Clement of Alexandria · a new plain-English translation from the original language
For it was not only the Aesopians and Macedonians and Laconians who, as Eratosthenes says in his work On Goods and Evils, endured under torture without flinching, but also Zeno of Elea, when compelled to reveal certain secrets, held out against the tortures, confessing nothing; indeed, when at last he bit off his own tongue, he spat it at the tyrant, whom some call Nearchus and others Demylus. Theodotus the Pythagorean did likewise, and so did Praylus, the acquaintance of Lacydes, as Timotheus of Pergamum says in his work On the Courage of the Philosophers, and Achaicus in his Ethics. Postumus the Roman too, when seized by Peucetion, not only refused to disclose any of the hidden things, but even laid his hand upon the fire and let it melt away like bronze, with a resolve utterly unshaken. As for Anaxarchus, I pass over in silence the man who, while being pounded, cried out at his pounder, "Pound the sack of Anaxarchus" — for you do not pound Anaxarchus himself, however much he is pounded by the tyrant's iron pestles.
Neither, then, does the hope of blessedness nor love toward God chafe against what befalls it, but remains free, even should it fall among the most savage beasts, even should it fall into the all-devouring fire, even should it be put to death by a tyrant's tortures; clinging fast to divine friendship, it ranges above unenslaved, having handed over the body to those who can lay hold only of that. The Getae, a barbarian nation not untouched by philosophy, choose an ambassador each year to send to the hero Zamolxis. Now Zamolxis was one of the acquaintances of Pythagoras.
So the man judged most worthy is slaughtered, to the grief of those who had practiced philosophy but were not chosen, as men rejected from a blessed service. The whole Church, indeed, is full of those who throughout their entire lives have rehearsed for the life-giving death unto Christ — of temperate women no less than of men. For it is possible for the one who lives as a citizen according to our way to practice philosophy even without letters, whether he be barbarian or Greek, slave or old man, child or woman; for temperance is common to all human beings, at least to those who choose it, and it has been agreed among us that the same nature, within each kind, possesses also the same virtue.
The woman, then, is not found to possess one nature with regard to humanity while the man has another, but a shared nature — and therefore a shared virtue as well. And if the virtue proper to a man is, presumably, self-mastery and justice together with whatever traits are reckoned to accompany these, is it right for the man alone to hold virtue, while the woman remains loose and wrongdoing? Yet even to voice such a thing is shameful. Concern for self-mastery, then, and for justice and for the whole of virtue besides, must be shown equally by woman and by man, by the free person no less than the slave, since virtue, sharing one nature, turns out to be a single thing throughout. We do not claim that the female shares the male's nature purely as female; some distinction must surely exist between the two, through which one became female and the other male; conceiving, certainly, and bringing forth offspring belong to the woman precisely as female, not as a human being generally; yet were there no distinction at all between man and woman, both would perform and undergo identical things.
Where they coincide — namely in soul — they will attain to identical virtue; but where they diverge — namely in the particular constitution of the body — they diverge with regard to conceiving offspring and to managing a household. "Understand well," writes the apostle, "Christ is head over every man, and the woman's head is the man; woman did not come from man — man came from woman. Yet in the Lord, woman is not apart from man, nor man apart from woman." Just as we hold that a man must be self-controlled and rule over his own pleasures, so equally we would insist the woman be trained in that same self-mastery, contending against her pleasures likewise; and by this I mean: "Walk according to the Spirit, and you will not carry out what the flesh craves," as the apostolic precept urges; "for what the flesh wants runs counter to the Spirit, and what the Spirit wants runs counter to the flesh." These, then, stand opposed not as evil against good, but as rivals contending toward our good. He continues, in any case, thus:
"...so that you cannot do the things you actually wish." "The deeds produced by flesh are plain to see: sexual immorality, impurity, debauchery, idol-worship, witchcraft, hostility, quarreling, envy, fits of temper, rivalries, splits, factions, jealous grudges, bouts of drunkenness, orgies, and similar things; regarding which I warn you now, just as I warned before, that people who do such things will have no share in God's kingdom. Whereas the Spirit yields love, joy, peace, patience, gentleness, goodness, faithfulness, mildness, self-control." By "flesh," I take it, he intends sinners, just as by "spirit" he intends the upright. And indeed courage, too, must be understood along the lines of cheerful endurance — as in offering the other cheek to one who strikes, and handing over the tunic besides to whoever seizes the cloak — subduing wrath through inner strength. For we do not drill women toward a martial boldness resembling the Amazons, given that we wish even men to remain peaceable.
I myself have heard, moreover, that the Sauromatian women make war no less than men, and other women, the Sacae, who shoot arrows while feigning flight backward, on equal terms with the men. I know too that the women near Iberia perform manly labor and toil, and even when they come to give birth they let nothing of their tasks slacken, but often, in the very midst of the contest of their labors, the woman, having given birth to the child, takes it up and carries it home. Even now female dogs are no less than males both in guarding the house and in hunting and in watching the flocks: "A Cretan hound, Gorgo, ran along the track of the deer." Women, then, must practice philosophy just as men do, even if the males happen to be superior and to carry off the first place in all things — unless indeed they should be enervated by softness.
