Classics 35
Justice and the Gods

1. Upon the prospering earth there are thirty thousand immortal
spirits, who keep watch for Zeus on all that men do.
They have an eye on decrees given and on harsh dealings,
and invisible in their dark mist they hover on the whole earth.
Justice herself is a young maiden. She is Zeus’s daughter,
and seemly, and respected by all the gods of Olympos.
When any man uses force on her by false impeachment
she goes and sits at the feet of Zeus Kronion, her father,
and cries out on the wicked purpose of men, so that their people
must pay for the profligacy of their rulers, who for their own greedy purposes
twist the courses of justice aslant by false proclamations.

(Hesiod, Works and Days 252-262)

2. [Chryses:] "Hear me, god of the silver bow, who stand over Chryse and holy Cilla, and rule mightily over Tenedos, Sminthian god, if ever I roofed over a temple to your pleasing, or if ever I burned to you fat thigh-pieces of bulls and goats, fulfill this prayer for me: let the Danaans pay for my tears by your arrows"

(Homer, Iliad 1.37-42)

3. And even as beneath a tempest the whole black earth is oppressed, on a day in harvest-time, when Zeus poureth forth rain most violently, whenso in anger he waxeth wroth against men that by violence give crooked judgments in the place of gathering, and drive justice out, recking not of the vengeance of the gods; and all their rivers flow in flood, and many a hillside do the torrents furrow deeply, and down to the dark sea they rush headlong from the mountains with a mighty roar, and the tilled fields of men are wasted; even so mighty was the roar of the mares of Troy as they sped on.

(Homer, Iliad 16.384-393)

4. A man cannot perjure himself without the gods’ knowing of it, nor can he escape punishment at their hands; and if not he himself, then the children and all the descendants of the perjurer fall into great misfortune.

(Lykourgos, Prosecution of Leokrates 79)

5. "For let me tell you, Socrates," [Cephalus] said, "that when a man begins to realize that he is going to die, he is filled with apprehensions and concern about matters that before did not occur to him. The tales that are told of the world below and how the men who have done wrong here must pay the penalty there, though he may have laughed them down hitherto, then begin to torture his soul with the doubt that there may be some truth in them."

(Plato, Republic 330d-e)

6. Euthyphro: . . .What is pleasing to the gods is holy, and what is not pleasing to them is unholy. . . .

Sokrates: Was it not also stated, Euthyphro, that the gods quarrel and fight with each other, and that hatreds come between them? . . .

Sokrates: . . .Now think of this. Is what is holy holy because the gods approve it, or do they approve it because it is holy?

(Plato, Euthyphro 6e-10a)

7. Homer and Hesiod have attributed to the gods everything that is a shame and a reproach among men: stealing and committing adultery and deceiving each other.

But if cattle and horses or lions had hands, or were able to draw with their hands and do the works that 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.

One god, greatest among gods and men, in no way similar to mortals either in body or in thought.

(Xenophanes, fragments 11, 15, 23)

8. [Callicles:] But nature, in my opinion, herself proclaims the fact that it is right for the better to have advantage of the worse, and the abler of the feebler. It is obvious in many cases that this is so, not only in the animal world, but in the states and races, collectively, of men--that right has been decided to consist in the sway and advantage of the stronger over the weaker. For by what manner of right did Xerxes march against Greece, or his father against Scythia?

(Plato, Gorgias 483c-e)

9. [The Athenians to the Melians:] Well, the favor of the gods should be as much on our side as yours. Neither our principles nor our actions are contrary to what men believe about the gods, or would want for themselves. Nature always compels gods (we believe) and men (we are certain) to rule over anyone they can control. We did not make this law, and we were not the first to follow it, but we will take it as we found it and leave it to posterity forever, because we know that you would do the same if you had our power, and so would anyone else. . . .

(Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War 5.103.1)

10. Respecting the gods, I am unable to know whether they exist or do not exist.

Man is the measure of all things: of those that are, that they are; of those that are not, that they are not.

(Protagoras, fragments)

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