Oration 12

But is it really the case, gentlemen, that with you, as with a great many others, I have suffered the strange and astonishing fate of the owl? For that bird, though it is no wiser than the others and no finer to look at, but is exactly the sort of creature we know it to be, is courted by the rest of the birds whenever it utters its mournful and altogether unpleasant cry; and the moment they catch sight of it, some perch close by, while others fly round and round it, despising, as I suppose, its meanness and weakness — though men say that the birds admire the owl.

Yet how is it that they do not rather admire the peacock, so beautiful and so richly coloured, and especially when it is preening itself and displaying the beauty of its feathers — when it shows off before the female, raising its tail and spreading it all about itself like a fair vaulted chamber, or like a painted heaven dappled with stars, marvellous too in the rest of its body, very nearly the colour of gold blended with dark blue, and on the very tips of its feathers something resembling eyes, or rings, both in shape and in their general likeness?

And if again one should care to observe the lightness of its plumage, so that it is neither cumbersome nor hard to bear despite its length, the bird places itself in the midst, very quiet and motionless, offering itself to be looked at, turning about as in a procession; and when it wishes to amaze, it shakes its feathers and makes a not unpleasant sound, like that of a light wind stirring some dense thicket. Yet the birds have no wish to look upon the peacock while it adorns itself with all this, nor, when they hear the voice of the nightingale singing at dawn, are they at all moved towards her;

nor do they welcome the swan for its music, not even when, blessed with a good old age, it sings its last song, and out of pleasure and forgetfulness of the hardships of life utters its glad strain and escorts itself, painlessly as it seems, towards a painless death — not even then do they gather, charmed by its melodies, upon the bank of some river, or in a broad meadow, or on the clean shore of a lake, or upon some small and verdant island in a stream.

So with you also: though you have so many delightful sights and so many things to hear — clever orators here, most pleasant writers there of measured and unmeasured speech, and bright-coloured peacocks, and a host of sophists exalted by their reputation and their pupils as though upon wings — yet you come to me and wish to listen to a man who knows nothing and lays no claim to knowing anything. Am I not, then, justified in comparing your eagerness to what happens with the owl, an event scarcely brought about without some divine purpose?

It is by that purpose that the bird is said to be dear to Athena, the fairest and wisest of the gods, and it found favour even in the art of Pheidias among the Athenians, who did not think it unworthy to set it beside the goddess, with the people's consent. And Pericles, too, he is said to have wrought, without his knowing it, upon the shield. Yet for my part it does not occur to me to count these things good fortune for the owl, unless indeed it possesses some greater measure of wisdom.

Whence, I suppose, Aesop also composed the fable that, being wise, the owl advised the birds, when the oak was first springing up, not to allow it but to destroy it by every means; for from it, she said, there would come a drug from which there was no escape, by which they would be caught — the birdlime. Again, when men were sowing flax, she bade them pick out that seed as well;

for it would not grow to any good. And a third time, seeing a man who was an archer, she foretold: This man will overtake you with your own feathers, for though himself on foot he will send against you winged shafts. But the birds disbelieved her words, and thought her foolish, and said that she was mad; yet afterwards, learning by experience, they marvelled at her and believed her to be truly the wisest of all. And for this reason, whenever she appears, they approach her as one who knows everything;

but she no longer gives them any advice, only laments. Perhaps, then, you too have received some true word and profitable counsel — that very counsel which philosophy gave to the Greeks of old, which those of that day disregarded and dishonoured, but which men of the present time recall, and so they come to me on account of my outward appearance, honouring philosophy as they honour the owl, though in truth she is voiceless and without freedom of speech. For I am conscious in myself of nothing — neither of having said anything worth taking seriously before, nor of knowing now any more than you.

But there are other men, wise and altogether blessed, whom, if you wish, I will point out to you, naming each one by name. For indeed, by Zeus, I think this is the one useful thing I possess — to recognize the men who are wise and clever and know everything; and if you are willing to consort with them, leaving all else aside — parents, native lands, the shrines of the gods, the tombs of your ancestors — and to follow them wherever they lead, or, should they settle and remain somewhere, to settle with them — whether at Babylon in the city of Ninus and Semiramis, or in Bactra, or Susa, or Palibothra, or some other famous and wealthy city — giving them money, or persuading them in some other way, then you will be more blessed than blessedness itself.

But if you yourselves are unwilling, blaming your own nature or poverty or old age or weakness, then at least do not begrudge it to your sons, nor rob them of the greatest goods; rather entrust them willingly, and persuade the unwilling, or compel them by every means, so that, being adequately educated and become wise, they may henceforth be renowned among all Greeks and barbarians, surpassing in virtue and reputation and wealth and well-nigh every kind of power. For not only, as they say, do virtue and glory attend upon wealth, but wealth too follows of necessity upon virtue.

