Clement of Alexandria · a new plain-English translation from the original language
It is not, then, the outward appearance of the man that must be beautified, but the soul, with the adornment of nobility of character; and one might also say of the flesh, with the adornment of self-control. But those women who beautify the surface while leaving the depths untilled, without realizing it, adorn themselves after the fashion of the Egyptian temples. Among the Egyptians the propylaea and the forecourts of the sacred precincts are elaborately worked, and there are groves and meadows, and the courts are crowned with a great many columns; the walls gleam with foreign stones and with skillful painting that lacks nothing; the shrines shine with gold and silver and electrum, and glitter, adorned with colored stones from India and Ethiopia, and the inner sanctuaries are overshadowed with gold-spangled curtains. But if you go in beyond the enclosure, hastening to the sight of the greater thing, seeking the image that dwells within the shrine, a pastophoros or some other of those who perform the sacred rites, gazing solemnly about the precinct, singing a paean in the Egyptian tongue, draws back a little of the curtain as though about to show the god, and gives us broad occasion for laughter at the object of reverence. For no god will be found within, the one we hastened toward in our search, but instead a cat, a crocodile, or some native snake, or some such creature, unworthy of the shrine but well suited to a hole or a den or a mudbank; the god of the Egyptians appears as a beast wallowing on a purple couch. In just this way, it seems to me, the women who deck themselves in gold, practicing the crimping of their curls and the anointing of their cheeks and the pencilling of their eyes and the dyeing of their hair, and contriving all the rest of their foolishness, adorning the fleshly enclosure, truly playing the Egyptian, draw on their superstitious lovers. But if someone should uncover the curtain of the shrine — I mean the headdress, the dye, the garment, the gold, the rouge, the paint, that is, the fabric woven together out of all these things, the veil — expecting to find within the true beauty, he will be disgusted, of this I am certain. What dwells within is not the worthy image of God he sought, but rather a harlot and adulteress has taken possession of the soul's inner sanctuary, and the true beast will be exposed — an ape smeared with white lead — and that shifting serpent, gnawing away the intelligent part of the man through love of glory, has the soul for its den; having filled everything with deadly drugs and having belched forth upon them the venom of his own deceit, this procuring dragon has turned the women into harlots (for love of adornment belongs not to a wife but to a courtesan). These women give scant thought to managing a household with their husbands; instead, loosing their husband's purse-strings, they divert his resources to their desires, so that they may have many witnesses to their supposed beauty, and sitting the whole day long over their toilette they occupy themselves with hired slaves. Just as they season bad meat with sauce, so they spend the day melting away over their toilette, shut up in their chambers, lest they be caught out dyeing their hair blond; and in the evening, as if creeping out of a den toward the lamp, this counterfeit beauty comes forth; for it is the wine's haze together with the lamp's faint glow that conspires to assist their deceit. And the comic poet Menander bars the woman who dyes her locks blond from the house: 'Now crawl out of this house; for the modest wife must not make her hair yellow, nor paint her cheeks with rouge, nor pencil her eyes.' These wretched women do not realize that they are destroying their own proper beauty by importing what is foreign to them; for at daybreak, pulled about and rubbed and plastered with certain pastes, they scrape their skin and, with drugs and the excessive fussing of their washes, wither away their own natural bloom. For this reason they appear sallow from the plasters, and are easily overcome by illnesses, their flesh already wasted by the drugs, their beauty a mere sketch, dishonoring the Creator of mankind, as though he had not given them beauty as they deserved. Naturally they become idle about their housekeeping, sitting like painted figures on display, made not for keeping house but for being looked at. That is why the calculating woman in the comic poet says: 'What sensible or splendid thing could we women accomplish, we who sit here painted up, ruining the character of free women, bringing about the overthrow