we can divine
who was the Giver.3
This is a favourite thought with Clement, and, as he does
with all ideas that please him, he repeats it over and over again,
in all sorts of connexions and in all variety of phrase. When
a man is avowedly making " patchwork " books (Stromateis),
there is really no occasion on which we can call it irrelevant
for him to repeat himself, and this is a thought worth repeating.
" Before the advent of the Lord, Philosophy was necessary to
the Greeks for righteousness, and it is still profitable for piety,
a sort of primary instruction for those who reap faith by revela-
tion. . . . God is the cause of all good things, of some directly,
as of the Old and New Testament, of others indirectly as of
Philosophy. And perhaps even directly it was given in those
times to the Greeks, before the Lord called the Greeks also ;
for Philosophy too was a paidagogos for the Greek world, as
the Law was for the Hebrews, to bring them to Christ"4
1 We may note his fondness for the old idea of Plato that man is an <j>\rrbv ovp&viov
and has an fyi0irros dpxaia irpos ovpavov Koivuvia. Cf. Protr. 2$, 3 > IOO» 3-
- Strom, vi, 156, 3—157, 5-
3 Strom, vi, 159. Cf. vi, 57, 58, where he asks Who was the original teacher,
and answers that it is the First-born, the Wisdom.
4 Strom, i, 28, /card Trpotj^ov^vov and KO.T tiraKO\ov67ii*a. See de Faye, p. 168,
169. Note ref. to Paul, Galat. 3, 24.
280 CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA
" Generally speaking, we should not be wrong in saying that
all that is necessary and profitable to life comes to us from
God — and that Philosophy was more especially given to the
Greeks, as a sort of covenant (SiaO^K^ of their own, a step
(vTTopdOpa) toward the Philosophy according to Christ, — if
Greek philosophers will not close their ears to the truths,
through contempt of the barbarian speech." l " God is the
bestower (x°Piyo$) °f both covenants, who also gave Philosophy
to the Greeks, whereby among the Greeks the Almighty is
glorified." 2 " In those times Philosophy by itself ' justified '
the Greeks — though not to the point of perfect righteousness." 3
" As in due season the Preaching now comes, so in due season
the law and the prophets were given to the barbarians and
Philosophy to the Greeks, to train their ears for the Preaching." 4
Philosophy however fell short of the Law. Those, who
were righteous by the Law, still lacked Faith ; while the others,
whose righteousness was by Philosophy, not only lacked Faith
but failed to break with idolatry.5 (This was in many
quarters the capital charge against contemporary philosophy.)
It was for this reason that the Saviour preached the Gospel in
Hades, just as after him, according to Hermas, " the apostles
and teachers, when they fell asleep in the power and faith of
the Son of God, preached to those who had fallen asleep
before them."6 It is curious that Clement not only cites
Philosophy as a gift of God to the Gentiles before Faith came,
that God's judgments might be just, but he also says, on the
authority of the Law (quoting inaccurately and perhaps from
memory), that God gave them the sun, the moon and stars to
worship, which God made for the Gentiles that they might not
become utterly atheistic and so utterly perish. " It was a
road given to them, that in worshipping the stars they might
look up to God." 7 That they fell into idolatry was however
only too patent a fact.
1 Strom, vi, 67, I. 2 Strom, vi, 42, i 3 Strom, i, 99, 3.
4 Strom, vi, 44, I. ° Strom, vi, 44, 4,
6 Strom, vi, 45-7 ; Cf. Strom, ii, 44, citing Hermas, Sim. ix, 16, 5-7. A curious
discussion follows (in Strom, vi, 45-52) on the object of the Saviour's descent into
Hades, and the necessity for the Gospel to be preached in the grave to those who in
life had no chance of hearing it. " Could he have done anything else ? " (§ 51).
7 Strom, vi, no, in; Deuteronomy 4, 19, does not bear him out — neither in
Greek nor in English.
THE ORIGIN OF PHILOSOPHY 281
The exact means, by which the Greeks received the
truths contained in their philosophy, is not certain. A
favourite explanation with Christian writers, and one to
which Clement gives a good deal of thought, is that Greek
thinkers borrowed at large from the Old Testament, for
Moses lived some six hundred years before the deification of
Dionysos, the Sibyl long before Orpheus.1 Clement's illustra-
tions are not very convincing. " The idea of bringing
Providence as far down as the moon came to Aristotle from
this Psalm : ' Lord, in heaven is thy mercy and thy truth as
far as (eo)?) the clouds.' " Epicurus took his conception of
Chance from " Vanity of vanities, all is vanity ; " while the
Sabbath is found in several lines of Homer — unfortunately
spurious. An attempt to convict Euripides of plagiarism
from Plato's Republic shows the worth of these suggestions,
and the whole scheme wakes doubts as to the value of
Clement's judgment.2
Another theory was angelic mediation. God might have
communicated with the Greeks by inferior angels ; 3 or those
angels who fell into pleasure might have told their human
wives what they knew of divine secrets, " and so the doctrine
of Providence got about."4 Or else by happy guess or
accident the Greeks found parts of the truth for themselves —
or in virtue of some naturally implanted notion (eWom) or
common mind, and then " we know who is the author of
nature." 5
Whatever the explanation, in any case the hand of God
was to be traced in it — Providence foreknew all, and so de-
signed that the wickedness of fallen angels and men should
promote righteousness and truth.6 So much for those who
quote the text " All that ever came before me were thieves
and robbers,"7 or who say that the devil is the author of
1 Strom, i, 105 and 108. Cf. Tert. adv. Marc, ii, 17, sed ante Lycvrgos et
Solonas omnes Mouses et deus ; de antma, 28, multo antiquior Moyses etiam Saturno
nongentis circiter annis ; cf. Apol. 19.
2 For the Scripture parallels see Strom, v, 90-107. For Euripides and other inter-
Hellenic plagiarisms, Strom, vi, 24.
3 Strom, vii, 6.
4 Strom, v, 10, 2. See an amusing page in Lecky, European Morals, i, 344.
8 Strom, i, 94, I ; /card irepLirruffiv ; /card ffvvrvxlav ; <f>vfftKr]v (vvoiav ; notvo*
vovv.
6 Strom, v, 10 ; i, 18 ; 86 ; 94. ~ Strom, i, 81, I ; John 10, 8.
282 CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA
Philosophy l (though we may admit Epicureanism to have
been sown by the sower of tares).2 We might look far for a
more vivid illustration of the contrast between sound instinct
and absurd theory.
Thus he vindicates the right of the Christian to claim
Philosophy as the manifestation of the Divine Logos, and as
a fore-runner of the Gospel, and in his Protrepticus he shows
how the Christian thus re-inforced can deal with paganism.
If the Stromateis weary even the sympathetic reader with their
want of plan, their diffuseness and repetition, and their inter-
minable and fanciful digressions — faults inherent in all works
of the kind — the Protrepticus makes a different impression.
It is written by the same hand and shows the same tendencies,
but they are under better control. Allegories, analogies and
allusions still hinder the development of his thought — like
Atalanta he can never let a golden apple run past him. He
is not properly a philosopher in spite of all his love of
Philosophy, and he thinks in colours, like a poet. Yet he is
not essentially a man of letters or a poet ; he is too indolent ;
his style is not inevitable or compulsive. It is too true a
confession when he says that he does not aim at beauty of
language. His sentence will begin well, and then grow in-
tricate and involved — in breaks an allusion, not always very
relevant, and brings with it a quotation that has captured his
fancy and paralyses his grammar — several perhaps — some
accommodation is made, and the sentence straggles on, and
will end somehow — with a pile of long words, for which others
have been patiently waiting since before the quotation, in
pendent genitives, accusatives and so forth. But in the
Protrepticus — in the better parts of it — something has happened
to his style, for (to speak after his own manner)
Nothing of him that doth fade,
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange.
He is no longer arguing ; he surrenders to a tide of emotion,
and is borne along singing, and as he sings, he seems to gather up
all the music of the ancient world ; we catch notes that come
from Greek and Hebrew song, and the whole is woven together
1 Strom, vi, 66 ; 159. a Strom, vi, 67, 2.
THE PROTREPTICVS
283
into a hymn to " the Saviour," " my Singer," " our new
Orpheus," that for sheer beauty, for gladness and purity of
I feeling is unmatched in early Christian literature. One comes
back to it after years and the old charm is there still. That
it can survive in a few translated fragments is hardly to be
expected.
He begins with the famous singers of Greek myth —
Amphion, Arion, and Eunomus with the grass-hopper. . . You
will believe empty myths, he says, but " Truth's bright face
seems to you to be false and falls under eyes of unbelief."
But Cithaeron and Helicon are old. " Let us bring Truth
and shining Wisdom from heaven above to the holy mount of
God and the holy choir of the prophets. Let her, beaming
with light that spreads afar, illumine all about her them that
lie in darkness, and save men from error." " My Eunomus
sings not Terpander's strain, nor Capion's, not the Phrygian,
| the Lydian or the Dorian, but the eternal strain of the new
harmony, the strain that bears the name of God, the new song,
the song of the Levite, with
A drug infused antidote to the pains
Of grief and anger, a most potent charm
For ills of every name,1
a sweet and true cure of sorrow." Orpheus sang to enslave
men to idols, to foolish rites, to shadows. " Not such is my
singer ; he has come, soon to end cruel slavery to tyrannic
daemons ; he transfers us to the gentle and kindly yoke
of piety, and calls to heaven them that were fallen to
I earth."2
It was this new song that first made the whole cosmos a
harmony, and it is still the stay and harmony of all things.
It was this Logos of God who framed " the little cosmos, man,"
setting soul and body together by the holy spirit, and who
sings to God upon this organ of many tones — man. The
Logos himself is an organ for God, of all the harmonies, tune-
ful and holy.3 What does this organ, this new song, tell us ?
The Logos, that was before the Day-Star was, has appeared
among men as a teacher, — he by whom all things were made.
1 Odyssey, iv, 221, Cowper's translation.
* Protr. 1-3. * Ibid. 5; 6.
284 CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA
As Demiurge he gave life ; as teacher he taught to live well ;
that, as God, he may lavish upon us life forever. Many voices
and many means has the Saviour employed for the saving of
men. Lest you should disbelieve these, the Logos of God has
himself become man that you might learn from man how man
may become God.1
He casts a glance over Greek myths and mysteries —
cymbals, tambourines, emblems, legends and uncleanness, the
work of men who knew not the God who truly is, men " without
hope and without God in the world." " There was from of
old a certain natural fellowship of men with heaven, hidden in
the darkness of their ignorance, but now on a sudden it has
leapt through the darkness and shines resplendent — even as
that said by one of old,
See'st thou that boundless aether there on high
That laps earth round within its dewy arms ?
and again,
O stay of earth, that hast thy seat on earth,
Whoe'er thou art, beyond man's guess to see ;
and all the rest that the children of the poets sing." 2 But
wrong conceptions have turned " the heavenly plant, man,"
from the heavenly life and laid him low on earth, persuading
him to cleave to things fashioned of earth. So he returns to
the discussion of pagan worships — " but by now your myths too
seem to me to have grown old " — and he speaks of the daemon-
theory by which the pagans themselves explained their
religion. The daemons are inhuman and haters of men ; they
enjoy the slaying of men — no wonder that with such a be-
ginning superstition is the source of cruelty and folly. But
" no ! I must never entrust the hopes of the soul to things
without souls." 3 " The only refuge, it seems, for him who
would come to the gates of Salvation is the Divine Wisdom."4
1 Protr. 8, 4, 6 \6yos o TOV deov foffpuvos yev6fji.evos tva. 5r) /cat eri> napa dvdpwirov
fj.ddr}S, irrj Trore apa avdpwiros ytvijrai 6e6s.
2 Protr. 25, 3 ; ref. to Euripides, fr. 935, and Troades, 884. The latter (not
quite correctly quoted by Clement) is one of the poet's finest and profoundest
utterances.
8 Protr. 56, 6. 4 Ibid. 63, 5.
THE PROTREPTICUS 285
He now reviews the opinions of the philosophers about
God. The Stoics (to omit the rest) " saying that the divine
goes through all matter, even the most dishonourable, shame
Philosophy."1 "Epicurus alone I will gladly forget."2
" Where then are we to track out God, Plato ? ' The Father
and maker of this whole it is hard to find, and, when one has
found him, to declare him to all is impossible.' In his name
why? ' For it is unspeakable.' Well said ! Plato! thou hast
touched the truth ! "3 " I know thy teachers," still addressing Plato,
" Geometry thou dost learn from Egyptians, Astronomy from
Babylonians, the charms that give health from Thracians ;
much have the Assyrians taught thee ; but thy laws — such
of them as are true — and thy thought of God, to these
thou hast been helped by the Hebrews."4 After the
philosophers the poets are called upon to give evidence —
Euripides in particular.5 Finally he turns to the prophets
and their message of salvation — " I could quote you ten
thousand passages, of which ' not one tittle shall pass '
without being fulfilled ; for the mouth of the Lord, the
holy spirit, spoke them."6
God speaks to men as to his children — " gentle as a father,"
as Homer says. He offers freedom, and you run away to
slavery ; he gives salvation, and you slip away into death.
Yet he does not cease to plead — " Wake, and Christ the Lord
shall lighten upon you, the sun of resurrection."7 "What
would you have covenanted to give, oh ! men ! if eternal
salvation had been for sale ? Not though one should measure
out all Pactolus, the mythic river of gold, will he pay a price
equal to salvation." 8 Yet " you can buy this precious salva-
tion with your own treasure, with love and faith of life . . . that
is a price God is glad to accept." fl Men grow to the world,
like seaweed to the rocks by the sea, and despise immortality
" like the old Ithacan, yearning not for Truth and the fatherland
1 Protr. 66, 3. 2 Ibid. 66, 5. 3 Ibid. 68, I.
4 Protr. 70, I ; in Strom, i, 150, 4, he quotes a description of Plato as MWWTTJJ
a.rriKlfav. Cf. Tertullian, Apol. 47.
8 Protr. 76. He quotes Orestes, 591 f. ; Alcestis, 760 ; and concludes (anticipating
Dr Verrall) that in the Ion yvfj.vy Ty xe^oXr? CKKVK\^ TV fledrpy rot* 0fovt, quoting
Ion, 442-447-
6 Protr. 82, I. 7 Ibid. 84, 2.
8 Ibid. 85,4. * Ibid. 86, i.
286 CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA
in heaven, and the light that truly is, but for the smoke." i It
is piety that " makes us like God " — a reference to Plato's
familiar phrase. God's function (epyov) is man's salvation.
" The word is not hidden from any. Light is common and
shines upon all men ; there is no Cimmerian in the reckoning.
Let us hasten to salvation, to re-birth. Into one love to be
gathered, many in number, according to the unity of the
essence of the Monad, let us hasten. As we are blessed,
let us pursue unity, seeking the good Monad. And
this union of many, from a medley of voices and distrac-
tion, receives a divine harmony and becomes one symphony,
following one coryphaeus (xo/oeimfc) and teacher, the Word,
resting upon the Truth itself, and saying 'Abba Father.'"
Here indeed Philosophy and the Gospel join hands, when
the Monad and Abba Father are shown to be one and the
same.3
It is easy to see which of the thoughts represented by
these names means most to Clement. " Our tender loving
Father, the Father indeed, ceases not to urge, to admonish, to
teach, to love ; for neither does he cease to save " — " only,
oh ! child ! thirst for thy Father, and God will be shown to
thee without a price." 4 " Man's proper nature is to be at
home with God ; " as then we set each animal to its natural
task, the ox to plough and the horse to hunt, so " man, too,
who is born for the sight of heaven, a heavenly plant most
truly, we call to the knowledge of God. . . . Plough, we say, if
you are a ploughman, but know God as you plough ; sail, if
you love sea-faring, but calling on the heavenly pilot."5
" A noble hymn to God is an immortal man, being built
up in righteousness, in whom are engraved the oracles
of truth " 6 ; and very soon he quotes " Turn the other
cheek " as a " reasonable law to be written in the heart." 7
1 Protr. 86, 2. The reference is to Odyssey, i, 57. One feels that, with more !
justice to Odysseus, more might have been made of his craving for a sight of the j
smoke of his island home.
2 Protr. 88, 2, 3.
3 Elsewhere, he says God is beyond the Monad, Paed. i, 71, i, tirtKeiva TOV Ms
Kai virep avrty rty fj.ova.da. See p. 290.
4 Protr. 94, 1,2. On God making the Christian his child, cf. Tert. adv. Marc.
iv, 17.
5 Protr. 100, 3, 4. 6 Ibid. 107, I. "' Ibid. 1 08, 5.
THE SCRIPTURES 287
I' God's problem is always to save the flock of men. It
jwas for that the good God sent the good Shepherd. The
Logos has made truth simple and shown to men the
jneight of salvation." l " Christ wishes your salvation ; with
|bne word he gives you life. And who is he? Hear in
brief: the Word of truth, the Word of immortality, that
[gives man re-birth, bears him up to truth, the goad of
Salvation, who drives away destruction, who chases forth
f|ieath, who built in men a temple that he might make God
[to dwell among men." 2
The last chapter is a beautiful picture of the Christian life,
j!ull of wonderful language from Homer, the Bacchce of
(Euripides, and the Mysteries, and in the centre of it — its very
Ipeart — " Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy-
i!aden, and I will give you rest."
In the passages here quoted from the Protrepticus some
|pf Clement's main ideas in the realm of Christian thought
lire clearly to be seen ; and we have now to give them
I: further and more detailed examination. We have to see
fivhat he makes of the central things in the new religion
>— of God, and the Saviour, and of man, and how he
i interprets the Gospel of Jesus in the language of Greek
|j philosophy. It is to be noted that, whatever happened in
|he course of his work — and very few books are, when
yritten, quite what the writer expected on beginning —
Clement looked upon his task as interpretation. The Scrip-
fures are his authorities — "he who has believed the divine
Scriptures, with firm judgment, receives in the voice of God
vho gave the Scriptures a proof that cannot be spoken
Against." 3 Amid the prayers and hymns of the ideal
Christian comes daily reading of the sacred books.4 Clement
ias no formal definition of inspiration, but he loved the
lacred text, and he made it the standard by which to
udge all propositions. It is perhaps impossible to over-
|stimate the importance of this loyalty in an age, when
fhristian speculation was justly under suspicion on account
1 Protr. 116, I, S\f/os (height) is the word used inMiterature for "sublimity," and
bat may be the thought here. Cf. Tert. de Bapt. 2, simplidtas divinorwn operum
. . et magnificentia. See p. 328-
1 Protr. 117, 4. 3 Strom, ii, 9, 6. * Ibid, vii, 49.
288 CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA
of the free re-modelling of the New Testament text that
went with it. Clement would neither alter, nor excise,
but he found all the freedom he wanted in the accepted
methods of exegesis. Allegory and the absence of any
vestige of historical criticism — -and, not least, the inability
induced by the training of the day to conceive of a
work of art, or even a piece of humbler literature, as a
whole — his very defects as a student secured his freedom
as a philosopher. He can quote Scripture for his purpose ;
the phrase will support him where the context will not ; and
sometimes a defective memory will help him to the words he
wants, as we have seen in the case of the worship of sun,
moon and stars. To the modern mind such a use of Scripture
is unwarrantable and seems to imply essential indifference to
its real value, but in Clement and his contemporaries it is not
inconsistent with — indeed, it is indicative of — a high sense of
the value of Scripture as the ipsissima verba of God. And
after all a mis-quotation may be as true as the most authentic
text, and may help a man as effectually to insight into the
thoughts of God.
We have seen that Clement quarrelled with the Stoics for
involving God in matter — " even the most dishonourable." The
world-soul was, in fact, repugnant to men who were impressed
with the thought of Sin, and who associated Sin with matter.
This feeling and a desire to keep the idea of God disentangled
from every limitation led to men falling back (as we saw in
the case of Plutarch) on the Platonic conception of God's
transcendence. Neo-Platonism has its " golden chain " ol
existence descending from Real Being — God — through a vast
series of beings who are in a less and less degree as they are
further down the scale. It is not hard to sympathize with the
thoughts and feelings which drew men in this direction
The best thinkers and the most religious natures in the
Mediterranean world (outside the circle of Jesus, and some
Stoics) found the transcendence of God inevitably attrac
tive, and then their hearts sought means to bridge thej
gulf their thoughts had made. For now he was out o
all knowledge, and away beyond even revelation ; for re-
velation involved relation and limitation, and God must b<
absolute.
THE LOGOS 289
We have seen how Plutarch found in the existence of
I daemons a possibility of intercourse between gods and men,
while above the daemons the gods, he implies, are in com-
munication with the remote Supreme. But for some thinkers
|this solution was revolting. Philo, with the great record
before him of the religious experience of his race, was not
(prepared to give up the thought " O God, thou art my God." l
iLinking the Hebrew phrase " the word of the Lord " with the
jStoic Logos Spermaticos and Plato's Idea, he found in the
resulting conception a divine, rational and spiritual principle
(immanent in man and in the universe, and he also found a
divine personality, or quasi-personality, to come between the
kbsolute and the world. He pictures the Logos as the Son
pf God, the First-born, the oldest of angels, the " idea of ideas,"
and again as the image of God, and the ideal in whose likeness
nan was made. As the ambassador of God, and High Priest,
the Logos is able to mediate directly between man and God,
md bridges the gulf that separates us from the Absolute.2
plore than anything else, this great conception of Philo's pre-
pared the way for fusion of Greek thought and Christianity.
Element is conspicuously a student and a follower of Philo —
lor was he the first among Christian writers to feel his
nfluence.
