Tertullian · a new plain-English translation from the original language
[1] But to pass now to the mythic sort, which is assigned to the poets — I hardly know whether it amounts to much for our modest purpose, or whether such figures are confirmed by proofs of divinity of such weight as Mopsus the African or Amphiaraus the Boeotian. For now this class must only be sampled; its full account will be given in its proper place. [2] Meanwhile, that these figures were merely men is evident from a single fact: you refrain from styling them gods outright, calling them instead heroes. [3] What, then, are we arguing? If divinity were to be awarded to the dead at all, it certainly should not go to such as these. [4] Look — you, when with that same license of presumption you disgrace heaven with the tombs of your kings, do you not honor with the comfort of that sort of consecration only those approved by justice, courage, piety, and every good quality of the kind — content, for such men, even to be laughed at as you swear falsely by them, [5] while, on the other hand, you strip the impious and the shameful even of the earlier rewards of human glory — tearing up their decrees and titles, pulling down their images, restamping their coinage? [6] But shall he who watches over all, who approves — indeed exacts — good deeds, prostitute the ordering of so great an indulgence of his to the common crowd? And shall men be allowed to have more scrupulousness and justice than he in distributing honors? Will the retinues of kings and princes be more discriminating than those of the supreme god? [7] And yet you shudder at and turn away from vagrants, exiles, the weak, the crippled, the lowborn, the disreputably raised; while on the other hand the incestuous, adulterers, ravishers, and parricides — men your own laws mark out for punishment. Is it a matter for laughter or for outrage, that such should be believed gods as men ought not even to be?
[8] But indeed, in this mythic class that the poets hand down, how inconsistent you are about the modesty of your own conscience and its defense! [9] For as often as we reproach you with the wretched, shameful, or savage doings of your gods, you defend them as fables, pleading the license of the poets; [10] but whenever such things are simply passed over in silence, you not only do not burden poetry with blame, but honor it as well, and count it, indeed, among the essential arts: in fact you bring your children's education forward through it as the very initiatress of letters. [11] Plato judged that poets who slander the gods should be banished, and that Homer himself, crowned though he be, should be driven from the city. [12] But since you receive and keep them, why do you not believe them when they weave such tales about your gods? [13] So then, if you place faith in the poets, why do you worship such gods? If instead you worship them precisely because you give the poets no credence, why do you lavish honor upon liars, and why take no care to avoid insulting those whose slanderers you revere? Clearly, no reliability is to be demanded of poets. [14] Do you not, in saying that they became gods after death, thereby confess that they were men before death? What novelty is it, then, if those who were men are stained by human mishaps, or crimes, or tales? [15] Do you not believe the poets — and yet you have instituted certain sacred rites on the basis of their very accounts? Why is the priestess of Ceres seized by force, if Ceres suffered nothing of the sort? Why are other men's children sacrificed to Saturn, if he spared his own? [16] Why is a male castrated for the Idaean goddess, if no disdainful youth was ever gelded by the pain of frustrated desire on her account? [17] Why do the women of Lanuvium not taste of the sacrificial feast of Hercules, if he did not perish on account of a woman? [18] The poets do indeed lie — but not in having attributed such deeds to men who never performed them, nor in having assigned divine foulness where none existed; and yet meanwhile it has seemed more credible to you that they were gods, though not of that sort, than that they were of that sort, but not gods.
VIII.