Symposium (The Banquet of the Ten Virgins)

EUBOULION: You have come at the best possible moment, Gregorion. I was looking for you just now, wanting to learn about the gathering of Marcella, Theopatra, and the other virgins who were present then at the banquet, and what their speeches on chastity were. For they say that they contended so magnificently and so powerfully that they lacked nothing needful to the subject. So if you have come for some other reason, put that off till later, and do not hesitate now to go through for us in order everything we are asking you. GREGORION: It seems I have missed my hope, since you already know about what you are asking. For I thought you had not yet heard anything of what happened, and I was very proud of it and gave myself airs as the one who would be first to tell you. That is why I hurried to come here to you, precisely so as not to be forestalled by someone else. EUBOULION: Take heart, my dear; we know nothing precisely of what happened. The one who brought the news could not relate more than that there had been discussions; what they were and how they went, he did not know when questioned. GREGORION: Do you want, then, since I came here for this very purpose, to hear everything that was said from the beginning? Or shall I pass over some things and mention those I think worth remembering? EUBOULION: Not at all; but from the beginning, Gregorion. First describe for us the gathering, where it took place, and the preparation of the food, and how you yourself poured the wine: “and they pledged one another in golden cups, gazing up at the great heaven.” GREGORION: You are always clever in conversation and very curious, simply cross-examining everyone. EUBOULION: It is not worth arguing about these things now, Gregorion; but, as we asked you, tell us what happened from the beginning, and do not do otherwise. GREGORION: I will try. But first answer me this yourself: you surely know Arete, the daughter of Philosophy? EUBOULION: What of it? GREGORION: Invited by her into the garden toward the east to gather the fruits of the season, we went, “I myself,” Theopatra told me (for it was she I was questioning), “and Procilla and Tysiane. We travelled, Gregorion, a rough and hard road, and steep. When we were already near the place,” said Theopatra, “a tall and beautiful woman met us, walking quietly and gracefully, clothed in a robe as brilliant as snow. Her whole beauty was something divine and beyond description; great modesty bloomed on her face together with dignity, and her gaze was stern yet cheerfully blended with gentleness, as,” she said, “I have never seen. For she was entirely unadorned and wore nothing counterfeit. She came up to us with great joy and, like a mother seeing us after a long time, embraced and kissed each of us, saying: ‘Daughters, I have longed greatly to bring you into the meadow of incorruption; you have come at last, perhaps because creeping things frightened you on the way. For as I watched I saw you often turning aside, and I feared that you might spring away and slip over the cliffs. But thanks be to the Bridegroom, to whom I have betrothed you, children, who has granted all our prayers.’ And as she was saying this,” she said, “we reached the enclosure, the doors being still open, and going in we found Thecla, Agathe, and Marcella already about to dine. At once Arete,” she said, “said: ‘Come, you too, and recline here in order beside these who share your way of life.’ There were, I think, ten of us feasting there in all,” she told me. “The place was exceedingly beautiful and full of great rest. The air was spread about, lightly mingled with pure rays of light in fine order; and in the very middle a spring bubbled up quietly like oil, a most sweet drink, and from it clear and pure water flowed and formed fountains, which overflowed like rivers and watered the whole place, giving rich streams. For there were various trees there, laden with fresh fruit, the fruits hanging cheerfully in one beauty, and ever-green meadows garlanded with fragrant and many-coloured flowers, from which a breeze gently blew bearing much sweet scent. Near by was a tall chaste-tree, under which we rested, because it was very spreading and shady.” EUBOULION: You seem to me, my dear, to be describing a second dwelling of paradise. GREGORION: You guess rightly. “When, then,” she said, “we were enjoying a feast of every kind and varied delight, so that we lacked nothing pleasant, Arete came in after this and began thus: ‘Maidens, pride of my greatness of mind, fair virgins, who tend the unploughed meadows of Christ with unwedded hands: we have had enough food and feasting now; for all that we provide is plentiful. What is it, then, that I want now, and what do I expect? That each of you speak a speech in praise of virginity. Let Marcella begin, since she reclines first and is also the eldest. As for the one who contends well, I would be ashamed of myself if I did not make her envied, crowning her with the undefiled leaves of wisdom.’”

Marcella, then, she said, began at once from this point and said: “Virginity is something exceedingly great and wonderful and glorious; and, to speak plainly and in keeping with the Scriptures, this best and most beautiful way of life alone is the richest part of the church, and its flower and its first-fruits. For this reason the Lord too promises to bring into the kingdom of heaven those who have kept themselves virgins, where in the Gospels he gives instruction about the different kinds of eunuchs. For chastity is very rare and hard for human beings to attain, and the more supreme and magnificent it is, the greater the dangers it involves. It needs strong and noble natures, which, turning aside the whole stream of pleasure, steer the chariot of the soul upward on high, not falling short of the goal, until, leaping lightly over the world with the swiftest speed of thought and standing truly upon the vault of heaven, they gaze purely upon incorruption itself, springing forth from the undefiled bosom of the Almighty. The earth could not produce this drink; heaven alone knows how to make it flow. For virginity must be thought of as walking on earth but touching the heavens. Some, longing for it and looking only to its end, came forward with unwashed feet, imperfect through vulgarity of mind, and turned back halfway along the road, having taken up no thought worthy of the way of life. For it is not only bodies that must be kept uncorrupted, just as temples should not be made more splendid than the images in them; rather, souls, which are the images of the bodies, must be cared for and adorned with righteousness. And they are cared for and cleansed most when, striving eagerly to listen to the divine words, they do not stop until they lay hold of what is true, coming to the doors of the wise. For as with salt the juices of meat are drawn out, and its putrefactions and everything that corrupts it, in the same way all the irrational desires of the body are dried out of the virgin by teachings. For a soul that is not sprinkled, like salt, with the words of Christ must necessarily stink and breed worms, just as David the king, confessing with tears, cried out in the mountains, ‘My wounds stank and festered,’ because he had not dried himself out by salting himself with discipline, but through carelessness was dragged into passion and reeked of adultery. That is why in Leviticus every offering, unless it is first salted with salt, is forbidden to be brought as a whole burnt offering to the Lord God. For all spiritual study of the Scriptures has been given to us as salt, which stings and dries out for our benefit; without it no soul can be offered through the Word to the Almighty. ‘For you are the salt of the earth,’ the Lord said to the apostles. The virgin, then, must always love what is noble and stand out among those foremost in wisdom, and have nothing careless or soft, but think thoughts worthy of virginity, always scouring away with the word the [stains] of pleasure, lest a small unnoticed putrefaction breed the worm of licentiousness. ‘For the unmarried woman,’ says blessed Paul, ‘is anxious about the things of the Lord, how to please the Lord, that she may be holy in both body and spirit.’ But many, thinking listening a side matter, suppose they are doing a great favour if they lend their ears even briefly. Such women must be excluded; for a petty and low nature, which only pretends to wisdom, should not share in divine teachings. Is it not ridiculous to chatter with women who strain to do everything for things of little worth, so that what they complete may be most exact, but in necessary things, through which the love of self-control grows most, do not think exactness most important?

“For truly it was by a great abundance that the plant of virginity was sent down to human beings from heaven; and for this reason it was not revealed to the first generations. For humanity was still very few, and it had first to grow to a multitude and then be perfected. That is why the men of old did nothing shameful in taking their own sisters as wives, until the law came, set the distinction, and, forbidding what had earlier seemed good, declared it sin, calling ‘accursed’ ‘the one who uncovers the nakedness of his sister’; for God was carefully bringing to our race, at each time, what suited it, just as fathers do with their sons. For they do not set tutors over them straight away from the beginning, but, letting the age of childhood frolic like calves, they first send them to teachers who lisp along with them, until, having cast off the youthful hair of the mind, they are passed on to the practice of greater studies, and from there again to still greater ones. In this way we must think that God, the Father of all, dealt with those before us. For the world, not yet filled with human beings, was like an infant, and it had first to grow to manhood from these beginnings and be multiplied. But when at last it had been settled from end to end, spread out without limit, God no longer allowed humanity to remain in the same practices, but considered how, passing from these to others, they might advance nearer to heaven, until, arriving at virginity itself, the greatest and most supreme teaching, they should be perfected: travelling first from marriage with sisters to taking wives from other families; and from there to no longer mounting many women by the law of four-footed beasts, as if born for breeding; and from there to not being adulterers; and again to continence, and from continence to virginity, where, having practised despising the flesh, they come fearlessly to anchor in the calm harbour of incorruption.

“But if anyone dares to accuse this account of lacking support from the Scriptures, come, let us set out the words of the prophets as well and show what has been said to be even more true. Abraham, at any rate, who first received circumcision as a covenant, seems to signify nothing else, by being circumcised in a member of his flesh, than this: that one should no longer [go] to flesh formed from the same blood, teaching each person to cut off the pleasure of intercourse with his own sister, as with his own flesh. So lying with one's own sisters and having them as bedfellows ceased from the times of Abraham; and being joined in unions with several wives is abolished from the times of the prophets. For it says, ‘Do not go after your desires, and restrain yourself from your appetites,’ for ‘wine and women will lead astray men of understanding.’ And in another place: ‘Let your fountain of water be your own, and rejoice with the wife of your youth,’ clearly now forbidding many wives. And Jeremiah openly calls those who rage after various women ‘stallions mad for mares’; for ‘the prolific multitude of the ungodly,’ it says, ‘will be of no use, and from bastard slips it will not strike deep root.’ But, so as not to speak at length gathering the prophetic sayings, come, let us show again how continence succeeds the union with one wife, until it wholly loosens the inclination toward intercourse that comes from habit, taking away little by little the pleasures of the flesh. Straightway, indeed, someone is introduced who already plainly renounces this distraction, saying: ‘O Lord, Father and Master of my life, do not abandon me to their counsel; take from me the haughtiness of the eyes; let not the appetite of the belly and intercourse seize me.’ And in the all-virtuous Wisdom, the Holy Spirit, now openly drawing the hearers to self-control and continence, sings thus, crying out, ‘Better is childlessness with virtue; for immortality is in its memory, because it is known both with God and with men; they honour it when present and long for it when it has departed; and in eternity it marches crowned, having won the contest for undefiled prizes.’

“About the stages of humanity, then, how, beginning from marriage between brothers and sisters, it travelled toward continence, enough has been said; virginity remains. As far as possible, then, we must try to speak of it. First we must examine why, when many prophets and righteous men taught and did many good things, none either praised or chose virginity. It was reserved, it seems, for the Lord alone to be the first to teach this doctrine, since he alone, coming among us, taught humanity to advance to God. For it was fitting that he, the chief priest and chief prophet and chief angel, should also be called chief virgin. In ancient times humanity was not yet perfect, and therefore it was not yet able to receive the perfect thing, virginity. For, having been made ‘in the image’ of God, it still needed to receive also what is ‘according to the likeness.’ To accomplish this the Word was sent down into the world and first took on our form, spotted with many sins, so that we, for whose sake he wore it, might in turn be able to receive his. For it is possible to be perfected according to the likeness of God when, like skilful painters, we imprint in ourselves, as on tablets, the same features of his human way of life, and remain unharmed as disciples of the path that he revealed. That is why, being God, he chose to put on human flesh, so that, seeing as on a tablet the divine model of life, we too might be able to imitate the one who painted it. For he did not think one thing and do another, nor, thinking one thing good, teach another; but what was truly profitable and good, that he both taught and did.

“What, then, did the Lord, the Truth, the Light, accomplish when he came down into the world? He kept his flesh uncorrupted, adorning it with virginity. We too, then, if we are to be ‘according to the likeness’ of God, should strive to honour the virginity of Christ; for likeness to God is flight from corruption. And that the Word made man became the chief virgin of the church, as he became the chief shepherd and chief prophet, John too, who was possessed by Christ, shows us in the book of Revelation, saying: ‘And I looked, and behold, the Lamb standing on Mount Zion, and with him a hundred and forty-four thousand having his name and the name of his Father written on their foreheads. And I heard a voice from heaven like the sound of many waters and like the sound of loud thunder; and the voice that I heard was like that of harpers playing on their harps. And they sing a new song before the throne and before the four living creatures and the elders; and no one could learn the song except the hundred and forty-four thousand, who have been redeemed from the earth. These are the ones who were not defiled with women; for they are virgins, these who follow the Lamb wherever he goes’: showing the Lord as leader of the chorus of virgins. Notice besides how great is the dignity of virginity with God: ‘These were redeemed from among men as first-fruits for God and for the Lamb, and in their mouth no lie was found; they are blameless; they follow,’ it says, ‘the Lamb wherever he goes.’ Here too he clearly wants to teach us that the multitude of virgins was limited from the start to this number, that is, a hundred and forty-four thousand, while the other saints crowd together in an unlimited multitude. For we must attend to what he declares when speaking about the others: ‘And I saw from every tongue and tribe and nation a great multitude, which no one could number.’ So it is established, as I said, that for the other saints he introduces an unspeakable multitude, but for those in virginity a very small number, in comparison with those who make up a countless multitude. This, Arete,” she said, “is my speech to you on virginity. And if I have left anything out, let Theophila succeed me and fill it up.”

Theophila, then, she said, spoke: “It seems to me necessary, since Marcella set out well on her speech but did not complete it sufficiently, that I should try to bring the argument to its end. That humanity advanced by stages to virginity, God urging it on at each season, she seems to me to have set out well; but that from then on one must no longer beget children, she did not say well. For I think I have clearly seen from the Scriptures that, when virginity came, the Word did not entirely abolish the begetting of children. For it is not the case that because the moon is greater than the stars, the light of the other stars is therefore abolished. Let us begin from Genesis, so as to give Scripture the precedence. For God's declaration and ordinance concerning the procreation of children is admittedly being fulfilled even now, since the Creator is still forming human beings. This is plain to everyone: God is still at work painting the world, as the Lord also taught, saying, ‘My Father is working until now.’ But when the rivers at last cease flowing into the basin of the sea, and the light is completely separated from the darkness (for it is still being separated now), and the dry land at last stops yielding its fruits together with creeping things and four-footed beasts, and the predetermined number of human beings is filled up, then indeed the begetting of children must cease. But now, while the world still stands and is being fashioned, [we must work with God in forming] the human being after the image of God; for it was said, ‘Increase and multiply.’ And we must not loathe the ordinance of the Creator, from which we ourselves have come into being. For the beginning of the generation of human beings is the depositing of the seed in the furrows of the womb, so that bone from bones and flesh from flesh, taken by an invisible power, may be fashioned again by the craftsman into another human being. In this way we must think that the saying is fulfilled, ‘This now is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh.’

“For perhaps this was also hinted at by the trance cast on the first-formed man, foreshadowing the enchantment of the man in love, when, thirsting for children, he falls into a trance, relaxed as in sleep by the pleasures of begetting, so that again something drawn from his bones and flesh may be completed, as I said, as another human being. For when the harmony of the body is greatly disturbed in the thrusts of intercourse, as those initiated in the rite of marriage teach us, all the marrow-like and most fertile part of the blood, which is liquid bone, gathered from all the members, frothing and curdled, rushes out through the generative organs into the living soil of the woman. Rightly, then, for this reason a man is said to leave ‘his father and his mother’ …, being then all at once forgetful of everything, when, united with his wife in loving embraces, he is possessed by the desire to beget, offering his side to be taken by the divine Creator, so that the father himself may appear again in the son. Since, then, God is still forming the human being even now, is it not rash to loathe the begetting of children, which he himself, who works with undefiled hands, is not ashamed of? For ‘Before I formed you in your mother's womb, I knew you,’ he says to Jeremiah; and to Job he said, ‘Did you take clay and form a living creature and set it speaking upon the earth?’ And Job is recorded as saying to him in prayer, ‘Your hands made me and formed me.’ And is it not absurd to forbid the unions of marriage, when we still expect that there will be, even after us, those who will stand against the evil one, for whose sake the Word promised that the [days] would be shortened? For if, as you said, the begetting of children has from that time on been thought bad by God, for what reason will those born contrary to his decree and the divine will be able to stand acceptable before God? For what is born must be counterfeit and not dear to God if it is formed, like a forged coin, against the intention and ordinance of his power, unless we grant that human beings too can form human beings.

And Marcella, taking her up, said: “Theophila, a great error, and one contrary to what you said, appears; and do you think you have escaped notice after pushing aside so great a cloud? For that argument arrives which someone perhaps will put to you, most wise, demanding: ‘What do you say about those born unlawfully of adultery?’ For you granted that it is impossible and unattainable to enter the world without being led by the hand by the will of the Majesty, the tent of the body being fashioned by God. And lest you flee, as behind a wall, to the Scripture that says with assurance, ‘The children of adulterers will not come to maturity,’ he will gently repel you, saying: ‘And yet we see those conceived from unlawful unions here growing through labours that often come to term into ripe fruit.’ And if again you argued cleverly, ‘My good man, I think “will not come to maturity” is said of those not perfected in the righteousness taught by Christ,’ it will be said: ‘And yet, blessed one, very many born of unrighteous seed are nonetheless not only counted worthy of the flock of the brothers, but often are even appointed to preside over them.’ Since, then, it is plain, and all report, that those born of adultery also come to maturity, we must not think that the Spirit prophesied about conceptions and births, but perhaps about those who commit adultery against the truth, who, adulterating the Scriptures with doctrines that steal wisdom, beget a wisdom that never matures, mixing error with piety. So, since this pretext of yours has been taken away, come, answer whether those born of adultery too are born with God's good pleasure. For you said that the birth of a human being is impossible unless the Lord forms it and gives it a soul.”

And Theophila, as though caught round the waist by a noble opponent, grew dizzy, and recovering her breath with great difficulty said: “You ask a question, blessed one, that needs to be shown by an example, so that you may see still more that the creative power, governing through all things, is itself chiefly at work in the generation of human beings, making grow what is planted in fertile soil. For what is sown is not to blame, but the one who, in beds of stolen wedlock, shamelessly sells his own seed into another's field, like a hireling of a little pleasure. Compare our birth into life to something like this: a house with its entrance lying against high mountains; and suppose it extends far down, a long way from the entrance, with many openings at the back, and rounded at that part.” “I am picturing it,” said Marcella. “Then suppose a modeller sitting inside at work on statues; and imagine the material of clay being supplied to him abundantly from outside through the openings by many people, none of whom sees the craftsman. Grant that the house is covered with mist and clouds and that nothing is visible to them from outside but the openings.” “Let this too be granted,” she said. “And that each of those who work together in bringing the clay has one opening assigned to him, into which alone he brings and deposits his own material, not touching another. And if he should meddlesomely try to open the one allotted to another, he is to be threatened with fire and scourges. … Then consider what follows: the modeller inside goes round the openings, takes the clay found in each and models it separately, and after a period of months, having finished modelling it, gives it back to those outside through the same opening. He has this command: to work without distinction all clay that can be fashioned, even if it is wrongly channelled by someone into another's opening (for the material has done no wrong, so it must be modelled and formed as blameless), but to punish as a villain and transgressor the one who, against the decree and command, deposited it in another's opening. For the clay is not to blame, but the one who did this against what is holy; for through incontinence he carried it to another's opening and deposited it secretly or by force.” “What you say is most true.”

