Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol III:
Tertullian: Part I: Gods, Those Which Were Confessedly Elevated to the Divine Condition, What Pre-Eminent Right Had They to Such Honour? Hercules an Inferior Character.

Chapter XIV.—Gods, Those Which Were Confessedly Elevated to the Divine Condition, What Pre-Eminent Right Had They to Such Honour? Hercules an Inferior Character.

But since they will have it that those who have been admitted from the human state to the honours of deification should be kept separate from others, and that the distinction which Dionysius the Stoic drew should be made between the native and the factitious 1041 gods, I will add a few words concerning this last class also. I will take Hercules himself for raising the gist of a reply 1042 (to the question) whether he deserved heaven and divine honours? For, as men choose to have it, these honours are awarded to him for his merits. If it was for his valour in destroying wild beasts with intrepidity, what was there in that so very memorable? Do not criminals condemned to the games, though they are even consigned to the contest of the vile arena, despatch several of these animals at one time, and that with more earnest zeal? If it was for his world-wide travels, how often has the same thing been accomplished by the rich at their pleasant leisure, or by philosophers in their slave-like poverty? 1043 Is it forgotten that the cynic Asclepiades on a single sorry cow, 1044 riding on her back, and sometimes nourished at her udder, surveyed 1045 the whole world with a personal inspection?  Even if Hercules visited the infernal regions, who does not know that the way to Hades is open to all? If you have deified him on account of his much carnage and many battles, a much greater number of victories was gained by the p. 144 illustrious Pompey, the conqueror of the pirates who had not spared Ostia itself in their ravages; and (as to carnage), how many thousands, let me ask, were cooped up in one corner of the citadel 1046 of Carthage, and slain by Scipio?  Wherefore Scipio has a better claim to be considered a fit candidate for deification 1047 than Hercules. You must be still more careful to add to the claims of (our) Hercules his debaucheries with concubines and wives, and the swathes 1048 of Omphale, and his base desertion of the Argonauts because he had lost his beautiful boy. 1049 To this mark of baseness add for his glorification likewise his attacks of madness, adore the arrows which slew his sons and wife. This was the man who, after deeming himself worthy of a funeral pile in the anguish of his remorse for his parricides, 1050 deserved rather to die the unhonoured death which awaited him, arrayed in the poisoned robe which his wife sent him on account of his lascivious attachment (to another). You, however, raised him from the pyre to the sky, with the same facility with which (you have distinguished in like manner) another hero 1051 also, who was destroyed by the violence of a fire from the gods. He having devised some few experiments, was said to have restored the dead to life by his cures. He was the son of Apollo, half human, although the grandson of Jupiter, and great-grandson of Saturn (or rather of spurious origin, because his parentage was uncertain, as Socrates of Argon has related; he was exposed also, and found in a worse tutelage than even Jove’s, suckled even at the dugs of a dog); nobody can deny that he deserved the end which befell him when he perished by a stroke of lightning. In this transaction, however, your most excellent Jupiter is once more found in the wrong—impious to his grandson, envious of his artistic skill. Pindar, indeed, has not concealed his true desert; according to him, he was punished for his avarice and love of gain, influenced by which he would bring the living to their death, rather than the dead to life, by the perverted use of his medical art which he put up for sale. 1052 It is said that his mother was killed by the same stroke, and it was only right that she, who had bestowed so dangerous a beast on the world, 1053 should escape to heaven by the same ladder.  And yet the Athenians will not be at a loss how to sacrifice to gods of such a fashion, for they pay divine honours to Æsculapius and his mother amongst their dead (worthies). As if, too, they had not ready to hand 1054 their own Theseus to worship, so highly deserving a god’s distinction! Well, why not? Did he not on a foreign shore abandon the preserver of his life, 1055 with the same indifference, nay heartlessness, 1056 with which he became the cause of his father’s death?

Footnotes

Inter nativos et factos. See above, c. ii., p. 131.

Summa responsionis.

Famulatoria mendicitas.

Vaccula.

Subegisse oculis, “reduced to his own eyesight.”

Byrsæ.

Magis obtinendus divinitati deputatur.

Fascias.

Hylas.

Rather murders of children and other kindred.

Æsculapius.

Tertullian does not correctly quote Pindar (Pyth. iii. 54–59), who notices the skilful hero’s love of reward, but certainly ascribes to him the merit of curing rather than killing:  Αλλὰ κέρδει καὶ σοφία δέδεται ἔτραπεν καὶ κᾀκεῖνον ἁγάνορι μισθῷ χρυσὸς ἐν χερσὶν φανεὶς ἂνδῤ ἐκ θανάτου κομίσαι ἢδη ἀλωκότα· χερσὶ δ᾽ ἄρα Κρονίων ῥίψαις δἰ ἄμφοῖν ἀμπνοὰν στέρνων καθέλεν ὠκέως, αἴθων δὲ κεραυνὸς ἐνέσκιμψεν μόρον—“Even wisdom has been bound by love of gain, and gold shining in the hand by a magnificent reward induced even him to restore from death a man already seized by it; and then the son of Saturn, hurling with his hands a bolt through both, speedily took away the breath of their breasts, and the flashing bolt inflicted death” (Dawson Turner).

Tertullian does not follow the legend which is usually received.  He wishes to see no good in the object of his hatred, and so takes the worst view, and certainly improves upon it. The “bestia” is out of reason. [He doubtless followed some copy now lost.]

Quasi non et ipsi.

Ariadne.

Amentia.