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

Translated by Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson.

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Page 82

Theopompus writes, "For if, by avoiding the present danger, we were to pass the rest of our time in security, to show love of life would not be wonderful. But now, so many fatalities are incident to life, that death in battle seems preferable." And what? Child the sophist having uttered the apophthegm, "Become surety, and mischief is at hand," did not Epicharmus utter the same sentiment in other terms, when he said, "Suretyship is the daughter of mischief, and loss that of suretyship?" [3232] Further, Hippocrates the physician having written, "You must look to time, and locality, and age, and disease," Euripides says in Hexameters: [3233] --

"Those who the healing art would practice well,

Must study people's modes of life, and note

The soil, and the diseases so consider."

Homer again, having written:--

"I say no mortal man can doom escape,"--

Archinus says, "All men are bound to die either sooner or later;" and Demosthenes, "To all men death is the end of life, though one should keep himself shut up in a coop."

And Herodotus, again, having said, in his discourse about Glaucus the Spartan, that the Pythian said, "In the case of the Deity, to say and to do are equivalent," Aristophanes said:--

"For to think and to do are equivalent."

[3232] Grotius's correction has been adopted, enguas de zamia, instead of engua de zamias.

[3233] In the text before In Hexameters we have teresei, which has occasioned much trouble to the critics. Although not entirely satisfactory, yet the most probable is the correction thelousi, as above.

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