“Now, then, since this has been set out, it is time for you, most wise, to apply this whole image to what was said before: likening the house to the invisible nature of our generation; the entrance lying against the mountains to the descent and conveyance of souls from heaven into bodies; the openings to the female sex, that of women; and the modeller to the creative power of God, which, using nature, as I said, as a veil over our generation, invisibly forms us as human beings within, making the garments for the souls. Those who bring the material of clay are to be compared to the male sex, when, thirsting for children, they go to the natural passages of the woman and deposit the seed, just as there the clay into the openings. For the seed, which shares, so to speak, in the divine creative portion, must not itself be thought the cause of the fires of licentiousness. For craft always works on the material that lies before it; no thing in itself is to be thought evil, but it becomes such through the action of those who use it. Done decently and chastely, it turns out decent; done shamefully and indecently, shameful. What wrong did iron, discovered for farming and the crafts, do to those who sharpened it for battles of mutual slaughter? What wrong did gold or silver or bronze, and in short all the workable earth, do to those who sin ungratefully against their own Creator by turning to the images wrought from them? Even if someone supplies wool from stolen goods to the art of weaving, the art works the material before it to this one end, whether it will take the making, rejecting nothing useful to itself, since the stolen thing, being lifeless, is not to blame here. So it must be made beautiful; but the one who took it by unjust theft must be punished. So too those who destroy marriages and break the harmony of life, [playing on] the strings with frenzy and provoking their appetite to adultery, must themselves be tried and punished; for they steal and defile the procreative embraces from other people's gardens. But the seed, like the wool there, must be formed and given life.”

“And why should I lengthen my speech by using so many examples? For nature could not have accomplished so great a work in so short a time without care. Who fixed the frame of the bones when it was not yet fixed? Who bound the limbs with sinews, to be tightened and relaxed as they bend at the joints? Or what god leavened the moisture, wetting it with blood, and made soft flesh from dust, except the only best craftsman, fashioning us, man, the most rational and living image of himself, and moulding us like wax from moist and tiny seeds in the womb? For who is it that takes care that the embryo, flooded within by the fluid and the pressure of the vessels, is not smothered? Or who, after it has come out into the light, changes it to size and beauty and strength from weak and small, if not this very best craftsman, God, as I said, reshaping and repainting its features after Christ by his creative power? That is why we have received in divinely inspired writings that the children born, even if they are from adultery, are handed over to guardian angels. For if they came into being contrary to the intention and ordinance of that blessed nature of God, how would they be handed over to angels to be nourished with much rest? And how would they, with great boldness, summon their own parents to the judgment seat of Christ to accuse them, saying, ‘You, O Lord, did not begrudge us this common light; but these exposed us to death, despising your commandment’? For ‘children born of unlawful beds,’ it says, ‘are witnesses of wickedness against their parents at their examination.’”

“And perhaps someone arguing plausibly among men who are neither critical nor sensible will find room to say that this fleshly tunic of the soul, planted by human beings, is formed of itself, apart from God's decree; but he will not be believed if he teaches that the substance of the soul too is sown along with the mortal body. For the immortal and ageless element the Almighty alone breathes in, since he alone is the maker of things invisible and indestructible. ‘For he breathed into his face the breath of life,’ it says, ‘and the man became a living soul.’ Indeed the Word, blaming those craftsmen who make images in human likeness for the ruin of human beings, not perceiving their own maker, says in the all-virtuous Wisdom: ‘Their heart is ashes, and their hope cheaper than earth, and their life of less worth than clay, because they did not know the one who formed them and inspired in them an active soul and breathed into them a living spirit.’ So God is the maker of all human beings. That is why, according to the apostle, he also ‘wills all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.’ And since this has at last reached its end, what follows must now be said. When someone has thoroughly learned the theory of what happens to human beings by nature, he will know not to loathe the begetting of children, but to praise and prefer chastity. For it is not the case that, because honey is sweeter than other things, all the other fruits, which are blended with a natural sweetness, must therefore be thought bitter. And of this I will offer Paul as a sure witness, who says, ‘So then he who gives his virgin in marriage does well, and he who does not give her in marriage does better.’ For the Word, by setting the better and sweeter beside the other, did not forbid the other, but legislates, assigning to each what is proper and profitable. For to some he has not yet granted to attain virginity; others he no longer wishes to be stained by crimson provocations, but to practise from now on and to picture the angel-like transformation of bodies, where ‘they neither marry nor are given in marriage,’ according to the unerring oracles. For the undefiled eunuchhood that gains the kingdom of heaven is not entrusted to all, but clearly only to those who are able to keep the ever-blooming and undefiled flower of virginity. For the prophetic word likens the church to a most flowery and many-coloured meadow, adorned and crowned not only with the flowers of chastity but also with those of childbearing and of continence. For ‘the queen stands at the right hand’ of the Bridegroom, ‘adorned in gold-fringed garments.’ This, Arete, is my own contribution, as far as I am able, to the speech on behalf of chastity.” When Theophila had said this, Theopatra said, a pleasant murmur arose from all the virgins, praising the speech; and when they were quiet, after a long silence, Thalia rose; for to her it had been assigned to contend third, after Theophila.

Taking up the argument from this point, I think, she said herself: “You seem to me, Theophila, to excel all of us in both deed and word, and to take second place to no one in wisdom. For no one will find fault with your speech, not even if he were utterly contentious and quarrelsome. Only one thing, blessed one, while the rest was rightly said, seems to me to trouble and distress me, when I consider that so spiritual and wise a man, I mean Paul, would not idly have referred the union of the first-formed man and the woman ‘to Christ and the church’ if Scripture had pictured nothing loftier than the words and the story. For if Scripture must be taken simply as a type of the union of man and woman, why does the apostle, when he mentions these things and leads us by the hand, I think, into the way of the Spirit, refer them ‘to Christ and the church’ and interpret the story of Eve and Adam allegorically? For the text of Genesis says this: ‘And Adam said, “This now is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called woman, because she was taken out of her husband. Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.”’ But the apostle, looking at this very passage, no longer wants it taken according to the letter, as I said, of the union of woman and man, as you did. For you, working out the argument in a more natural way, took Scripture as speaking only of conceptions and births: that living creatures come together, swelling and in labour like trees in the season of bearing, so that bone taken from bones may be born as another human being. But he, teaching that the word is to be referred more spiritually to Christ, said this: ‘He who loves his own wife loves himself. For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, because we are members of his body. For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. This mystery is great; but I speak concerning Christ and the church.’

“Do not be disturbed if, while speaking of some things, he leaps to others, so that he seems to mix in and insert things unlike the subject, digressing from the inquiry, as he does here too. For, wishing, as is likely, to establish carefully his account of chastity, he first prepares the ground for his argument, beginning with a smoother kind of expression. For the character of his discourse, being most varied and worked up by amplification, begins more on the surface but flows out into what is loftier and magnificent; then again, turning to depth, it ends sometimes in what is simpler and plain, sometimes in what is more forceful and subtle, bringing in nothing foreign to the main points by its changes, but, drawing everything together by a wonderful affinity, he works the inquiry before him into a single subject. I must uncover more boldly the sense of the apostle's arguments, rejecting nothing of what was said before. For you seem to me, Theophila, to have gone through those things sufficiently and brilliantly, working out the words of Scripture as they stand, which is the safer course. For it is dangerous to despise the literal text entirely, as has been said, especially that of Genesis, where the unchangeable decrees of God concerning the constitution of the universe are recorded; in accordance with them the world is still governed even now most beautifully, in perfect measure, until he who ordered it, wishing to re-form it, dissolves the first laws of nature by another decree. But since the demonstration of the argument must not be left unexamined and, as it were, half lame, come, let us give it also its partner in the higher sense, examining Scripture more deeply. For we must not despise Paul, who rises above the letter and declares that it refers to Christ and the church.

“And first we must examine (for some are likely to object in one way or another) how Adam can be likened to the Son of God, when he was found in the fall of transgression and heard, ‘You are earth, and to earth you shall go.’ And how will he who was moulded from clay after the earth and the firmament be thought ‘the firstborn of all creation’? And how will it be granted that he himself is ‘the tree of life,’ who was cast out because of his transgression, ‘lest he again stretch out his hand and eat of it and live for ever’? For what is likened to that of which it is a likeness must resemble it in many respects, and not have its constitution from what is contrary and alien. For no one who dared to equate the unequal with the even, or harmony with discord, would be accepted as sensible; rather the equal is likened to what is equal by nature, even if it is equal only slightly, and white to white, even if it only very faintly and moderately shows the whiteness of that from which it too is called white. Now it is clear to anyone wise, beyond all doubt, that to be sinless and incorrupt is equal and bright, while what is mortal and sinful, cast out through condemnation and come under sentence, is uneven and discordant.

“These, then, I think, are roughly the objections returned by the many who do not want to refer the first man to Christ, despising, it seems, Paul's understanding. Come, let us consider how rightly he referred Adam to Christ, thinking him not only to be a type and image, but that he himself became this very Christ, because the Word who was before the ages descended into him. For it was fitting that God's firstborn, his first offshoot and only-begotten, Wisdom, should be blended with the first-formed man, first and firstborn of human beings, and become man. For this is Christ: a man filled with unmixed and perfect deity, and God contained in a man. For it was most fitting that the eldest of the ages and first of the archangels, being about to converse with human beings, should take up his dwelling in the eldest and first man of humanity, Adam. In this way, [renewing] what was from the beginning and forming him anew from a virgin and the Spirit, he fashions the same man, since at the beginning too, while the earth was still virgin and unploughed, God took dust and formed from it, without seed, the most rational creature.

“And let the prophet Jeremiah come forward as my sure and clear witness, saying: ‘And I went down to the potter's house, and behold, he was doing work on the stones. And the vessel he was making in his hands fell apart. And again he made it another vessel, as it pleased him to make it.’ For while Adam was still being moulded of clay, still, it seems, soft and moist, and had not yet been hardened and turned to stone like earthenware by incorruption, sin, like water trickling and dripping down on him, dissolved him. That is why God, moistening him afresh and making the same man ‘for honour,’ first hardened and set him in the virgin womb, united and blended him with the Word, and brought him out into life unmeltable and unbreakable, so that he might not again be flooded from outside by the streams of corruption, become soft, and fall apart. And in the parable of the finding of the sheep my Lord is clearly teaching the same thing, where he says to those standing by: ‘What man of you, having a hundred sheep, if he loses one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine on the mountains and go after the lost one, seeking it until he finds it? And when he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders, and coming home he calls together his friends and neighbours, saying, “Rejoice with me, for my lost sheep has been found.”’

“For since he truly was and is, being ‘in the beginning with God’ and being ‘God,’ the ‘chief captain’ and ‘shepherd’ of those in heaven, whom all rational beings obey and follow, and who tends in good order and numbers the multitudes of the blessed angels … (for this is the equal and perfect number of immortal living creatures, divided by kinds and tribes, man too being taken into the flock here; for he too had been created free of corruption, so that he might honour the King and Maker of all, singing in answer to the cries of the angels that came from heaven). But since it happened that he transgressed the commandment and suffered a ruinous and terrible fall, being resolved into death, for this reason the Lord says that he came from heaven into life, leaving the ranks and armies of the angels. For the mountains must be likened to the heavens, and the ninety-nine sheep to the powers and ‘the principalities and authorities,’ which the captain and shepherd left when he came down to seek the lost one. For man was still lacking to be enrolled in their number, the Lord having carried him and put him on, so that he might not again, as I said, be flooded and sunk by the great waves and the deceits of pleasure. For this reason the Word took up man, that through him he might undo the condemnation that had come for his ruin, having defeated the serpent. For it was fitting that the evil one should be conquered not through another, but through the very one whom he boasted he had deceived and tyrannized; because sin and condemnation could not be undone otherwise than if the same man, on whose account it was said, ‘You are earth, and to earth you shall go,’ wrestled again and undid the sentence brought upon all because of him, so that, as ‘in Adam’ first ‘all die, so’ again ‘in Christ,’ who took up Adam, ‘all shall be made alive.’

“That man, having become the instrument and garment of the Only-begotten, has been shown to be the very thing that he was who dwelt in him, seems to me now to have almost reached its end. But that there is neither inequality nor discord must again be briefly examined from the beginning. Whoever says that what is good by nature and just and holy by nature, by participation in which other things become good, is Wisdom, after God, speaks most rightly; and, on the other side, that what is unholy and unjust and evil is sin. For two things are opposed to each other in the extreme: life and death, incorruption and corruption. Equality is life, inequality corruption; harmony is righteousness and prudence, discord injustice and folly. But man, being between these, is neither righteousness itself nor injustice; standing in the middle between incorruption and corruption, to whichever of them he inclines and leans, he is said to be changed into the nature of the one that prevails. Turning toward corruption he becomes corruptible and mortal, toward incorruption incorruptible and immortal. For, placed on the border between ‘the tree of life’ and ‘the tree of the knowledge of good and evil,’ whose fruit he tasted, he was changed into its form, being himself neither ‘the tree of life’ nor that of corruption, but appearing mortal by participation in and the presence of corruption, and again incorruptible and immortal by association with and the anointing of life. So Paul too taught, saying, ‘For corruption will not inherit incorruption,’ nor death life, rightly defining corruption and death as that which corrupts and kills, not what is corrupted and dies, and incorruption and life as that which makes immortal and gives life, not what is made immortal and given life. So man is neither discord and inequality nor equality and harmony; but when he received discord, that is, transgression and sin, he became discordant and unseemly; and when he received harmony, that is, righteousness, he became a harmonious and seemly instrument, so that the Lord, the incorruption that conquered death, might sing the resurrection tunefully with the flesh, not letting it be inherited again by corruption. And about these things let enough now have been said.

“For it has already been shown, with proofs from Scripture not to be despised, that the first-formed man can properly be referred to Christ himself, being no longer only a type and likeness and image of the Only-begotten, but having become this very thing, Wisdom and Word. For man, blended like water with wisdom and life, became that very thing which was the unmixed light that entered him. That is why the apostle aptly referred to Christ what concerns Adam. For in this way it would best agree that the church came into being from his bones and flesh; for her sake the Word left his Father in heaven and came down to be joined to his wife, and slept the trance of his passion, dying for her, ‘that he might present the church to himself glorious and blameless, having cleansed her by the washing’ for the spiritual and blessed seed, which he himself sows, whispering it and planting it in the depth of the mind, and which the church receives and forms, like a woman, so as to bring forth and nurture virtue. For in this way ‘Increase and multiply’ is also fittingly fulfilled, as she grows daily in size and beauty and number through the union and communion of the Word, who still even now comes down to us and falls into a trance in the remembrance of his passion. For otherwise the church could not conceive believers and give them new birth ‘through the washing of regeneration,’ unless Christ, emptying himself for them too, so that he might be contained, as I said, in the recapitulation of his passion, should die again, coming down from heaven, and, joined to his own wife, the church, should allow a certain power to be taken from his own side, so that all who are built up in him may grow, those born through the washing, having received of his bones and of his flesh, that is, of his holiness and of his glory. For whoever says that the bones and flesh of Wisdom are understanding and virtue speaks most rightly; and the side is ‘the Spirit of truth,’ the Paraclete, from whom the enlightened receive and are fittingly born again to incorruption. And it is impossible for anyone to share in the Holy Spirit and be enrolled as a member of Christ unless the Word first comes down for him too and falls asleep in a trance, so that he, rising with him from sleep, having been renewed and restored, may himself be able to share in it, filled with the Spirit. For this may properly be called the side of the Word, ‘the Spirit of truth,’ sevenfold according to the prophet; taking from him, after the trance of Christ, that is, after his becoming man and his passion, God fashions the ‘helper’ for him: I mean the souls joined and betrothed to him. For often the Scriptures name thus, church, the whole gathering and assembly of believers, the more perfect being brought up by progress into the one person and body of the church. For those who are better and have grasped the truth more clearly, having been freed from the absurdities of the flesh through perfect purification and faith, become the church and ‘helper’ of Christ, joined and betrothed to him, as the apostle says, like a ‘virgin,’ so that, receiving the pure and fruitful seed of the teaching, they may work together, helping the preaching, for the salvation of the rest. But those who are still imperfect and beginning in the teachings are brought to birth and formed, as in wombs, by the more perfect, until, being delivered, they are born again to the greatness and beauty of virtue; and these in turn, becoming the church by progress, may serve in the birth and nurture of other children, bringing to completion, like a womb, in the receptacle of the soul, the unblemished will of the Word.

“For we must consider also the case of the renowned Paul: when he was not yet ‘perfect in Christ,’ he was first born and nursed with milk, Ananias preaching the gospel to him and renewing him by baptism, as the account in the Acts contains. But when he had come to manhood and been built up, re-formed into spiritual perfection, and was declared a ‘helper’ and ‘bride’ of the Word, having received and conceived the seeds of life, then he who had earlier been called a child becomes church and mother, himself in labour with those who through him believed in the Lord, until Christ should be brought to birth in them too. For he says, ‘My little children, with whom I am again in labour until Christ is formed in you,’ and again, ‘For in Christ Jesus I begot you through the gospel.’ So it is established in this way that the contemplation concerning Eve and Adam is referred to the church and to Christ. For this is the great mystery, truly beyond the world, which I, through weakness and dullness of mind, cannot speak of worthily and according to its greatness. Nevertheless I must attempt it; for it would follow now to tell you also what comes next.

“For Paul, calling everyone to holiness and self-control, in this way hurled what concerns the first-formed man and Eve toward Christ and the church, as a second question, so that the ignorant might be silenced, stripped of their pretext. For, being licentious because of the excessive flows of pleasure in them, they dare to force the Scriptures against orthodox reasoning, holding out as a bulwark for their incontinence both ‘God said, “Increase and multiply”’ and ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and his mother’; nor are they ashamed to run down the Spirit, but … they fan the frenzy, kindling it with provocations. That is why, cutting off very sharply these stealthy follies and contrived pretexts of theirs, when he came to prescribe how husbands should behave toward their wives, and declared that they should do so just as Christ also did to the church, ‘giving himself up’ for her, ‘that he might sanctify and cleanse her by the washing of water with the word,’ he ran back to Genesis, recalling the words about the first-formed man, and he secured these too for the sense of the subject before him, so as not to give a hold to those who, under pretext of begetting children, advocate the friction of bodies, to misuse these chief texts.

“For consider, virgins, that, wishing believers to be chaste, he tries through many proofs to indicate to them the dignity of chastity: at one point saying, ‘Now concerning the things about which you wrote to me: it is good for a man not to touch a woman,’ he shows plainly from the outset that not to touch a woman is good, placing it first and setting it out absolutely. Then again, seeing the weakness and the burning of the more incontinent toward intercourse, he allowed those unable to rule the flesh to have relations with their own bedfellows rather than fall shamefully and pour themselves out in sexual immorality. Indeed, after permitting this he at once added, ‘so that Satan may not tempt you because of your lack of self-control,’ which means: ‘But if you cannot, my friends, be entirely chaste because of your lack of self-control and the moistness of your bodies, I have permitted you rather to have relations with your own wives, so that you may not, while thought to profess continence, be continually tempted by the evil one, burning for other women.’

