勸勉希臘人 第 1 章 第 1/7 段

CLEMENT THE STROMATIST: EXHORTATION TO THE GREEKS. Amphion of Thebes and Arion of Methymna were both singers, and both belong to legend (and this song is still sung even now in the chorus of the Greeks); by the art of music the one lured a fish, and the other walled in Thebes.

And yet another, a Thracian sage (this too is a Greek legend), tamed the wild beasts by his bare song, and even transplanted trees, the oaks, by his music.

I could tell you yet another legend and singer akin to these: Eunomus the Locrian and the Pythian cicada.

A Greek festival was being held at Pytho over a dead serpent, while Eunomus sang the dirge for the reptile.

Whether the song was a hymn or a lament for the snake, I cannot say.

There was a contest, and Eunomus was playing the cithara in the heat of the day, at the hour when the cicadas were singing under the leaves up in the mountains, warmed by the sun.

They were singing, you see, not to the dead serpent, the Pythian one, but to the all-wise God an autonomous song, better than the laws of Eunomus.

A cicada flies onto the lyre's frame;

it began to chirp on the instrument as though on a branch;

and the singer, attuning himself to the cicada's song, supplied the missing string.

So it is not by Eunomus's song that the cicada is drawn, as the legend would have it—the legend that set up Eunomus in bronze at Pytho with his very cithara, together with the Locrian's fellow contestant;

the cicada flies of its own accord, and sings of its own accord.

But the Greeks thought it had become a contestant in music.

How then have you come to believe empty legends, supposing that living creatures are charmed by music? But Truth's bright countenance alone, it seems, appears to you to be counterfeit, and has fallen under the eyes of unbelief.

And so Cithaeron and Helicon and the mountains of the Odrysians and the Thracians' shrines of initiation—the mysteries of error—have been deified and hymned.

As for me, even if these are but legends, I am indignant at so many calamities dramatized in tragedy;

but for you the very records of evils have become dramas, and the actors of those dramas a spectacle for your delight.

But come, let us shut up the dramas and the poets who play the Lenaean reveler—now utterly drunk—crowning them somewhere with ivy as they rave wildly in Bacchic rite, together with the satyrs themselves and the maddened troop, along with the rest of the chorus of demons, let us confine them in aged Helicon and Cithaeron; and let us bring down from above, out of the heavens, Truth together with most radiant Wisdom, to the holy mountain of God and the holy prophetic chorus.

And let her, shining out as a light most far-seen, illumine on every side those who are wallowing in darkness, and deliver mankind from error, stretching out her supreme right hand—understanding—unto salvation;

and let those who look up and lift their heads forsake Helicon and Cithaeron, and dwell in Zion;

for out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem—the heavenly Word, the true champion crowned in the theater of the whole world.

And this my Eunomus sings, not the air of Terpander nor of Cepion, nor indeed the Phrygian or Lydian or Dorian mode, but the eternal melody of the new harmony, that which bears the name of God, the new song, the Levitical—soothing of grief, free of wrath, bringing forgetfulness of all evils;

a sweet and true medicine of persuasion is blended into the song.

Being possessed by demons unto destruction, celebrating outrages, deifying griefs, they were the first to lead men by the hand to the idols—yes, indeed, to stones and wood, that is, to images and shadow-paintings—and to build up the awkwardness of their custom, having yoked under utter slavery, by songs and incantations, that truly noble freedom of those who dwell as citizens under heaven.

But not such is my singer, nor has he come to dissolve before long the bitter slavery of the tyrannizing demons; rather, transferring us to the gentle and benevolent yoke of true godliness, he calls us back again to heaven, us who had been cast down to earth.

He alone, of all who ever were, tamed the most intractable beasts—men: the flighty ones as birds, the deceivers as reptiles, the hot-tempered as lions, the pleasure-lovers as swine, the rapacious as wolves.

And the senseless are stones and wood;

indeed, a man baptized in ignorance is more insensible than stones.

Let the prophetic voice come forward as a witness for us, in concord with truth, pitying those worn down in ignorance and folly;

for God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham.

