Miscellanies 6.2.23 · Sophia Scriptura

Greek text · Stählin 2:440

Ἡροδότου τε αὖ ἐν τῷ περὶ Γλαύκου τοῦ Σπαρτιάτου λόγῳ φήσαντος τὴν Πυθίαν εἰπεῖν τὸ πειρηθῆναι τοῦ θεοῦ καὶ τὸ ποιῆσαι ἴσον γενέσθαι, Ἀριστοφάνης ἔφη· δύναται γὰρ ἴσον τῷ δρᾶν τὸ νοεῖν, καὶ πρὸ τούτου ὁ Ἐλεάτης Παρμενίδης· τὸ γὰρ αὐτὸ νοεῖν ἐστίν τε καὶ εἶναι. Ἢ οὐχὶ καὶ Πλάτωνος εἰπόντος ἡμεῖς δὲ τοῦτο λέξοιμεν ἂν ἴσως οὐκ ἀτόπως, ὅτι ἀρχὴ μὲν ἔρωτος ὅρασις, μειοῖ δὲ τὸ πάθος ἐλπίς, τρέφει δὲ μνήμη, τηρεῖ δὲ συνήθεια, Φιλήμων ὁ κωμικὸς γράφει· ὁρῶσι πάντες πρῶτον, εἶτʼ ἐθαύμασαν, ἔπειτʼ ἐπεθεώρησαν, εἶτʼ ἐς ἐλπίδα ἐνέπεσον· οὕτω γίνεται ἐκ τούτων ἔρως. Ἀλλὰ καὶ Δημοσθένους εἰπόντος πᾶσι γὰρ ἡμῖν ὁ θάνατος ὀφείλεται καὶ τὰ ἑξῆς, ὁ Φανοκλῆς ἐν Ἔρωσιν ἢ Καλοῖς γράφει· ἀλλὰ τὸ Μοιράων νῆμʼ ἄλλυτον, οὐδέ ποτʼ ἔστιν ἐκφυγέειν, ὁπόσοι γῆν ἐπιφερβόμεθα.

English · Claude translation

And again, when Herodotus, in his story of Glaucus the Spartan, said that the Pythia declared that to tempt the god and to do the deed amount to the same thing, Aristophanes said: “For to intend is equal to doing,” and before him Parmenides of Elea: “For thinking and being are the same.” Or when Plato said: “We might say this, perhaps not absurdly, that the beginning of love is sight; hope lessens the passion, memory nourishes it, and habit preserves it,” does not Philemon the comic poet write: “All first see, then they admire, then they gaze further, then they fall into hope; thus love comes to be from these”? And when Demosthenes said: “For death is owed by all of us,” and so on, Phanocles writes in his Loves, or Fair Boys: “But the thread of the Fates cannot be unloosed, nor can any escape it, as many as feed on the earth.”

About this passage

Source

Stählin 2:440 · Otto Stählin, ed., Clemens Alexandrinus, vol. 2, Stromata Buch I–VI, GCS 15 (Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1906); vol. 3, Stromata Buch VII und VIII, GCS 17 (Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1909) · Greek text: Otto Stählin, Clemens Alexandrinus 2–3 (GCS 15, 17, 1906–1909), digitized by the Perseus Digital Library, CC BY-SA 4.0

Text

As printed in Stählin, GCS 15, 17. Manuscript variants and the editor's apparatus are not reproduced; no textual problem is noted in this passage.

Translation

Claude translation (claude-opus-5-5), 2026-09-27 · Translated by Claude from the Greek text of Stählin (1906–1909); made independently of existing English translations.

Compare

Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 2 (1885) (an older public-domain English translation, whole volume at CCEL; checked against ours only after ours was made) · Book 3 is left partly untranslated (in Latin) there.

Extrabiblical texts

Herodotus, Hist. 6.86 (Herodotus, Histories) · allusion, high confidence
Parmenides (Parmenides (fragments)) · quotation, medium confidence

Notes

Translation notes

The sources are Herodotus 6.86, Parmenides (fragment 3 Diels–Kranz), and fragments of Aristophanes, Philemon, and Phanocles. The saying ascribed to Plato is not found in his extant works; “lessens” translates the printed μειοῖ, where one expects “increases,” so the text may be faulty. The Demosthenes wording is uncertain (compare On the Crown 97).

Notes on the original text

Digital text corrected (misreading in the digital text (δ); wrong breathing and accent on εἶτα): Παρμενίσης → Παρμενίδης; εἷτʼ ἐς → εἶτʼ ἐς.

Cite this passage

Clement of Alexandria, Strom. 6.2.23 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/clement-stromata/6/2/23/).

Plain text

Clement of Alexandria, Strom. 6.2.23 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/clement-stromata/6/2/23/).