Athenagoras, Plea for the Christians 26

The demons I mentioned earlier are the ones who drag people toward idols, appointed over the blood of sacrifices and licking it up. The figures whom the masses call gods and honor with images, as their own histories show, were merely human beings. It is each person's faith that supplies the energy by which demons trample the names. Some castrate themselves, the devotees of Rhea; others flagellate or cut themselves, the devotees of Artemis; the priestess in Tauris kills strangers — I let those abused by swords and dice, and the various kinds of demons, speak for themselves — for it is not in the nature of God to drive anyone toward what is contrary to nature. When a demon brings evils upon a man, it first damages his mind. But God, being perfectly good, is eternally doing good. Therefore, the fact that some men act while images are erected to others stands as the greatest proof: Troy and Parium. Troy has images of Neryllinus, a man of our own time; Parium has images of Alexander and Proteus, and Alexander's tomb and image still stand in the marketplace. The other statues of Neryllinus serve as public ornaments, if a city can be adorned by such things, and one of them is even believed to prophesy and heal the sick; the Trojans sacrifice because of it, anoint the statue with gold, and crown it. The statue of Alexander and that of Proteus — you know he threw himself into the fire at Olympia — the former is also said to prophesy, and public sacrifices and festivals are held for Alexander's statue as for an attendant god. Are Neryllinus, Proteus, and Alexander the ones acting through these statues, or is it the material itself? But the material is bronze. What can bronze do by itself, when it can be melted down and reshaped into another form, like the foot-basin King Amasis made, as Herodotus tells? And what more can Neryllinus, Proteus, and Alexander do for the sick? Whatever the image is said to do now, Neryllinus was already doing while he was alive and sick.