Clement of Alexandria, LCL 092
Loeb Classical Library
Number of quotes: 26
Book ID: 140 Page: 5
Section: 2E6
Exhortation to the Greeks - Chpt. IHow in the world is it that you have given credence to worthless legends, imagining brute beasts to be enchanted by music, while the bright face of truth seems alone to strike you as deceptive, and is regarded with unbelieving eyes?
Quote ID: 3013
Time Periods: 23
Book ID: 140 Page: 31
Section: 2D2
Exhortation to the Greeks - Chpt. IIA curse then upon the man who started this deception for mankind, whether it be Dardanus, who introduced the mysteries of the Mother of the Gods;
Quote ID: 3014
Time Periods: 0123
Book ID: 140 Page: 49
Section: 4A
Exhortation to the Greeks - Chpt. II. . . the term atheist has been applied to Euhemerus of Acragas, Nicanor of Cyprus, Diagoras and Hippo of Melos, with that Cyrenian named Theodorus and a good many others besides, men who lived sensible lives and discerned more acutely, I imagine, than the rest of mankind the error connected with these gods. Even if they did not perceive the truth itself, they at least suspected the error; and this suspicion is a living spark of wisdom, and no small one, which grows up like a seed into truth. One of them thus directs the Egyptians: “If you believe they are gods, do not lament them, nor beat the breast; but if you mourn for them, no longer consider these beings to be gods.”{c} Another, having taken hold of a Heracles made from a log of wood- he happened, likely enough, to be cooking something at home- said: “Come, Heracles, now is your time to under-take this thirteenth labour for me, as you did the twelve for Eurystheus, and prepare Diagoras his dish!” Then he put him into the fire like a log.
Quote ID: 3016
Time Periods: 0
Book ID: 140 Page: 69
Section: 4B
Exhortation to the Greeks - Chpt. IIIt would be a long story to relate his varied adulteries and his corruptions of boys. For your gods did not abstain even from boys. For your gods did not abstain even another Pelops, another Chrysippus, another Ganymedes. These are the gods your wives are to worship.
. . .
Let these be they whom your boys are trained to reverence, in order that they may grow to manhood with the gods ever before them as a manifest pattern of fornication!
Quote ID: 3017
Time Periods: 23
Book ID: 140 Page: 79
Section: 5D
Exhortation to the GreeksScour not heaven, but earth. Callimachus the Cretan, in whose land he lies buried, will tell you in his hymns:
for a tomb, O Prince, did the Cretans
Fashion for thee.{b}
Yes, Zeus is dead (take it not to heart), like Leda, like the swan, like the eagle, like the amorous man, like the snake.
They run as follows:
Cretans ever do lie; for a tomb, O Prince, did they fashion
Even for thee; but thou art not dead, for thy life is unending.
Quote ID: 3019
Time Periods: 1
Book ID: 140 Page: 90
Section: 2B2
Exhortation to the Greeks - Chpt. III{a}To understand the point of Clement’s onslaught against the “daemons” it must be remembered that the best Greek teachers of his age, such as Plutarch and Maximus of Tyre, used the doctrine of “secondary divinities” as a means of preserving their own monotheism without altogether breaking away from the popular mythology. According to them, the one Supreme God worked through many ministers, to whom worship could rightly be offered. Clement attacks daemons and gods you worship, and of the demigods too.
Quote ID: 3021
Time Periods: 23
Book ID: 140 Page: 99
Section: 2A3,2E3
Exhortation to the Greeks - Chpt. IIIWe must not then be surprised that, once daemon-worship had somewhere taken a beginning, it became a fountain of insensate wickedness. Then, not being checked, but ever increasing and flowing in full stream, it establishes itself as creator of a multitude of daemons. It offers great public sacrifices; it holds solemn festivals; it sets up statues and builds temples. These temples - for I will not keep silence even about them, but will expose them also - are called by a fair-sounding name, but in reality they are tombs.
In the temple of Athena in the Acropolis at Larissa there is the tomb of Acrisius; and in the Acropolis at Athens the tomb of Cecrops, as Antiochus says in his ninth book of Histories. {a} And what of Erichthonius? Does not he lie in the temple of Athena Polias? And does not Immaradus, the son of Eumolpus and Daeira, lie in the enclosure of the Eleusinium which is under the Acropolis? Are not the daughters of Celeus buried in Eleusis? Why recount to you the Hyperborean women? They are called Hyperoche and Laodice, and they lie in the Artemisium at Delos; this is in the temple precincts of Delian Apollo.
Quote ID: 3022
Time Periods: 23
Book ID: 140 Page: 101
Section: 2A3,2E3
Exhortation to the Greeks - Chpt. III.40But really, if I were to go through all the tombs held sacred in your eyes,
The whole of time would not suffice my need.{b}
As for you, unless a touch of shame steals over you for these audacities, then you are going about utterly dead, like the dead in whom you have put your trust.
