Clement of Alexandria · a new plain-English translation from the original language
Of the bath, then (for it was from this point that I turned aside in speaking), there are four reasons for which we resort to it: either for cleanliness, or for warmth, or for health, or, last, for pleasure. Bathing for the sake of pleasure, then, is to be dismissed; for shameless pleasure must be cut off root and branch. Women may properly bathe both for cleanliness and for health, whereas men should bathe for health only. The matter of warmth is superfluous, since it is possible in any case to relieve a body stiffened by cold in other ways. Frequent use of the bath weakens one's powers and relaxes the natural tensions of the body, and often brings on faintness and swooning. For bodies drink, in a manner, like trees — not only through the mouth, but also through the pores that open through the whole body during bathing, as they say. A proof of this: people who are often thirsty, upon stepping into water, have had their thirst relieved. Well then, even if the bath is of benefit for some purpose, one ought not on that account become enslaved to it. The ancients called bathhouses "fullers of men," since faster than is fitting they wear the body threadbare like a cloth, and force it to grow old before its time, stewing it as it were, the flesh being softened by the heat just as iron is softened; hence we need, so to speak, the quenching and tempering of cold water afterward. Nor indeed should one bathe on every occasion, but if a person is either too empty or, again, too full, the bath is to be declined; yes, and a person must reckon with how old the body is and what point in the year it is, since bathing is not advantageous for every person, nor at just any moment, as specialists in such things acknowledge. For us, moderation suffices, which we everywhere invoke as an aid to life; for one ought not to spend so much time at the bath as to need someone to lead one by the hand, nor bathe continually and many times a day as though frequenting the marketplace. Moreover, to be doused by a crowd of household servants is to commit insolence against one's neighbors, since it is people indulging their luxury and unwilling to understand that the bath ought to be held in common, equally, for all who bathe. One ought to wash, above all, the soul with the cleansing word, and the body too, sometimes, because of the grime that gathers upon it — yet sometimes also simply to relieve one's weariness. "Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites," says the Lord, "since you resemble graves coated in whitewash: on the surface a grave looks fair, yet inwardly it holds nothing but a dead man's bones and every kind of impurity." And he says as much again to those same men: "How miserable for you, since you scrub clean the exterior of the cup and the plate, while inside they are crammed with impurity. Scour the interior of the cup first, so that its exterior too may come clean." The best bath of the soul, then, scours away filth and is spiritual, concerning which prophecy expressly says: "The Lord will rinse off the grime covering Israel's sons and her daughters, and will purge the blood out from their midst" — meaning the bloodshed of lawlessness, and the slaying of the prophets. And the word added the manner of this cleansing, saying: "by a spirit of judgment and a spirit of burning." But merely bodily washing of the flesh gets done through water on its own, as frequently occurs out in rural districts lacking any bathhouse.
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