Exhortation to the Greeks 4.46

If, besides this, I were to bring the statues themselves and set them before you to examine, you would go through them and find that your custom is truly nonsense, since you pray to senseless “works of human hands.” In ancient times the Scythians worshiped the dagger, the Arabs the stone, the Persians the river; and among other peoples those still more ancient set up conspicuous pieces of wood and erected pillars of stone. These were called xoana, because they had been scraped (apexesthai) from the raw material. The image of Artemis on Icarus, for example, was an unworked piece of wood, and that of Cithaeronian Hera at Thespiae a felled tree trunk; and the image of Samian Hera, as Aethlius says, was at first a plank, and later, when Procles was archon, it became human-shaped. When the xoana began to be made in human likeness, they took the name brete, from brotoi (“mortals”). At Rome in ancient times, says the historian Varro, the image of Mars was a spear, since the craftsmen had not yet launched into this handsome but evil art.