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Salutius

3. On the Gods and the World

Edited by Paolo Bagnato

V. On the First Cause or the One

1. After this, one must know not only the First Cause but also the orders of the Gods that derive from It, the nature of the World, the essence of the intellect and the soul, Providence, Fate and Fortune, Virtues and Vices, the good and the bad forms of government that derive from them and, lastly, from where evils come into the World. Each of these topics would require many and extensive discussions, but nothing prevents us from talking about them briefly lest to remain entirely in ignorance.

2. The First Cause must necessarily be one: for every multiplicity is preceded by unity1, and It surpasses all things in power and goodness: everything necessarily participates in It2, nothing can oppose It because of Its power, and, because of Its goodness, It will never separate from Itself.

3. If the First Cause were a soul, everything would be ensouled; if It were intellect, everything would be intelligent; if It were being, everything would participate in being, so that seeing the being in all things, some people identified the First Cause with this very thing. If things were characterized only by being, and they weren’t also good, the argument would be true; but if things exist because of their goodness and participate in the Good, then the First Principle must necessarily be super-substantial3 and good4. There’s clear evidence of this: virtuous souls, in fact, for the sake of good do not take their existence into account when they put themselves in danger for the homeland, for friends or for virtue.

After this ineffable Power come the orders of the Gods.

VI. The Gods

1. Among the Gods some are encosmici5, others hypercosmic6. By encosmic I mean the Gods who cause the World; among the hypercosmics some cause the essences of the Gods, others the intellect, others the soul; for this reason, they have three orders that can be found in discourses about these topics.

2. Among the encosmics, some cause the being of the World, others animate it, others bring harmony between diversities, others finally preserve this harmony: since these are four actions and each has a beginning, a middle point and an end, the Gods who govern them are necessarily twelve7.

3. Those who cause the World are Zeus8, Poseidon9 and Hephaestus10; Those who animate it are Demeter11, Hera12 and Artemis13; Those who harmonize it are Apollo14, Aphrodite15 and Hermes16; Those who preserve it are Hestia17, Athena18 and Ares19.

4. One can see these references even in the statues20: Apollo tunes the lyre, Athena is armed, Aphrodite is naked, since harmony creates beauty and beauty in what is seen is not hidden. Since these are the divinities that primarily rule the World, we must believe that the other Gods are within Them21: just like Dionysus is in Zeus22, Asclepius23 in Apollo, the Charites24 in Aphrodite.

5. We can also notice their spheres of competence: to Hestia belongs the earth, to Poseidon water, to Hera air, to Hephaestus fire, while the six superior spheres to the Gods to whom they are usually attributed; in fact, we consider Apollo and Artemis as the sun and the moon; the sphere of Cronus25 is believed to belong to Demeter, the aether to Athena; while the heaven is common to all26.

We have therefore listed and celebrated the orders, the powers and the spheres of the twelve Gods.

VII. The World27

1. The World itself must necessarily be eternal and without birth28: eternal because if it perished it would be necessary to make another one better, worse or the same otherwise there would be chaos29. But if worse, the one who makes it worse must be bad; if better, the one who did not make it this way from the beginning must be an incompetent; if the same, the action is useless30; it is not even legitimate to consider the chaos hypothesis31.

2. To show that the World is without birth it is enough to state this: if it does not perish, it is not even born, because everything that is born also dies, furthermore since the existence of the World is due to the goodness of the God, it is necessary that the God is always good and that the World always exists. Just as light coexists with the sun and fire, and just as shadow coexists with the body.

3. Among the bodies in the World, some imitate the intellect and move in a circle32, others imitate the soul and move in a straight line. Of the latter, fire and air move upwards, while earth and water move downwards; among those that move in a circle, the sphere of the fixed stars moves from east to west, while the seven planets move from west to east33. The reasons for this are many and various, including preventing an incomplete generation due to the fast-circular movement of the spheres.

4. Since their motion is different, the nature of the bodies also necessarily differs: the celestial body cannot burn or cool, or do anything else that pertains to the four elements.

5. Since the World is a sphere – as demonstrated by the zodiac – and the lowest point of each sphere is the centre – because it is the furthest point from any part of the surface -, heavy bodies that fall downwards, fall towards the earth.

The Gods made all these things, the intellect ordered them, the soul moves them. We have already spoken about the Gods.

