The Ε at Delphi (20-21)

But God is (if there be need to say so), and He exists for no fixed time, but for the everlasting ages which are immovable, timeless, and undeviating, in which there is no earlier nor later, no future nor past, no older nor younger; but He, being One, has with only one Now completely filled For ever; and only when Being is after His pattern is it in reality Being, not having been nor about to be, nor has it had a beginning nor is it destined to come to an end. Under these conditions, therefore, we ought, as we pay Him reverence, to greet Him and to address Him with the words, Thou art; or even, I vow, as did some of the men of old, Thou art One.

In fact the Deity is not Many, like each of us who is compounded of hundreds of different factors which arise in the course of our experience, a heterogenous collection combined in a haphazard way. But Being must have Unity, even as Unity must have Being. Now divergence from Unity, because of its differing from Being, deviates into the creation of that which has no Being. Wherefore the first of the god’s names is excellently adapted to him, and so are the second and third as well. He is Apollo, that is to say, denying the Many[*] and abjuring multiplicity; he is Ieius, as being One and One alone[*]; and Phoebus,[*] as is well known, is a name that the men of old used to give to everything pure and undefiled; even as the Thessalians, to this day, I believe, when their priests, on the prohibited days, are spending their time alone by themselves outside the temples, say that the priests are keeping Phoebus.

Unity is simple and pure. For it is by the admixture of one thing with another that contamination arises, even as Homer[*] somewhere says that some ivory which is being dyed red is being contaminated, and dyers speak of colours that are mixed as being spoiled[*]; and they call the mixing spoiling.[*] Therefore it is characteristic of the imperishable and pure to be one and uncombined.

Those who hold that Apollo and the sun are the same,[*] it is right and proper that Ave welcome and love for their goodness of heart in placing their concept of the god in that thing which they honour most of all the things that they know and yearn for. But,

as though they were now having a sleepy vision of the god amid the loveliest of dreams, let us wake them and urge them to proceed to loftier heights and to contemplate the waking vision of him, and what he truly is, but to pay honour also to this imagery of him in the sun and to revere the creative power associated with it, in so far as it is possible by what is perceived through the senses to gain an image of what is conceived in the mind, and by that which is ever in motion an image of that which moves not, an image that in some way or other transmits some gleams reflecting and mirroring his kindliness and blessedness. And as for his vagaries and transformations when he sends forth fire that sweeps his own self along with it, as they say,[*] and again when he forces it down here and directs it upon the earth and sea and winds and living creatures, and, besides, the terrible things done both to living creatures and to growing vegetation — to such tales it is irreverent even to listen; else will the god be more futile than the Poet’s fancied child[*] playing a game amid the sand that is heaped together and then scattered again by him, if the god indulges in this game with the universe constantly, fashioning the world that does not exist, and destroying it again when it has been created. For, on the contrary, so far as he is in some way present in the world, by this his presence does he bind together its substance and prevail over its corporeal weakness, which tends toward dissolution. And it seems to me right to address to the god the words Thou art, which are most opposed to this account, and testify against it, believing that never does any vagary or transformation take place near him, but that such acts and experiences are related to some other god, or rather to some demigod, whose office is concerned with Nature in dissolution and generation; and this is clear at once from the names which are, as it were, correspondingly antithetic. For the one is spoken of as Apollo (not many), the other as Pluto (abounding); the one Delian (clear), the other Aïdoneus (unseen); the one Phoebus (bright), the other Scotios (dark)[*]; with the one are associated the Muses and Memory, with the other Oblivion and Silence; the one is Theorian (observing) and Phanaean (disclosing), and the other

Lord of the darkling Night and idling Sleep[*];

and he is also

Of all the gods most hateful to mortals.[*]

Whereas concerning the other Pindar[*] has said not unpleasingly

And towards mortal men he hath been judged the most gentle.

It was fitting therefore for Euripides[*] to say,

Drink-offerings for the dead who are gone

And the strains that the god of the golden hair,

Apollo, will never accept as his own.

And even before him Stesichorus,[*]

The harp and sport and song

Most doth Apollo love;

Sorrows and groans are Hades’ share.

And it is evident that Sophocles[*] assigns each of the instruments to each god in these words:

No harp, no lyre is welcome for laments.

As a matter of fact it was only after a long lapse of time and only recently that the flute ventured to utter a sound over things of delight, but during all the early time it used to be fetched in for times of mourning, and it had the task of rendering service on these occasions, not a very honourable or cheerful one. Later it carne to be generally associated with everything. Especially did those who confounded the attributes of the gods with the attributes of demigods get themselves into confusion.

But this much may be said: it appears that as a sort of antithesis to Thou art stands the admonition Know thyself, and then again it seems, in a manner, to be in accord therewith, for the one is an utterance addressed in awe and reverence to the god as existent through all eternity, the other is a reminder to mortal man of his own nature and the weaknesses that beset him.