This I declare to you and counsel you in the presence of this god, moved by goodwill and friendship. And I think I would first persuade and exhort myself, if the state of my body and my time of life allowed it; but as it is, because of my infirmity, I am compelled — in case I might somewhere be able to find among the men of old some scrap of wisdom, cast aside now and stale, as it were — through the lack of better, living teachers. And I will tell you yet another thing in which I have fared like the owl, even if you choose to laugh at my words.

For just as the owl herself makes no use of the birds that flock to her, yet to the fowler she is the most profitable of all possessions — for he need neither throw out food nor imitate her cry, but merely by displaying the owl he gets a great multitude of birds — so to me too the eagerness of the many is of no use. For I take no pupils, knowing that I would have nothing to teach, since I myself know nothing; and as for promising to lie and deceive, I have not that boldness. Yet by attaching myself to a sophist I might be a great help to him, gathering a large crowd about himself, and then leaving it to him to dispose of the catch as he pleases. But somehow none of the sophists takes me up, nor are they glad to see me.

Now I am fairly certain that you believe me when I speak of my own inexperience and want of knowledge — plainly because of your own knowledge and good sense; and this, it seems to me, you would believe not of me only, but of Socrates as well, who made the same claim about himself to everyone, that he knew nothing; whereas Hippias and Polus and Gorgias, each of whom most admired and was astonished at himself, you would consider wise and blessed.

Yet I tell you beforehand that you, so vast a multitude, have been eager to hear a man neither comely in appearance nor strong, one already past his prime in years, who has no pupil, who professes no art or science — neither of the more august nor of the lesser sort, neither divination nor sophistry, nor any power of rhetoric or flattery — who is no skilled writer and has no work worthy of praise and serious regard, but only wears his hair long. Yet if this seems to you better and more desirable, it must be done, and we must try how it may be possible for us.

You will not, however, hear discourses such as those of any other speaker of the present day, but far meaner and stranger ones, such indeed as you see. You must, in short, allow me to follow wherever anything occurs to me, and not be vexed if I appear to wander in my speech, just as in fact I have spent the rest of my life wandering, but rather grant me your pardon, since you are listening to a private man and a chatterer. For indeed I happen just now to have travelled a long road, straight to the Ister and the country of the Getae, or of the Mysians, as Homer calls the nation by its present name.

I came neither as a trader of merchandise nor as one of those who attend the army carrying baggage or driving cattle, nor was I serving on an embassy of alliance or one of those well-wishing kind that join in prayers with the tongue alone — naked, without helmet or shield, nor did I carry a spear, nor indeed any other weapon at all.

So that I wondered how they could endure the sight of me. For I knew neither how to ride a horse, nor was I a capable archer or hoplite; nor was I among the light-armed and unarmoured troops, free of the heavy infantry's gear; I was no javelin-man or slinger, nor again able to cut wood or dig a trench, nor to mow fodder from an enemy's meadow turning frequently this way and that, nor to raise a tent or a palisade — such as those military attendants who accompany the armies;

helpless in all these matters, I arrived among men who were not sluggish, nor at leisure to listen to discourses, but on edge and full of fighting spirit, like racehorses at the starting-gates, who could not brook delay, but in their eagerness and ardour pawed the ground with their hooves. There one might see everywhere swords, everywhere breastplates, everywhere spears, everything full of horses, everything full of arms, everything full of armed men.

Alone among so many I appeared utterly at ease, an altogether peaceable spectator of war, frail in body, advanced in years, bearing no golden staff nor the sacred fillets of any god, come to the camp on the necessary errand of ransoming a daughter, but desiring to see men contending — some for empire and power, others for freedom and fatherland. Then, let no one suppose that I shrank from the danger; rather, remembering a certain ancient vow, I turned aside hither to you, always accounting things divine, however small, mightier and of more avail than things human.

Which, then, is more pleasant to you and more suited to the occasion — that I should recount the things there: the size of the river, the nature of the country, the temper of its seasons, the race of the men, and, I suppose, their numbers and their armament — or rather that I should take in hand the older and greater inquiry concerning this god, in whose presence we now are?

For he is the common king and ruler and president and father of men and gods, and moreover the steward of peace and of war, as it seemed to the poets of old, who were both experienced and wise — if somehow we prove able to hymn his nature and power in a brief discourse, falling short of his worth, while saying just this much.

