Tatian, Address to the Greeks 21

We do not speak foolishly, men of Greece, nor do we proclaim empty words when we announce that God has come in human form. You who revile us, compare your myths to our accounts. They say Deiphobus was loved by Athena because of Hector; Phoebus, unshorn, herded the curl-horned oxen for Admetus' sake; an old woman came to Semele, Zeus's bride. Pondering such stories, how can you laugh at us? Your Asclepius died; the man who corrupted the fifty Thespian virgins in a single night gave himself to the fire and departed. Prometheus, bound to the Caucasus, suffered punishment for benefiting humanity. Zeus envies you and withholds dreams from humans, wishing them to perish. Therefore, examine your own traditions; even if you deem us to be mythologizing in the same way, accept our message. We are not foolish; we despise your fabrications. You recount the birth of the gods and thereby declare them mortal. Why does Hera not conceive now? Has she grown old, or is she at a loss because the one who announced it to you is absent? Be persuaded, men of Greece: do not allegorize your myths or your gods. Even if you attempt it, the divinity according to you is destroyed by your own hands; for the beings called demons among you are base in character, or, having come later, they are not what they are said to be according to nature. I would not be persuaded to worship the substance of the elements, nor would I persuade my neighbor. Metrodorus of Lampsacus, in his work on Homer, has spoken with excessive piety, turning everything into allegory. He claims that neither Hera nor Athena nor Zeus is what those who built temples and precincts for them believe; rather, they are substances of nature and adornments of the elements. He would say that Hector, Achilles, Agamemnon, all Greeks and barbarians, along with Helen and Paris, being of the same nature, were introduced for the sake of economy, none of those people having actually existed. We have proposed these things as a hypothesis; for it is not holy to compare our conception of God to those who are rolled in matter and mud.