Hence it occurs to me to wonder at those who say that atheism is impiety, and do not say the same of superstition. Yet Anaxagoras was brought to trial for impiety on the ground that he had said the sun is a stone; but nobody has called the Cimmerians impious because they do not believe even in the existence of the sun at all. Cf. Homer, Od. xi. 13-19. What say you? The man who does not believe in the existence of the gods is unholy? And is not he who believes in such gods as the superstitious believe in a partner to opinions far more unholy? Why, for my part, I should prefer that men should say about me that I have never been born at all, and there is no Plutarch, rather than that they should say Plutarch is an inconstant fickle person, quick-tempered, vindictive over little accidents, pained at trifles. If you invite others to dinner and leave him out, or if you haven’t the time and don’t go to call on him, or fail to speak to him when you see him, he will set his teeth into your body and bite it through, or he will get hold of your little child and beat him to death, or he will turn the beast that he owns into your crops and spoil your harvest Probably a covert reference to Artemis who sent the Calydonian boar to ravage the fields; Homer, Il. ix. 533 ff. When Timotheus, in a song at Athens, spoke of Artemis as Ecstatic Bacchic frantic fanatic, Bergk, Poet. Lyr. Graec. , iii. p. 620, Timotheus, No. 1; cf. Plutarch, Moralia , 22 A. Cinesias, the song-writer, standing up in his place among the audience, exclaimed, May you have a daughter like that! It is a fact that the superstitious make assumptions like that, and even worse than that, about Artemis: If hasting in fear from a hanging corpse, If near to a woman in childbirth pain, If come from a house where the dead are mourned, Polluted you entered the holy shrine, Or if from the triple cross-roads come Drawn to the place by cleansing rites For the part you bear to the guilty one. Cf. Bergk, Poet. Lyr. Gr. iii. p. 680; Lobeck, Aglaophamus , p. 633, and Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, Lesebuch (berli, 1902), p. 336. And they think no more reasonably than this about Apollo and about Hera and about Aphrodite. For they tremble at all of these and dread them. And yet what did Niobe say regarding Leto that was So irreverent as is the belief which superstition has fixed in the minds of the unthinking regarding the goddess, that, because she was derided, she required that the unhappy woman’s Daughters six that she bore and six sons in the prime of young manhood Adapted from Homer, Il. xxiv. 604. be shot dead? So insatiable was she in doing harm to others, and so implacable! For if it were really true that the goddess cherishes anger, and hates wickedness, and is hurt at being ill spoken of, and does not laugh at man’s ignorance and blindness, but feels indignation thereat, she ought to require the death of those who falsely impute to her such savagery and bitterness, and tell and write such stories. At any rate, we bring forward the bitterness of Hecuba as something barbaric and savage when she says, I wish I might eat up his liver, Biting it ’tween my teeth. Homer, Il. xxiv. 212. And yet of the Syrian goddess Cf. , for example, Athenaeus, 346 d, or Kock, Com. Attic. Frag. iii. p. 167, Menander, No. 544. the superstitious believe that if anybody eats sprats or anchovies, she will gnaw through the bones of his shins, inflame his body with sores, and dissolve his liver. Is it, then, an unholy thing to speak meanly of the gods, but not unholy to have a mean opinion of them? Or does the opinion of him who speaks malignly make his utterance improper? It is a fact that we hold up malign speaking as a sign of animosity, and those who speak ill of us we regard as enemies, since we feel that they must also think ill of us. You see what kind of thoughts the superstitious have about the gods; they assume that the gods are rash, faithless, fickle, vengeful, cruel, and easily offended; and, as a result, the superstitious man is bound to hate and fear the gods. Why not, since he thinks that the worst of his ills are due to them, and will be due to them in the future? As he hates and fears the gods, he is an enemy to them. And yet, though he dreads them, he worships them and sacrifices to them and besieges their shrines; and this is nothing surprising; for it is equally true that men give welcome to despots, and pay court to them, and erect golden statues in their honour, but in their hearts they hate them and shake the head. Sophocles, Antigone , 291. Hermolaüs Cf. Plutarch, Life of Alexander , chap. lv. (p. 696 C). attended upon Alexander, Pausanias It is said that Pausanias later helped to kill Philip. Cf. Aristotle, Politics , v. 10; Diodorus Siculus, xv. 94-95; Aelian, Varia Historia , iii. 45; Valerius Maximus, i. 8, ext. 9. served as bodyguard for Philip, and Chaerea Cassius Chaerea fomented the conspiracy which resulted in the death of Caligula; cf. Tacitus, Annals , i. 32; Suetonius, Caligula , 56-58. for Gaius Caligula, yet each one of these must have said as he followed along: Verily I would have vengeance if only my strength were sufficient. Homer, Il. xxii. 20. The atheist thinks there are no gods; the superstitious man wishes there were none, but believes in them against his will; for he is afraid not to believe. And yet, as Tantalus would be glad indeed to get out from under the rock suspended above his head, so the superstitious man would be glad to escape his fear by which he feels oppressed