He, taking pity on the great ignorance and hardness of heart of those petrified against the truth, raised up out of those stones—out of the nations who had put their faith in stones—a seed of godliness sensible of virtue.

Again, then, He has somewhere called venomous and treacherous hypocrites who set ambushes for righteousness a brood of vipers;

but even of these snakes, if any willingly repent and follow the Word, he becomes a man of God.

And He allegorically calls others wolves clothed in sheep's fleeces, hinting at the rapacious in human form.

And all these most savage beasts, then, and such stones, the heavenly song itself transformed into gentle men.

For we too were once—yes, we too were once—foolish, disobedient, deceived, enslaved to pleasures and manifold lusts, passing our lives in malice and envy, hateful, hating one another, as the apostolic writing says;

but when the kindness and benevolence of God our Savior appeared, not by works done in righteousness which we ourselves had done, but according to His mercy He saved us.

Behold how great the strength of the new song!

It has made men out of stones, and men out of beasts.

And those otherwise dead, who had no share in the life that truly is, became merely listeners of the song, and came back to life.

This same Word, too, set the whole universe in tuneful order, and strained the discord of the elements into the array of harmony, that thus the entire cosmos might become for Him a harmony.

And He let the sea loose at liberty, yet hindered it from treading upon the land; and the land, in turn, that drifts He made firm, and fixed it as a boundary of the sea;

yea, indeed, He softened the onrush of fire with air, as though blending Dorian harmony with Lydian;

and He tamed the harsh coldness of the air by interweaving fire with it, thus blending tunefully these lowest notes of the universe.

And so this pure song, the support of the universe and the harmony of all things, stretched from the center to the extremes and from the heights to the center, brought this whole into accord—not according to Thracian music, like that of Jubal, but according to the ancestral will of God, which David emulated.

But He who is of David and before him, the Word of God, disdaining lyre and cithara, those lifeless instruments, and having attuned by the Holy Spirit this cosmos and indeed also the little cosmos, man—both his soul and his body—makes music to God through the many-voiced instrument, and sings in accompaniment to the instrument, namely man.

"...so that you may breathe in," He says, "and may contain the Lord."

Yes indeed, David the king, the cithara-player, whom we mentioned a little before, was exhorting toward the truth and turning men away from idols; far indeed was he from hymning the demons, who were driven away by the true music that came from him—the music by which, when Saul was demon-possessed, that man healed him merely by singing.

A beautiful living instrument the Lord wrought in man, after His own image;

and assuredly He Himself too is the all-harmonious instrument of God, tuneful and holy, the supramundane Wisdom, the heavenly Word.

What, then, does this instrument, the Word of God, the Lord, and the new song will? To open the eyes of the blind and to unstop the ears of the deaf, and to lead by the hand those lame of foot or wandering into righteousness, to reveal God to senseless men, to make an end of corruption, to conquer death, to reconcile disobedient sons to the Father.

Benevolent is the instrument of God!

The Lord has mercy, instructs, exhorts, admonishes, saves, guards, and as the reward of our learning promises us out of His abundance the kingdom of heaven, enjoying of us this one thing only—that we are saved.

For evil feeds upon the destruction of men, but truth, like the bee that injures none of the things that are, rejoices over the salvation of men alone.

You have, then, the promise; you have the benevolence.

And do not so suppose my saving song to be new in the sense that a vessel or a house is new;

for it was before the morning star, and in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

Error is old, but truth appears new.

Whether, then, mythical she-goats teach that the Phrygians are ancient, or again the poets who record the Arcadians as pre-lunar, or yet again the Egyptians who dream that this land was the first to bring forth both gods and men—

but not one even of these was before this cosmos; rather, before the foundation of the cosmos were we, who for the necessity of our coming to be in it were begotten beforehand to God—we, the rational creatures of the Word of God, on whose account we lay claim to antiquity, because in the beginning was the Word. But that the Word was from above, the divine beginning of all things, He both was and is;

but that now there has received a name—the name long since consecrated, worthy of power—the Christ: He has been named by me "a new song."

The Word, therefore, the Christ, is the cause both of our being of old (for He was in God) and of our well-being (for now He has appeared to men)—this very Word, who alone is both, God and man, the cause to us of all good things;

from whom, being thoroughly taught how to live well, we are sent forward unto eternal life.