Shall we, then, begin in the manner of Hesiod, a good man and dear to the Muses, who very wisely did not himself presume to begin of his own thinking, but called upon the Muses to tell of their own father? For this song befits the goddesses far more than the numbering of those who came against Ilium, themselves and the benches of their ships in order, of whom the greater part were foolish; and a wiser and better poet is he who summons them to this task somewhat thus:

Muses of Pieria, who glorify with songs, come, tell of Zeus, your own father, hymning him, through whom mortal men are alike unspoken and spoken of, named and unnamed, by the will of great Zeus. For lightly he gives strength, and lightly he crushes the strong; lightly he diminishes the conspicuous and exalts the obscure, and lightly he makes straight the crooked and withers the proud — Zeus who thunders on high, who dwells in the loftiest halls.

Take this up, then, and say whether this discourse and this song would be fitting for the assembly, O sons of the Eleans. For you are the rulers and leaders of this festival, the overseers and guardians of the deeds and words done here. Or ought those who have come hither to be merely spectators — both of the other sights, evidently all-beautiful and most renowned, and especially of the worship of the god and of his truly blessed image, which your ancestors, sparing no extravagance of expense and attaining the highest art, fashioned and dedicated as the fairest and most god-beloved of all the statues that are upon the earth — Pheidias, as they say, vying with the poetry of Homer,

who with a slight nod of his brows moved all Olympus, as Homer most vividly and confidently has said in his verses: He spoke, and with his dark brows the son of Cronus nodded; the ambrosial locks streamed down from the lord's immortal head, and he made great Olympus tremble. Or ought we to examine more carefully these very matters — the poems and the dedications and, in short, whatever is of such a kind as in some way to shape and mould the human conception of the divine — since we are now, as it were, engaged in a philosopher's discourse?

Concerning the gods, then, and the universal nature, and especially the ruler of all, first and foremost there is the belief and conception common to the whole human race, alike of Greeks and of barbarians, a belief necessary and innate in every rational creature, arising by nature without any mortal teacher and without the initiating priest of mysteries, free of deceit, by reason of our kinship with the gods and the many testimonies of the truth, which did not permit the earliest and most ancient of men to nod off and grow careless;

for, inasmuch as they dwelt not far off nor outside the divine, apart by themselves, but had grown up in its very midst — or rather had grown up together with it and clung to it in every way — they could not for long remain without understanding, having received, moreover, intelligence and reason concerning it, since they were illumined on every side by the divine and mighty manifestations of heaven and the stars, and of the sun and moon besides, encountering by night and day forms manifold and unlike, and beholding sights beyond contrivance and hearing voices of every kind from winds and woods and rivers and the sea, and besides from beasts both tame and wild — while they themselves uttered a most pleasant and clear sound, and delighting in the proud and intelligent quality of the human voice, set symbols upon the things that come to their perception, so as to name and make plain everything they conceived,

easily taking up the memories and conceptions of countless things. How, then, were they likely to be ignorant and to have no inkling of him who sowed and planted and preserved and nourished them, being filled on every side with the divine nature through sight and hearing and, in short, every sense — dwelling upon the earth, beholding the light from heaven,

having abundant nourishment, since the forefather god had richly provided and prepared it beforehand — first, for the first and earthborn men, the food from the earth, the mud being still soft and rich, which they licked up as from a mother, the earth, drawing the moisture from her as the plants now do; and second, for those who were now advancing, fruits springing up of themselves and grass not hard, together with sweet dew and the drinkable streams of the nymphs; and indeed, depending upon the surrounding air and nourished by the continual inflow of breath, drawing in moist air like infant children, with the breast never failing them of its milk, ever held to their lips.

For we might more justly call this the first nourishment for the men of earlier and of later times alike. For when the babe falls from the womb, still sluggish and feeble, the earth, who is in truth its mother, receives it, while the air, breathing in upon it and cooling it, straightway rouses it with the moister nourishment of milk, and grants it to utter sound. This, fittingly, one might call the first breast that Nature holds out to those who are born.

Experiencing and reflecting on these things, men could not but marvel at and love the divine; and besides this, perceiving the seasons, that they come to be for the sake of our preservation, each of the two extremes very precisely and sparingly tempered, they had moreover this peculiar gift from the gods, set apart from the other animals — to reason and reflect concerning them.

It is much as if one should lead a man, Greek or barbarian, to be initiated by bringing him into some mystic chamber of surpassing beauty and size, where he sees many mystic sights and hears many such voices, with darkness and light appearing to him by turns, and a thousand other things taking place; and further, if, as is the custom in what is called the enthronement, the initiating priests, having seated those being initiated, dance round about them in a circle — is it likely that this man would be unmoved in his soul and would suspect nothing of what is taking place, that it is done with wiser counsel and design, even if he were one of the far-off and nameless barbarians, with no guide or interpreter present, provided he had a human soul?

