But because we have passed over Socrates, who
should have come next after Parmenides, we must now
turn back our discourse to him. Him therefore has Colotes begun at the very first to remove, as the common proverb has it, from the sacred line; and having mentioned
how Chaerephon brought from Delphi an oracle, well
known to us all, concerning Socrates, he says thus: ‘Now
as to this narration of Chaerephon's, because it is odious
and absolutely sophistical, we will overpass it.’ Plato then,
that we may say nothing of others, is also odious, who has
committed it to writing; and the Lacedaemonians are yet
more odious, who reserve the oracle of Lycurgus amongst
their most ancient and most authentic inscriptions. The
oracle also of Themistocles, by which he persuaded the
Athenians to quit their town, and in a naval fight defeated
the barbarous Xerxes, was a sophistical fiction. Odious
also were all the ancient legislators and founders of Greece,
who established the most part of their temples, sacrifices,
and solemn festivals by the answer of the Pythian Oracle.
But if the oracle brought from Delphi concerning Socrates,
[p. 360]
a man ravished with a divine zeal to virtue, by which he is
styled and declared wise, is odious, fictitious, and sophistical, by what name shall we call your cries, noises, and
shouts, your applauses, adorations and canonizations, with
which you extol and celebrate him who incites and exhorts
you to frequent and continual pleasures? For thus has he
written in his epistle to Anaxarchus: ‘I for my part in
cite and call you to continual pleasures, and not to vain and
empty virtues, which have nothing but turbulent hopes of
uncertain fruits.’ And yet Metrodorus, writing to Timarchus, says: ‘Let us do some extraordinarily excellent
thing, not suffering ourselves to be plunged in reciprocal
affections, but retiring from this low and terrestrial life, and
elevating ourselves to the truly holy and divinely revealed
ceremonies and mysteries of Epicurus.’ And even Colotes
himself, hearing one day Epicurus discoursing of natural
things, fell suddenly at his feet and embraced his knees, as
Epicurus himself, glorying in it, thus writes: ‘For as if
you had adored what we were then saying, you were suddenly taken with a desire, proceeding not from any natural
cause, to come to us, prostrate yourself on the ground, embrace our knees, and use all those gestures to us which are
ordinarily practised by those who adore and pray to the
Gods. So that you made us also,’ says he, ‘reciprocally
sanctify and adore you.’ Those, by Jupiter, well deserve
to be pardoned, who say, they would willingly give any
money for a picture in which should be presented to the
life this fine story of one lying prostrate at the knees and
embracing the legs of another, who mutually again adores
him and makes his devout prayers to him. Nevertheless
this devout service, how well soever it was ordered and
composed by Colotes, received not the condign fruit he expected; for he was not declared wise; but it was only said
to him: Go thy ways, and walk immortal; and understand
that we also are in like manner immortal.
[p. 361]
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