For according to that divinely inspired apostle of the Lord, the saving grace of God has appeared to all men, instructing us, that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly and righteously and godly in the present age, awaiting the blessed hope and appearing of the glory of the great God and our Savior Jesus Christ. This is the new song, the appearing that now has shone forth among us of the Word who was in the beginning and pre-existed;

the pre-existent Savior has appeared of late; He who is in Him who Is has appeared, because the Word was with God, the teacher has appeared; the Word by whom all things were created has appeared;

and having in the beginning, together with our fashioning, granted life as Creator, He taught us, when He appeared as teacher, how to live well, that afterward, as God, He might bestow life everlasting.

And He did not now for the first time take pity on us in our error, but from above, from the beginning; yet now, when we were already perishing, He appeared and saved us through and through.

For the wicked, creeping beast, working its sorcery, still even now enslaves and torments men—as it seems to me, punishing them barbarously, men who are said to be bound together with dead bodies, until they rot away together with them;

and having bound them fast to images and certain such idols by the wretched bond of superstition, this very thing that is spoken of, he buried them, alive, with himself, until they too perish together.

For which reason (since the deceiver is one—he who of old brought down Eve, and now already the rest of mankind as well, into death), one likewise is He who is our succor and helper, the Lord, foretelling from the beginning prophetically, and now already calling us plainly unto salvation.

Let us flee, then, persuaded by the apostolic charge, the ruler of the authority of the air, of the spirit that now works in the sons of disobedience, and let us run to the Savior, the Lord, who both now and ever exhorted us unto salvation—through wonders and signs in Egypt, in the wilderness both through the bush and through the cloud that followed by His benevolent grace as a handmaid for the Hebrews.

By this fear, indeed, He exhorted the hard-hearted;

but already through all-wise Moses and truth-loving Isaiah and the whole prophetic chorus, He turns more rationally toward the Word those who possess ears.

And there is a place where He reproaches, and another where He even threatens;

and some of mankind He even bewails;

and to others He sings, just as a good physician of ailing bodies treats some with poultices, smooths down others, douches others, divides others even with the knife, cauterizes still others, and there is a case where he even amputates, if by any means it be possible for the man to be made whole, even at the cost of a part or a limb.

Many-voiced indeed is the Savior, and of many turns, for the salvation of men;

by threatening He admonishes, by reproaching He turns them about, by lamenting He shows mercy, by playing music He comforts; through the bush He speaks (those men needed signs and wonders), and by the fire He terrifies men, kindling the flame out of the pillar, a token at once of grace and of fear:

if you obey, the light; if you disobey, the fire.

And since flesh is more honorable than pillar and bush, the prophets after those things speak forth—the Lord Himself speaking in Isaiah, He Himself in Elijah, He Himself in the mouth of the prophets;

but you—if you do not believe the prophets, and take both the men and the fire to be legend—the Lord Himself shall speak to you, He who, being in the form of God, counted it not a thing to be grasped to be equal with God;

but He emptied Himself, the compassionate God, longing to save man;

and now the Word Himself plainly speaks to you, shaming your unbelief—yes, I say, the Word of God, who became man, that you too might learn from a man how, after all, a man may become God.

Is it not, then, absurd, my friends, that God should always be exhorting us to virtue, while we shrink back from the benefit and put off our salvation? For does not John also call us to salvation, and become wholly a voice of exhortation? Let us, then, inquire of him:

"Who are you, and from where, among men?" Elijah, he will not say; the Christ, he will deny being;

but he will confess himself to be a voice crying in the wilderness.

Who, then, is John? To take it figuratively, let it be permitted to say: the exhorting voice of the Word, crying in the wilderness.

What do you cry, O voice? Tell us also. "Make straight the ways of the Lord."

John is a forerunner, and the voice is the forerunner of the Word—a voice of exhortation, preparing beforehand unto salvation, a voice exhorting unto the inheritance of heaven;

through which the barren and desolate woman is no longer childless.

This childbearing was foretold to me by an angel's voice;

that voice too was a forerunner of the Lord, bringing good news to a barren woman, as John did to the wilderness.

