Clement of Alexandria · a new plain-English translation from the original language
Let there come forward to us now — for philosophy alone does not suffice — even poetry itself, that art which has spent its whole labor upon falsehood, that at last, however reluctantly, it may bear witness to truth, or rather confess to God its mythical digression. Let whichever poet wishes come forward first. Aratus, then, conceives the power of God as pervading all things: "that all things might grow firm-set, him do they ever propitiate first and last: hail, Father, great wonder, great blessing to men." In this same way Hesiod of Ascra hints at God: "for he himself is king and lord of all, and of the immortals no other contests his power." Already too upon the stage they lay truth bare. One, gazing up into the ether and the sky, says — this is Euripides — "consider this to be God." And Sophocles, son of Sophillus, says: "There is in truth one, only one God, who made heaven and the far-stretching earth, and the sea's grey-blue swell, and the might of the winds; but we mortals, many of us, erring in heart, have set up as a consolation for our sorrows images of gods carved from stone, or figures of bronze, or of wrought gold, or of ivory; and offering to these sacrifices and empty festal gatherings, we suppose that in this way we act piously." This man, then, already, and at some risk, brought truth before the spectators upon the stage. And the Thracian hierophant, poet as well, Orpheus son of Oeagrus, after his hierophancy of the mysteries and his theology of idols, at last, though late, sings a recantation of truth, that truly sacred discourse: "I will utter what may lawfully be uttered; shut the doors, all you profane alike; but you, Musaeus, child of the moon that gives forth light, give ear, for I will speak things that are true, and do not let whatever once entered your heart steal away your precious life. Look rather upon the divine word, and attend to it, guiding the intellectual chamber of your heart; walk well upon the path, and gaze only upon the immortal king of the universe." Then, going a little further, he adds plainly: "He is one, self-begotten; of the One all things are born; and he himself moves about among them, and no mortal sees him, but he himself sees all." So indeed Orpheus — in time, at any rate, he came to understand, though he had gone astray. But you, O mortal of cunning devices, delay no longer, but turning back from your wandering, propitiate God. For even if the Greeks, having caught some few sparks of the divine word, uttered a small measure of truth, they thereby bear witness that its power is not hidden, while at the same time they convict themselves of weakness, in that they did not attain the goal. For it is, I think, already plain to everyone that those who act or even speak apart from the word of truth are like men forcing themselves to walk without a footing. And to persuade you toward salvation there are also the very refutations of your own gods, which the poets, driven by the constraint of truth, turn into comedy. Menander the comic poet, for instance, in the play Heniochus [in the Hypobolimaeus], says: "No god pleases me who walks about outside with an old woman, nor one who slips into houses on his little board, a begging priest of the Mother" — for such indeed are the begging priests of the Mother. Hence Antisthenes fittingly said to them when they went about begging: "I do not feed the Mother of the gods, whom the gods feed." Again, the same comic poet, in the play The Priestess, angered at the prevailing custom, tries to expose the godless folly of this error, declaring sensibly: "For if a man drags the god about with cymbals wherever he wishes, then the one who does this is greater than the god; but these are instruments of human audacity and violence, devised by men." And Menander is not alone; Homer too, and Euripides, and many other poets besides, convict your gods and are not afraid to abuse them, however much they belong to them. At once they call Athena "dog-fly" and Hephaestus "bent on both sides," and to Aphrodite Helen says: "may you never return again to Olympus on your own feet." And of Dionysus, Homer writes openly: "who once drove the nurses of raving Dionysus headlong down the holy mountain of Nysa; and they all together cast their sacred implements to the ground, struck by man-slaying Lycurgus." Worthy indeed of Socratic discourse is Euripides, who, looking to truth and despising the spectators, at one time exposes Apollo — who "dwells at the center seat, giving to mortals the clearest of oracles" — saying: "trusting in him I killed the mother who bore me; count him unholy, and put him to death; the fault was his, not mine — he was more ignorant than I of what is right and just"; and at another time brings on stage a Heracles raving mad, and elsewhere drunken and insatiable — and how could he not be, he who, while feasting on meat, ate raw green figs besides, barking without art, fit only for a barbarian to learn from. And already in the play Ion, with head uncovered, he wheels the gods out before the theater on the stage-machine: "how then is it just that you, who wrote the laws for mortals, should yourselves be found guilty of injustice? And if — though it will not happen, but I will use the argument — you were to pay mortals the penalty for forced marriages, you, and Poseidon, and Zeus who rules heaven, in paying the penalty for injustice you would empty your temples."
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