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

Translated by Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson.

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Page 50

Does he not seem to you to paraphrase that text, "At the presence of the Lord the earth trembles?" [3167] In addition to these, the most prophetic Apollo is compelled--thus testifying to the glory of God--to say of Athene, when the Medes made war against Greece, that she besought and supplicated Zeus for Attica. The oracle is as follows:--

"Pallas cannot Olympian Zeus propitiate,

Although with many words and sage advice she prays;

But he will give to the devouring fire many temples of the immortals,

Who now stand shaking with terror, and bathed in sweat;" [3168]

and so forth.

Thearidas, in his book On Nature, writes: "There was then one really true beginning [first principle] of all that exist"--one. For that Being in the beginning is one and alone."

"Nor is there any other except the Great King,"

says Orpheus. In accordance with whom, the comic poet Diphilus says very sententiously, [3169] the

"Father of all,

To Him alone incessant reverence pay,

The inventor and the author of such blessings."

[3167] Ps. lxviii. 8. [Comp. Coleridge's Hymn in Chamounix.]

[3168] This Pythian oracle is given by Herodotus, and is quoted also by Eusebius and Theodoret.

[3169] gnomikotata. Eusebius reads geniikotaton, agreeing with patera.

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