Athenagoras, Plea for the Christians 17

A defense requires precise reasoning about the names of the gods, since they are recent, and about their images, since they appeared only yesterday and the day before, so to speak. You know these facts are especially worthy of attention, because they harmonize with all ancient testimony and surpass it. I assert that Orpheus, Homer, and Hesiod are the very ones who supplied both the genealogies and the names to the gods spoken of under them. Herodotus bears witness: he judges Hesiod and Homer to be about four hundred years older than himself, and not much more; these are the poets who composed the Greek theogony, assigned the gods their epithets, distributed their honors and arts, and described their forms. As for images, they were not even thought to exist until the arts of modeling, drawing, and statue-making arose — until the time of Saurius of Samos, Craton of Sicyon, Cleanthus of Corinth, and a Corinthian maiden. Saurius invented skiagraphy by tracing a horse in sunlight; Craton invented graphic art by sketching the shadows of a man and a woman on a whitened panel; and the maiden invented coroplasty when, driven by erotic longing, she traced her lover’s shadow on a wall while he slept. Her father, a potter, delighted in the exact likeness, carved out the outline, and filled it with clay; the model is still preserved in Corinth. After them, Daedalus and Theodorus of Miletus advanced statue-making and modeling. The timespan for images and the whole business of idols is so short that one can say each craftsman is the god he fashions. The Artemis at Ephesus, the Athena — or rather Athela, since the mystics call her Athela, the ancient name derived from the olive — and the seated statue by Endoios, a pupil of Daedalus; the Pythian Apollo, a work of Theodorus and Telecleus; the Delian Apollo and Artemis, the work of Tectaeus and Angelion; the Hera in Samos and the Smilis in Argos, made by human hands; the remaining idols, the work of Phidias; the Aphrodite at Cnidus, the work of Praxiteles; the Asclepius at Epidaurus, a work of Phidias. In short, not one of them has escaped being made by a human. 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.