Clement of Alexandria: STROMATA (MISCELLANIES), Part III, Complete

Translated by Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson.

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Thus also those skilled in the mysteries forbid "to eat the heart;" teaching that we ought not to gnaw and consume the soul by idleness and by vexation, on account of things which happen against one's wishes. Wretched, accordingly, was the man whom Homer also says, wandering alone, "ate his own heart." But again, seeing the Gospel supposes two ways--the apostles, too, similarly with all the prophets--and seeing they call that one "narrow and confined" which is circumscribed according to the commandments and prohibitions, and the opposite one, which leads to perdition, "broad and roomy," open to pleasures and wrath, and say, "Blessed is the man who walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, and standeth not in the way of sinners." [3018] Hence also comes the fable of Prodicus of Ceus about Virtue and Vice. [3019] And Pythagoras shrinks not from prohibiting to walk on the public thoroughfares, enjoining the necessity of not following the sentiments of the many, which are crude and inconsistent. And Aristocritus, in the first book of his Positions against Heracliodorus, mentions a letter to this effect: "Atoeeas king of the Scythians to the people of Byzantium: Do not impair my revenues in case my mares drink your water;" for the Barbarian indicated symbolically that he would make war on them. Likewise also the poet Euphorion introduces Nestor saying,--

"We have not yet wet the Achaean steeds in Simois."

Therefore also the Egyptians place Sphinxes [3020] before their temples, to signify that the doctrine respecting God is enigmatical and obscure; perhaps also that we ought both to love and fear the Divine Being: to love Him as gentle and benign to the pious; to fear Him as inexorably just to the impious; for the sphinx shows the image of a wild beast and of a man together.

[3018] Ps. i. 1.

[3019] [See Paedogogue, ii. 11, supra.]

[3020] [Rawlinson, Herod., ii. 223.]

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