Clement of Alexandria — Stromata 4

Now, as the Greeks represent the gods as possessing human forms, so also do they as possessing human passions . And as each of them depict their forms similar to themselves, as Xenophanes says, Ethiopians as black and apes, the Thracians ruddy and tawny; so also they assimilate their souls to those who form them: the Barbarians, for instance, who make them savage and wild; and the Greeks, who make them more civilized, yet subject to passion. Wherefore it stands to reason, that the ideas entertained of God by wicked men must be bad, and those by good men most excellent. And therefore he who is in soul truly kingly and gnostic, being likewise pious and free from superstition , is persuaded that He who alone is God is honourable , venerable, august, beneficent, the doer of good, the author of all good things, but not the cause of evil .

And respecting the Hellenic superstition we have, as I think, shown enough in the book entitled by us The Exhortation , availing ourselves abundantly of the history bearing on the point. There is no need, then, again to make a long story of what has already been clearly stated. But in as far as necessity requires to be pointed out on coming to the topic, suffice it to adduce a few out of many considerations in proof of the impiety of those who make the Divinity resemble the worst men. For either those Gods of theirs are injured by men , and are shown to be inferior to men on being injured by us; or, if not so, how is it that they are incensed at those by whom they are not injured, like a testy old wife roused to wrath ? As they say that Artemis was enraged at the Ætolians on account of Œneus.

For how, being a goddess, did she not consider that he had neglected to sacrifice , not through contempt, but out of inadvertence, or under the idea that he had sacrificed ? And Latona, arguing her case with Athene, on account of the latter being incensed at her for having brought forth in the temple, says:— Man-slaying spoils Torn from the dead you love to see. And these To you are not unclean. But you regard My parturition here a horrid thing, Though other creatures in the temple do No harm by bringing forth their young. It is natural, then, that having a superstitious dread of those irascible [gods], they imagine that all events are signs and causes of evils .

If a mouse bore through an altar built of clay, and for want of something else gnaw through an oil flask; if a cock that is being fattened crow in the evening, they determine this to be a sign of something. Of such a one Menander gives a comic description in The Superstitious Man: — A. Good luck be mine, you honoured gods! Tying my, right shoe's string, I broke it. B. Most likely, silly fool, For it was rotten, and you, niggard, you Would not buy new ones. It was a clever remark of Antiphon, who (when one regarded it as an ill omen that the sow had eaten her pigs), on seeing her emaciated through the niggardliness of the person that kept her, said, Congratulate yourself on the omen that, being so hungry, she did not eat your own children. And what wonder is it, says Bion, if the mouse, finding nothing to eat, gnaws the bag?