Page 137

A PHILOSOPHIC MISSIONARY - DION CHRYSOSTOM

and often hold out their hands to their absent parents in sleep ; and so do men to the gods. They rightly love these beneficent kinsmen, and are eager for any kind of close association with them. So many savage people, whose artistic resources are poor, give the name of God to mountains, inert trees, and shapeless stones.
'You, Homer, wisest of poets and far the first in power as in time, will say that you were the first to reveal to Greece many beautiful likenesses of the gods in general and of the greatest among them-some gentle, others terrible and awful. But my Zeus is peaceful and completely calm, as though he presided over a Greece at unity and undivided. I set him there after counsel with my art and with the wise and good city of Elis, a gentle, majestic, and untroubled figure, the giver of life and livelihood and of all good things, the father, saviour, and guardian of the world. I did what human thought can do, to copy the inconceivable nature of God. Consider whether you do not find my likeness of him congruous with all the titles which the God bears. He is called King for his sovereignty and power ; Father for his gentleness and care ; God of the City for his relation to law and the commonweal ; God of the Race for the kinship between God and man ; God of Friendship and Companionship, because he brings all mankind together and wills them to be friends, without private or public enmity ; God of Strangers, because we must not neglect the stranger or look on any man as a foreigner ; God of Property and the Crops, because he is the cause of the crops and the giver of our wealth and property. As far as one can portray these things without words, has not my art achieved its end ? The strength and magnificence of my Zeus are designed to reveal the Ruler and King ; his majestic and severe air show the deity of the City and its Laws. Of the kinship of God and man his human form is a kind of symbol. His benevolence, his look of goodness and gentleness typify his attributes as God of Friends, Suppliants and Strangers, as Defender and the like. His simplicity

Page 138

A PHILOSOPHIC MISSIONARY - DION CHRYSOSTOM

and magnanimity represent the God of Property and the Crops : for he looks like one who gives and lavishly bestows good things. I represented all these qualities as best I could, since I was unable to express them in words. But my art could not show him letting loose lightning after lightning, wars or destruction of hosts or floods or violent hail or snow, or sending to Greeks or foreign peoples dread strife, which inspires an undying passion for battle and war in weary and fainting men. And if I had been able, I should never have wished to do it.'
If Phidias made such a speech I think that the Greeks might reasonably crown him.