The Instructor 3.2.13

That adornment makes women courtesans and men effeminate and adulterous, the tragic poet is our witness, telling the story thus: “This judge of the goddesses, coming from Phrygia, as the myth of the Argives has it, to Lacedaemon, flowery in the robe of his garments and gleaming with gold, in barbarian luxury, loving and loved, went off, snatching Helen away to the cattle stalls of Ida, having found Menelaus abroad.” O adulterous beauty! Barbarian love of finery and effeminate luxury overturned Greece; clothing, luxury, and youthful beauty corrupted Spartan self-control; barbarian finery exposed the daughter of Zeus as a courtesan. They had no Instructor to check their desires, nor one who said, “Do not commit adultery,” nor one who said, “Do not covet,” nor “Do not go to adultery through desire,” nor “Do not inflame your appetites through love of finery.” What an end followed for them, and how many evils those enjoyed who would not restrain their self-love! Two continents were stirred by uneducated pleasures, and all was shaken by a barbarian youth. All Greece put to sea, the sea was cramped carrying continents; a long war was fanned into flame, fierce battles broke out, and the plains were filled with corpses; the barbarian insulted the naval station; injustice prevailed, and the eye of that poetic Zeus looked at the Thracians; barbarian plains drank noble blood, and the streams of rivers were dammed by dead bodies; breasts were beaten in lamentation, and mourning spread over the earth; “all the feet of many-fountained Ida were shaken, and its peaks, and the city of the Trojans and the ships of the Achaeans.” Where shall we flee, Homer, and stand? Show us a land that has not been shaken.