Note 313 — Chapter V · FREETHOUGHT IN GREECE

In the same age the same freethinking temper is seen in Stilpo of Megara (fl. 307), of the school of Euclides, who is said to have been brought before the Areopagus for the offence of saying that the Pheidian statue of Athênê was “not a God,” and to have met the charge with the jest that she was in reality not a God but a Goddess; whereupon he was exiled.313 The stories told of him make it clear that he was an unbeliever, usually careful not to betray himself. Euclides, too, with his optimistic pantheism, was clearly a heretic; though his doctrine that evil is non-ens314 later became the creed of some Christians. Yet another professed atheist was the witty Bion of Borysthenes, pupil of Theodoros, of whom it is told, in a fashion familiar to our own time, that in sickness he grew pious through fear.315 Among his positions was a protest or rather satire against the doctrine that the Gods punished children for the crimes of their fathers.316 In the other schools, Speusippos (fl. 343), the nephew of Plato, leant to monotheism;317 Strato of Lampsakos, the Peripatetic (fl. 290), called “the Naturalist,” taught sheer pantheism, anticipating Laplace in declaring that he had no need of the action of the Gods to account for the making of the world;318 Dikaiarchos (fl. 326–287), another disciple of Aristotle, denied the existence of separate souls, and the possibility of foretelling the future;319 and Aristo and Cleanthes, disciples of Zeno, varied likewise in the direction of pantheism; the latter’s monotheism, as expressed in his famous hymn, being one of several doctrines ascribed to him.320