To the Cynic Heracleios
To the Cynic Heracleios Late Antiquity Julian GreekTruly many things come to pass in the long course of time. This line from comedy occurred to me to cry aloud the other day, when, having been invited, we sat listening to a Cynic who barked nothing clear or noble, but who sang fables like the nurses, and even these he did not handle soundly. My first impulse was to rise and break up the gathering; but since it was necessary—as in a theater, when Heracles and Dionysus are made the subject of comedy by the comic poets—to hear him out, I endured it, not for the sake of the speaker but of the company; or rather, if I may speak somewhat more boldly, for my own sake, that I might not seem, like the doves, to have been frightened into flight by mere little words, driven off by superstition rather than by pious and reasoned reflection. So I stayed, having said to myself that line: "Endure, my heart; a thing yet more shameful you once endured." Bear with a Cynic talking nonsense for a small part of a day; it is not the first time you have heard the gods blasphemed. We do not so manage public affairs well, nor are we so temperate in our private concerns—indeed, we are not so fortunate—as to keep our ears clean, or at the very least to keep our eyes unstained by the manifold impieties of this iron race of ours. But since the Cynic, as though we lacked such evils, filled us with his unholy words, naming the best of the gods—as I would he had never named him, nor we ever heard it—come, let us try to instruct him in your presence: first, that it befits the Cynic to write discourses rather than fables; next, what kind of fables one ought to compose, and how they should be elaborated, if indeed philosophy has any need of fable-writing at all; and finally, I shall discourse briefly about reverence toward the gods. For this it was that brought me before you, though I am no professional writer and have hitherto declined public speaking, like any other of the tiresome and sophistical occupations. But it will perhaps not be out of place for me to say, and for you to hear, a little about fable, by way of a kind of genealogy.
As to its origin—whence it was discovered, and who first attempted to compose a plausible fiction for the profit or the entertainment of his hearers—one could no more find this out than if one should set about searching for the first man who sneezed or cleared his throat. But if, as horsemen appeared in Thrace and Thessaly, while archers and the lighter sorts of arms appeared in India, Crete, and Caria—the pursuits, I think, following the nature of the country—if in this same way one supposes also concerning all other matters, that wherever each thing is held in honor, there especially and first it was invented, then fable seems originally to have been the invention of the common herd of men, and from that day to this the practice has remained current among them, like any other of the entertainments, the pipe and the lyre, for the sake of delight and recreation. For just as birds need no teaching to fly, nor fish to swim, nor deer to run, since they are so by nature—and even if one binds or confines them, they nonetheless try to use those parts which they are conscious of being naturally fitted for—so too, I think, the human race, having in its soul nothing else than reason and knowledge as it were confined within (that power which the wise call so), turns to learning and inquiry and busy investigation as to the work most proper to itself. And to him whom a kindly god has quickly released from his bonds and brought his power into act, knowledge is straightway present; but for those still bound—just as Ixion, they say, was made to consort with a cloud instead of the goddess—a false opinion has been ingrained in place of a true one. For thence arise in them these windy and monstrous things, like images, as it were, and shadows of true knowledge. At all events they practice falsehoods before the knowledge of truths, and teach them most eagerly, and learn them as though they were something useful and admirable. And if one must at all make some defense for those who first fashioned fables, they seem to me to do for the souls of children what the nurses do: when children itch about the cutting of their teeth, the nurses fasten certain leathern things to their hands to soothe their distress; even so these men, to the little soul that is growing its wings and longing to know something more, yet not yet able to be taught the truth, channel in these fables, watering it as one waters a thirsty field, in order, I think, to soothe its irritation and its pain.
As this practice advanced and gained repute among the Greeks, the poets drew from it the apologue, which differs from the fable in being composed not for children but for men, and in containing not entertainment only but also some admonition. For it aims, while concealing its purpose, to admonish and instruct, whenever the speaker is wary of speaking openly, suspecting the hostility of his hearers. So Hesiod too plainly did. And after him Archilochus, as though setting a kind of seasoning to his poetry, not seldom made use of fables, seeing, as was natural, that the theme he was pursuing was deficient in such entertainment, and knowing clearly that poetry deprived of fable is mere versifying, and is deprived, one might say, of itself—for it is no longer poetry—he plucked these seasonings from the poetic Muse, and set them beside his work for this very reason, that he might be reckoned not a writer of lampoons but a poet. And the Homer, or Thucydides, or Plato of fables—or whatever you wish to call him—was Aesop the Samian, a slave by fortune rather than by choice, yet a man not foolish even in this very matter. For one to whom the law granted no freedom of speech, it was fitting to bring forward his counsels in outline and embellished with pleasure and charm—just as, I think, among physicians the free ones prescribe what is needful, but if a man happen to be by fortune a servant and by his craft a physician, he is put to trouble, being forced at once to flatter and to treat his master.
If, then, this servitude befits the Cynic too, let him speak, let him write fables, and let anyone whatever yield the telling of them to him; but if he claims to be the only free man, then for what purpose he will use fables, I do not know. Is it that, having tempered the bitter and biting part of his counsel with pleasure and charm, he may both benefit and at the same time escape suffering any harm at the hands of the one benefited? But this is far too servile. Yet would not a man be better instructed by hearing the facts themselves, and the names that belong to them—calling, as the comic poet says, a spade a spade? But why should one need to name Phaethon instead of so-and-so? Why profane unholily the title of King Helios? And who among men who walk the earth is worthy to be called Pan or Zeus, that we should transfer our thoughts from those gods to them? And yet, even if this were possible, it would be better to name the men themselves. For was it not better to say so, by giving men human names?—or rather, not even giving them names, for those which our parents gave us would suffice. But if it is neither easier to learn through the fiction, nor fitting for the Cynic to fashion such things, why did we not spare the lavish expense, and—worse still—why did we waste our time fashioning and composing little fables, then writing them out and learning them by heart? But perhaps reason does not say that, instead of true and unfabricated things, false and fabricated ones ought to be sung in the common assemblies by the Cynic, who alone has a share in freedom; rather, custom has so grown up, beginning from Diogenes and Crates down to their successors. Nowhere will you find any such precedent—for I leave aside, for the present, that it in no way befits the Cynic, who deface the coinage, to attend to custom, but to reason alone, and to find out for himself what is to be done, not to learn it from without. And if Antisthenes the Socratic, like Xenophon, announced some things through fables, let not this deceive you; for a little later I shall discourse to you on this point.
