Julian

“ What have you ever done to make you worthy of the staff of Diogenes or still more, by Zeus, of his freedom of speech? Do you really think it so great an achievement to carry a staff and let your hair grow, and haunt cities and camps uttering calumnies against the noblest men, and flattering the vilest? Tell me in the name of Zeus and of this audience now present, who are disgusted with philosophy because of men of your sort, why was it that you visited the late Emperor Constantius in Italy but could not travel as far as Gaul? ”

“ For tell me, in Heaven's name, how are such men less criminal than bandits who infest lonely places and haunt the coasts in order to despoil navigators? Because, as people say, they despise death; as though bandits were not inspired by the same frenzied courage! So says at any rate he [23] who with you counts as a poet and mythologist, though, as a Pythian god proclaimed to certain bandits who sought his oracle, he was a hero and divinity - I mean where, speaking of pirates of the sea, he says: "Like pirates who wander over the sea, staking their lives." ”

“ Can we call it common currency? Shall we not rather say that it is the very summary of truth, and by the injunction "Know Thyself" we are told the way in which we must "give a new stamp to the common currency"? For just as one who pays no regard whatever to conventional opinions but goes straight for the truth will not decide his own conduct by those opinions but by actual facts, so I think he who knows himself will know accurately, not the opinion of others about him, but what he is in reality. ”

“ Therefore he who desires to be a Cynic despises all the usages and opinions of men, and turns his mind first of all to himself and the god. For him gold is not gold or sand sand, if one enquire into their value with a view to exchanging them, and leave it to him to rate them at their proper worth: [226] for he knows that both of them are but earth. And the fact that one is scarcer and the other easier to obtain he thinks is merely the result of the vanity and ignorance of mankind. ”

“ This then is his aim, to do away with all reverence for the gods, to bring dishonour on all human wisdom, to trample on all law that can be identified with honour and justice, and more than this, to trample on those laws which have been as it were engraved on our souls by the gods, and have impelled us all to believe without teaching that the divine exists, and to direct our eyes to it and to yearn towards it: for our souls are disposed towards it as eyes towards the light. ”

“ Moreover, would any man be better taught by not hearing facts as they really are, or called by their real names, like the comic poet who calls a spade a spade? [16] What need to speak of Phaethon instead of So-and-so? What need sacrilegiously to profane the title of King Helios? Who among men that walk here below [17] is worthy to be called Pan or Zeus, as though we should ascribe to those gods our human understanding? ”

“ Now if our Cynic also is subject to this sort of slavery, let him recite myths, let him write them, and let everyone else under the sun leave to him the role of mythologist. But since he asserts that he alone is free, I do not know what need he has of myths. Does he need to temper the harshness and severity of his advice with sweetness and charm, [208] so that he may at once benefit mankind and avoid being harmed by one whom he has benefited? Nay, that is too much like a slave. ”

“ But if I am bound to say something in defence of those who originally invented myths, I think they wrote them for childish souls: and I liken them to nurses who hang leathern toys to the hands of children when they are irritated by teething, in order to ease their suffering: so those mythologists wrote for the feeble soul whose wings are just beginning to sprout, and who, though still incapable of being taught the truth, is yearning for further knowledge, and they poured in a stream of myths like men who water a thirsty field, so as to soothe their irritation and pangs. ”

“ For just as it is the nature of birds to fly and of fish to swim and of stags to run, and hence they need not be taught to do so; and even if one bind or imprison these animals they try none the less to use those special parts of themselves for the purpose for which they know they are naturally adapted; even so I think the human race whose soul is no other than reason and knowledge imprisoned so to speak in the body - the philosophers call it a potentiality - even so I say the human race inclines to learning, research and study, as of all tasks most congenial to it. ”