Through this voice of the Word, therefore, the barren woman is blessed with fair children, and the wilderness bears fruit;

the two forerunning voices of the Lord—of the angel and of John—signify to me the salvation laid up in store, so that, this Word having appeared, we may carry off the fruit of fair offspring, life everlasting.

At any rate, the Scripture, bringing both voices into one, makes the whole matter clear:

"Let her break forth into a cry, she who does not travail, for more are the children of the desolate than of her who has a husband." To us an angel brought good news, John exhorted us to discern the husbandman, to seek the husband.

For one and the same is this man—the husband of the barren woman, the husbandman of the wilderness—who filled with divine power both the barren woman and the wilderness.

For since the children of the noble woman were many, while the Hebrew woman, of old prolific, was childless through disobedience, the barren woman receives the husband and the wilderness the husbandman;

then the one becomes mother of fruits, the other of believers, but both are mothers through the Word;

while for the unbelievers, even still now, there remain both the barren woman and the wilderness.

John, the herald of the Word, in some such way exhorted men to become ready for the coming of God the Christ; and this was what the silence of Zacharias hinted at, awaiting the fruit that is forerunner of the Christ, that the light of truth, the Word, might loose the mystical silence of the prophetic riddles, becoming the gospel.

But you, if you long to see God as He truly is, partake of purifications befitting God—not of laurel leaves and certain fillets adorned with wool and purple, but, having bound on righteousness and put round about you the leaves of self-control, seek diligently after Christ;

"for I am the door," He says somewhere;

which it is necessary for those who wish to understand God to learn thoroughly, that He may throw open for us all at once the gates of the heavens;

for the gates of the Word are rational, opened by the key of faith;

"no one has known God except the Son, and he to whom the Son may reveal Him." And I well know that He who opens the door, which was hitherto shut, afterward reveals the things within, and shows what it was not even possible to know before, except for those who have journeyed through Christ, through whom alone God is beheld.

Do not, then, busy yourselves with godless sanctuaries, nor with the mouths of pits full of marvel-mongering, nor with the Thesprotian cauldron, nor the Cirrhaean tripod, nor the Dodonaean bronze;

and leave the aged oak honored amid desert sands, and the oracle there, withered along with the very oak itself, to legends grown old.

Silent, at any rate, is the spring of Castalia, and the other spring at Colophon, and likewise the other prophetic streams have died; and indeed, though late, yet at last empty of their vanity they have been refuted, flowing away together with their own legends.

Recount to us also, of the rest of the divination—or rather the lunacy—the useless oracular shrines: the Clarian, the Pythian, the Didymaean, that of Amphiaraus, the Apollo, that of Amphilochus; and, if you wish, summon also the prodigy-watchers and the bird-augurs and the interpreters of dreams along with them; and set up together beside the Pythian, bringing the flour-diviners and the barley-diviners, and those who are still honored among the many, the belly-prophets;

yes indeed, let the sanctuaries of the Egyptians and the necromancies of the Etruscans be handed over to darkness.

These are truly the sophistries of faithless men and the gaming-houses of unmixed error;

fellow-travelers of this sorcery are the she-goats trained for divination, and the ravens taught by men to give oracles to men.

But what if I should recount to you the mysteries? I will not dance them out, as they say Alcibiades did, but I will lay bare full well, in accordance with the word of truth, the sorcery concealed in them, and these very gods of yours, whose rites are mystic, I will wheel round, as upon the stage of life, before the spectators of truth.

The Bacchae celebrate the raving Dionysus with the eating of raw flesh, conducting the sacred frenzy, and they perform the distribution of the flesh of the slaughtered, crowned with serpents, shrieking out "Euan!"—that Eua through whom error came in our train;

and the token of the Bacchic rites is a consecrated serpent.

Indeed, by the rough breathing the word is interpreted "hua," the female serpent.

Deo and Kore (Demeter and Persephone) have already become a mystic drama, and Eleusis with its torches celebrates their wandering, their rape, and their grief.

