The Tale Of Two Famous Ancient Creative Minds’ Indefinite Ponderance Of The Divine

In the ancient Greco–Roman world, a folktale was preserved involving a discussion between a tyrannical ruler and a prominent creative mind over the nature and characteristics of the gods and divinity, in general. Although the tale was present in the collective consciousness of the ancients for centuries, the characters involved in the story, as well as the century and setting in which the story took place, could vary from storyteller to storyteller. In all of the accounts, however, studying the divine turned out to be a more daunting task than the ponderers first considered.

Rome’s masterful orator and statesman, Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 BCE), wrote a brief account of the folk tale. His version set the discussion in the court of the tyrant, Hiero I of Syracuse (r. 478-467/466 BCE). As the story goes, Hiero requested that the poet, Simonides of Ceos (c. 556-468 BCE), look into the nature and identity of the gods and present a report about his findings. Simonides accepted the task and asked for a day to think it over. When this day elapsed, the poet pleaded for two more days to contemplate the matter. Further postponements subsequently ensued, and Simonides finally admitted to Hiero that the more time her spent pondering the divine, the more increasingly clear it became to him that he would not be able to adequately understand or explain the divine. On this tale, Cicero wrote, “Should you ask me to identify God or his nature, I shall cite Simonides as my authority: when the tyrant Hiero posed the same question to him, he asked for a day’s grace to consider it privately, and when Hiero put the same question to him the next day, he begged two days’ grace. After doubling the number of days repeatedly, and being asked by Hiero why he did this, he answered: ‘The longer I ponder the question, the darker I think is the prospect of a solution’” (Cicero, The Nature of the Gods, 1.60).

Differences in the story occurred in a separate account presented by the later Christian theologian and writer, Tertullian (c. 2nd and 3rd Century). In his version of the story, the discussion of the divine took place in the court of King Croesus of Lydia (c. 6th century BCE), and the task of studying the gods was presented to Thales of Miletus, a renowned polymath who lived approximately between 620 and 546 BCE. On this alternate account of the tale, Tertullian wrote, “consider what was the answer that Thales the prince of naturalists made Croesus, when he was pressed by him plainly to declare his positive notions of the divine nature. Did not the philosopher put off the prince from time to time with his ‘I will consider on it’?” (Tertullian, Apology, 46.8). Therefore, Thales of Miletus, too, had to continuously put off his conclusions about the divine. Unfortunately, neither Cicero nor Tertullian wrote about what Simonides or Thales might have eventually concluded concerning divinity. The conclusion, one supposes, is that no adamant conclusion about the divine can be reached.

Written by C. Keith Hansley

Picture Attribution: (Thales van Milete, created by Jacques de Gheyn (III) in the 17th century, [Public Domain] via Creative Commons and the Rijksmuseum)

Sources:

• Cicero, The Nature of the Gods, translated by P. G. Walsh. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997, 1998, 2008.
• The Politics by Aristotle, translated by T. A. Sinclair and revised by T. J. Saunders. London: Penguin Classics, 1962, 1992.
• The Histories by Herodotus, translated by Aubrey de Sélincourt and revised by John Marincola. New York: Penguin Classics, 2002.
• [Tertullian’s Apology] https://ia801303.us.archive.org/33/items/apologyoftertull00tert/apologyoftertull00tert.pdf
• [Tertullian’s Apology] https://www.tertullian.org/articles/reeve_apology.htm
• https://www.britannica.com/biography/Simonides-of-Ceos
• https://www.worldhistory.org/croesus/