element in the world. As for his own explanation of the myths,
Eusebius holds that they descend from a period when men in their
lawless barbarism knew no better than to tell such tales. "Ancient
folk, in the exceeding savagery of their lives, made no account of
God, the universal Creator [here Eusebius is probably wrong] . . .
but betook them to all manner of abominations. For the laws of
decent existence were not yet established, nor was any settled and
peaceful state ordained among men, but only a loose and savage
fashion of wandering life, while, as beasts irrational, they cared
for no more than to fill their bellies, being in a manner without
God in the world." Growing a little more civilised, men, according
to Eusebius, sought after something divine, which they found in the
heavenly bodies. Later, they fell to worshipping living persons,
especially "medicine men" and conjurors, and continued to worship
them even after their decease, so that Greek temples are really
tombs of the dead.[1] Finally, the civilised ancients, with a
conservative reluctance to abandon their old myths (Greek text
omitted), invented for them moral or physical explanations, like
those of Plutarch and others, earlier and later.[2]


[1] Praep. E., ii. 5.

[2] Ibid., 6,19.


As Eusebius, like Clemens of Alexandria, Arnobius, and the other
early Christian disputants, had no prejudice in favour of Hellenic
mythology, and no sentimental reason for wishing to suppose that
the origin of its impurities was pure, he found his way almost to