Or is this rather impossible, and is not the whole race of men in common being initiated into the complete and truly perfect initiation — not in a small building got ready by the Athenians for the reception of a small crowd, but in this universe, a varied and wise work of craftsmanship, where countless marvels appear at every moment, and where, moreover, the celebrants are not men like the initiates, but immortal gods initiating mortals, dancing round forever, as one may say, by night and day, in light and stars — and is it conceivable that of all these things men should have no perception nor suspicion, and least of all of the supreme leader who presides over the whole and directs the entire heaven and universe, like a wise helmsman commanding a ship most beautifully and unfailingly equipped?

For one would not so much marvel that such a thing happens among men, but far more how it reaches even to the unreasoning and irrational beasts, so that they too know and honour the god and are eager to live according to his ordinance; and still more strange, the plants, which have no conception of anything, but are soulless and voiceless and governed by a single, simple nature, yet even these of their own accord and willingly bear the fruit proper to each. So very clear and manifest is the will and power of this god.

But surely we shall seem altogether ridiculous and antiquated for these words, in asserting that such understanding is nearer to the beasts and the trees than is inexperience and ignorance to us — when certain men, having become wiser than all wisdom, not by pouring wax into their ears, as they say the sailors of Ithaca did so as not to hear the song of the Sirens, but having interposed a kind of leaden nature, at once soft and impenetrable to voice, and besides, I suppose, having cast before their eyes much darkness and mist (by which Homer says one overcome is hindered from recognizing a god), think contemptuously of things divine; and having set up a single base and untroubling divinity — a certain luxury or great and dissolute idleness and unrestrained wantonness, which they call pleasure, in truth a womanish god — they prefer and serve it with cymbals and noises and pipes played in the dark. With their feasting we have no quarrel,

if their wisdom went only so far as to sing; but they must needs rob us of our gods and banish them, driving them out of their own city and dominion, out of this whole universe, into certain absurd regions, as one banishes unfortunate men to certain desert islands; and they assert that this entire universe is without sense and without reason, masterless, having no ruler nor steward nor overseer, and that it wanders and is borne along at random, no one either now providing for it or having formerly wrought the whole — as children, having set their hoops in motion, then let them roll along of themselves.

Now these things the discourse has pursued, having strayed of its own accord; for perhaps it is not easy to check the philosopher's thought and speech wherever it sets out, since whatever meets it always appears profitable and necessary for the hearers — a discourse not rehearsed against the water-clock and the constraint of the law courts, as someone said, but composed with great liberty and freedom from fear. To run back, then, is not hard, as in a voyage it is not hard for skilled helmsmen who have not strayed far off course.

As the first source of the belief and conception concerning the divine, we said, is simply the innate conception in all men, arising from the very facts and from the truth — a conception not formed through error nor at random, but very strong and ever-flowing, beginning from all time and among all nations, and enduring, well-nigh common and public to the rational race; and the second we said was that which is acquired and engendered in souls through other agencies, by accounts and tales and customs — some of them masterless and unwritten, others written and having well-known authors.

Of such belief let us say that one kind is voluntary and persuasive, the other necessary and prescriptive. I mean that the kind belonging to the voluntary and persuasive is that of the poets, while that belonging to the necessary and prescriptive is that of the lawgivers; for neither of these two could have prevailed had not that first conception underlain it, by reason of which men willingly received, and in a sense foreknew, both the prescriptions and the persuasions — the poets and lawgivers expounding rightly and in harmony with the truth and with men's notions, but in some matters going astray.

Of the two kinds mentioned, which we should call the older in time among us Greeks — poetry or legislation — I could not say with assurance at present. Yet perhaps it is fitting that the painless and persuasive should be older than that which carries penalty and command.

Up to this point, then, the matter concerning the first and immortal Father — whom we who share in Greece call also Zeus of our fathers — proceeds for men much as does the matter concerning mortal and human parents. For indeed the goodwill and service owed to those parents by their offspring arises first, untaught, from nature and benefaction, the begetting and nourishing and cherishing parent being at once loved and served in return by the begotten as far as may be possible;

and second and third comes the matter of the poets and lawgivers — the former exhorting men not to withhold gratitude from that which is older and akin, and is moreover the cause of life and of being, the latter compelling and threatening punishment to the disobedient, without making clear and plain what sort of beings the parents are, and for what benefactions they bid us not leave the owed debt unpaid. In the accounts and tales concerning the gods one may rather see this happening in both cases. Now I myself observe that to the many everywhere precision is wearisome, no less in matters of discourse, when men care only for numbers; and giving no preface nor making any distinction about the subject, nor beginning their words from any starting-point, they run through, as the saying is, with unwashed feet, the most obvious and barest matters. And of unwashed feet there is no great harm, since they go through mud and much filth; but of an ignorant tongue no small damage comes to the hearers. Yet it is fitting that the educated, those of whom one may make some account, should labour and toil through it together, until, as out of some bend and rough place, we bring the discourse onto the straight road.