“ Now of these branches of philosophy, logic has no concern with the composition of myths; nor has mathematics, the subdivision of natural philosophy; but they may be employed, if at all, by that department of practical philosophy which deals with the individual man, and by that department of theology which has to do with initiation and the Mysteries. For nature loves to hide her secrets, [36] and she does not suffer the hidden truth about the essential nature of the gods to be flung in naked words to the ears of the profane. ”

“ Now there are certain characteristics of ours that derive benefit from that occult and unknown nature, which nourishes not our souls alone but our bodies also, and brings us into the presence of the gods, and this I think often comes about by means of myths; when through riddles and the dramatic setting of myths that knowledge is insinuated into the ears of the multitude who cannot receive divine truths in their purest form.
It is now evident what branch and what sort of philosophy may properly on occasion employ myths. ”

“ For he in whom the abundance of life has not been perfected by the essential nature of Dionysus, uniform and wholly indivisible as it is in the divisible world and pre-existing whole and unmixed in all things, he I say who has not been perfected by means of the Bacchic and divine frenzy for the god, runs the risk that his life may flow into too many channels, and as it flows be torn to shreds, and hence come to naught. ”

“ Furthermore, suppose that one should discard also that second law which is sanctified both by nature and by God, I mean the law that bids us keep our hands altogether and utterly from the property of others, and permits us neither by word or deed or in the inmost and secret activities of our souls to confound such distinctions, since the law is our guide to the most perfect justice - is not this conduct worthy of the pit? ”

“ It is because the most ignorant of the rhetoricians, those whose tongues not King Hermes himself could purify, and who could not be made wise by Athene herself with the aid of Hermes, having picked up their knowledge from their industry in frequenting public places, - for they do not know the truth of the current proverb, "Grape ripens near grape" [60] - then all rush into Cynicism. They adopt the staff, the cloak, the long hair, the ignorance that goes with these, the impudence, the insolence, and in a word everything of the sort. ”

“ Prefer our worship to all other blessings. For we are thy benefactors and friends and preservers." At these words the youth became calm and showed plainly that he was already obedient in all things to the gods. "Come," said Helios, "now depart with good hope. For everywhere we shall be with thee, even I and Athene and Hermes here, and with us all the gods that are on Olympus or in the air or on earth and the whole race of gods everywhere, so long as thou art pious towards us and loyal to thy friends, and humane towards thy subjects, [234] ruling them and guiding them to what is best. ”

“ But when it was the will of Zeus to bestow on all mankind in common a new order of things, and to make them pass from the nomadic to a more civilised mode of life, Dionysus came from India and revealed himself as very god made visible, visiting the cities of men and leading with him a great host of beings in some sort divine ”

“ He does not treat of all kinds of myths but only those connected with initiation into the Mysteries, such as Orpheus, the founder of the most sacred of all the Mysteries, handed down to us. For it is the incongruous element in myths that guides us to the truth. ”

“ Well, he declares that all who raise the question or seek to enquire at all whether gods exist ought not to be answered as though they were men but to be chastised as wild beasts. And if you had read that introductory sentence which was inscribed over the entrance to his school, like Plato's, you would most surely know that those who entered the Lyceum were warned to be reverent to the gods, to be initiated into all the mysteries, to take part in the most sacred ceremonies, and to be instructed in knowledge of every kind. ”

“ But if anyone is hostile to a Cynic, as indeed many are even to the gods, he is not that Cynic's enemy, since he cannot injure him; rather he inflicts on himself the most terrible punishment of all, namely ignorance of one who is nobler than himself; and so he is deserted and bereft of the other's protection.
Now if my present task were to write about the Cynic philosophy, I could add many details about the Cynics, not less important than what I have said already. But not to interrupt my main theme, I will now consider in due course the question what kind of myths ought to be invented. ”

“ But as regards the thought, the incongruous may be admitted, so that under the guidance of the gods men may be inspired to search out and study the hidden meaning, though they must not ask for any hint of the truth from others, but must acquire their knowledge from what is said in the myth itself. [45] For instance I have heard many people say that Dionysus was a mortal man because he was born of Semele, and that he became a god through his knowledge of theurgy and the Mysteries, and like our lord Heracles for his royal virtue was translated to Olympus by his father Zeus. ”