But now tell me this, in the name of the Muses, about Cynicism: is it some madness, and a life not human but bestial, a disposition of soul that reckons nothing fair, nothing serious, nothing good? For Oenomaus might lead many to suppose this about it. If you had taken any trouble to look into the matter, you would have recognized clearly, in the Cynic's own "Voice of the Cynic," and in his treatise against the oracles, and in absolutely everything the man wrote, that the thing is such as to abolish all reverence toward the gods, to dishonor all human prudence, and to trample underfoot not only the law that bears the same name as the fair and the just, but also those laws written, as it were, by the gods upon our souls, by which all of us, untaught, are persuaded that something divine exists and look toward it, and, I think, hasten toward it, so disposing our souls toward it as, I think, things that see are disposed toward the light. And beside this, if the second law also is driven out, which is by nature sacred and divine—the law that bids us abstain wholly and in every way from what belongs to others, and forbids us to confound these things either in word or in deed or in the very hidden activities of the soul—the law that is for us the guide of the most perfect justice—is not the thing worthy of the pit? Ought not those who praise such things, like the scapegoats, to be driven out, not merely beaten with rods (for that penalty is too light for their offenses), but stoned to death? For in what, tell me by the gods, do these men differ from those who carry on brigandage in lonely places and have seized the headlands in order to do harm to those who sail in? "They despise death," it is said—as though this same madness did not attend those others too. At any rate your own poet and fabulist—or rather, as the Pythian called him, a hero and a daemon—says of those who plunder the sea: "like pirates who roam over the brine, staking their lives." What further witness, then, do you seek to the madness of brigands? Except that one might call those brigands braver than such Cynics, and these Cynics more reckless than those brigands. For the brigands, conscious to themselves of so wretched a life, fling themselves into the wilderness no more through fear of death than through shame; but these others walk about in the midst of men, confounding the common ordinances, not by introducing a better and purer polity, but a worse and more loathsome one.
As for the tragedies attributed to Diogenes—which are, by general admission, the work of some Cynic, and disputed only on this point, whether they belong to the master, Diogenes, or to the pupil Philiscus—who, on perusing them, would not be disgusted and judge them an excess of foulness left untouched even by the courtesans? And as for those of Oenomaus—for he too wrote tragedies akin to his discourses, more unspeakable than the unspeakable and beyond all evil—I no longer have anything to say worthy of them, even if I should cry over them all the woes of the Magnesians, or the Termerian mischief, or in a word the whole of tragedy together with the satyr-play and comedy and mime: so thoroughly is every shamefulness, every madness, wrought up to excess in those works of the man. And if anyone thinks fit, from these, to show us what manner of thing Cynicism is—blaspheming the gods, barking at all men, as I said at the outset—let him go, let him be off, from land to land, wherever he pleases.
But if, as the god said to Diogenes, having "defaced the coinage," he turn to the counsel given before this by the god, the "Know thyself"—which Diogenes and Crates plainly emulated in their deeds—then this is indeed of all things most worthy, I would say, of a man who wishes both to be a general and to be a philosopher. But what did the god say? Do we know? That he bade him despise the opinion of the many, and deface not the truth but the coinage. In which class, then, shall we place the "Know thyself"? In that of the coinage? Or shall we set down this very thing as the chief point of the truth, and as a way of expressing "Deface the coinage" through the maxim "Know thyself"? For just as the man who has utterly dishonored conventional opinions and come to truth itself will, even concerning himself, reckon not by conventions but by realities, so too, I think, the man who has come to know himself will know precisely what he is and not what he is conventionally supposed to be. Is not, then, the Pythian a true god, and was not Diogenes clearly persuaded of this, who, obeying him, was shown forth—from an exile—not greater than the King of Persia, but, as tradition has handed down, the rival, in renown, even of him who overthrew the Persian empire and contended with the deeds of Heracles, and was ambitious to surpass Achilles?
What manner of man, then, this Diogenes was, both toward the gods and toward men, let it be known, not from the discourses of Oenomaus nor the tragedies of Philiscus—who, by inscribing the name of Diogenes upon them, told many a lie against that divine head—but from the deeds he did. Why did he come to Olympia? In the name of Zeus, why? To behold the competitors? But could he not have beheld the same men, without trouble, at the Isthmian and the Panathenaic games? Or was it because he wished to meet there the best of the Greeks? But did they not frequent the Isthmus? You will find, then, no other cause than the worship of the god. And if he was not terrified by the thunderbolt—neither was I, by the gods, terrified, though I have often experienced many signs from heaven. Yet for all that I so revere and love and worship and stand in awe of the gods, and feel toward them, in short, all such things as one would feel toward good masters, toward teachers, toward fathers, toward guardians, toward all such persons, that the other day I nearly rose up at your words. This, however, came over me—I know not how—and was said, though perhaps it ought to have been kept silent. But Diogenes, poor and destitute of money as he was, went on foot to Olympia, yet bade Alexander come to him, if Dio is to be trusted on the point. So fitting did he think it that he himself should go to the temples of the gods, but that the most kingly man of his time should come to consort with him. And the things he wrote to Archidamus—are they not royal admonitions? And not only in his words was Diogenes god-fearing, but in his deeds also. For when, having chosen to dwell at Athens, the divine power led him off to Corinth, then, though set free by the man who had bought him, he no longer thought he ought to leave the city; for he was persuaded that the gods cared for him, and that he had been sent to Corinth not in vain nor by some chance, but in a manner sent by the gods, seeing that the city was more luxurious than that of the Athenians and needed a greater and nobler corrector.
Again: are there not also many graceful and elegant proofs preserved of the piety and reverence of Crates toward the gods? Hear them, at any rate, from us, if you have had no leisure to learn them from his own works: "Glorious children of Mnemosyne and Olympian Zeus, Pierian Muses, hear me as I pray: grant unfailing food to my belly, and grant it apart from servitude, which makes a man's life mean . . . and useful to friends, but not sweet, do you make me. Wealth I would not gather, the famous wealth, seeking the riches of the beetle and the substance of the ant, but to have a share in justice and to gather a wealth that is easy to bear, easy to come by, honorable for virtue. Winning these, I will propitiate Hermes and the holy Muses, not with costly luxuries, but with holy virtues."
