He
arrived at Athens, however, the noble city of the intellectuals, over
which brooded the sublime spirit of Plato--the Plato of the gloriousness
of the risk of immortality; and there Paul disputed with Epicureans and
Stoics. And some said of him, "What doth this babbler (_spermologos_)
mean?" and others, "He seemeth to be a setter forth of strange gods"
(Acts xvii. 18), "and they took him and brought him unto Areopagus,
saying, May we know what this new doctrine, whereof thou speakest, is?
for thou bringest certain strange things to our ears; we would know,
therefore, what these things mean" (verses 19-20). And then follows that
wonderful characterization of those Athenians of the decadence, those
dainty connoisseurs of the curious, "for all the Athenians and strangers
which were there spent their time in nothing else, but either to tell or
to hear some new thing" (verse 21). A wonderful stroke which depicts for
us the condition of mind of those who had learned from the _Odyssey_
that the gods plot and achieve the destruction of mortals in order that
their posterity may have something to narrate!
Here Paul stands, then, before the subtle Athenians, before the
_graeuli_, men of culture and tolerance, who are ready to welcome and
examine every doctrine, who neither stone nor scourge nor imprison any
man for professing these or those doctrines--here he stands where
liberty of conscience is respected and every opinion is given an
attentive hearing.
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