The library · Edition and sources
Clement of Alexandria: The Instructor
William Wilson; ANF02 (1885) · Translated text
Quiet reading. References stay within reach.
Reading appearance
Accessibility options
Saved in this browser and shared between texts. Labels and line patterns remain in every theme.
About this reading layout
Source wording, punctuation, paragraph boundaries and supplied line breaks are retained. Long prose also has editorial reading breaks at sentence boundaries. Substantial passages already enclosed in double quotation marks are set apart; this does not identify their source or establish a connection.
These added breaks are reading aids, not claims about the original manuscript’s layout. Poetry is lineated only where the downloaded text supplies line breaks. References and edition notes remain with their text.
Book III. — Public Spectacles.
The Instructor will not then bring us to public spectacles; nor inappropriately might one call the racecourse and the theatre “the seat of plagues;”Edition note 1 for there is evil counsel as against the Just One,Edition note 2 and therefore the assembly against Him is execrated. These assemblies, indeed, are full of confusionEdition note 3 and iniquity; and these pretexts for assembling are the cause of disorder—men and women assembling promiscuously if for the sight of one another. In this respect the assembly has already shown itself bad: for when the eye is lascivious,Edition note 4 the desires grow warm; and the eyes that are accustomed to look impudently at one’s neighbours during the leisure granted to them, inflame the amatory desires.
Let spectacles, therefore, and plays that are full of scurrility and of abundant gossip, be forbidden.Edition note 5 For what base action is it that is not exhibited in the theatres? And what shameless saying is it that is not brought forward by the buffoons? And those who enjoy the evil that is in them, stamp the clear images of it at home. And, on the other hand, those that are proof against these things, and unimpressible, will never make a stumble in regard to luxurious pleasures.
For if people shall say that they betake themselves to the spectacles as a pastime for recreation, I should say that the cities which make a serious business of pastime are not wise; for cruel contests for glory which have been so fatal are not sport. No more is senseless expenditure of money, nor are the riots that are occasioned by them sport. And ease of mind is not to be purchased by zealous pursuit of frivolities, for no one who has his senses will ever prefer what is pleasant to what is good.