Quote ID: 3023
Time Periods: 2
Book ID: 140 Page: 111
Section: 2C
Exhortation to the Greeks - Chpt. IVAnother fresh divinity was created in Egypt,- and very nearly among Greeks too, - when the Roman king {b} solemnly elevated to the rank of god his favourite whose beauty was unequalled. He consecrated Antinous in the same way that Zeus consecrated Ganymedes. For lust is not easily restrained, when it has no fear; and today men observe the sacred nights of Antinous, which were really shameful, as the lover who kept them with him well knew. Why, I ask, do you reckon as a god one who is honoured by fornication?
Quote ID: 3025
Time Periods: 2
Book ID: 140 Page: 155
Section: 2B
Exhortation to the Greeks - Chpt. IVCertainly Menander seems to me to be in error where he says,
O Sun, thee must we worship, first of gods,
Through whom our eyes can see the other gods.
Quote ID: 3026
Time Periods: 2
Book ID: 140 Page: 169
Section: 2D2
Exhortation to the GreeksLet these shame you into salvation. For instance, the comic poet Menander, in his play The Charioteer, says:
No god for me is he who walks the streets
With some old dame, and into houses steals
Upon the sacred tray.{a}
For this is what the priests of Cybele{b} do. It was a proper answer, then, that Antisthenes used to give them when they asked alms of him: “I do not support the mother of the gods; that is the gods’ business.”{c} Again, the same writer of comedy, in his play The Priestess, being angry with prevailing custom, tries to expose the godless folly of idolatry by uttering these words of wisdom:
For if a man
By cymbals brings the God where’er he will,
Then is the man more powerful than God.
But these are shameless means of livelihood
Devised by men.{d}
Quote ID: 3027
Time Periods: 0123
Book ID: 140 Page: 173
Section: 4B
Exhortation to the Greeks - Chpt. VIIAnd again, in this play the Ion, he displays the gods to the spectators without any reserve{b}:
How is it right that ye who made men’s laws
Yourselves are authors of unrighteous deeds?
But if – I say it, though it shall not be –
Ye pay men penalties for violent rapes,
Phoebus, Poseidon, Zeus the king of heaven,
The price of crime shall strip your temples bare.{e}
Quote ID: 3028
Time Periods: 5
Book ID: 140 Page: 219
Section: 3A4C
Till the ground, we say, if you are a husbandman; but recognize God in your husbandry. Sail the sea, you who love sea-faring; but ever call on the heavenly pilot. Were you a soldier on campaign when the knowledge of God laid hold of you? Then listen to the commander who signals righteousness.Original source:
Clement of Alexandria, “The Rich Man’s Salvation”, 18.
Quote ID: 8767
Time Periods: 2
Book ID: 140 Page: 229
Section: 3A2,3A4C
Become wise and yet harmless….
Quote ID: 8768
Time Periods: 2
Book ID: 140 Page: 233
Section: 3A2A,3A4C
Let the Athenian, then, follow the laws of Solon, the Argive those of Phoroneus, and the Spartan those of Lycurgus, but if you record yourself among God’s people, then heaven is your fatherland and God your lawgiver. And what are His Laws? “Thou shalt not kill; thou shalt not commit adultery; thou shalt not corrupt a boy….
Quote ID: 8769
Time Periods: 2
Book ID: 140 Page: 241
Section: 4A
Exhortation to the Greeks - Chpt. XIAnd it is only necessary to live according to piety, in order to obtain eternal life; whereas philosophy, as the elders say, is a lengthy deliberation, that pursues wisdom with a never-ending love.{a}
Quote ID: 3031
Time Periods: 2
Book ID: 140 Page: 251
Section: 1A
Exhortation to the Greeks - Chpt. XIILet us then shun custom; let us shun it as some dangerous headland, or threatening Charybdis, or the Sirens of legend. Custom strangles man; it turns him away from truth; it leads him away from life; it is a snare, an abyss, a pit, a devouring evil.
Quote ID: 3032
Time Periods: 2
Book ID: 140 Page: 271
Section: 4B
The Rich Man’s Salvation1. Men who offer laudatory speeches as presents to the rich may rightly be classed, in my opinion, not only as flatterers and servile, since in the hope of a large return they make a show of granting favours that are really no favours, but also as impious and insidious.
. . .