You see that he prayed by speaking well of the gods, not, as you do, by blaspheming against them. For how many hecatombs are worth as much as holiness, which the divine Euripides too rightly hymned, saying, "O holiness, queen of the gods, holiness"? Or has it escaped you that all things, both great and small, when offered to the gods with holiness, have equal power, but that, when deprived of holiness, not a single hecatomb—by the gods!—but even the thousand-victim sacrifice of an Olympias is mere expenditure, and nothing more? Knowing this, I think, Crates himself honored the gods with the only thing he had, holiness, together with reverent speech, and taught others to prefer not the costliness of sacrifice but holiness itself in their acts of worship. Such being these two men in their dealings with the gods, they did not gather audiences about them, nor, like the sophists, consort with their friends by means of images and fables. For it is well said by Euripides, "Simple is the speech of truth"; he says that it is the false and the unjust that needs adornment. What, then, was their manner of consorting with others? Their deeds went before their words; those who honored poverty were themselves seen first to despise their patrimony; those who embraced unpretentiousness were the first to practice frugality through everything; those who removed the tragic and pompous from the lives of others themselves dwelt first in the marketplaces or the precincts of the gods, and made war upon luxury even before words, by their deeds—proving by deeds, not crying aloud in words, that it is possible to reign together with Zeus, if one need nothing, or very little, and is not troubled by the body. And they rebuked offenders while the erring still lived; they did not blaspheme the dead, when even the more moderate among enemies make peace with the departed. The true Cynic has no enemy at all, even if someone strike his poor body, or drag his name about, or revile and blaspheme him—because enmity arises toward an antagonist, but he who is above contention with another is wont to be honored with goodwill; and if someone is otherwise disposed toward him—as many, I think, are toward the gods—he is no enemy to that Cynic, for he is not harmful to him, but rather, laying upon himself the heaviest penalty, ignorance of the better, he is left bereft of that one's protection.
But if my purpose now were to write about Cynicism, I would say still further on these matters what occurs to me, perhaps no less than what has been said; as it is, however, rendering what is continuous with our purpose, let us next consider what manner of thing the fables that are fashioned ought to be. Yet perhaps this inquiry too is preceded by another: to what kind of philosophy fable-writing belongs. For many even of the philosophers and the theologians appear to have practiced it, as Orpheus, the most ancient, who philosophized under divine inspiration, and not a few of those after him; nay, Xenophon too plainly, and Antisthenes, and Plato, made use of fables in many places, so that it has become clear to us that fable-writing belongs, if not to the Cynic, at least to some philosopher. A little, then, must first be said about the parts—or the instruments—of philosophy. For it makes no great difference in which way one reckons logic together with the practical and the natural parts, since it appears equally necessary in both. Each of these three is again divided into three: the natural part into the theological, the mathematical, and, thirdly, the part concerned with the contemplation of things that come to be and pass away, and of things that are eternal yet nonetheless corporeal—asking what their being is and what is the essence of each. Of the practical part, that which concerns a single man is ethics, that concerning a single household is economics, and that concerning a city is politics. Of logic, again, one branch is the demonstrative, proceeding through truths; another is the constraining, through accepted opinions; and another is the fallacious, through apparent accepted opinions. So many being the parts of philosophy—unless something has escaped me; and it is no wonder that a soldier should not be too precise nor split hairs in such matters, since he speaks of them not from the practice of books but from such acquaintance as has come his way. You yourselves will bear me witness, if you reckon the days—how many they are between this and the lecture we lately attended, and how full of business they have been for us. But, as I said, even if anything has been omitted by me—though I think nothing is lacking—he who supplies it will be no enemy, but a friend.
Now of these parts, fable-writing belongs neither to logic nor to the mathematical part of the natural, but only, if at all, to that part of the practical which concerns the single man, and to the part of theology which is initiatory and mystical. For "Nature loves to hide herself," and the hidden part of the gods' essence does not endure to be flung naked, in bare words, upon impure ears. And just as the secret nature of the sacred symbols is wont to benefit even when not understood—for it heals not souls only but bodies also, and brings about the presence of the gods—so too, I think, this often happens through fables, when, to the ears of the many, which cannot purely receive the things divine, the divine truths are poured in through riddles, with the stage-setting of fable. It now being clear to what kind and species of philosophy fable-writing on occasion belongs—for besides reason, the choice of the men of old bears witness to it: for many fables are told by Plato when he theologizes about the things in Hades, and before him by the son of Calliope; while by Antisthenes and Xenophon and Plato himself, when handling certain ethical themes, the writing of fables has been mingled in, not carelessly but with a certain harmony—these fables, if you had wished, you ought to have imitated, taking, instead of Heracles, the name of Perseus or some Theseus, and stamping upon it the Antisthenean type; and instead of Prodicus's stage-setting about those two divinities, you ought to have brought another like it upon the stage.
But since I have mentioned the initiatory fables also, come now, let us try by ourselves to see what kind ought to suit each of the two parts, no longer needing ancient witnesses in everything, but following the fresh footsteps of a man whom I, after the gods, admire and revere equally with Aristotle and Plato. He speaks not about all fables, but about the initiatory, which Orpheus handed down to us, he who established the most holy rites. For the very incongruity in the fables paves the way toward the truth. For the more paradoxical and monstrous the riddle, the more it seems to protest against trusting the things said on the surface, and bids us busy ourselves about the hidden meaning, and not to desist before, under the gods as guides, these hidden things become manifest and initiate—or rather perfect—the mind within us, or whatever in us is higher than mind: that small portion of the One itself and of the Good, which contains the whole indivisibly, the fullness of the soul, and holds the soul together in the One and the Good through its transcendent and separate and exalted presence. But these things concerning the great Dionysus came upon me—I know not how—to rave in Bacchic frenzy; so I set the ox upon my tongue, for of things unspeakable one must say nothing. But may the gods grant the benefit of those things both to me, from them, and to the many of you who are as yet uninitiated in these matters.