of households, the corruption of marriages, and the smuggling in of supposititious children?' This very thing the comic poet Antiphanes, in his Malthake, mocks as the common trade-talk of courtesans, words devised for wearing men down, saying: 'She comes, she goes off again, she comes forward again, she goes off, she arrives, she is present, she washes, comes forward, cleans herself, combs her hair, has stepped in, rubs herself down, bathes, examines herself, dresses, perfumes herself, adorns herself, anoints herself — and if she has anything left over, she hangs herself.' Three times over, not once, they deserve to perish, using crocodile dung and smearing themselves with the froth of putrefaction, daubing their brows with soot and rubbing white lead into their cheeks. How, then, could such women, sickening even to the pagan poets on account of their behavior, fail to be truly repugnant? Another comic poet, Alexis, exposing them, whose words I will likewise cite, words that shame the shamelessness of their affectation by the very elaborateness of the telling — for he was no less thorough — I myself am ashamed at how far the comedy about women's quarters goes, a 'helper' who then goes on to ruin her husband besides. For in the first place, all their other business becomes secondary to gain and to plundering their neighbors. If one happens to be small, cork is stitched into her slippers. If one is tall, she wears a thin sandal and goes about with her head bent down onto her shoulder, which takes away from her height. If one has no hips, she puts on padding sewn in, so that onlookers exclaim at her fine figure. If one has a large belly, she has such breasts as the comic poets speak of, propping them up so that they push the covering of the belly forward like poles. If one has red eyebrows, they paint them with soot. If it happens that one is dark, she plasters herself with white lead. If one is too pale, she rubs in rouge. If some part of her body is fine, she shows it uncovered. If she has good teeth, she must laugh continually, so that those present may admire how charming a mouth she has; and if she does not enjoy laughing, she spends the whole day with a thin, upright sliver of myrtle-wood held between her lips, so that in time she grins fixedly, whether she wishes to or not.
These things I set before you, drawn from worldly wisdom, for the turning aside of the mischievous craft of love of adornment, since the Word wishes by every means to save us; and shortly I will also fasten upon the divine Scriptures. Somehow that which is not hidden tends, out of shame at being exposed, to draw back from its sins. And just as a bandaged hand or an anointed eye betrays by its appearance the suspicion of sickness, so paints and dyes hint at a soul that is sick in its depths. The divine Instructor urges us to pass by 'a strange river' — allegorizing as a strange river the strange woman, the wanton one, who flows over all, poured out for all through licentious harlotry into luxury. 'Abstain from strange water,' he says, 'and drink not from a strange spring,' urging us to guard against the stream of self-indulgence, 'that we may live long, and years of life be added to us' — whether by not hunting after another's pleasure, or by turning aside from heresies as well. Now the appetite for delicacies and the appetite for wine, mighty passions though they be, do not rival the passion for adornment. A full table and cups passed one after another are enough to satisfy gluttony; but for those who love gold and purple and precious stones, not even the gold above and beneath the earth suffices, nor the Tyrian sea, nor the freight from India and Ethiopia, nor even the Pactolus flowing with its wealth. Not even if one of them should become a Midas would they be satisfied, but remain still poor, longing for yet other riches, ready to die together with their gold. And if Wealth himself is blind, as indeed he is, how can those women who flutter about him and share his passion fail to be blind as well? Having no limit to their desire, they run aground on shamelessness; for they need the theater and the procession and crowds of spectators and wandering about in the temples and lingering in the streets, so as to become conspicuous to everyone. For they adorn themselves in order to please others, glorying in their face and not in their heart; for as brand-marks betray the runaway slave, so do their painted colors betray the adulteress. 'And though you clothe yourself in scarlet and adorn yourself with ornaments of gold, and though you paint your eyes with stibium, your beautifying is in vain,' says the Word through Jeremiah.