There being, then, three sources set before us of the conception of the divine among men — the innate, the poetic, and the legal — let us name a fourth, the plastic and creative art concerned with images and likenesses of the gods: I mean that of painters and sculptors and stone-carvers and, in short, of everyone who has thought himself worthy to declare himself an imitator of the divine nature through his art — whether by a very weak and deceptive shadow-painting that imitates to the sight by a mixture of colours and the bounding line which comprehends nearly all that is most exact, or by the carving of stones, or the working of wooden figures, the art little by little removing the excess until it leaves the very form that appears, or by the casting of bronze and the like precious metals melted by fire or poured into certain moulds, or by the moulding of wax, which most easily follows the art and admits most readily of correction;

such men were Pheidias and Alcamenes and Polycleitus, and besides Aglaophon and Polygnotus and Zeuxis, and earlier than they Daedalus. For it did not suffice these men to display their cleverness and skill upon other subjects, but, exhibiting also images of the gods and dispositions of every kind, taking the cities as their patrons both privately and publicly, they filled men with much and varied surmise concerning the divine — not wholly at variance with the poets and lawgivers, partly that they might not seem lawless and be liable to the penalties imposed, and partly because they saw that men had already been preoccupied by the poets, whose image-making was older. So they did not wish to appear to the many unconvincing and unpleasant by innovating.

For the most part, then, they fashioned in accordance with the tales and in agreement with them, but in part they introduced things of their own, becoming in a manner rivals and fellow-craftsmen of the poets: as those exhibited through hearing, so these, in their own way, expounded things divine through sight to the more numerous and less experienced spectators. And all this drew its strength from that first beginning, as done for the honour and gratitude of the divine.

And indeed, apart from the simple and most ancient conception concerning the gods, which grows in all men together with their reason, besides these three interpreters and teachers — the poetic, the legislative, and the creative — we must of necessity take a fourth, who is in no way careless nor inexperienced in his thinking about them: I mean the philosopher, the truest and perhaps most perfect expositor and prophet, by reason, of the immortal nature.

The lawgiver, then, let us for the present excuse from rendering account — an austere man, and himself one who calls others to account; for he would need to spare both himself and your leisure. But of the rest let us take up the foremost of each kind and examine whether they appear to have done any service, or even harm, towards piety by their works or words, and how they stand as to agreement or as to disagreement with one another, and which of them best accords with the truth, being in harmony with the first and guileless conception. Now all of these sing in unison, as though they had laid hold of a single track and were keeping to it — some clearly, others more obscurely. For perhaps the truly philosophic would not need persuasion, were he not brought into comparison with the makers of statues or of verses, and that too in a festival crowd whose judges are friends to those others.

For suppose someone should call Pheidias to account, the first among the Greeks — this wise and god-gifted craftsman of the august and all-beautiful work — having seated as judges those who award the prize to the god in the contest, or rather a common tribunal of all the Peloponnesians, and besides of the Boeotians and Ionians and the other Greeks everywhere throughout Europe and Asia: not demanding an account of the money nor of the expense laid out upon the statue — for how many talents the gold was bought, and the ivory, and besides the cypress and cedar, that lasting and incorruptible material for the inner work, and the outlay for food and wages to the workmen, who were neither few nor employed for a short time, both other no mean craftsmen and Pheidias himself, who received the largest and most perfect wage for his art —

for these matters it is fitting that the Eleans should reckon, who spent so lavishly and magnificently; but we shall say that the contest set before Pheidias was about something else. Suppose, then, someone should say to him: O best and most excellent of craftsmen, that you have wrought a sweet and beloved sight and an inconceivable delight to behold, for all Greeks and barbarians who have ever come hither, many of them many times, no one will deny.

For in truth this would astound even the irrational nature of animals, could they but look upon it — both the bulls ever led to this altar, that they submit willingly to those who begin the sacrifice, if they may afford some gratification to the god, and besides the eagles and horses and lions, that, quenching the savage and wild quality of their spirit, they keep great stillness, delighted by the sight. And of men, whoever is altogether sore in soul, having drained many misfortunes and sorrows in his life and not even casting sweet sleep upon his eyes — even he, I think, standing opposite this image, would forget all the dread and grievous things that befall in human life.

