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Delphi Complete Works of Dio Chrysostom

Page 24

by Dio Chrysostom


  [35] That human beings should be so affected would occasion no surprise, but much rather that, as we see, this influence reaches even the senseless and irrational brutes, so that even they recognize and honour the god and desire to live according to his ordinance; and it is still stranger that the plants, which have no conception of anything, but, being soulless and voiceless, are controlled by a simple kind of nature — it is passing strange, I say, that even these voluntarily and willingly yield each its own proper fruit; so very clear and evident is the will and power of yonder god. [36] Nay, I wonder if we shall be thought exceedingly absurd and hopelessly behind the times in view of this reasoning, if we maintain that this unexpected knowledge is indeed more natural for the beasts and the trees than dullness and ignorance are for us? Why, certain men have shown themselves wiser than all wisdom; yes, they have poured into their ears, not wax, as I believe they say that the sailors from Ithaca did that they might not hear the song of the Sirens, but a substance like lead, soft at once and impenetrable by the human voice, and they also methinks have hung before their eyes a curtain of deep darkness and mist like that which, according to Homer, kept the god from being recognized when he was caught; these men, then, despise all things divine, and having set up the image of one female divinity, depraved and monstrous, representing a kind of wantonness or self-indulgent ease and unrestrained lewdness, to which they gave the name of Pleasure — an effeminate god in very truth — her they prefer in honour and worship with softly tinkling cymbal-like instruments, or with pipes played under cover of darkness — [37] a form of entertainment which nobody would grudge such men if their cleverness went only as far as singing, and they did not attempt to take our gods from us and send them into banishment, driving them out of their own state and kingdom, clean out of this ordered universe to alien regions, even as unfortunate human beings are banished to sundry uninhabited isles; and all this universe above us they assert is without purpose or intelligence or master, has no ruler, or even steward or overseer, but wanders at random and is swept aimlessly along, no master being there to take thought for it now, and no creator having made it in the first place, or even doing as boys do with their hoops, which they set in motion of their own accord, and then let them roll along of themselves.

  [38] Now to explain this digression — my argument is responsible, having turned aside of itself; for perhaps it is not easy to check the course of a philosopher’s thoughts and speech, no matter what direction they may take; for whatever suggests itself to his mind always seems profitable, nay indispensable, for his audience, and my speech has not been prepared to “suit the water-clock and the constraint of court procedure,” to use somebody’s expression, but allows itself a great deal of license. Well, it is not difficult to run back again, just as on a voyage it is not difficult for competent steersmen who have got a little off their course to get back upon it.

  [39] To resume, then: Of man’s belief in the deity and his assumption that there is a god we were maintaining that the fountain-head, as we may say, or source, was that idea which is innate in all mankind and comes into being as the result of the actual facts and the truth, an idea that was not framed confusedly nor yet at random, but has been exceedingly potent and persistent since the beginning of time, and has arisen among all nations and still remains, being, one may almost say, a common and general endowment of rational beings.

  As the second source we designate the idea which has been acquired and indeed implanted in men’s souls through no other means than narrative accounts, myths, and customs, in some cases ascribed to no author and also unwritten, but in others written and having as their authors men of very great fame. [40] Of this acquired notion of the divine being let us say that one part is voluntary and due to exhortation, another part compulsory and prescriptive. By the kind that depends upon voluntary acceptance and exhortation I mean that which is handed down by the poets, and by the kind that depends upon compulsion and prescription I mean that due to the lawgivers. I call these secondary because neither of them could possibly have gained strength unless that primary notion had been present to begin with; and because it was present, there took root in mankind, of their own volition and because they already possessed a sort of foreknowledge, the prescriptions of the lawgivers and the exhortations of the poets, some of them expounding things correctly and in consonance with the truth and their hearers’ notions, and others going astray in certain matters. [41] But which of the two influences mentioned should be called the earlier in time, among us Greeks at any rate, namely, poetry or legislation, I am afraid I cannot discuss at length on the present occasion; but perhaps it is fitting that the kind which depended, not upon penalties, but upon persuasion should be more ancient than the kind which employed compulsion and prescription. [42] Now up to this point, we may almost say, the feelings of the human race towards their first and immortal parent, whom we who have a share in the heritage of Hellas call Ancestral Zeus, develop step by step along with those which men have toward their mortal and human parents. For in truth the goodwill and desire to serve which the offspring feel toward their parents is, in the first type, present in them, untaught, as a gift of nature and as a result of acts of kindness received, [43] since that which has been begotten straightway from birth loves and cherishes in return, so far as it may, that which begat and nourishes and loves it, whereas the second and third types, which are derived from our poet and lawgivers, the former exhorting us not to withhold our gratitude from that which is older and of the same blood, besides being the author of life and being, the latter using compulsion and the threat of punishment for those who refuse obedience, without, however, making anything clear and showing plainly just who parents are and what the acts of kindness are for which they enjoin upon us not to leave unpaid a debt which is due. But to an even greater extent do we see this to be true in both particulars in their stories and myths about the gods.

