Origen, AGAINST CELSUS, Part IV, Complete

Translated from the Greek original by Frederick Crombie.

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Page 126

The mysteries relating to the Titans and Giants also had some such (symbolical) meaning, as well as the Egyptian mysteries of Typhon, and Horus, and Osiris." After having made such statements, and not having got over the difficulty [4485] as to the way in which these accounts contain a higher view of things, while our accounts are erroneous copies of them, he continues his abuse of us, remarking that "these are not like the stories which are related of a devil, or demon, or, as he remarks with more truth, of a man who is an impostor, who wishes to establish an opposite doctrine." And in the same way he understands Homer, as if he referred obscurely to matters similar to those mentioned by Heraclitus, and Pherecydes, and the originators of the mysteries about the Titans and Giants, in those words which Hephaestus addresses to Hera as follows:--

"Once in your cause I felt his matchless might,

Hurled headlong downward from the ethereal height." [4486]

And in those of Zeus to Hera:--

"Hast thou forgot, when, bound and fix'd on high,

From the vast concave of the spangled sky,

I hung thee trembling in a golden chain,

And all the raging gods opposed in vain?

Headlong I hurled them from the Olympian hall,

Stunn'd in the whirl, and breathless with the fall." [4487]

[4485] kai me paramuthesamenos.

[4486] Cf. Homer, Iliad, i. 590.

[4487] Cf. Homer, Iliad, xv. 18-24.

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