So have you discovered and contrived a sight that is verily a balm for grief and anger, a forgetting of all ills. Such light and such grace are upon it from your art. For not even Hephaestus himself, it is likely, would find fault with this work, judging it by the pleasure and delight of human sight. But whether, on the other hand, you have fashioned the fitting form and the worthy shape of the goddess's nature, using a delightful material, displaying a man's form of surpassing beauty and size — but, save for being a man, having made all the rest as you have made it — let us now consider; and if you defend yourself adequately on these points before the present company, and persuade us that you have found the proper and fitting figure and form for the first and greatest god, you would receive a second reward, greater and more perfect than that from the Eleans.

For you see that no small contest nor danger is ours. For formerly, since we knew nothing certain, each of us moulded a different idea, every man imagining and dreaming all that is mortal according to his own power and nature; and if anywhere there were small and obscure likenesses made by earlier craftsmen, we neither greatly trusted nor heeded them. But you, by the strength of your art, prevailed, and gathered first Greece, then the rest, by this apparition, having shown it godlike and brilliant, so that none of those who have seen it can easily form any other conception.

Do you suppose, then, that Iphitus and Lycurgus and the Eleans of that day, through want of money, made the contest and the sacrifice befitting Zeus, but found no statue to bear the name and figure of the god — they who were well-nigh superior in power to those of later times — or rather that they feared lest they might never be able to imitate adequately, by mortal art, the supreme and most perfect nature?

To this, perhaps, Pheidias would reply, being a man not without eloquence, nor of an inarticulate city, and moreover the intimate and companion of Pericles: Men of Greece, this contest is the greatest of all that ever were; for it is not about empire, nor about the generalship of a single city, nor about a number of ships or a land army, whether it has been rightly managed or not, that I now render account, but about the god who rules over all, and about the likeness fashioned to him — whether it has been made gracefully and resemblingly, lacking nothing of the imitation of the divine that is possible for men, or whether it is unworthy and unfitting.

Bear in mind that I was not the first to be your expositor and teacher of the truth. For I was not even born at the beginnings of Greece, when she had as yet no clear and settled doctrines concerning these matters, but she was in a manner older, and already firmly persuaded and convinced concerning the gods. And whatever works of stone-carvers or painters older than my art were in agreement, except in the precision of the workmanship, I forbear to mention.

But I found your beliefs ancient and immovable, which it was not possible to oppose, and other craftsmen concerning things divine, older than we and held to be far wiser — the poets — those being able to lead men to every conception through their poetry, while our own handiworks have only this single sufficient power of likeness.

For the divine manifestations — I mean of the sun and moon and the whole heaven and the stars — are in themselves wholly marvellous to behold, but the imitation of them is simple and artless, if one should wish to liken the shapes of the moon or the circle of the sun; and further, those things are wholly full of character and mind, while in the likenesses nothing of the sort is shown forth. Whence perhaps from the beginning it was so established among the Greeks.

For mind and intelligence in itself no modeller nor painter will ever be able to represent; for of such things all men are utterly unbeholding and uninformed. But that in which this resides, not surmising it but knowing it, we take refuge in, attaching to the god a human body as a vessel of intelligence and reason, in our want and lack of an example seeking through the visible and representable to show forth the unrepresentable and invisible, using the power of a symbol — a better course than that of certain barbarians who, men say, liken the divine to animals on small and absurd pretexts. But he who far surpasses in beauty and dignity and magnificence — he, well-nigh, is by far the mightiest craftsman of the images concerned with things divine.

For no one would say that it would have been better that no seat nor image of the gods had been set up among men, on the ground that one ought to look only to the heavenly bodies. For all these, indeed, the man of sense reveres, accounting them blessed gods seen from afar; but because of the impulse towards the divine, there is in all men a strong love to honour and serve the divine from close at hand, approaching and laying hold of it with persuasion, sacrificing and crowning it with garlands.

For simply, as infant children torn from father or mother, having a dread longing and yearning, often stretch out their hands to those not present, dreaming of them, so also men, loving the gods rightly because of their benefaction and kinship, are eager in every way to be with them and commune with them; whence many of the barbarians too, through poverty and lack of art, name as gods mountains and unworked trees and shapeless stones, which are in no way whatever more akin to the divine form.

But if you blame me for the figure, you would do well first to be angry with Homer; for he not only imitated a form very near to the work of creation, naming the god's locks, and besides his chin straightway at the beginning of his poem, when he says that Thetis supplicated on behalf of the honour of her son; but in addition he gave to the gods conversations and counsels and harangues, and besides journeys from Ida to heaven and Olympus, and sleeps and banquets and unions — ordering all most loftily in his verses, yet keeping to mortal likeness. And indeed, when he dared to liken Agamemnon to the god in the most authoritative parts, saying: in eyes and head like Zeus who delights in thunder.

