Five Stages of Greek Religion Part 12

[133:2] Cf. also his _Consolatio ad Apollonium_. The earliest text is perhaps the interesting fragment of Demetrius of Phalerum (fr. 19, in _F. H. G._ ii. 368), written about 317 B. C. It is quoted with admiration by Polybius xxix. 21, with reference to the defeat of Perseus of Macedon by the Romans:

'One must often remember the saying of Demetrius of Phalerum . . . in his Treatise on Fortune. . . . "If you were to take not an indefinite time, nor many generations, but just the fifty years before this, you could see in them the violence of Fortune. Fifty years ago do you suppose that either the Macedonians or the King of Macedon, or the Persians or the King of Persia, if some G.o.d had foretold them what was to come, would ever have believed that by the present time the Persians, who were then masters of almost all the inhabited world, would have ceased to be even a geographical name, while the Macedonians, who were then not even a name, would be rulers of all? Yet this Fortune, who bears no relation to our method of life, but transforms everything in the way we do not expect and displays her power by surprises, is at the present moment showing all the world that, when she puts the Macedonians into the rich inheritance of the Persian, she has only lent them these good things until she changes her mind about them." Which has now happened in the case of Perseus. The words of Demetrius were a prophecy uttered, as it were, by inspired lips.'

[134:1] Eur., _Tro._ 886. Literally it means 'The Compulsion in the way Things grow'.

[134:2] Zeno, fr. 87, Arnim.

[135:1] Chrysippus, fr. 913, Arnim.

[135:2] Cleanthes, 527, Arnim. ???? d? ', ? ?e?, ?a? s? ?' ? ?ep?????, ?t?. Plotinus, _Enn._ III. i. 10.

[135:3] Epicurus, Third Letter. Usener, p. 65, 12 = Diog. La. x. 134.

[136:1] Aristotle, fr. 12 ff.

[136:2] e. g. Chrysippus, fr. 1076, Arnim.

[138:1] _Themis_, p. 180, n. 1.

[138:2] Not to Plotinus: _Enn._ II. ix against the Valentinians. Cf.

Porphyry, ?f??a?, 28.

[138:3] Bousset, _Hauptprobleme der Gnosis_, 1907, pp. 13, 21, 26, 81, &c.; pp. 332 ff. She becomes Helen in the beautiful myth of the Simonian Gnostics--a Helen who has forgotten her name and race, and is a slave in a brothel in Tyre. Simon discovers her, gradually brings back her memory and redeems her. Irenaeus, i. 23, 2.

[139:1] _De Iside et Osiride_, 67. (He distinguishes them from the real G.o.d, however, just as Sall.u.s.tius would.)

[139:2] Mithras was wors.h.i.+pped by the Cilician Pirates conquered by Pompey. Plut., _Vit. Pomp._ 24.

[139:3] ??????? t?? p??t?? ?e??. Plato (Diels, 305); Stoics, ib. 547, l.

8.

[140:1] Aristotle (Diels, 450). ?sa? d? e??a? t?? sfa??a?, t?s??t???

?p???e?? ?a? t??? ??????ta? ?e???. Chrysippus (Diels 466); Posidonius, ib. (cf. Plato, _Laws_. 898 ff.). See Epicurus's Second Letter, especially Usener, pp. 36-47 = Diog. La. x. 86-104. On the food required by the heavenly bodies cf. Chrysippus, fr. 658-61, Arnim.

[140:2] ? d? ?p??????? ??d?? t??t?? ??????e?. Diels, 307{a} 15. Cf.

432{a} 10.

[141:1] Heath, _Aristarchos of Samos_, pp. 301-10.

[142:1] Pythagoras in Diels, p. 555, 20; the best criticism is in Aristotle, _De Caelo_, chap. 9 (p. 290 b), the fullest account in Macrobius, _Comm. in Somn. Scipionis_, ii.

[142:2] See Diels, _Elementium_, 1899, p. 17. These magic letters are still used in the Roman ritual for the consecration of churches.

[143:1] A seven-day week was known to Pseudo-Hippocrates pe?? sa???? _ad fin._, but the date of that treatise is very uncertain.

[143:2] Aesch., _Ag._ 6; Eur., _Hip._ 530. Also _Ag._ 365, where ?st???

???? goes together and ?te p?? ?a???? ??' ?pe?.

[143:3] Proclus, _In Timaeum_, 289 F; Seneca, _Nat. Quaest._ iii. 29, 1.

[145:1] Chrysippus, 1187-95. Esse divinationem si di sint et providentia.

