Miscellanies 5.14.111
Summary: Cleanthes rebukes those who look to opinion; the tragedians' tales of Zeus's adulteries are theatrical folly, while Heraclitus speaks of the everlasting Word that people fail to understand.
Greek text · Stählin 2:401–402
ὁ δὲ αὐτὸς κατὰ τὸ σιωπώμενον τὴν τῶν πολλῶν διαβάλλων εἰδωλολατρείαν ἐπιφέρει· ἀνελεύθερος πᾶς ὅστις εἰς δόξαν βλέπει, ὡς δὴ παρʼ ἐκείνης τευξόμενος καλοῦ τινος. οὔκουν ἔτι κατὰ τὴν τῶν πολλῶν δόξαν περὶ τοῦ θείου ὑποληπτέον. οὐδὲ γὰρ λάθρᾳ δοκῶ φωτὸς κακούργου σχήματʼ ἐκμιμούμενον σοὶ Ζῆνʼ ἐς εὐνὴν ὥσπερ ἄνθρωπον μολεῖν, Ἀμφίων λέγει τῇ Ἀντιόπῃ. ὁ Σοφοκλῆς δὲ εὐθυρημόνως γράφει· τὴν τοῦδε γάρ τοι Ζεὺς ἔγημε μητέρα, οὐ χρυσόμορφος οὐδʼ ἐπημφιεσμένος πτίλον κύκνειον, ὡς κόρην Πλευρωνίαν ὑπημβρύωσεν, ἀλλʼ ὁλοσχερὴς ἀνήρ. εἶτα ὑπελθὼν καὶ δὴ ἐπήγαγεν· ταχὺς δὲ βαθμοῖς νυμφικοῖς ἐπεστάθη ὁ μοιχός. ἐφʼ οἷς ἔτι φανερώτερον τὴν ἀκρασίαν τοῦ μυθοποιουμένου Διὸς ὧδέ πως ἐκδιηγεῖται· ὃ δʼ οὔτε δαιτὸς οὔτε χέρνιβος θιγὼν πρὸς λέκτρον ᾔει καρδίαν ὠδαγμένος· ὅλην δʼ ἐκείνην εὐφρόνην ἐθόρνυτο. ταυτὶ μὲν οὖν παρείσθω ταῖς τῶν θεάτρων ἀνοίαις· ἄντικρυς δὲ ὁ μὲν Ἡράκλειτος τοῦ λόγου τοῦδʼ ἐόντος αἰεὶ φησὶν ἀξύνετοι γίγνονται ἄνθρωποι καὶ πρόσθεν ἢ ἀκοῦσαι καὶ ἀκούσαντες τὸ πρῶτον.
English · Claude translation
And the same poet, by implication finding fault with the idolatry of the many, adds: “Unfree is everyone who looks to opinion, as if he would obtain something good from it.” We must no longer, then, think of the divine according to the opinion of the many. “For I do not think that Zeus, imitating the form of an evil-doing man, came secretly to your bed like a human being,” says Amphion to Antiope. And Sophocles writes outright: “For it was this man's mother that Zeus married, not in the form of gold, nor clothed in swan's plumage, as when he got the Pleuronian girl with child, but wholly a man.” Then, going on, he added: “And swiftly the adulterer stood at the bridal steps.” And after this he relates the incontinence of the Zeus of the myths still more plainly, thus: “He, touching neither feast nor water for washing, went to bed, his heart stung; and all that night he mounted her.” Let these things be left to the follies of the theaters. But Heraclitus says plainly: “Though this word is always, men are without understanding, both before they hear it and when they have first heard it.”
About this passage
Notes
Translation notes
- The quotations are Cleanthes (Stoicorum Veterum Fragmenta 1.557, continued), Euripides, Antiope (fragment 210 Nauck), Sophocles, a lost play on the birth of Heracles (the fragment number is uncertain), and Heraclitus, fragment 1 (Diels–Kranz). Heraclitus' “word” is logos, which Clement reads of the divine Word.
Cite this passage
Clement of Alexandria, Strom. 5.14.111 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/clement-stromata/5/14/111/).
Plain text
Clement of Alexandria, Strom. 5.14.111 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/clement-stromata/5/14/111/).
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