Clement, as already said, professed himself an eclectic in
bhilosophy, and of such we need not expect the closest reason-
ng. Our plan will be to gather passages illustrative of his
Noughts — we might almost say of his moods — and set
|ide by side what he says from time to time of God.
j)n such a subject it is perhaps impossible to hope for
or consistency except at the cost of real aspects of
ne matter in hand. Something will be gained if we
pn realize the thoughts which most moved the man, even
hough their reconciliation is questionably possible. This
pubt however does not seem to have occurred to himself,
br he connects the dogmata of the philosophers and the
baching of the New Testament as if it were the most
atural thing in the world.
. * fta/m 63. I.
' See Caird, Evolution of Theology in tht Greek Philosophers, ii, pp. 183 ff ; de
kye, CUmenl, pp. 231-8.
'9
29o CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA
To begin with the account of God which Clement gives in
philosophical language. " The Lord calls himself ' one ' (fcV) —
' that they all may be one ... as we are one ; I in them, and
thou in me, that they may be perfected into one.' Now God
is ' one' (*v) and away. beyond the ' one ' (evo?) and above the
Monad itself." 1 Again, after quoting Solon and Etnpedocles
and " John the Apostle " (" no man hath seen God at any
time "), Clement enlarges on the difficulty of speaking of God :
— " How can that be expressed, which is neither genus, nor
differentia, nor species, neither indivisible, nor sum, nor accident,
nor susceptive of accident ? Nor could one properly call him
a whole (O\CH>) ; for whole (TO <>\ov) implies dimension, and he
is Father of the Whole (ran/ oXan/). Nor could one speak of
his parts, for the one is indivisible and therefore limitless, not
so conceived because there is no passing beyond it, but as
being without dimension or limit, and therefore without form
or name. And if we ever name him, calling him, though not
properly, one, or the good, or mind, or absolute being, or father,
or God, or demiurge, or lord, we do not so speak as putting
forward his name ; but, for want of his name, we use beautiful
names, that the mind may not wander at large, but may rest
on these. None of these names, taken singly, informs us of
God ; but, collectively and taken all together, they point to his
almighty power. For predicates are spoken either of properties
or of relation, and none of these can we assume about God. Nor
is he the subject of the knowledge which amounts to demon-
stration ; for this depends on premisses (Trporepa) and things
better known (yvtapi^repa] ; 2 but nothing is anterior to the
unbegotten. It remains then by divine grace and by the
Logos alone that is from him to perceive the unknowable."1
Again, " God has no natural relation (<f>v(mcr]i> crxtW) to us
the founders of heresies hold (not though he make us of what
is not, or fashion us from matter, for that is not at all, and this
is in every point different from God) — unless you venture
to say that we are part of him and of one essence (oyuooucr/ou?)
with God ; and I do not understand how anyone who
1 Pad. i, 71, I ; cf. Philo, Leg. Alleg. ii, § I, 67 M. rdrrerat otr o 0e6t xarA r6
h xai TV /xoi/d3o, /naXXoi/ Si ical i /xocAj KarA rov Jfxa Ot6t>. Cf. de Fayc, p. 31*
* Expirs.ions tukt-n from Aristotle, Anal. Post, i, 2, p. 71 t>, 20.
v, 81, 5—82, 3.
THE ABSOLUTE GOD
knows God will endure to hear tint said, when he casts
ye upon our life and the evils with which we are mixed
u p. For in this way (and it is a thing not fit to speak of)
God would be sinning in his parts, that is, if the pai:
parts of tin- whole and complete the whole — if they do not
complete it, they would not be parts. However, God, by
nature (fwrtt) being rich in pity (tXeo?), of his goodness
ires for us who are not his members nor by nature his
children (/Aifrt /UO/HCW ovrtw aurov wre <f>v<ret rtKvtav). Indeed
this is the chief proof of God's goodness, that though
this is our position with regard to him, by nature utterly
alienated ' from him, he nevertheless cares for us. For the
instinct of kindness to offspring is natural (Qwrucii) in
animals, and so is friendship with the like-minded based
on old acquaintance, but God's pity is rich towards us
who in no respect have anything to do with him, I mean,
in our being (ouor/a) or nature or the peculiar property of
<nn heing (<W«/x« 77; OIKCUI Ttj? ovcria? nnS>v\ but merely by
our beiiu- the work of His will." l " The God of the Whole
> W), who is above every voice and every thought and
conception, could never be set forth in writing, for his
property is to be unspeakable."2
It follows that the language of the Bible is not to be taken
lite-rally when it attributes feelings to God. Clement has cited
texts which speak of "joy" and "pity" in connexion with
(iod. and he has to meet the objection that these are moods
of the soul and passions (T/DOTTU? ^v\^ KC" Tru^n)- We mistake,
wlu u we interpret Scripture in accordance with our own
experience of the flesh and of passions, "taking the will
of the passionless God (rou uTraOov? Oeou) on a line with our
own perturbations (fftwj/uutn). When we suppose that the fact
in the case of the Almighty is as we are able to hear, we err
in an at heist ir way. For the divine was not to be declared as
I it ts ; but as we, fettered by flesh, were able to understand,
even so the prophets spoke to us, the Lord accommodating
himself to the weakness of men with a mind to save them
',„. ii, 74, 1—75,2 ; cf. Plutarch, dt <&/. or. 414 F, 416 F (quoted on p. 07), «»"
involving (.'.oil in hum. in :ill.m •, : ami also adv. Sto. 33, ami 4 ". 33, 34, °n
•U • ilortiiiu- ni.ikmp, li«>»l n -sjiDiisihlc for human sin. Cf. further stateiiu-nlk in
the same vein in Strom, ii, 6, I ; v, 71, 5 ; vii, 2. * Strom, v. 65, 2.
292 CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA
Thus the language of our emotions, though not
properly to be employed, is used to help our weakness.1 For
God is, in fact, " without emotion, without wrath, without
desire " (a.7ra9r]s, aOu/mos, aveTriOv/jLJjros).2' Clement repeatedly
recurs with pleasure to this conception of " Apathy " ; it is
the mark of God, of Christ, of the Apostles, and of the ideal
Christian, with whom it becomes a fixed habit (e£f?).3
God is not like a man (av6pa)7roeiSrj$), nor does he need
senses to hear with, nor does he depend on the sensitiveness of
the air (TO ev7ra6e$ TOV aepo?) for his apprehensions, " but the
instantaneous perception of the angels and the power of
conscience touching the soul — these recognize all things, with
the quickness of thought, by means of some indescribable
faculty apart from sensible hearing. Even if one should say
that it was impossible for the voice, rolling in this lower air,
to reach to God, still the thoughts of the saints (aytW) cleave,
not the air alone, but the whole universe as well. And the
divine power instantly penetrates the whole soul like light.
Again do not our resolves also find their way to God, uttering
a voice of their own ? And are not some things also wafted
heavenward by the conscience ? . . . God is all ear and all eye,
if we may make use of these expressions." 4 Thus it would
seem that God is not so far from every one of us as we might
have supposed from the passages previously quoted, and the
contrast between the two views of God grows wider when we
recall Clement's words in the Protrepticus about the Heavenly
Father. While a Greek, the pupil of the philosophers, could
never use the language of a Jew about " God our Father " with
the same freedom from mental reservation, Clement undoubt-
edly speaks of God at times in the same spirit that we feel in
the utterances of Jesus. He goes beyond what contemporary
philosophers would have counted suitable or desirable, as we can
see in the complaints which Celsus makes of Christian language
about God, though Celsus, of course, is colder than the religious
1 Strom, ii, 72, 1-4. z Strom, iv, 151, I.
3 See Strom, ii, 103, I ; iv, 138, I ; vi, 71-73 ; Peed, i, 4, I.
4 Strom, vii, 37, Mayor's translation. The " expressions" are said to go back to
Xenophanes (cited by Sext. Empir. ix, 144) oDXoj y&p opqi, oCXos 5£ poet, oSXos 5^ T'
d/cotfet. Cf. Pliny, N.H. ii, 7, 14, quisquis est deus, si modo est alius, et quacumque in
partt, totus est sensuus, totus visuus, totus audituus, totus animce, totus animi, totw
sui.
THE LOGOS
293
of his day. But the main difference between Christians
and philosophers was not as to God the Father, but as
to Christ.
When Clement, in his work of restatement, came to
discuss Christ, he found Philo's Logos ready to his hand and
he was not slow to use it. It is characteristic that, just
as he unquestioningly accepted the current philosophic
account of God and saw no great difficulty in equating
a God best described in negations with the Abba Father
of Jesus, so he adopted, not less light-heartedly, the
conflate conception of the Logos. Whether its Platonic
and Stoic elements would hold together ; whether either
of them was really germane to the Hebrew part ; whether
in any case any of the three sets of constituents corre-
sponded with anything actually to be reached by observation
or experience ; or whether, waiving that point, the com-
bination was equal to its task of helping man to conceive
of God at once as immanent and transcendent, Clement
hardly inquired. So far he followed Philo. Then came
in a new factor which might well have surprised Plato,
Zeno and Philo alike. Following once more, but this time
another leader, Clement equates the Philonian Logos with the
historic Jesus of Nazareth.
So stated, the work of Clement may well look absurd.
But after all he is not the only man who has identified
the leading of instinct with philosophic proof. In suc-
cession he touched the central thoughts of his various
leaders, and he found them answer to cravings within
him. He wanted a God beyond the contagion of earth,
Supreme and Absolute ; and Plato told him of such a
God. Yet the world needed some divine element ; it
must not be outside the range and thought of God ; and
here the conception of divine Reason, linking man and
nature with God Himself, appealed to his longing. Lastly
the impossibility of thinking Jesus and his work to be
accidental, of conceiving of them as anything but vitally
bound up with the spiritual essence of all things, with God
and with God's ultimate mind for man and eternity, was the
natural outcome of entering into the thoughts of Jesus, of
realizing his personality and even of observing his effect upon
294 CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA
mankind.1 When one remembers how in every age men have
passed through one form and another of experience, and have
then compacted philosophies to account for those experiences,
have thought their constructions final, and have recommended
their theories as of more value than the facts on which, after reflec-
tion, slight or profound, but perhaps never adequate, they have
based them, it will not seem strange that Clement did the same.
Ah yet, when all is thought and said,
The heart still overrules the head ;
Still what we hope we must believe,
And what is given us receive.
The old task is still to do. The old cravings are still within
us ; still the imperishable impulse lives to seek some solution
of the great question of the relations of God and the soul and
the universe, which may give us more abiding satisfaction than
Clement's can now have, and which will yet recognize those old
cravings, will recognize and meet them, not some but all of them.
" Most perfect, and most holy of all," says Clement, " most
sovereign, most lordly, most royal and most beneficent, is the
nature of the Son, which approaches most closely to the One
Almighty Being. The Son is the highest Pre-eminence, which
sets in order all things according to the Father's will, and
steers the universe aright, performing all things with unweary-
ing energy, beholding the Father's secret thoughts through his
working. For the Son of God never moves from his watch-
tower, being never divided, never dissevered, never passing from
place to place, but existing everywhere at all times and free
from all limitations. He is all reason, all eye, all light from
the Father, seeing all things, hearing all things, knowing all
things, with power searching the powers. To him is subjected
the whole army of angels and of gods — to him, the Word of
the Father, who has received the holy administration by reason
of Him who subjected it to him ; through whom also all men
belong to him, but some by way of knowledge, while others
have not yet attained to this ; some as friends, some as faithful
servants, others as servants merely." 2
1 Cf. Strom, ii, 30, I, et yap dvOpi/j-rrivov t\v TO
dT&r/S??. T) 5£ otf£ei (sc. T] Trums). Protr. no, I, oi5 yap dv otfrws & 6\lyv
ToaovTov Hpyov avcv Oeias KO/u5?Js ft-rii/wey
2 Strom, vii, 5, J. B. Mayor's translation.
THE LOGOS 295
The Logos is the source of Providence, the author, as
already seen, of all human thought and activity, of the beauty
of the human body too,1 Saviour and Lord at once of all men
—man being "his peculiar work," for into him alone of
animals was a conception of God instilled at his creation.
" Being the power of the Father, he easily prevails over whom-
soever he will, not leaving even the smallest atom of his govern-
ment uncared for." * " He it is in truth that devises the bridle
for the horse, the yoke for the bull, the noose for the wild
beast, the rod for the fish, the snare for the bird ; he governs
the city and ploughs the land, rules and serves, and all things
he maketh ;
Therein he set the earth, the heaven, the sea,
And all the stars wherewith the heaven is crowned.
O the divine creations ! O the divine commands ! This
water, let it roll within itself; this fire, let it check its rage;
this air, let it spread to aether ; and let earth be fixed and
borne, when I will it. Man I yet wish to make ; for his
material I have the elements ; I dwell with him my hands
fashion. If thou know me, the fire shall be thy slave."1
" All 4 gaze on the supreme Administrator of the universe,
as he pilots all in safety according to the Father's will, rank
being subordinated to rank under different leaders till in the
end the Great High Priest is reached. For on one original
principle, which works in accordance with the Father's will,
depend the first and second and third gradations ; and then at
the extreme end of the visible world there is the blessed
ordinance of angels ; and so, even down to ourselves, ranks
below ranks are appointed, all saving and being saved by the
initiation and through the instrumentality of One. As then
the remotest particle of iron is drawn by the breath (TUM/MOTI)
of the stone of Heraklea [the magnet] extending through a
long series of iron rings, so also through the attraction of the
holy spirit (Trvcvfiari) the virtuous are adapted to the highest
1 Pad. i, 6, 6, r6 51 <ru>/ua /cciXXei KCU evpvOv-iq. ffvvcKcpa<raro.
2 Phrases mostly from Strom, vii, 6-9. ZVVOI.OLV (vearaxBoa Oeov. See criticism of
Celsus, p. 244.
3 Pad. iii, 99, 2—100, i. The quotation is from Homers description of
Hephaistos making the shield for Achilles, //. 18, 483.
4 All parts of the universe.
296 CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA
mansion ; and the others in their order even to the last
mansion ; but they that are wicked from weakness, having
fallen into an evil habit owing to unrighteous greed, neither
keep hold themselves nor are held by another, but collapse
and fall to the ground, being entangled in their own passions." 1
This last clause raises questions as to evil and freewill.
Clement believed in freewill ; for one thing, it was necessary
if God was to be acquitted of the authorship of evil. " God
made all things to be helpful for virtue, in so far as might be
without hindering the freedom of man's choice, and showed
them to be so, in order that he who is indeed the One
Alone Almighty might, even to those who can only see darkly,
be in some way revealed as a good God, a Saviour from age to
age through the instrumentality of his Son, and in all ways
absolutely guiltless of evil." 2
Clement also brings in the Platonic Idea to help to express
Christ. " The idea is a thought of God (ew/oi//ua), which the
barbarians have called God's Logos." 3 " All the activity of
the Lord is referred to the Almighty, the Son being, so to
speak, a certain activity (evepyeia) of the Father," 4 and a little
lower he adds that the Son is " the power (Suva/jus) of the
Father/' 6 As such he may well be " above the whole universe,
or rather beyond the region of thought." 6 And yet, as we
have seen, he leans to the view that the Logos is a person —
the Great High Priest. In criticizing him, it is well to
remember how divergent are the conceptions which he wishes
to keep, and to keep in some kind of unity.
Once again, in many of Clement's utterances upon the
Logos there is little that Philo, or perhaps even a pagan
philosopher, could not have approved ; but through it all there
is a new note which is Clement's own and which comes from
another series of thoughts. For it is a distinctive mark of
Clement's work that the reader rises from it impressed with
the idea of "the Saviour." The Protrepticus is full of the
thought of that divine love of men, warm and active, which
1 Strom, vii, 9. Mayor's translation, modified to keep the double use of irveD/^o.
For the magnet see Plato, Ion. 533 D E.
* Strom, vii, 12. 3 Strom, v, 16, 3 (no article with Logos).
4 Strom, vii, 7 5 Strom, vii, 9.
8 Strom, v, 38, 6, o KI//HOJ vvcpdvu TOW K6fff*ov 7r<WT6s, /uaAXov Si iirtKciva TOV
THE LOGOS 297
j Jesus associated with "your heavenly Father," but which
I Clement, under the stress of his philosophy must connect with
I the Logos — "cleansing, saving and kindly; most manifest
God indeed, made equal with the ruler of the universe."1
| He is our " only refuge " (/movrj KarcKfrwyri), the " sun of resur-
rection," the " sun of the soul." 2 And yet one group of ideas,
familiar in this connection, receives little notice from Clement.
'The Logos is indeed the Great High Priest, but the symbolism
of priest and sacrifice and sin-bearer is left rather remarkably
iunemphasized. He is " the all-availing healer of mankind," s
ibut his function is more to educate, to quicken, and to give
•(knowledge than to expiate.
The great and characteristic feature of the Logos is that
" he took the mask (Trpo<rwjrelov) of a man and moulded it for
himself in flesh and played a part in the drama of mankind's
salvation ; for he was a true player (71/17070? ayowerni?), a
fellow-player with the creature ; and most quickly was he
spread abroad among all men, more quickly than the sun,
when he rose from the Father's will, and proved whence he
was and who he was by what he taught and showed, he, the
bringer of the covenant, the reconciler, the Logos our Saviour,
the fountain of life and peace, shed over the whole face of the
sarth, by whom (so to say) all things have become an ocean
}f blessings." 4 Though essentially and eternally free from
oassion (cnraOijs) " for our sake he took upon him our flesh
fvith its capacity for suffering" (rrjv iraOrjTrjv vdpica)6 and
' descended to sensation (aio-Orja-i^)." 6 "It is clear that none
:an in his lifetime clearly apprehend God ; but ' the pure in
leart shall see God ' when they come to the final perfection,
pince, then, the soul was too weak for the perception of what
's (rwv OVTWV), we needed a divine teacher. The Saviour is
lent down to teach us how to acquire good, and to give it to
Is (xwyoV) — the secret and holy knowledge of the great
providence," 7 — " to show God to foolish men, to end corruption,
1 Protr. no, I. 2 Protr. 63, 5 ; 84, 2 ; 68, 4.
I ' Peed, i, 6, 2, <TXot/ jnjfcrcu rov irXda/xaroj, nal <ru>/za *al ^v*V a*e«Tot atrrov 6
cwipKTjs TT)S dvQpuTrbTrjTos Iarp6s.
* Protr. no, 2, 3. Cf. also Pad. i, 4, 1-2.
I 8 Strom, vii, 6. Cf. Pad. i, 4, 2. drdXvroj (Is rt> iravTeXls drepwirbur Toflwr.
' Strom, v, 40, 3.
7 Strom, v, 7, 7-8.
298 CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA
to conquer death, to reconcile disobedient children to their
Father. . . . The Lord pities, educates, encourages, exhorts, saves
and guards, and as the prize of learning he promises us out of
his abundance the kingdom of heaven — this alone giving him
joy in us, that we are saved." l All this was foreknown before
the foundation of the world ; the Logos was and is the
divine beginning or principle of all things, " but because he
has now taken the long-hallowed name, the name worthy of
his power, the Christ, that is why I call it the new song."2
And indeed he is right, for " the Epiphany, now shining among
us, of the Word that was in the beginning and before it " !
is new in philosophy ; and it is a new thing also that the
doctrine of a Logos should be " essentially musical." The
Incarnation of the divine Teacher is the central fact for
Clement.
The identification of this incarnate Logos with Jesus of
Nazareth was part of Clement's inheritance, and as usual he
accepted the form which the tradition of the Church had
assumed. But Clement's theology altered the significance of
Jesus. For the Abba Father whom Jesus loved, he substituted
the great Unknowable, and then he had to bring in a figure
unfamiliar to the thought of Jesus — the Logos, whom he
clothed with many of the attributes of the Father of Jesus,
and then identified with Jesus himself. Not unnaturally in
this combination the historic is outweighed by the theoretic
element, and indeed receives very little attention. The!
thought of Incarnation is to Clement much more important
than the Personality.
Jesus is " God and pedagogue," " good shepherd," and
"mystic Angel (or messenger)," "the pearl," "the great High
Priest," and so forth.4 In a few passages (some of them
already quoted) Clement speaks of the earthly life of Jesus —
of the crown of thorns, the common ware, and the absence of
a silver foot-bath. But he takes care to make it clear that
Jesus was " not an ordinary man," and that was why he did
not marry and have children — this in opposition to certain
1 Protr, 6, 1-2, TOVTO /j.6vov &iro\aijui> i)/j.£>v
2 Protr. 6, 5. 3 Protr. 7, 3.
4 The references are (in order) Peed, i, 55 ; i, 53, 2 ; i, 59, I ; ii, 118, 5 ; Protr,,
I2O, 2.
THE VIRGIN-BIRTH 299
vain persons who held up the Lord's example as a reason
for rejecting marriage, which "they call simple prostitution
and a practice introduced by the devil." T So far was Jesus
from being " an ordinary man " that Clement takes pains to
dissociate him from ordinary human experience. To the
miraculous birth he refers incidentally but in a way that
leaves no mistake possible. " Most people even now believe,
as it seems, that Mary ceased to be a virgin through the birth
of her child, though this was not really the case — for some
say she was found by the midwife to be a virgin after her
delivery."2 This expansion of the traditional story is to be
noted as an early illustration of the influence of dogma. The
episode appears in an elaborate form in the apocryphal
Gospels.3 But Clement goes further. " In the case of the
Saviour, to suppose that his body required, qud body, the
necessary attentions for its continuance, would be laughable
(yeXcoy). For he ate — not on account of his body, which was
held together by holy power, but that it might not occur
to those who consorted with him to think otherwise of him —
as indeed later on some really supposed him to have been
manifested merely in appearance [i.e. the Docetists who
counted his body a phantom]. He himself was entirely
without passion (cnraflrfc) and into him entered no emotional
movement (Kitujfia 7ra0/;-n/coV), neither pleasure nor pain." 4
A fragment (in a Latin translation) of a commentary of
Clement's upon the first Epistle of John, contains a curious
statement : " It is said in the traditions that John touched the
surface of the body of Jesus, and drove his hand deep into
it, and the firmness of the flesh was no obstacle but gave way
to the hand of the disciple."5 At the same time we read:
" It was not idly that the Lord chose to employ a body of
mean form, in order that no one, while praising his comeliness
1 Strom, iii, 49, 1-3, ovSt avBpwiros ty KOIVOI.
2 Strom, vii, 93.
8 See Protevangcliumjaeobi, 19, 20 (in Tischendorf 's Evan^elia Apocrypha, p. 36),
a work quoted in the 4th century by Gregory of Nyssa, and possibly the source of this
statement of Clement's. Tischendorf thinks it may also have been known to Justin.
