Epicharmus : More than a Name
Ep.366 : και γαρ λεγεται, νους ορα και νους ακουει/"as it is said, the mind sees and the mind hears"
Strom.2.5.24 : Επιχαρμος ειπατω, νους ορη <και> νους ακουει, ταλλα κωφα και τυφλα/"Let Epicharmus speak : 'The mind sees and the mind hears; all besides is deaf and blind'"
A problem with the 'scissors and paste' account of the letter as a C4/C5 forgery is to explain why it had to be made just so Clementine to pass as a letter of Basil. The Epicharmus quote is another case in point. The quasi-scriptural use of a pagan text to cap an argument is very Clement, and he cites Epicharmus fifteen times. The highly-educated Basil, in all his work, never quotes any comic poet/playwright ever.
To delve a little deeper, was Clement's use of this poet purely ornamental, or did it have a particular significance ?
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Clement has a two-track rationale for his use of pagan texts where the authors have 'got it right.' Firstly, all humanity has been granted an inkling of the truth, and some have exercised that faculty :
"Well done, Plato, you have hit the truth. But do not give up. Join me in the search for the Good. For there is a certain divine effluence [απορροια] instilled into all men without exception, but especially into those who spend their lives in thought." (Protrep.6.68.2)
Secondly, Greek philosophers and literati have only gained their limited insights by plagiarizing from the the 'barbarian philosophy'. Strom.1.15 presents a conspectus of ancient wisdom world-wide, and continues :
"Thus philosophy, a thing of the highest utility, flourished in antiquity among the barbarians, shedding its light over the nations. And afterwards it came to Greece....Of these, by far the oldest is the Jewish race; and that their philosophy committed to writing is the absolute origin [προκαταρξαι] of philosophy among the Greeks, the Pythagorean Philo shows extensively." (Strom.1.15.71, 72)
('Pythagorean' is an epithet which Clement bestows on the first rank of pre-Christians, those who have achieved the acutest insight).
"Let us add in completion what follows, and exhibit now with greater clearness the plagiarism of the Greeks from the barbarian philosophy." (Strom.5.14.89)
This 'theft' is illustrated throughout Clement, but Strom.5.14 is a particularly long and dense chapter, comparing a plethora of texts from philosophers, poets and dramatists to their OT 'originals'. Our quarry gets star billing :
"Power in all things is - by the most intellectual of the Greeks - ascribed to God. Epicharmus - he was a Pythagorean - says.." (Strom.5.14.100)
This tallies with Plato's estimate. Plato's Theaetetus was a treatise which Clement knew well. At 152e Plato has Socrates refer to "the chief poets in the two kinds of poetry, Epicharmus, in comedy, and in tragedy, Homer."
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As regards charges of plagiarism within the Greek tradition, it seems that his doctrine of origins led Clement to take a positive view, even with regard to that "devotee of Moses, best- of- all Plato" (Paed.3.11.54). The earlier the source, the closer it was to the original.
On the Nature of the Cosmos and the Soul by 'Timaeus of Locri' is in fact a pseudo-Pythagorean forgery, a Doricized abridgement of Plato's Timaeus. But it was accepted as the source text Plato used to create his dialogue. Clement quotes a passage from 'Timaeus of Locri', by name, at Strom.5.14.115. This suggests that Clement was both aware of the history of plagiarism accusations and perfectly relaxed about it.
From the C4 BC onwards, there is a record of plagiarism accusations against Plato, often with a Pythagorean connection. For instance, he is supposed to have paid a fortune to the Pythagorean Philolaus for his single opus, which he simply transcribed [μεταγεγραφεναι] as the Timaeus (Diogenes Laertius 8.85). Or, it was "three Pythagorean books" he bought from Philolaus (Diogenes Laertius 3.9).
More substantial are the excerpts Diogenes Laertius (3.9-17) gives from the ostensibly C4 BC work of Alcimus :
"Further, he derived great assistance from Epicharmus the comic poet, for he transcribed [μεταγραψας] a great deal from him, as Alcimus says in the books To Amyntas, of which there are four. In the first of them he writes thus : 'It is evident that Plato often employs the words of Epicharmus. Just consider..'" Alcimus gives three summaries/quotations from Plato, and juxtaposes to each extended passages from Epicharmus. "These and like instances Alcimus notes through four books, pointing out the assistance [ωφελειαν] derived by Plato from Epicharmus."
This is precisely the method Clement uses to 'expose' plagiarism in Strom.5.14. Yet from Clement's perspective, Plato's value is enhanced, as a transmitter of the highest form of pre-Christian insight.