  1. See also Proclus’ Elements of Theology and in particular theorems 1, 5, 11 and 21.[↩]
  2. “The divine is not separate from anything, but it is present equally in all things, even in the lowest levels of reality. The One is in fact present everywhere since all beings derive their existence from the Gods, and even if they proceed forth deriving from the Gods, in reality they did not separate from Them but they are established in Them. Since the Gods embraced all things and continue to hold them in Themselves, how could things separate or move away from the Gods? Indeed, that which is beyond the Gods does not exist in any way, because all beings have been included in an embrace by the Gods and exist in Them. Thus, all things emanated proceeding from the Gods and at the same time did not go out from Them, because if they separated from Them, they could not even exist. Therefore, all things remain established in the Gods.” Proclus, Commentary on Timaeus, Book 2, 209. Proclus talks about emanation as a triadic process, a circular rhythm made by three instantaneous moments: μονή that is the permanence of the principle in itself or the effect remaining in the cause; πρόοδος or procession, that is, the effect that proceeds from the cause, in which it was already contained; ἐπιστροϕή or conversion, that is, the return of the effect to the cause. This “apparent procession”, as one may say, where the effects proceed from the causes while remaining in them, was developed by the Platonist Scotus Eriugena (9th century AD) in a Christian and therefore creationist context, expressing concepts surprisingly similar to the ajātivāda doctrine of Vedānta.[↩]
  3. That is, superior to Being.[↩]
  4. The superiority and anteriority of the Good over Being is common to all Platonists and derives mainly from Plato’s Republic (Book VI, 509 B) where he explains how the being of things comes from the Good, therefore the Good is beyond and above Being. Proclus, Elements of Theology 12: “The Good is the Principle and the First Cause of everything that exists”.[↩]
  5. Worldly or intermundane.[↩]
  6. Beyond the world or supramundane.[↩]
  7. They are the Olympian Gods of the Greek religion, corresponding to the Dii Consentes of the Roman religion. For further information see the Proclus’ Platonic Theology.[↩]
  8. He is the Father and King of all Gods, the God of Sky and lightning. His name is close to that of the Vedic Dyauṣ but in some respects he is very similar to Indra. This and the following brief descriptions of the Gods clearly do not do justice to their breadth, but we still consider them useful especially for our non-Western readers who can thus more easily familiarize themselves with these names who would otherwise risk to remain meaningless.[↩]
  9. God of the sea.[↩]
  10. God of fire.[↩]
  11. Goddess of the earth and agriculture, strongly connected to the Eleusinian Mysteries. See also From Cosmos to Chaos – 11. The Greek Civilization: the bright side (III)[↩]
  12. Goddess of the air, she’s the wife of Zeus.[↩]
  13. Often represented with a bow, she is the Goddess of hunting, of wild places and the animals that live there.[↩]
  14. God of music and the sun, his name can be translated as “not-many” and was in fact interpreted by the Pythagoreans and the Platonists as the negation of multiplicity.[↩]
  15. Goddess of beauty and prosperity, similar to Lakṣmī.[↩]
  16. Messenger of the Gods.[↩]
  17. Goddess of domestic fireplace.[↩]
  18. Warrior and wisdom Goddess.[↩]
  19. Ruthless God of war.[↩]
  20. See Porphyry, On Statues (Περί αγαλμάτων), a text of which remain only few fragments, but extremely useful to understand the function and meaning of the statues in the Greek religion.[↩]
  21. Both in the sense that the other Gods are included in These and that They depend on Them.[↩]
  22. The presence of Dionysus in Zeus also refers to the myth in which Zeus welcomed him and sewed him into his thigh after manifesting himself in divine form to Semele, who was carrying Dionysus in her womb, killing her with lightning. For this reason, Dionysus was also called Digonos, that is, “twice born” (similar to the Sanskrit dvija). This myth is very similar to the Hindu one in which Indra, whose resemblance to Zeus has already been mentioned, welcomes into his thigh Soma, who can easily be compared to Dionysus because he too is closely linked to a sacred and intoxicating drink, that is the wine. Clearly, any materialist and sociological interpretation of these myths must be rejected.[↩]
  23. God of medicine.[↩]
  24. Goddesses related to beauty, nature and fertility.[↩]
  25. Saturn.[↩]
  26. Assigning specific places and specific spheres of competence to each God does not conflict with the fact that they are not separated from each other and that they are not limited to a specific place, as stated by Salutius in the beginning of this treatise. This is also clarified by Iamblichus in the treatise On the Mysteries (1.30-31) who, in a similar way to the Emperor Marcus Aurelius (Meditations, XII.30), says that the light of the Gods, just like the light of the sun, is one and undivided even if it seems to us multiple and divided.[↩]
  27. I.e. the whole cosmos, the universe.[↩]
  28. The eternity of the universe supported by the Platonists can be accepted considering the interconnection between space and time: the creation or emanation of the world cannot be placed in a temporal line because time cannot exist without space. Therefore, we cannot establish a beginning of the world and what has no beginning does not have an end, just as, on the contrary, everything that is born will die. This was one of the points of major contrast with the Christian creationist doctrine.[↩]
  29. I.e. disorder, that is, non-cosmos, since the word cosmos, which indicates the world and the universe in general, actually means “order”.[↩]
  30. The World could not be remade worse, better or the same because that would mean to reject the basic doctrines regarding the nature of the Gods established at the beginning of the treatise.[↩]
  31. The non-existence of the cosmos is unacceptable for a Platonist because the One, the First Cause, naturally emanates the entire chain of Being illustrated here, without any effort, giving life and existence to everything spontaneously, for the sole fact of being, just like water overflows from an overfilled glass.[↩]
  32. The circle is like a line that returns to itself, just like the intellect does and as it’s illustrated by the myth of Cronus previously discussed.[↩]
  33. According to the Greeks, the circle was a symbol of perfection because it is complete and closed in itself, while the straight line represented an indefinite and therefore imperfect proceeding. For this reason, circular movement concerns celestial bodies, ideally far from the imperfections of the world, and, on the contrary, rectilinear movement concerns bodies in the world, which rise or fall depending on their heaviness.[↩]