Clement of Alexandria: INSTRUCTOR (PAEDAGOGUS) - Part II, Complete

Translated by Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson.

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Page 64

But the embellishment of smoothing (for I am warned by the Word), if it is to attract men, is the act of an effeminate person,--if to attract women, is the act of an adulterer; and both must be driven as far as possible from our society. "But the very hairs of your head are all numbered," says the Lord; [1603] those on the chin, too, are numbered, and those on the whole body. There must be therefore no plucking out, contrary to God's appointment, which has counted [1604] them in according to His will. "Know ye not yourselves," says the apostle, "that Christ Jesus is in you?" [1605] Whom, had we known as dwelling in us, I know not how we could have dared to dishonour. But the using of pitch to pluck out hair (I shrink from even mentioning the shamelessness connected with this process), and in the act of bending back and bending down, the violence done to nature's modesty by stepping out and bending backwards in shameful postures, yet the doers not ashamed of themselves, but conducting themselves without shame in the midst of the youth, and in the gymnasium, where the prowess of man is tried; the following of this unnatural practice, is it not the extreme of licentiousness? For those who engage in such practices in public will scarcely behave with modesty to any at home. Their want of shame in public attests their unbridled licentiousness in private. [1606] For he who in the light of day denies his manhood, will prove himself manifestly a woman by night. "There shall not be," said the Word by Moses, "a harlot of the daughters of Israel; there shall not be a fornicator of the sons of Israel." [1607]

[1603] Matt. x. 30.

[1604] enkatarithmenen seems to be here used in a middle, not a passive sense, as katarithmemenos is sometimes.

[1605] 2 Cor. xiii. 5.

[1606] [Such were the manners with which the Gospel was forced everywhere to contend. That they were against nature is sufficiently clear from the remains of decency in some heathen. Herodotus (book i. cap. 8) tells us that the Lydians counted it disgraceful even for a man to be seen naked.]

[1607] Deut. xxiii. 17.

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