The library · Edition and sources
Clement of Alexandria: The Instructor
William Wilson; ANF02 (1885) · Translated text
Quiet reading. References stay within reach.
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Book III. — Ear-rings.
The Word prohibits us from doing violence to natureEdition note 1 by boring the lobes of the ears. For why not the nose too?—so that, what was spoken, may be fulfilled: “As an ear-ring in a swine’s nose, so is beauty to a woman without discretion.”Edition note 2 For, in a word, if one thinks himself made beautiful by gold, he is inferior to gold; and he that is inferior to gold is not lord of it. But to confess one’s self less ornamental than the Lydian ore, how monstrous! As, then, the gold is polluted by the dirtiness of the sow, which stirs up the mire with her snout, so those women that are luxurious to excess in their wantonness, elated by wealth, dishonour by the stains of amatory indulgences what is the true beauty.