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Translated by Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson.
Clement of Alexandria in Print
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128 Pages
Page 16
"A river of silly words--not a dropping;"
just as in old shoes, when all the rest is worn and is falling to pieces, and the tongue alone remains. The Athenian Solon most excellently enlarges, and writes:--
"Look to the tongue, and to the words of the glozing man,
But you look on no work that has been done;
But each one of you walks in the steps of a fox,
And in all of you is an empty mind."
This, I think, is signified by the utterance of the Saviour, "The foxes have holes, but the Son of man hath not where to lay His head." [1840] For on the believer alone, who is separated entirely from the rest, who by the Scripture are called wild beasts, rests the head of the universe, the kind and gentle Word, "who taketh the wise in their own craftiness. For the Lord knoweth the thoughts of the wise, that they are vain;" [1841] the Scripture calling those the wise (sophous) who are skilled in words and arts, sophists (sophistas). Whence the Greeks also applied the denominative appellation of wise and sophists (sophoi, sophistai) to those who were versed in anything Cratinus accordingly, having in the Archilochii enumerated the poets, said:--
"Such a hive of sophists have ye examined."
And similarly Iophon, the comic poet, in Flute-playing Satyrs, says:--
"For there entered
A band of sophists, all equipped."
Of these and the like, who devote their attention to empty words, the divine Scripture most excellently says, "I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent." [1842]
[1840] Matt. viii. 20; Luke ix. 58.
[1841] Job v. 13; 1 Cor. iii. 19, 20; Ps. xciv. 11.
[1842] Isa. xxix. 14; 1 Cor. i. 19.
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