See vkstopseudo-Matthaievangclium, 13 (Tischendorf, p. 75), known to St Jerome.
4 Strom, vi, 71, 2. A strange opinion of Valentinus about Jesus eating may be
compared, which Clement quotes without dissent in Strom, iii, 59, 3. See p. 249, n. 4.
5 Printed in Dindorf's edition, vol. iii, p. 485-
3oo CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA
and beauty, should depart from what he said, and in cleaving
to what is left behind should be severed from the higher things
of thought (ran/ votjrwv)" l
It is consistent with the general scheme of Clement's
thought that the cross has but a small part in his theology.
" It was not by the will of his Father that the Lord suffered,
nor are the persecuted so treated in accordance with his choice "
— it is rather in both cases that " such things occur, God not
preventing them ; this alone saves at once the providence and
goodness of God." 2 Yet " the blood of the Lord is twofold ;
there is the fleshly, whereby we have been redeemed from
corruption, and the spiritual, by which we have been
anointed." 3 The cross is the landmark between us and our
past.4 On the whole Clement has not much to say about sin,
though of course he does not ignore it. It is " eternal death " ; 6
it is " irrational " ; 6 it is not to be attributed " to the operation
(energy) of daemons," as that would be to acquit the sinner,
still it makes a man " like the daemons " (SaifjLoviKos).7 God's
punishments he holds to be curative in purpose.8 He says
nothing to imply the eternity of punishment,9 and as we have
seen he speaks definitely of the Gospel being preached to the
dead.
The Christian religion, according to Clement, begins in
faith and goes on to knowledge. The heavier emphasis with
him always falls on knowledge, though he maintains in a fine
chapter that faith is its foundation.10 " The Greeks," he says,
" consider faith an empty and barbarous thing," n but he is far
from such a view. Faith must be well-founded — " if faith is
such as to be destroyed by plausible talk, let it be destroyed."1
But the word left upon the reader's mind is knowledge. A
passage like the following is unmistakable. " Supposing one
were to offer the Gnostic his choice, whether he would prefer
I Strom, vi, 151, 3. Cf. Celsus, p. 249, and Tert. de carne Christi, 9, Adeo nee
humana honestatis corpus fuit ; Tertullian however is far from any such fancies as
to Christ's body not being quite human, see p. 340.
8 Strom, iv, 86, 2, 3 ; contrast Tertullian 's attitude in de Fuga in Persccutione, etc.
3 Pad. ii, 19, 4. 4 Pad. iii, 85, 3.
5 Protr. 115, 2. 6 Pad. i, ch. 13. 7 Strom, vi, 98, i.
8 Cf. Strom, i, 173 ; iv, 153, 2 ; Fad. i, 70, i) ybp xoXcurcs ^TT' deafly KO.I <>
ui$f Aet'a TOV Ko\a^o/j.^vov.
9 Cf. J. B. Mayor, Pref. to Stromatcis, vii, p. xl. 10 Strom, ii, ch. 4. Cf. ii, 48.
II Strom, ii, 8, 4. 12 Strom, vi, 81, i.
THE VISION OF THE TRUE GNOSTIC 301
the knowledge of God or eternal salvation, one or the other
(though of course they are above all things an identity) ;
without the slightest hesitation he would choose the knowledge
of God for its own sake." l The ideal Christian is habitually
spoken of in this way, as the " man of knowledge " — the true
" Gnostic," as opposed to the heretics who illegitimately claim
the title. A very great deal of Clement's writing is devoted to
(building up this Gnostic, to outlining his ideal character. He
is essentially man as God conceived him, entering into the
(divine life, and, by the grace of the Logos, even becoming
iGod.
This thought of man becoming God Clement repeats very
|often, and it is a mark of how far Christianity has travelled
ifrom Palestine. It begins with the Platonic ideal of being
[made like to God, and the means is the knowledge of God or
Ithe sight of God given by the Logos. " ' Nought say I of the
.rest,' 2 glorifying God. Only I say that those Gnostic souls
are so carried away by the magnificence of the vision (Oecopla)
that they cannot confine themselves within the lines of the
constitution by which each holy degree is assigned and in
accordance with which the blessed abodes of the gods have
(been marked out and allotted ; but being counted as ' holy
|among the holy,' and translated absolutely and entirely to
another sphere, they keep on always moving to better and yet
better regions, until they no longer greet the divine vision in
mirrors or by means of mirrors, but with loving souls feast for
ever on the uncloying never-ending sight, radiant in its
transparent clearness, while throughout the endless ages they
taste a never-wearying delight, and thus continue, all alike
lonoured with an identity of pre-eminence. This is the
apprehensive vision of the pure in heart. This, then, is the
ork (evepyeia) of the perfected Gnostic — to hold communion
ith God through the Great High Christ being made like the
Lord as far as may be. Yes, and in this process of becoming
ike God the Gnostic creates and fashions himself anew, and
.dorns those that hear him."3 In an interesting chapter
Clement discusses abstraction from material things as a necessary
1 Strom, iv, 136, 5. z From jEsch. Agam. 36.
3 Strom, vii, 13. (Mayor's translation in the main). Cf. Protr. 86, 2,
T$ 0ey ; Peed, i, 99, I ; Strom, vi, 1041 2.
302 CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA
condition for attaining the knowledge of God ; we must " cast
ourselves into the greatness of Christ and thence go forward." l
" If a man know himself, he shall know God, and knowing
God shall be made like to him. . . . The man with whom the
Logos dwells ... is made like to God . . . and that man
becomes God, for God wishes it." 2 " By being deified into
Apathy (cnrdOeiav) a man becomes Monadic without stain."3
As Homer makes men poets, Crobylus cooks, and Plato
philosophers ; " so he who obeys the Lord and follows the
prophecy given through him, is fully perfected after the like-
ness of his Teacher, and thus becomes a god while still moving
about in the flesh." 4 " Dwelling with the Lord, talking with
him and sharing his hearth, he will abide according to the
spirit, pure in flesh, pure in heart, sanctified in word. ' The
world to him,' it says, * is crucified and he to the world.'
He carries the cross of the Saviour and follows the Lord ' in
his footsteps as of a god/ and is become holy of the
holy." 6
We seem to touch the world of daily life, when after all
the beatific visions we see the cross again. Clement has
abundance of suggestion for Christian society in Alexandria,
and it is surprising how simple, natural and wise is his attitude
to the daily round and common task. Men and women alike
may " philosophize," for their " virtue " (in Aristotle's phrase) is
the same — so may the slave, the ignorant and the child.6 The
Christian life is not to eradicate the natural but to control it.r
Marriage is a state of God's appointing — Clement is no Jerome.
Nature made us to marry and " the childless man falls short of
the perfection of Nature." 8 Men must marry for their country's i
sake and for the completeness of the universe.9 True man-
hood is not proved by celibacy — the married man may " fall
short of the other as regards his personal salvation, but he has i
1 Strom, v, 71, 3. 2 /W. Hi, i, i, and 5. s Strom, iv, 152, I.
4 Strom, vii, 101.
5 Strom, ii, 104, 2, 3, with reff. to Paul Gal. 6, 14 ; and Odyssey, 2, 406. Other ,
passages in which the notion occurs are Strom, iv, 149, 8 ; vii, 56, 82. Augustine I
has the thought — all the Fathers, indeed, according to Harnack. See Mayor's note
on Strom, vii, 3. It also comes in the Theologia Germanica.
ti Strom, iv. 62, 4 ; 58, 3 ; the Apery in Peed, i, 10, I.
7 Peed, ii, 46, i. 8 Strom, ii, 139, 5.
9 Strom, ii, 140, I, a very remarkable utterance.
CHRISTIAN HAPPINESS 3oj
|:he advantage in the conduct of life inasmuch as he really
preserves a faint (oXiyijv) image of the true Providence."1 The
fieathen, it is true, may expose their own children and keep
parrots, but the begetting and upbringing of children is a part
pf the married Christian life.2 " Who are the two or three
! fathering in the name of Christ, among whom the Lord is in
the midst? Does he not mean man, wife and child by
|:he three, seeing woman is made to match man by
fcod."3
The real fact about the Christian life is simply this, that the
pew Song turns wild beasts into men of God.4 " Sail past the
iiren's song, it works death," says Clement, "if only thou wilt,
hhou hast overcome destruction ; lashed to the wood thou shalt
I be loosed from ruin ; the Word of God will steer thee and the
loly spirit will moor thee to the havens of heaven." 5 To
the early Christian " the wood " always meant the cross of
fesus. The new life is "doing good for love's sake,"8 and "he
Lvho shows pity ought not to know that he is doing it. ...
(When he does good by instinctive habit (ev e£ei) then he will
pe imitating the nature of good." 7 God breathed into man
ind there has always been something charming in a man since
phen (<£/\T/ooi>).8 So "the new people" are always happy,
Always in the full bloom of thought, always at spring-time.*
The Church is the one thing in the world that always
rejoices.10
Clement's theology is composite rather than organic — a
Structure of materials old and new, hardly fit for the open air,
jthe wind and the rain. But his faith is another thing — it rests
iipon the living personality of the Saviour, the love of God and
the significance of the individual soul, and it has the stamp of
(such faith in all the ages — joy and peace in believing. It has
iasted because it lived. If Christianity had depended on the
1 Strom, vii, 70, end.
8 Pad. ii, 83, I, TO?J 3£ yeyafj.ijK6ai CT/CO'TTOJ TJ iraiSoiroita, rAos & i) eOrtKvLa..
Cf. Tertullian, adv. Marc, iv, 17, on the impropriety of God calling us children if we
puppose that he nobis filiosfacere non pcrmisit auferendo connubium. The opposite
jriew, for purposes of argument perhaps, in de exh. castilatis, 12, where he ridicules the
idea of producing children for the sake of the state.
' Strom, iii, 68, I. 4 Protr. 4, 3. * Protr. 1 1 8, 4.
6 Strom, iv, 135, 4. 7 Strom, iv, 138, 2, 3. 8 Pad. i, 7, 2.
" Pad. i, 20, 3, 4.
10 Pad. i, 22, 2, uov-i) a0T7j els TOI)S at'wvas /dvs i xalpovaa. &el.
3o4 CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA
Logos, it would have followed the Logos to the limbo whither
went ALon and Aporrhoia and Spermaticos Logos. But that
the Logos has not perished is due to the one fact that with the
Cross it has been borne through the ages on the shoulders of
Jesus.
30$"
CHAPTER X
TERTULLIAN
IN his most famous chapter Gibbon speaks at one point of
the affirmation of the early church that those who per-
sisted in the worship of the daemons " neither deserved
nor could expect a pardon from the irritated justice of the
Deity." Oppressed in this world by the power of the Pagans,
Christians " were sometimes seduced by resentment and spiritual
pride to delight in the prospect of their future triumph. ' You
are fond of spectacles,' exclaims the stern Tertullian, ' expect
the greatest of all spectacles, the last and eternal judgment of
the universe. How shall I admire, how laugh, how rejoice,
how exult, when I behold so many proud monarchs, and
fancied gods, groaning in the lowest abyss of darkness ; so
many magistrates, who persecuted the name of the Lord, lique-
fying in fiercer fires than they ever kindled against the
Christians ; so many sage philosophers blushing in red-hot
flames with their deluded scholars ; so many celebrated poets
trembling before the tribunal, not of Minos, but of Christ ; so
many tragedians more tuneful in the expression of their own
sufferings ; so many dancers ' But the humanity of the
reader will permit me to draw a veil over the rest of this in-
fernal description, which the zealous African pursues in a long
variety of affected and unfeeling witticisms." l
The passage is a magnificent example of Gibbon's style
and method, — more useful, however, as an index to the mind of
Gibbon than to that of Tertullian. He has abridged his transla-
tion, and in one or two clauses he has missed Tertullian's points ;
finally he has drawn his veil over the rest of the infernal
description exactly when he knew there was little or nothing
more to be quoted that would serve his purpose. He has
made no attempt to understand the man he quotes, nor the
1 Gibbon, Decline and Fall, c. 15 (vol. ii, p. 177, Milman-Smith) ; Tertullian, de
Spectofulis, 30.
20
306 TERTULLIAN
mood in which he spoke, nor the circumstances which gave
rise to that mood. Yet on the evidence of this passage
and a sonnet of Matthew Arnold's, English readers pass
a swift judgment on "the stern Tertullian " and his "unpity-
ing Phrygian sect." But to the historian of human thought,
and to the student of human character, there are few figures
of more significance in Latin literature. Of the men who
moulded Western Christendom few have stamped themselves
and their ideas upon it with anything approaching the
clearness and the effect of Tertullian. He first turned the
currents of Christian thought in the West into channels in
which they have never yet ceased to flow and will probably
long continue to flow. He was the first Latin churchman,
and his genius helped to shape Latin Christianity. He, too,
was the first great Puritan of the West, precursor alike of
Augustine and of the Reformation. The Catholic Church left
him unread throughout the Middle Ages, but at the Renaissance
he began once more to be studied, and simultaneously there
also began the great movement for the purification of the
church and the deepening of Christian life, which were
the causes to which he had given himself and his
genius.
Such a man may be open to criticism on many sides. He
may be permanently or fitfully wrong in thought or speech or
conduct ; but it is clear that an influence so great rests upon
something more profound than irritability however brilliant in
expression. There must be somewhere in the man something
that corresponds with the enduring thoughts of mankind —
something that engages the mind or that wins the friendship
of men — something that is true and valid. And this, what-
ever it is, is the outcome of many confluent elements — of
temperament, environment and experience, perhaps, in chief.
The man must be seen as his personal friends saw him and as
his enemies saw him ; what is more, they — both sets of them—
must be seen as he saw them. The critic must himself, by
dint of study and imagination, be played upon by as many of
the factors of the man's experience as he can re-capture.
Impressions, pleasures, doubts, hopes, convictions, friendships,
inspirations — everything that goes to shape a man is relevant
to that study of character without which, in the case of
CARTHAGE 307
formative men, history itself becomes pedantry and illusion.
Particularly in the case of such a man as Tertullian is it
needful to repeat this caution. The impetuous dogmatism in
which his mind and, quite as often, his mood express them-
selves, and his hard words, harder a great deal than his heart,
no less than his impulsive convictions, " seem," as Gibbon put
it, " to offend the reason and the humanity of the present age."
On the other side, the church, which the historian in a footnote
saddles with the responsibility of sharing Tertullian's most
harsh beliefs, is at one with " the present age " in repudiating
him on grounds of her own. Yet, questioned or condemned,
Tertullian played his part, and that no little one, in the conflict
of religions ; he stood for truth as he saw it, and wrote and
spoke with little thought of the praise or blame of his
contemporaries or of posterity — all that he had abandoned
once for all, when he made the great choice of his life.
Questioned or condemned, he is representative, and he is
individual, the first man of genius of the Latin race to
follow Jesus Christ, and to re-set his ideas in the language
native to that race.
Tertullian was born about the middle of the second century
A.D. at Carthage, or in its neighbourhood. The city at all
events is the scene of his life — a great city with a great history.
" Tyre in Africa " is one of his phrases for Carthage and her
u sister-cities," and he quotes Virgil's description of Dido's town
studiis asperrima belli.1 But his Carthage was not that of
Dido and Hannibal. It was the re-founded city of Julius
Caesar, now itself two hundred years old — a place with a
character of its own familiar to the reader of Apuleius and
of Augustine's Confessions, — a character confirmed by the
references of Tertullian to its amusements and its daily sights.
" What sea-captain is there that does not carry his mirth even
to the point of shame ? Every day we see the frolics in which
I sailors take their pleasure." 2 Scholars have played with the
| fancy that they could trace in Tertullian's work the influence
I of some Semitic strain, as others with equal reason have found
1 Both of these in de Pallio, i. It may be noted that in allusions to Dido's story
he prefers the non-Virgilian version, more honourable to the Queen ; Afol. 50 ; ad
martyras, 4.
* adv. Valentin. 12.
3o8 TERTULLIAN
traces of the Celt in Virgil and Livy. Tertullian himself has
perhaps even fewer references to Punic speech and people than
Apuleius, while, like Apuleius, he wrote in both Greek and
Latin,1 and it is possible that, like Apuleius, and Perpetua the
martyr, he spoke both.
Jerome tells us that Tertullian was the son of a centurion.2
He tells us himself, incidentally and by implication, that he
was the child of heathen parents. " Idolatry," he says, " is the
midwife that brings all men into the world ; " and he gives a
very curious picture of the pagan ceremonies that went with
child-birth, the fillet on the mother's womb, the cries to Lucina,
the table spread for Juno, the horoscope, and finally the
dedication of a hair of the child, or of all his hair together, as
the rites of clan or family may require.3 Thus from the very
first the boy is dedicated to a genius ', and to the evil he inherits
through the transmission of his bodily nature is added the
influence of a false daemon — " though there still is good innate
in the soul, the archetypal good, divine and germane,
essentially natural ; for what comes from God is not so much
extinguished as overshadowed." 4 The children of Christian
parents have so far, he indicates, a better beginning ; they are
holy in virtue of their stock and of their upbringing.5 With
himself it had not been so. It is curious to find the great
controversialist of later days recalling nursery tales, how " amid
the difficulties of sleep one heard from one's nurse about the
witch's towers and the combs of the sun " — recalling too the
children's witticisms about the apples that grow in the sea and
the fishes that grow on the tree.6 They come back into his
mind as he thinks of the speculations of Valentinus and his
followers.
His education was that of his day, — lavish rhetoric, and
knowledge of that very wide character which in all his
contemporaries is perhaps too suggestive of manual and
1 References to his Greek treatises (all lost) may be found in de cor. mil, 6 ; de
bapt. 15 ; de virg. vet. I.
2 De viris illustribus, sub nomine.
3 de anima 39. 4 Ibid. 41. 5 Ibid. 39.
6 adv. Valent. 3, in infantia inter somni difficultates a nutricula audisse lamia
turres et pectines Salts ; ibid. 20, puerilium dicibulorum in mari poma nasci et in
arbore pisccs.
HIS TRAINING 309
cyclopaedia 1 — works never so abundant in antiquity as then.
But he was well taught, as a brilliant boy deserved, and his
range of interests is remarkable. Nor is he overwhelmed by
miscellaneous erudition, like Aulus Gellius for instance, or like
Clement of Alexandria, to come to a man more on his own
level. He is master of the great literature of Rome ; he has
read the historians and Cicero ; he can quote Virgil with telling
effect. Usque adeone mori miserum est? he asks of the
Christian who hesitates to be martyred ; 2 " a hint from the
world " he says. Sooner or later, he read Varro's books, the
armoury of every Latin Christian against polytheism.
He " looked into medicine," he tells us, and a good many
passages in his treatises remind us of the fact.3 It may help
to explain an explicitness in the use of terms more usual in the
physician perhaps than in the layman.
But his career lay not in medicine but in law, and he
caught the spirit of his profession. It has been debated
whether the Tertullian, whose treatise de castrensi peculio is
quoted in the Digest, is the apologist or another, but no legal
treatises are needed to convince the reader how thoroughly
a lawyer was the author of the theological works. He has
every art and every artifice of his trade. He can reason quietly
and soundly, he can declaim, he can do both together. He is a
master of logic, delighting in huge chains of alternatives. He
can quibble and wrest the obvious meaning of a document to
perfection, browbeat an opponent, argue ad hominem* evade a
clear issue, and anticipate and escape an obvious objection, as
well as any lawyer that ever practised. Again and again he
impresses us as a special pleader, and we feel that he is forcing
us away from the evidence of our own sense and intelligence
to a conclusion which he prefers on other grounds. His
1 e.g. he alludes to a manual on flowers and garlands by Claudius Saturninus,
and another on a similar subject, perhaps, by Leo /Egyptius ; de cor. mil. 7, 12.
Apart from the Christian controversy on the use of flowers, we shall find later on
that he had a keener interest in them than some critics might suppose ; adv. Marc.
i. 13, 14-
2 dejuga, 10.
:J de anima, 2 ; cf. ibid. 10, quotation of a great anatomist Herophilus who dissected
" six hundred " subjects in order to find out Nature's secrets ; also ibid. 25, a dis-
cussion of childbirth to show that the soul does not come into the child with its first
breath ; ibid. 43, a discussion of sleep. Scorpiact, 5, surgery.
4 f.g. the end of adv. Hcrmogenem.
310 TERTULLIAN
epigrams rival Tacitus, and there is even in his rhetoric a
conviction and a passion which Cicero never reaches. The
suddenness of his questions, and the amazing readiness of his
jests, savage, subtle, ironic, good-natured, brilliant or common-
place,1 impress the reader again and again, however well he
knows him. Yet Tertullian never loses sight of his object,
whatever the flights of rhetoric or humour on which he ventures.
In one case, he plainly says that his end will best be achieved
by ridicule. " Put it down, reader, as a sham fight before the
battle. I will show how to deal wounds, but I will not deal
them. If there shall be laughter, the matter itself shall be the
apology. There are many things that deserve so to be
refuted ; gravity would be too high a compliment. Vanity
and mirth may go together. Yes, and it becomes Truth to
laugh, because she is glad, to play with her rivals, because she
is free from fear." 2 Then, with a caution as to becoming
laughter, he launches into his most amusing book — that against
the Valentinians.