“Come, let us go through the text itself more carefully: the apostle did not grant these things to the many absolutely, but first added the reason why he was led to it. Having declared, then, that ‘it is good for a man not to touch a woman,’ he added: ‘but because of sexual immorality, let each man have his own wife’ (that is, because of the compulsion of sexual immorality, if you cannot restrain pleasure) ‘and let each woman have her own husband. Let the husband render to the wife her due, and likewise also the wife to the husband. The wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband; and likewise also the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife. Do not deprive one another, except perhaps by agreement for a time, that you may devote yourselves to prayer; and come together again, so that Satan may not tempt you because of your lack of self-control. But this I say by way of concession, not by command.’ And this too is said very thoughtfully. For he indicated that he had now given advice ‘by way of concession, and not by command,’ since he applies the command to self-control and not touching a woman, and the concession to those who, as I said, cannot restrain desire. These are his rules, then, about men married once and women married once, as long as their union [lasts]. But concerning men who have already lost their wives, or women their husbands, we must again trace precisely the apostle's voice and what it declares: ‘But I say to the unmarried and to the widows: it is good for them if they remain as I am. But if they are not practising self-control, let them marry; for it is better to marry than to burn.’ Here too he persisted in preferring continence. For, taking himself as the greatest example for his hearers to imitate, he summoned them to this resolve, teaching that it is better for one who has been joined to one wife to remain by himself, just as he himself did. But if this should be hard for someone to achieve because of the burning and vigour of the body, he allows one in that state to go on, by concession, to a second marriage, not declaring second marriage itself to be good, but judging it better than burning. It is as if someone, on the day of the Pascha and of the [fast], brought food to a person dangerously ill and bade him, because of his illness, to taste what was brought, saying: ‘Truly, my friend, it would be good … for you, like us, to hold out firmly and partake of the same things (for today it is forbidden to think of food at all); but since you have been seized by illness beforehand and weakened and cannot bear it, we therefore grant you a concession and advise you to take some food, lest, being quite unable through illness to resist the desire for food, you perish.’ So also the apostle here: having first said that he wished all to be self-controlled, as he himself was, he then, for those sick with the passions, lest they be wholly corrupted by sexual immorality, the generative members being provoked by tickling to mingle with the seed of strangers, permitted second marriage, judging it better than ‘to burn’ and behave shamefully.

“About continence and marriage and self-control and the union of men and women, and in which of these lies what is profitable for the building up of righteousness, I have now nearly finished; it remains to speak about [virginity], whether he said anything about it too. So these things too must be discussed. The passage runs thus: ‘Concerning virgins I have no command of the Lord; but I give my opinion as one who by the Lord's mercy is trustworthy. I think, then, that this is good because of the present distress, that it is good for a person to remain as he is. Are you bound to a wife? Do not seek to be released. Are you released from a wife? Do not seek a wife. But if you do marry, you have not sinned; and if a virgin marries, she has not sinned. Yet such people will have trouble in the flesh, and I would spare you.’ Introducing the subject of virginity very cautiously, and being about to advise that whoever wishes may give his own virgin in marriage, so that nothing that concerns holiness should be done by compulsion and force, but by the free choice of the soul (for this is pleasing to God), he does not wish these words, that is, that the virgin be given in marriage, to be taken as spoken by the authority and judgment of the Lord. Indeed, having said, ‘and if a virgin marries, she has not sinned,’ he again, cautiously, almost unsettled his consent, indicating that he had given this advice by human concession, not by divine. At once, then, after saying, ‘and if a virgin marries, she has not sinned,’ he added, ‘Yet such people will have trouble in the flesh, and I would spare you,’ which means: ‘I, sparing you, my friends, have agreed to this, since you yourselves have chosen to think so, so that I may not seem to hurry and compel any of you to it by force. Nevertheless, even if you prefer, finding chastity hard to bear, to turn rather to this, I still think it profitable for you to master the provocations of the flesh, not misusing your own vessels for impurity because you have married.’ Indeed he adds: ‘This I say, brothers: the time from now on is short, so that those who have wives may be as though they had none.’ Then, persisting again and urging the same things, he worked out his argument further, strongly confirming the resolve of virginity. In express words, then, joining what follows to what was said before, he declared: ‘I want you to be free from anxiety. The unmarried man is anxious about the things of the Lord, how to please the Lord; but the married man is anxious about the things of the world, how to please his wife. And the wife and the virgin are divided. The unmarried woman is anxious about the things of the Lord, that she may be holy in both body and spirit; but the married woman is anxious about the things of the world, how to please her husband.’ For it is beyond dispute and plain to all that to be anxious about the things of the Lord and to please the Lord is far better than to be anxious about the things of the world and to please one's wife. For who is so foolish and blind that he does not at once perceive that Paul's exhortation leans more toward chastity? ‘For this I say,’ he says, ‘for your own benefit, not to put a noose on you, but for what is seemly.’

“Notice besides what has been said how he declares that the way of life of virginity is also a gift of God. That is why he rejects those among the more incontinent who have come to it on a pretext of vainglory, advising them to marry, lest, in the season of their prime, when the flesh gives them throbbing inflammations, they behave shamefully, their souls driven by frenzy. For we must consider what he teaches: ‘But if anyone thinks he is behaving shamefully toward his virgin,’ he says, ‘if she is past her prime, and it must be so, let him do what he wishes; he does not sin; let them marry.’ Here he fittingly prefers marriage to shameful conduct in the case of those who chose to remain virgins but afterwards find it hard to bear and grow weary, and who, out of shame before people, boast in word that they persevere, but in deed cannot hold out any longer. But the one who with sovereign and free choice decides ‘to keep his own’ flesh ‘virgin’ and has no ‘necessity,’ that is, a passion that calls the loins to intercourse (for there are, as is likely, differences of bodies), the one who contends and earnestly perseveres in his promise and carries it through excellently, him he urges to remain and keep it, giving virginity the first prize. For the one who is able, he says, and is ambitious ‘to keep his own’ flesh ‘virgin, does better’; and the one who is not able, but keeps [it] lawfully and does not secretly corrupt, ‘does well.’ About these things enough has been said. Let anyone who wishes take in hand the letter to the Corinthians and, having conversed with each thing written in it, then examine and compare what we have said, whether it does not hold in full agreement and harmony with it. This, Arete, is what I too contribute, as far as I can, on behalf of chastity.” EUBOULION: Through a great deal, Gregorion, she barely arrived at her subject, having measured out and crossed a very long sea of words. GREGORION: So it seems. But come, let us go through the rest in order, recalling it as faithfully as we can, while I think I still have the hearing ringing in my ears, before it flies away and escapes; for the memories of the old easily lose what they have newly heard. EUBOULION: Speak, then; for we have come gladly to hear these speeches. GREGORION: Well then, as you said, after Thalia had been brought to land on waveless courses, Theopatra said that she herself took up next and spoke as follows.

“If, virgins, the wisdom of the art of speaking stood always on the same lines of argument and always travelled the same path, there would be no way for one attempting to speak after those who have already contended not to be wearisome. But if there are countless impulses and courses of speech, God inspiring us ‘in many portions and in many ways,’ what reason is there to hide oneself and be afraid? For one who shares in grace is not blameless if he does not adorn good things with words of thanksgiving. So come, let us too sing of the most brightly shining and most precious star among Christ's gifts, chastity. For this is the broadest and most generous road of the Spirit. From what point, then, we should begin so as to seem to say what is fitting and suited to our subject, must now be considered.

“For I think I have perceived precisely that nothing else has been so much the cause and means of salvation for human beings, of their restoration to paradise, their change to incorruption, and their reconciliation with God, nothing has so led us to life, as chastity. I will try to show now what I think about these things, so that, hearing clearly the power of this gift, you may know how many goods it has brought us. In ancient times, then, after man was cast out because of his transgression and removed, the stream of corruption poured over him abundantly, and, rushing violently in enormous surges, not only swept along outside in disorder, but already, pouring in, flooded the souls within. Suffering this continually, they were carried along deaf and senseless, having given up steering their own vessels, because they had nothing firm. For the senses of the soul, as those who know about these things say, when they are overcome by the passions that strike from outside and admit the onrush of the wave of folly that floods within, at once, darkened, hinder the whole vessel of the soul, which by nature is easily guided, from travelling on its straight course. For this reason God, taking pity on us, who were thus unable either to hold out or to recover, sent down from heaven the best and most glorious help, chastity, so that, having made our bodies fast by it like ships, we might lie calmly at anchor, safe from corruption; and the Holy Spirit bears witness to this. For this is found in the hundred and thirty-sixth Psalm, where the souls joyfully sing a hymn of thanksgiving to God, all those who have been taken up and now travel round heaven with Christ, [that they were not swept away] by the material and bodily streams. From this, indeed, they say that Pharaoh too bore the type of the devil, since he ordered the male children to be thrown pitilessly into the river and the female to be kept alive. For the devil too, reigning ‘from Adam until Moses’ over the great Egypt, the world, took pains that the male and rational offspring of the soul should be swept away by the passions and destroyed, while he longs for the fleshly and sensible to increase and multiply.

“But so as not to stray from our subject, come, let us take in hand and explain this Psalm, which the pure and unblemished souls sing to God, saying, ‘By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down and wept when we remembered Zion. On the willows in the midst of it, there we hung up our instruments.’ Calling their bodies ‘instruments,’ they clearly hung them up, fastening them by the cables of chastity to [the tree], so that they might not be snatched away and swept off again by the stream of incontinence. For Babylon, which is interpreted ‘tumult’ or ‘confusion,’ signifies this life flowing all round us, in the midst of which we sit and are flooded all the time we are in the world, as the rivers of wickedness constantly rush upon us. That is why we are terrified and lament and cry out with weeping to God, that our instruments may not be torn from the tree of chastity by the waves of pleasure and slip down. For the divine Scriptures everywhere take the willow as a type of virginity, since its flower, if ground up and drunk, quenches everything that boils up toward coupling and provocation, until it makes wholly barren and fruitless every impulse toward begetting children; as Homer too indicated, calling willows for this reason ‘fruit-losing.’ And in Isaiah the righteous are said to grow like willows by flowing water. For the plant of virginity grows greatly to its height when the righteous man, who has been entrusted to keep and tend it, waters it with the gentlest streams of Christ, sprinkling it with wisdom. For as this tree naturally grows green and sprouts with water, so virginity naturally flowers and flourishes always when enriched with words, so that one may hang his own instrument from it.

“If, then, the rivers of Babylon are the torrents of pleasure, as the wise say, which confuse and disturb the soul, the willows must be self-control, from which we hang and draw up the generative instruments that swing downward and weigh down the mind, so that they may not be carried down to the channels of incontinence and, like worms, touch the discharges and putrefactions. For God gave virginity as most useful and helpful for gaining incorruption, sending it as an ally to those who reach out for and long for Zion, as the Psalmist teaches, that is, for the shining love that is the commandment concerning it, since Zion is interpreted ‘command of the watchtower.’ Let us now consider in this way what follows as well. Why do the souls confess that they were asked by their captors to sing the song of the Lord in a foreign land, if not because they teach that the gospel is a holy and secret song, which sinners and those who commit adultery sing to the evil one? For they depart from the commandments, doing the will of ‘the spiritual forces of wickedness,’ and throw ‘what is holy to the dogs and the pearls before swine,’ just like those of whom the prophet says in displeasure, ‘And they read the law outside.’ For it was not because the Jews went out and read the law outside the gates of Jerusalem or of their houses that the prophet strongly accuses them and cries out that they had become liable to charge, but because, while transgressing the commandments and acting impiously toward God, they read the precepts with a feigned show, as if pious, but did not receive them in their soul and hold them with faith, but spat them out ‘by their works.’ For this is how they sing the song of the Lord in a foreign land: dragging down the law and explaining it in a lower sense, expecting an earthly kingdom, and setting their hopes on this foreign land, which the word says will pass away, where the captors, lying in wait for deception, entice them with pleasures.

“Those too who sing the gospel to the foolish seem to sing ‘the song of the Lord in a foreign land,’ of which Christ is not the husbandman. But those who have put on and shine with the most pure, bright, unmixed, reverent, and seemly beauty of virginity, and are found barren and fruitless of fleeting and painful things, do not sing ‘the song in a foreign land,’ because they do not carry their hopes here, nor cling to the delights of mortal bodies, nor look at the sense of the commandments in a low way, but well and nobly, with lofty mind, they gaze at the promises above, seeking the heavenly place that is akin to them. That is why God, admiring their thoughts, promises ‘with an oath’ to give them special honours, setting them first ‘at the beginning of joy’ and establishing them in the first seat. For he says thus: ‘If I forget you, O Jerusalem, may my right hand be forgotten. May my tongue cling to my throat if I do not remember you, if I do not set Jerusalem first as at the beginning of my joy’: calling Jerusalem these very undefiled and, as I said, unharmed souls, which, having drunk with undefiled lips the strictly pure, unfermented drink, are betrothed ‘to one husband, to present a pure virgin to Christ’ in heaven, ‘having won the contest for undefiled prizes.’ In this way Isaiah too exhorts, saying: ‘Shine, shine, Jerusalem; for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you.’ It is plain to everyone that these promises will be fulfilled after the resurrection. For the Holy Spirit does not prophesy about the much-talked-of little town in Judea, but about that truly heavenly city, the blessed Jerusalem, which they say is the assembly of the souls that God promises, without fail, to set first ‘at the beginning of joy’ of the new ages, making them dwell, arrayed in the whitest adornment of virginity, in a pure dwelling of unsetting lights, because they did not remember to put off the bridal adornment, that is, to slacken their reasoning with strange imaginings.

“Indeed, the saying in Jeremiah that a bride should not forget her adornment, nor a virgin her breast-band, signifies not to give way and loosen the band of self-control through deceits and distractions. For the breast is reasonably thought to be our heart and mind; and the breast-band, the girdle that binds and draws tight the soul's resolve toward chastity, is love toward God. May Jesus, our captain and shepherd and ruler and bridegroom, grant you, fair virgins, to keep it unbroken and sealed ‘to the end.’ For no one could easily find a better help for human beings than this possession, pleasing and dear to God. That is why I say that all must honour chastity, and especially practise it and praise it. Let these first-fruits of speech, then, be dedicated to you by me too, Arete, partly in play and partly in earnest.” “I accept the gift,” Arete said, she told me, “and I bid Thallousa speak after you; for I must receive a speech from each one of you.”

Thallousa, then, she said, having paused a little and considered something to herself, said: “Arete, I ask you to stand by me as a helper in my mind, so that we may appear to speak in a manner worthy first of you and then of those present. For I am fully persuaded, having learned it from the sacred writings, that the greatest and most splendid offering and gift, than which nothing of equal worth can be brought by human beings to God, is the contest of virginity. For, although many people did many good things by vows in the law, those alone who offered themselves to God by their own free will would not have been said to fulfil a great vow unless this were so. For the text runs thus: ‘And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, “Speak to the sons of Israel and say to them: A man or woman who vows a great vow, to consecrate chastity to the Lord.”’ One vows to bring golden and silver vessels to the temple and dedicate them; another to dedicate a tenth of his crops, another of his property, another the best of his flocks; another consecrates his possessions; and yet none of these is said to have vowed a great vow to the Lord, but only the one who dedicates himself wholly to God.

“For I must try, virgins, to show you in a true account the spiritual sense of the Scripture. For whoever guards and attends in one part, but is distracted and errs in another, is not wholly dedicated to God. For the perfect man must dedicate everything, both what belongs to the soul and what belongs to the flesh, so that he may be complete and not lacking. In this way God instructs Abraham too, saying, ‘Take for me a heifer three years old, and a goat three years old, and a ram three years old, and a turtledove and a pigeon.’ That is (for notice that he enjoins this too, in a manner of good omen): ‘Offer to me and keep your soul unyoked and unharmed like a heifer, and your flesh and your reason, the one like a goat, since it ranges over the heights and cliffs, the other like a ram, so that it may never leap away and fall and slip from the truth. For so you will be perfect and blameless, Abraham, having dedicated to me your soul, your perception, and your mind.’ These he symbolically called a three-year-old heifer and goat and ram, as having taken up the blameless knowledge of the Trinity. And perhaps he also hints at the first, middle, and last course of our life's age, wishing, as far as possible, that we should offer ourselves to him having lived chastely through the time of childhood, manhood, and old age. In the same way our Lord Jesus Christ also exhorts in the Gospels, legislating thus: ‘Let your lamps’ not be quenched, and ‘your loins’ not be ungirded. ‘Therefore be like men waiting for their master, when he will return from the wedding, so that when he comes and knocks they may open to him at once. Blessed are you, for he will make you recline and will come and serve you; and if he comes in the second watch or in the third, blessed are you.’ For consider, virgins, that by supposing three watches of the night, the evening, the second, and the third, and three comings of his own, he hinted at the three changes of our age, youth, prime, and old age, wishing that, if he comes to take us out of the world while we are in the first age, that is, while we are children, we may be ready and pure, having practised nothing wrong; and likewise in the second, and in the third. For the evening watch is the time of a man's prime and youth, in which the ruling part of the soul begins to be troubled, clouded by the changes of life, as his flesh reaches maturity and turns to passions. The second is when, having advanced ‘to mature manhood,’ the mind begins to gain stability and firmness against its turmoils and conceit. The third is when most of the fancies of the desires waste away, as the flesh withers and advances into old age.

“That is why we ought to kindle in our heart the unquenchable lamp of faith, gird our loins with self-control, and keep awake and always wait for the Lord, so that, whether he wishes to take some of us in our first age, or in the second, or in the third, he may come and find us most ready and doing what he commanded, and make us recline in the bosom of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob. And Jeremiah says, ‘It is good for a man when he bears a heavy yoke in his youth,’ and his soul will not ‘depart from the Lord.’ For it is truly good to put one's neck from childhood under divine care and not to shake off, until old age, the rider mounted on a pure mind, while the evil one is always dragging our reasoning down toward what is worse. For who does not welcome the pleasures and delights that come through the eyes, through the ears, through taste and smell and touch, if he does not bear the charioteer, self-control, who restrains and bloodies the horse of vice? Another, then, looking at other things, will think otherwise; but we say that a person dedicates himself perfectly to God who strives to keep his flesh undefiled from childhood, practising virginity. For it quickly brings great and much-desired gifts of hope to those who long for it, withering the passions and sparks that ruin the soul. Come, let me explain how we are dedicated to the Lord.