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That Ep.366 closes with a quotation from Epicharmus, the ur-Plato, the gold standard of (pagan) citation in Clement, is, I suggest, an addition to the cumulative evidence that the letter is best understood as an example of Clement recycling his characteristic material.
A Stromateis of What?
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andrewcriddle
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Re: A Stromateis of What?
The phrase is widely used in Platonic sources not necessarily attributed to Epicharmus.mbuckley3 wrote: ↑Thu Aug 03, 2023 4:07 pm Epicharmus : More than a Name
Ep.366 : και γαρ λεγεται, νους ορα και νους ακουει/"as it is said, the mind sees and the mind hears"
Strom.2.5.24 : Επιχαρμος ειπατω, νους ορη <και> νους ακουει, ταλλα κωφα και τυφλα/"Let Epicharmus speak : 'The mind sees and the mind hears; all besides is deaf and blind'"
A problem with the 'scissors and paste' account of the letter as a C4/C5 forgery is to explain why it had to be made just so Clementine to pass as a letter of Basil. The Epicharmus quote is another case in point. The quasi-scriptural use of a pagan text to cap an argument is very Clement, and he cites Epicharmus fifteen times. The highly-educated Basil, in all his work, never quotes any comic poet/playwright ever.
See Mind and Body
Andrew Criddle
Re: A Stromateis of What?
Granted, Andrew. But probably not relevant in this case.andrewcriddle wrote: ↑Sat Aug 05, 2023 5:03 am
The phrase is widely used in Platonic sources not necessarily attributed to Epicharmus.
Clement attributes the phrase to Epicharmus at Strom.2.5.24.
You have previously written, in response to Stephan : "You have argued that the letter is a rehash of Clementine material and I think you are probably right."
So either the letter is written by a peculiarly close imitator of Clement, who folds in the line from Strom.2.5.24. Or it's written by Clement.
In either case, Epicharmus is understood to be the source of the phrase.
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Secret Alias
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Re: A Stromateis of What?
It's obvious the letter is Clementine not Valentinian.
I'm on vacation but I also felt the wholesale incautious incorporation of a pagan writer into a what is a weird letter to begin with seems to me to imply the letter writer was writing to someone who shared his pagan/Christian background. Didn't need to explain who it was or what the quote meant. Unlikely to have been written in the 5th century CE. It's a letter of Clement.
When you write letters to an intimate you can say things in ways you can't in a formal treatise. Off the cuff.
I'm on vacation but I also felt the wholesale incautious incorporation of a pagan writer into a what is a weird letter to begin with seems to me to imply the letter writer was writing to someone who shared his pagan/Christian background. Didn't need to explain who it was or what the quote meant. Unlikely to have been written in the 5th century CE. It's a letter of Clement.
When you write letters to an intimate you can say things in ways you can't in a formal treatise. Off the cuff.
Re: A Stromateis of What?
Ep.366 : a supplementary footnote on μισγεσθαι
In a previous post (03 May) I highlighted the curious archaism of μισγεσθαι/'to be mixed with' in Ep.366. Based on lexica and indices, I asserted that Clement of Alexandria was the last known writer to have used the verb when writing in his own voice. Secondarily, I noted that the bold leap from a sexual sense in Strom.1.16.74 to the non-sexual in Ep.366 was typical of Clement's 'transformative' use of vocabulary.
There has been no evidence offered against my main contention. So it was initially disconcerting to see μισγεσθαι staring at me from the page when browsing the C6 medical writer Aëtius of Amida. However, it is part of a long quotation from the C2 medic Rufus of Ephesus, so my time-line is preserved.
Interestingly, Rufus unambiguously uses μισγεσθαι in a sexual sense. The work quoted from is his Περι Αφροδισιων/On Sexual Intercourse. Sex is a cure for melancholia :
διο και τω μελαγχολικω και κατηφει και μισανθρωπω οντι ως τι μεγιστον ιαμα επιτηδειοτατον μισγεσθαι/'therefore it is the greatest cure, as it were, and most beneficial for someone melancholic, downcast, and cantankerous to have sex' *
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For a specific example of Clement's 'transformative' vocabulary, where he both uses a word in its normal sense and then turns a negative into a positive, consider αυτομολεω and cognates, 'to desert'.
Philo's limited use of the word is almost entirely confined to his On the Giants, a work known to Clement, his great plagiarizer. At #43, there is the injunction not to 'desert to pleasure'/αυτομολησαι δε προς την..ηδονην. There is a cluster in #65-67 : ηυτομολησαν, αυτομολησις, αυτομολια, αυτομολουντος, αυτομολος. Nimrod 'began this desertion' to fleshly fixations, 'he went over to the enemy, took up arms against his friends', 'even as the wicked man is an exile without home or city or settlement, so also is he a deserter'. In short, the term is, understandably, pejorative.
