The Philosophical Critique of Myth

Xenophanes (c. 570 - c. 475 BCE)

born in Colophon in Ionia; left Colophon perhaps after its capture by the Medes in 546; went to Zancle in Sicily. His floruit is recorded as the 60th Olympiad (540-537), around the time of the foundation of Elea. The Eleatic philosophers, Parmenides and Zeno, were thought to have been influenced by him. Xenophanes wrote in various elegiac meters and in dactylic hexameter.

It is proper for men who are enjoying themselves first of all to praise God with decent stories and pure words.... But the man whom one must praise is he who after drinking expresses thoughts that are noble, as well as his memory concerning virtue allows, not treating of the battle of the Titans or of the Giants, figments of our predecessors, nor of violent civil war, in which tales there is nothing useful; but always to have respect for the gods, that is good.

Both Homer and Hesiod have attributed to the gods all things that are shameful and a reproach among mankind: theft, adultery, and mutual deception.

The Ethiopians say that their gods are snub-nosed and black; the Thracians that theirs have light blue eyes and red hair.

But if cattle and horses or lions had hands , or were able to draw with their hands and do the works men can do, horses would draw the forms of the gods like horses, and cattle like cattle, and they would make their bodies such as they each had themselves.

Heraclitus (floruit 69th Olympiad - 504-501 BCE)

from Ephesus in Ionia, probably from an old aristocratic family

Homer deserves to be flung out of the contests and given a beating; and also Archilochus.

Much learning does not teach one to have intelligence; for it would have taught Hesiod and Pythagoras, and again, Xenophanes and Hecateus.

Plato (427/8 - 347/8) - Athenian of aristocratic family, pupil of Socrates, founder of the Academy

The Attack on Poetry - The Republic

With all these things being said - of this sort and in this quantity - about virtue and vice and how human beings and gods honor them, what do we suppose they do to the souls of the young men who hear them? I mean those who have good natures and have the capacity, as it were, to fly to all the things that are said and gather from them what sort of man one should be and what way one must follow to go through life best. (365a)

There is first of all, I said, the greatest lie about the things of the greatest concern, which was no pretty invention of him who told how Uranus did what Hesiod says he did to Cronus, and how Cronus in turn took his revenge, and then there are the doings and sufferings of Cronus at the hands of his son. Even if they were true I should not think they ought to be thus lightly told to thoughtless young persons. But the best way would be to bury them in silence, and if there were some necessity for relating them, only a very small audience should be admitted under pledge of secrecy and after sacrificing, not a pig [as in the Eleusinian Mysteries], but some huge and unprocurable victim, to the end that as few as possible should have hear these tales. (378a)

But Hera's fettering by her son and the hurling out of heaven of Hephaestus by his father when he was trying to save his mother from a beating, and the battles of the gods in Homer's verse are things that we must not admit into our city either wrought in allegory or without allegory. For the young are not able to distinguish what is and what is not allegory, but whatever opinions are taken into the mind at that age are wont to prove indelible and unalterable. For which reason, maybe, we should do our utmost that the first stories that they hear should be so composed as to bring the fairest lessons of virtue to their ears. (378d)

"Now then," I said, "this would be one of the laws and models concerning the gods, according to which those who produce speeches will have to do their speaking and those who produce poems will have to do their making: the god is not the cause of all things, but of the good."

"And it's very satisfactory," he said.

"Now what about this second one? Do you suppose the god is a wizard, able treacherously to reveal himself at different times in different ideas, at one time actually himself changing and passing from his own form into many shapes, at another time deceiving us and making us think such things about him? Or is he simple and does he least of all things depart from his own idea? (380cd)

Listen and reflect. I think you know that the very best of us, when we hear Homer or some other of the makers of tragedy imitating one of the heroes who is in grief , and is delivering a long tirade in his lamentations or chanting and beating his breast, feel pleasure, and abandon ourselves and accompany the representation with sympathy and eagerness, and we praise as an excellent poet the one who most strongly affects us in this way.... (605d)

Then, Glaucon, said I, when you meet encomiasts of Homer who tell us that this poet has been the educator of Hellas, and that for the conduct and refinement of human life he is worthy of our study and devotion, and that we should order our entire lives by the guidance of this poet, we must love and salute them as doing the best they can, and concede to them that Homer is the most poetic of poets and the first of tragedians, but we must know the truth, that we can admit no poetry into our city save only hymns to the gods and the praises of good men. For if you grant admission to the honeyed Muses in lyric or epic, pleasure and pain will be lords of your city instead of law... (606e-607a)

Critias (c. 480 - 403 BCE) uncle of Plato, one of the Thirty Tyrants of Athens in 404-403

from the satyr play, Sisyphus (sometimes attributed to Euripides)

There was a time when the life of men was unordered, bestial and the slave of force, when there was no reward for the virtuous and no punishment for the wicked. Then, I think, men devised retributory laws, in order that Justice might be dictator and have arrogance as its slave, and if anyone sinned, he was punished. Then, when the laws forbade them to commit open crimes of violence, and they began to do them in secret, a wise and clever man invented fear (of the gods) for mortals, that there might be some means of frightening the wicked, even if they do anything or say or think it in secret. Hence he introduced the Divine (religion), saying that there is a God flourishing with immortal life, hearing and seeing with his mind, and thinking of everything and caring about these things, and having divine nature, who will hear everything said among mortals, and will be able to see all that is done. And even if you plan anything evil in secret, you will not escape the gods in this; for they have surpassing intelligence. (Critias fr. 25 DK)

Theagenes (floruit 529-522 in Rhegium) - the first known to apply the allegorical method to Homer