Tertullian rivals Apuleius in brilliant mastery of the
elaborate and artificial rhetoric of the day. He has the same
tricks of rhyming clauses and balancing phrases. Thus : attente
custoditiir quod tarde invenitur ; 3 or more fully : spiritus enim
dominatur, caro famulatur ; tamen utrumque inter se communi-
cant reatum, spiritus ob imperium, caro ob ministeriumt Here
the vanities of his pagan training subserve true thought.
Elsewhere they are more playful, as when he suggests to
those, who like the pagans took off their cloaks to pray, that
God heard the three saints in the fiery furnace of the Babylonian
king though they prayed cum sarabaris et tiaris suis — in turbans
and trousers.5 But when he gives us such a string of phrases
as aut Platonis honor •, aut Zenonis vigor \ aut A ristotelis tenor , aut
Epicuri stupor, aut Heracliti moeror, aut Empedoclis furor? one
feels that he is for the moment little better than one of the
wicked. At the beginning of his tract on Baptism, after speaking
1 Puns, e.g., on area, ad Scap. 3 ; on stropha, de Spcct. 29 ; on pleroma, adv. Val.
12. See his nonsense on the tears, salt, sweet, and bituminous, of Achamoth, a
Valentinian figure, adv. Val. 15 ; on " the Milesian tales of his^Eons," de Anima. 23.
a adv. Valent. 6. 3 adv. Valent. I.
4 de baptisntO) 4. 5 de orations t 15.
* de anima, 3.
HIS STYLE 311
of water he pulls himself up abruptly — he is afraid, he says,
that the reader may fancy he is composing laudes aquae (in
the manner of rhetorical adoxography) rather than discussing
the principles of baptism.1 His tract de Pallio is frankly a
humorous excursion into old methods, in which the elderly
Montanist, who has left off wearing the toga, justifies himself
for his highly conservative and entirely suitable conduct in
adopting the pallium. The " stern " Tertullian appears here in
the character that his pagan friends had long ago known, and
that his Christian readers might feel somewhere or other in
everything that he writes. There is a good-tempered playful-
ness about the piece, a fund of splendid nonsense, which suggest
the fellow-citizen of Apuleius rather than the presbyter.'2 But
earnestness, which is not incompatible with humour, is his strong
characteristic, and when it arms itself with an irony so power-
ful as that of Tertullian, the result is amazing. Sometimes he
exceeds all bounds, as when in his Ad Nationes he turns that
irony upon the horrible charges, which the pagans, knowing
them to be false, bring against the Christians, while he, pretend-
ing for the moment that they are true, invites his antagonists
to think them out to their consequences and to act upon them.8
Or again take the speech of Christ on the judgment day, in
which the Lord is pictured as saying that he had indeed en-
trusted the Gospel once for all to the Apostles, but had thought
better of it and made some changes — as of course, Tertullian
suggests, he really would have to say, if it could be supposed
that the latest heretics were right after all.4
But, whatever be said or thought of the rhetoric, playful or
earnest, it has another character than it wears in his con-
temporaries. For here was a far more powerful brain, strong,
clear and well-trained, and a heart whose tenderness and sensi-
bility have never had justice. In some ways he very much
suggests Thomas Carlyle — he has the same passion, the same
vivid imagination and keen sensibility, the same earnestness
and the same loyalty to truth as he sees it regardless of conse-
1 de bapt. 3 (end)
2 On de pallio see Boissier, La Fin du Paganisnie, bk. iii, ch. I.
3 adNatt, i, 7 ; the charges were incest, and child-murder for purposes of magic.
4 de Prescript ione, 44 (end). Similarly of resurrection, virgin-birth, etc.—
ncfgitavi.
312 TERTULLIAN
quence and compromise, — and alas ! the same " natural faculty
for being in a hurry," which Carlyle deplored, and Tertullian
before him — " I, poor wretch, always sick with the fever of
impatience " l — the same fatal gift for pungent phrase, and the
same burning and indignant sympathy for the victim of wrong
and cruelty.2 The beautiful feeling, which he shows in handling
the parables of the lost sheep and the prodigal son, in setting
forth from them the loving fatherhood of God,3 might surprise
some of his critics. Nor has every great Christian of later and
more humane days been capable of writing as he wrote of
victory in battle against foreigners — " Is the laurel of triumph
made of leaves — or the dead bodies of men ? With ribbons is
it adorned — or with graves ? Is it bedewed with unguents, or
the tears of wives and mothers? — perhaps too of some who
are Christians, for even among the barbarians is Christ."4
There are again among his books some which have an appeal
and a tender charm throughout that haunt the reader — that
is, if he has himself passed through any such experience as
will enable him to enter into what was in Tertullian's mind
and heart as he wrote. So truly and intimately does he know
and with such sympathy does he express some of the deepest
religious emotions.6
From time to time Tertullian drops a stray allusion to his
earlier years. He was a pagan — de vestris sumus — " one of
yourselves" (Apol. 18); "the kind of man I was myself once,
blind and without the light of the Lord."6 A Roman city,
and Carthage perhaps in particular, offered to a gifted youth of
Roman ways of thinking endless opportunities of self-indulgence.
Tertullian speaks of what he had seen in the arena — the con-
demned criminal, dressed as some hero or god of the mythology,
mutilated or burned alive, for the amusement of a shouting
1 de Patientia, I , miserrimus ego semper czger caloribus impatienti<f.
2 Cf. his tone as to the scortum, unexampled, so far as I know, in Latin literature,
and only approached in Greek perhaps by Dio Chrysostom — the publics libidinis
hostia (de Sped. 17), publicarum libidinum victims (de cult. fern, ii, 12). He of all
who mention the strange annual scene on the stage, which Cato withdrew to allow,
has pity for the poor women.
s de Panitcntia, 8. * de corona, 12.
5 I refer especially to such passages as de Carne Christi, 4-9, 14 ; de Resurr.
Carnis, 7, 12, etc.
6 de Ptxnit. I, hoc genus hominum quod et ipsi retro fuimus, cad, sine domini
famine.
HIS EARLY LIFE 3,3
audience,1 "exulting in human blood."2 " We have laughed,
amid the mocking cruelties of noonday, at Mercury as he
examined the bodies of the dead with his burning iron ; we
have seen Jove's brother too, with his mallet, hauling out the
corpses of gladiators."3 In later days when he speaks of such
things, he shudders and leaves the subject rather than remember
(what he has seen — malo non implere quam memint'sse* He
knew the theatre of the Roman city — " the consistory of all
! uncleanness " he calls it. " Why should it be lawful (for a
| Christian)," he asked, "to see what it is sin to do? Why
I should the things, which ' coming out of the mouth defile a
i man,' seem not to defile a man when he takes them in through
I eyes and ears?"5 He speaks of Tragedies and Comedies,
i teaching guilt and lust, bloody and wanton ; and the reader of
the Golden Ass can recall from fiction cases wonderfully
illuminative of what could have been seen in fact. When he
apostrophizes the sinner, he speaks of himself. "You," he
cries, " you, the sinner, like me — no ! less sinner than I, for I
recognize my own pre-eminence in guilt"6 He is, he says,
" a sinner of every brand, born for nothing but repentance." 7
To say, with Professor Hort, on the evidence of such passages
ithat Tertullian was " apparently a man of vicious life " might
involve a similar condemnation of Bunyan and St Paul ; while
to find the charge "painfully " confirmed by " the foulness which
ever afterwards infested his mind " is to exaggerate absurdly
in the first place, and in the second to forget such parallels as
iSwift and Carlyle, who both carried explicit speech to a point
;beyond ordinary men, while neither is open to such a suggestion
as that brought against Tertullian. With such cases as
jApuleius, Hadrian or even Julius Caesar before us, it is im-
possible to maintain that Tertullian's early life must have been
(spotless, but it is possible to fancy more wrong than there was.
The excesses of a man of genius are generally touched by the
1 Apol. 15, cf. ad Natt. i, 10, another draft of the same matter.
8 de Spect. 19, eamus in amphitheatrum . . . delcctemur sanguine humano
(ironically).
8 Apol. 15. The burning-iron was to see whether any life were left in the
fallen.
4 de Spect. 19 (end). 5 de Sptctaculis, 17.
* de Pcmit. 4.
7 de Panit. 12, peuator omnium notarum, rue ulli ret nisi panittntim natus.
314 TERTULLIAN
imagination, and therein lies at once their peculiar danger, and
also something redemptive that promises another future.
Tertullian at any rate married — when, we cannot say ; but,
as a Christian and a Montanist, he addressed a book to his
wife, and in his De Anima he twice alludes to the ways of
small infants in a manner which suggests personal knowledge.
In the one he speaks with curious observation of the sense-
perception of very young babies ; in the other he appeals to
their movements in sleep, their tremors and smiles, as evidence
that they also have dreams. Such passages if met in
Augustine's pages would not so much surprise us. They
suggest that the depth and tenderness of Tertullian's nature
have not been fully understood.1
Meanwhile, whatever his amusements, the young lawyer
had his serious interests. If he was already acquiring the
arts of a successful pleader, the more real aspects of Law were
making their impression upon him. The great and ordered
conceptions of principle and harmony, which fill the minds of
reflective students of law in all ages, were then reinforced by
the Stoic teaching of the unity of Nature in the indwelling of
the Spermaticos Logos with its universal scope and power.
Law and Stoicism, in this union, formed the mind and char-
acter of Tertullian. In later days, under the stress of con-
troversy (which he always enjoyed) he could find points in
which to criticize his Stoic teachers ; but the contrast between
the language he uses of Plato and his friendliness (for instance)
for Seneca s&pe noster^ is suggestive. But that is not all. A
Roman lawyer could hardly speculate except in the terms of
Stoicism — it was his natural and predestined language. Above
all, the constant citation of Nature by Tertullian shows who
had taught him in the first instance to think.
When, years after, in 2 1 2 A.D., he told Scapula that " it is
a fundamental human right, a privilege of Nature, that any |
and every man should worship what he thinks right," he had
sub-consciously gone back to the great Stoic Jus Natures?
1 de anima, 19 and 49. Add his words on the wife taken away by death, cut
ttiam religiosiorem reseruas affectioncm, etc., de exh. cast. II.
2 de anima, 20. Cf. ibid. 17, on the moderation of the Stoics, as compared with
Plato, in their treatment of the fidelity of the senses.
3 ad Scap. 2. Tamen humani tun's et naturalis potestatis est unicuique quod pula-
vtrit colere.
THE EVIDENCE OF NATURE 315
(Nature is the original authority — side by side, he would say
in his later years, with the inspired word of God, — yet even so
r it was not the pen of Moses that initiated the knowledge of
the Creator. . . . The vast majority of mankind, though they
have never heard the name of Moses — to say nothing of his
Ipook — know the God of Moses none the less." 1 One of his
favourite arguments rests on what he calls the testimonium
\inimce naturaliter Christiana — the testimony of the soul
Miich in its ultimate and true nature is essentially Christian ;
|ind this argument rests on his general conception of Nature.
Let a man " reflect on the majesty of Nature, for it is from
(Nature that the authority of the soul comes. What you give
|to the teacher, you must allow to the pupil. Nature is the
teacher, the soul the pupil. And whatever the one has taught
or the other learnt, comes from God, who is the teacher of the
teacher (i.e. Nature) " ; 2 and neither God nor Nature can lie.8
An extension of this is to be found in his remark, in a much
more homely connexion, that if the " common consciousness "
'conscientia communis) be consulted, we shall find " Nature
itself" teaching us that mind and soul are livelier and more
ntelligent when the stomach is not heavily loaded.4 The
appeal to the consensus of men. as the expression of the
universal and the natural, and therefore as evidence to truth, is
essentially Stoic.
Over and over he lays stress upon natural law. " All
filings are fixed in the truth of God," ft he says, and " our God
is the God of Nature."6 He identifies the natural and the
rational — " all the properties of God must be rational just as
they are natural," that is a clear principle (reguld] ; 7 " the
rational element must be counted natural because it is native
to the soul from the beginning — coming as it does from a
rational author (auctore)"* He objects to Marcion that
Everything is so " sudden " — so spasmodic — in his scheme of
things.9 For himself, he holds with Paul (" doth not Nature
teach you ? ") that " law is natural and Nature legal," that
1 adv. Marc, i, 10, major popularitas generis humani.
-de testim. anima:, 5. n de test. an. 6.
4 dejejunio, 6. * de spectaculis, 20.
6 decor, mil. 5, Natures deus noster est.
''adv. Marc, i, 23. *de anima, 16. **dv. Marc, iii, 2; hr, II.
316 TERTULLIAN
God's law is published in the universe, and written on the
natural tables of the heart.1
This clear and strong conception of Nature gives him a
sure ground for dealing with antagonists. There were those
who denied the reality of Christ's body, and declaimed upon
the ugly and polluting features in child-birth — could the
incarnation of God have been subjected to this ? 2 But Nature
needs no blush — Natura veneranda est non erubescenda ; there is
nothing shameful in birth or procreation, unless there is lust.3
On the contrary, the travailing woman should be honoured for
her peril, and counted holy as Nature suggests.4 Here once
more we have an instance of Tertullian's sympathy and
tenderness for woman, whom he perhaps never includes in
his most sweeping attacks and condemnations. Similarly,
he is not carried away by the extreme asceticism of the
religions of his day into contempt for the flesh. It is the
setting in which God has placed " the shadow of his own soul,
the breath of his own spirit " — can it really be so vile ? Yet
is the soul set, or not rather blended and mingled with the
flesh, " so that it may be questioned whether the flesh carries
the soul or the soul the flesh, whether the flesh serves the
soul, or the soul serves the flesh. . . . What use of Nature,
what enjoyment of the universe, what savour of the elements,
does the soul not enjoy by the agency of the flesh ? " Think,
he says, of the services rendered to the soul by the senses, by
speech, by all the arts, interests and ingenuities dependent
on the flesh ; think of what the flesh does by living and
dying.5 The Jove of Phidias is not the world's great deity,
because the ivory is so much, but because Phidias is so great ;
and did God give less of hand and thought, of providence and
love, to the matter of which he made man ? Whatever shape
the clay took, Christ was in his mind as the future man.0
Some of these passages come from works of Tertullian's
later years, when he was evidently leaning more than of old
to ascetic theory. They are therefore the more significant.
1 de cor. mil. 6, et legtm naturalem suggerit et naturam legalem.
a Cf. de carne Christi, 4. 3 de anima, 27.
4 de carne Christi, 4, ipsum mulieris enitentis ptidorem vel pr» periculo honor-
undum vel pro natura rcligiosum.
*de Resurr. Car/it's, 7. • Ibid. 6.
THE GOODNESS OF THE CREATOR 317
jlf he wrote as a pagan at all, what he wrote is lost ; but it is
|not pushing conjecture too far to suggest that his interest in
iStoicism precedes his Christian period, when such an interest
is so clearly more akin to the bent of the Roman lawyer than
jthe Christian of the second century.
The rationality and the order of the Universe are common-
Iplaces of Stoic teachers, and, in measure, its beauty. Of this
(last Tertullian shows in a remarkable passage how sensible he
jwas. Marcion condemns the God who created this world.
But, says Tertullian, " one flower of the hedge-row by itself, I
jthink — I do not say a flower of the meadows ; one shell of any
sea you like, — I do not say the Red Sea ; one feather of a
jmoor-fowl — to say nothing of a peacock, — will they speak to
(you of a mean Creator ? " " Copy if you can the buildings of
the bee, the barns of the ant, the webs of the spider." What
of sky, earth and sea ? " If I offer you a rose, you will not
iscorn its Creator ! " l It is surely possible to feel more than the
controversialist here. " It was Goodness that spoke the word ;
Goodness that formed man from the clay into this consistency
of flesh, furnished out of one material with so many qualities ;
Goodness that breathed into him a soul, not dead, but alive ;
iGoodness that set him over all things, to enjoy them, to rule
ithem, even to give them their names ; Goodness, too, that went
further and added delight to man . . . and provided a help-
meet for him." 2
Of his conceptions of law something will be said at a later
point. It should be clear however that a man with such
interests in a profession, in speculation, in the beauty and the
(law of Nature, could hardly at any time be a careless hedonist,
leven if, like most men converted in mid-life, he knows regret
and repentance.
On the side of religion, little perhaps can be said. He had
jlaughed at the gods burlesqued in the arena. To Mithras
iperhaps he gave more attention. In discussing the soldier's
(crown he is able to quote an analogy from the rites of Mithras,
|in which a crown was rejected, and in which one grade of
1 adv. Marcion. i, 13, 14. Compare the beautiful picture at the end of de Oratione,
iof the little birds flying up, " spreading out the cross of their wings instead of hands,
and saying something that seems to be prayer."
2 adv. Marc, ii, 4.
318 TERTULLIAN
initiates were known as " soldiers." 1 Elsewhere he speaks of the
oblation of bread and the symbol of resurrection in those rites,
" and, if I still remember, Mithras there seals his soldiers on
the brow." 2 Si memini is a colloquialism, which should not be
pressed, but the adhuc inserted may make it a more real and
personal record.
To Christian ideas he gave little attention. There were
Christians round about him, no doubt in numbers, but they did
not greatly interest him. He seems, however, to have looked
somewhat carelessly into their teaching, but he laughed at
resurrection, at judgment and retribution in an eternal life.3
He was far from studying the Scriptures — " nobody," he said
later on, " comes to them unless he is already a Christian." 4
Justin devoted about a half of his Apology to prove the fulfil-
ment of Old Testament prophecy in the life of Jesus — an
Apology addressed to a pagan Emperor. Tertullian, in his
Apology, gives four chapters to the subject, and one of these
seems to be an alternative draft. The difference is explained
by Justin's narrative of his conversion, in which he tells us how
it was by the path of the Scriptures and Judaism that he, like
Tatian and Theophilus, came to the church. Tertullian's story
is different, and, not expecting pagans to pay attention to a
work in such deplorable style 5 as the Latin Bible, which he had
himself ignored, he used other arguments, the weight of which
he knew from experience. In his de Pallio, addressed to a
pagan audience, as we have seen, he alludes to Adam and the
fig-leaves, but he does not mention Adam's name and rapidly
passes on — "But this is esoteric — nor is it everybody's to know
it."6
Tertullian is never autobiographical except by accident,
yet it is possible to gather from his allusions how he became a
Christian. In his address to Scapula 7 he says that the first
governor to draw the sword on the Christians of Africa was
Vigellius Saturninus. Dr Armitage Robinson's discovery of
the original Latin text of the Acts of the Scillitan Martyrs > who
1 de cor. mil. 15. 2 de prase r. 40, et si adhuc memini ', Mithra signat, etc.
3 Apol. 1 8. H<zc et nos risimus aliquando. De vestris sumus.
4 de test. animce, I.
5 So Arnobius (i, 58, 59) and Augustine felt. Tertullian does not complain of the
style himself, but it was a real hindrance to many.
6 de Pallio, 3, Sed arcana ista nee omnium nosse. ad Scap. 3-
THE MARTYRS 3,9
Buffered under Saturninus, has enabled us to put a date to the
fevent, for we read that it took place in the Consulship of
|Praesens (his second term) and of Claudianus — that is in 1 80
|\.DM the year of the death of Marcus Aurelius. These Acts are
pf the briefest and most perfunctory character. One after
linother, a batch of quite obscure Christians in the fewest
bossible words confess their faith, are condemned, say Deo
firatias, and then — " so all of them were crowned together in
jnartyrdom and reign with the Father and the Son and the Holy
ispirit for ever and ever. Amen." That is all. They were
jnen and women, some of them perhaps of Punic extraction —
j^artzalus and Cittinus have not a Roman sound. After this,
t would seem that in Africa, as elsewhere, persecution recurred
ntermittently ; it might be the governor who began it, or the
:hance cry of an unknown person in a mob, and then the people,
vild and sudden as the Gadarene swine and for the same reason
Christians said),1 would fling themselves into unspeakable
orgies of bloodshed and destruction. What was more, no one
ould foretell the hour — it might be years before it happened
igain ; it might be now. And the Christians were surprisingly
eady, whenever it came.
Sometimes they argued a little, sometimes they said hardly
nything. Christiana sum, was all that one of the Scillitan
i/omen said. But one thing struck everybody — their firmness,
vstinatw.2 Some, like the philosophic Emperor, might call it
perversity ; he, as we have seen, found it thin and theatrical,
nd contrasted it with " the readiness " that " proceeded from
riward conviction, of a temper rational and grave " 3 — an interest-
hg judgment from the most self-conscious and virtuous of
len. On other men it made a very different impression — on
pen, that is, more open than the Caesar of the passionless face 4
p impression, men of a more sensitive and imaginative make,
uicker in penetrating the feeling of others.
Tertullian, in two short passages, written at different dates,
hows how the martyrs — perhaps these very Scillitan martyrs
" The devils entered into the swine." Cf. p. 164.
2 Pliny to Trajan, 96, 3, pcrtinaciam et infiexibilem obstinationtm.
\ * Marcus Aurelius, xi, 3. Cf. Aristides, Or. 46, who attributes aOOddtia to
tv rrj Ha\aiffTii>T] 8vffff€^ely.
I * Hist. August. M. Anton. 1 6, Erat enim ipsc tanta tranquillitatis ut vultum
mutavcrit niarorc vel gaudio.