[145:2] Cicero, _De Nat. De._ iii. 11, 28; especially _De Divinatione_, ii. 14, 34; 60, 124; 69, 142. 'Qua ex coniunctione naturae et quasi concentu atque consensu, quam s?p??e?a? Graeci appellant, convenire potest aut fissum iecoris c.u.m lucello meo aut meus quaesticulus c.u.m caelo, terra rerumque natura?' asks the sceptic in the second of these pa.s.sages.

[145:3] Chrysippus, 939-44. Vaticinatio probat fati necessitatem.

[145:4] Chrysippus, 1214, 1200-6.

[146:1] _Eine Mithrasliturgie_, 1903. The MS. is 574 Supplement grec de la Bibl. Nationale. The formulae of various religions were used as instruments of magic, as our own witches used the Lord's Prayer backwards.

[146:2] _Refutatio Omnium Haeresium_, v. 7. They wors.h.i.+pped the Serpent, Nahash (??????).

[147:1] Bousset, p. 351. The hostility of Zoroastrianism to the old Babylonian planet G.o.ds was doubtless at work also. Ib. pp. 37-46.

[147:2] Or, in some Gnostic systems, of the Mother.

[148:1] Harrison, _Prolegomena_, Appendix on the Orphic tablets.

[148:2] Ap. _Metamorphoses_, xi.

[149:1] 2 Cor. xii. 2 and 3 (he may be referring in veiled language to himself); Gal. i. 12 ff.; Acts ix. 1-22. On the difference of tone and fidelity between the Epistles and the Acts see the interesting remarks of Prof. P. Gardner, _The Religious Experience of St. Paul_, pp. 5 ff.

[149:2] Porphyry, _Vita Plotini_, 23. 'We have explained that he was good and gentle, mild and merciful; we who lived with him could feel it.

We have said that he was vigilant and pure of soul, and always striving towards the Divine, which with all his soul he loved. . . . And thus it happened to this extraordinary man, constantly lifting himself up towards the first and transcendent G.o.d by thought and the ways explained by Plato in the _Symposium_, that there actually came a vision of that G.o.d who is without shape or form, established above the understanding and all the intelligible world. To whom I, Porphyry, being now in my sixty-eighth year, profess that I once drew near and was made one with him. At any rate he appeared to Plotinus "a goal close at hand." For his whole end and goal was to be made One and draw near to the supreme G.o.d.

And he attained that goal four times, I think, while I was living with him--not potentially but in actuality, though an actuality which surpa.s.ses speech.'

[150:1] _C. I. G._, vol. xii, fasc. 3; and Bethe in _Rhein. Mus._, N.

F., xlii, 438-75.

[150:2] Irenaeus, i. 13, 3.

[150:3] Bousset, chap. vii; Reitzenstein, _Mysterienreligionen_, p. 20 ff., with excursus; _Poimandres_, 226 ff.; Dieterich, _Mithrasliturgie_, pp. 121 ff.

[152:1] Eur. fr. 484.

[152:2] _R. G. E._{3}, pp. 135-40. I do not touch on the political side of this apotheosis of h.e.l.lenistic kings; it is well brought out in Ferguson's _h.e.l.lenistic Athens_, e. g. p. 108 f., also p. 11 f. and note. Antigonus Gonatas refused to be wors.h.i.+pped (Tarn, p. 250 f.). For Sall.u.s.tius's opinion, see below, p. 223, chap. xviii _ad fin._

[153:1] Cf. ???? ????t????? da?????, Democr. 171, Diels, and Alcmaeon is said by Cicero to have attributed divinity to the Stars and the Soul.

Melissus and Zeno ?e?a? ??eta? t?? ?????. The phrase t???? t?? ????? ?p?

t?? ?st??? ????sa?, Diels 651, must refer to some Gnostic sect.

[154:1] See for instance Frazer, _Golden Bough_{3}, part I, i. 417-19.

[154:2] Aesch. _Pers._ 157, 644 (?e??), 642 (da???). Mr. Bevan however suspects that Aeschylus misunderstood his Persian sources: see his article on 'Deification' in Hastings's _Dictionary of Religion_.

[154:3] Cf. Aristotle on the ?e?a???????, _Eth. Nic._ 1123 b. 15. e? d?

d? e????? ?at?? ????? ????? ??, ?a? ???sta t?? e??st??, pe?? ??

???sta ?? e??. . . . ???st?? d? t??t' ?? ?e??e? ? t??? ?e???

?p????e?. But these kings clearly transgressed the mean. For the satirical comments of various public men in Athens see Ed. Meyer, _Kleine Schriften_, 301 ff., 330.