Clement of Alexandria · a new plain-English translation from the original language
Hence the Egyptian priest in Plato speaks altogether beautifully: "O Solon, Solon," he said, "you Greeks are always children, and there is no old opinion among you handed down through ancient hearing, nor is there any Greek who is an old man." By "old men," I think, he meant those who know the more ancient things, that is, our things, just as conversely he called "young" those who study the newer practices pursued by the Greeks, things that happened yesterday and the day before, yet who report them as if they were old and ancient. He then added a further point, "a teaching hoary with time," using the metaphor in a certain barbarian manner, plain and not finely wrought, since we ourselves employ figures of that kind without artifice; for the candid, at any rate, approach the whole fabric of interpretation directly. And concerning the Greeks he says their self-conceit differs little from that of children — not that one should understand "children's fables" nor even the fables told to children, but he called the fables themselves "children," as belonging to those among the Greeks who fancy themselves wise while seeing only a little way, thereby hinting at the teaching hoary with time, the truth most ancient among the barbarians, against which word he set the word "fable-as-child," refuting the mythical character of the younger peoples' undertaking as having, like children, nothing older about it, and showing thereby that both their myths and their reasonings alike are childish.
Divinely, then, the power that speaks to Hermas by revelation says that the visions and the revelations are given because of the double-minded, those who reason in their hearts whether these things are so or not. In like manner the proofs drawn from a rich store of wide learning strengthen and confirm and lay the foundation of demonstrative arguments, so long as their minds, being still those of the young, are yet unsteady and easily stirred. "A lamp, then, is a good commandment," according to the Scripture, "and the law is the light of the way"; for instruction convicts the paths of life. "Law, sovereign over everyone, over both mortal men and the immortals, rules them all," says Pindar. And I, for my part, understand by these words him who established the law, and I take the saying of Hesiod to have been spoken of the God of all, even though the poet said it only conjecturally and not with full comprehension: "For this law did the son of Cronos appoint for men, that fish and beasts and winged birds should devour one another, since there is no justice among them; but to men he gave justice, which is by far the best."
Whether, then, he means the law given at once with birth, or that given afterward, in either case both the law of nature and the law of instruction come from God, being one law, just as Plato too, in the Statesman, says the lawgiver is one, and in the Laws says the one who will harmonize the arts of music is one, teaching through these that reason has a single source, that God is a single being. Moses too, unmistakably, calls the Lord a covenant, saying, "Behold, I — my covenant is with you"; since he had also spoken of a covenant before — one should not seek it merely in the letter of Scripture. For a covenant is that which God, the cause of all, establishes; and "God" (theos) is said to derive from "placing" (thesis) and "ordering" (taxis), that is, from the arrangement of the universe. And in the Preaching of Peter you may find the Lord addressed as both Law and Word.
But let this, the first of our Stromateis of Gnostic notes according to true philosophy, be brought to a close here.
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