Clement of Alexandria · a new plain-English translation from the original language
Luxury has advanced to such a pitch that it is not only the female sex that is sick with this empty ambition, but men too vie with the disease. For men who are not clean of adornment are not healthy, but, inclining toward the softer way, make themselves womanish, cropping their hair in ignoble, whorish styles, wrapped about in bright cloaks, chewing mastic gum, and reeking of myrrh-ointment. What would one say on seeing such men? Quite simply, like a physiognomist, one would divine from their very appearance that they are adulterers and men-women, hunters after both kinds of Aphrodite, haters of hair, hairless, loathing the manly bloom, but adorning their locks like women. "Living in unholy audacities," the turncoats "do reckless and evil deeds," says the Sibyl. Because of these men, at any rate, the cities are full of picth-smearers, shavers, and pluckers who tend these effeminates; workshops have been set up and opened everywhere, and craftsmen of this whorish trade openly make a good deal of silver from it. To those who smear themselves with pitch and rip out their hairs, they offer every service, feeling no shame before onlookers or passersby, nor even before themselves as men — for such are the emulators of these more ignoble passions, having their whole body smoothed by the violent pulling of the pitch-plaster. They care not at all about going further in such shamelessness. For if nothing is left undone by them, nothing is unspeakable to me either. When one of these ignoble men was being sold, Diogenes, rebuking him in fatherly fashion, said very manfully, "Come, young man, buy yourself a man" — with a double-edged remark bringing that whorish fellow to his senses. For is it not ignoble for men to shave themselves smooth and be made sleek? As for certain dyeings of hair, and ointments for gray hairs, and blond tints — practices of ruined men-women — and their effeminate hair-combings, these must be given up. For they think that, like a snake, they shed the old age of the head by rewriting and remaking themselves; yet even if they contrive against their hairs, they will not escape their wrinkles, nor will they by contriving against time go unnoticed contriving against death. For it is no terrible thing — no, it is no terrible thing — to seem an old man when one cannot conceal the fact of being one. Indeed, the more a man hastens toward his end, the more honorable he is in truth, having only God as his elder, since God too is the everlasting Elder, older than all things that are. "Ancient of Days" the prophecy has called him, "and the hair of his head like pure wool," says the prophet. And no one else, says the Lord, "is able to make a hair white or black." How then do these godless men counter-create against God, or rather force themselves into opposition, falsifying the hair that he has made gray? "The crown of old men is much experience," says the Scripture, and the grayness of their face is the flower of much experience; but these men disgrace the privilege of their age, the gray hair. It is not possible — no, it is not possible — for one who has a counterfeit head to show forth a genuine soul. "But you did not so learn Christ," it says, "if indeed you heard him and were taught in him, as truth is in Jesus, that you put off, as regards your former manner of life, the old man" — not the gray-haired man, but "the man being corrupted according to the desires of deceit; and be renewed" — not by dyes and adornments, but "as regards the inner disposition of your understanding, and clothe yourselves with the new man, fashioned after God in righteous and holy truth." But that a man should groom himself and take a blade to his own face merely for elegance's sake, and, standing before a looking-glass, cut away and tweeze out and smooth down the growth on his cheeks — how is this not womanish? And if one did not see them naked, one might well take them for women. For even though the wearing of gold is not permitted to them either, yet still, on account of their effeminate desire, they wind straps and gold chains about themselves in the form of leaves, or, fashioning certain spherical shapes of the same material, they hang such things from their ankles and let them swing about their throats. Such is the contrivance of broken men dragged down into the women's quarters, of amphibious and lascivious beasts; the manner of this ambush is whorish and godless. For God willed the woman to be smooth, glorying, like a horse in its mane, in her hair alone as it grows naturally, but the man he adorned, as he did the lions, with a beard, and rendered him manly with a hairy chest — a token of vigor and command. In this same way he also adorned the cocks that champion the hens, arming them, as it were, with crests for helmets. And so highly does God value these hairs that he commanded them, along with wisdom, to accompany men; indeed, marveling at the dignity of it, he has honored the grim aspect of the sight with venerable gray hair. Wisdom and exact reasonings, gray with understanding, come to their prime together with time, and old age is strengthened by the vigor of much experience, holding forth grayness as a lovable flower of solemn wisdom, for a well-reasoned trust. This, then, is the man's badge, the beard, by which he is revealed as a man — it is older than Eve, and a symbol of the stronger nature. To this God has assigned as fitting the hairiness, and he has scattered hairs over the whole