Education and virtue, then, are necessary for the whole human race, if indeed they are eager for blessedness. And it is not, I think, without reason that Euripides writes in varied ways: at one time, "For every wife is worse than her husband, even should the basest man marry the woman of good repute"; at another, "For every temperate wife is a slave to her husband, but the intemperate one, through folly, surpasses the man who lives with her." "For nothing surpasses in goodness or nobility a household where husband and wife share one purpose in their thinking." The head, accordingly, denotes the governing part. And since the Lord governs as head over the man, while the man in turn heads the woman, the man stands as lord over the woman, being God's image and radiance.
This is why he also writes, in his letter to the Ephesians: "Yielding to each another out of reverence for God; wives to husbands, as though yielding to the Lord, since a husband heads his wife much as Christ heads the assembly, he being the one who rescues its body. Yet just as the assembly yields to Christ, wives too should yield to their husbands in every regard. Husbands, cherish your wives, in the manner Christ cherished the assembly; husbands, then, are bound to cherish their wives as they would their own flesh. Whoever cherishes his wife cherishes himself; no one, after all, has ever despised his own body."
And to the Colossians he writes: "Wives, defer to your husbands, as is proper for those in the Lord. Husbands, cherish your wives and do not turn harsh toward them. Children, listen to your parents in every matter, since this pleases the Lord well. Fathers, do not provoke your children, or they may lose all courage. Slaves, listen in every matter to those who own you by earthly reckoning, not merely when watched, as people out to please others, but with a sincere heart, in fear of the Lord. Whatever task falls to you, throw yourselves into it wholeheartedly, as though working for the Lord rather than for men, aware that the Lord will repay you with the inheritance as your reward; it is Christ the Lord you are serving. Whoever does wrong will be repaid in kind for the wrong done, and favoritism plays no part. Masters, give your slaves what is right and equitable, aware that you likewise answer to a Master above, where distinctions of Greek and Jew, of circumcised and uncircumcised, of barbarian, Scythian, bondsman, and free, no longer hold — Christ is everything, in everyone."
The earthly assembly mirrors the heavenly one, which is precisely why we ask that God's will be accomplished on earth just as it stands accomplished in heaven: "Clothe yourselves, then, with tender mercy, kindness, lowliness, meekness, and patience, tolerating one another and pardoning one another wherever a grievance arises between you; forgive as the Lord forgave you. And beyond all these, put on love, the tie that binds everything together in wholeness. Let Christ's peace govern your hearts — the peace to which you were summoned as one body — and remain grateful." Nothing, certainly, forbids repeating this same scriptural passage over and again, to Marcion's discredit, in the hope that he might yet be won over, once he grasps that a believer owes gratitude to the Creator-God, who summoned us and announced the gospel to us while we were still in the body.
From these passages it is clear to us both what unity through faith is, and who is the perfect one — so that, even against the will of some and though most people resist it, even if punishments hang over the wife from her husband or over the slave from the master, both the household servant and the wife will still practice philosophy. Indeed the free man too, even should death be threatened against him by a tyrant, even should he be dragged into the courts and drawn into the extremest dangers, even should he risk the loss of all his property, will not forsake reverence toward God in the slightest degree; nor will a wife bound to a worthless husband ever lose heart, nor the son should he have a worthless father, nor the household servant should he have a wicked master — but they will hold nobly to virtue; rather, just as it is a fine thing for a man to die for virtue's sake and for freedom's sake and for his own sake, so likewise for a woman also; for this belongs not to the nature of males in particular, but to the nature of the good.
Faithfully, then, both the old man and the young man and the household servant, obeying the commandments, will live, and, if need be, will die — which would amount to being made alive through death. We know, at any rate, that children and household servants and wives have often become the best of people even against the will of their fathers and masters and husbands. Those who intend to live in reverence toward God, then, must be no less eager, whenever some seem to be hindering them, but I think it fitting that they be far more zealous and strive all the more, so that, overcome, they may not fall away from the best and most necessary resolutions. For I do not think there is any comparison to be made between becoming an initiate of the Almighty and choosing the darkness of the demons. For as to the things we do for the sake of others, we would in each case do them while trying to look to those others for whose sake they seem to be done, taking as our measure what is pleasing to them; but as to the things that are our own concern rather than that of others, these we should carry out with equal zeal, whether they seem pleasing to some or not.
If, then, some of the indifferent things have obtained such honor that they are held to be choiceworthy even against the will of some, much more must virtue be reckoned a thing to be fought for, looking not to anything else but to the very fact that it can be nobly accomplished, whether it seems so to some or not. Well, then, does Epicurus too write to Menoeceus: "Let no one, being young, delay to practice philosophy, nor, being old, grow weary of practicing philosophy. For no one is either too young or too old for the health of the soul." And the one who says that the season for philosophy has not yet come, or has already passed, is like one who says that the season for happiness has either not yet arrived or is no longer present. So philosophy must be practiced by both the younger and the older — by the one, so that, growing old, he may be young in good things through gratitude for what has come to pass; by the other, so that he may be simultaneously youthful and aged through having no fear of what lies ahead.
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