But the work of my making no one, not even a madman, would liken to anyone, nor to a mortal, when it is set side by side with the beauty or grandeur of a god. From which, if I do not appear far greater and more sober a poet than Homer — who in your judgment was equal to a god in wisdom — I am ready to undergo whatever penalty you will. But I speak with reference to what my art can do;

for poetry is a lavish thing and resourceful in every way and self-governing, sufficient by itself, with the abundance of language and the multitude of words, to make plain all the soul's intentions; and whatever figure or deed or experience or magnitude it conceives, it would never lack a messenger's voice signifying each thing most vividly. For pliant is the tongue of mortals, and in it are many tales, Homer himself says, of every kind, and wide is the range of words this way and that.

For the human race runs the risk of being in want of all things rather than of voice and speech; and of this alone it possesses a wondrous wealth. At least it has left nothing of the things that come to perception unspoken or unmarked, but straightway sets upon what is conceived the clear seal of a name, and often several voices for one thing, of which, whenever it utters any, it furnishes a notion not much weaker than the truth. Very great, then, is the licence and power in man as concerns speech, to set forth what occurs to him.

But the art of the poets is most bold and uncensured, and especially Homer's, who employs the greatest freedom of speech, who chose not one character of diction, but mingled the whole Greek tongue, hitherto kept separate — of Dorians and Ionians, and besides that of the Athenians — blending it into the same far more than dyers blend their colours, not only of his own day but of earlier times: if anywhere a word had fallen out of use, taking even this up like an ancient coin from some masterless treasure, out of love of words, and many barbarian names too,

sparing none, if only it seemed to him to have pleasure or vehemence; and besides this, transferring words not only from neighbouring things nor from things near at hand, but from those furthest off, so that he might charm the hearer, enchanting him with amazement, and not even leaving these in place, but lengthening some, contracting others, and altering yet others; and at last he declared himself a maker not only of measures,

but of words too, uttering them from himself — some simply setting names upon things, others naming them upon the proper words, as though setting seal upon seal, more vivid and plainer — abstaining from no sound, but in short imitating the voices of rivers and woods and winds and fire and the sea, and besides of bronze and stone and, in short, of all living creatures and instruments, now of beasts, now of birds, now of pipes and reeds: clangs and hums and din and thud and crash he first devised and named, and rivers murmuring and shafts whizzing and waves roaring and winds raging, and other such dread and truly strange wonders, casting much confusion and tumult into the mind;

so that he was at no loss for words fearful and pleasant, and besides smooth and rough, and having countless other differences both in their sounds and in their meanings. By which epic art he was able to engender whatever passion he wished in the soul. But our race, the manual and craftsmanlike, in no way attains such liberty, but first we have need of material — safe enough to endure, but involving much labour to procure and not easily got, and besides not a few fellow-workers.

And in addition to this, we must of necessity work one figure for each image, and this immovable and abiding, so as to comprehend in itself the whole nature and power of the god. But for the poets it is easy to comprehend in their poetry many forms and shapes of every kind, adding to them motions and rests, as they may think fitting on each occasion, and deeds and words, and besides, I suppose, the resource of deception and of time. For carried along by a single conception and impulse of the soul, the poet drew up a great multitude of verses, as from a spring of water overflowing, before the vision and the conception he had received failed him and ran away. But our art is laborious and slow, advancing with difficulty and little by little, toiling, I suppose, with stony and hard material.

But hardest of all, the craftsman must keep the same image abiding in his soul forever, until he completes the work, often even for many years. And indeed the saying that the eyes are more trustworthy than the ears is perhaps true; yet they are far harder to persuade and require more vividness. For sight associates with the very things seen, but it is not impossible to rouse the hearing and beguile it, sending in imitations bewitched by measures and sounds.

And further, the measures of our art are constrained as to bulk and size; but the poets are free to magnify even these to any extent whatever. Thus it was easy for Homer to tell the magnitude of Strife, that she fixed her head in heaven and walked upon the earth; but for me it was something to be content with merely to fill the space assigned by the Eleans or the Athenians.

You, then, will say, O wisest of poets, Homer, far surpassing both in the power of your poetry and in time, well-nigh first to display to the Greeks, of all the other gods and especially of the greatest of the gods, many and beautiful images — some gentle, others fearful and dread.

But our god is peaceful and everywhere mild, such as befits the overseer of an unfactious and concordant Greece; whom I, with my own art and the counsel of the wise and good city of the Eleans, set up, gentle and august in a serene figure — the giver of life and existence and of all good things, the common father and saviour and guardian of men — as far as it was possible for a mortal to conceive and imitate the divine and inconceivable nature.