320 TERTULLIAN
— moved him. " That very obstinacy with which you taunt
us, is your teacher. For who is not stirred up by the con-
templation of it to find out what there is in the thing within ?
who, when he has found out, does not draw near ? and then,
when he has drawn near, desire to suffer, that he may gain
the whole grace of God, that he may receive all forgiveness
from him in exchange for his blood ? " * So he wrote in
197-8 A.D., and fourteen years later his last words to Scapula
were in the same tenor — " None the less this school (secta) will
never fail — no ! you must learn that then it is built up the
more, when it seems to be cut down. Every man, who
witnesses this great endurance, is struck with some mis-
giving and is set on fire to look into it, to find what is
its cause ; and when he has learnt the truth, he instantly
follows it himself as well."2 It would be hard to put
into a sentence so much history and so much character
Et ipse statim sequitur.
The martyrs made him uneasy (scrupulo]. There must be
more behind than he had fancied from the little he had seen
and heard of their teaching. " No one would have wished tc
be killed unless in possession of the truth," he says.3 In spite
of his laughter at resurrection and judgment, he was not sure
about them. When he speaks in later life of the naturals
timor anima in deum* — that instinctive fear of God which
Nature has set in the soul — he is probably not himself without
consciousness of sharing here too the common experienaj
of men ; and this is amply confirmed by the frequency anc|
earnestness with which he speaks of things to come aftei
death. Here however were men who had not this fear
Their obstinacy was his teacher. He looked for the reason, h<j
learned the truth and he followed it at once. That energy i:
his character — to be read in all he does. Like Carlyle's hi:
writings have "the signature of the writer in every word.
1 Apol. 50, Ilia ipsa obstinatio quam exprobratis magistra est. Quis cnim n& >
contemplations eius concutitur ad requirendum quid intus in re sit! gut's non ttt
requisivit accedit ? ubi accessit pati cxoptat, etc.
2 ad. Scap. 5. Quisquc enim tantam tolerantiam spectans, ut aliquo scrupui
percussus, et inquirere accenditur, quid sit in causa, et ubi cognoverit verttattm «:
ipse statim sequitur.
3 Scorpiacc, 8 (end).
4 de testim. anima;, 2. Cf. de cult. fern, ii, 2, Timor fundament uni salutis est,
IDOLATRY 32I
" It is the idlest thing in the world," he says, " for a man to
say, ' I wished it and yet I did not do it.' You ought to
carry it through (perficere) because you wish it, or else not to
wish it at all because you do not carry it through."1 And
again : " Why debate ? God commands." 2 Tertullian obeyed,
and ever after he felt that men had only to look into the
matter, to learn and to obey. " All who like you were
[ignorant in time past, and like you hated, — as soon as it
falls to their lot to know, they cease to hate who cease to be
lignorant." 3
Tertullian's tract On Idolatry illustrates his mind upon this
decisive change. There he deals with Christians who earn their
[living by making idols — statuaries, painters, gilders, and the
jlike ; and when the plea is suggested that they must live and
jhave no other way of living, he indignantly retorts that they
•should have thought this out before. Vivere ergo habes ? 4
\Must you live ? he asks. Elsewhere he says " there are no
musts where faith is concerned." 5 The man who claims to
jbe condicionalis* to serve God on terms, Tertullian cannot
tolerate. " Christ our Master called himself Truth — not
Convention." 7 Every form of idolatry must be renounced,
and idolatry took many forms. The schoolmaster and the
professor litterarum were almost bound to be disloyal to Christ ;
fill their holidays were heathen festivals, and their very fees
fri part due to Minerva ; while their business was to instruct
the youth in the literature and the scandals of Olympus. But
might not one study pagan literature? and, if so, why not
ceach it? Because, in teaching it, a man is bound, by his
position, to drive heathenism deep into the minds of the
Lroung ; in personal study he deals with no one but himself,
^nd can judge and omit as he sees fit.8 The dilemma of
choosing between literature and Christ was a painful thing for
fnen of letters for centuries after this.9 So Tertullian lays
down the law for others ; what for himself?
1 de Ptenitentia, 3. 2 de Panit. 4. Quid revolvis ? Deu s prxcipit.
3 adNatt. i, i. 4 de Idol. 5.
5 de cor. mil. 1 1, non admittit status Jidei ttecessitates. 6 de Idol. 12.
7 de virg. vel. I, Domitms noster Christus veritattm se non consueiudincm
pgnominavtt.
8 de Idol. 10. 9 See the correspondence of Ausonius and Taulinus.
21
322 TERTULLIAN
Under the Empire there were two ways to eminence, the
bar and the camp, and Tertullian had chosen the former. His
rhetoric, his wit, his force of mind, and his strong grasp of legal
principles in general and the issue of the moment in particular,
might have carried him far. He might have risen as high as
a civilian could. It was a tempting prospect, — the kingdoms
of the world and the glory of them — and he renounced it ; and
never once in all the books that have come down to us, does
he give any hint of looking back, never so much as suggests
that he had given up anythiug. Official life was full of
religious usage, full too of minor duties of ritual which a
Christian might not discharge. Tertullian was not the first to
see this. A century earlier Flavius Clemens, the cousin of
Domitian, seems to have been a Christian — Dio Cassius speaks
of his atheism and Jewish practices, and Suetonius remarks upon
his " contemptible inertia," though he was consul.1 In other
words, the Emperor's cousin found that public life meant
compromise at every step. This is Tertullian's decision of
the case — it has the note of his profession about it. " Let us
grant that it is possible for a man successfully to manage that,
whatever office it be, he bears merely the title of that office ;
that he does not sacrifice, nor lend his authority to sacrifices,
nor make contracts as to victims, nor delegate the charge of
temples, nor look after their tributes ; that he does not give
shows (spectacula] at his own or the public cost, nor preside over
them when being given ; that he makes no proclamation or edict
dealing with a festival ; that he takes no oath ; that — and these
are the duties of a magistrate — he does not sit in judgment on
any man's life or honour (for you might bear with his judging |
in matters of money) ; that he pronounces no sentence of con-
demnation nor any [as legislator] that should tend to condemna-
tion ; that he binds no man, imprisons no man, tortures 2 no
man " — if all this can be managed, a Christian may be a
magistrate.3 Tertullian made his renunciation and held no
magistracy. It may be said that, as he held none, it was easy
to renounce it ; but hopes are often harder to renounce than
realities. So Tertullian left the law and the Stoics, to study
1 Dio Cassius, 67, 14 ; Suetonius, Domit. 15 ; Eusebius, E.H. iii, 18. See E. G.
Hardy, Studies in Xoman History, ch. v., pp. 66, 67.
2 To obtain evidence— legal in the case of slaves. ;; de, Idol. 17.
THE DANGERS OF THE CHRISTIAN 323
the Scriptures, Justin and Irenaeus * — the Bible and the regula
fidei his new code, and the others his commentators. The
Christian is " a stranger in this world, a citizen of the city above,
of Jerusalem " ; his ranks, his magistracies, his senate are the
Church of Christ ; his purple the blood of his Lord, his laticlave
in His cross.2
But Tertullian could speak, on occasion, of what he had
done. "We have no fear or terror of what we may suffer
I from those who do not know," he wrote to Scapula, " for we
I have joined this school (sectam) fully accepting the terms of
our agreement ; so that we come into these conflicts with no
[further right to our own souls."3 The contest was, as he says
|elsewhere, " against the institutions of our ancestors, the
authority of usage, the laws of rulers, the arguments of the
wise ; against antiquity, custom, necessity ; against precedents,
(prodigies and miracles,"4 and he did not need Celsus to
iremind him what form the resistance of the enemy
imight take. He knew, for he had seen, and that was
[why he stood where he did. But it is worth our while
jto understand how vividly he realized the possibilities
before him.
There were the private risks of informers and blackmailers,
Jews r> and soldiers, to which the Christians were exposed.6
tThey were always liable to be trapped in their meetings —
P every day we are besieged ; every day we are betrayed ;
jnost of all in our actual gatherings and congregations are
[ve surprised." 7 How are we to meet at all, asks the anxious
Christian, unless we buy off the soldiers ? By night, says
[Tertullian, " or let three be your church." 8 Then- came the
Appearance before the magistrate, where everything turned on
;he character or the mood of the official. Tertullian quotes
o Scapula several instances of kindness on the bench, rough
tnd ready, or high-principled.9 Anything might happen—
1 Cf. adv. Valentin. 5.
8 decor, mil. 13, clavus latus in cruce ipsitis. There is a suggestion of a play
jpon words.
3 ad Scap. i, opening sentence of the tract. * ad Nat. ii, I.
1 Apol. 7. Cf. Scorp. 10, synagogas Judt£omm fontes pcrsccutionum.
6 Cf. defuga, 12 ; ad Scap. 5. 7 Apol. 7.
8 dcfaga, 14, sit tibi et in tribus ecclesia.
' ad Scap. 4.
324 TERTULLIAN
" then," wrote Perpetua, " he had all our names recited together
and condemned us to the beasts."1
What followed in the arena may be read in various Acts
of Martyrdom — in the story of Perpetua herself, as told in
tense and quiet language by Tertullian. He, it is generally
agreed, edited her visions, preserving what she wrote as she
left it, and adding in a postscript what happened when she
had laid down her pen for ever. The scene with the beasts
is not easy to abridge, and though not long in itself it is too
long to quote here ; but no one who has read it will forget
the episode of Saturus drenched in his own blood from the
leopard's bite, amid the yells of the spectators, Salvmn lotum !
salvum lotum ! nor that of Perpetua and Felicitas, mothers
both, one a month or so, the other three days, stripped naked
to be tossed by a wild cow. And here comes a curious
touch ; the mob, with a superficial delicacy, suggested cloth-
ing ; rough cloths were put over the women, and the cow
was let loose ; they were tossed, and then all were put to the
sword.
" At this present moment," writes Tertullian, " it is the
very middle of the heat, the very dog-days of persecution—
as you would expect, from the dog-headed himself, of course.
\ Some Christians have been tested by the fire, some by the
sword, some by the beasts ; some, lashed and torn with hooks,
have just tasted martyrdom, and lie hungering for it in
prison." 2 Cross, hook, aricT beasts 3 — the circus, the prison,
the rack4 — the vivicomburium? burning alive — and mean- j
while the renegade Jew is there with his placard of the "god 1
of the Christians," an ugly caricature with the ears and one j
hoof of an ass, clad in a toga, book in hand6 — the Gnostic ;
and the nervous Christian are asking whether the text " flee
ye to the next " may not be God's present counsel — and
meantime " faith glows and the church is burning like the ,
bush." 7 Yet, says Tertullian to the heathen, " we say, and j
we say it openly, — while you are torturing us, torn and bleed- ,
ing, we cry aloud * We worship God through Christ.' "
1 Passio Perpetual, 6. * Scorpiace, I. 3 Apol. 30. 4 Scorp. 10.
6 de anima> I. fi Apol. 16 ; ad Nat f. i, 14.
7 Scorpiace, I ; the reference is to Moses' bush, nee tanten consnmebafur.
8 ApoL 21.
ON MARTYRDOM 32 s
the Christian he says : " The command is given to me to
name no other God, whether by act of hand, or word of
tongue . . . save the One alone, whom I am bidden to fear,
lest he forsake me ; whom I am bidden to love with all my
being, so as to die for him. I am his soldier, sworn to his
service, and the enemy challenge me. I am as they are, if
I surrender to them. In defence of my allegiance I fight it
out to the end in the battle-line, I am wounded, I fall, I am
killed. Who wished this end for his soldier — who but he
who sealed him with such an oath of enlistment ? There you
have the will of my God." 1 " And therefore the Paraclete is
needed, to guide into all truth, to animate for all endurance.
Those, who receive him, know not to flee persecution, nor to
buy themselves off; they have him who will be with us, to
speak for us when we are questioned, to help us when we
suffer." - " He who fears to suffer cannot be his who
suffered." - The tracts On Flight in Persecution and The
Antidote for the Scorpion are among his most impressive
pieces. They must have been read by his friends with a
strange stirring of the blood. Even to-day they bring back
the situation — living as only genius can make it live.
But what of the man of genius who wrote them ? At
what cost were they written ? " Picture the martyr," he
writes, " with his head under the sword already poised, picture
him on the gibbet his body just outspread, picture him tied
to the stake when the lion has just been granted, on the
wheel with the faggots piled about him " 3 — and no doubt
Tertullian saw these things often enough, with that close
realization of each detail of shame and pain which is only
possible to so vivid and sensitive an imagination. He saw
himself tied to the stake — heard the governor in response to
the cry Christiano leonem 4 concede the lion — and then had to
wait, how long ? How long would it take to bring and to
let loose the lion ? How long would it seem ? Through all
this he went, in his mind, not once, nor twice. And mean-
while, what was the audience doing, while he stood there tied,
1 Scorpiact, 4 (end). 2 defuga, 14 (both passages).
3 de pudicitia, 22.
* For this cry in various forms see ApoL 40 ; de res. earn. 22 ; de exh. castit.
12; de sped. 27, convent™ et cactus . . . illic quotidianiin not /tones expostulanlur.
326 TERTULLIAN
waiting interminably for the lion ? He knew what they
would be doing, for he had seen it, and in the passage at the
end of de Spectaculis, which Gibbon quotes, every item of the
description of the spectator is taken in irony from the actual
circus. No man, trained, as the public speaker or pleader
must be, to respond intimately and at once to the feelings
and thoughts, expressed or unexpressed, of the audience,
could escape realizing in heightened tension every possibility
of anguish in such a crowd of hostile faces, full of frantic
hatred,1 cruelty and noise. To this Tertullian looked forward,
as we have seen, and went onward — as another did who
" steadfastly set his face for Jerusalem." The test of emotion
is what it has survived, and Tertullian's faith in Christ and
his peace of mind survived this martyrdom through the
imagination. Whatever criticism has to be passed upon his
work and spirit, to some of his critics he might reply
( Ye have not yet resisted unto blood, striving against
sin."
So much did martyrdom mean to the individual, yet it
was not merely a personal affair. It was God's chosen way
to propagate his church — so it had been foretold, and so it
was fulfilled. " Nothing whatever is achieved," says Tertullian
to the heathen, " by each more exquisite cruelty you invent ; 'l
on the contrary, it wins men for our school. We are made
more as often as you mow us down ; the blood of Christians
is seed." 3
Sixteen centuries or so later, Thoreau in his Plea for
Captain John Brown, a work not unlike Tertullian's own in its
force, its surprises, its desperate energy and high conviction,
wrote similarly of the opponents of another great movement
" Such do not know that like the seed is the fruit, and that in
the moral world, when good seed is planted, good fruit is
inevitable, and does not depend on our watering and cultivat-
ing ; that when you plant, or bury, a hero in his field, a crop
of heroes is sure to spring up. This is a seed of such
1 Scorpiace, II, ecce auiem et odio habemur ab omnibus hominibus nominis causa ;
de anima, I, non unius urbis sed tini7)ersi orbis iniquam sententiam sustitiens pro
nomine veritatis.
2 Cf. de aninia, I, de patibuLo ct vivicomburio per o/nne ingeniwn <~rude!itatts
exhauriat.
n Apol. 50, semen est sanguis Ckristianorum.
ON BAPTISM 327
force and vitality, that it does not ask our leave to
germinate."
There were yet other possibilities in martyrdom. It was
believed by Christians that in baptism the sins of the earlier
life were washed away ; but what of sins after baptism ? They
involved a terrible risk — "the world is destined to fire like
the man who after baptism renews his sins"1 — and it was
often felt safer to defer baptism to the last moment in conse-
quence. Constantine was baptized on his death-bed. " The
postponement of baptism is more serviceable especially in the
case of children ; " says Tertullian, " let them become Christians
when they shall be able to know Christ. Why should the
innocent age hasten to the remission of sins ? " : As to sins
committed after baptism, different views were held. In general,
as the church grew larger and more comprehensive, it took a
lighter view of sin, but Tertullian and his Montanist friends
did not, and for this they have been well abused, in their own
day and since. They held that adultery and apostasy were
not venial matters, to be forgiven by a bishop issuing an
" edict," like a Pontifex Maximus, in the legal style, " I forgive
the sins of adultery and fornication to such as have done
penance, pcenitentia functis" 3 The Montanist alternative was
not so easy ; God, they held, permitted a second baptism,
which should be final — a baptism of blood. " God had fore-
seen the weaknesses of humanity, the strategems of the enemy,
the deceitfulness of affairs, the snares of the world — that faith
even after baptism would be imperilled, that many would be
lost again after being saved — who should soil the wedding
dress, and provide no oil for their lamps, who should yet have
to be sought over mountain and forest, and carried home on
the shoulders. He therefore appointed a second consolation,
a last resource, the fight of martyrdom and the baptism of
blood, thereafter secure."4 This view may not appeal to us
to-day ; it did not appeal to Gnostic, time-server and coward.
The philosophy of sin involved is hardly deep enough, but
1 de Bapt. 8. '2 Ibid- l8'
:' Ironic chapter in de pudicitia, i. The edict is a technical term of the state,
and the Pent if ex Maximus was the Emperor, till Gratian refused the title in
375 A.D.
4 Scorpiace, 6 ; cf. de Bapt. 16.
328 TERTULLIAN
this doctrine of the second baptism cannot be said to lack
virility.
But Tertullian himself did not receive the first baptism with
any idea of looking for a second. Like men who are baptized
of their own motion and understanding, he was greatly im-
pressed by baptism. " There is nothing," he says, " which
more hardens the minds of men than the simplicity of God's
works, which appears in the doing, and the magnificence,
which is promised in the effect. Here too, because, with such
simplicity, without pomp, without any novel apparatus, and
without cost, a man is sent down into the water and baptized,
while but a few words are spoken, and rises again little or
nothing cleaner, on that account his attainment of eternity is
thought incredible."1 It must be felt that the illustration
declines from the principle. It may also be remarked that this
is a more magical view of baptism than would have appealed
to Seneca or to his contemporaries in the Christian movement,
and that, as it is developed, it becomes even stranger.
Tertullian's description of baptism is of interest in the
history of the rite. The candidate prepares himself with prayer,
watching and the confession of sin.2 " The waters receive the
mystery (sacramentum) of sanctification, when God has been
called upon. The Spirit comes at once from heaven and is
upon the waters, sanctifying them from himself, and so sancti-
fied they receive [combibunf] the power of sanctifying." 3 This
is due to what to-day we should call physical causes. The
underlying matter, he says, must of necessity absorb the
quality of the overlying, especially when the latter is spiritual,
and therefore by the subtlety of its substance more penetrative.4
We may compare " the enthusiastic spirit," which, Plutarch
tells us, came up as a gas from the chasm at Delphi,5 and
further the general teaching of Tertullian (Stoic in origin) of
the corporeity of the soul and of similar spiritual beings. He
illustrates the influence of the Spirit in thus affecting the
waters of baptism by the analogy of the unclean spirits that
haunt streams and fountains, natural and artificial, and similarly
affect men, though for evil — " lest any should think it a hard
thing that God's holy angel should be present to temper
1 de Bapt. 2. 3 Ibid. 20. 3 Ibid. 4.
4 Ibid. 4. •• Cf. p. 102.
RENOUNCING THE WORLD 320
waters for man's salvation." l Thus when the candidate has
solemnly " renounced the devil, his pomp and his angels," - he
is thrice plunged,3 his spirit is washed corporeally by the waters
" medicated " and his flesh spiritually is purified.4 " It is not
that in the waters we receive the Holy Spirit, but purified in
water under the angel, we are prepared for the Holy Spirit. . . .
The angel, that is arbiter of baptism, prepares the way for
the Spirit that shall come." 5 On leaving the water the Christian
is anointed (signaculuni). The hand of blessing is laid upon
him, and in response to prayer the Holy Spirit descends with
joy from the Father to rest upon the purified and blest.6
Tertullian never forgot the baptismal pledge in which he
renounced the devil, his pomp and his angels ; and, for his
part, he never showed any tendency to make compromise with
them — when he recognized them, for sometimes he seems not
to have penetrated their disguises. Again and again his pledge
comes back to him. What has the Christian to do with circus
or theatre, who has renounced the devil, his pomp and his
angels, when both places are specially consecrated to these,
when there, above all, wickedness, lust and cruelty reign with-
out reserve ? 7 How can the maker of idols, the temple-painter,
etc., be said to have renounced the devil and his angels, if they
make their living by them ? 8 We have seen the difficulty of
the schoolmaster here. The general question of trade troubles
Tertullian — its cupidity, the lie that ministers to cupidity, to
say nothing of perjury.9 Of astrologers, he would have thought,
nothing needed to be said — but that he had " within these
few days " heard some one claim the right to continue in the
profession. He reminds him of the source of his magical in-
formation— the fallen angels.10 One must not even name them
—to say Medius fidius is idolatry, for it is a prayer ; but to
say " I live in the street of Isis " is not sin — it is sense.11 Many
inventions were attributed by pagans to their gods. If every
implement of life is set down to some god, " yet I still must
recognize Christ lying on a couch — or when he brings a basin
1 de Bapt. 5. - de Spectac. 4 ; de cor. mil. 3.
3 de cor. mil. 3, ter mergitamnr. 4 de Bapt. 4. 5 Ibid. 6.
9 de Bapt. 8. For other minor details as to food and bathing see de for. mil. 3.
7 de Spectac. 4. 8 de Idol. 6.
9 de Idol. ii. Cf. Hernias. Mandate, 3, on lying in business.
10 de Idol. 9. n Ibid. 20.
330 TERTULLIAN
to his disciples' feet, or pours water from the jug, and is girded
with linen — Osiris' own peculiar garb." 1 In fact, common
utility, and the service of ordinary needs and comforts, may
lead us to look upon things (to whomsoever attributed) as
really due to the inspiration of God himself " who foresees,
instructs and gives pleasure to man, who is after all His own." 2
Thus common sense and his doctrine of Nature come to his
aid. " So amid rocks and bays, amid the shoals and breakers
of idolatry, faith steers her course, her sails rilled by the Spirit
of God." 3
Tertullian had been a lawyer and a pleader, as we are
reminded in many a page, where the man of letters is over-
ridden by the man of codes and arguments ; and a lawyer he
remained. The Gospel, for instance, bade that, if any man
take the tunic, he should be allowed to take the cloak also.
