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Arnobius
11. You laugh because in ancient times the Persians worshipped rivers, as is told in the writings which hand down these things to memory; the Arabians an unshapen stone;[4642] the Scythian nations a sabre; the Thespians a branch instead of Cinxia;[4643] the Icarians[4644] an unhewn log instead of Diana; the people of Pessinus a flint instead of the mother of the gods; the Romans a spear instead of Mars, as the muses of Varro point out; and, before they were acquainted with the statuary’s art, the Samians a plank[4645] instead of Juno, as Aëthlius[4646] relates: and you do not laugh when, instead of the immortal gods, you make supplication to little images of men and human forms—nay, you even suppose that these very little images are gods, and besides these you do not believe that anything has divine power. What say you, O ye—! Do the gods of heaven have ears, then, and temples, an occiput, spine, loins, sides, hams, buttocks, houghs,[4647] ankles, and the rest of the other members with which we have been formed, which were also mentioned in the first part of this book[4648] a little more fully, and cited with greater copiousness of language? Would that it were possible[4649] to look into the sentiments and very recesses of your mind, in which you revolve various and enter into the most obscure considerations: we should find that you yourselves even feel as we do, and have no other opinions as to the form of the deities. But what can we do with obstinate prejudices? what with those who are menacing us with swords, and devising new punishments against us? In your rage[4650] you maintain a bad cause, and that although you are perfectly aware of it; and that which you have once done without reason, you defend lest you should seem to have ever been in ignorance; and you think it better not to be conquered, than to yield and bow to acknowledged truth.
12. From such causes as these this also has followed, with your connivance, that the wanton fancy of artists has found full scope in representing the bodies of the gods, and giving forms to them, at which even the sternest might laugh. And so Hammon is even now formed and represented with a ram’s horns; Saturn with his crooked sickle, like some guardian of the fields, and pruner of too luxuriant branches; the son of Maia with a broad-brimmed travelling cap, as if he were preparing to take the road, and avoiding the sun’s rays and the dust; Liber with tender limbs, and with a woman’s perfectly free and easily flowing lines of body;[4651] Venus, naked and unclothed, just as if you said that she exposed publicly, and sold to all comers,[4652] the beauty of her prostituted body; Vulcan with his cap and hammer, but with his right hand free, and with his dress girt up as a workman prepares[4653] for his work; the Delian god with a plectrum and lyre, gesticulating like a player on the cithern and an actor about to sing; the king of the sea with his trident, just as if he had to fight in the gladiatorial contest: nor can any figure of any deity be found[4654] which does not have certain characteristics[4655] bestowed on it by the generosity of its makers. Lo, if some witty and cunning king were to remove the Sun from his place before the gate[4656] and transfer him to that of Mercury, and again were to carry off Mercury and make him migrate to the shrine of the Sun,—for both are made beardless by you, and with smooth faces,—and to give to this one rays of light to place a little cap[4657] on the Sun’s head, how will you be able to distinguish between them, whether this is the Sun, or that Mercury, since dress, not the peculiar appearance of the face, usually points out the gods to you? Again, if, having transported them in like manner, he were to take away his horns from the unclad Jupiter, and fix them upon the temples of Mars, and to strip Mars of his arms, and, on the other hand, invest Hammon with them, what distinction can there be between them, since he who had been Jupiter can be also supposed to be Mars, and he who had been Mavors can assume the appearance of Jupiter Hammon? To such an extent is there wantonness in fashioning those images and consecrating names, as if they were peculiar to them; since, if you take away their dress, the means of recognising each is put an end to, god may be believed to be god, one may seem to be the other, nay, more, both may be considered both!
