From the theme of God, St Paul then turned to the theme of men. God had “made of one blood all the nations of mankind.” He had appointed their times and places. There was no blind chance or mere Fate. Adapting the Stoic teaching of the active principle that gave life to everything, St Paul told them that God had made men to seek Him and know Him and live in Him. “God gives to all life, and breath, and all things …. For in Him we live and move and have our being.” He then went on to quote from two of their own poets, saying “For we are also His offspring.” These Greek poets were Cleanthes and Aratus. Cleanthes, the successor to Zeno as leader of the Stoics, had composed a very beautiful and deeply religious “Hymn to Zeus,” which contained these words. The same phrase was to be found in the “Phenomena” of Aratus, celebrated for his astronomical poems, for which it was said that his fame would live on as long as the sun and the moon endured. Aratus came from the same district as St Paul, Cilicia, - which perhaps accounts for the Apostle’s familiarity with his writings.

Standing almost in the shadow of the massive statue of Athena Promachos, St Paul developed his argument, saying that if we are indeed the offspring of God, it is against reason to suppose that God can be like sculptures of gold or silver or marble. In the original, his words imply that he could appreciate and admire the beauty of the statues even though he condemned their purpose. Idolatry was idolatry, even when clothed with the genius of Phidias.

So far his audience had listened attentively. But St Paul was never to finish his speech. As soon as he began to speak of the coming Judgment of the world and the Resurrection, it was the end. He had lost his audience. The Epicureans taught that death was the end of a man. The Stoics taught that at death a man’s soul was burned up or absorbed in the Divinity. There was no room for a judgment or a resurrection from the dead in the thinking of either group. Interruptions began. Pitying smiles of contempt could be seen. Mocking laughter broke out. The members of the Court had done their duty. The little Jew had proved to be a harmless babbler. They need not trouble themselves with him further. The Apostle was politely dismissed from the Court.

For St Paul it must surely have been a moment of the deepest disappointment and humiliation. Opposition and persecution he was used to dealing with, serious argument he was prepared for, but this polite and tolerant indifference was something which he had not previously encountered. He was intensely, passionately in earnest. His listeners, highly educated, cultured and mentally arrogant, were not seriously interested at all.

The immediate result of the Apostle’s visit was almost nothing. The highly trained philosophers were of all people the most difficult to convert, while in the rural districts surrounding Athens the country folk, as distinct from superficial townsfolk, clung tenaciously to their old pagan cults. Only a few joined St Paul. One was a woman named Damaris. Nothing else is recorded of her, but considering the secluded position of Greek women, it would be interesting to know how she came to be in touch with the Apostle. The only other convert whose name we know was Dionysius, a member of the Areopagus. Tradition holds that he was the first bishop of Athens. We possess no Letter written by St Paul to the Athenians, nor, as far as we know, did he ever visit Athens again. He would write to the Corinthians that while the Jews required a sign, the Greeks sought after wisdom - answers in obscure philosophical speculation, - that the Cross was a stumbling block to the Jews and “foolishness” to the Greeks.

We do not know how long St Paul stayed in Athens. We are told that he waited for some time for Silas and Timothy to rejoin him. It does not seem that he was driven away by any kind of persecution. What he could not have known, as he pondered the apparent failure of his visit, was that the day would come when the Parthenon, the Temple of the Virgin Athena, would be consecrated as a Christian church dedicated to the Virgin Mother of God, or that the pagan city would become a Christian city, the seat of the Archbishop of Athens and All Greece.