Concerning the things which it is lawful both to speak and to hear, and which bring no resentment upon either party, every discourse that is set forth is composed of diction and thought. Since, then, the fable too is a kind of discourse, it will be composed of these two. Let us consider each of them. There is in every discourse a certain simple thought, and there is also that which is brought forward figuratively, and of both the examples are many. The one, then, is simple and needs no variety; the figured kind has many differences within itself, of which, if you have given any heed to rhetoric, you are not ignorant. Of these figures according to thought, the greater part suit the fable; only it is not now my business to speak of the many, nor of all, but of two: the dignified in respect of thought, and the incongruous. And these same two occur also in respect of diction. For diction too is somehow shaped and figured by those who do not bring forward their words at random, nor, like torrents, drag along heaps of words from the crossroads; but of these two, when we fashion fables about things divine, the words must be wholly dignified, and the diction as far as possible chaste and fair and most befitting the gods, with nothing shameful or blasphemous or impious in it, that we may not become, for the multitude, leaders in such boldness, or rather that we ourselves, before the multitude, may not be the first to have committed impiety toward the gods. Nothing incongruous, then, ought there to be about such diction, but all things dignified and fair and magnificent and divine and pure, and, so far as may be, aimed at the essence of the gods.
But the incongruity in respect of thought, when it occurs for the sake of utility, is to be admitted, in order that men, not needing some external reminder, but taught by the things said within the fable itself, may be eager to seek out the hidden meaning and to busy themselves about it, with the gods as their guides. For look—I myself have heard many saying that Dionysus, since he was born of Semele, was a man, but became a god through theurgy and the initiatory art, just as the lord Heracles, through kingly virtue, was raised to Olympus by his father Zeus. But, my good men, I said, do you not understand the fable that plainly speaks in riddles? For where is the birth of Dionysus, as there is of Heracles, a birth that has the higher and superior and exalted element, yet still remains within the measure of human nature and is in some way made like to us? Heracles is said to have been born a child, and to have grown gradually into his divine body; he is recorded to have gone to teachers, he is said to have made campaigns and to have conquered all, yet to have suffered weariness in the body. Yet these things befell him, but in a greater than human degree. For when in his swaddling-clothes he strangled the serpents, and arrayed himself against the very elements of nature, heats and frosts, and then against the most desperate and unconquerable things—against, I mean, want of food and solitude—and his passage, I think, through the sea upon the golden cup, which I, by the gods, hold to have been no cup, but rather, I have believed, he walked over the sea as over dry land. For what was impossible to Heracles? What did not obey his divine and most pure body, the so-called elements being slaves to the creative and consummating power of his undefiled and pure mind? whom the great Zeus, through Providence Athena—having set this goddess over him as guardian, and having sent him forth whole out of his whole self—planted as a savior for the world, and then led back to himself through the fire of the thunderbolt, bidding his son come to him under the divine signal of the ethereal radiance. But concerning these things, may Heracles be gracious both to me and to you.
But the so-called birth of Dionysus, which is talked of but is no birth, but a daemonic manifestation—in what respect is it like to human things? His mother, while carrying him, they say, deceived by the jealous Hera, besought her lover to come to her as he was wont to come to his wedded wife; then her poor body, unable to bear the shocks of Zeus, was consumed by the thunderbolt. And when all was at once aflame, Zeus, bidding Hermes snatch up Dionysus, cut his own thigh and sewed him into it; then thence, when the babe was brought to maturity, Zeus, in travail, comes to the nymphs; and they, singing over his thigh the charm "Loose the stitch," brought forth the dithyramb into the light for us. Then the god was driven mad, they say, by Hera, but the Mother of the gods stayed his sickness, and straightway he was a god. There followed him, then, not a Lichas, as with Heracles, nor an Iolaus, nor a Telamon, nor a Hylas, nor an Abderus, but Satyrs and Bacchae and Pans and an army of daemons. You see how the begetting is human—through the thunderbolts—and the bringing-forth still more human, and the deeds more like to human things than either of the things mentioned? Why, then, do we not cast away that nonsense, and first of all know this about these matters, that Semele was wise in things divine? For she was a daughter of Cadmus the Phoenician, and to these the god himself bears witness of wisdom, saying, "Many paths of the blessed ones the Phoenicians too have learned."
She seems to me, then, to have first perceived this god among the Greeks, and, foretelling his coming manifestation as not far off, to have set in motion sooner than was fitting some of the rites concerning him, not enduring to await the appointed time, and thus to have been consumed by the fire that flowed upon her. And when it had been resolved by Zeus, in common for all mankind, to give a beginning to another order of things, and to change men from the nomadic life to the gentler one, Dionysus appeared, a daemon visible to the eye, coming out of India, visiting the cities, leading with him a great army of certain daemons, and giving to men, in common to all, as a token of his manifestation, the plant of the cultivated vine, by which, I think—since the things of their life were thereby made gentle—the Greeks thought fit to honor it with this name; and they called Semele his mother because of her foretelling, and especially since the god honors her as the first hierophant of his coming visitation, which was still to be. And the history being such—as one would discover, examining accurately—those who sought out who Dionysus among the gods truly is fashioned the truth, as I said, into a fable, hinting at the essence of the god, and his conception in the intelligible realm beside his father, and his ungenerated birth in the world . . . in the universe, and the rest in order, all that was worth seeking out, but not easy for me to declare—perhaps because I am still ignorant of the exact truth about them, and perhaps too because I am unwilling to fling forth, as in a theater, the god who is at once hidden and manifest, to ears unexamined and to minds turned to everything rather than to philosophy. But concerning these things let Dionysus himself know, to whom I also pray that he set both my mind and yours into Bacchic frenzy toward the true knowledge of the gods, lest, remaining long uninitiated in the Bacchic mysteries of the god, we suffer what Pentheus suffered—perhaps even while living, but certainly when released from the body. For whoever has not had the multiplied part of his life perfected, through the inspired Bacchic frenzy about the god, by the uniform and wholly indivisible essence of Dionysus that preexists in all things unmingled—for such a one there is danger that his life flow apart into many things, and, flowing thus, be torn asunder, and, torn asunder, perish. But let no one who hears "flow apart" and "be torn asunder" attend to the words as though they meant a little water or a thread of flax; let him understand what is said in another manner, the manner of Plato, of Plotinus, of Porphyry, of the divine Iamblichus. Whoever does not so do will laugh indeed, but let him know that it is a Sardonic laughter, since he is forever bereft of the knowledge of the gods—a knowledge to which I would not reckon equal even the government of the whole barbarian world together with that of the Romans; no, by my lord Helios. But again some god, I know not which, has set me raving in Bacchic frenzy upon these things, though I did not so choose.