They are insidious, because, although mere abundance is by itself quite enough to puff up the souls of its possessors, and to corrupt them, and to turn them aside from the way by which salvation can be reached, these men bring fresh delusion to the minds of the rich by exciting them with the pleasure that come from their immoderate praises, and by rendering them contemptuous of absolutely everything in the world except the wealth which is the cause of their being admired. In the words of the proverb, they carry fire to fire,{b} when they shower pride upon pride, and heap on wealth, heavy by its own nature, the heavier burden of arrogance.
Quote ID: 3033
Time Periods: 23
Book ID: 140 Page: 273
Section: 2D3B
The Rich Man’s SalvationFor only he who has reached the truth and is distinguished in good works shall carry off the prize of eternal life. But prayer requires a soul that runs its course strong and persevering until the last day of life, and the Christian citizenship requires a disposition that is good and steadfast and that strains to fulfil {b} all the Saviour’s commandments.
Quote ID: 3034
Time Periods: 2
Book ID: 140 Page: 291
Section: 2E2
The Rich Man’s Salvation“Sell what belongs to thee.”{b} And what is this? It is not what some hastily take it to be, a command to fling away the substance that belongs to him and to part with his riches, but to banish from the soul its opinions about riches, its attachment to them, its excessive desire, its morbid excitement over them, its anxious cares, the thorns of our earthly existence with choke the seed of the true life.{a} For it is no great or enviable thing to be simply without riches, apart from the purpose of obtaining life. Why, if this were so, those men who have nothing at all, but are destitute and beg for their daily bread, who lie along the roads in abject poverty, would, though “ignorant” of God and “God’s righteousness,”{b} be most blessed and beloved of God and the only possessors of eternal life, by the sole fact of their being utterly without ways and means of livelihood and in want of the smallest necessities. Nor again is it a new thing to renounce wealth and give it freely to the poor, or to one’s fatherland, which many have done before the Saviour’s coming, some to obtain leisure for letters and for dead wisdom, others for empty fame and vainglory- such men as Anaxagoras, Democritus and Crates.{c}
Quote ID: 3036
Time Periods: 023
Book ID: 140 Page: 295
Section: 2E2
The Rich Man’s SalvationThe men of former days, indeed, in their contempt for outward things, parted with and sacrificed their possessions, but as for the passions of the soul, I think they even intensified them. For they became supercilious, boastful, conceited and disdainful of the rest of mankind, as if they themselves had wrought something superhuman.
Quote ID: 3038
Time Periods: 345
Book ID: 140 Page: 297
Section: 2E2
The Rich Man’s SalvationHow could we feed the hungry and give drink to the thirsty, cover the naked and entertain the homeless, with regard to which deeds He threatens fire and outer darkness to those who have not done them,{e} if each of us were himself already in want of all these things? But further, the lord Himself is a guest with Zacchaeus{d} and Levi and Matthew,{e} wealthy men and tax-gatherers, and He does not bid them give up their riches.
Quote ID: 3039
Time Periods: 1
Book ID: 140 Page: 299
Section: 2E2
The Rich Man’s SalvationAn instrument, if you use it with artistic skill, is a thing of art; but if you are lacking in skill, it reaps the benefit of your unmusical nature, though not itself responsible. Wealth too is an instrument of the same kind. You can see it rightly; it ministers to righteousness. But if one use it wrongly, it is found to be a minster of wrong. For its nature is to minister, not to rule. We must not therefore put the responsibility on that which, having in itself neither good nor evil, is not responsible, but on that which has the power of using things either well or badly, as a result of choice; for this is responsible just for that reason. And this is the mind of man, which has in itself both free judgment and full liberty to deal with what is given to it. So let a man do away, not with his possessions, but rather with the passions of his soul, which do not consent to the better use of what he has...
Quote ID: 3040
Time Periods: 23
Book ID: 140 Page: 307
Section: 2A6,2D3B
The Rich Man’s SalvationSalvation does not depend upon outward things, whether they are many or few, small or great, splendid or lowly, glorious or mean, but upon the soul’s virtue . . .
Quote ID: 3041
Time Periods: 23
Book ID: 140 Page: 307
Section: 2E2
The Rich Man’s SalvationStrength and greatness of body do not give life, nor does insignificance of the limbs destroy, but the soul by its use of these provides the cause that leads to either result. Accordingly the scripture says, “When thou art struck, offer thy face,”{c} which a man can obey even though he is strong and in good health; whereas one who is weakly can transgress through an uncontrolled temper. Thus a man without means of livelihood might perchance be found drunk with lusts, and one rich in possessions sober and poor as regards pleasures, believing, prudent, pure, disciplined.
Quote ID: 3042
Time Periods: 23
Book ID: 140 Page: 327
Section: 2D3B
For since a man is neither absolutely being lost if he is rich but fearful, nor absolutely being saved because he is bold and confident that he will be saved. . .
Quote ID: 3043
Time Periods: 2
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