Clement of Alexandria · a new plain-English translation from the original language
Let the revel be banished from our rational feasting, and also those vain all-night vigils that flaunt themselves in drunkenness. For the revel is a maddening flute-song, an improvisation of erotic distress; and love-passion and drunkenness, those irrational affections, are settled far from our chorus. And the all-night vigil kept over drinking is a kind of fellow-reveler to drunkenness, a summoner to intoxication and an inciter to sexual union, a shameless daring. Those who amid flutes and harps and dances and castanets and Egyptian rattles and such frivolities become disorderly, unseemly, and thoroughly uneducated tumults, deafened by cymbals and drums and clattered about by the instruments of deception -- such a banquet becomes, quite simply, as it seems to me, a theater of drunkenness. For the apostle bids us, "having put off the works of darkness, to put on the armor of light," "walking becomingly as in the day, not in reveling and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness," devoting our leisure to none of these.
Let the syrinx, then, be assigned to shepherds, and the flute to superstitious men rushing toward idolatry. For truly these instruments are to be banished from a sober banquet, being more fitting for beasts than for men, and for the more irrational among men. For we have learned that deer are charmed by the syrinx and are led, when hunted by huntsmen, by the melody right into the snares set for their feet; and for mares in heat a certain tune of flute-piping is played, like a wedding-hymn -- the musicians have called this the "horse-goad." Every illiberal sight and sound, and, to sum it up, every shameful sensation of intemperance -- which is truly insensibility -- must be thoroughly cut away, guarding against the pleasure that tickles and effeminizes both eyes and ears; for by broken melodies and mournful rhythms the varied sorceries of the Carian muse corrupt men's characters, dragging them down into passion through licentious and depraved music. Setting apart from this revel the worship owed to God, the Spirit sings out, "Give him praise with the blast of the ram's-horn" -- since it is by that very blast that he will awaken the dead; "give him praise upon the psaltery," since our tongue serves the Lord as a psaltery; "and give him praise upon the harp" -- take the harp here as meaning the mouth, plucked as though by a plectrum moved by the Spirit; "give him praise with drum and dance" -- by this he points to the assembly of believers pondering the flesh's rising again within its resounding covering of skin; "give him praise with strings and pipes" -- our very body he names the pipe-organ, its sinews the strings, whereby it gained a fitting tautness, and once touched by the Spirit it sounds out with a human voice; "give him praise with the clash of joyful cymbals" -- our tongue he names the cymbal set within the mouth, which rings against the lips whenever they meet. It was for this that he called out to all mankind, "may everything that draws breath give the Lord praise," for he has come near to every living thing he fashioned. Man, then, is in truth an instrument devoted to peace; the rest, examine them closely and you will find them fit for battle, whether they stir up craving, fan the flames of desire, or turn tempers savage. Consider how, when at war, the Etruscans sound the horn, the Arcadians the syrinx, the Sicels the pektis, the Cretans the lyre, the Spartans the flute, the Thracian tribes the horn, the Egyptians the drum, and the Arab peoples the cymbal; we, however, rely on a single instrument, the Word who brings peace alone, through whom we glorify God -- no longer the ancient psaltery, ram's-horn, drum, and flute favored by seasoned warriors and by those who had learned to scorn the fear of God, who used to bring these together at their festivities, so that through such rhythms their flagging resolve could once more be stirred.
Let our friendly companionship at the wine-table be twofold, according to the Law: for since "you shall love the Lord your God," and then "your neighbor," let the first friendliness be toward God, expressed through thanksgiving and psalm-singing, and the second toward our neighbor, expressed through dignified conversation; "may the message of the Lord make its home within you abundantly," as the apostle states. This message shapes and adapts itself to every occasion, person, and setting, and here it suits itself to the banquet-table; for the apostle goes on: "instructing and correcting each other with full wisdom through psalms and hymns and songs of the Spirit, singing to God with gratitude in your hearts; and everything you undertake, be it speech or action, carry out under the authority of the Lord Jesus, rendering thanks through him to God the Father." Such is our joyful festivity; and should you wish to strike up a tune and play upon the cithara or lyre, nothing there deserves blame -- you will be imitating the righteous Hebrew king who was grateful to God. "Rejoice, you righteous, in the Lord; praise befits the upright," says the prophecy; "give thanks to the Lord upon the harp, sing to him upon the ten-stringed psaltery, sing to him a new song." And may it not be that the ten-stringed psaltery signifies the Word, Jesus, made manifest through the numeral of the decad? And just as it is fitting for us, before partaking of food, to bless the Maker of all things, so also at the wine-table it is proper to sing to him as we partake of his creatures; for the psalm is a melodious and temperate form of blessing -- the apostle has called the psalm a "spiritual song." And above all, before we give ourselves over to sleep, it is a sacred duty to render thanks to God, since we have known his kindness and favor, so that our very sleep may come in a manner pleasing to him. "And confess to him," it says, "in the songs of your lips, because in his command all good pleasure comes to be, and there is no diminishing of his salvation." But even among the ancient Greeks, at their drinking-feasts and their dripping wine-cups, in imitation of the Hebrew psalms a song called the skolion used to be sung, all together raising a single voice in a paean, and sometimes also passing the song around in turns along with the cups; and the more musical among them sang also to the lyre. But let the love-songs go far off and perish, and let hymns to God alone be our songs. "Let them praise," it says, "his name in the dance; let them sing to him with timbrel and psaltery." And who the singing dance is, the Spirit itself will tell you: "his praise is in the assembly of the holy ones; let them exult in their King." And again it adds: "for the Lord takes pleasure in his people." For indeed the temperate harmonies are to be admitted, driving as far as possible from our robust mind those truly dissolute harmonies which, through their artful trickery in the turns and bendings of the notes, train men toward degeneracy and scurrilous buffoonery; but the austere and temperate melodies take their leave of the insolence that comes with drunkenness. The chromatic harmonies, then, must be left to the colorless drunken revels and to that flower-decked, courtesan-like music.
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