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wrote to introduce Christianity to pagans and persuade them of his new religion's
inherent superiority. As is common with this work he quotes large pieces of other's
works to illustrate his view of historical information and then follow with his own
comments. After relating the story of the death of Pan (mostly identical to the
version in Plutarch so I will not repeat it here) he concludes with:
So far Plutarch. But it is important to observe the time at which he says that the death of
the daemon took place. For it was the time of Tiberius, in which our Saviour, making His
sojourn among men, is recorded to have been ridding human life from daemons of every
kind: so that there were some of them now kneeling before Him and beseeching Him not to
deliver them over to the Tartarus that awaited them.
You have therefore the date of the overthrow of the daemons, of which there was no
record at any other time; just as you had the abolition of human sacrifice among the Gentiles
as not having occurred until after the preaching of the doctrine of the Gospel had reached
all mankind. Let then these refutations from recent history suffice (Oehler
1851
-1854).
As previously mentioned this particular image of the death of the old gods,
exemplified by Pan, fading out at the birth of Jesus was particularly important to
many English authors and poets. A prominent example would be John Milton,
who draws upon this image in his first major English poem “On the Morning of
Christ's Nativity” (Lewalski
1966
) written in 1629, beginning with a description of
the birth of Jesus which includes a description of shepherds in their ignorance of the
momentous event that has just occurred:
The Shepherds on the Lawn, Or ere the point of dawn, Sate simply chatting in a rustic row;
Full little thought they than That the mighty Pan Was kindly com to live with them below:
Perhaps their loves, or els their sheep, Was all that did their silly thoughts so busie keep
(Lewalski
1966
).
And then proceeding in a description of the decline of the Oracles and the
disappearance of all the old gods one by one, starting with a retelling of Plutarch via
Eusebius spliced into the narrative:
The Oracles are dumm, No voice or hideous humm Runs through the arched roof in words
deceiving. Apollo from his shrine Can no more divine, With hollow shreik the steep of
Delphos leaving. No nightly trance, or breathed spell, Inspire's the pale-ey'd Priest from
the prophetic cell.
The lonely mountains o're, And the resounding shore, A voice of weeping heard, and
loud lament; From haunted spring and dale Edg'd with poplar pale, The parting Genius is
with sighing sent, With flowre-inwov'n tresses torn The Nimphs in twilight shade of tangled
thickets mourn.
In consecrated Earth, And on the holy Hearth, The Lars, and Lemures moan with
midnight plaint, In Urns, and Altars round, A drear, and dying sound Affrights the Flamins
at their service quaint; And the chill Marble seems to sweat, While each peculiar power
forgoes his wonted seat (Lewalski
1966
).
This goes on for several more verses with an extensive list of pagan gods which
are no longer worshiped and concludes with the triumph of the new order over the
old with the birth of Christ:
He feels from Juda's land The dredded Infants hand, The rayes of Bethlehem blind his
dusky eyn; Nor all the gods beside, Longer dare abide, Nor Typhon huge ending in snaky
twine: Our Babe, to shew his Godhead true, Can in his swadling bands controul the damned
crew.