“The command in Numbers, then, to ‘vow a great vow’ shows this, which I will set forth by explaining it more fully, proving that chastity is a great vow beyond all vows. For I am plainly dedicated wholly to the Lord when I strive to keep my flesh not only untouched by intercourse but also unstained by other misdeeds. ‘For the unmarried woman,’ he says, ‘is anxious about the things of the Lord, how to please the Lord’: not only so that she may not win a glory of virtue lame in some part, but that she may be sanctified in both, as the apostle says, ‘in spirit and in body,’ dedicating her members to the Lord. For we must say what it is to dedicate oneself perfectly to the Lord. If I open my mouth for some things and shut it for others, for example, open it for the explanation of the Scriptures, to praise God rightly and magnificently as far as I can, but shut it, setting ‘a door’ and ‘a guard’ on it so as not to speak vain things, my mouth is chaste and dedicated to the Lord, and ‘my tongue’ has become ‘a pen,’ an instrument of wisdom. For through it the Word, the Lord, the swift-writing scribe of the ages, writes in clear letters from the depth and power of the Scriptures, illuminating ‘the law of the Spirit’: swift-writing because he alone swiftly and keenly writes down and fulfils the will of the Father, hearing, ‘Swiftly despoil, quickly plunder.’ Of this ‘scribe’ ‘my tongue’ is the ‘pen’; for it has been made chaste for him and dedicated as a pen that is ‘fair,’ writing fairer things than the poets and prose-writers who establish human doctrines. If I accustom my eyes too not to desire the beauty of bodies, nor to take pleasure in shameful sights, but to look at the things above, my eyes too are chaste and dedicated to the Lord. If I stop my ears against slander and whispering and open them to the word of God, going to the wise, I have dedicated my hearing too to the Lord. If I shake my hands free from peddling, from reselling, from love of money, from striking, my hands too are chaste to God. If I keep my walking from going in crooked ways, I have dedicated my feet too, not going to law courts and revels, ‘where men who judge crookedly are,’ but to accomplish rightly the fulfilment of some one of the commandments. What remains for me, if I make my heart too wholly chaste, dedicating all its thoughts to the Lord? I think nothing base, I reason on nothing worldly, pride and anger have no citizenship in me, I meditate on the law of the Lord by day and by night; and this is ‘to consecrate chastity, having vowed a great vow.’

“I will try, virgins, to explain to you also what follows in these ordinances, since they too depend on our own right conduct, being laws about virginity and oracles teaching what the virgin should abstain from and that she should be lifted upward. For it runs thus: ‘And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, “Speak to the sons of Israel and say to them: A man or woman who vows a great vow to consecrate himself to the Lord shall abstain from strong drink and wine; and he shall not drink vinegar made from wine or vinegar made from strong drink, or anything made from grapes, and he shall not eat fresh grapes or raisins all the days of his vow.”’ That is: one who has pledged and dedicated himself to [God] will not pluck from the plant of wickedness any of its produce, because by nature it always brings drunkenness and derangement. For we have learned from the Scriptures of two different vines, which have come to be separately and are unlike. One brings immortality and righteousness, the other madness and delirium. The sober and gladdening vine, which, like branches, cheerfully hangs from its teachings clusters of gifts dripping with love, is our Lord Jesus, who says plainly to the apostles, ‘I am the true vine, you are the branches, and my Father is the vinedresser.’ But the wild and deadly one is the devil, dripping rage and poison and wrath, just as Moses teaches, describing him: ‘For their vine,’ he says, ‘is from the vine of Sodom, and their tendrils from Gomorrah. Their grapes are grapes of gall, their cluster is bitter to them. Their wine is the rage of serpents and the incurable rage of asps.’ Harvesting from this, the inhabitants of Sodom were driven by frenzy to turn ‘against nature’ to a fruitless desire for males. From this those in the time of Noah, drunk, slid into unbelief and were sunk beneath the flood. From this Cain drew, and dyed his brother-hating hands red, and first defiled the earth with the gore of a kinsman. From this the nations, getting drunk, whet their anger for battles of mutual slaughter. For a man is not so deranged and senseless from wine as from jealousy and anger; one is not so drunk and out of his mind from wine as from grief, from lust, from lack of self-control. From tasting this vine the virgin has been commanded not to taste, so that, sober and awake from the cares of life, she may kindle the shining lamp of righteousness for the Word. ‘For take heed,’ says the Lord, ‘lest your hearts be weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness and the cares of life, and that day come upon you like a snare.’

“And the virgin has been commanded not only never in any way to touch what is made from that vine, but also what imitates it and resembles it. For all manufactured and counterfeit wine is called strong drink, even if it is made from dates or other fruits. For these too, like toasts of wine, violently muzzle the reasoning. And, to speak to you truly, the wise call ‘strong drink’ everything, besides wine from the vine, that brings drunkenness and derangement to the soul. So, in order that, while guarding against the chief sins of wickedness, she may not be stained by what imitates and counterbalances them, mastering some and being mastered by others, that is, delighting in clothes of fine weaving, or in stones and gold and greed and the other adornments of the body, which themselves also make the soul drunk: for this reason he lays down these laws, that she may not pour herself out in effeminacies and laughter and deceits, stirred up to foolish talk, which whirl about and confound the reasoning. As he indicated elsewhere too, saying, ‘You shall not eat the hyena and what is like it, nor the weasel and what is like it.’ For this is the straight and short road to heaven: not only to drag along no hindrance of those things that throw a person headlong when he is excited by pleasures and delights, but also none of what imitates them. For indeed the assembly of the chaste has been handed down as the bloodless altar of God. So great and glorious a thing virginity appears to be. That is why it must be kept undefiled and wholly pure, having no share in the impurities of the flesh, but, gilded with wisdom, set within, ‘before the testimony,’ in the holy of holies, sending up to the Lord the fragrance of love. For ‘You shall make for me,’ he says, after the altar overlaid with bronze (on which the burnt offerings and the offerings were brought), another ‘altar of incorruptible wood, and you shall overlay it with gold, and you shall set it before the veil that is over the ark of the testimony,’ before ‘the mercy seat,’ that is, [the mercy seat] ‘of the testimonies,’ ‘where I will make myself known to you there. And Aaron shall burn on it incense of spices to the Lord in the morning, when he trims the lamps; he shall burn incense on it continually before the Lord throughout your generations. He shall not offer on it strange incense or burnt offering; he shall not pour out sacrifice or drink offering on it.’

“If the law is, according to the apostle, ‘spiritual,’ containing the images of the good things to come, come, let us strip off ‘the veil’ of ‘the letter’ spread over it and look at its exact meaning uncovered. The Hebrews were commanded to fashion the tabernacle as a copy of the church, so that through things perceptible they might proclaim beforehand ‘the image’ of divine ‘realities.’ For the pattern shown on the mountain, according to which Moses built the tabernacle, was an exact form of the dwelling in heaven, which we now serve more clearly than the types, but more dimly than the truth. For the truth has not yet come to human beings pure, as it is by nature; we who could not bear to see incorruption unmixed here, since we cannot even look freely at the sun's rays. The Jews proclaimed ‘the shadow’ of the image, third from the truth; but we clearly hold sacred the image of the heavenly order. For the truth will be shown precisely after the resurrection, when we shall behold ‘face to face’ the holy tabernacle, ‘the city’ in the heavens, ‘whose builder and maker is God,’ and not through ‘riddles’ and ‘in part.’

“For the Jews foretold our things, and we foretell the heavenly things, since the tabernacle was a symbol of the church, and the church of the heavens. So, this being the case, and the tabernacle being taken, as I said, as a type of the church, the altars too must bear some sign of the realities of the church: the one overlaid with bronze must be likened to the body of elders and the company of widows (for they are God's living altar, to whom we bring calves and tithes and freewill offerings and so offer sacrifices to the Lord); and the golden altar, set within in the holy of holies before the testimony, on which no sacrifice or drink offering is brought, must be compared to those in virginity, whose bodies, untouched by intercourse, are secured with pure gold. For two things are celebrated in praise of gold: that it does not admit rust, and that in colour it appears somewhat like the rays of the sun. It is fittingly, then, a symbol of chastity, which admits no stain or spot, but always flashes with the light of the Word. That is why it too stands within, nearer the holy of holies and before the veil, sending up prayers to the Lord with undefiled hands like incense, acceptable as ‘a fragrant odour.’ So John too indicated, saying that the incense in the bowls of the twenty-four elders is the prayers of the saints. This, Arete, is my contribution, as far as I can, on the spur of the moment, on behalf of chastity.”

When Thallousa had said this, Theopatra said, Arete touched Agathe with her sceptre, and she, perceiving it, at once rose and answered: “With great confidence and persuasion, and with the hope of speaking well, Arete, since you accompany me, I too will try, as far as I can, to contribute something to the subject, but in my own way and not in answer to what has been said. For I could not philosophize on a level with these speeches, worked out so variously and brilliantly; I would seem to earn a reproach for foolishness if I leapt forward to make myself equal to those superior in wisdom. If, then, you will bear with those who make speeches however they can, I will attempt to speak, abating nothing of my eagerness. I must begin from here. Virgins, we all come into this world possessing an indescribable beauty, akin and suited to wisdom. For souls resemble most closely him who begot and formed them when, shining with the undefiled form ‘according to the likeness’ and the features of that countenance to which God looked when he made them, having an immortal and indestructible form, they remain such. For the unbegotten and incorporeal beauty, which neither begins nor fades, but is unchangeable and ageless and needs nothing, itself in itself, itself light, resting in unspeakable and unapproachable places, embracing and creating and re-shaping all things by the abundance of its power, made the soul ‘according to the image’ of its own image. That is why it is rational and immortal; for, created according to the image of the Only-begotten, as I said, it has an unsurpassable beauty. That is why ‘the spiritual forces of wickedness’ too love it and plot against it, forcing themselves to defile that godlike and lovely form of it, as the prophet Jeremiah shows when he reproaches Jerusalem: ‘You had the face of a harlot; you became shameless toward your lovers,’ speaking of the soul that gives itself up to the opposing powers to be profaned. For the lovers are the devil and his angels, who contrive to stain and defile by their intercourse the rational and clear-sighted beauty of our understanding, and desire to become adulterers of every soul betrothed to the Lord.

“If, then, someone keeps this beauty unstained and unharmed, and such as he who formed and painted it moulded it, imitating the eternal and intelligible nature, of which man is the impress and likeness, becoming like a most beautiful and holy statue, he will be carried from here to the city of the blessed, the heavens, and will be made to dwell there as in a temple. Our beauty is best and most safely kept undefiled when, sheltered by virginity, it is not blackened by the scorching heat of corruption from outside, but, remaining by itself, is adorned with righteousness, being led as a bride to the Son of God. So he himself teaches, exhorting us to keep the unquenchable light of chastity burning in our own flesh as in lamps. For the number of the ten virgins signifies the souls that have believed in Jesus, representing by the letter iota [ten] the only road leading straight to the heavens. But five were prudent and wise, and five ‘foolish’ and unwise; for they did not take care to have their vessels filled with oil, and remained empty of righteousness. By these he hints at those who hasten to reach the goal of virginity and do everything decently and chastely to fulfil this love, and at those who profess and pride themselves on aiming at it, but are careless and overcome by the changes of the world, and are like people sketching an outline of virtue rather than working out its living truth.

“For the saying that the kingdom of heaven is like ten virgins who ‘took their lamps and went out’ to meet the bridegroom means that all had taken up the same road of this way of life, as the ten [iota] indicates. For they all set out alike, having professed themselves to it, and in this respect they are called ten, since, as I said, they chose the same purpose; but they did not go out alike to meet the bridegroom. For some provided abundant food, and for later too, for their oil-fed lamps, while others were careless and cared only for the present. That is why they are divided equally into fives, since some of them kept pure and virgin from sins the five senses, which most have called the gates of wisdom, while the others, on the contrary, defiled them by kneading them with vice through a multitude of wrongs. For, though they practised continence and chastity, they bore more fruit of transgressions than of righteousness; and from this it came about that they were shut out of the divine enclosures and turned away. For whether we do right or do wrong, both our good deeds and our misdeeds are strengthened through these senses. And as Thallousa said that there is a chastity of the eyes and ears and tongue and the rest of the senses, so too here the one who has kept her faith inviolate through the five pathways of virtue, sight, taste, smell, touch, and hearing, is called five virgins, because she has restored to Christ the five images of perception pure, from each of them clearly shining holiness like a lamp. For our flesh is truly a lamp with five lights, which the soul carries like a torch and presents to the Bridegroom, Christ, on the day of the resurrection, showing through all the senses her faith shining brightly; as he himself taught, saying, ‘I came to cast fire on the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled!’, calling our bodies ‘earth,’ in which he wished the quick-moving and fiery practice of his teaching to be kindled speedily. For the oil must be compared to wisdom and righteousness; for when the soul pours these out abundantly and sheds them on the body, the light of virtue is kindled unquenchable on high, making good deeds shine ‘before men,’ so that ‘the Father in heaven’ may be ‘glorified.’

“Such oil, then, those in Leviticus too offered, ‘pure oil, clear, beaten, to burn a lamp outside the veil before the Lord.’ But they were commanded to tend a very small light, ‘from evening until morning.’ For their lamp seems to be likened to the prophetic word, which shows forth boldness for self-control, nourished by the deeds and the faith of the people; and the temple to ‘the allotted portion of the inheritance,’ since a lamp can give light only around one house. This lamp, then, had to burn before the day; ‘for they shall burn it,’ he says, ‘until morning,’ that is, until the coming of Christ. For when ‘the sun’ of chastity and ‘of righteousness’ has risen, there is no need of a lamp. As long, then, as that people stored up what fed the lamp, supplying the oil through their works, the lamp of self-control was not quenched for them, but was always shining and giving light in ‘the allotted portion of the inheritance.’ But when the oil failed, as they turned aside from faith to licentiousness, the lamp was utterly put out, so that the virgins might once more flash forth their lamps in successive relays from above, kindling incorruption for the world as a beacon. So now too we must supply without fear the pure oil of good works and understanding, strained of all corruption that weighs down, so that, ‘when the bridegroom is delayed,’ our lamps too may not likewise go out. For the delay is the interval before the coming of Christ; the drowsiness and sleep of the ten virgins is the departure from life; and the midnight is the reign of the Antichrist, during which the destroying angel goes through the houses. And the cry that arose saying, ‘Behold, the bridegroom is coming; go out to meet him,’ is the voice from heaven and the trumpet, when, all the saints having risen with their bodies, they will go on the clouds, caught up ‘to meet’ the Lord. For we must notice that the word says that after the cry all the virgins were awakened, that is, that after the shout brought from heaven the dead will rise; as Paul too declares, saying: ‘For the Lord himself, with a command, with the voice of an archangel and with the trumpet of God, will descend from heaven, and the dead in Christ will rise first’ (that is, the bodies, for they died when stripped of the souls); ‘then we who are living will be caught up together with them,’ meaning the souls. For we who are living are properly the souls, who, having received back these bodies, will meet him in the clouds, carrying our lamps adorned not with any foreign and worldly adornment, but with prudence and self-control, full of the brightness of heavenly radiance, gleaming like stars.

“These, fair virgins, are the rites of our mysteries; these the initiations of those initiated into virginity; these the rewards of ‘the undefiled prizes’ of self-control. I am betrothed to the Word, and receive as dowry from the Father the eternal crown of incorruption and wealth; and ‘in the ages I march crowned’ with the bright and unfading flowers of wisdom. I join the dance with Christ, who gives the prize in heaven, around the King without beginning and without end; I have become a torch-bearer of unsetting lights, and I sing the new song with the company of the archangels, proclaiming the new grace of the church. For the word declares that the company of virgins always follows the Lord and shares his festal company wherever he may be. John too hints at this in his mention of the hundred and forty-four thousand. Come, then, young people of the new ages, come, fill your vessels with righteousness; for it is now time to rise and go to meet the Bridegroom. Come, passing lightly by the spells and charms of life that whirl about and bewitch the soul; for you will obtain the promises, yes, by him who showed the path of our life. This woven crown from the prophetic meadows, Arete, I too have adorned and offer to you.”

When Agathe too had finished her speech excellently, she said, and had won approval for what she had said in her turn, Arete again bade Procilla speak. She rose, came forward in front of the couch, and spoke as follows: “It is not right for me to lose heart, Arete, even after so many speeches, since I believe without doubt in ‘the manifold wisdom of God,’ which has the power to give richly and variously to whomever it wills. For seafarers say that the same wind blows on those who sail, yet some, handling their sailing differently, do not hasten to put in at the same harbour; for some have the wind standing fair astern, while for others it blows from the side, and yet for both the voyage is completed most easily. So too the ‘intelligent, holy, and only-begotten spirit’ of wisdom, blowing gently down from the Father's treasuries above, will blow as a clear, fair wind of knowledge on all of us and will suffice to direct the course of our speeches without trouble; for it is now my time to speak. This, virgins, is one excellent and dignified kind of praise: when the one who praises offers, for the praises, a witness greater than the one praised. For from this we can learn precisely that the words of praise are spoken not to please, nor from compulsion, nor for reputation, but in truth and with unflattering judgment. For the prophets and apostles, who spoke more fully about the Son of God who is before the ages and spoke of him as God more than other men, did not refer his praises to an angelic utterance, but to him who holds the sovereignty and power over all. For it was fitting that he who is greater than all others, after the Father, should have as witness only his own Father, who is greater than he. So I too will refer the praises of chastity not to human opinion, but to him to whom we belong and who has taken up the whole, showing that he is its husbandman, the lover of its beauty, and a trustworthy witness. Anyone who wishes can see this clearly in the Song of Songs, where Christ himself, praising those firmly established in virginity, says: ‘As a lily among thorns, so is my beloved among the daughters,’ comparing to a lily the gift of chastity for its purity, fragrance, sweetness, and cheerfulness. For chastity is like spring, always blooming delicately with incorruption in white buds. That is why he is not ashamed to confess that he loves the beauty of its bloom, saying in what follows: ‘You have ravished our heart, my sister, my bride, you have ravished our heart with one of your eyes, with one ornament of your neck. How beautiful are your breasts, more than wine, and the fragrance of your garments above all spices. Your lips drip honeycomb, O bride; honey and milk are under your tongue, and the fragrance of your garments is like the fragrance of frankincense. A garden locked, my sister, my bride, a garden locked, a fountain sealed.’ Christ sings these praises to those who have come to the goal of virginity, including them all under the one name of bride, since the bride must be betrothed and named after [the bridegroom], yet still be undefiled and untouched, like a sealed garden, in which all the spices of the fragrance of heaven grow, so that Christ alone may come and gather them, sprung from incorporeal seeds. For the Word loves nothing of the flesh, because by nature he does not accept anything corruptible, such as hands or face or feet; but he rejoices looking at the immaterial and spiritual beauty itself, not touching the bloom of the body.

“For consider, virgins, that ‘you have ravished our heart … with one of your eyes,’ said by him to the bride, points to the clear-sighted eye of understanding, when the inner man, having cleansed it, sees the truth more clearly. For it is plain to everyone that the power of sight is twofold, one of the soul and the other of the body. But the Word does not profess to love that of the body, but only that of the mind, saying, ‘You have ravished our heart with one of your eyes, and with one ornament of your neck,’ which means: ‘You, by the lovely look of your understanding, have winged our heart to longing, flashing forth from within the bright adornment of self-control.’ For the ornaments of necks are what we call necklaces, made of precious and many-coloured stones. But souls that care for the body put this perceptible adornment around the outer neck of the flesh to deceive those who look at them, while chaste souls, on the contrary, fasten on within the adornment truly made of the precious and many-coloured stones of freedom, magnanimity, wisdom, and love, caring little for the passing ornaments of this world, which, like leaves, flourish for a season and wither together with the changes of the body. For the adornment of a human being appears twofold, and of these the Lord accepts the inner, undefiled one, saying that he has been ravished ‘by one ornament of the neck’ of the bride, as if signifying that he longs for the inner man, which gleams with the radiance of its attire, as the Psalmist too testifies, saying, ‘All the glory of the king's daughter is within.’