Is it not, then, absurd that horses and birds and the other animals rise up from the grass and the meadows and fly up rejoicing in their own proper adornment — the horse in its mane, its natural coloring, the bird in its varied plumage — while woman thinks herself so deficient, inferior even to the nature of beasts, as to lack beauty of her own, needing a foreign beauty, bought and merely painted on? Headdresses and varieties of headdresses and elaborate braidings, and the countless stylings of the hair, and costly contrivances of mirrors, by which they arrange themselves to hunt those who, like foolish children, are infatuated with mere outward forms — all this belongs to women who have utterly lost their sense of shame, whom one would not be wrong to call courtesans, since they turn their faces into masks. But the Word exhorts us to fix our gaze 'not on what can be seen, but on what cannot be seen; since what can be seen lasts only for a season, whereas what cannot be seen endures without end.' And what goes even further into absurdity: for their counterfeit appearance, as though it were some noble deed or an improvement of themselves, they have devised mirrors — on which, of all things, a veil ought most to be placed, given the deception involved. For not even, as the Hellenic legend tells it, was it granted to the beautiful Narcissus to become a spectator of his own image with impunity. And if Moses commands that men make no image in rivalry with God, how could these women reasonably do so, imitating by reflection images of themselves for the counterfeiting of their faces? Moreover, when the prophet Samuel was dispatched to consecrate as king a son of Jesse, and beheld the eldest of these sons, tall and comely, and when Samuel, taken with him, reached forward the oil of consecration, 'the Lord said to him,' so the text runs, 'regard neither his looks nor his lofty build, for this one I have refused. Man sees only what meets the eyes, but the Lord sees into the heart' — and it was not the one handsome in body he anointed, but the one handsome in soul. If, then, the Lord accounts the natural beauty of the body as less than that of the soul, what does he think of the counterfeit kind, casting out the whole falsehood root and branch? 'For we walk by faith, not by appearance.' Most clearly, then, the Lord teaches through Abraham that the one who follows God must despise homeland and kindred and possessions and all wealth, making him a sojourner, and for this reason also named him 'friend,' because he despised the abundance he had at home; for he was of noble birth and exceedingly wealthy. At any rate, with three hundred and eighteen of his own household servants he overcame the four kings who had taken Lot captive. We find only Esther justly adorned. This woman beautified herself in secret for her own king, but that beauty of hers is found to have been the ransom of a people threatened with slaughter.
That love of adornment makes women into courtesans, and men into effeminates and adulterers, the tragic poet bears witness for us, relating the matter somewhat as follows: 'He who journeyed from Phrygian lands to judge among the goddesses, as the Argive story tells it, came to Lacedaemon, resplendent in the raiment of his garments and shining with gold, in barbarian luxury, loving and beloved, went off, snatching away Helen to the pastures of Ida, having caught Menelaus away from home.' O adulterous beauty! Barbarian love of adornment and effeminate luxury overturned Greece; Laconian self-control was corrupted by foreign dress and luxury and youthful beauty; barbarian extravagances proved the daughter of Zeus to be no better than a courtesan. They had no instructor to check their desires, no one saying 'you shall not commit adultery,' nor one saying 'you shall not desire,' so that they might not travel the road to adultery through desire, nor kindle their appetites through love of adornment. Such was the end that followed for them, and such the evils they suffered who were unwilling to restrain their self-love; two continents were set in motion by undisciplined pleasures, and all things were thrown into turmoil because of one barbarian youth; the whole of Greece takes to the sea, and the ocean is crowded, bearing continents upon it; a long war is kindled, and fierce battles break out, and the plains are filled with the dead; the barbarian insults the harbor of the ships; injustice prevails, and the eye of that Zeus of the poets looks upon the Thracians; noble blood is drunk down by barbarian soil, and river currents grow clogged with corpses; women strike their breasts in lamentation, and mourning spreads across the land; every foothill and summit of Ida of the many springs trembles, along with the city of Troy, and the fleet belonging to the Achaeans. Where shall we flee, Homer, and stand? Show us a land that has not been shaken. ... 'Do not touch the reins, child, being inexperienced, nor mount the chariot to drive it, untaught; heaven delights in two charioteers only, by whom alone the fire is driven when it is drawn along.' For pleasure leads the understanding astray, and reason's purity, left untaught by the Word, descends into wantonness, reaping that fall as payment for its offense. A proof of this for you are the angels of God, who abandoned beauty for a beauty that fades, and fell so far from the heavens to the earth. And the men of Shechem too are punished, having fallen upon and outraged the holy virgin; their punishment was a grave, and the memorial of their chastisement serves as an instructor unto salvation.
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