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Arnobio. Seven Books against the Heathen. Libro IV, Cap. 22
22. But you will perhaps say that the gods do not trouble themselves about these losses, and do not think that there is sufficient cause for them to come forth and inflict punishment upon the offenders for their impious sacrilege. Neither. then. if this is the case, do they wish to have these images. which they allow to be plucked up and torn away with impunity; nay, on the contrary, they tell us plainly that they despise these statues, in which they do not care to show that they were contemned, by taking any revenge. Philostephanus relates in his Cypriaca, that Pygmalion, king of Cyprus, loved as a woman an image of Venus, which was held by the Cyprians holy and venerable from ancient times, his mind, spirit, the light of his reason, and his judgment being darkened; and that he was wont in his madness, just as if he were dealing with his wife, having raised the deity to his couch, to be joined with it in embraces and face to face, and to do other vain things, carried away by a foolishly lustful imagination. Similarly, Posidippus, in the book which he mentions to have been written about Gnidus and about its affairs, relates that a young man, of noble birth,-but he conceals his name,-carried away with love of the Venus because of which Gnidus is famous, joined himself also in amorous lewdness to the image of the same deity, stretched on the genial couch, and enjoying the pleasures which ensue. To ask, again, in like manner: If the powers of the gods above lurk in copper and the other substances of which images have been formed, where in the world was the one Venus and the other to drive far away from them the lewd wantonness of the youths, and punish their impious touch with terrible suffering? Or, as the goddesses are gentle and of calmer dispositions, what would it have been for them to assuage the furious joys of the wretched men, and to bring back their insane minds again to their senses?
ARNOBII ADVERSVS NATIONES LIBER VI
22.1. “Nisi forte neclegere deos dicetis haec damna nec putare esse idoneam causam, propter quam se exserant et nocentibus poenam violatae religionis infligant”. 2. – Ergo si haec ita sunt, nec simulacra ipsi habere desiderant, | f. 132 | quae convelli et diripi perpetiuntur inpune, immo e contrario perdocent aspernari se illa, in quibus spretos <se> ultione in aliqua significare non curant. 3. Philostephanus in Cypriacis auctor est, Pygmalionem regem Cypri simulacrum Veneris, quod sanctitatis apud Cyprios et religionis habebatur antiquae, adamasse ut feminam mente anima lumine rationis iudicioque caecatis solitumque dementem, tamquam si uxoria res esset, sublevato in lectulum numine copularier amplexibus atque ore resque alias agere libidinis vacuae imaginatione frustrabiles. 4. Consimili ratione Posidippus in eo libro, quem scriptum super Cnido indicat superque rebus eius, adulescentem haud ignobilem memorat – sed vocabulum eius obscurat – correptum amoribus Veneris, propter quam Cnidus in nomine est, amatorias et ipsum miscuisse lascivias cum eiusdem numinis signo genialibus usum toris et voluptatum consequentium finibus. 5. Ut similiter rursum interrogem: “Si in aere atque in materiis ceteris quibus signa formata sunt superorum potentiae delitiscunt: ubinam gentium fuerant una atque altera Veneres, ut inpudicam patulantiem iuvenum propulsarent ab se longe et contactus impios cruciabili coercitione punirent? 6. Aut quoniam mites et ingeniis tranquillioribus deae sunt, quantum fuerat, miseris furialia ut restinguerent gaudia mentemque in sanam recreatis redducerent sensibus?”.
215 d.C.
CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA. Exhortation to the Heathen (Chapter 4)
Chapter 4. The Absurdity and Shamefulness of the Images by Which the Gods are Worshipped.
The Parian stone is beautiful, but it is not yet Poseidon. The ivory is beautiful, but it is not yet the Olympian Zeus. Matter always needs art to fashion it, but the deity needs nothing. Art has come forward to do its work, and the matter is clothed with its shape; and while the preciousness of the material makes it capable of being turned to profitable account, it is only on account of its form that it comes to be deemed worthy of veneration. Your image, if considered as to its origin, is gold, it is wood, it is stone, it is earth, which has received shape from the artist’s hand. But I have been in the habit of walking on the earth, not of worshipping it. For I hold it wrong to entrust my spirit’s hopes to things destitute of the breath of life. We must therefore approach as close as possible to the images. How peculiarly inherent deceit is in them, is manifest from their very look. For the forms of the images are plainly stamped with the characteristic nature of demons. If one go round and inspect the pictures and images, he will at a glance recognise your gods from their shameful forms: Dionysus from his robe; Hephæstus from his art; Demeter from her calamity; Ino from her head-dress;Poseidon from his trident; Zeus from the swan; the pyre indicates Heracles; and if one sees a statue of a naked woman without aninscription, he understands it to be the golden Aphrodite. Thus that Cyprian Pygmalion became enamoured of an image of ivory: the image was Aphrodite, and it was nude. The Cyprian is made a conquest of by the mere shape, and embraces the image. This is related by Philostephanus. A different Aphrodite in Cnidus was of stone, and beautiful. Another person became enamoured of it, and shamefully embraced the stone. Posidippus relates this. The former of these authors, in his book on Cyprus, and the latter in his book on Cnidus. So powerful is art to delude, by seducing amorous men into the pit. Art is powerful, but it cannot deceive reason, nor those who live agreeably to reason. The doves on the picture were represented so to the life by the painter’s art, that the pigeons flew to them; and horses have neighed to well-executed pictures of mares. They say that a girl became enamoured of an image, and a comely youth of the statue at Cnidus. But it was the eyes of the spectators that were deceived by art; for no one in his senses ever would have embraced a goddess, or entombed himself with a lifeless paramour, or become enamoured of a demon and a stone. But it is with a different kind of spell that art deludes you, if it leads you not to the indulgence of amorous affections: it leads you to payreligious honour and worship to images and pictures.