I publish without reserve what has been involved in secrecy, not ashamed to tell what you are not ashamed to worship. And if you have been initiated, you will laugh all the more at these fables of yours which have been held in honour.
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These I would instance as the prime authors of evil, the parents of impious fables and of deadly superstition, who sowed in human life that seed of evil and ruin - the mysteries.Īnd now, for it is time, I will prove their orgies to be full of imposture and quackery. Others say that Melampus the son of Amythaon imported the festivals of Ceres from Egypt into Greece, celebrating her grief in song. For I will never be persuaded by that Cyprian Islander Cinyras, who dared to bring forth from night to the light of day the lewd orgies of Aphrodité in his eagerness to deify a strumpet of his own country. Perish, then, the man who was the author of this imposture among men, be he Dardanus, who taught the mysteries of the mother of the gods, or Eetion, who instituted the orgies and mysteries of the Samothracians, or that Phrygian Midas who, having learned the cunning imposture from Odrysus, communicated it to his subjects. You may understand mysteria in another way, as mytheria (hunting fables), the letters of the two words being interchanged for certainly fables of this sort hunt after the most barbarous of the Thracians, the most senseless of the Phrygians, and the superstitious among the Greeks. I think that the derivation of orgies and mysteries ought to be traced, the former to the wrath ( ὀργή) of Demeter against Zeus, the latter to the nefarious wickedness ( μύσος) relating to Dionysus but if from Myus of Attica, who Pollodorus says was killed in hunting - no matter, I don't grudge your mysteries the glory of funeral honours. Moreover, according to the strict interpretation of the Hebrew term, the name Hevia, aspirated, signifies a female serpent.ĭemeter and Proserpine have become the heroines of a mystic drama and their wanderings, and seizure, and grief, Eleusis celebrates by torchlight processions. The symbol of the Bacchic orgies is a consecrated serpent. The bacchanals hold their orgies in honour of the frenzied Dionysus, celebrating their sacred frenzy by the eating of raw flesh, and go through the distribution of the parts of butchered victims, crowned with snakes, shrieking out the name of that Eva by whom error came into the world. Goats, too, have been confederates in this art of soothsaying, trained to divination and crows taught by men to give oracular responses to men.Īnd what if I go over the mysteries? I will not divulge them in mockery, as they say Alcibiades did, but I will expose right well by the word of truth the sorcery hidden in them and those so-called gods of yours, whose are the mystic rites, I shall display, as it were, on the stage of life, to the spectators of truth. Insane devices truly are they all of unbelieving men. Let the secret shrines of the Egyptians and the necromancies of the Etruscans be consigned to darkness. And bring and place beside the Pythian those that divine by flour, and those that divine by barley, and the ventriloquists still held in honour by many. Recount to us also the useless oracles of that other kind of divination, or rather madness, the Clarian, the Pythian, the Didymæan, that of Amphiaraus, of Apollo, of Amphilochus and if you will, couple with them the expounders of prodigies, the augurs, and the interpreters of dreams. The fountain of Castalia is silent, and the other fountain of Colophon and, in like manner, all the rest of the springs of divination are dead, and stripped of their vainglory, although at a late date, are shown with their fabulous legends to have run dry. The Gerandryon, once regarded sacred in the midst of desert sands, and the oracle there gone to decay with the oak itself, consigned to the region of antiquated fables. The Absurdity and Impiety of the Heathen Mysteries and Fables About the Birth and Death of Their Gods.Įxplore not then too curiously the shrines of impiety, or the mouths of caverns full of monstrosity, or the Thesprotian caldron, or the Cirrhæan tripod, or the Dodonian copper. Includes the Catholic Encyclopedia, Church Fathers, Summa, Bible and more all for only $19.99.īY CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA Chapter 2. Please help support the mission of New Advent and get the full contents of this website as an instant download.
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