  Now I am well aware that to most men strict exactness in any exposition is on every occasion irksome, and that exactness in a speech is no less so for those whose sole interest is in quantity alone; these without any preface whatever or any statements defining their subject-matter, nay, without even beginning their speeches with any beginning, but straight off ‘with unwashen feet,’ as the saying is, proceed to expound things most obvious and naked to the sight. Now as for ‘unwashen feet,’ though they do no great harm when men must pass through mud and piles of refuse, yet an ignorant tongue causes no little injury to an audience. However, we may reasonably expect that the educated men of the audience, of whom one ought to take some account, will keep up with us and go through the task with us until we merge from bypath and rough ground, as it were, and get our argument back upon the straight road.

  [44] Now that we have set before us three sources of man’s conception of the divine being, to wit, the innate, that derived from the poets, and that derived from the lawgivers, let us name as the fourth that derived from the plastic art and the work of skilled craftsmen who make statues and likenesses of the gods — I mean painters and sculptors and masons who work in stone, in a word, everyone who has held himself worthy to come forward as a portrayer of the divine nature through the use of art, whether (1) by means of a rough sketch, very indistinct or deceptive to the eye, or (2) by the blending of colours and by line-drawing, which produces a result which we can almost say is the most accurate of all, or (3) by the carving of stone, or (4) by the craft which makes images of wood, in which the artist little by little removes the excess of material until nothing remains but the shape which the observer sees, or (5) by the casting of bronze and the like precious metals, which are heated and then either beaten out or poured into moulds, or (6) by the moulding of wax, which most readily answers the artist’s touch and affords the greatest opportunity for change of intention. [45] To this class belong not only Pheidias but also Alcamenes and Polycleitus and further, Aglaophon and Polygnotus and Zeuxis and, earlier than all these, Daedalus. For these men were not satisfied t
o display their cleverness and skill on commonplace subjects, but by exhibiting all sorts of likenesses and representations of gods they secured for their patrons both private persons and the states, whose people they filled with an ample and varied conception of the divine; and here they did not differ altogether from the poets and lawgivers, in the one case that they might not be considered violators of the laws and thus make themselves liable to the penalties imposed upon such, and in the other case because they saw that they had been anticipated by the poets and that the poets’ image-making was the earlier. [46] Consequently they preferred not to appear to the many as untrustworthy and to be disliked for making innovations. In most matters, accordingly, they adhered to the myths and maintained agreement with them in their representations, but in some few cases they contributed their own ideas, becoming in a sense the rivals as well as fellow-craftsmen of the poets, since the latter appealed to the ear alone, whereas it was simply through the eye that they, for their part, interpreted the divine attributes to their more numerous and less cultivated spectators. And all these influences won strength from that primary impulse, as having originated with the honouring of the divine being and winning his favour.

  [47] And furthermore, quite apart from that simple and earliest notion of the gods which develops in the hearts of all men along with their reasoning power, in addition to those three interpreters and teachers, the poets, the lawgivers, and creative artists, we must take on a fourth one, who is by no means indifferent nor believes himself unacquainted with the gods, I mean the philosopher, the one who by means of reason interprets and proclaims the divine nature, most truly, perhaps, and most perfectly.

  [48] As to the lawgiver, let us omit for the present to hale him here for an accounting; a stern man is he and himself accustomed to hold all others to an accounting. Indeed, we ought to have consideration for ourselves and for our own preoccupation. But as for the rest, let us select the foremost man of each class, and consider whether they will be found to have done by their acts or words any good or harm to piety, and how they stand as to agreement with each other or divergence from one another, and which one of them adheres to the truth most closely, being in harmony with that primary and guileless view. Now in fact all these men speak with one voice, just as if they had taken the one track and were keeping to it, some clearly and others less plainly. Would the true philosopher, perhaps, not stand in need of consolation if he should be brought into comparison with the makers of statues or of poetic measures, and that too, before the throng of a national festive-gathering where the judges are predisposed in their favour?