But the reason I said all this: when the fables, in respect of thought, become incongruous concerning things divine, they thereby cry out to us, as it were, and protest that we should not believe them simply, but should look at and search out the hidden meaning. And by so much is the incongruous in these matters better than the dignified, inasmuch as through the latter there is danger of supposing the gods to be exceedingly fair and great and good, yet men nonetheless; whereas through the incongruous there is hope that, despising the things said on the surface, we may run up to the exalted essence of the gods, transcending all that exists, the pure intellection of them. These, then, are the reasons why the initiatory and mystagogic philosophy brings forward words above all holy and dignified, but, in respect of the thought, makes the interpretation of such things of another sort.
But he who fashions discourses and brings in fables for the sake of the correction of character ought to do this not for men, but for children, whether children in age or in understanding, and in any case for those who need such discourses. If, then, we appeared to you children—whether I, or this Anatolius here (and reckon with him also Memmorius and Salustius, and besides these, if you wish, the others in order)—then you have need of hellebore. For why should one play coy? Since, in the name of the gods and of the fable itself—or rather of the common king of all, Helios—what work, great or small, has been done by you? Beside whom have you stood as he contended for justice? Whom in mourning have you consoled, teaching him by your discourse that death is not an evil, either for the one who suffers it or for his kin? What young man will charge you with his own temperance, that you made him, from a profligate, temperate and fair to behold, not in body only, but far more in soul? What discipline of life have you practiced? What have you done worthy of the staff of Diogenes, or, by Zeus, of his frankness of speech? Do you think it a great work to take up a staff, or to let your hair grow, and to roam about the cities and the camps, and to revile the best men while flattering the worst? Tell me, in the name of Zeus and of these hearers, who because of you turn aside from philosophy, why was it that you went to the late Constantius into Italy, but not also as far as the Gauls? And yet, had you journeyed to us, if nothing else, you would at least have been keeping company with a man more able to understand your speech. And what of your roaming everywhere and making trouble for the mules? I hear, too, for the muleteers, who dread you more than the soldiers; for some of you, I am told, use those staves more harshly than the soldiers their swords. You become, then, naturally, more terrible to them. Long ago I gave you this name, and now I think I shall even write it down. The impious Galilaeans call certain men "renunciants"; the greater part of these, having given up little, gather very much—or rather, everything—from every quarter, and gain besides honor and an escort and service. Such, more or less, is your work too, except perhaps for the getting of money; and this happens not because of you, but because of us, for we are more sensible than those fools—and perhaps too because you have no specious pretext for levying tribute respectably, such as they have in what they call, I know not how, "almsgiving"; in all else you and they are much alike. You have left your country, as they have; you roam about everywhere, and you have troubled the camp more than they, and more shamelessly—for they are invited, but you even when driven off. And what good has come to you from this—or rather to us, the rest? Up came Asclepiades, then Serenianus, then Chytron, then I know not what little fellow, fair-haired and tall, then you, and with you others twice as many. What good, then, has come of your coming up, my excellent friends? What city or what private man has perceived your frankness of speech? You did not unwisely choose, at the outset, the journey to a king who did not even wish to see you; but having come up, you used the occasion still more unwisely and more ignorantly and more madly, flattering at once and barking, presenting books and importuning that these be brought forward. I think none of you went so often to a philosopher's as to a copyist's, so that for you the forecourts of the palace were Academy and Lyceum in place of the Painted Porch.
Will you not be done with these things? Will you not now at last, if not before, lay them aside, when you get nothing more from your hair and your staff? And how has philosophy been brought into contempt by you? The dullest of the rhetoricians, who could not have their tongues purified even by King Hermes himself, nor be made prudent even by Athena together with Hermes, these, having snatched this up from their vulgar and gadding cleverness—for they do not even know the proverb that is bandied about, that "the grape ripens beside the grape"—rush to Cynicism: staff, cloak, hair, and thereafter ignorance, boldness, recklessness, and absolutely all such things. "The short and intense road to virtue," they say. Would that you too were traveling the long one! You would more easily have come by that than by this. Do you not know that the short roads have great difficulties? And as on the highways the man who can take the short cut will the more easily go round the long way, but not, conversely, will the man who has gone the long way be at all able to take the short cut, so too in philosophy there is one end and one beginning: to know oneself and to be made like to the gods. The beginning, then, is to know oneself; the end, likeness to the higher powers.
Whoever, then, wishes to be a Cynic, despising all the conventions and the opinions of men, has turned first to himself and to the god. To him the gold is not gold, nor is the sand sand, if one examine them with a view to exchange and commit it to him to value their worth; for he knows both of them to be earth. And that the one is rarer and the other more common among men, he reckons the works of vainglory and ignorance. The shameful or the fair he places not in things praised or blamed, but in nature. He flees superfluous foods, and turns away from the pleasures of love. When the body constrains him, he does not cleave to opinion, nor wait for the cook and the sauces and the savor of roasting; nor does he look round about for a Phryne or a Lais or the wife of so-and-so, nor the little daughter, nor the maidservant; but, having satisfied the body's need as far as possible from what is at hand, and having thrust away the troublesome part of it, from on high, from the summit of Olympus, he looks down upon the others wandering in darkness in the meadow of Ate, enduring, for the sake of utterly few enjoyments, such things as not even beside Cocytus and Acheron the more refined of the poets prattle of. This is the short road. For he must all at once stand outside himself and know that he is divine, and keep his mind unwearied and unmoved among the divine and undefiled and pure thoughts, but utterly neglect the body, and reckon it, as Heraclitus says, "more to be cast out than dung," and most easily fulfill its needs, so long as the god commands him to use the body as an instrument. So much, then, on that matter, as they say. But I shall return to where I digressed.