body of the man, but whatever is smooth and soft of it he took away from the side, fashioning Eve, a woman soft to the touch, for the reception of seed, a helper for procreation and household-keeping. But the man — since the smoothness was given up — remained a man, and shows himself to be a man; and to him has been granted the acting, as to her the being acted upon. For by nature the hairy is drier and hotter than the hairless. Hence too the males are hairier and hotter than the females, the intact than the castrated, the mature than the immature. The badge of the manly nature, then, the hairiness, it is impious to transgress against; but the adornment of smoothing — I grow heated as I speak of it — if practiced toward men marks a womanish weakling, if toward women, an adulterer; and both alike must be banished as far as possible from our way of life. "But even the very hairs upon your head have all been counted," declares the Lord; counted likewise are those on the chin, and indeed those over the whole body. In no way at all must one pluck out what has been reckoned into the counsel of God, enrolled in his will; "unless indeed you do not recognize yourselves," says the Apostle, "that Christ Jesus is in you" — whom, if we knew him dwelling within us, I do not know how we could have dared to outrage him. As for smearing oneself with pitch — I hesitate even to speak of the indecency of the practice — turning themselves about and bending over, stripping bare to plain view the secret parts of nature, writhing and arching their backs, in shameless postures without shame for themselves, in the very training-ground, in the midst of the gymnasium, where the virtue of men is put to the test, behaving indecently, pursuing this practice contrary to nature — how is this not the extremity of licentiousness? For those who do such things openly would hardly feel shame before certain people at home. Their shamelessness in public testifies against them to their license in private where none can see; for the man who denies being a man in the light of day is plainly exposed by night as a woman. "There shall not be," said the word through Moses, "a whore among the daughters of Israel, nor shall a male prostitute be found among the men of Israel." "Yet the pitch-plaster is beneficial," someone objects. "No, it is harmful," I say; no one in his right mind, unless he were diseased, would wish to seem a whore, and no one would willingly wish to make it his business to defame the beautiful image. For if "those called according to purpose, whom God foreknew," are, according to the blessed Apostle, marked out "to bear the likeness of his Son's image, so that he should be the firstborn amid a multitude of brothers," how are they not godless who outrage the body conformed to the Lord? But for a man who wishes to be beautiful, it is the mind, the most beautiful thing in man, that must be adorned, and it is this that he must show becoming more comely day by day; and it is not the hairs but the desires that must be plucked out. I even pity the slave-dealers' boy-slaves, adorned for outrage — but they at least have not disgraced themselves; being commanded, the wretched ones adorn themselves for shameful gain. But those who choose of their own accord to do these things, which, if commanded to do them, they would have valued at the price of death, if they were men — how are they not to be spat upon?
And now life has advanced to such a pitch of licentiousness, with injustice running riot, that all lasciviousness has been poured out over the cities and become law. Women stand upon the roof among them, selling their own flesh for the outrage of pleasure, and boys, taught to deny their nature, play the part of women. Luxury has overturned everything; soft, over-elaborate living has shamed mankind; it seeks everything, attempts everything, forces everything, confounds nature — men have suffered the things of women, and women play the man, being married and marrying, women to women, contrary to nature. No path is untrodden by licentiousness; a common Aphrodite is made public property among them, luxury their shared hearth. Oh, the pitiable spectacle, oh, the unspeakable practice! These are the trophies your civic self-indulgence displays, the streetwalkers the proof of your deeds. Alas for such lawlessness! But the wretched do not even understand how the uncertainty of intercourse produces many tragedies. Fathers, unwitting, often lie with a son who has played the whore, or with lustful daughters, forgetting the children they exposed, and license of self-indulgence reveals as men their own begotten children. These things the wise framers of the laws permit; it is lawful for them to sin according to law, and they call the unspeakable act of pleasure a matter of ease. Those who wrong nature think themselves free of adultery, but justice, the avenger, follows upon their audacities; and, drawing down upon themselves an inexorable calamity, they purchase death for a paltry coin. Merchants of these wares, the ill-starred men sail carrying prostitution as freight, as if it were grain, as if it were wine. Others, far more wretched still, buy pleasures as if bread, as if a relish for their meal, taking no thought even of that word of Moses: "You shall not profane your daughter by making her a whore, lest the land play the whore, and the land be filled with lawlessness." These things were prophesied long ago, and the outcome is plain to see; already every land is filled with both fornication and lawlessness.