no less than Tantalus by his rock, and he would call the condition of the atheist happy because it is a state of freedom. But, as things are, the atheist has neither part nor lot in superstition, whereas the superstitious man by preference would be an atheist, but is too weak to hold the opinion about the gods which he wishes to hold. Moreover, the atheist has no part in causing superstition, but superstition provides the seed from which atheism springs, and when atheism has taken root, superstition supplies it with a defence, not a true one or a fair one, but one not destitute of some speciousness. For it is not because these people saw in the heavens anything to find fault with, or anything not harmonious or well-ordered in the stars or seasons, or in the revolutions of the moon or in the movements of the sun around the earth, artisans of day and night, Adapted from Plato, Timaeus , p. 40 C. Plutarch quotes the phrase more accurately in Moralia , 937 E, 938 E, and 1006. or in the feeding and growth of living creatures, or in the sowing and harvesting of crops, as the result of which they decided against the idea of a God in the universe; but the ridiculous actions and emotions of superstition, its words and gestures, magic charms and spells, rushing about and beating of drums, impure purifications and dirty sanctifications, barbarous and outlandish penances and mortifications at the shrines—all these give occasion to some to say that it were better there should be no gods at all than gods who accept with pleasure such forms of worship, and are so overbearing, so petty, and so easily offended. Would it not then have been better for those Gauls Cf. Caesar, Gallic War , vi. 16 and Strabo, iv. 4. 5. and Scythians Cf. Herodotus, iv. 70-72. to have had absolutely no conception, no vision, no tradition, regarding the gods, than to believe in the existence of gods who take delight in the blood of human sacrifice and hold this to be the most perfect offering and holy rite ? Again, would it not have been far better for the Carthaginians to have taken Critias or Diagoras Both Critias and Diagoras were famous atheists of antiquity. Cf. Sextus Empiricus, Adersus Mathematicos , ix. 54; Plutarch, Moralia , 880 D, 1075 A. to draw up their law-code at the very beginning, and so not to believe in any divine power or god, rather than to offer such sacrifices as they used to offer to Cronos? Plutarch says ( Moralia , 175 A and 522 A) that the practice was stopped by Gelon, tyrant of Syracuse, after his victory oer the Carthaginians in 480 B.C. But cf. Diodorus, xx. 14, which suggests that the practice was later revived. Cronos here is, of course, the Greek equivalent of Phoenician El (Hebrew Moloch or Baal). Cf. G. F. Moore in the Journal of Biblical Lit. xvi. (1897), p. 161. These were not in the manner that Empedocles describes Diels, Fragmente der Vorsokratiker , i. p. 275. in his attack on those who sacrifice living creatures: Changed in form is the son beloved of his father so pious, Who on the altar lays him and slays him. What folly! No, but with full knowledge and understanding they themselves offered up their own children, and those who had no children would buy little ones from poor people and cut their throats as if they were so many lambs or young birds; meanwhile the mother stood by without a tear or moan; but should she utter a single moan or let fall a single tear, she had to forfeit the money, Since the bad omen of her conduct would nullify the good effect of the sacrifice. and her child was sacrificed nevertheless; and the whole area before the statue was filled with a loud noise of flutes and drums so that the cries of wailing should not reach the ears of the people. Yet, if Typhons or Giants were ruling over us after they had expelled the gods, with what sort of sacrifices would they be pleased, or what other holy rites would they require? Amestris, the wife of Xerxes, caused twelve human beings to be buried alive Herodotus, vii. 114; but compare iii. 35. as an offering in her behalf to propitiate Hades, of whom Plato says The reference is probably to Plato, Cratylus , pp. 403 A-404B, where are repeated the popular etymologies of Pluto from πλοῦτος (wealth), and Hades from πάντα τὰ καλὰ ἐιδέναι (all-knowing of good). that it is because he is humane and wise and rich, and controls the souls of the dead by persuasion and reason, that he has come to be called by this name. Xenophanes, the natural philosopher, seeing the Egyptians beating their breasts and wailing at their festivals, gave them a very proper suggestion: If these beings are gods, said he, do not bewail them; and if they are men, do not offer sacrifices to them. The saying is quoted also in Moralia , 379 B and 763 C, and referred to in 228 E, cf. also Aristotle, Rhetoric , ii. 23, 27. But there is no infirmity comprehending such a multitude of errors and emotions, and involving opinions so contradictory, or rather antagonistic, as that of superstition. We must try, therefore, to escape it in some way which is both safe and expedient, and not be like people who incautiously and blindly run hither and thither to escape from an attack of robbers or wild beasts, or from a fire, and rush into trackless places that contain pitfalls and precipices. For thus it is that some persons, in trying to escape superstition, rush into a rough and hardened atheism, thus overleaping true religion which lies between. An application of the Aristotelian doctrine that virtue is the mean between two extremes (vices).