And it seems to me that one ought to derive the etymology of the orgia (rites) and the mysteria (mysteries): the former from the wrath (orge) of Deo which arose against Zeus, the latter from the pollution (mysos) that befell concerning Dionysus;

but even if from a certain Attic Myus, whom Apollodorus says perished in a hunt, there is no grudge:

your mysteries have been glorified by honor paid at a tomb.

It is possible for you also, in another way, to understand the "mysteries" as "myth-stories" (mythēria), by the corresponding interchange of the letters;

for they hunt—if any others do—then assuredly these myths of this kind also hunt the most barbarous of the Thracians, the most senseless of the Phrygians, the superstitious among the Greeks.

May he perish, then, who first began this deception among men—whether Dardanus, who instituted the mysteries of the Mother of the gods, or Eetion, who established the rites and initiations of the Samothracians, or that Phrygian Midas, who, having learned from Odrysus, then handed on to his subjects the artful deception.

For the Cypriot islander Cinyras could never persuade me—he who dared to hand over from night into day the lustful rites concerning Aphrodite, ambitious to deify a harlot of his own city.

Others say that Melampus the son of Amythaon brought over from Egypt to Hellas the festivals of Deo, the grief that is hymned.

These men I, for my part, would call the originators of evil, fathers of godless myths and of deadly superstition, who planted in human life the mysteries as a seed of vice and corruption.

But now—for indeed it is time—I will expose your very rites, full of deception and marvel-mongering.

And if you have been initiated, you will laugh all the more at these myths of yours that are honored.

I speak openly of things hidden, not being ashamed to tell what you are not ashamed to worship.

The foam-born and Cyprus-born goddess, dear to Cinyras (I mean Aphrodite, the genital-loving one, because she sprang from the genitals—those genitals of Uranus that were cut off, the lustful ones, which after the severance were tossed by the wave)—how worthy a fruit of lewd members Aphrodite proves to be: in the rites of this sea-born pleasure, a lump of salt and a phallus, as a token of her birth, is handed to those being initiated into the art of adultery;

and those being initiated bring her coin, as lovers do to a courtesan.

The mysteries of Deo, and the amorous embraces of Zeus with his mother Demeter, and the wrath (I do not know what else to call her henceforth, mother or wife) of Deo—on whose account she is said to have been called Brimo—and supplications to Zeus, and the draught of gall, and the tearings-out of hearts, and unspeakable obscenities:

these same things the Phrygians perform to Attis and Cybele and the Corybantes.

And they have spread the tale that Zeus, having torn off the testicles of a ram, brought them and cast them into the bosom of Deo, paying a false penalty for his violent embrace, as though he had castrated himself.

The symbols of this initiation, set out from my abundance of evidence, I know will move you to laughter—though, because of the refutations, you are in no mood to laugh:

"I crept in under the bridal chamber." Are these symbols not an outrage? Are these mysteries not a mockery? And what if I should add the rest as well? Demeter conceives, Kore is reared up, and then this same Zeus who begot her unites again with Pherephatta, his own daughter, after the mother Deo, forgetful of his former pollution—Zeus, the father and the corrupter of the maiden—and he unites with her having become a serpent, he who was thus exposed.

At any rate, the token for the initiates of the Sabazian mysteries is "the god through the bosom";

and this is a serpent, drawn through the bosom of those being initiated—a proof of the incontinence of Zeus.

Pherephatta too conceives a bull-shaped child;

indeed, some idol-mongering poet says:

"a herdsman, the goad"—calling, I think, the herdsman's goad the fennel-stalk, which the Bacchae wreathe round.

Do you wish me to recount to you also the flower-gatherings of Pherephatta, and the basket, and the rape by Aïdoneus (Hades), and the cleft of the earth, and the swine of Eubuleus that were swallowed up together with the goddesses—for which reason, in the festival of the Thesmophoria, they cast piglets into the chasms?

For the mysteries of Dionysus are utterly inhuman;

while he was still a child, the Curetes dancing round him in armed motion, and the Titans craftily stealing in, having deceived him with childish toys—these Titans tore him to pieces while he was yet an infant, as Orpheus the Thracian, the poet of the Rite, says:

"a cone and a bull-roarer and limb-bending playthings, and fair golden apples from the clear-voiced Hesperides."

