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| Chapter IV.—With Whom We are to Associate.
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Chapter IV.—With Whom We are to Associate.
But really I have unwittingly deviated in spirit
from the order, to which I must now revert, and must find fault with
having large numbers of domestics. For, avoiding working with their own
hands and serving themselves, men
have recourse to servants, purchasing a great crowd of fine cooks,
and of people to lay out the table, and of others to divide the meat
skilfully into pieces. And the staff of servants is separated into many
divisions; some labour for their gluttony, carvers and seasoners, and
the compounders and makers of sweetmeats, and honey-cakes, and custards;
others are occupied with their too numerous clothes; others guard the
gold, like griffins; others keep the silver, and wipe the cups, and make
ready what is needed to furnish the festive table; others rub down the
horses; and a crowd of cup-bearers exert themselves in their service,
and herds of beautiful boys, like cattle, from whom they milk away
their beauty. And male and female assistants at the toilet are employed
about the ladies—some for the mirrors, some for the head-dresses,
others for the combs. Many are eunuchs; and these panders serve without
suspicion those that wish to be free to enjoy their pleasures, because
of the belief that they are unable to indulge in lust. But a true
eunuch is not one who is unable, but one who is unwilling, to indulge
in pleasure. The Word, testifying by the prophet Samuel to the Jews,
who had transgressed when the people asked for a king, promised not a
loving lord, but threatened to give them a self-willed and voluptuous
tyrant, “who shall,” He says, “take your daughters to
be perfumers, and cooks, and bakers,”1616
ruling by the law of war,
not desiring a peaceful administration. And there are many Celts, who bear
aloft on their shoulders women’s litters. But workers in wool, and
spinners, and weavers, and female work and housekeeping, are nowhere.
But those who impose on the women, spend the
day with them, telling them silly amatory stories, and wearing out
body and soul with their false acts and words. “Thou shalt not
be with many,” it is said, “for evil, nor give thyself
to a multitude;”1617
for wisdom shows itself among few, but disorder
in a multitude. But it is not for grounds of propriety, on account of not
wishing to be seen, that they purchase bearers, for it were commendable
if out of such feelings they put themselves under a covering; but it
is out of luxuriousness that they are carried on their domestics’
shoulders, and desire to make a show.
So, opening the curtain, and looking keenly round on
all that direct their eyes towards them, they show their manners; and
often bending forth from within, disgrace this superficial propriety
by their dangerous restlessness. “Look not round,” it
is said, “in the streets of the city, and wander not in its
lonely places.”1618
For that is, in truth, a lonely place,
though there be a crowd of the licentious in it, where no wise man
is present.
And these women are carried about over the temples,
sacrificing and practising divination day by day, spending their time with
fortune-tellers, and begging priests, and disreputable old women; and they
keep up old wives’ whisperings over their cups, learning charms and
incantations from soothsayers, to the ruin of the nuptial bonds. And some
men they keep; by others they are kept; and others are promised them by
the diviners. They know not that they are cheating themselves, and giving
up themselves as a vessel of pleasure to those that wish to indulge in
wantonness; and exchanging their purity for the foulest outrage, they
think what is the most shameful ruin a great stroke of business. And there
are many ministers to this meretricious licentiousness, insinuating
themselves, one from one quarter, another from another. For the
licentious rush readily into uncleanness, like swine rushing to that
part of the hold of the ship which is depressed. Whence the Scripture
most strenuously exhorts, “Introduce not every one into thy house,
for the snares of the crafty are many.”1619
And in another place,
“Let just men be thy guests, and in the fear of the Lord let
thy boast remain.”1620
Away with fornication. “For know this
well,” says the apostle, “that no fornicator, or unclean
person, or covetous man, who is an idolater, hath any inheritance in
the kingdom of Christ and of God.”1621
But these women delight in
intercourse with the effeminate. And crowds of
abominable creatures (κιναίδες)
flow in, of unbridled tongue, filthy in body, filthy in language; men
enough for lewd offices, ministers of adultery, giggling and whispering,
and shamelessly making through their noses sounds of lewdness and
fornication to provoke lust, endeavouring to please by lewd words and
attitudes, inciting to laughter, the precursor of fornication. And
sometimes, when inflamed by any provocation, either these fornicators,
or those that follow the rabble of abominable creatures to destruction,
make a sound in their nose like a frog, as if they had got anger
dwelling in their nostrils. But those who are more refined than these
keep Indian birds and Median pea-fowls, and recline with peak-headed1622
| 1622 φοξός, in allusion
to Thersites, to which Homer applies this epithet. | creatures;
playing with satyrs, delighting in monsters. They laugh when they hear
Thersites; and these women, purchasing Thersiteses highly valued, pride
themselves not in their husbands, but in those wretches which are a burden
on the earth, and overlook the chaste widow, who is of far higher value
than a Melitæan pup, and look
askance at a just old man, who
is lovelier in my estimation than a monster purchased for money. And
though maintaining parrots and curlews, they do not receive the orphan
child;1623
| 1623 [The wasting
on pet dogs, pups, and other animals, expense and pains which might
help an orphan child, is a sin not yet uprooted. Here Clement’s
plea for widows, orphans, and aged men, prepares the way for Christian
institutions in behalf of these classes. The same arguments should prevail
with Christians in America.] | but they expose children that are
born at home, and take up the young of birds, and prefer irrational to
rational creatures; although they ought to undertake the maintenance of
old people with a character for sobriety, who are fairer in my mind than
apes, and capable of uttering something better than nightingales; and
to set before them that saying, “He that pitieth the poor lendeth
to the Lord;”1624
and this, “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto the least of these
My brethren, ye have done it to Me.”1625
But these, on the other
hand, prefer ignorance to wisdom, turning their wealth into stone,
that is, into pearls and Indian emeralds. And they squander and throw
away their wealth on fading dyes, and bought slaves; like crammed
fowls scraping the dung of life. “Poverty,” it is said,
“humbles a man.”1626
By poverty is meant that niggardliness by which
the rich are poor, having nothing to give away.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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