“But let no one suppose that we reject the rest of the company of believers, thinking that we teach that the virgins alone will obtain the promise, not understanding that there will be tribes and families and ranks of each ‘in proportion to’ their faith. Paul too describes this, saying, ‘There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars; for star differs from star in glory. So also is the resurrection of the dead.’ And the Lord does not profess to give the same honours to all, but counts some among the kingdom of heaven, promises others the inheritance of the earth, and others that they will see the Father. And indeed here he declares that the first rank, the holy chorus of the virgins, following him, will enter with him, as into a bridal chamber, into the rest of the new ages. For they bore witness, not enduring the burdens of the body for a short part of time, but throughout their whole life they endured, not shrinking from contending to the end in the truly Olympic contest of chastity. For, having held out against the savage tortures of pleasures, and fears, and griefs, and the other evils of human wickedness, they carry off the prizes first of all, being ranked in the better place of the promise. Indeed, the Word calls these souls alone his chosen and true bride, and the rest concubines and maidens and daughters, saying thus: ‘There are sixty queens and eighty concubines, and maidens without number. One is my dove, my perfect one; she is the only one of her mother, the chosen one of her who bore her. The daughters saw her and will call her blessed; the queens and the concubines will praise her.’ For though the daughters of the church are clearly many, one alone is chosen and most precious in her eyes above all, the rank of the virgins.

“But if anyone has a doubt about these things, as though the main points have not yet been worked out sufficiently, and wishes them to be set out more fully by a spiritual higher interpretation, namely who are the queens and the concubines and the maidens, we will say that these words can also be spoken of those who have excelled in righteousness from the beginning in the successive ages: for example, those before the flood, those after the flood, and those from Christ onward. The bride is the church; the queens are those royal souls before the flood who were pleasing to God, that is, those around Abel and Seth and Enoch; the concubines are the prophets after the flood, with whom, before the church was betrothed to the Lord, he consorted as with concubines and sowed true words in abundant and pure philosophy, so that, conceiving faith, they might bear for him ‘a spirit of salvation.’ For such are the offshoots that souls produce, bearing ever-remembered beauty, with which Christ is blended. For if you will look at the books of Moses, or of David, or of Solomon, or of Isaiah, or of the prophets after them, virgins, you will know what saving offspring they have left to life through their communion with the Son of God. That is why the Word thoughtfully called the prophetic souls concubines, because he did not openly [take them to himself] as he did the church, for whom he [killed] the fatted calf.

“Besides this we must also ask, so that nothing necessary may escape us, why he says the queens are sixty, the concubines eighty, and the maidens so many that they cannot be counted because of their multitude, but the bride one. And first we must speak about the sixty. He called sixty queens, as I think, those who in succession from the first-formed man until Noah were pleasing to God, since these did not need other commands and laws in order to be saved, the creation of the world in six days being still recent for them. For they remembered that in six days God fashioned the creation, and what happened in paradise, and how man, having the command not to taste of the plant of understanding, ran aground, the sophist of wickedness having led him astray. From this, then, he symbolically called sixty queens the souls that, immediately from the establishment of the world, chose in succession to long for God, being, so to speak, offspring of the first age and neighbours of the great six days, because they came, as I said, immediately after the six days. For these had great honour, conversing with angels and often seeing God awake, not in dreams. Consider how much boldness toward God Seth had, how much Abel, Enos, Enoch, Methuselah, Noah, who were the first lovers of righteousness and the first of the ‘firstborn’ children ‘enrolled in heaven’ to be counted worthy of the kingdom, sprouting as an early fruit to God, a kind of first-fruits of those planted for salvation. Enough about these; we must speak next about the concubines.

“For those after the flood the knowledge of God was more remote, and they needed another teaching, now that idolatry was creeping in, which would again ward off evil and help them. So God, that the human race might not be utterly destroyed by forgetfulness of good things, commanded his own Son to announce through the prophets his future coming into life through the flesh, in which the joy and knowledge of the spiritual eighth day will be proclaimed, which brings forgiveness of sins and resurrection; for through it the passions and the corruption of human beings would be circumcised. And for this reason he called the list of prophets from Abraham onward eighty concubines, because of the dignity of circumcision, which contains the number eight, on which the law too depends; for they first, before the bride, the church, was betrothed to the Word, conceived the divine seeds and announced beforehand the circumcision of the spiritual eighth day. And the maidens, who make up a countless company, he calls the multitudes who, ranking below the better ones, did righteousness and contended youthfully and nobly against sin.

“But neither the ‘queens’ nor the ‘concubines’ nor the ‘maidens’ of these are compared to the church. For the one thought ‘perfect’ and ‘chosen’ beyond them all, composed of all and joined together from the apostles, is the bride who surpasses all in the beauty of her bloom and of her virginity. That is why she is called blessed and praised by the others, because she saw and heard abundantly what they had longed to see even briefly and did not see, and to hear and did not hear. For ‘Blessed are your eyes,’ the Lord says to the disciples, ‘which see what you see. For I tell you that many prophets desired to see what you see, and did not see it, and to hear what you hear, and did not hear it.’ So the prophets call her blessed and admire her for this reason, because the church was counted worthy and shared in what they did not attain to hear and see. ‘For there are sixty queens and eighty concubines, and maidens without number. One is my dove, my perfect one.’

“But one could also say in another way that the bride is the undefiled flesh of the Lord, for whose sake he left the Father and came down here, was joined to it, and, becoming man, dwelt in it. That is why he called it figuratively a dove, since the creature is tame, lives under the roof, and delights in living with human beings. For it alone, so to speak, was found spotless and undefiled, surpassing all in the adornment and beauty of righteousness, so that none even of those who pleased God most could stand near it in comparison of virtue; and for this reason it was counted worthy to become partner in the kingdom of the Only-begotten, betrothed and united to him. And in the forty-fourth Psalm too, the queen who stands out from the many at the right hand of God, arrayed in the gold-woven adornment of virtue, whose ‘beauty’ ‘the king desired,’ is, as I said, that undefiled and blessed flesh which the Word himself carried up into heaven and set ‘at the right hand’ of the Father, adorned ‘in gold-woven clothing,’ that is, with the practices of incorruption, which he symbolically called ‘gold fringes,’ since this garment is embroidered and woven together from various virtues, such as chastity, prudence, faith, love, patience, and the other good things, which, covering the shame of the flesh, adorn the human being with golden adornment.

“Then we must consider what the Spirit teaches again in what follows in the Psalm, after the man whom the Word took up has been enthroned ‘at the right hand’ of the Almighty. ‘Virgins will be brought to the king after her,’ he says; ‘her companions will be brought to you. They will be brought with gladness and rejoicing; they will be led into the temple of the king.’ Here the Spirit seems now to praise chastity very plainly, promising that, after the bride of the Lord, as we have explained, the virgins will come second to the Almighty ‘with rejoicing and gladness,’ escorted and attended by angels. For the glory of virginity is so exceedingly lovely and thrice-desired that, after the queen whom the Lord, having fashioned her sinless, brought up to the Father, the chorus and rank of the virgins is brought, having received second place after the bride. Let these exercises of speech on behalf of chastity, Arete, be inscribed for you from me too.”

When Procilla had said this, Thecla said: “It falls to me to contend next after her, and I rejoice that I too have the wisdom of words as my fellow traveller, for I feel it tuning me within like a lyre and preparing me to speak carefully and becomingly.” ARETE: I welcome your eagerness most gladly, Thecla, and I trust that you will render me speeches fitting to your ability. For you will fall short of no one in general philosophy and education; and what need is there to speak of the gospel and divine learning, you who were made wise by Paul? “Let us speak first, then, beginning from the name itself: for what reason this supreme and blessed way of life was called virginity, what it is, and what power it has, and afterwards what fruits it produces. For nearly everyone is in danger of being ignorant of it, though it differs by countless degrees from the other advantages of virtue that we labour at for the cleansing and adornment of the soul. For virginity (parthenia) is called, by the change of one letter, ‘nearness to God’ (partheia), since it alone makes the one who possesses it, and has been initiated into its incorruptible rites, like God, than whom no greater good can be found, being far removed from pleasure and pain. Watered by it, the wing of the soul truly grows and becomes light, being accustomed day by day to fly away from human pursuits. For since the sons of the wise have said that our life is a festival, and that we have come as into a theatre to perform the drama of truth, that is, righteousness, while the devil and the demons contrive against us and contend with us, we must look upward and, taking wing, soar aloft and flee the charms of their fine voices and their appearances, coloured on the outside with a show of self-control, more than the Sirens of Homer. For many, bewitched by the pleasures of error, lose their wings and grow heavy on coming into our life, when the sinews by which the nature of the wings of self-control is held together, lifting what inclines downward toward the corruption of bodies, have been slackened and loosened. So, Arete, whether … you have received this name, or because you also lift souls up to heaven, walking always on the whitest minds, come and help me with the speech which you yourself bade me make.

“For those who have lost their wings and fallen into pleasures do not cease from grief and toil until, fulfilling the compulsion of incontinence by their passionate desire, they remain uninitiated and incomplete in the drama of truth, raging with the savage pleasures of lust instead of begetting children with modesty and self-control. But those who are well-winged and light, peering out from life into the place beyond the world and seeing from afar what no other human being has beheld, the very meadows of incorruption, which bear and are filled with indescribable beauties and flowers, are always turned toward them, recalling the sights there; and for this reason they think little of what are here thought good things, wealth, glory, birth, and marriage, and no longer value any of them more highly. Indeed, if anyone should wish to hand over their bodies to beasts or fire and punish them, they are ready to disregard the pains because of their longing for those things and their amazement at them, so that, though they are in the world, they seem not to be in the world, but already, in thought and in the impulse of desire, to be in the assembly of those in heaven. For it is not right that the wing of virginity should by its own nature be weighed down to earth, but it bears upward into the pure ether and the life that neighbours the angels. That is why, after the recall and departure from here, those who have kept their virginity rightly and faithfully for Christ are the first of all to carry off the prizes of victory, crowned by him with the flowers of incorruption. For the story is that as soon as their souls leave the world, angels meet the virgins with great acclamation and escort them to the meadows spoken of before, to which they had longed to come even earlier, having imagined them from afar at the time when, still living in their bodies, they glimpsed divine things.

“When they have come there, they see wonderful, brilliant, and blessed beauties, such as are hard to express to human beings. For there is righteousness itself and self-control itself, love itself and truth and prudence, and likewise the other bright flowers and plants of wisdom, of which we here, dreaming, think that only phantom shadows arise from human actions, because there is no clear image of them here, but only formless likenesses, which we too often perceive dimly by comparing them. For no one has ever seen with his eyes the size or shape or beauty of righteousness itself, or of understanding, or of peace; but there, in what truly is, they are seen whole and clear, as they are. For there is a tree of self-control itself, a tree of love, a tree of understanding, just as here there are plants of fruits, such as grapes or pomegranates or apples. So too the fruits of those are seen and eaten, yet they do not perish and waste away, but make those who pluck them grow into immortality and divinity; just as he from whom we all come, before he fell and his eyes were blinded, was in paradise and plucked its fruits, God having ordained that the man be set as worker and guardian of the plants of wisdom. For the first Adam too had been entrusted with tending such fruits. And Jeremiah also knows that these things are in a particular place, far removed from our inhabited world, where, pitying those who have slipped away from eternal goods, he says: ‘Learn where prudence is, where strength is, where understanding is, to know at the same time where length of life and life are, where the light of the eyes and peace are. Who has found her place, or who has entered into her treasuries?’ Into their treasuries, then, the story goes, the virgins pass and gather the fruits of the virtues, watered by many well-ordered lights, which God pours forth for them like a spring, illuminating that age with unsetting lights. And they dance harmoniously, honouring God; for a pure air is poured around them, not ridden over by the sun.

“Now, then, virgins, daughters of undefiled self-control, our zeal is for abundant life and the kingdom of heaven. You too, share eagerly in the same glory of chastity as those before you, caring little for this life. For chastity is no small thing for incorruption, lifting the flesh upward to the height and drying up its dampness and its muddy weight by a greater pull. Let not the filth of what is heard weigh you down, sinking toward the earth, nor let grief turn joy into sorrow, melting away the hopes of better things; but shake off unwearied the misfortunes that befall you, not clouding your reasoning with laments. Let faith conquer everywhere, and let its light drive away the phantoms of the evil one that hover round the heart. For just as, when the moon has shone out and filled the sky with radiance and the whole air has become clear, and suddenly envious clouds run up from somewhere in the west and overshadow her light for a little while, yet do not take it away, since they are at once driven off by the force of the wind; so you too, virgins, shining with chastity in the world, when troubled by afflictions and toils, do not sink down from your hopes. For the clouds from the evil one are driven away by the Spirit, if, like your mother, the virgin in heaven who bears the male child, you too do not fear the serpent that lies in wait and ambushes. About her I will now tell you in some fashion, for now is the time. ‘And a great sign appeared in heaven,’ says John, explaining the Revelation, ‘a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars; and being with child she cries out in labour and in pain to give birth. And another sign appeared in heaven; and behold, a great red dragon, having seven heads and ten horns, and on his heads seven diadems; and his tail drags a third of the stars of heaven and threw them to the earth. And the dragon stood before the woman who was about to give birth, so that when she bore her child he might devour it. And she bore a male son, who is to shepherd all the nations with a rod of iron; and her child was caught up to God and to his throne. And the woman fled into the wilderness, where she has a place prepared by God, that there they may nourish her for one thousand two hundred [and sixty] days.’ So much, in summary, for what is told about the woman and the dragon; but to find and state their interpretation is beyond us. Nevertheless we must dare, trusting him who commanded us to search ‘the Scriptures.’ If, then, what I say seems good to you both, it is no longer hard to undertake; for you will surely forgive me if I cannot fully match the precision of Scripture.

“The woman seen in heaven clothed with the sun and wearing a crown of twelve stars, who had the moon as the seat at her feet, and who was in labour and in pain to give birth, is properly, in the exact sense, our mother, virgins, being a power by herself distinct from her children, whom the prophets, according to the aspect of what they were describing, have called now Jerusalem, now bride, now Mount Zion, now temple and tabernacle of God. For the power that is urged to shine in the prophet, when the Spirit cries out to her, ‘Shine, shine, Jerusalem; for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you. Behold, darkness and gloom will cover the earth, it will cover the nations; but the Lord will appear upon you, and the glory of the Lord will be seen upon you. And kings will walk in your light, and nations in your brightness. Lift up your eyes round about and see your children gathered. All your sons have come from afar, and your daughters will be carried on shoulders’: this power is the church, whose children, in baptism, after the resurrection, will come running to her from all sides in their whole company, while she rejoices, receiving the light that knows no evening and clothed with the brightness of the Word in the form of a robe. For with what other adornment more precious or more honourable was it fitting that the queen should be adorned when led as a bride to the Lord, having received light ‘as a garment,’ for which reason she was also called by the Spirit? Come, go up in thought and behold, like virgins at a wedding, a great woman, wholly pure and undefiled, with enduring beauty, flashing with a radiance in no way less than that of the lights, clothed with light itself instead of a robe, her head adorned with shining stars instead of precious stones. For what clothing is to us, light is to her; and what gold or transparent stones are to us, the stars are to her; not stars such as those placed in the visible region, but better and brighter, so that these are rather thought to be their images and likenesses.

“And she stands upon the moon: by the moon, I think, is meant figuratively the faith of those who are cleansed from corruption by the washing, because its light resembles lukewarm water more than anything, and all moist substance depends on it. The church, then, stands upon our faith and our reception, like the aspect of the moon, ‘until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in,’ labouring and giving new birth to the natural as spiritual; and in this sense she is also a mother. For just as a woman, receiving a man's unformed seed, in the course of time brings forth a complete human being, so one might say that the church is always conceiving those who flee to the Word, and, forming them according to the likeness and form of Christ, in the course of time makes them citizens of those blessed ages. That is why she must stand over the washing, bearing those who are washed; for in this way her activity around the washing has also been called the moon, since those who are born again, being renewed, shine with a new gleam (selas), that is, a new light; and so they are also called, by a turn of phrase, ‘newly enlightened,’ the spiritual full moon always showing itself new to them in the yearly cycle of the passion and its remembrance, until the radiance and the perfect light of the great day rises.

“But if someone, indignant at what has been said (for nothing is hard now to say plainly), should say: ‘And how, virgins, is your explanation still in accord with the sense of Scripture, when the Revelation declares that the church bears a male child, while you have taken it that her fruitful labour pains are fulfilled in those who are washed?’ we will say: ‘But, fault-finder, neither can you show that the one born is Christ himself. For the mystery of the incarnation of the Word had been fulfilled long before the Revelation, and John prophesies about present and future things. And Christ, conceived long before, was not caught up to the throne of God when he was born, for fear that the serpent might harm him; rather, he was born and came down from the Father's thrones for this very purpose, that he might remain and overcome the dragon that assailed the flesh.’ So one must confess that it is the church that is in labour and gives birth to the redeemed, as the Spirit also says somewhere in Isaiah: ‘Before she who was in labour gave birth, and before the pain of labour came, she escaped and bore a male. Who has heard such a thing? And who has seen it thus? Did the earth labour in one day? Or would a nation be born at once? For Zion was in labour and bore a male.’ Whom did she escape, if not the dragon, so that the spiritual Zion might bear the male people, who have come from womanish passions and weakness to the unity of the Lord and have become manly by their zeal?

“Let us speak again, then, going back to the beginning, until we come in order to the end, explaining what was said. See, then, whether the argument seems to you too to be fulfilled creditably. For I think the church is said to bear a male child in this sense: that those who are enlightened receive purely the features, the impress, and the manliness of Christ, the form of the likeness of the Word being imprinted and born in them according to exact knowledge and faith, so that Christ is spiritually born in each one. And for this reason the church swells and is in labour until Christ, born, ‘is formed in us,’ so that each of the saints, by sharing in Christ, may be born a christ. In this sense it is said in a certain Scripture, ‘Do not touch my christs, and do my prophets no harm,’ as if those baptized into Christ had become christs by participation in the Spirit, the church contributing here their clear formation and transformation in the Word. Paul confirms this too, teaching plainly where he says: ‘For this reason I bow my knees to God and the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that according to the riches of his goodness he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in the inner man, that Christ may dwell through faith in your hearts.’ For the word of truth must be stamped and imprinted on the souls of those who are born again.

