Clement of Alexandria: EXHORTATION TO THE HEATHEN Complete

Translated by Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson.

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Page 27

At any rate, the native countries of your gods, and their arts and lives, and besides especially their sepulchres, demonstrate them to have been men. Mars, accordingly, who by the poets is held in the highest possible honour:--

"Mars, Mars, bane of men, blood-stained stormer of walls," [889] --

this deity, always changing sides, and implacable, as Epicharmus says, was a Spartan; Sophocles knew him for a Thracian; others say he was an Arcadian. This god, Homer says, was bound thirteen months:--

"Mars had his suffering; by Aloeeus' sons,

Otus and Ephialtes, strongly bound,

He thirteen months in brazen fetters lay." [890]

Good luck attend the Carians, who sacrifice dogs to him! And may the Scythians never leave off sacrificing asses, as Apollodorus and Callimachus relate:--

"Phoebus rises propitious to the Hyperboreans,

Then they offer sacrifices of asses to him."

And the same in another place:--

"Fat sacrifices of asses' flesh delight Phoebus."

[889] Iliad, v. 31.

[890] Iliad, v. 385.

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