Since, then, it befits to relate fables to children—whether in understanding, even if they be men, or to those who are children in age—one must examine that nothing be said amiss either toward gods or toward men, nor, as just now, anything impious. And further, this must be carefully tested in everything: whether what is fashioned is persuasive, whether it is suited to the facts, whether it is truly a fable. For what has now been made by you is no fable of yours—and yet you boasted of this; but the fable is an old one, and you have fitted it to other circumstances, which, I think, those are wont to do who use the figurative construction of conceptions—and great in this is the Parian poet. You seem, then, not even to have composed a fable, most clever sir, and to boast idly; and yet this is the work of a ready-witted nurse. But if the mythical narratives of Plutarch had come into your hands, it would never have escaped you wherein it differs to fashion a fable from the beginning and to fit an existing one to suitable circumstances. But that I may not, while you travel the short road, hinder and fetter you a little by casting you among long and intricate books—you have not even heard the fable of Demosthenes, which the man of Paeania composed for the Athenians, when the Macedonian demanded the Athenian orators. You ought, then, to have fashioned something of this kind; or, by the gods, was it a great matter to tell some little fable of this sort? You will compel me to become a fable-maker too.
A rich man had many sheep and herds of cattle and broad flocks of goats, and "his mares, ten thousand often, pastured in the marsh," and shepherds, both slaves and free hired men, and herdsmen of cattle and goatherds of goats and grooms of the horses, and very many possessions. Many of these his father had left him, but he himself had acquired many times as many, wishing to be rich both justly and unjustly—for he cared little for the gods. There were born to him many wives, and sons by them and daughters, among whom he distributed his substance, and then died, having taught them nothing about management, nor how one might acquire such things when they are not present, or preserve them when present. For in his ignorance he thought that the mere multitude sufficed, since he himself was not very skilled in such an art, having taken it up not by reason but rather by a certain habit and experience—like the inferior physicians who heal men by experience alone, whence too most of their patients' diseases escape them. Thinking, then, that the multitude of his sons sufficed for the preservation of his substance, he took no thought how they should be virtuous. And this proved to them the beginning, first, of injuries against one another. For each, desiring, like his father, to have much and to have all alone, turned against his neighbor. So for a time this went on. And the kinsmen too shared in the harvest of the boys' folly and ignorance, being themselves also not well educated. Then all was filled with slaughters, and the tragic curse was brought to fulfillment by the daemon; for they apportioned their patrimony "with the whetted steel," and everything was full of disorder: the ancestral shrines were razed by the boys, having been neglected before by their father and stripped of the offerings which had been set up by many others, but not least by his own forefathers. And while the shrines were being demolished, tombs, old and new, were being built up, the spontaneous course of things and fortune foretelling to them that they would need many tombs before long, since they cared little for the gods. All things, then, being confounded together, and marriages that were no marriages being made, and human things being defiled together with divine, pity came over Zeus. And then, looking toward Helios, he said: "O child, an offspring among the gods more ancient than heaven and earth, do you still purpose to bear a grudge for his contempt against a self-willed and reckless man, who, forsaking you, became to himself and to his race the cause of such great sufferings? Or do you think that, because you are not angry with him nor indignant, nor whet your arrows against his race, you are any less the cause to him of this calamity, in leaving his house bereft of you? But come," he said, "let us call the Fates, to see whether the man is in any way to be helped." And they straightway obeyed Zeus. And Helios, as though pondering and reckoning something within himself, kept his gaze fixed upon Zeus. And the eldest of the Fates said: "Holiness, together with Justice, forbids it, O father. It is your work, then, since you bade us yield to them, to persuade those goddesses also." "But they are my daughters," he said, "and it is fitting to ask them. What, then, O ladies, do you say?" "Of this, father," they said, "you yourself are master. But consider how, among men, this wicked zeal for unholy deeds may not utterly prevail." "On both points," he said, "I will consider." And the Fates, being near at hand, spun out all things as the father willed. And Zeus begins to speak to Helios: "This child here," he said—and there was, as it happened, a kinsman of theirs, somewhere cast aside and neglected, a nephew of that rich man and cousin of the heirs—"this," he said, "is your offspring. Swear, then, by my scepter and yours, that you will care for him especially, and shepherd him, and heal him of his sickness. For you see how he is, as it were, filled with smoke and filth and soot, and there is danger that the fire sown in him by you be quenched, unless you 'put on your strength.' I, and the Fates, grant him to you; take him, then, and nurture him." Hearing this, King Helios was glad, rejoicing in the babe, seeing yet preserved in him a little spark from himself, and from thenceforth he nurtured that child, "leading him out from blood and tumult and the slaying of men." And father Zeus bade also Athena the motherless, the virgin, together with Helios, rear the little child. And when he had been reared and become a youth, "with the first down upon his chin, when youth is most graceful," perceiving the multitude of the evils—how great a thing had come about concerning his kinsmen and cousins—he needed to fling himself into Tartarus, stunned at the magnitude of the evils. But when Helios, being kindly, together with Providence Athena, cast a kind of sleep and stupor upon him and led him away from this intention, he, awaking again, goes off into the wilderness. Then there, finding a certain small stone, he rested, and considered with himself in what way he might escape the magnitude of such great evils; for already all things appeared to him wretched, and nothing anywhere fair as yet. Hermes, then—for he was on friendly terms with him—appearing as a young man of his own age, greeted him kindly and said: "Come, I will be your guide along a smoother and more even road, when you have crossed over this little crooked and steep place, where you see all men stumbling and turning back from here." And the youth went off with much circumspection, having with him a sword