Athenagoras, Plea for the Christians 17

A defender must offer a more precise account not only of the names — because they are recent — but also of the images, since they came into being, so to speak, only yesterday and the day before. You yourselves recognize these facts as even more weighty, since they harmonize with all the ancients and surpass them. I assert, then, that Orpheus, Homer, and Hesiod are the very ones who gave both the genealogies and the names to the gods spoken of under them. Herodotus bears witness: he reckons Hesiod and Homer to be four hundred years older than himself, and not much more; these are the poets who composed the theogony for the Greeks, who assigned the gods their epithets, distributed their honors and functions, and described their forms. As for images, they were not even conceived until the arts of modeling, drawing, and statue-making appeared — until Saurius of Samos, Craton of Sicyon, Cleanthus of Corinth, and a Corinthian maiden arrived on the scene. Saurius discovered shadow-drawing by tracing a horse in the sunlight; Craton invented graphic art by smearing the silhouettes of a man and a woman onto a whitened panel; the maiden originated coroplasty when, seized with erotic longing for a youth, she outlined his shadow on a wall as he slept, and her father, a potter, delighted by the exact likeness, carved the outline and filled it with clay — a model still preserved in Corinth today. Building on these, Daedalus and Theodorus of Miletus further developed statue-making and modeling. The time allotted to images and the whole idol-making enterprise is so brief that one can practically name the craftsman of each god. The Artemis of Ephesus and the Athena (or rather Athela, the more mystical name, derived from the ancient olive) — the seated statue was Endoios' work, a pupil of Daedalus; the Pythian Apollo is the work of Theodorus and Telecleus; the Delian Apollo and Artemis are the art of Tectaeus and Angelion; the Hera in Samos and the statue in Argos are the hands of Smilis; the remaining images are Phidias' work; the Aphrodite of Cnidus is the work of Praxiteles; the Asclepius at Epidaurus is the work of Phidias. In short, not one of them has escaped being made by human hands. If they are gods, why did they not exist from the beginning? Why are they younger than their makers? Why did they need human beings and art to come into being? They are earth, stone, wood, and elaborate craftsmanship — nothing more.