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

Translated by Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson.

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Page 74

It was a clever remark of Antiphon, who (when one regarded it as an ill omen that the sow had eaten her pigs), on seeing her emaciated through the niggardliness of the person that kept her, said, Congratulate yourself on the omen that, being so hungry, she did not eat your own children.

"And what wonder is it," says Bion, "if the mouse, finding nothing to eat, gnaws the bag?" For it were wonderful if (as Arcesilaus argued in fun) "the bag had eaten the mouse."

Diogenes accordingly remarked well to one who wondered at finding a serpent coiled round a pestle: "Don't wonder; for it would have been more surprising if you had seen the pestle coiled round the serpent, and the serpent straight."

For the irrational creatures must run, and scamper, and fight, and breed, and die; and these things being natural to them, can never be unnatural to us.

"And many birds beneath the sunbeams walk."

And the comic poet Philemon treats such points in comedy:--

"When I see one who watches who has sneezed,

Or who has spoke; or looking, who goes on,

I straightway in the market sell him off.

Each one of us walks, talks, and sneezes too,

For his own self, not for the citizens:

According to their nature things turn out."

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