“And what was proclaimed from above by the Father himself to Christ when he came to the cleansing of the water in the Jordan seems especially to resemble and agree with what has been said: ‘You are my Son; today I have begotten you.’ For we must observe that he declared that he is his Son indefinitely and timelessly; for he said to him, ‘You are,’ not ‘You have become,’ showing that he had neither recently obtained sonship nor, having existed before, received it afterwards, but that, having been begotten before, he both will be and is the same. But ‘Today I have begotten you’ means: ‘You who already existed in the heavens before the ages, I willed to beget for the world too,’ that is, to make known what was previously unknown. Indeed, for those human beings who have not yet perceived ‘the manifold wisdom of God,’ Christ has not yet been born, that is, has not yet been known, not yet been revealed, not yet appeared. But if they too should perceive the mystery of grace, then, when they have turned and believed, he is born in them too according to knowledge and understanding. That is why the church is fittingly said from this always to form and bear the male Word in those who are being cleansed. So much, as far as I can, about her labour pains; now we must pass on to the dragon and the rest. Let us try again to explain them in some way, virgins, not shrinking at all from the greatness of the riddles of Scripture; and if anything difficult falls in the way of our words, I will again carry you across it like a river.”

“The ‘great,’ ‘red’ ‘dragon,’ the many-turning, the many-cleft, the seven-headed, the horned, which ‘drags a third of the stars’ and ‘stood’ lying in wait to ‘devour’ ‘the child’ of the woman in labour, is the devil, who lies in ambush and waits to ruin the mind of the enlightened that has been seized by Christ, and the impress and clear form of the Word born in them. But he misses and fails of his prey, since those who are born again are caught up on high ‘to the throne of God’: that is, the mind of the renewed is lifted up around the divine seat and the firm, unstumbling foundation of truth, being trained to see and to picture the things there, so that it may not be deceived by the dragon, who weighs downward; for it is not permitted to him to destroy those who incline upward and look upward. And the stars, which he touches at the top with the tip of his tail and drags down to the earth, are the bands of the heresies. For we must say that the assemblies of those of other opinions are dark, dim, and downward-turning stars, since they too wish to be knowers of heavenly things, to have believed in Christ, to have the seat of their soul in the heavens, and to draw near the stars as ‘children of light.’ But they are dragged down, shaken off by the dragon's coils, because they did not stand within the triangles of piety, having stumbled concerning orthodox worship. That is why they were called a third part of the stars, as having erred about one of the numbers of the Trinity: sometimes about that of the Father, like Sabellius, who said that the Almighty himself suffered; sometimes about that of the Son, like Artemas, and those who declared that he appeared in mere semblance; sometimes about that of the Spirit, like the Ebionites, who contend that the prophets spoke by their own impulse. As for Marcion and Valentinus and the followers of Elchasai and the others, it is better not even to mention them.

“And she who has borne and bears the manly Word in the hearts of believers, and has come into the wilderness undefiled and unharmed by the wrath of the beast, is, as we have explained, our mother, the church. And the wilderness into which she came and is nourished for the thousand two hundred and sixty days, truly a wilderness of evils, barren and sterile of corruption, hard of access and hard to travel for the many, but fruitful, rich in pasture, flourishing, and easy to travel for the saints, full of wisdom and sprouting with life, is this very place of Arete, most beautiful, with beautiful trees and beautiful breezes, where ‘the south wind has awakened and the north wind has blown through, and the spices flow,’ and everything is filled with ambrosial dew and crowned with unfading shoots of immortal life. In it we are now gathering flowers and weaving for the queen, with untouched fingers, the purple and shining crown of virginity; for the bride of the Word is adorned with the fruits of Arete. And the thousand two hundred and sixty days, which we spend here in our sojourn, are, virgins, the exact and excellent understanding, straight and true, of the Father and the Son and the Spirit, in which our mother rejoices as it grows and exults during this time, until at the restoration of the new ages she comes into the assembly in the heavens and no longer beholds what is through knowledge, but, having entered with Christ, sees it clearly. For the thousand, being a hundred multiplied by ten, contains a perfect and full number, which is a symbol of the Father himself, who created all things from himself and holds all things together in himself; the two hundred is the number joined from two perfect numbers, which is a symbol of the Holy Spirit, since he gives the knowledge of the Son and of the Father; and the sixty contains the number six in tens, which is a symbol of Christ, since the number six, proceeding from the unit, is composed of its own parts, so that nothing is lacking in it and nothing is in excess; for when resolved into its own parts it is completed. For example, when six is cut into equal parts, the same quantity must again be made up from the divided sections. For, divided first in half, it makes three; then divided into three parts it makes two; then divided into six it makes one; and it is again completed into itself. For when divided into twice three, three times two, and six times one, the three, the two, and the one, added together, again make up the six. And everything perfect necessarily neither needs another for its completion nor ever exceeds itself. Of the other numbers, some are more than perfect, like twelve (for its half, six, its third, four, its fourth, three, its sixth, two, and its twelfth, one, the parts into which it can be divided, when added together exceed twelve, since it does not keep itself equal to its parts as six does), and others less than perfect, like eight. For its half, four, its quarter, two, and its eighth, one, the parts into which it is cut, when added together make seven, and it needs a unit for its completion, not being in every way in harmony with itself like six. That is why the number six has been referred to the Son of God, who came into life from the fullness ‘of the deity.’ For, having emptied himself and taken ‘the form’ of ‘a servant,’ he was filled up again to his own perfection and dignity. For, having been made small in himself and resolved into his own parts, from his own smallness and his own parts he was restored again to his own completeness and greatness, never diminished from being perfect. And the whole creation of the world is seen to be composed from this number and harmony, God having made ‘in six days’ ‘the heaven and the earth and the things in them,’ the creative power of the Word containing the number six, by which the triad is productive of bodies; for length, breadth, and depth make a body, and six is composed of triangles. But there is no fitting time at present to go through these things precisely, lest, leaving our subject, we consider a side issue.

“So the church, coming here into this wilderness that is barren of evils, as we said before, is nourished, winged with the heaven-traversing wings of virginity, which the word called ‘the wings of the great eagle,’ having conquered the serpent and driven away the stormy clouds from her full moon. For the sake of these things all these intervening words have been brought in, to teach you, fair virgins, to imitate your mother with all your might, and not to be troubled by the vexations and changes and afflictions of life, so that you may enter proudly with her into the bridal chamber, showing forth your lamps. Do not, then, lose heart at the ‘schemes’ and slanders of the beast, but equip yourselves strongly for the battle, armed with the helmet ‘of salvation’ and ‘the breastplate’ and the greaves. For you will cause him countless terror if you attack him with great spirit and courage, and he will not stand at all, seeing his opponents drawn up from a stronger position; but at once the many-headed and many-faced beast will let you carry off the prizes of the seven bouts, the beast that is ‘in front a lion, behind a serpent, in the middle a Chimaera, breathing out the terrible might of blazing fire. And her Christ the king slew, trusting the signs of his Father.’ For she destroyed many, and no one endured her as she belched out deadly foam from her jaws, until Christ first loosened her and overcame her, and made her altogether weak and contemptible for us.

“Therefore, taking a manly and sober spirit, set your weapons against the swelling beast, and do not retreat at all, troubled at the things he boasts of. For you will have countless glory if, having conquered, you take away the seven crowns upon him, for which the contest and the wrestling lie before us, according to our teacher Paul. For she who has first fought down the devil and put to death his seven heads becomes master of the seven crowns of virtue, having contended through the seven great contests of chastity. For one head of the dragon is incontinence and luxury: whoever crushes it wears the crown of self-control. Another head is cowardice and softness: whoever tramples it takes the crown of martyrdom. Other heads are unbelief and folly and the other advantages of wickedness in the same way: whoever overcomes and destroys them carries off the honours for them, as the dragon's strength is in many ways de-horned. For the ten horns and stings, which he was said to carry on his heads, are, fair virgins, the ten contraries of the Decalogue, with which he is accustomed to gore and strike the souls of most people, thinking and contriving the opposite of the commandment ‘You shall love the Lord your God’ and of the laws that follow. See one horn of his, fiery and bitter, sexual immorality, with which he strikes the incontinent; see adultery, see falsehood, see love of money, see theft and the other things akin and related to these, which grow strong on his man-slaying heads. When you have de-horned these with Christ fighting at your side, you will take them, garlanding your divine heads with your crowns won against the dragon. For it is ours to prefer the better things and set them before earthly ones, having received a reason that is sovereign and free, beyond all compulsion, to choose by our own authority what is pleasing, not being slaves to fate and fortune … as not a man, but blessed and good he would be, if, using the human example of Christ, and painting himself after him and imitating him, he lives. For the greatest of all evils, innate in most people, is to refer the causes of sins to the movements of the stars and to say that our life is steered by the compulsions of fate, as those do who have studied the stars with great arrogance; for, trusting in supposition rather than understanding, which is something between truth and falsehood, they have been greatly deceived about the contemplation of what truly is. So, if you would allow me, Arete, now that the speech you bade me give is completed, my lady, I will try, with you contending alongside and inspiring me, to show clearly, against those who are angry and dispute with us, saying that we do not speak truly in declaring that man is free, that ‘by their own wickedness they have sorrows beyond their lot,’ choosing what is pleasant before what is profitable.” ARETE: I allow it and will contend alongside you; for the speech will be perfectly adorned when these things too have been added.

THECLA: “Let us speak first, then, as far as we can, about such people, stripping bare the sorcery in which they take pride, as though they alone had grasped with what figures the heaven is adorned, according to the Chaldean theories. For they say that the circuit of the world is like the turnings of a well-rounded sphere, the earth having the place of centre and point. For since the revolution is spherical, the earth, they say, must be in the middle of the whole, the distances being equal on all sides, and the heaven turns around it, since it is older. For if a circumference is formed from a point and centre, which is what a circle seems to be, and it is impossible for a circle to be drawn without a point, and a circle cannot exist without a point, how, they say, did not the earth, and the chaos and depth around it, exist before everything? For truly into chaos and depth these wretched people have slipped through error, because ‘knowing God, they did not glorify him as God or give thanks, but became futile in their reasonings, and their senseless heart was darkened’; and this, even though the wise among them have said that nothing earthborn is more honoured and older than the Olympians. That is why those who have come to know Christ are not truly always children, like the Greeks, who have buried the truth under myths and fictions rather than the art of reasoning, and who, fitting the misfortunes of human beings to the heavenly bodies, are not ashamed to describe the circuit of the world with geometrical theorems and figures, teaching that the heaven is adorned with images of birds and fish and land animals, and that the qualities of the stars were fixed from the misfortunes of men of old, so that the movements of the planets depend on such bodies. For they say that the stars revolve around the nature of the twelve signs of the zodiac, drawn along by the motion of the zodiacal circle, so that through their mingling what befalls many is seen, according to their conjunctions and separations with one another, and their risings and settings. For, according to them, the whole heaven, being spherical and using the earth as its centre and point, since all the straight lines falling from the circumference to the earth are equal to one another, is divided by the circles that surround it: of these the greatest is the meridian; the second, which divides it into equal parts, is called the horizon; the third, which divides these, is the equator. On either side of it are two tropics, the summer and the winter, one toward the north and the other toward the south. Beyond these is the so-called unzoned circle, around which are the Bears, and the antarctic outside the tropics. And the Bears, turning about themselves and weighing on the axis through the poles, produce the motion of the whole world, having their heads at each other's loins and not touching our horizon, while the zodiacal circle touches all the circles, making an oblique motion. And in it, they say, is a number of signs, called the twelve twelfths, beginning from the Ram and ending with the Fishes; and they present these as having been set among the stars for mythical reasons: saying that the Ram is the one that carried Helle, the daughter of Athamas, and Phrixus to the Scythians, and the Bull's head is in honour of Zeus, the bull that carried Europa across to Crete; and the circle called the Milky Way, which begins from the knot of the Fishes and runs to the Ram, is said to have poured from the breasts of Hera for Heracles by Zeus's command. So, according to them, before Europa and Phrixus and the Dioscuri and the other signs set among the stars from men and beasts, there was not yet any fate of birth, but our forefathers lived without a birth-fate. For we must try, like doctors using the healing drugs of arguments, to quench the falsehood if we can, examining the truth in this way.

“If it was better, you wretches, for human beings to be under a birth-fate than not, why was there not a birth-fate from the very beginning, from when the human race came into being? And if there was, what need was there of those recently set among the stars, the Lion, the Crab, the Twins, the Virgin, the Bull, the Scales, the Scorpion, the Ram, the Archer, the Fishes, the Goat-horned, the Water-carrier, Perseus, Cassiopeia, Cepheus, Pegasus, the Water-snake, the Raven, the Bowl, the Lyre, the Dragon, and the rest, from whose ordering you teach that the many have acquired this mathematical, or rather accursed, foreknowledge? Either, then, there was a birth-fate also for those before, and the establishment of these signs is vain; or there was not, and God changed life to a better state and way of living, since those before lived a worse time. But the men of old were better than those of today, which is why they were even called the golden race. So there is no birth-fate. If the sun, riding over the circles and travelling through the signs in yearly revolutions, brings about the changes and turnings of the seasons, how did those who lived before the signs were set among the stars and the heaven was adorned with them survive, when summer, autumn, winter, and spring were not yet distinguished, through which the nature of the body grows and is maintained? But they did survive, and were longer-lived and stronger than those of today, God directing the seasons then as now. So the heaven has not been embroidered with such figures. If ‘the sun and the moon and the other stars,’ which were made for the marking and keeping of the numbers of time, for the adornment of heaven, and for the changes of seasons, are divine and better than human beings, they must also live a better, blessed, and peaceful life, far excelling ours in righteousness and virtue, moving with an orderly and happy motion. But if they contrive and cause the misfortunes and follies of mortals, being busy with licentiousness and the changes and turns of life, then they are more wretched than human beings, looking at the earth and at perishable and lawless deeds, and living no better than human beings, if indeed our life depends on their emanation and movement.

“If no action happens without desire, nor desire without need, and the divine is without need, then it has no thought of wickedness. And if the nature of the stars is set nearer to God, being better than the virtue of the best human beings, the stars have no thought of evil and are without need. Again: everyone who is persuaded that the sun and the moon and the stars are divine will agree with us that they are far removed from evil and incapable of earthly actions, being free of the passion of pleasure and pain; for such loathsome appetites do not belong to heavenly beings. But if they are by nature outside these things and without need, how do they contrive for human beings what they themselves do not want and are outside of? Those who declare that man is not free, but say that he is steered by the inescapable compulsions of fate and unwritten decrees, are impious toward God himself, making him the provider and maker of human evils. For if he himself, with unfenced and inconceivable wisdom, harmoniously directs the whole circular motion of the stars, steering the rudder of the world, and the stars bring the qualities of vice and virtue into life, dragging human beings to them with bonds of compulsion, they declare God to be the cause and giver of evils. But God is not the cause of any harm to anyone. So there is no birth-fate. Everyone who has even a little understanding will agree that the divine is just, good, wise, true, beneficial, not the cause of evils, free from passion, and everything of that kind. And if the just are better than the unjust and injustice is loathsome to them, and God, being just, rejoices in righteousness, while injustice, being contrary and hostile to righteousness, is hateful to him, then God is not the cause of injustice. If what benefits is wholly good, and self-control benefits household and life and friends, then self-control is good. And if self-control is good by nature, and licentiousness is contrary to self-control, and what is contrary to the good is evil, then licentiousness is evil. And if licentiousness is evil by nature, and through licentiousness come adulteries, thefts, rages, and murders, then the licentious life is evil by nature; but the divine is free from passions. So there is no birth-fate. If the self-controlled are better than the incontinent and incontinence is loathsome to them, and God, being without thought of passions, rejoices in self-control, then incontinence is hateful to God too. That action according to self-control, which is virtue, is better than action according to incontinence, which is vice, can be learned from kings, rulers, generals, wives, children, citizens, masters, servants, tutors, and teachers; for each of these, when self-controlled, is beneficial to himself and to the community, but when licentious, harmful to himself and to the community. And if there is a difference between the effeminate and the manly, the licentious and the self-controlled, and the state of the manly and self-controlled is better and that of their opposites worse, and the former are near to God and his friends, the latter far from him and his enemies, then those who speak of a birth-fate declare that injustice and justice are the same, effeminacy and manliness, incontinence and self-control; which is impossible. For if the good is opposed to the evil, and the unjust is evil, and the just is opposed to it, and the just is good, and the good is hostile to the evil, and the evil unlike the good, then the just is different from the unjust. So God is not the cause of evils, and, being good, does not rejoice in evils, as the argument itself has established. And if there are some who are wicked, they are wicked through lack of sense and not through a birth-fate, ‘having by their own wickedness sorrows beyond their lot.’ If birth-fate brings it about that someone kills another and stains his hands with blood, but law forbids this, punishing the wicked and by threat restraining the decrees of birth-fate, such as to do injustice, commit adultery, steal, and poison, then law is opposed to birth-fate. For what birth-fate has decreed, law forbids, and what law forbids, birth-fate forces people to do. So law is hostile to birth-fate. And if hostile, then the lawgivers did not give laws according to birth-fate; for, decreeing what is contrary to birth-fate, they abolish birth-fate. Either, then, there is a birth-fate and there should have been no laws, or there are laws and they are not according to birth-fate. But, they say, it is impossible for anyone to be born or anything to be formed without a birth-fate; for they say that one cannot even move a finger without fate. Then Minos, Draco, Lycurgus, Solon, and Zaleucus were born lawgivers by birth-fate and laid down laws forbidding adulteries, murders, violence, robberies, and thefts, as if these did not exist and happen by birth-fate. But if these too happen by birth-fate, the laws are not by birth-fate; for otherwise birth-fate would be abolished by itself, invalidating itself and fighting against itself, in one place establishing laws forbidding adultery and murder, punishing and pursuing the wicked, in another working murders and adulteries. But this is impossible; for nothing is at odds with itself, hostile to itself, destructive of itself, and unprofitable to itself. So there is no birth-fate. If everything whatever that happens happens by birth-fate, and there is nothing apart from birth-fate, then law too must have come into being by birth-fate. But law destroys birth-fate, teaching that virtue can be taught and is acquired by diligence, and that vice is to be avoided and grows from lack of education. So there is no birth-fate. If birth-fate makes people wrong one another and be wronged by one another, what need is there of laws? And if they exist so that the wronged may defend themselves against sinners, God caring for the wronged, it would have been better not to make people wicked by fate than, after making them so, to correct them by laws. But God is good and wise and does what is better. So there is no birth-fate. Either upbringing and customs are the causes of sins, or the passions of the soul and the desires through the body. Whichever of these is the cause, God is not the cause. If it is better to be just than unjust, why is a human being not such from birth? And if afterwards, so that he may become better, he is corrected by teachings and laws, then he is corrected as being free, and not as being evil by nature. If the wicked are wicked by nature through birth-fate, by the decrees of providence, they are not blameworthy and deserving of punishment by the laws, since they live according to their own nature and have not been able to change. And again: if the good, living according to their own nature, are praiseworthy, birth-fate being the cause of the good being good, then neither are the wicked, living according to their own nature, to be blamed before a just judge. And, to speak plainly, one who lives according to the nature he has does no wrong; for he did not make himself such, but fate did, and he lives according to its motion, led by inescapable compulsions. So no one is evil. But there are evil people, and vice is blameworthy and hateful to God, as the argument has established, while virtue is dear and praiseworthy, God having ordained a law to punish the wicked. So there is no fate.