Yes, says Tertullian, if he asks — " if he threatens, I will ask
for the tunic back." 4 A man, with such habits of mind, will
not take violent measures to repel injustice, but he may be
counted upon to defend himself in his own way. Tertullian,
accordingly, when persecution broke out in the autumn of 197
in Carthage, addressed to the governor of the province an
Apology for the Christians. It is one of his greatest works.
It was translated into Greek, and Eusebius quotes the trans-
lation in several places. It is a most brilliant book. All his
wit and warmth, his pungency and directness, his knowledge
and his solid sense come into play. As a piece of rhetoric, as
a lawyer's speech, it is inimitable. But it is more than that, !
for it is as full of his finest qualities as of his other gifts of
dexterity and humour. It shows the full grown and developed
man, every faculty at its highest and all consecrated, and the j
book glows with the passion of a dedicated spirit.
He begins with the ironical suggestion that, if the governors
of provinces are not permitted in their judicial capacity to
examine in public the case of the Christians, if this type of
action alone their authority is afraid — or blushes — to investigate
in the interests of justice, he yet hopes that Truth by the
1 de cor. mil. 8. 2 Ibid. 8.
3 de Idol. 24, inter hos scopulos et sinus, inter hcec vada et freta idololatria,
•velificata spiritu dei fides navigat.
13.
THE APOLOGY
tilent path of letters may reach their ears. Truth makes no
txcuse — she knows she is a stranger here, while her race, home,
hope, grace and dignity are in heaven. All her eagerness is
hot to be condemned unheard. Condemnation without trial
fis invidious, it suggests injustice and wakes suspicion. It is in
the interests of Christianity, too, that it should be examined —
that is how the numbers of the Christians have grown to such
!a height. They are not ashamed — unless it be of having be-
come Christians so late. The natural characteristics of evil
jare fear, shame, tergiversation, regret ; yet the Christian
(criminal is glad to be accused, prays to be condemned and is
happy to suffer. You cannot call it madness, when you are
|shown to be ignorant of what it is.
Christians are condemned for the name's sake, though such
condemnation, irrespective of the proving of guilt or innocence,
iis outrage. Others are tortured to confess their guilt, Christians
to deny it. Trajan's famous letter to Pliny, he tears to shreds ;
.Christians are not to be hunted down — that is, they are
innocent ; but they are to be punished — that is, they are
Iguilty. If the one, why not hunt them down ? If the other,
why not punish ? Of course Trajan's plan was a compromise,
and Tertullian is not a man of compromises. If a founder's
I name is guilt for a school, look around ! Schools of philosophers
and schools of cooks bear their founders' names with impunity.
But about the Founder of the Christian school curiosity ceases
| to be inquisitive. But the " authority of laws " is invoked against
j truth — non licet esse vos ! is the cry. What if laws do forbid
Christians to be? " If your law has made a mistake, well, I
suppose, it was a human brain that conceived it ; for it did
not come down from heaven." Laws are always being changed,
and have been. " Are you not yourselves every day, as ex-
i periment illumines the darkness of antiquity, engaged in felling
and cutting the whole of that ancient and ugly forest of laws
with the new axes of imperial rescripts and edicts ? " Roman
laws once forbade extravagance, theatres, divorce — they forbade
I the religions of Bacchus, Serapis and Isis. Where are those
laws now ? " You are always praising antiquity, and you im-
provise your life from day to day." 2
In passing, one remark may be made in view of what is
1 Apol. 4.
33* TERTULLIAN
said sometimes of Tertullian and his conception of religion.
" To Tertullian the revelation through the Christ is no more
than a law." 1 There is truth in this criticism, of course ; but
unless it is clearly understood that Tertullian drew the dis-
tinction, which this passage of the Apology and others suggest,
between Natural law, as conceived by the Stoics, and civil law
as regarded by a Propraetor, he is likely to be misjudged.
He constantly slips into the lawyer's way of handling law,
for like all lawyers he is apt to think in terms of paper and
parchment ; but he draws a great distinction, not so familiar
to judges and lawyers — as English daily papers abundantly
reveal — between the laws of God or Nature and the laws of
human convention or human legislatures. The weak spot was
his belief in the text of the Scriptures as the ultimate
and irrefragable word and will of God, though even here,
in his happier hours, when he is not under stress of
argument, he will interpret the divine and infallible code, not
by the letter, but by the general principles to be observed at
once in Nature and the book. Legis injustce honor nullus est^
is not the ordinary language of a lawyer.
The odious charges brought by the vulgar against the
Christians then, as now in China, and used for their own
purposes by men who really knew better, he shows to be
incredible. No one has the least evidence of any kind for
them, and yet Christian meetings are constantly surprised.
What a triumph would await the spy or the traitor who
could prove them ! But they are not believed, or men
would harry the Christians from the face of the earth
(c. 8). As to the idea that Christians eat children to gain
eternal life — who would think it worth the price ? No ! if
such [things are done, by whom are they done ? He reminds
his fellow-countrymen that in the reign of Tiberius priests of
Saturn were crucified in Africa on the sacred trees around
their temple — for the sacrifice of children. And then who
are those who practise abortion ? " how many of those who
crowd around and gape for Christian blood ? " And the
gladiatorial shows ? is it the Christians who frequent them ?
Atheism and treason were more serious charges. " You do
1 Gwatkin, The Knowledge of God (Gittord Lectures), ii, p. 163.
'2 adNatt. i, 5. %
THE APOLOGY 333
|not worship the gods." What gods? He cannot mention
i them all — " new, old, barbarian, Greek, Roman, foreign, captive,
kdoptive, special, common, male, female, rustic, urban, nautical and
military " — but Saturn at any rate was a man, as the historians
[know. But they were made gods after they died. Now, that
pmplies " a God more sublime, true owner (mancipem\ so to
Ispeak, of divinity," who made them into gods, for they could
:piot of course have done it themselves; and meanwhile you
(abolish the only one who could have. But why should he ?
— " unless the great God needed their ministry and aid in his
divine tasks" — dead men's aid! (c. u). No, the whole
juniverse is the work of Reason ; nothing was left for Saturn to
ao, or his family. It rained from the beginning, stars shone,
jthunders roared, and " Jove himself shuddered at the living
ibolts which you put in his hand." Ask the spiders what they
think of your gods and their webs tell you (c. 1 2). To-day a
igod, to-morrow a pan, as domestic necessity melts and casts
Ithe metal. And the gods are carried round and alms begged
for them — religio mendicans — "hold out your hand, Jupiter, if
lyou want me to give you anything ! " x Does Homer's poetry
do honour to the gods (c. 14) — do the actors on the stage
,(c. 15)?
Christians are not atheists. They worship one God,
Creator, true, great, whose very greatness makes him known
of men and unknown.2 Who he is, and that he is one, the
human soul knows full well — O testimonium animce naturaliter
\Christiance! But God has other evidence — instrumentum
\litter atur(z. He sent into the world men " inundated with the
|divine spirit " to proclaim the one God, who framed all things,
I who made man, who one day will raise man from the dead for
I eternal judgment. These writings of the prophets are not
i secret books. Anyone can read them in the Greek version,
! which was made by the seventy elders for Ptolemy Philadelphus.
I To this book he appeals, — to the majesty of Scripture, to the
I fulfilment of prophecy.
Zeno called the Logos the maker of all things — and named
!him Fate, God, mind of Jove, Necessity. Cleanthes described
him as permeating all things. This the Christians also hold to
1 Cf. pp. 20-22.
2 Apol. 17, ittt turn vis magnitudims el not urn fiominibits obicit et ignolum.
334 TERTULLIAN
be God's Word, Reason and Power — and his Son, one with him
in being, Spirit as He is Spirit. This was born of a Virgin, be-
came man, was crucified and rose again. Even the Caesars
would have believed on Christ, if Caesars were not needful to
the world, or if there could be Christian Caesars.1 As for the
pagan gods, they are daemons, daily exorcised into the con-
fession of Christ.
But the charge of Atheism may be retorted. Are not the
pagans guilty of Atheism, at once in not worshipping the true
God and in persecuting those who do ? As a rule they
conceive, with Plato, of a great Jove in heaven surrounded by
a hierarchy of gods and daemons.2 But, as in the Roman
Empire, with its Emperor and its procurators and prefects, it
is a capital offence to turn from the supreme ruler to the
subordinate, so " may it not involve a charge of irreligion to
take away freedom of religion, to forbid free choice of divinity,
that I may not worship whom I will ? " Every one else may ;
but " we are not counted Romans, who do not worship the god
of the Romans. It is well that God is God of all, whose we are,
whether we will or no. But with you it is lawful to worship
anything whatever — except the true God."
But the gods raised Rome to be what she is. Which
gods? Sterculus? Larentina? Did Jove forget Crete for
Rome's sake — Crete, where he was born, where he lies buried ? 3
No, look to it lest God prove to be the dispenser of kingdoms,
to whom belong both the world that is ruled and the man
who rules. Some are surprised that Christians prefer " obstinacy
to deliverance " — but Christians know from whom that sugges-
tion comes, and they know the malevolence of the daemon ranks,
who are now beginning to despair since " they recognize they
are not a match for us " (c. 2 7).
For the Emperor Christians invoke God, the eternal, the
true, the living. They look up, with hands outspread, heads
bared, and from their hearts, without a form of words, they
pray for long life for the Emperor, an Empire free from alarms,
a safe home, brave armies, a faithful senate, an honest people
and a quiet world (c. 30). They do this, for the Empire stands
1 Apol. 21.
- Chapters 22 to 24 give a good summary of his views on daemons.
a Celsus refers to Christian discussion of this ; Origen, adv. Ccls. iii, 43.
THE APOLOGY 335
between them and the world's end. (It was a common thought
that the world and Rome would end together.) Christians
however honour Caesar as God's vice-gerent ; he is theirs
bore than any one's, for he is set up by the Christians' God.
They make no plots and have no recourse to magic to inquire
Into his " health" (c. 35).1 In fact "we are the same to the
jEmperors as to our next-door neighbours. We are equally
j'orbidden to wish evil, to do evil, to speak evil, to think evil of
Lnyone.1' So much for being enemies of the state (c. 36).
Christians do not retaliate on the mob for its violence, though,
f they did, their numbers would be serious. " We are but of
Yesterday, and we have filled everything, cities, islands, camps,
balace, forum," etc. ; " all we have left you is the temples."
But " far be it that a divine school should vindicate itself with
human fire, or grieve to suffer that wherein it is proved " (c. 37).
Christians make no disturbances and aspire to no offices,
f hey are content to follow their religion and look after the
Door, the shipwrecked, and men in mines and prisons. " See
liow they love each other ! " say the heathen.2 They are not,
is alleged, the cause of public disasters ; though if the Nile do
liot overflow, or if the Tiber do, it is at once Christianas ad
'eonem ! But they are " unprofitable in business ! " Yes, to
pimps, poisoners and mathematicians ; still they are not
prahmans or solitaries of the woods, exiles from life, and they
fefuse no gift of God. " We sail with you, take the field with
ou, share your country life, and know all the intercourse of
rts and business " (cc. 42, 43). They are innocent, for they
ar God and not the proconsul. If they were a philosophic
khool, they would have toleration — " who compels a philosopher
b sacrifice, to renounce, or to set out lamps at midday to no
purpose ? " Yet the philosophers openly destroy your gods
Ind your superstitions in their books, and win your applause
br it — and they " bark at your princes." He then points out
kow much there is in common to Christians and philosophers,
Ind yet (in a burst of temper) how unlike they are. No,
iwhere is the likeness between the philosopher and the
Christian ? the disciple of Greece and of heaven ? the trafficker
p fame and in life ? the friend and the foe of error ? " (c. 46).
1 Cf. ad, Scap. 2, with argument from end of world.
2 c. 39 vidt, inquiunt, ut invicem se diligant.
336 TERTULLIAN
The Christian artisan knows God better than Plato did. And
yet what is knowledge and genius in philosopher and poet, is
" presumption " in a Christian ! " Say the things are false that
protect you — mere presumption ! yet necessary. Silly ! yet
useful. For those who believe them are compelled to become
better men, for fear of eternal punishment and hope of eternal
refreshment. So it is inexpedient to call that false or count
that silly, which it is expedient should be presumed true. On
no plea can you condemn what does good " (c. 49).
Yet, whatever their treatment, Christians would rather be
condemned than fall from God. Their death is their victory ;
their " obstinacy " educates the world ; and while men condemn
them, God acquits them. That is his last word — a deo
absolvimur (c. 50).
Such, in rough outline, is the great Apology — not quite
the work of the fuller or baker at whom Celsus sneered. Yet
it has not the accent of the conventional Greek or Latin
gentleman, nor that of the philosophic Greek Christian. The
style is unlike anything of the age. Everything in it is
individual ; there is hardly a quotation in the piece. Every-
thing again is centripetal ; Tertullian is too much in earnest to
lose himself in the endless periods of the rhetorician, or in the
charming fancies dear to the eclectic and especially to con-
temporary Platonists. Indeed his tone toward literature and
philosophy is startlingly contemptuous, not least so when
contrasted with that of Clement
For this there are several reasons. First of all, like Carlyle,
Tertullian has " to write with his nerves in a kind of blaze," and,
like Carlyle, he says things strongly and sweepingly. It is
partly temperament, partly the ingrown habit of the pleader.
Something must be allowed to the man of moods, whose way
it is to utter strongly what he feels for the moment. Such
men do a service for which they have little thanks. Many
moods go in them to the making of the mind, moods not
peculiar to themselves. In most men feelings rarely find full
and living expression, and something is gained when they are
so expressed, even at the cost of apparent exaggeration. The
sweeping half-truth at once suggests its complement to the man
who utters it, and may stir very wholesome processes of thought
in the milder person who hears it.
THE PHILOSOPHERS
In the next place the philosophers may have deserved the
criticism. Fine talk and idle talk, in philosophic terms, had dis-
gusted Epictetus ; l and for few has Lucian more mockery than
for the philosophers of his day — Tertullian's day—with their
platitudes and their beards, their flunkeyism and love of gain.
Clement of Alexandria, who loved philosophy, had occasional
hard words for the vanity of its professors.2 For a man of
Tertullian's earnestness they were too little serious. Gloria
animal 3 is one of his phrases — a creature of vainglory was not
likely to appeal to a man who lived in full view of the lion and
the circus. He had made a root and branch cleavage with
idolatry, because no men could die like the Christians unless
they had the truth. The philosophers — to say nothing of their
part now and then in stirring the people against the Christians —
had made terms with polytheism, beast-worship, magic, all that
was worst and falsest in paganism, " lovers of wisdom " and
seekers after truth as they professed themselves to be.
Ancient Philosophy suggests to the modern student the name
of Heraclitus or Plato ; but Tertullian lived in the same streets
with Apuleius, philosopher and Platonist, humorist and glories
animal. But even Plato vexed Tertullian.4 The "cock to
be offered to ^Esculapius " was too available a quotation in a
world where the miracles of the great Healer were everywhere
famous. The triflers and the dogmatists of the day used Plato's
myths to confute the Christian doctrine of the resurrection.
And of course Plato and Tertullian are in temperament so far
apart, that an antipathy provoked by such causes was hardly to
be overcome.
Again, Tertullian remarks frequently that heresy has the
closest connexion with philosophy. Both handle the same
questions : " Whence is evil, and why ? and whence is man and
how ? and whence is God ? " 5 Marcion, for instance, is " sick
(like so many nowadays and, most of all, the heretics) with
the question of evil, whence is evil?"6 and turns to dualism. Or
else " the heretics begin with questions of the resurrection, for
the resurrection of the flesh they find harder to believe than the
unity of the Godhead." 7 What Celsus, a typical product of
1 Epictetus, D. Hi, 23. 2 Clement, Strom, vi, 56, 0iXctim'a. 3 deanima, \.
4 Cf. de anima, 6, 17, 18, 23, etc. 8 ^ />**r. 7.
8 adv. Marc, i, 2. T de res. camis, 2.
22
338 TERTULLIAN
contemporary philosophy, thought of the resurrection of the
flesh we have seen — a " hope of worms ! " Lastly, there was a
strong tendency in the church at large for re-statement of the
gospel in the terms of philosophy ; and in such endeavours, as
we know, there is always the danger of supposing the terms
and the philosophy of the day to be more permanent and more
valid than the experience which they are supposed to express.
In Tertullian's century there seemed some prospect that every
characteristic feature of the gospel would be so " re-stated " as
to leave the gospel entirely indistinguishable from any other
eclectic system of the moment. Jesus became a phantom, or
an seon ; his body, sidereal substance, which offered, Clement
himself said, no material resistance to the touch of St John's
hand. God divided, heaven gone, no hope or faith left possible
in a non-real Christ even in this life — Christians would be indeed
of all men most miserable, and morality would have no longer
any basis nor any motive. What in all this could tempt a man
to face the lions ? It was not for this that Christians shed their
blood — no, the Gnostics recommended flight in persecution.
It is easy to understand the sweeping Viderint — Tertullian's
usual phrase for dismissing people and ideas on whom no more
is to be said — " Let them look to it who have produced a Stoic
and Platonic and dialectic Christianity. We need no curiosity
who have Jesus Christ, no inquiry who have the gospel." l
It was natural for Clement and his school to try to bring
the gospel and philosophy to a common basis — a natural
impulse, which all must share who speculate. The mistake has
been that the church took their conclusions so readily and has
continued to believe them. For Tertullian is, on his side, right,
and we know in fact a great deal more about Jesus than we
can know about the Logos.
Accordingly a large part of Tertullian's work, as a Christian,
was the writing of treatises against heresy. He has in one
book — de Prascriptionibus Hcereticorum — dealt with all
heretics together. The Regula Fidei, which is a short creed,2
was instituted, he says, by Christ, and is held among Christians
without questions, " save those which heretics raise and which
make heretics." On that Regula rests the Christian faith. To
know nothing against it, is to know everything. But appeal is
1 de Prascr. 7. 2 de Preset. 13.
THE PRESCRIPTION OF HERETICS 339
imade to Scripture. We must then see who has the title to
Scripture (possessio)} and whence it comes. Jesus Christ while
bn earth taught the twelve, and they went into the world and
•promulgated " the same doctrine of the same faith," founding
churches in every city, from which other churches have taken
faith and doctrine — he uses the metaphors of seed and of layers
\\tradttx) from plants. Every day churches are so formed and
&uly counted Apostolic. Thus the immense numbers of
fbhurches may be reckoned equivalent to the one first church.
Ho other than the Apostles are to be received, as no others
Ivere taught by Christ. "Thus it is established that every
joctrine which agrees with those Apostolic mother-churches,
[he originals of the faith, is to be set down to truth, as in
Accordance with what the churches have received from the
ipostles, the apostles from Christ, and Christ from God."2
3ut have the churches been faithful in the transmission of this
Dody of doctrine? Suppose them all to have gone wrong,
suppose the Holy Spirit to have been so negligent — is it likely
|hat so vast a number should have wandered away into one
faith ? Again let Marcion and others show the history of their
:hurches. Let their doctrines be compared with the Apostolic,
ind their varieties and contradictions will show they are not
\postolic. If then Truth be adjudged to those who walk by
he Regula, duly transmitted through the church, the Apostles
ind Christ from God, then heretics have no right of appeal to
|he Scriptures which are not theirs. If they are heretics, they
[annot be Christians ; if they are not Christians, they have no
light (ius) to Christian literature. "With what right (iure)
iflarcion, do you cut down my wood ? By what licence,
Mentinus, do you divert my springs ? . . . This is my estate ;
I have long held it ; I am first in occupation ; I trace my
|ure descent from the founders to whom the thing belonged,
am the heir of the Apostles." 3
In this, as in most human arguments, there are strands of
(ifferent value. The legal analogy gave a name to the book
\-prcescriptio was the barring of a claim — but it is not
1 de Prascr. 15. 2 de Prascr. 21.
3 de Prcescr. 37, Mea est possessio. Cf. definition which says possessions appel-
mtur agri . . . qui non mancipatione sed usu tenebantur et ut quisque occupaverat
widtbat. Tertullian improves this title as he goes on.
340 TERTULLIAN
the strongest line. Law rarely is. But Tertullian was not
content to rule his opponents out of court. He used legal
methods and manners too freely, but he knew well enough
that these settled nothing. As a rule he had much stronger
grounds for his attack. He wrote five books against Marcion
to maintain the unity of the Godhead and the identity of the
Father of Jesus, the God of the Old Testament and the God
of Nature. His book against the Valentinians has a large
element of humour in it — perhaps the best rejoinder to the
framers of a cosmogony of so many aeons, none demonstrable,
all fanciful, — the thirty of them suggest to him the famous
Latin sow of the ALneidl Against Hermogenes he maintains
the doctrine of the creation of the world from nothing. The
hypothesis that God used pre-existing matter, makes matter
antecedent and more or less equal to God. And then, in legal
vein, he asks a question. How did God come to use matter ?
" These are the three ways in which another's property may be
taken, — by right, by benefit, by assault, that is by title, by
request, by violence." Hermogenes denies God's title in this
case ; which then of the other means does he prefer ? 2
His best work in the controversial field is in his treatises,
On the Flesh of Christ, On the Resurrection of the Flesh, and On
the Soul. The first of these, above all, will appeal to any
reader to whom the historic Jesus is significant. Much has
changed in outlook and preconceptions since Tertullian wrote,
but his language on the reality of Jesus, as an actual human
being and no sidereal or celestial semblance of a man, on thei
incarnation, and the love of God, still glows and still finds a
response. "Away," he pictures Marcion saying, " Away with!
those census-rolls of Caesar, always tiresome, away with the
cramped inns, the soiled rags, the hard stall. Let the angelic
host look to it ! " 3 And then he rejoins, Do you think nativity
impossible — or unsuitable — for God ? Declaim as you like on
the ugliness of the circumstances ; yet Christ did love men
(born, if you like, just as you say) ; for man he descended, for
man he preached, for man he lowered himself with every
humiliation down to death, and the death of the cross. Yes,
1 This jibe is in adv. Marc, i, 5 ; there are plenty without it in adv. Val.
2 adv. Hermog. 9, iure, beneficio, impetu^ id est dominio precario vi.
