Ante-Nicene Fathers/Volume VIII/Pseudo-Clementine Literature/The Clementine Homilies/Homily V/Chapter 9

by Anonymous

Chapter IX.—A Love-Letter.

“Then Appion said:  ‘I am all the more hopeful to be able to persuade her, as you wish, provided only we be able to converse with her.’  ‘That,’ said I, ‘is impossible.’  Then Appion asked if it were possible to send a letter to her.  Then I said:  ‘That indeed may be done.’  Then Appion said:  ‘This very night I shall write a paper on encomiums of adultery, which you shall get from me and despatch to her; and I hope that she shall be persuaded, and consent.’  Appion accordingly wrote the paper, and gave it to me; and I thought of it this very night, and I remembered that fortunately I have it by me, along with other papers which I carry about with me.”  Having thus spoken, I showed the paper to those who were present, and read it to them as they wished to hear it; and having read it, I said:  “This, O men, is the instruction of the Greeks, affording a bountiful licence to sin without fear.^[1]  The paper was as follows:—

Footnotes

1. [The introduction of the letters is an ingenious literary device.  Much of the mythological matter is given in Recognitions, x.—R.]