And the worthless symbols of this rite of yours it is not worthless to set forth for your condemnation:

a knucklebone, a ball, a top, apples, a bull-roarer, a mirror, a tuft of wool.

Athena, then, having made off with the heart of Dionysus, was named Pallas from the "palpitating" (pallein) of the heart;

but the Titans, who also tore him apart, setting a certain cauldron upon a tripod and casting in the limbs of Dionysus, first boiled them;

"then, having pierced them through, they held them over Hephaestus's fire." But Zeus, appearing later (if he was a god, perhaps because he partook of the savor of the roasting flesh, whose prerogative your gods confess to have obtained), assails the Titans with a thunderbolt, and entrusts the limbs of Dionysus to his son Apollo to bury.

And he—for he did not disobey Zeus—carrying the mangled corpse, deposits it on Parnassus.

And if you wish to behold also the rites of the Corybantes: these, having slain their third brother, covered the head of the corpse with a purple cloth, and, having crowned it, buried it, carrying it on a bronze shield up under the foothills of Olympus (and these are the mysteries, to put it briefly—murders and burials).

And the priests of these rites, whom those whose business it is to name them call Anactotelests, add a fresh marvel to the calamity, forbidding that whole-rooted parsley be set upon the table;

for they suppose, you see, that the parsley sprang up from the blood that flowed from the Corybant.

Just as, indeed, the women who celebrate the Thesmophoria take care to eat the seeds of the pomegranate;

for they believe that the pomegranates have sprouted up from the drops of the blood of Dionysus that fell to the ground.

And, calling the Corybantes Cabiri, they proclaim a Cabiric initiation;

for these two fratricides, having taken up the chest in which the genitals of Dionysus lay, brought it down to Tyrrhenia, traders in a famous cargo;

and there they tarried, being fugitives, setting before the Tyrrhenians, as the highly honored teaching of piety, the worship of genitals and a chest.

For which reason, not unfittingly, some wish Dionysus to be called Attis, as being deprived of his genitals.

And what wonder is it if the barbarous Tyrrhenians are initiated in such shameful sufferings, when among the Athenians and the rest of Hellas—I am ashamed even to say it—the mythology concerning Deo is full of shame? For Deo, wandering in search of her daughter Kore around Eleusis (this is a place in Attica), grows weary and sits down at a well in her grief.

This is forbidden to the initiates even now, lest those who have been initiated should seem to imitate [the grieving goddess].

Now at that time the earth-born inhabited Eleusis;

their names were Baubo and Dysaules and Triptolemus, and further Eumolpus and Eubuleus;

from whom flourished in Athens the family of the Eumolpids and that of the Heralds (Kerykes), namely this hierophantic line.

And so (for I will not refrain from speaking it) Baubo, having received Deo as a guest, offers her a draught of barley-drink (kykeon);

and when she refused to take it and was unwilling to drink (for she was in mourning), Baubo, becoming exceedingly aggrieved, as though slighted, pulls up her garments and displays her private parts to the goddess;

and Deo is delighted at the sight, and at last barely accepts the drink, being pleased at the spectacle.

These are the secret mysteries of the Athenians.

These very things, indeed, Orpheus also records.

And I will set before you the very verses of Orpheus, that you may have the mystagogue himself as witness of this shamelessness:

"So saying, she drew up her robes, and displayed all the unseemly fashion of her body;

and the child Iacchus was there, and laughing he tossed her about with his hand beneath the bosom of Baubo;

and the goddess then, when she smiled, smiled in her heart, and received the gleaming vessel in which the kykeon lay."

And here is the watchword of the Eleusinian mysteries:

"I fasted, I drank the kykeon, I took from the chest; having handled it, I put it away into the basket, and from the basket into the chest." Fine spectacles indeed, and fitting for a goddess!

Worthy indeed of night are these rites, and of fire, and of the great-hearted—or rather vain-minded—people of the Erechtheids, and besides them of the rest of the Greeks, for whom there awaits, when they have died, things they do not even expect. To whom, then, does Heraclitus of Ephesus prophesy? To the night-wanderers, the magi, the Bacchants, the maenads, the initiates—to these he threatens the things after death, to these he prophesies the fire;