3 de came Christi, 2.
THE INCARNATION OF CHRIST 341
loved him whom he redeemed at so high a price. And
rith man he loved man's nativity, even his flesh. The con-
;ion of men to the worship of the true God, the rejection of
>r, the discipline of justice, of purity, of pity, of patience, of
innocence — these are not folly, and they are bound up with
ic truth of the Gospel. Is it unworthy of God ? " Spare
one hope of all the world, thou, who wouldst do away with
disgrace of faith. Whatever is unworthy of God is all to
ly good." 1 The Son of God also died — " It is credible because
is foolish. He was buried and rose again ; it is certain
luse it is impossible." And how could all this be, if his body
not true ? " You bisect Christ with a lie. The whole of
was Truth." 2 The gospel narrative from beginning to end
iplies that Christ's body was like ours — " he hungered under
devil, thirsted under the Samaritan woman, shed tears
:r Lazarus, was troubled 3 at death (for, the flesh, he said, is
ik), last of all he shed his blood." How could men have
it in a face radiant with " celestial grandeur " ? Wait !
irist has not yet subdued his enemies that he may triumph
ith his friends.
Jesus is to come again, as he was, as he is, sitting at the
•ather's right hand, God and man, flesh and blood, the same
essence and form as when he ascended ; so he shall come.4
id men will be raised in the flesh to receive judgment. A
•m overhangs the world.5 What the treasure-house of
lal fire will be, may be guessed from the petty vents men
in Etna and elsewhere.6 There will be white robes for
lartyrs ; for the timid a little portion in the lake of fire
sulphur.7 All that Gibbon thought would "offend the
>n and humanity of the present age " in the last chapter of
de Spectaculis may recur to the reader. But, continues
'ertullian in that passage, my gaze will be upon those who let
their fury on the Lord himself—" ' This,' I shall say, * is
the son of the carpenter or the harlot, Sabbath-breaker,
imaritan, demoniac. This is he whom you bought from
1 de came Christi, 5, Quodcnngue deo indignum est mihi expedit,
2 de carne Chnsti, 5, prorsus credibilc est quid ineptum est, . . . cerium fsl guia
nbile. . . . Quid dimidias mendacio Christum ? Totus veritasfuit.
3 de carne Christi, 9, trepidat perhaps represents the dyuvia of Luke.
4 de res. carnis, 51. 5 de penit. I. 6 de panit. 12. "' Scorfiace, 12
342 TERTULLIAN
Judas ; this is he, whom you beat with the reed and the palms
of your hands, whom you disfigured with your spittle, to
whom you gave gall and vinegar. This is he whom his
disciples stole away, that it might be said he had risen, — or the
gardener took him away, that his lettuces might not be trodden
by the crowds that came.' " " A long variety of affected and
unfeeling witticisms," is Gibbon's judgment.
A mind less intent on polemic will judge otherwise of
Tertullian and his controversies. There is, first of all, much
more of the philosophic temper than is commonly supposed.
He does not, like Clement and other Greeks, revel in cosmo-
logical speculations as to the Logos, nor does he loosely adopt
the abstract methods of later Greek philosophy. But in his
treatment of the Soul, of moral order and disorder, and of
responsibility, he shows no mean powers of mind. He argues
from experience, and from the two sources, from which he
could best hope to learn most directly the mind of God,
Nature and the Scriptures. The infallibility of the Scriptures
is of course a limitation to freedom of speculation, but it was
an axiom of the early church, and a man of experience might
accept it, bound up as it was with sound results in the martyr-
death and the changed life. Tertullian will get back to the
facts, if he can ; and if he judges too swiftly of Nature and
too swiftly accepts the literal truth of Scripture, — while these
are drawbacks to our acceptance of his conclusions, there is
still to be seen in him more independence of mind than in
those Greek Fathers for whom Greek philosophy had spoken
the last word in metaphysics. It is psychology that interests
Tertullian more, and moral questions, and these he handles
more deeply than the Stoics. He stands in line with |
Augustine and Calvin, his spiritual descendants.
If he speaks more of hell than certain Greeks do, it is not
unnatural. The man, who saw such deaths in the amphi-
theatre as he describes in the Passion of Perpetua, who ;
remembered the expressions he had then seen on the faces of
the spectators, who knew too well the cruelty that went with :
Roman lust, could hardly help believing in hell. What was !
the origin of evil ? asked philosopher and heretic. What is its
destiny ? and what are you to do with it now ? asked
Tertullian ; and, in all seriousness, the answer to the former
ON CONDUCT 343
I question is more likely to be found when the answers of the
I latter are reached. At any rate the latter are more practical,
I and that adjective, with what it suggests of drawback and of
I gain, belongs to Tertullian.
His application of the test of utility to belief is obviously
I open to criticism. " It is expedient," said Varro, " for men to
I be deceived in religion." No, Tertullian would have said, it is
I more expedient for them to know the truth ; and he backed his
I conviction by his appeal to Nature, on the one hand, Nature,
I rational through and through, and ever loyal to law, to fixity
I of principle, and on the other hand by reference to the
I verification of his position yielded by experience — once more
I the martyr-death and the transformed character. These
I fundamental ideas he may have misused in particulars, if not in
I matters more essential ; but, if he is wrong from the beginning
I in holding them, human knowledge, progress and conduct
I become fortuitous and desultory at once. Nature and
I verification from life are substantially all we have. To these
I of course Tertullian added revelation in a sense distinct
From the question of conduct we pass naturally to the
t great cleavage of Tertullian with the church. A change had
I come in church practice and government since the days when
the Teaching of the Apostles represented actual present fact, —
E perhaps even since the Apology of Aristides. The church had
grown larger, it had developed its organization, and it was
|| relying more on the practical men with a turn for administra-
jl tion, who always appear when a movement, begun by idealists,
U seems to show signs of success. The situation creates them,
and they cannot be avoided. They have their place, but they
do not care for ideas. Thus in the church the ministry of the
Spirit, the ministry of gifts, was succeeded by the ministry of
office, with its lower ideals of the practical and the expedient.
The numbers of the church swelled, and a theory began to
i spread, which Cyprian took up later on, and which was almost
inevitable on his principles, that the church was an ark, with
beasts clean and beasts unclean within it. This theory
answered to the actual facts, hardly to the ideal, and
Tertullian rejected it.1 Conduct at once suggested the theory,
1 de Idol, 24 (end), Vidtritnus enim si secundum arttf typum tt tan'us et mi/vus
tt lupus et cams et serf ens in ccclcsia erit.
344 TERTULLIAN
and responded to it. Christians fell into adultery and apostasy,
and while at first this meant "delivery to Satan," restoration
became progressively easy. The Shepherd of Hermas
extended second chances, till Tertullian fiercely spoke of
" that apocryphal shepherd of adulterers.1"
From Phrygia came the suggestion of reformation. Our
evidence as to the history of Montanism in its native land is
derived from hostile sources, and the value of it must partly
depend on the truth of the witnesses and partly on their in-
telligence, and of neither have we any guarantee at all. That
they are clearly hostile is plain from the fragments in Eusebius.
That they understood the inner meaning of what they con-
demned, we have no indication. Montanus, however, asserted
Christ's promise of the Paraclete — his enemies allege that he
identified himself with the Paraclete, a statement which might
be used to show how quotation may lead to suggestio falsi.
But the coming of the Paraclete was not in fact a synonym for
fanaticism and the collection of money, as the enemies of
Montanus hinted. It meant the bracing of Christian life and
character, and the restoration of prophecy, new revelation of
truth, power and progress. It appealed to the Christian world,
and the movement spread — probably with modifications as it
spread. The oracles of Montanus and of two women, Prisca
and Maximilla, became widely known, and they inculcated a
stern insistence on conduct, which was really needed, while they
showed how reformation was to be reached. To use language
of more modern times, involves risk of misconception ; but if
it may be done with caution, we may roughly say that the
Montanists stood for what the Friends call the Inner Light, and
for progressive revelation — or, at any rate, for something in
this direction. The indwelling of God was not consistent with
low living ; and earnest souls, all over the world, were invested
with greater power and courage to battle with the growing
lightness in the church and to meet the never-ceasing hostility
of the world — the lion and the cruel faces of the amphi-
theatre.
Yet Montanism failed for want of a clear conception of
the real character of primitive Christianity. Aiming at morals,
Montanists conceived of life and the human mind and God in a
1 de Pud. 20.
ECSTASY 345
way very far from that of Jesus. They laid a stress, which is not
Ihis, on asceticism and on penance, and they cultivated ecstasy
— in both regions renouncing the essentially spiritual conception
lof religion, and turning to a non-Christian view of matter.
JThey thus aimed at obtaining or keeping the indwelling spirit
jof Jesus, known so well in the early church, but by mechanical
jmeans ; and this, though the later church in this particular
Jfollowed them for generations, is not to be done. Still,
(Whatever their methods and their expedients, they stood for
^righteousness, and here lay the fascination of Montanism
nor Tertullian.
Throughout his later life Tertullian, then, was a Montanist,
though the change was not so great as might be expected.
(Some of his works, such as that On Monogamy \ bear the stamp
pf Montanism, for re-marriage was condemned by the Montan-
tjists. Elsewhere his citation of the oracles of Prisca suggests
fthat a book belongs to the Montanist period ; or we deduce it
ijfrom such a passage as that in the work On the Soul where
pe describes a vision. The passage is short and it is
Suggestive.
" We have to-day among us a sister who has received gifts
^charismata] of the nature of revelations, which she undergoes
\fatitur) in spirit in the church amid the rites of the Lord's
pay falling into ecstasy (per ecstasiri}. She converses with
Angels, sometimes even with the Lord, and sees and hears
foysteries, and reads the hearts of certain persons, and brings
I healings to those who ask. According to what Scriptures are
jead, or psalms sung, or addresses made, or prayers offered up,
fhe matter of her visions is supplied. It happened that we
I pad spoken something of the soul, when this sister was in the
tpirit When all was over, and the people had gone, she — for
|t is her practice to report what she has seen, and it is most
tarefully examined that it may be proved — ' amongst other
hings,' she said, * a soul was shown to me in bodily form
bd it seemed to be a spirit, but not empty, nor a thing of
kcuity ; on the contrary, it seemed as if it might be
puched, soft, lucid, of the colour of air, and of human form
in every detail."1
Such a story explains itself. The corporeity of the soul
1 de attima, 9.
346 TERTULLIAN
was a tenet of Stoicism, essential to Tertullian, for without it
he could not conceive of what was to follow the resurrection.
He spoke of it and we can imagine how. It would hardly
take a vision to see anything of which he spoke. The sister
however was, what in modern phrase is called, psychopathic,
and the vision occurred, controlled by the suggestion that
preceded it.
It must be admitted that there is in some of his Montanist
treatises, particularly where he is handling matters of less
importance, such as re-marriage, fasting, and the like, a bitter-
ness of tone which is not pleasant. As long as his humour
and his strong sense control his irony, it is no bad adjunct of
his style, it is a great resource. But it declines into sarcasm,
and " sarcasm," as Teufelsdrockh put it, " is the language of the
devil " ; and we find Tertullian, pleading for God and righteous-
ness, in a tone and a temper little likely to win men. But the
main ideas that dominate him still prevail — conduct, obedience,
God's law in Nature and in the book, the value of the martyr-
death.
Little is to be got by dwelling on his outbursts of ill
temper ; they hardly do more than illustrate what we knew
already, his intensity, his sensibility, his passion. They form
the negative side of the great positive qualities. Let me
gather up a few scattered thoughts which come from his heart
and are better and truer illustrations of the man, and with them
let chapter and book have an end.
Conduct is the test of creed (de Prcescr. H<zr. 43). To
lie about God is in a sense idolatry (de Pmscr. 40).
Security in sin means love of it (de Pudic. 9). Whatever
darkness you pile above your deeds, God is light (de Panit. 6).
What we are forbidden to do, the soul pictures to itself at its
peril (de Pcenit. 3). Truth persuades by teaching, it does
not teach by making things plausible (adv. Valent. i). Faith
is patience with its lamp lit — illuminata (de Pat. 6). Patience
is the very nature of God. The recognition of God understands
well enough the duty laid upon it. Let wrong-doing be
wearied by your patience (de Pat. 3, 4, 8). There is no
greater incitement to despise money than that the Lord him-
self had no wealth (de Pat. 7). Love is the supreme mystery
(sacramentum) of faith (de Pat. 12). Faith fears no famine
CONCLUSION 347
(de Idol. 1 2). Prayer is the wall of faith (de Or. 29). Every day,
every moment, prayer is necessary to men. . . . Prayer comes
1 from conscience. If conscience blush, prayer blushes (de exh.
cast. 10). Good things scandalize none but the bad mind (de
virg. vel. 3). Give to Caesar what is Caesar's — his image on
• the coin; give to God what is God's — his image in man,
III yourself (de Idol. I 5 ).
But to this there is no end, and an end there must be. By
• his expression of Christian ideas in the natural language of
I Roman thought, by his insistence on the reality of the historic
I Jesus and on the inevitable consequences of human conduct, by
• his reference of all matters of life and controversy to the will of
• God manifested in Nature, in inspiration and in experience,
iTertullian laid Western Christendom under a great debt, never
• very generously acknowledged. For us it may be as profitable
• to go behind the writings till we find the man, and to think
•of the manhood, with every power and every endowment,
•sensibility, imagination, energy, flung with passionate enthusiasm
• on the side of purity and righteousness, of God and Trut1^ ; to
•think of the silent self-sacrifice freely and generously made for
: a despised cause, of a life-long readiness for martyrdom, of a
jlspirit, unable to compromise, unable in its love of Christ to see
ill His work undone by cowardice, indulgence and unfaith, and of
li a nature in all its fulness surrendered. That the Gospel could
l]|capture such a man as Tertullian, and, with all his faults of
• mind and temper, make of him what it did, was a measure of
Hlks power to transform the old world and a prophecy of its
II power to hold the modern world, too, and to make more of it
las the ideas of Jesus find fuller realization and verification in
|| every generation of Christian character and experience.
INDEX
ABSOLUTE Being (of God), 93, 1 1 2,
133, 188, 231, 257, 288, 289,
290-292.
Actium, battle, 2.
y^lian, 209.
/Esculapius (Asklepios), 22, 191,
209, 221-223, 255, 337.
Alexander of Abonoteichos, 211,
212.
Alexander Severus, 14.
Alexandria, 78, 79, 81 ; ch. ix.,
beginning.
Allegoric methods, 72, 126, 181,
184, 226, 278, 288.
Anaxagoras, 102.
Ancyra, monument, 5.
Angels, 15, 95, 279, 281, 329.
Antinous, 160, 172, 252.
Antoninus, M. Aurelius, Emperor,
see Marcus.
Antony (M. Antonius, the Tri-
umvir), 2, 9.
Anubis, 22, 209, 211, 236.
Apathy, 161, 232, 291, 292, 297,
302 ; see also Greek Index.
Apellas, M. Julius, 221, 222.
Apelles, the painter, 217.
Apis, 6.
Apollo, 5, 82, 94.
Apollonius of Tyana, 14.
Apuleius, see ch. vii. generally,
his origin and history, 228.
his studies, 228.
his mind and style, 227, 228,
234, 237, 337.
defence on charge of Magic,
228, 230.
the Golden Ass, 227, 233-237.
on philosophy, 230.
on gods, 231.
on mysteries, 230.
Apuleius — continued.
on human life, 231.
on religion, 230.
Aricia, 26.
Aristides, ^Klius, 222.
Artemidorus of Daldia, author of
a book on the interpretation
of dreams, 88, 225-227.
Arval Brothers, 9.
Ass, book once attributed to
Lucian, 20, 21, 227.
Astrology, 18, 35, 147, 329.
Astronomy, 27, 97, 219, 277, 281,
285.
Ataraxia, 216, 219.
Athens, 78, 80, 267.
students at Athens, 78, 80, 228.
Attalus, a Stoic, 41.
Attis, 21.
Augustine, St, 8, 12, 21, 166, 237,
3°7-
Augustus, i, 2.
attempts to reform state, 3.
his monument at Ancyra, 5.
his superstitions, 6.
restoration of religion, 5-7, 9, 14,
32.
his system of government, 34.
effects of his system, 18, 33-37.
BAPTISMS, 109, 159, 327-329.
Barnabas, 151, 165, 180, 181,
192.
Blood, eating with, 15.
Brahmans, 270, 335.
Britannicus, 45.
British Isles, 26, 105.
Browning, R., quoted, 27, 144.
Buddha, 270.
Buddhism, 68.
Burrus, 44~46-
349
350 THE CONFLICT OF RELIGIONS
CARLYLE, Thomas, 40, 41, 159,
311, 312, 313, 336, 346.
Carthage, 109, 307.
Catullus, 21.
Celsus, see ch. viii. generally.
who was he ? 239, 240.
his date, 240.
his mind and style, 240, 241,
258-261.
on folly of Christians, 241-243,
245-
on vulgarity of Christians, 241,
242.
on "only believe," 242, 250.
on Christian account of God,
242-244.
and God's descent, 246.
his own account of God, 244,
245, 246-248, 254.
and of daemons, 254-256.
Christian thinking anthropo-
centric, 243, 244.
on evil, 247.
on true religion, 248, 254, 259,
260.
on ancestral religion, 254.
on incarnation, 248, 249.
on the historic Jesus, 117, 172,
173, 249-252.
on persecution of Christians,
25°, 275.
on the sects, 250, 253.
on miracles and magic, 251.
on evidence of oracles, 255, 258.
on Christian plagiarisms, 117,
252.
on immortality, 252, 253.
his plea for Roman Empire, 256,
257, 261.
misses centre of Christian move-
ment, 259.
quoted ch. viii. passim, and pp.
95, 114, 116, 117, 193, 194.
Chseronea, 79, 82, 86, 223.
Chaldaeans, 17, 207, 270.
Christ in prophecy, 183-193.
Christian community and early
Church, see chs. v. and vi.
generally.
Christian community and early
Church — continued.
name Christian, 151.
its variety, 141, 143-147.
its unity, 141, 143.
its universality, 143, 144.
the new life, 142, 152, 159-162,
164-166, 302, 303, 335.
its happiness, 142, 148, 165, 166.
conversion, 142, 150.
Jewish influence, 143, 144.
Greek influence, 144, 145, 168.
Roman influence, 146.
freedom from daemons, 146, 147,
283, 284.
daemons retaliate in persecution,
164, 319.
knowledge of God, 147, 300, 301.
the "Holy Spirit," 142, 149-
iS1* m-
Jesus the centre, 141, 151, 152,
157, 194, 259.
Jesus the example, 264, 265,
272.
theories as to Jesus, 154-157,
275, 289-298, 340, 341.
the " ecclesia of God," 158, 257.
organization of Christian society,
157-159, 263, 339.
its sacraments, 158, 159.
propagation, 159-162, 196, 241.
women, 163, 180, 316.
marriage, 302, 303, 314.
immortality, 163.
belief in second coming of
Christ, 164, 341.
persecution, 164, 165, 250, 275,
319. 323-326.
martyrs, 146, 165, 319-321.
controversy with Judaism, 167-
169 ff., 175.
effect of this, 194, 195.
admission of Gentiles, 168.
sects, 250, 253.
the "great church," 253.
spiritual religion, 179, 181,
182.
its progress, 196, 262, 263 f.
daily reading of Scriptures, 287.
INDEX
35'
Christian community and early
Church — continued.
question of philosophy, 134,
145. '56, 157, 263, 274-276,
336-338.
tenacity of historic facts of
Gospel, 1 13-115* JI9» i45»
152, 271.
the regula, 338, 339.
the " ark " theory, 343.
Christian feeling toward the Em-
pire, 240, 257, 303, 322, 334,
335-
Ihrysippus, 71, 73, 96, 209, 247.
licero, M. Tullius, i, 7, 8.
his wife and daughter, 10.
on divination, 16, 17.
klaudia Acte, 45.
[laudius, Emperor, 43, 44.
leanthes, 39, 71, 247.
lement of Alexandria, see ch. ix.
generally.
I his writings, 267, 279, 282.
his history, 266, 267.
I his education, 267-274.
the mysteries, 269.
his conversion, 271.
1 his mind and style, 267, 273,
282, 293.
I his literary interests, 267, 273,
277.
his use of Scripture, 287, 288,
291.
on philosophy, 268, 273, 275-
282.
his references to Plato, 273, 279,
281, 285, 286, 296.
to Euripides, 281, 284.
his use of Philo, 289.
on knowledge, 272, 300, 301.
'unity of knowledge, 275.
on faith, 242, 280, 300.
on Absolute God (see also Monad
below), 290-292.
on the Monad, 286, 290.
the love of God and Abba
Father, 285, 286, 293, 297.
Jon the Logos, 283, 287, 289-298.
'on incarnation, 297, 298.
Clement of Alexandria— continued.
on Jesus, 283, 293, 298-300.
on the cross, 300, 302.
on Christian life, 272, 287, 302,
303-
on manners, 264-266.
on sin, 300.
on "deification," 301, 302.
on marriage, 302, 303.
on Christian tradition, 271.
on virgin-birth, 299.