13. But why do I laugh at the sickles and tridents which have been given to the gods? why at the horns, hammers, and caps, when I know that certain images have[4658] the forms of certain men, and the features of notorious courtesans? For who is there that does not know that the Athenians formed the Hermæ in the likeness of Alcibiades? Who does not know—if he read Posidippus over again—that Praxiteles, putting forth his utmost skill,[4659] fashioned the face of the Cnidian Venus on the model of the courtesan Gratina, whom the unhappy man loved desperately? But is this the only Venus to whom there has been given beauty taken from a harlot’s face? Phryne,[4660] the well-known native of Thespia—as those who have written on Thespian affairs relate—when she was at the height of her beauty, comeliness, and youthful vigour, is said to have been the model of all the Venuses which are held in esteem, whether throughout the cities of Greece or here,[4661] whither has flowed the longing and eager desire for such figures. All the artists,therefore, who lived at that time, and to whom truth gave the greatest ability to portray likenesses, vied in transferring with all painstaking and zeal the outline of a prostitute to the images of the Cytherean. The beautiful thoughts[4662] of the artists were full of fire; and they strove each to excel the other with emulous rivalry, not that Venus might become more august, but that Phryne[4663] might stand for Venus. And so it was brought to this, that sacred honours were offered to courtesans instead of the immortal gods, and an unhappy system of worship was led astray by the making of statues.[4664] That well-known and[4665] most distinguished statuary, Phidias, when he had raised the form of Olympian Jupiter with immense labour and exertion,[4666] inscribed on the finger of the god Pantarces[4667] is beautiful,—this, moreover, was the name of a boy loved by him, and that with lewd desire,—and was not moved by any fear or religious dread to call the god by the name of a prostitute; nay, rather, to consecrate the divinity and image of Jupiter to a debauchee. To such an extent is there wantonness and childish feeling in forming those little images, adoring them as gods, heaping upon them the divine virtues, when we see that the artists themselves find amusement in fashioning them, and set them up as monuments of their own lusts! For what reason is there, if you should inquire, why Phidias should hesitate to amuse himself, and be wanton when he knew that, but a little before, the very Jupiter which he had made was gold, stones, and ivory,[4668] formless, separated, confused, and that it was he himself who brought all these together and bound them fast, that their appearance[4669] had been given to them by himself in the imitation[4670] of limbs which he had carved; and, which is more than[4671] all, that it was his own free gift, that Jupiter had been produced and was adored among men?[4672]
14. We would here, as if all nations on the earth were present, make one speech, and pour into the ears of them all, words which should be heard in common:[4673] Why, pray, is this, O men! that of your own accord you cheat and deceive yourselves by voluntary blindness? Dispel the darkness now, and, returning to the light of the mind, look more closely and see what that is which is going on, if only you retain your right,[4674] and are not beyond the reach[4675] of the reason and prudence given to you.[4676] Those images which fill you with terror, and which you adore prostrate upon the ground[4677] in all the temples, are bones, stones, brass, silver, gold, clay, wood taken from a tree, or glue mixed with gypsum. Having been heaped together, it may be, from a harlot’s gauds or from a woman’s[4678] ornaments, from camels’ bones or from the tooth of the Indian beast,[4679] from cooking-pots and little jars, from candlesticks and lamps, or from other less cleanly vessels, and having been melted down, they were cast into these shapes and came out into the forms which you see, baked in potters’ furnaces, produced by anvils and hammers, scraped with the silversmith’s, and filed down with ordinary files, cleft and hewn with saws, with augers,[4680] with axes, dug and hollowed out by the turning of borers, and smoothed with planes. Is not this, then, an error? Is it not, to speak accurately, folly to believe that a god which you yourself made with care, to kneel down trembling in supplication to that which has been formed by you, and while you know, and are assured that it is the product[4681] of the labour of your hands,[4682]—to cast yourself down upon your face, beg aid suppliantly, and, in adversity and time of distress, ask it to succour[4683] you with gracious and divine favour?
15. Lo, if some one were to place before you copper in the lump, and not formed[4684] into any works of art, masses of unwrought silver, and gold not fashioned into shape, wood, stones, and bones, with all the other materials of which statues and images of deities usually consist,—nay, more, if some one were to place before you the faces of battered gods, images melted down[4685] and broken, and were also to bid you slay victims to the bits and fragments, and give sacred and divine honours to masses without form,—we ask you to say to us, whether you would do this, or refuse to obey. Perhaps you will say, why? Because there is no man so stupidly blind that he will class among the gods silver, copper, gold, gypsum, ivory, potter’s clay, and say that these very things have, and possess in themselves, divine power. What reason is there, then, that all these bodies should want the power of deity and the rank of celestials if they remain untouched and unwrought, but should forthwith become gods, and be classed and numbered among the inhabitants of heaven if they receive the forms of men, ears, noses, cheeks, lips, eyes, and eyebrows? Does the fashioning add any newness to these bodies, so that from this addition you are compelled[4686] to believe that something divine and majestic has been united to them? Does it change copper into gold, or compel worthless earthenware to become silver? Does it cause things which but a little before were without feeling, to live and breathe?[4687] If they had any natural properties previously,[4688] all these they retain[4689] when built up in the bodily forms of statues. What stupidity it is—for I refuse to call it blindness—to suppose that the natures of things are changed by the kind of form into which they are forced, and that that receives divinity from the appearance given to it, which in its original body has been inert, and unreasoning, and unmoved by feeling![4690]
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