and shield and spear, but his head was as yet uncovered. Trusting him, then, he went forward, through a road smooth and unbroken and very pure and laden with fruits and with many fair flowers, all such as are dear to the gods, and with trees of ivy and laurel and myrtle. And having led him to a certain great and lofty mountain, Hermes said: "On the summit of this the father of all the gods sits enthroned. See, then—here is the great peril: that you worship him as holily as may be, and ask of him whatever you will; and may you choose, O child, the best things." Having said this, Hermes hid himself again. But the youth wished to learn from Hermes what he ought to ask of the father of the gods; and when he did not see him, though near at hand, he said: "The counsel, though wanting, is good. Let us ask, then, with good fortune, for the best things, even though we do not yet clearly behold the father of the gods. O father Zeus—or by whatever name is dear to you, and however you wish to be named—show me the road that leads up to you. For the regions there seem to me better, beside you, as I divine, beside you, judging the beauty about you from the splendor in these places whence we have hitherto journeyed." When he had prayed thus, either a sleep or an ecstasy came upon him. And Hermes shows him Helios himself. The youth, then, struck with amazement at the sight, said: "To you, O father of the gods, both for these and for all these other things, I will bring and dedicate myself." And throwing his arms about the knees of Helios, he clung fast, beseeching him to save him. And Helios, calling Athena, bade her first question him as to how many arms he had brought. And when she saw the shield and the sword together with the spear, she said: "But where, O child, is your Gorgon-head and your helmet?" And he said: "These too I acquired with difficulty; for there was no one to help me, cast aside in the house of my kinsmen." "Know, then," said the great Helios, "that you must by all means return thither." Thereupon he begged him not to send him there again, but to keep him, since he would never afterward come back, but would perish by the evils there. And as he entreated with tears, Helios said: "But you are young and uninitiated. Go, then, to your own people, that you may be initiated and may live there in safety; for you must go and cleanse all those impieties, and call upon me and Athena and the other gods to aid you." Hearing this, the youth stood in silence. And the great Helios, leading him to a certain lookout, of which the upper part was full of light, but the part beneath was of countless mists, through which, as through water, the dim light of the radiance from King Helios penetrated, said: "Do you see your cousin, the heir?" And he said, "I see him." "And what of these herdsmen and shepherds?" And the youth said that he saw these too. "What sort of man, then, does the heir appear to you? And what sort, again, are the shepherds and the herdsmen?" And the youth said: "He seems to me to nod for the most part, and, sinking down unnoticed, to live in soft pleasure; and of the shepherds, few are decent, but the multitude are wretched and bestial. For he eats and sells the sheep and wrongs his master doubly. For he both destroys his flocks, and, bringing in a little from much, says that he is unpaid, and complains—though it were better to demand the wages in full than to destroy the flock." "If, then," said Helios, "I, together with this Athena, at the command of Zeus, set you in place of this heir as steward of all these—?" Again at this the youth held back and entreated him much to let him stay. But Helios said: "Be not too disobedient, lest ever I come to hate you, as now I have loved you exceedingly." And the youth said: "But, O most mighty Helios and Athena, I call you and Zeus himself to witness—use me for whatever you will." Then again Hermes, appearing suddenly, made the youth more courageous; for now he reckoned that he had found a guide for the journey back and for his sojourn there. And Athena said: "Learn, O excellent one—offspring of this good father, the god, and mine. This heir the best of the shepherds do not gladden, but the flatterers and the wicked have made him their slave and subject. It happens to him, therefore, not to be loved by the worthy, and to be wronged in the greatest matters by those reputed to love him. See to it, then, when you return, that you do not set the flatterer before the friend. Hear a second admonition, O child. This man, while nodding, is for the most part deceived; but be you sober and watchful, lest the flatterer, deceiving you under cover of a friend's frankness, escape your notice—being like some smith, full of smoke and ash, yet wearing a white robe and his face smeared with white lead—and lest you then give him one of your daughters to wed. Hear a third admonition, and very strongly guard yourself; and reverence us alone, and of men whoever is like to us, but no other. You see how shame and being too utterly cowed harmed this foolish man." And the great Helios, taking up the discourse again, said: "Having chosen friends, treat them as friends; do not reckon them servants or attendants, but approach them freely and most simply and nobly, not saying one thing and thinking another about them. You see that this also ruined the heir—distrust toward his friends. Love those whom you rule, as we love you. Let your relation to us go before all fair things for you; for we are your benefactors and friends and saviors." Hearing this, the youth was melted, and it was plain that he now obeyed the gods in all things. "But go," he said, "journey with good hope. For we will be with you everywhere—I and Athena and this Hermes and, with us, all the gods in Olympus, and those about the air and the earth, and everywhere the whole divine race—so long as you are holy toward us, and faithful toward your friends, and kindly toward your subjects, ruling and guiding them to the best things; but never give yourself up as a slave to your own desires or to theirs. Having, then, the panoply which you brought to us, go forth, and take besides this torch from me, that for you also upon earth a great light may shine and you may long for nothing here; and from fair Athena here the Gorgon-head and the helmet—for she has many, you see, and gives them to whom she will. And Hermes will give you a golden wand. Go forth, then, adorned with this panoply, through all the earth and through all the sea, immovably obedient to our laws, and let no one, of men or of women, of your own people or of strangers, persuade you to forget our commands. For abiding by them, you will be dear to us and honored, and revered by our good ministers, but terrible to wicked and ill-fated men. And know that your poor flesh has been given you for the sake of this service; for we wish, out of reverence for your forefathers, to cleanse for you your ancestral house. Remember, then, that you have an immortal soul and one that is our offspring, and that, following us, you will be a god and will behold, together with us, our father."