“And why do I lengthen the speech, dwelling so long on refutations, when I have set out the more necessary points, useful for persuasion and for assent to what is profitable, and have made plain to all, even from a few arguments, the inconsistency of their contrivance? So that even a child can now see through and perceive the error: that it is up to us, and not in the stars, to do good or evil. For there are two movements in us, desires natural to flesh and to soul, differing from each other. That is why they have also received two names, the one of virtue, the other of vice. And we must obey the most beautiful and golden guidance of virtue, choosing the best things before the base. But enough about these things; I will hold back my speech. For I am ashamed, after the speeches on chastity, and I cover my face at being forced to set out the opinions of star-gazers, or rather vain-gazers, who spend the time of their life in conceit, occupied with nothing but mythical fictions. Let these gifts too, woven together from divinely spoken words, be brought to you from me, my lady Arete.” EUBOULION: How very combatively and gloriously Thecla spoke, Gregorion! GREGORION: What then if you had heard her yourself, speaking fluently and with a ready tongue, with great grace and charm? So that anyone who attended would admire her, her appearance blooming along with her words, as she continued picturing, with deep feeling and as if they were really present, the things she described, her face flushed with modesty; for she is by nature wholly white, both in body and soul. EUBOULION: You speak rightly, Gregorion, and there is nothing false in what you say. For I have known her wisdom from her other brave deeds too, and could tell how many and what great things she accomplished, making a display of surpassing love for Christ, and how she often appeared distinguished in meeting the great and foremost contests of the martyrs, having zeal equal to her eagerness, and strength of body equal to the vigour of her resolves. GREGORION: You too speak most truly; but let us not linger, for we shall often talk of these things again. Now I must first report to you, as I undertook, the speeches of the remaining virgins, namely Tysiane and Domnina; for these are still left.

When Thecla had stopped after saying so much, Theopatra said that Arete bade Tysiane speak; and she, smiling, came forward before her and said: “Arete, lovely boast of the lovers of virginity, I too beg you to stand by me as my helper, so that I may not be at a loss for words, since many speeches of every kind have already been given. That is why I also decline these prefatory and preparatory parts of speeches, so that I may not, by spending time fitting them properly, fall away from the subject itself; so glorious, precious, and magnificent a thing is virginity. God, teaching the true Israelites the feast of the true Tabernacles and how they must celebrate and honour it, shows in Leviticus that each one must adorn his own tabernacle above all with chastity. I will set out the words of Scripture as well, from which it will be shown to all beyond dispute how pleasing and dear to God is this achievement of chastity: ‘And on the fifteenth day of the seventh month, when you have completed the produce of the land, you shall keep a feast to the Lord seven days, and on the eighth day there shall be rest. And on the first day you shall take the beautiful fruit of a tree, and branches of palm trees, and boughs of thick trees, and willows, and branches of chaste-tree from the brook, to rejoice before the Lord your God seven days of the year, a perpetual statute for your generations. In the seventh month you shall celebrate it; you shall dwell in booths seven days. Every native in Israel shall dwell in booths, that your generations may see that I made the sons of Israel dwell in booths when I brought you out of the land of Egypt. I am the Lord your God.’ The Jews will surely suppose, fluttering about the bare letter of Scripture, like the creatures called caterpillars about the leaves of vegetables and not, like the bee, about the flowers and fruits, that these words and these laws were spoken about a tabernacle such as they build, as though God rejoiced in the perishable decorations that they put together from the fruits of trees, not having perceived the wealth of ‘the good things to come.’ These things, like a breath and phantom shadows, foretell the resurrection and the setting up again of our tent that has fallen to the earth, when, having received it back immortal in the seventh millennium, we shall celebrate the great feast of the true Tabernacles in the new and painless creation, the fruits of the earth having been completed and human beings no longer begetting and being begotten, but God having rested from the works of creating the world. For since God made the heaven and the earth in six days and completed the whole world and ‘rested on the seventh day from his works which he had made, and blessed the seventh day and sanctified it,’ therefore we are commanded, symbolically, to keep a feast to the Lord in the seventh month, when the fruits of the earth have been completed: that is, when this world has been completed in the seventh millennium, when God, having truly completed the world, ‘will rejoice’ in us. For now all things are still being fashioned by his enduring will and inconceivable power: the earth still yields its fruits, the waters are gathered ‘into their gatherings,’ the light is still being separated, the number of human beings is still being fashioned, the sun rises ‘to rule the day’ and the moon still ‘to rule the night,’ and the four-footed beasts, wild animals, and creeping things are brought forth from the earth, and birds and swimming creatures from the moist substance. But when the times are completed and God ceases working this creation, in the seventh month, on the great day of the resurrection, the feast of our Tabernacles is celebrated to the Lord, of which the words in Leviticus are symbols and types. Tracing them out we must understand the naked truth. For ‘a wise man,’ it says, ‘hearing these things will become wiser, and will understand a parable and a dark saying, the words of the wise and riddles.’ So let the Jews be ashamed, not having perceived the depths of the Scriptures, and thinking that the law and the prophets spoke everything bodily, since they long for worldly things and prefer outward wealth to that of the soul. For since the Scriptures are divided into a type of things past and of things to come, these wretches, leaping away from the things to come, carry out the types as if they were already past: as in the case of the slaughter of the lamb, thinking that the mystery of the lamb is only a remembrance of the salvation of their fathers in Egypt, when, as the firstborn of Egypt were struck, they themselves were saved, having reddened the doorposts of their houses with the blood; but they no longer thought that this was also a type foreshadowing the slaughter of Christ, by whose blood the souls that have been secured and sealed will be saved from wrath, when the world is set on fire and the firstborn children of Satan are destroyed, the punishing angels turning away in awe before the seal of the blood imprinted on them.

“Let this be said as an example, showing that the Jews, thinking present things to be types of what has already happened, have run aground from the hope of ‘the good things to come,’ not being willing that the types should foretell the images, nor the images the truth. For ‘the law’ is the type and shadow of the image, that is, of the gospel, and the image, the gospel, is the type of the truth itself. For the men of old and the law foretold to us, prophesying, the features of the church, and the church foretells those of the new ages. So we, who have received Christ, who said, ‘I am the truth,’ know that the shadows and the types have ceased, and we hasten toward the truth, foretelling its clear images. For we still know ‘in part’ and as ‘through a mirror,’ since ‘the perfect’ has not yet come to us, the kingdom of heaven and the resurrection, when ‘what is in part will be done away.’ For then the tabernacles of all of us are set up, when the body rises with the bones joined and fastened together with the flesh. Then we purely celebrate the day of joy to the Lord, when we receive back our tabernacles eternal, no longer to die or be dissolved into the dust of the earth. For our tabernacle was earlier unfallen; but through the transgression it was shaken and bent down, God dissolving the sin by death, so that man, being a sinner immortally, with sin living in him, should not be condemned eternally. And for this reason he died, though he had not been made mortal or corruptible, and the soul was separated from the flesh, so that the transgression might be put to death through death, being no longer able to live in what had died. So, the transgression having died and been destroyed, I fly up again immortal, and I sing to God, who through death saves his children from death, and I celebrate the feast to him lawfully, having adorned my tabernacle, my flesh, with good works, as the virgins there did with their five-lighted lamps.

“Being examined on the first day of the resurrection, I bring what is commanded, whether I have been adorned with the fruits of virtue, whether I am shaded by the branches of chastity. For understand, I beg you, that the resurrection is the feast of Tabernacles, and understand that the things taken for the building of the tabernacle are the deeds of righteousness. So I take on the first day what is prescribed, as it were on the day on which I am judged, whether I have adorned my tabernacle with what is commanded, whether these things are found in it, which here in the world we are commanded to acquire, and there to offer to God. Come, let us consider what follows as well. ‘And you shall take for yourselves on the first day,’ it says, ‘the beautiful fruit of a tree, and thick branches of trees, and willows, and branches from the brook, to rejoice before the Lord your God.’ The Jews, ‘uncircumcised in heart,’ think that the most beautiful fruit of a tree is the citron, because of its size, and are not ashamed to say that God is honoured with a citron, for whom ‘all the four-footed beasts of the earth are not sufficient for a burnt offering, nor Lebanon for burning.’ And in general, you hard-hearted people, why is the citron beautiful? Why not rather the grape, or the pomegranate, or the apple, and the other fruits that excel the citron? Indeed, in the Song of Songs Solomon, mentioning all these beautiful fruits, passed over the citron alone in silence. But the fools were led astray from these things, not understanding ‘the tree of life,’ which paradise bore before, but which the church has now made to spring up for all, producing the beautiful and seemly fruit of faith. Having come with such fruit, we must bring it on the first day of the feast to the judgment seat of Christ. If we too do not have such fruit, we will not be able to celebrate the feast with God; we will not attain, as John says, the first resurrection. For the tree is Wisdom, the firstborn of all. ‘She is a tree of life to those who lay hold of her,’ says the prophet, ‘and secure for those who lean on her as on the Lord.’ ‘A tree planted by the streams of waters, which will give its fruit in its season’: that is teaching and love and understanding, given in due season to those who come to the waters of redemption. Whoever has not believed in Christ, nor perceived that he is the beginning, the tree of life, and cannot show God his tabernacle adorned with the most beautiful of beautiful fruits, how will he celebrate the feast? How will he rejoice? Do you want to know the beautiful fruit of the tree? Consider the words of our Lord Jesus Christ, how they are beautiful in loveliness ‘beyond the sons of men.’ The law, sprouted through Moses, was a beautiful fruit, but not so beautiful as the gospel. For the former was a kind of type and ‘shadow of things to come,’ but this is ‘truth’ and the grace of life. The fruit of the prophets was beautiful, but not so beautiful as the fruit of incorruption cultivated from it.

“‘And you shall take for yourselves on the first day the beautiful fruit of a tree and branches of palm trees,’ meaning the training in divine teachings, by which the soul is cleansed of its passions and adorned, as sins are swept out of it and cast away. For we must come to the feast clean and adorned, having laboured at the exercises and practices of virtue as with a broom; since the mind, cleansed by laborious practices and exercises of the strange thoughts that cover it, sees sharply toward the truth, just as the widow in the Gospels found her coin after sweeping the house and throwing out the refuse, the passions that darken and cover the soul, which multiply from our softness and carelessness. So let whoever is eager to arrive at the feast of those tabernacles and be enrolled with the saints first acquire the beautiful fruit, faith; then the palm branches, the training and study of the Scriptures; then next the flourishing and thick branches of love. He commands these to be taken after the palm branches, most aptly calling love ‘thick branches’; for what is thick is wholly laden with fruit and dense, having nothing bare or empty, but everything full, both shoots and stems. Such is love, being in no part empty or fruitless. For truly, ‘if I sell my possessions and give to the poor, and if I give my body to be burned, and if I acquire such faith as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.’ Love, then, is the most fruitful and thickest of all trees, full and filled with gifts. Then what else does he want taken? He says willow branches, calling righteousness willow branches; for which reason the righteous, according to the prophet, ‘spring up like grass among the water and like willows by flowing water,’ flourishing in the Word. And above all he commands that the better branches, which adorn the tabernacle, be brought, because the tree is named after chastity, with which the things mentioned before are adorned. Away, then, with the licentious now, who drive away chastity for the sake of their own pleasures. For how will they enter the feast with Christ, not having adorned their tabernacle with the branches of chastity, the deifying and blessed plant, with which those hastening to that assembly and wedding must be garlanded and their loins be shaded? Come, fair virgins, look at the Scripture itself and the commands, how the Word took chastity as the completion of the achievements mentioned before, teaching how conspicuous and thrice-desired it will be at the resurrection, and that without it no one will obtain the promises. We who live as virgins cultivate it in a special way and offer it to the Lord. Those too make use of it who are chaste toward their own wives, and they bear, as it were, around the stem, shoots of it that have sprouted, self-control, not reaching to its high and great branches as we do; nevertheless, even if small, they too offer shoots of chastity. But those who are driven by passion, even if they do not commit sexual immorality, but are charmed into having relations without restraint even with their lawful wife alone, how will they celebrate the feast? How will they rejoice, not having adorned their tabernacle, the flesh, with the branches of the chaste-tree, nor having listened to the saying, ‘that those who have wives may be as though they had none’?

“For this reason I say that, above all, those who aim at the contests and use great prudence should without delay [embrace] and honour chastity as most beneficial and glorious. For in the new and painless creation, whoever is not found adorned with the branches of chastity will not obtain rest, not having fulfilled the commandment of God according to the law, nor will he come to live in the land of promise without first celebrating the Tabernacles. For only those who have celebrated the feast of Tabernacles come to the holy land, setting out from the so-called Tabernacles until they arrive at the temple and the city of God, advancing to the greater and more glorious joy, as the types that took place among the Jews also show. For as they, having gone out from the borders of Egypt, travelled first and came to the booths, and setting out from there came again to the land of promise, so also do we. For I too, having travelled from here and gone out of the Egypt of this life, come first to the resurrection, the true feast of Tabernacles; and there, having set up my tabernacle adorned with the fruits of virtue on the first day of the feast of the resurrection, the day of judgment, I celebrate with Christ the millennium of rest, the so-called seven days, the true Sabbaths. Then again, following Jesus, ‘who has passed through the heavens,’ I come, as they did after the rest of the feast of Tabernacles, into the land of promise, the heavens, not remaining in booths, that is, my tabernacle not remaining as it is, but, after the millennium, changed from human form and corruption to angelic greatness and beauty. There at last, virgins, after the feast of the resurrection has been completed, we pass from the wonderful place of the tabernacle to greater and better things, going up to the very house of God above the heavens, ‘with the voice of exultation and thanksgiving, the sound of those keeping festival,’ as the Psalmist says. With this robe, Arete, my lady, I too present you according to my ability.” EUBOULION: I am very anxious, Gregorion, thinking to myself in what a tumult Domnina must have been then, her heart troubled and afraid that she might be at a loss for words and say something inferior to the other virgins, so many and so varied speeches having already been given on the subject. If, then, she was visibly moved, come, finish this too; for I wonder whether she had anything to say, having been allotted the last place. GREGORION: Theopatra told me, Euboulion, that she was greatly troubled, but was not at a loss for words. After Tysiane, Arete, casting her eye on her, said: “Come, daughter, you too give your speech, so that we may complete the feast in full.”

Domnina, then, she said, blushing deeply, could barely breathe; and she rose and turned to prayer, calling on Wisdom to stand by her as a helper. When she had prayed, she said, courage came to her at once, and a kind of divine calm took hold of her, and she said: “Arete, I too will leave out the long preliminaries and try, as far as I can, to speak to the subject itself, so that by lengthening side issues I may not give them more time than the things for which they are said. For I think it the greatest part of prudence not to make long, roundabout speeches that charm the ears before the question asked, but to begin at once with what the question is about. So I too will begin from here; for it is time. Nothing, fair virgins, can so profit a human being toward the good as chastity. For chastity alone does and brings about this: that the soul is steered most beautifully and best and is washed clean of the stains and defilements of the world. For from the time when Christ taught us to practise it and revealed to us its unsurpassable beauty, the kingdom of the evil one was overthrown, who before had always taken all captive and enslaved them, so that none of the men of old was pleasing to the Lord, but all were overpowered by stumbles, since the law was not able to free humanity from corruption, until virginity, succeeding the law, reigned over human beings by Christ's ordinances. For those before would not so often have been driven into battles and murders and lusts and idolatries if the righteousness that comes from the laws had been sufficient for their salvation. But then they were often embroiled in great and many misfortunes; whereas, since Christ became man and armed his flesh, adorning it with virginity, the savage tyrant, the ruler of incontinence, has been overthrown, and peace and faith prevail, human beings no longer turning to idolatry as they did of old.

“But so that I may not seem to some to be sophistical, drawing these conclusions from mere probabilities and talking nonsense, I too, virgins, will set before you from the Old Testament a written prophecy, to show that I speak the truth: from Judges, where the kingdom of chastity was already clearly foretold. For it says: ‘The trees went forth to anoint a king over themselves, and they said to the olive tree, “Reign over us.” And the olive tree said to them, “Shall I leave my fatness, which God and men have glorified, and go to rule over the trees?” And all the trees said to the fig tree, “Come, reign over us.” And the fig tree said to them, “Shall I leave my sweetness and my good fruit and go to rule over the trees?” And the trees said to the vine, “Reign over us.” And the vine said to them, “Shall I leave my wine, the gladness of men, and go to rule over the trees?” And the trees said to the bramble, “Come, reign over us.” And the bramble said to the trees, “If in truth you anoint me king over you, come, trust in my shelter; but if not, let fire come out of the bramble and devour the cedars of Lebanon.”’ That this was not said of trees growing from the earth is plain; for lifeless trees, fixed in the earth by their roots, would not come together to elect a king for themselves. Rather, this is certainly told of souls which, before the incarnation of Christ, had run wild with transgressions and approach God, asking him to take pity on them and to let his mercy and compassion now reign over them, which Scripture has represented by the type of the olive tree, because oil helps bodies, relieves toil and pains, and provides light. For every flame of a lamp grows when fed with oil; and God's mercies surely relieve death and sins, help humanity, and nourish the light of the heart. And consider whether Scripture does not indicate the successive laws from the first-formed man to Christ, which the devil imitated with counterfeit fictions to deceive the human race. It likens the fig tree to the commandment given to man in paradise, since, deceived, he covered his nakedness with fig leaves; the vine to that given to Noah at the flood, because he was mocked when he fell asleep from wine; the olive to that given to Moses in the wilderness, since the prophetic gift, the holy oil, had failed from the inheritance when they transgressed; and the bramble to that given to the apostles for the salvation of the world, since through them we were taught chastity, of which alone the devil was not able to fashion a deceptive counterfeit. And for this reason four Gospels have been handed down, since God proclaimed good news to humanity four times and educated it by four laws, whose times are clearly shown by the difference of the fruits. For the fig tree, by its sweetness and ripeness, represents the delight that man had in paradise before the transgression; for the Holy Spirit often takes the fruit of the fig in the better sense, as we will show later. The vine, because of the cheerfulness that comes from wine and the gladness of those saved from the wrath and the flood, hints at their change from fear and anxiety to joy. And the olive, by the fruit of its oil, shows the compassion of God, who again patiently endured, after the flood, when human beings had turned to godlessness, to give a law, to appear to some, and, as it were, to feed with oil the light of virtue that was already going out.

“And the bramble represents chastity; for the bramble and the chaste-tree are the same tree, called bramble (rhamnos) by some and chaste-tree (agnos) by others. And perhaps because this plant is by nature akin to virginity it was called both bramble and chaste-tree: bramble from its firmness and strength against pleasures, chaste-tree from always being chaste. That is why the story says that Elijah, fleeing from the face of the woman Jezebel, first came under a bramble and, being heard, was strengthened and received food; because for those who flee frenzy and the woman, pleasure, the tree of chastity sprang up as refuge and shelter, which from the coming of Christ, the chief virgin, has reigned over human beings. For since the first admonitions, those in the time of Adam and of Noah and of Moses, were unable to save humanity, the law according to the gospel alone saved all. For this is why the fig tree is said not to have reigned (the trees being understood as human beings, and the fig as the commandment): because man, after his fall, wished to be ruled again by virtue and not to be cast out from the incorruption of the paradise of delight, but he was repelled for having transgressed and cast far away, as no longer able or fit to be ruled by incorruption. And first the preaching through Noah was sent to him after the transgression, so that, if he paid heed, he might even be able to be saved from sin, promising rest and gladness from evils if they practised it with all their might, just as the vine promises to produce wine for those who tend and work it. But this law too did not reign over humanity, because they did not obey it, though it was earnestly preached by Noah. Yet after they were already seized and drowning in the waters they began to repent and to promise to give themselves up to obey the commandments. That is why they are also scorned as subjects, that is, the preaching of the commandment scorns to help them, the Spirit answering and reproaching them because they deserted those whom God commanded to help, save, and gladden them, like Noah and those with him: ‘You hard-hearted ones, shall I come to help you, who are fruitless of understanding and no different from dry wood, who did not believe me before when I preached escape from what was coming?’

