Tfhio - JScholarship - Johns Hopkins University

APOLOGETICVS 39 115
of friends, but also most patiently supply their own to their
friends, in accordance, I believe, with the well-known teaching
of ancient sages and philosophers, the Greek Socrates and the
Roman Cato, who shared their wives with friends, those wives
whom they had married, perhaps with their consent, to bear
children in other households also. For what care could they
have for chastity, which their husbands had given away so
lightly! What an example of Athenian philosophy, of Roman
seriousness! A philosopher and a censor both acting the part
of procurers! What wonder is it then that so great affection is
outraged! For you also re-vile our little dinners as extravagant
also in addition -to being disgraced by crime. It was about us of
course that Diogenes uttered his saying: 'The Megarians buy
food as if they were to die to-morrow, but they build as if they
were never to die!' But one sees a mote more easily in another's
eye than a beam in one's own. The air becomes sour with so
many, tribes, parishes and guilds belching. The Salii will need
a money-lender when they are to dine: the pubhc accountants
wiU sum up the expenditure of the tithes and offerings to
Hercules; at the Apaturia, the Dionysia, and the Attic mysteries
a levy of cooks is proclaimed, at the smoke of a Sarapis banquet
the fixemen will be aroused. It is only the dining-room of the
Christians that is objected to. Our dinner shows its significance
by its name: it is called by the name which amongst the Greeks
means affection. Whatsoever be its cost, it is a gain to incur
expense in the name of rehgion, since by this refreshment we
help those who are in need, not in the way that among you
parasites eagerly strive for the glory of enslaving their freedom at
the price of a belly that has to be filled amid insults; but in the
way that with God greater regard is paid to them of low degree.
If the purpose of our entertainment is honourable, form your
estimate of the remainder of our rule from its motive. As it is
concerned with our religious duty, it allows nothing base,
nothing disorderly. We do not recline until we have first
partaken of prayer to God; only so much is eaten as to satisfy
hunger; only as much is drunk as becomes the chaste. Appetite
is satisfied so far as is consistent -with the remembrance that
they have to worship God even in the night; they talk as those
who know that the Master is listening. After the bringing in of
water for washing the hands, and lights, each is invited to sing
publicly to God as he is able from his knowledge of holy scripture
or from his own mind; thus it can be tested how he has drunk.
In like manner prayer closes the feast. The meeting then
breaks up, not into riotous bands for assaulting the innocent,
nor into disturbances in the streets, nor for outbursts of
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