“ In Sallust's treatise On the Gods and the World he gives much the same account of the proper function of myths and divides them into five species, giving examples of each. "To wish to teach the whole truth about the gods to all produces contempt in the foolish, because they cannot understand, and lack of zeal in the good; whereas to conceal the truth by myths prevents the contempt of the foolish and compels the good to practise philosophy." ”

“ For just as is the case with the public roads, a traveller who is able to take a short cut will more easily than other men go all the way round, whereas it does not at all follow that he who went round could always go the short cut, so too in philosophy the end and the beginning are one, namely, to know oneself and to become like the gods. ”

“ For is it likely that a man who in order to honour the gods journeyed to Olympia, and like Socrates embraced philosophy in obedience to the Pythian oracle, - [239] for he says himself that at home and in private he received the commands of that oracle and hence came his impulse to philosophy [100] - is it likely I say that such a man would not very gladly have entered the temples of the gods but for the fact that he was trying to avoid submitting himself to any set of laws and making himself the slave of any one constitution? ”

“ Now one could no more discover where myth was originally invented and who was the first to compose fiction in a plausible manner for the benefit or entertainment of his hearers, than if one were to try to find out who was the first man that sneezed or the first horse that neighed. ”

“ And when a kindly god without delay looses a man's fetters and brings that potentiality into activity, then on the instant knowledge is his: whereas in those who are still imprisoned false opinion instead of true is implanted, just as, I think, Ixion is said to have embraced a sort of cloud instead of the goddess. ”

“ But though I had to listen as one does when Heracles and Dionysus are being caricatured in the theatre by comic poets, [8] I bore it to the end, not for the speaker's sake but for the sake of the audience, or rather, if I may presume to say so, it was still more for my own sake, so that I might not seem to be moved by superstition rather than by a pious and rational sentiment and to be scared into flight by his miserable words like a timid dove. So I stayed and repeated to myself the famous line "Bear it my heart: yea thou didst of yore endure things yet more shameful." ”

“ And in such myths the incongruous element is even more valuable than the serious and straightforward, the more so that when the latter is used there is risk of our regarding the gods as exceedingly great and noble and good certainly, but still as human beings, whereas when the meaning is expressed incongruous there is some hope that men will neglect the more obvious sense of the words, and that pure intelligence may rise to the comprehension of the distinctive nature of the gods that transcends all existing things. ”

“ For we desire, out of respect for thy ancestor to cleanse the house of thy forefathers. Remember therefore that thou hast an immortal soul that is our offspring, and that if thou dost follow us thou shalt be a god and with us shalt behold our father. ”

“ Then when the myth was gaining ground and coming into favour in Greece, poets developed from it the fable with a moral, which differs from the myth in that the latter is addressed to children and the former to men, and is designed not merely to entertain them but conveys moral exhortation besides. For the man who employs fable aims at moral exhortation and instruction, though he conceals his aim and takes care not to speak openly, for fear of alienating his hearers. ”

“ But perhaps you will say that though reason asserts that the Cynic, who alone of men can claim to be free, ought not to invent and compose lying fictions instead of the unvarnished truth and then recite these in public assemblies, nevertheless the custom began with Diogenes and Crates, and has been maintained from that time by all Cynics. ”

“ For in what sense do we regard the "birth" of Heracles, yes, and of Dionysus as well, since in their case birth has superior and surpassing and distinctive elements, even though it still falls within the limits of human nature, and up to a certain point resembles our own? Heracles for instance is said to have been a child, even as we are ”

“ A man must completely come out of himself and recognise that he is divine, and not only keep his mind untiringly and steadfastly fixed on divine and stainless and pure thoughts, but he must also utterly despise his body, and think it, in the words of Heracleitus, "more worthless than dirt." ”