Christocentric, 272, 273, 274.
the Protrepticus, 282-287, 296.
Clement quoted, ch. ix. passim,
and on pp. 149, 166, 242, 243,
244, 247, 248, 251, 257, 258,
259, 260.
Cleopatra, 2.
Consensus of mankind as evidence,
68, 91, 210, 315.
lian (testimonium anima).
Cooks, schools of, 302, 331.
Cornutus, 41, 55.
Critias, verses of, 4, 5.
Crocodiles worshipped, 108, in,
265.
Cupid and Psyche, 234.
Cybele, 5, 20, 21, 103.
Cyprian, 147, 158, 343.
DEMONS, 14, 39, 59, 94-102, 103,
i52"I54, 254-256.
not gods, 94, 232.
intermediaries between gods and
men, 96, 97, 98, 229, 232.
subject to change, 96.
guardian-daemons (genius}, 1 5,
59, 99, 100, 233, 308.
may be seen by the physical eye,
99, 100, 207, 208, 232, 255.
communicate with souls directly,
101, 102.
authors of pagan cults, 107, 232,
254-
relations with oracles, magic, etc.,
102, 108, 229, 253.
resent neglect, 164, 233, 255.
their tyranny, 19, 107, 146, 147.
284.
352 THE CONFLICT OF RELIGIONS
Daemons — continued.
some usurp names of gods, 107,
108, 232.
daemon-possession, 100, 153.
" glossolaly," 150.
dangers from daemons, 256.
the name of Jesus and daemons,
147.
daemons the fallen angels, 95,
281.
daemon - theory and Emperor-
worship, 154.
daemons misled Jews as to law,
181.
forestalled Christian sacraments,
159.
and facts of Christian teaching,
191.
facts behind daemon-theory, 100,
i5°» X53» 222> 23i-
Dancing, secular and sacred, 76,
79, 80.
Dea did) 9, 19.
Delphi, 82, 92, 102, 107, 108.
Dio Cassius, 48, 322.
Dio Chrysostom, 80, 312.
Diodorus Siculus, 5.
Diogenes Laertius, 39.
Diogenes of Oinoanda, 217-220.
Dionysus, 98, 108, 191, 250.
Divination, 16, 17, 229.
Docetism, 146, 154, 157, 299.
Domitian, 49, 81, 322.
Dreams studied, 6, 225-227.
Druids, 270.
ECSTASY, 101, 102, 153, 345.
Egyptian religion, 21, 25, 56, 211,
265, 270; see Isis, Osiris,
Serapis.
Emperor-worship, 163.
Ennius, 3.
Epictetus, see ch. ii. generally.
his history, 49-50.
his solitude, 50-52.
his habits, 52.
his celebrity, 53.
on cleanliness, 52.
a relic of Epictetus, 53.
Epictetus — continued.
his teaching, 50, 53.
quoted throughout ch. ii.
Epicurus, 16, 17, 218-220, 281,282
285.
Epidauros, 221, 222.
Euclid, 80, 275.
Euhemerus, 5, 106.
Euripides, 243, 270, 281, 284, 285
287.
FAUNS, 12, 13.
Flavius Clemens, 322.
Francis, St, 40, 49.
Fravashi, 15.
Freedmen, 33, 35.
GADARENES, 123, 203.
Gaius, Emperor, 34.
Galen, 160.
Garlands, use of, 230, 265.
Gellius, Aulus, 53, 80, 87, 213.
Genius^ see Daemons.
Germans, 36, 200, 211, 270.
Giants, 208.
Gibbon, 305.
Gladiatorial shows, 36, 312, 313
Stoic criticism, 63.
Christian criticism, 162.
Glossolaly, see Tongues.
Gnosticism and Gnostics, 263
see Marcion and Valentinus.
God, see Absolute Being.
Golden Age, 7, 33, 36, 171.
Gospels, 113-115.
credibility, 114, 115.
Greece, depopulated, 78.
Guardian, see Daemons.
Gyges, myth of, 34.
HADES, value of the belief in it, 5
described by those who hav<
seen it, 105, 208.
the gospel preached in Hade
by Christ and apostles, 101
280.
Hadrian, 88, 200, 252, 262.
Heraclitus, 219, 247, 252, 253.
Herakles, 62, 98, 173, 191, 250.
Hennas, 48, 166, 280, 329, 344,
^lerodotus, 34, 255.
flesiod, 98.
tlierodules, 22, 172.
I' Holy," n, 13, 19.
ttloly Spirit, see Christian com-
munity.
Horace, 9, 13, 30, 78.
| Odes on the Augustan reforma-
tion, 6, 7.
I his own feelings on religion, 10,
28.
i on superstition, 17.
I his "conversion," 18.
ftuman sacrifices, 26, 107.
f Hymn of the Soul," Gnostic, 15.
IDOLS, meat offered to, 16.
Ignatius, 146, 158, 159, 161, 163,
174.
mmortality, 31, 68-70, 104, 105,
163, 164, 252, 253.
incubation, 22, 23, 99, 221.
Indians, 270.
Inspiration, 103, 169, 174, 287,
333. 342.
[renaeus, 323.
sis, 22-24, 98> 99> Io6> I^7) no,
in, 235-237.
[ESUS, see chapters iv. and v.
generally ; see Christ.
" Life " of Jesus hardly possible,
US-
dates available, 115.
his character can be known,
115, 116.
his personality centre of Christian
movement, 116, 139, 141,
151, 152, 157, 194, 257.
repeated in personality of his
followers, 139, 140.
his style, criticized by Celsus,
"7-
his conversation, 117-120.
humour or playfulness in his
talk, 1 1 8, 119, 127.
his manner, 119.
his fixed gaze, 123.
23
INDEX 353
Jesus — continued.
his parables as reminiscences,
120.
his childhood and youth, 120,
121.
his mother and father, 120, 121.
Abba, 121, 137, 148, 149, 150]
257, 260, 286.
Amen, 125.
on children, 121, 122.
on being "born again," 122.
outdoor life, 122, 123.
on wild nature, 123; cf. 265.
his reality, 123-127.
anger, 123.
on self-deception, 124.
on vulgar vices, 124.
on poverty and hunger, 124,
125; cf. 264, 346.
energy of character, 125.
on traditional beliefs, 125.
his use of Scripture, 126.
his temptations, 126-130.
his "weakness," 127, 340.
the agony in the garden, 128,
129.
his betrayal, 128, 129.
his experience of men, 128, 130.
his "disposition for private
friendships," 129.
his belief in common men,
130
happiness in God centre of his
Gospel, 130, 1,4, 150, 165,
166.
on holiness, 131-133.
on rituals and taboos, 133.
on relation with God, 130, 133-
k. '?8. .
his intuition, 134.
on Fatherhood of God, 134-135.
on likeness to God, 135.
on instinct, 135, 136.
on Last Judgment, 136.
on Kingdom of God, 137.
on Messiahship, 128, 138.
his cross, 138, 139, 153, 163,
25°, 25T» 3°-» 302-
the crown of thorns, 265.
354
THE CONFLICT OF RELIGIONS
Jesus — continued.
the "spirit of Jesus," 139, 150,
1 68.
Christian teaching of resur-
rection, 146, 163, 173, 340.
Jesus in early Church, 151.
theories as to Jesus, 154-157,
340.
second coming, 164, 341.
connexion with Judaism, 167
Jewish slanders on Jesus, 172,
173-
attack of Celsus, 172, 173, 249-
252.
better known than the Logos,
338.
Jews, see Judaism.
exiled from Palestine, 180.
set mobs against Christians,
169, 323» .324-
John the Baptist, 115.
Judaism, see ch. vi. generally.
among Greeks and Romans, 1 1,
70, 103.
its history, 169-172.
its Messianic future, 143, 170-
172.
its morality, 143.
its casuistry, 131.
its tribal character, 132, 144.
its taboos, 131, 132, 178.
its monotheism, 143, 146, 169,
172, 173.
its teaching on sin, 144.
its Scriptures, 144, 174.
influence on Greek readers, 176.
prophecy of Christ in Scriptures,
183-193-
Judaism and Jesus, 167.
Judaism and Paul, 167-169.
resistance to Christiaaity, 169-
174, 1 80.
circumcision, 171, 177, 179, 180.
Sabbath, n, 132, 171, 177-181.
anti-Christian propaganda, 172,
173, 324.
Christian arguments against
Judaism, 176-193.
Jewish law temporary, 181, 182.
Julian, 23, 162, 260.
Julius Caesar, C, i, 78, 307.
Julius Ccesar (Shakespeare's), 139.
Juno (guardian), 59.
Jupiter Capitolinus, 19.
Justin Martyr, 72, 148, 165, 176-
i93» 3*8, 323; see ch. vi.
generally.
Juvenal, 21, 23, 24, 55, 132,
202.
KING, term applied to Roman
Emperor, 34, 256.
Kyphi, 103.
LACTANTIUS, 183, 237.
Lares, 5, n, 14, 233.
Larvae, 16.
Lemures, 16, 233.
Linen, in religious ritual, 22, 211,
224, 230, 236, 330.
Livy, 8, 17.
Logos spermaticos (Stoic), see Greek
Index.
Logos (Christian), 138, 156, 157,
189 ; see also under Clement.
Lucian, see ch. vii.
his origin and history, 201, 202.
his Dialogues, 202 f.
his mind and style, 203, 204,
215.
on philosophy, 205, 206, 209.
on the " Celestial City," 205.
on the gods, 209-211.
on human life, 213-215.
on superstition, 206^208.
Philopseudes, 206-208.
on life after death, 214, 215.
on Christians, 162, 212.
quoted, pp. 53, 162, 163.
Lucretius, 12, 16, 20, 30, 71.
on religion, 25, 26, 27.
on Nature, 25.
Lupercal, 5.
Lupercalia, 9.
MAGIANS, 13, 98, 105, 270.
Magic, 18, 207, 229, 230, 233, 251,
256, 335-
INDEX
355
(Mantle (see Oracles and Daemons),
101.
Marcion, 114, 193, 315, 317, 337-
340.
Marcus Aurelius, Emperor, 63,
130, 196-201, 211, 225, 251,
3.19-
criticism of Christians, 198, 200,
244, 274.
Marriage, 160, 229, 299, 302, 303.
; Martyrs, 146, 165, 319-326.
(Maximilla, 163, 344.
Maximin Daza, 162, 260.
Menander, 99, 266, 267.
iNlessalina, 43, 44.
Messiah, 138, 156, 170, 173.
Metempsychosis, 42, 164, 252.
Mithras, 105, 191, 210, 256, 260,
317, 3i8.
Monarchy, 34.
Monasticism, 24.
Monotheism, 19, 94, 143, 146, 148.
Montanism, 327, 343, 346.
Moses before Greek literature, 176,
281.
1 1 man before Moses, 315.
| a magician, 230.
Mother of the gods, see Cybele.
Muhammad, 191.
llystagogue, 78, 99, 253, 269
Mysteries, 6, 76, 92, 145, 158, 230,
269, 284, 287.
NAPOLEON, 44.
(Nature, in philosophy, 36, 39, 57,
58, 66, 314-317-
[Necromancy, 99, 105.
Neo-Platonism, in.
Nero, 44-47.
IKicopolis, 49.
Huma, King —
inventor of religion, 8.
jj and the nymph, Egeria, 100.
Nursery tales, 308.
|)CTAVIAN, see Augustus.
IHnoanda, 217.
bracles, 223, 255.
I their numbers, 78.
Oracles — continued.
their evidence as to gods, 92, 255.
as to immortality, 104.
daemons and oracles, 101, 102,
255; see Daemons,
oracle of Trophonius, 224, 255.
Origen, 114.
his book against Celsus; see
ch. vi\\. passim.
Orpheus, 14, 98, 173, 281, 283.
Osiris, 98, in, 233, 237,330.
Ovid, 3, 8, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 23,
59-
PAN and Pans, 12, 13.
Pantaenus, 266, 271.
Pantheism, 29, 38, 58.
Paul, 148-150, 154-156, 167-169,
174, 177.
Pausanias, the traveller, 222-225,
268, 270.
Penates, 8, 14.
Peregrinus Proteus, 212, 2 [3.
Perpetua, the martyr, 88, 229, 308,
Persius, 41, 55, 56, 67, 68.
Philo, 125, 153, 156, 194, 289, 290.
Photagogue, 269.
Piso's conspiracy, 47.
Plagiarism, 117, 252, 281.
Plato, 34, 50, 72, 96, 97, 102, 117,
118, 135, 149, 229-232, 244,
245, 252, 270, 285, 288, 289,
293. 336, 337-
Pliny, the Elder, 13, 18, 26.
Pliny, the Younger, 82, 208, 331.
Plotinus, 99, 100.
Plutarch, see ch. iii. generally.
his history, 78-88.
his city, 79, 82.
his family, 79-80.
his friends, 80, 81.
his wife and children, 85, 86.
his slaves, 86-88.
his travels, 81.
his poor Latin, 81.
his studies, 83.
his writings, 83-85.
his character, 83-85, 89, 105.
356 THE CONFLICT OF RELIGIONS
Plutarch — continued.
his "philosophy," 89-91, 105
no.
defect in his thinking, 83, 85,
1 10, III.
value of his work, 90, no, in.
"the ancient faith of our
fathers," 76, 89.
on the knowledge of the divine,
9!-93-
on Absolute Being and trans-
cendence of God, 93, 94, 97,
105.
Providence and the government
of the universe, 93-96.
on deputy gods and daemons
(?•»•), 94-102.
the guardian, 99.
on " Mantic " (oracles, divina-
tion, etc.), 100-103.
on superstition, 103.
on pleasures of faith, 76, 104.
on immortality, 104, 105.
on evil, 105.
his apocalypses, 105.
on defence of tradition, 76, 106-
108, in.
on purification of legends, 106-
108.
on questionable rituals, 107,
1 08.
on the Stoics, 64, 66, 68, 72, 73,
82, 94, 95. 97, 99;
quoted, ch. iii. passim ; also pp.
42, 56, 60, 66, 68, ;
136-
Polybius, on Roman religion, 3-4.
Polycarp, 165.
Pontifex Maximus, 6, 327.
Porphyry, 99.
Prisca, 163, 344.
Propertius, 8.
Prudentius, 7, u.
Psychomanteion, 99.
Punic language, etc,, 229, 308,
3!9-
Pythagoras, 42, 55, 96, 173.
QUINTILIAX, 9, 43- 48.
RELIGION —
nature of, 19.
development of, 24.
Oriental, 24.
polytheism knows no false gods*
25-
how to judge religions, 40.
city cults, 56.
Gospels, 56.
and philosophy, 132.
See also Jesus, Christian com-
munity, and Plutarch.
Rhetoric, 37, 41, 43, 82, 85, 2ofl
226, 228, 231, 267, 268, 310.
Rome —
her empire gift of gods, 7, |H
334-
government of empire, i, 2, 33!
141.
rise of superstition, 18.
under the Emperors, 33-37.
influence of Stoics, 39.
women of Rome, 41, 51-52.
its crowds of people, 47, 48.
as a school for virtue, 49.
Plutarch at Rome, 81.
art collections, 145.
SABBATH, n, 132, i-
Sacrifice, human, 26, 107.
Salvation, 54, 67, 151.
Satyrs, 12, 13.
Scepticism, 216, 217.
ScilJitan martyrs, 319.
Scriptures source of Greek philo-
sophy, 176, 281, 285.
Sealskin, as protection ap r.st
thunder, 6.
Self-examination, 54.
Seneca, see ch. ii. generally.
his histc:
his parents, 41.
his teachers, 41-43.
his style, 43.
exile, 43-44-
minister, 44-46.
his end, 47.
his character, 47-49.
his books, 45, 46.
INDEX
357
Jen eca — continued.
I his letters, 48.
I his teaching, 49.
I on popular gods and super-
stition, 17, 49.
I self-examination, 54.
I quoted, ch. ii. passim ; also pp.
15. 3i» 9i-
lerapis, 21-24.
crvius, commentator on Virgil,
8, 15.
lervius Sulpicius, 10.
lervius Tullius, 14.
fcxtus Empiricus, 4, 216, 217.
la very, 36, 52.
berates, 38, 72, 73, 117, 148, 233.
w>lornon, Psalms of, 170.
ption, a Pythagorean, 42.
fcermaticos Logos, see Greek
Index.
jterculus, 334.
|oicism, see chap. ii. generally ;
see Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius,
and Seneca ; see Greek Index
for Spermaticos Logos and
other technical terms,
unity of existence, 37, 56, 57,
58, 97, 314.
man a "fragment of God," 38,
58, 60.
the soul, 38.
God, 58.
polytheism and personality of
gods, 70, 73, 76, 95.
worship of God, 57.
"God within," 61, 148.
"Holy Spirit," 61, 65.
Providence, 38, 59-61, 71.
harmony with Nature, 39, 66.
argument from consensus, 68,
91.
divination, 16, 17, 92.
daemons, 59, 70.
the guardian, 58, 59.
the example, 72, 73.
fatalism, 60.
prayer, 66, 199, 200.
endurance, 60.
duty, 6 1.
Stoicism — continued.
the "hymn to Zeus," 61, 165.
mankind, 63.
failure of Stoicism, 63 f., 67,
75-
on pity, 65.
the will, 65-68.
the feelings, 66.
sin, 67, 68.
immortality, 68-70, 164.
the final conflagration, 69, 72,
164.
criticism of Stoicism among the
ancients, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68,
70, 71-73, 82, 95,97, 99.164,
205, 206, 216, 285, 288, 291.
Strabo, the Geographer, 26, 223.
Superstition, see chs. i. and vii.
no refuge in sleep from it, 17,
109.
practices, 109, 230.
beliefs, 206-208.
Syriac, 201.
Syrians, 56, 103, 207.
TABOOS, 131, 132.
Tacitus, 33, 37.
Tatian, 145-147, 148, 164, 271,
318-
Taurobolium, 67, 70.
Tertullian, see ch. x. generally,
conventional accounts of him,
305. 306, 3'3.
his work, 306.
his history, 307-322.
his education, 308-310.
his rhetoric, 309-311.
his mind and style, 311, 312
325. 33°, 346.
his literary interests, 309, 321.
his interest in medicine, 309.
his interest in law, 309,.
330, 33J» 332» 339. 34°-
his Stoicism, 314.
on "Nature," 3 14-3 1 7-
Nature's beauty, 317.
as to asceticism, 316, 345.
on man, 316.
his conversion, 318-321.
358 THE CONFLICT OF RELIGIONS
Tertullian — continued.
testimonium aninuz, 315, 320,
333-
on God, 315-317, 328.
on sin, 327.
on forgiveness, 327.
on baptism, 327-329.
on the Scriptures, 315, 332,
333-
on prophecies of Christ in Old
Testament, 178-180, i84; 188,
189, 193.
on philosophy and philosophers,
336-338.
on heresy and heretics, 338-341.
on idolatry, 321, 322, 329.
on war, 312.
on theatre, 313.
on amphitheatre, 312, 313, 324.
on marriage and child-birth, 314,
3i6, 345.
on Christian life, 335.
on trade, 329.
on persecution, 318-320, 323-
326.
on martyrdom ,,3 1 9-3 2 1, 324-327.
his Apology, 330-336.
on the Church, 343 f.
on Montanism, 344 f.
on ecstasy, 345.
on the Paraclete, 344.
on pagan gods, 7.
Tertullian quoted, chs. vi. and x.
passim ; also pp. 17, 18, 71, 73,
93, 103, 108, in, 137, 142,
143, 148, 160, 161, 165, 166,
197, 212, 240, 243, 248, 249,
250, 251, 254, 256.
Theophilus, 148, 318.
Thoreau, 326.
Thrasea Psetus, 40, 45, 151.
Tiberius, 33, 34.
Tibullus, ii.
Tongues, speaking with, 142, 149,
153, 174-
Tragedies, 37.
Trajan, 35, 331.
Trees, holy, 13, 230.
Trophonius, oracle of, 224, 255.
" Trypho," ch. vi. passim.
VALENTINUS and his school, 299,
308, 340.
Varro —
on national value of deceit in
religion, 5, 343.
his books on the gods, 8, 9,
3°9-
counted an "enemy of religion,"
8, 10
Vegetarianism, 24, 42, 108.
Virgil, see ch. i., 28-32.
his history, 28.
the civil wars, i, 28.
Italy, 28.
on Nature, 29.
on Man, 31.
on religion, 31, 32
Virgin-births, 100, 189-192, 299,
334
WELLS, holy, 13.
Witches, 97, 233.
Wordsworth, 2, 30, 64, 77, 86.
XENOPHANES, 16, in, 292.
ZENO, 39, 72, 333.
Zoology, ancient, 181, 229.
Zoroaster, 98, 105, 230.
INDEX
359
GREEK
a7ra#eia, 66, 302.
T;s, 291, 292, 297, 299.
aTroppota, 153,^304^
rov deoVy 38.
31.
, 23, 6l, 98.
70.
, 39 ; see Daemons.
65, 199.
€i/0eos, 92, 153; cf. 174.
€vOoV(TUt>SltfS, I O2.
Ivvoia, 56, 244, 281, 295.
245.
v, 65, 109.
060TOKOS, 21.
S, 21.
KOO-/A109, 38, 64.
INDEX
K/3CUTIS, I O2.
Aoyos, see
oXa, TO, 59, 290, 291.
, 155, 189, 297.
7ra0os, 66, 103.
Trvevpi, 101, 102, 295.
irvcvpa Siairvpov, 38.
TTVev/xa «v^ou(riaoTt»cbv, 102.
7ToXlT«ta TOU KOO-/10V, 39.
7rpoai>o-is, 65, 279.
Xoyos, 37, 56, 64, 71,
77, 148, 156.
ra «rt o-ot, 39, 65, 66.
39, 51, 101, 216.
b, 103.
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