Now it is against this latter sentiment — that which recognised the Gods as placable or forgiving[392] — that Plato declares war as the worst of all heresies. He admits indeed, implicitly, that the Gods are influenced by prayer and sacrifice; since he directs both the one and the other to be constantly offered up, by the citizens of his Magnêtic city, in this very Treatise. He even implies that the Gods are too facile and compliant: for in his second Alkibiadês, Sokrates is made to remark that it was dangerous for an ignorant man to pray for specific advantages, because he might very probably bring ruin upon himself by having his prayers granted —
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“Evertêre domos totas, optantibus ipsis, Di faciles.” |
Farthermore Plato does not scruple to notice[393] it as a real proceeding of the Gods, that they executed the prayer or curse of Theseus, by bringing a cruel death upon the blameless youth Hippolytus; which Theseus himself is the first to deplore when he becomes acquainted with the true facts. That the Gods should inflict punishment on a person who did not deserve it, Plato accounts not unworthy of their dignity: but that they should remit punishment in any case where he conceives it to have been deserved, he repudiates with indignation. Though accessible and easily influenced by prayer and sacrifice from other persons, they are deaf and inexorable to those who have incurred their displeasure by wrong-doing.[394] The prayer so offered is called by Plato a treacherous cajolery, the sacrifice a guilty bribe, to purchase their indulgence.[395] Since, in human affairs, no good magistrate, general, physician, pilot, &c., will allow himself to be persuaded by prayers or presents to betray his trust: much less can we suppose (he argues) the Gods to be capable of such betrayal.[396]
[392] The common sentiment is expressed in a verse of Euripides — Τίνα δεῖ μακάρων ἐκθυσαμένους Εὑρεῖν μόχθων ἀνάπαυλαν — (Fragm. Ino 155); compare Eurip. Hippol. 1323.
[393] Plato, Legg. xi. p. 931 C. ἀραῖος γὰρ γονεὺς ἐκγόνοις ὡς οὐδεὶς ἕτερος ἄλλοις, δικαιότατα. Also iii. p. 687 D.
[394] Plato, Legg. iv. pp. 716-717.
[395] Plato, Legg. x. p. 906 B. θωπείαις λόγων.
[396] Plato, Legg. x. pp. 906-907.
Both Herodotus and Sokrates dissented from Plato’s doctrine.
The general doctrine, upon which Plato here lays so much stress, and the dissent from which he pronounces to be a capital offence — that the Gods, though persuadeable by every one else, were thoroughly unforgiving, deaf to any prayer or sacrifice from one who had done wrong — is a doctrine from which Sokrates[397] himself dissented; and to which few of Plato’s contemporaries, perhaps hardly even himself, consistently adhered. The argument, upon which Plato rests for convincing all these numerous dissentients, is derived from his conception of the character and functions of the Gods. But this, though satisfactory to himself, would not have been granted by his opponents. The Gods were conceived by Herodotus as jealous, meddlesome, intolerant of human happiness beyond a narrow limit, and keeping all human calculations in a state of uncertainty:[398] in this latter attribute Sokrates also agreed. He affirmed that the Gods kept all the important results essentially unpredictable by human study, reserving them for special revelations by way of prophecy to those whom they preferred. These were privileged and exclusive communications to favoured individuals, among whom Sokrates was one:[399] and Plato, though not made a recipient of the same favour as Sokrates, declares his own full belief in the reality of such special revelations from the Gods, to particular persons and at particular places.[400] Aristotle, on the other hand, pronounces action and construction, especially action in details, to be petty and unworthy of the Gods; whom he regards as employed in perpetual contemplation and theorising, as the only occupation worthy to characterise their blessed immortality.[401] Epikurus and his numerous followers, though not agreeing with Aristotle in regarding the Gods as occupied in intellectual contemplation, agreed with him fully in considering the existence of the Gods as too dignified and enviable to be disturbed by the vexation of meddling with human affairs, or to take on the anxieties of regard for one man, displeasure towards another.