Consider whether you will not find the image fitting to all the titles of the god. For Zeus alone of the gods is named Father and King, and Protector of the City, and God of Kindred, and God of Friendship and of Comradeship, and besides God of Suppliants and of Refuge and of Strangers and of Possessions and of the Fruits, and having countless other appellations, all of them good: named King by reason of his rule and power; Father, I suppose, because of his care and gentleness; Protector of the City, by reason of law and the common good; God of Kindred, because of the kinship of race shared by gods and men;

God of Friendship and Comradeship, because he brings all men together and wishes them to be friends to one another, and no man an enemy or foe to any; God of Suppliants, as one who listens and is gracious to those in need; God of Refuge, by reason of the escape from evils; God of Strangers, because we ought not to neglect even strangers, nor to consider any man an alien; God of Possessions and of the Fruits, inasmuch as he is the cause of the fruits and the giver of wealth and power.

And of that which it was possible to show forth without speaking, does the art not adequately suffice? For the strength and magnificence of the form is meant to signify the rule and the king; the gentleness and kindliness, the father and his care; the dignity and severity, the Protector of the City and the lawful one; the kinship of men and gods, the very likeness of form, in the manner of a symbol; and the God of Friendship and of Suppliants and of Strangers and of Refuge, and all such titles, simply the kindliness to men and the gentleness and goodness shown in the form make it like; and the God of Possessions and of the Fruits, the simplicity and magnanimity made plain through the form; for in truth the good things most resemble one who gives and bestows freely.

These things, then, I imitated as far as was possible, since I could not name them. But him continually flashing lightning for war and the destruction of multitudes, or sending excess of rains or of hail or of snow, or stretching out the dark rainbow, the symbol of war, or sending a star casting off continuous sparks, a dread portent to sailors or to a soldier, or dispatching grievous strife upon Greeks and barbarians, so as to cast a love of war and ceaseless battle into men weary and worn out; nor again setting upon the scales the dooms of demigod men or of whole armies, decided by a self-moved inclination — these it was not possible to imitate through art; nor indeed, even had it been possible, would I ever have wished it.

For what sort of thing would a voiceless image of thunder become, or a lightless likeness of lightning or the thunderbolt, out of these earthly metals here? And further, the earth shaken and Olympus moved by a slight nod of the brows, or some crown of cloud about his head — for Homer it was easy to say, and there was great freedom towards all such things; but for our art it is altogether impossible, having close at hand the clear refutation of sight.

But if, on the other hand, one thinks the material more ignoble than is worthy of the god, this is true and right; yet he could not justly blame either those who gave it or him who chose and approved it. For there was no other nature better or more brilliant to the sight, which it was possible to bring into men's hands and to share in the craftsmanship.

For to work air or fire and the unstinting spring of water in certain mortal instruments, and the solid mass that is in all these — I mean not gold and stone, for these are small and mean, but the whole strong and heavy substance — distinguishing each separately and weaving them together into one for the generation of animals and plants, is not possible even for all the gods, but well-nigh for this one alone, whom another poet very beautifully addressed: Dodonaean, mighty in strength, father of best craftsmanship.

For he indeed is the first and most perfect craftsman, who took as patron of his own art not the city of the Eleans, but the whole material of the universe. But Pheidias or Polycleitus you would not reasonably require to do anything more, but even these things are greater and more august than our handicraft.

For not even Hephaestus has Homer represented elsewhere displaying his skill; rather, though he provided the god as a craftsman for the work of the shield, he could not contrive to find another material. For he says thus: He cast into the fire stubborn bronze and tin, and precious gold and silver. To no man, then, would I yield that he should ever become better than I in the art; but with Zeus himself, who fashions the whole universe, no mortal ought to be compared.

When Pheidias had said these things and made his defence, the Greeks, it seems to me, would fittingly have crowned him. But perhaps the discourse has escaped the notice of the many — though, as I think, very suitable for philosophers and for a multitude to hear — concerning the setting up of statues, how they ought to be set up, and concerning the poets, how they conceive of things divine, better or worse, and further concerning the first conception of god, of what sort it is and in what manner it arose among men. And much, I think, was said concerning the power of Zeus as well, in accordance with his titles. And if it has been said with good words of praise for both the statue and those who set it up, so much the better.

For in truth he seems to look upon us so — full of goodwill and care — so that to me he almost seems to utter these words: All this, O all-Greece, you accomplish nobly and fittingly, offering magnificent sacrifices from your present means, and especially establishing this most glorious contest, as from the beginning, of bodily vigour and strength and speed, and preserving the customs of festivals and mysteries that you have received. But this I consider with concern: that you yourself are not well tended, but together with grievous old age you are foully squalid and clad in unseemly garb.