  [49] Suppose, for instance, that someone were to take Pheidias first and question him before the tribunal of the Hellenes, Pheidias, that wise and divinely-inspired creator of this awe-inspiring masterpiece of surpassing beauty, and should appoint as judges the men who are directing this contest in honour of the god, or better, a general court of all Peloponnesians and of the Boeotians, too, and Ionians and of the other Hellenes, wherever they are to be found in Asia as well as in Europe, and then suppose they should demand an accounting, not of the monies or of the sum spent on the statue — the number of talents paid for gold and ivory, and for cypress and citron-wood, which are durable and indestructible timber for the interior work, or of the expenditure for the maintenance and wages of the workmen, who were not few in number and worked for so long a time, the wages not only of the men in general, who were no mean artisans, but of Pheidias also, to whom went the greatest and fullest reward on account of his artistic skill — of these items, I say, it was fitting that the Eleans, who poured out their money so lavishly and magnificently, should have called for a reckoning; [50] but as for us, we shall maintain that it is for something else that Pheidias must submit to trial. Suppose, then, that someone should actually say to him:

  “O best and noblest of artists, how charming and pleasing a spectacle you have wrought, and a vision of infinite delight for the benefit of all men, both Greeks and barbarians, who have ever come here, as they have come in great throngs and time after time, no one will gainsay. [51] For verily even the irrational brute creation would be so struck with awe if they could catch merely a glimpse of yonder statue, not only the bulls which are being continually led to the altar, so that they would willingly submit themselves to the priests who perform the rites of sacrifice, if so they would be giving some pleasure to the god, but eagles too, and horses and lions, so that they would subdue their untamed and savage spirits and preserve perfect quiet, delighted by the vision; and of men, whoever is sore distressed in soul, having in the course of his life drained the cup of many misfortunes and griefs, nor ever winning sweet sleep — even this man, methinks, if he stood before this image, would forget all the terrors and hardships that fall to our human lot. [52] Such a wondrous vision did you devise and fashion, one in very truth a

  Charmer of grief and anger, that from men

  All the remembrance of their ills could loose!

  So great the radiance and so great the charm with which your art has clothed it. Indeed it is not reasonable to suppose that even Hephaestus himself would criticize this work if he judged it by the pleasure and delight which it affords the eye of man.”

  “But, on the other hand, was the shape you by your artistry produced appropriate to a god and was its form worthy of the divine nature, when you not only used a material which gives delight but also presented a human form of extraordinary beauty and size; and apart from its being a man’s shape, made also all the other attributes as you have made them? that is the question which I invite you to consider now. And if you make a satisfactory defence on these matters before those present and convince them that you have discovered the proper and fitting shape and form for the foremost and greatest god, then you shall receive in addition a second reward, greater and more perfect than the one given by the Eleans. [53] For you see that the issue is no small one, nor the danger, for us. Since in times past, because we had no clear knowledge, we formed each his different idea, and each person, according to his capacity and nature, conceived a likeness for every divine manifestation and fashioned such likenesses in his dreams; and if we do perchance collect any small and insignificant likenesses made by the earlier artists, we do not trust them very much nor pay them very much attention. But you by the power of your art first conquered and united Hellas and then all others by means of this wondrous presentment, showing forth so marvellous and dazzling a conception, that none of those who have beheld it could any longer easily form a different one. [54] Pray, do you imagine that it was owing to lack of money that Iphitus and Lycurgus and the Eleans of that period, while instituting the contest and the sacrifice in such wise as to be worthy of Zeus, yet failed to search for and find a statue to bear the name and show the aspect of the god, although they were, one might almost say, superior in power to their descendants? Or was it rather because they feared that they would never be able adequately to portray by human art the Supreme and most Perfect Being?”

  [55] Perhaps in answer to this Pheidias would say, since he was not tongue-tied nor belonged to a tongue-tied city, and besides was the close friend and comrade of Pericles:

  “My Greek fellow-citizens, the issue is the greatest that has ever arisen. For it is not about empire or the presidency of one single state or the size of the navy or as to whether an army of infantry has or has not been correctly administered, that I am now being called to account, but concerning that god who governs the universe and my representation of him: whether it has been made with due respect to the dignity of the god and so as to be a true likeness of him, in no way falling short of the best portrayal of the divinity that is within the capacity of human beings to make, or is unworthy of him and unbefitting.

 

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