Sigalion in the Shield of Croesiades or Apologetic Dialogue for the Mystery of Detected Syncretism (1650) - Page 10

((c) Juvenal, Satire 2.

But let us commit the dispute, shaken from our hands, to be estimated by the judgment of another, and to be agitated as if under a veil: let us not hear ourselves, but the Sages, whose fame was once given to be carried and brought back through Lydia, Greece, and the whole world—Croesus the Lydian, Solon the Salaminian, Paul the Tarsian; let them say each their own opinion, let them put forth a genuine definition of syncretism, let them judge and arbitrate about the defined, perhaps—the number, the place in which it should be held? It is right for us to mix their conversations for the present, and to grasp their sayings. Let us be confident, therefore, if it seems so, attentive, docile, benign. HUSH!

CROESUS THE LYDIAN.

§. 3.

Enough has been said thus far, O Solon, concerning private beatitude; I have understood who is blessed in your sense, and when at last he is blessed. Something else remains pertaining to public happiness and the whole kingdom, which it pleases me to ask of you, concerning the Cretan art, by which they are accustomed to re-sheathe swords once drawn into each other’s entrails? Citizens—(f) the Cretans of old (g) "often engaged in seditions and wars with one another, were accustomed to resolve them and unite when foreign enemies approached. And this was what was called by them syncretism." Agitated by frequent seditions and civil wars, upon the arrival of external enemies, they came together for peace and alliance. For that was what they called syncretism. Fame reports thus; from whose relation you may understand first the intestine wars of the Cretans, then the constant remedy of wars by dissolution and union: excited by the fear of an external enemy; but more splendid than solid. Therefore (h) they have often clashed in intestine wars, born from wherever

(f) Homer, Iliad, Beta.

(g) so Plutarch, On Brotherly Love, p. 879; interpreted by Xylander, part 2, moral, p. 298.

(h) The Cretans are said to have lacked wild beasts, but not emulations, envy, and the zeal for contending; for so says Aristotle, book on marvelous things heard, p. 1093. In Crete, they say no wolves, bears, vipers, or other harmful wild beasts of that kind are born, by the benefit of Jupiter, who is said to have been born there. Compare Plutarch, On profiting from enemies. Elogies of the Cretans exist, Titus 3:3, that they were once "living in vice and envy, hateful and hating one another."