“And when these too had thus been counted unworthy of divine care, and humanity had again poured itself into error, God again sent a law to reign and to remind them of righteousness, in the time of Moses. But they too bade it a long farewell and turned to idolatry. So God handed them over to mutual slaughter, flights, and captivities, the law despairing of saving them; and when, driven together by evils, they lamented, they again professed that they would obey the commandments, until God, taking pity on humanity for the fourth time, sent chastity to reign, which Scripture fittingly called the bramble. It consumed pleasures and threatened thereafter that, unless all obeyed it without hesitation and came to it in truth, it would consume all with fire; for after it there would no longer be another law or teaching, but judgment and fire. And for this reason from then on man began to act righteously, to believe firmly in God, and to split away from the devil. So beneficial and helpful was chastity sent down to human beings; for of it alone the devil was not able to make a counterfeit for deception, as he did of the other laws.

“For the fig tree, as I said, having been taken as a type of the delight in paradise because of the sweetness of its fruit and its ripeness, the devil led man astray by its counterfeits and caught him, persuading him to cover the nakedness of his body with fig leaves, that is, with pleasure-loving luxury, because of their itching. And those saved from the flood he again made drunk with a counterfeit drink in place of the vine of spiritual gladness, and mocked them, again stripping man bare of virtue. What I mean will be clearer from this. The opposing power always imitates the forms of virtue and righteousness, not for real practice, but for deception and hypocrisy. For, to lure to death those who flee death, it adorns itself outwardly with the appearance of immortality, and in this way wishes to be thought a fig tree and a vine and to produce sweetness and gladness, disguising itself ‘as an angel of light’ and luring many with a show of piety. For we find in the Scriptures two kinds of figs and of vines: good figs, ‘very good,’ and bad figs, ‘very bad’; ‘wine that gladdens the heart of man,’ and ‘wine that is the rage of serpents and the incurable rage of asps.’ But since chastity has reigned over human beings, error has been exposed and conquered, Christ the chief virgin having overthrown it; and the true olive and the true fig and the true vine bear fruit after chastity has prevailed over all, as the prophet Joel too proclaims the good news, saying: ‘Take heart, O land, and rejoice and be glad, for the Lord has done great things. Take heart, beasts of the field, for the plains of the wilderness have sprouted, for the tree has borne its fruit; the vine and the fig tree have given their strength. And you children of Zion, rejoice and be glad in the Lord your God, for he has given you food for righteousness,’ calling the former laws a vine and a fig tree, trees that sprouted fruits for righteousness for the children of the spiritual Zion, which bore fruit after the incarnation of the Word, when chastity reigned over us, having before held back and closed up their shoots because of sin and much error. For the true vine and the true fig tree could not give us the food that yields life while the fig tree that was not true, decked out for deception, was still in flower. But when the Lord withered the counterfeit imitations of the true, declaring to the fruitless fig tree, ‘May no fruit ever come from you again,’ then those truly fruitful flourished and sprouted ‘food for righteousness.’ And sometimes the vine is often referred to the Lord himself, and the fig tree to the Holy Spirit, since the Lord gladdens the hearts of human beings and the Spirit heals. That is why Hezekiah is first commanded to be plastered with a cake of figs, that is, with the fruit of the Spirit, so that he might be healed, as it were, according to the apostle, by love. For ‘the fruit of the Spirit,’ he says, ‘is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, faith, gentleness, self-control,’ which the prophet called figs because of its great sweetness. And Micah says: ‘And each shall rest under his vine and each under his fig tree, and there shall be none to make them afraid.’ For it is plain that those who have fled to the shelter of the Spirit and of the Word and rested there will not fear or be frightened by the one who troubles hearts.

“And that the olive tree hints at the legislation in the time of Moses, Zechariah shows, saying thus: ‘And the angel who talked with me returned and woke me, as a man is woken from his sleep, and said to me, “What do you see?” And I said, “I have looked, and behold, a lampstand all of gold, and the bowl on top of it, and two olive trees, one on the right of its bowl and one on the left.”’ And a little later, when the prophet asked, ‘What are these olive trees on the right of the lampstand and on the left, and the two branches of the olive trees that are beside the two golden spouts?’ the angel answered and said, ‘These are the two sons of fatness, who stand by the Lord of all the earth’: meaning the two primordial powers that attend God, which in his house, around the allotted portion, supply through the branches God's spiritual oil, so that it may have the light of divine knowledge. For the two branches of the two olive trees are the law and the prophets, which surround the allotted portion of the inheritance, and which Christ and the Holy Spirit caused to sprout, since we could not yet receive the whole fruit and greatness of these plants before chastity ruled and reigned over the world; but formerly we cultivated only their branches, the law and prophecy, and that only moderately, often slipping. For who could ever receive Christ or the Spirit perfectly without first being purified? For the discipline that from childhood makes the soul desirous and loving of good repute, and carries this adornment easily and without torment there, choosing great hopes for small labours, is chastity, which makes our bodies immortal. All human beings must gladly prefer and praise it: some because through it they were led as brides to the Word, having practised virginity; others because by it they were freed from the condemnation ‘You are earth, and to earth you shall go.’ This, Arete, is my speech to you on behalf of chastity, as far as I am able; though it is modest and brief, my lady, I ask you to receive it most kindly from me, who have been chosen to speak last.”

“I accept it,” Theopatra said Arete replied, “and I praise you all. For you, Domnina, even if not so strikingly, have gone through excellently and earnestly what you undertook, not putting together sweet talk for the pleasure of the hearers, but a reminder for correction and sobriety. For whoever says that chastity must be placed first among my pursuits and embraced before the others commands rightly. Many think they honour and serve it, but, so to speak, few honour it. For it is not when a person strives to keep his own flesh untasting of the pleasure of intercourse, but does not master the other things, that he honours chastity; rather he dishonours it, not least by vulgar desires, exchanging pleasures for pleasures. Nor, when he labours hard against outward desires but is puffed up with pride at this very ability to master the fires of the flesh, and regards everyone as nothing, does he honour chastity; for he dishonours it by insulting it with arrogance, cleaning the outside of the cup and the dish, the flesh, the body, while harming his heart with conceit and love of power. Nor does one who prides himself on wealth take care to honour it; rather this man too dishonours it more than anything, preferring a little gain to that to which nothing precious in the world is equal in worth; for ‘all’ wealth before it, and ‘gold,’ is ‘like a little sand.’ Nor does one who loves himself beyond measure and takes care to look only to what benefits himself, careless of his neighbours, honour chastity; this man too dishonours it, for he falls far short of those who keep company with it worthily, by maiming its love, its compassion, and its kindness. For one must not be chaste and virgin in one respect, but defiled and licentious in another by evil deeds; nor profess purity and self-control in one respect, but be stained and sin in another; nor again confess in one respect that one has no care for worldly things, but acquire them and be engrossed in them in another; but one must keep all the members unshared with corruption and unmixed, not only those that itch and serve intercourse, but also those more active than these. For it is a mockery to keep the organs of procreation virgin but not the tongue, or to keep the tongue virgin but not the sight or the hearing or the hands, or to have and keep these virgin but not keep the heart, and let it play the harlot with conceit and anger. For whoever does not intend to sin in the practice of chastity must keep all his members and senses pure and tightly bound, just as pilots tighten the joints of ships, so that sin may have no passage to pour in. For great failings necessarily happen to great pursuits, and evil is more opposed to what is truly good than to what is not good. Many, then, thinking that chastity is rather enduring against frenzied desires, neglected its other parts, stumbled, and brought reproaches on those who have rightly set out toward it; these you have refuted, being a law in all things, since you have lived as virgins in both deed and word. So the kind of person the virgin ought to be has been described. And, having been an ear-witness of you all contending sufficiently in speech, I declare you all victors and crown you; and Thecla with the greater and thicker crown, as first among you and shining more magnificently.”

When she had said this, Theopatra said, Arete bade them all rise, stand under the chaste-tree, and fittingly send up a hymn of thanksgiving to the Lord, with Thecla leading and going first. When they had risen, she said, Thecla stood in the middle of the virgins, at the right hand of Arete, and sang with decorum, while the rest, standing in a circle as in the figure of a chorus, responded to her.

Refrain: I keep myself pure for you, and holding shining lamps, O Bridegroom, I come to meet you.

(Α) From above, virgins, the sound of a cry that wakes the dead has come, bidding us go all together to meet the Bridegroom in white robes and with lamps toward the east. Awake, before the King has come within the doors. Refrain: I keep myself pure for you, and holding shining lamps, O Bridegroom, I come to meet you.

(Β) Fleeing the much-lamented happiness of mortals and the love of life's luxury and pleasures, I long to be sheltered in your life-giving arms and to behold your beauty for ever, blessed one. Refrain.

(Γ) Leaving the mortal beds of marriage and my [house] rich in gold, O King, for your sake I have come in spotless robes, that I too may enter with you into the all-blessed bridal chambers. Refrain.

(Δ) I have come, blessed one, escaping the countless enchanting wiles of the dragon; I have endured the flame of fire and the man-destroying rushes of savage beasts, waiting for you from heaven. Refrain.

(Ε) I have forgotten my homeland, longing for your grace; I have forgotten the choruses of virgins of my own age, and the pride of mother and family; for you yourself, O Christ, are all things to me. Refrain.

(Ζ) [Giver] of life, O Christ, hail, light without evening; receive this cry. The chorus of virgins addresses you, perfect flower, love, joy, understanding, wisdom, Word. Refrain.

(Η) With opened doors, O Queen of bright adornment, you have received us too within the bridal chambers, O bride of undefiled body, gloriously victorious, fragrant; in like robes we stand beside Christ, singing your all-blessed marriage, O young shoot. Refrain.

(Θ) Now the girls weep, groaning heavily outside the gates of the bridal chamber, and cry out in lamentation, because, having let the light of their lamps go out, they did not come in time to see the chamber of joy. Refrain.

(Ι) For, turning aside from the holy road to the things of life, the wretched ones neglected to acquire more oil; and carrying lamps dead of blazing fire, they groan from their hearts within. Refrain.

(Κ) Bowls brimming with sweet nectar are set before us; let us drink; it is a heavenly drink, virgins, which the Bridegroom has set out for those worthily called to the wedding. Refrain.

(Λ) Abel, dripping with blood, told clearly of your slaughter, looking up to heaven: “Receive me, I beg you, O Word, wounded without pity by a brother's hand.” Refrain.

(Μ) Your steadfast servant Joseph, O Word, won the greatest prize of all; for a woman, burning with desire, dragged him by force to a lawless bed, but he, not turning aside at all, fled naked, crying out: Refrain.

(Ν) Jephthah offered up his daughter, newly slain, as a sacrifice to God, a maiden who had not known man, like a lamb beside the altar; and she, nobly fulfilling the type of your flesh, blessed one, cried out steadfastly: Refrain.

(Ξ) Bold Judith, by well-aimed wiles, beheaded the general of the foreign hosts, charming him with the forms of her beauty without defiling the members of her body, and she said with victorious cries: Refrain.

(Ο) Seeing the comely form of Susanna, two men, mad with lust, said: “Woman, we have come longing for the bed of a secret union, dear one.” And she said with trembling cries: Refrain.

(Π) “It is far better for me to die than to betray my bed to you, you who are mad for women, and to suffer eternal punishment under the fiery vengeance of God. Save me, O Christ, from these men now.” Refrain.

(Ρ) The forerunner, who washed multitudes of mortals in cleansing streams, was lawlessly led to slaughter by an evil man because of chastity; and, wetting the dust with crimson gore, he cried out to you, blessed one: Refrain.

(Σ) Your life-bearing grace too, untouched and unstained, bearing your spotless offspring in a womb without seed, the virgin, was suspected of having betrayed her bed; and, being with child, she said, blessed one: Refrain.

(Τ) Longing to see your wedding day, blessed one, all whom you yourself, King of angels, have called from above have come, O Word, bringing you the greatest gifts in spotless robes. Refrain.

(Υ) With hymns, blessed bride of God, we your bridesmaids now honour you, untouched virgin, O church of snow-white body, dark-haired, chaste, blameless, lovely. Refrain.

(Φ) Corruption has fled, and the tearful pains of diseases; death has been taken away, all folly has perished, heart-consuming grief has died, and the joy of God, Christ, has suddenly shone upon mortals again. Refrain.

(Χ) Paradise is no longer bereft of mortals; for by divine ordinance, as before, the one who fell by the many-coloured arts of the dragon dwells in it again, incorruptible and without fear, blessed one. Refrain.

(Ψ) Singing the new song, the chorus now sets you toward heaven, O Queen, all light, crowned with the white cups of lilies and carrying light-bearing flames in its hands. Refrain.

(Ω) O blessed one, without beginning, who dwell in the undefiled places of heaven and hold all things together by eternal power, receive us too, Father, together with your Son, within the gates of life; we are here. Refrain: I keep myself pure for you, and holding shining lamps, O Bridegroom, I come to meet you.

EUBOULION: Thecla deservedly carried off the first of the prizes, Gregorion. GREGORION: Deservedly indeed. EUBOULION: What about the stranger from Telmessus? Tell me, was she not listening even from outside? For I wonder whether she kept quiet on learning of this banquet, and did not at once fly, like a bird to food, to hear what was being said. GREGORION: No; for the story is that she was present with Methodius, who was questioning Arete about these very things. But it is a fine and blessed thing to have such a teacher and guide as Arete. EUBOULION: But, Gregorion, which shall we say are better: those who do not feel desire but master desire, or those who feel desire and remain virgins? GREGORION: Those who do not feel desire and remain virgins, since these have their mind and their perception undefiled and are wholly uncorrupted, having sinned in nothing. EUBOULION: Well said, by self-control, Gregorion, and wisely. But I am not hindering you, am I, if I take up your words, so that I may learn more firmly, and no one may refute me hereafter? GREGORION: Take them up wherever you like; for I am well able, Euboulion, to teach you that one who does not desire is better than one who desires, and no one will refute you. EUBOULION: Bravo! I rejoice that you answer me so grandly and show how rich you have become in wisdom. GREGORION: You seem to be a chattering sort of person, Euboulion. EUBOULION: Why so? GREGORION: Because you say these things mocking me rather than speaking the truth. EUBOULION: Hush, my dear; I greatly admire your understanding and high repute. I said this because you say that you not only know, but even pride yourself on teaching others, things about which many wise people often dispute among themselves. GREGORION: Tell me truly: are you really in doubt whether those who do not desire differ at all from those who desire and practise continence? Or are you just teasing me? EUBOULION: How could I be testing you in what I confess I do not know? But come, tell me, most wise, in what way those who do not desire and are chaste differ from those who desire and remain virgins. GREGORION: First, in that they have the soul itself pure, and the Holy Spirit always dwells in it, since it is not dragged about and clouded by imaginings and thoughts of incontinence, so as ever to be harmed even through thought; but these are wholly incapable of receiving desire in both flesh and heart, enjoying calm from the passions. But those who are lured from outside by imaginings through the sight, and receive desire flowing like a stream into the heart, are often no less defiled, even if they think they are contending and fighting against pleasures, being defeated in their thoughts. EUBOULION: Shall we say, then, that those who enjoy calm and are not troubled by desire are pure? GREGORION: Most certainly. For God, who by the beatitudes makes even gods of those who believe in him without hesitation, declares boldly that such people ‘will see God,’ because they bring nothing that darkens or disturbs the eye of the soul to the divine contemplation, but, having got wholly outside worldly appetites, they keep not only the flesh pure of intercourse, as I said, but also the heart incapable of receiving thoughts of incontinence, in which above all the Holy Spirit dwells and rests as in a temple. EUBOULION: Wait (for I think we shall go more rightly from here toward finding out who are truly better), and tell me: do you call someone a good pilot? GREGORION: I do. EUBOULION: The one who has brought the ship safely through great and desperate storms, or the one who has done so in calm and still weather? GREGORION: The one in great and desperate storms. EUBOULION: Shall we not say, then, that a soul that is flooded by the waves of the passions and does not grow weary or faint, but nobly steers its ship, the flesh, into the harbour of self-control, is better and more approved than one that sails in fair weather? GREGORION: We shall. EUBOULION: For to be ready for the onsets of the blasts of the evil spirit, and not to be cast away or overcome, but, looking up to Christ in everything, to fight steadfastly against pleasures, earns greater praise than to remain a virgin easily and without storm. GREGORION: So it seems. EUBOULION: And what of the Lord? Does he not seem to show that one who desires and practises continence excels one who does not desire and remains a virgin? GREGORION: Where? EUBOULION: Where, comparing the prudent man to a house well founded, he declares it cannot fall, being unable to be thrown down by the rain and the rivers and the winds; likening, it seems, the storms to the desires, and the rock to the unmoved and unfailing resolve of the soul for chastity. GREGORION: You seem to speak the truth. EUBOULION: And what of a doctor? Do you not call the best the one already proved in great diseases, who has healed many? GREGORION: I do. EUBOULION: And the one who has done nothing yet, and has never had the sick in his hands at all, is surely still less approved? GREGORION: Yes. EUBOULION: Must we not say, then, that a soul that bears with a moister body and calms its diseases concerning pleasures with the drugs of self-control is more skilled in healing than one that has been allotted a healthy and passionless body to govern? GREGORION: We must say so. EUBOULION: And what about wrestling? Is the better wrestler the one who has great and strong opponents and is always wrestling without being thrown, or the one who has no opponents? GREGORION: Clearly the one who has them. EUBOULION: In wrestling, then, the athlete who has opponents is more approved? GREGORION: Necessarily. EUBOULION: Then, necessarily, a soul that contrives against the attacks of desire and is not dragged down, but pulls against it and opposes it, appears stronger than one that does not desire? GREGORION: True. EUBOULION: And what about holding out steadfastly against the impulses of base appetites, Gregorion? Does it seem to you to belong rather to courage? GREGORION: Very much so. EUBOULION: And this courage is a power of virtue? GREGORION: Clearly. EUBOULION: Then, if endurance is a power of virtue, the soul that is troubled and holds out against desires appears more powerful than the one that is not troubled? GREGORION: Yes. EUBOULION: And if more powerful, also better? GREGORION: Yes. EUBOULION: Then, from what has been agreed, the soul that desires and practises continence is better than the one that does not desire and practises continence. GREGORION: What you say is true, and I shall want to discuss these things with you still more fully. So, if you like, I will come again tomorrow to hear about them. For now, as you see, it is time to turn at last to caring for the outer man.