Whether this is a fable or a true account, I do not know. But as for what was made by you—who do you mean to be Pan, and who Zeus, unless it be this: that we are, I and you, you Zeus and I Pan? O the absurdity of the False-Pan—more absurd, however, by Asclepius, than the man who is anything rather than Zeus! Are not these things, in plain truth, from a mouth that raves not with inspired but with frenzied madness? Do you not know that Salmoneus too paid the penalty to the gods for these very things, because, being a man, he tried to be Zeus? And as for what is said in Hesiod about those who named themselves with the names of the gods, Hera and Zeus—if you have not even now heard it, I can pardon you; for you were neither well trained, nor did you happen upon a guide such as I had, in regard to the poets, in this philosopher here, after whom I came to the forecourts of philosophy, to be initiated under a man whom I have judged to surpass all of my own time. He taught me, before all things, to practice virtue and to reckon the gods the guides of all fair things. Whether, then, he accomplished anything to the purpose, he himself may know, and before him the kingly gods; but this at least he took away from me, the frenzied and reckless temper, and tried to make me more temperate than I was. And I, though, as you know, winged with the external advantages, nonetheless subjected myself to my guide and to his friends and contemporaries and fellow-pupils; and of those whom I heard praised by him, I was eager to be a hearer, and read those books which he himself approved. Thus we, being initiated under guides—a philosopher for the part of preliminary education, and a most philosophic man for him who showed me the forecourts of philosophy—enjoyed, little though it was because of the external occupations that fell upon us, the right training nonetheless, having journeyed not the short road of which you speak, but the long one; and yet, by the gods, I think I turned toward virtue by a shorter road than you. For I, if it be not vulgar to say so, stand at her forecourts, while you are even far from the forecourts. And what share have you, or your brothers—but, removing the ill-omened word, do you yourself fill up the rest; or, if you wish, bear it patiently from us, spoken gently—what share have you in virtue? You censure all men, yourself doing nothing worthy of praise; you praise vulgarly, as none of the most ignorant orators do, for whom, through their poverty of language and their inability to find from the matter at hand anything to say, in come Delos and Leto with her children, then swans singing clear and trees re-echoing them, and dewy meadows full of soft and deep grass, and the fragrance from the flowers, and spring itself, and certain images of this kind. Where did Isocrates do this in his panegyric speeches? Where did any of the men of old, who were genuinely initiated into the Muses' rites—not, as those of today? But I leave the rest, that I may not, by quarreling with these too, give offense at once both to the basest of the Cynics and to the orators; for to me, toward the best of the Cynics—if indeed any such now exist—and toward the noble orators, all things are friendly.
Of such discourses, even if a great abundance flows in—and there is no end to them, so that one who wished to speak might draw, as it were, from a very copious jar—for the sake of the business that lies before us I will refrain. But adding a little more to my discourse, as one repays the deficiency of a debt, I shall turn to something else, having here, somewhere, completed this writing. What, then, was the reverence of the Pythagoreans concerning the names of the gods, and what that of Plato? And what manner of man was Aristotle in these matters? Is it not worth seeing? Or will no one deny that the Samian was such? For he neither permitted men to wear the names of the gods upon their seal-rings, nor to use the names of the gods rashly in an oath. And if I should now say that he journeyed even to Egypt and saw the Persians, and everywhere tried to behold all the mysteries of the gods and to be initiated into all manner of rites everywhere, I shall say things perhaps unknown to you, but familiar and clear to the many. But hear Plato: "My fear, O Protarchus, in regard to the names of the gods is no human one, but beyond the greatest dread. And now Aphrodite I address in whatever way is dear to her; but pleasure I know to be a thing of many forms." These things are said in the Philebus, and other such again in the Timaeus; for he thinks fit that we should believe simply, and without proof, all that the poets say about the gods. These I have set down, lest ever it furnish you a pretext—as, I think, it does many of the Platonists—since Socrates was by nature ironical, to dishonor the Platonic doctrine. For there it is not Socrates, but Timaeus, who says these things, being least of all ironical. And yet this at least is not sound, to examine not the things said, but the speakers, and to whom the discourses are addressed. Do you wish, then, that after this I should recite to you the all-wise Siren, the type of Hermes the eloquent, dear to Apollo and the Muses? He thinks fit that those who ask, or who attempt at all to inquire, whether there are gods, should meet not, as men, with an answer, but, as the beasts, with chastisement. And if you had read his introductory discourse, which, like that of Plato's school, was prefixed to his own course of teaching, you would have known before all else that, to those who walk within the Peripatos, it was proclaimed to be pious toward the gods, and to have been initiated into all the mysteries, and to have performed the most holy rites, and to have been led through all the branches of learning.
But see that you do not frighten us by bringing forward Diogenes, as a kind of bugbear. For he was not initiated, they say; nay, even to the man who urged him to be initiated he said: "It is absurd, young man, if you think that, for the sake of this initiation, the tax-gatherers will share in the good things of the holy in Hades, while Agesilaus and Epaminondas will lie in the mire." This, O young man, is too deep, and needs an interpretation, I am persuaded, greater than any of mine—such as the goddesses themselves may grant us the conception of; and I think it has already been granted. For Diogenes appears not, as you think fit to claim, impious, but like to those whom I mentioned a little before. For looking to the circumstance that had befallen him, and then to the commands of the Pythian, and understanding that the one to be initiated had first to be enrolled as a citizen and to become an Athenian, if not by nature, at least by law, he avoided this—not the being initiated—reckoning himself a citizen of the world, and thinking fit, through greatness of soul, to be a fellow-citizen with the whole essences of the gods, which administer in common the whole world, and not with those that have parceled out its parts. And the law he did not transgress, out of reverence for the gods, although in all else he trampled and defaced the coinage; and he did not bring himself back to that from which he was glad to have been freed. And what was this? To be a slave to the laws of one city, and to subject himself to that which it was necessary for one made an Athenian to suffer. For how should not the man who went to Olympia for the sake of the gods, who was persuaded by the Pythian and philosophized like Socrates—for he too says that he has a Pythian at home with himself, whence came to him also his impulse toward philosophy—how should he not have gone within the sanctuaries, and that most gladly, had he not declined this, the subjecting of himself to laws and making himself the slave of a citizenship? But why did he not state this very reason, instead of the opposite one, which takes away no small part of the solemnity of the mysteries? Perhaps one might lay such a charge especially against Pythagoras too, but he would not reason rightly. For not all things are to be spoken, and of these very things which it is lawful to declare, some, I think, ought, before the many, to be kept silent. But the reason for these things too is nonetheless plain. For perceiving that the man who urged him to such things was careless of rectitude in his life, but was greatly puffed up at having been initiated, Diogenes, both correcting and teaching him at once that to those who have lived worthily of initiation the gods keep their recompense unimpaired even if they are not initiated, but that to the wicked there is no advantage even if they push their way within the sacred precincts—or does not the hierophant too proclaim this, forbidding those who are not pure of hand, and whoever ought not, to be initiated? What end, then, shall there be of our discourse, if even these things do not yet persuade you?