I admire the ancient lawgivers of the Romans; they hated the effeminate way of life, and judged that a man's carnal union with the female contrary to the law of nature deserved castration, according to the law of justice. For it is not right ever to pluck out the beard — that natural beauty, that noble beauty first appearing on the youth, at the time when he is most graceful. And as he goes further in years, it is anointed and made to shine as a beard, the very place upon which the prophetic ointment came down when Aaron was honored. It befits the man who is rightly trained, in whom peace has taken up its dwelling, to keep peace also with his own hairs. What, then, would the women not undertake — those who rush headlong into wantonness — daring such things as they preen themselves before their mirrors for men? Or rather, these ought not to be called men at all, but batali and gynnides, whose voices are broken and effeminate and whose dress is made soft by touch and by dye. Such men are plainly exposed in their manner by outward things — by their wrap, their footwear, their bearing, their gait, their haircut, their look. "By his look a man is made known," the Scripture states, "and when one meets him, his character is discerned; his clothing, the way he walks, and how he laughs betray what he is." For those who are most at war with hairs elsewhere on the body cultivate only those on the head, all but binding up their locks in hairnets like women. Now lions indeed take pride in their shagginess, but they arm themselves for battle with their mane; boars too glory in their crest, but hunters fear them for the bristling of their hair; woolly sheep are laden down with their fleeces, but even for these the loving Father multiplied their hairs for your service, O man, having taught the shearing of their fleeces. And among the nations, the Celts and the Scythians wear long hair, but they do not adorn it; there is something fearsome in the barbarian's fine head of hair, and its fair color threatens war — the color is somehow akin to blood. Both these barbarian peoples have hated luxury; the German will show clear witnesses in the Rhine, the Scythian in his wagon. Yet the Scythian sometimes even makes light of his wagon (though its size seems wealth to the barbarian), and, abandoning luxury, lives a frugal life; taking the horse, a home sufficient unto itself and lighter-going than the wagon, the Scythian mounts and is carried wherever he wishes; and when he is faint with hunger, he asks the horse for food, and it offers its veins, and the one possession he has, he supplies its blood to its master, and for the nomad the horse becomes both vehicle and food. Of the Arabians too — another nomadic people — the fighting men ride camels; these men sit upon the camels even while they are pregnant; and the camels graze and run at the same time, bearing their masters, and they carry their household along with them. And if drink should fail these barbarians, they milk the camels, and when even this nourishment is exhausted, they do not spare even the blood — in the manner, it is said, of wolves gone rabid. But the camels, gentler than the barbarians, bear no grudge though wronged, but boldly run through the desert, both carrying and nourishing their masters at once. Perish, then, those beasts of prey whose food is blood; for it is not lawful for men even to touch blood, men whose body is nothing but flesh cultivated by blood. Human blood has partaken of reason and shares in grace along with the spirit, and even if someone wrongs it, it will not go unnoticed. It is even permitted to blood, though stripped bare of bodily form, to speak to the Lord. I accept the plainness of the barbarians; loving a frugal way of life, the barbarians have abandoned luxury. Such men the Lord calls us to be — stripped bare of vulgar bad taste, stripped bare of vainglory, torn away from sins, carrying only the tree of life, holding fast only to salvation.
← All of Clement of Alexandria: Exhortation, Instructor & Miscellanies