Ante-Nicene Fathers/Volume VIII/Pseudo-Clementine Literature/The Clementine Homilies/Homily V/Chapter 18

by Anonymous

Chapter XVIII.—The Philosophers Advocates of Adultery.

“‘But why?  Do not the celebrated philosophers extol pleasure, and have they not had intercourse with what women they would?  Of these the first was that teacher of Greece, of whom Phœbus himself said, “Of all men, Socrates is the wisest.”  Does not he teach that in a well-regulated state women should be common?^[1] and did he not conceal the fair Alcibiades under his philosopher’s gown?  And the Socratic Antisthenes writes of the necessity of not abandoning what is called adultery.  And even his disciple Diogenes, did not he freely associate with Lais, for the hire of carrying her on his shoulders in public?  Does not Epicurus extol pleasure?  Did not Aristippus anoint himself with perfumes, and devote himself wholly to Aphrodite?  Does not Zeno, intimating indifference, say that the deity pervades all things, that it may be known to the intelligent, that with whomsoever a man has intercourse, it is as with himself; and that it is superfluous to forbid what are called adulteries, or intercourse with mother, or daughter, or sister, or children.  And Chrysippus, in his erotic epistles, makes mention of the statue in Argos, representing Hera and Zeus in an obscene position.

Footnotes

1. This from a marginal reading.