Clement uses the term two times. At Strom.2.20.117, he reproduces Philo's 'deserting to pleasure'/αυτομολων προς ηδονην. It is pejorative. But at Protrep.10.93.1, desertion is turned into a virtue :
'Let us therefore repent, and pass from ignorance to knowledge, from senselessness to sense, from incontinence to continence [εξ ακρασιας εις εγκρατειαν], from unrighteousness to righteousness, from godlessness to God. It is a glorious venture to desert [αυτομολειν] to God's side.'
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* Corpus Medicorum Graecorum, VIII.1, (ed. Olivieri), p.266, ll.16-18. This volume of the CMG is open-access online.
In a previous post (03 May) I highlighted the curious archaism of μισγεσθαι/'to be mixed with' in Ep.366. Based on lexica and indices, I asserted that Clement of Alexandria was the last known writer to have used the verb when writing in his own voice. Secondarily, I noted that the bold leap from a sexual sense in Strom.1.16.74 to the non-sexual in Ep.366 was typical of Clement's 'transformative' use of vocabulary.
There has been no evidence offered against my main contention. So it was initially disconcerting to see μισγεσθαι staring at me from the page when browsing the C6 medical writer Aëtius of Amida. However, it is part of a long quotation from the C2 medic Rufus of Ephesus, so my time-line is preserved.
Interestingly, Rufus unambiguously uses μισγεσθαι in a sexual sense. The work quoted from is his Περι Αφροδισιων/On Sexual Intercourse. Sex is a cure for melancholia :
διο και τω μελαγχολικω και κατηφει και μισανθρωπω οντι ως τι μεγιστον ιαμα επιτηδειοτατον μισγεσθαι/'therefore it is the greatest cure, as it were, and most beneficial for someone melancholic, downcast, and cantankerous to have sex' *
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For a specific example of Clement's 'transformative' vocabulary, where he both uses a word in its normal sense and then turns a negative into a positive, consider αυτομολεω and cognates, 'to desert'.
Philo's limited use of the word is almost entirely confined to his On the Giants, a work known to Clement, his great plagiarizer. At #43, there is the injunction not to 'desert to pleasure'/αυτομολησαι δε προς την..ηδονην. There is a cluster in #65-67 : ηυτομολησαν, αυτομολησις, αυτομολια, αυτομολουντος, αυτομολος. Nimrod 'began this desertion' to fleshly fixations, 'he went over to the enemy, took up arms against his friends', 'even as the wicked man is an exile without home or city or settlement, so also is he a deserter'. In short, the term is, understandably, pejorative.
Clement uses the term two times. At Strom.2.20.117, he reproduces Philo's 'deserting to pleasure'/αυτομολων προς ηδονην. It is pejorative. But at Protrep.10.93.1, desertion is turned into a virtue :
'Let us therefore repent, and pass from ignorance to knowledge, from senselessness to sense, from incontinence to continence [εξ ακρασιας εις εγκρατειαν], from unrighteousness to righteousness, from godlessness to God. It is a glorious venture to desert [αυτομολειν] to God's side.'
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* Corpus Medicorum Graecorum, VIII.1, (ed. Olivieri), p.266, ll.16-18. This volume of the CMG is open-access online.
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Secret Alias
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Re: A Stromateis of What?
You're beyond great. Really exceptional. 
Re: A Stromateis of What?
Ep.366 : Penelope and the Angels
★★★★★★★★★★★★★
Ep.366 : "For we have heard that even angels, having become ακρατεις, were dragged down [κατασπασθεντας] from heaven because of desire [επιθυμιαν]. For they were seized, they did not {voluntarily} descend."
Strom.3.7.59 : "Even some angels, becoming ακρατεις, seized by desire [επιθυμια], fell down [καταπεπτωκασιν] here from heaven."
In Ep.366, the insertion of the verb κατασπαω/'to drag down', into what is basically a reproduction of Strom.3.7.59, is a matter of interest. Its use is sufficiently rare to provoke the question as to why it's here. On the assumption of a C4/C5 forger using Clement as a base text, there are two explanations. Firstly, as we do not have multiple manuscripts of the Stromateis, it could be a genuine variant reading. Secondly, if the letter was composed from a notebook of 'passages of interest', the proximity of Clement's actual usages could be much closer, and so more suggestive, than is apparent to us.
If, however, there is a (cumulative) case to be made that the letter was written by Clement, we need to examine his use of κατασπαω. If it can be demonstrated that he only uses it in a specific context, and that context coheres with Ep.366, it adds to the argument that the letter was written by Clement, using natural variation in the recycling of his material.
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As a preliminary, let us put Clement's angels in context. As previously described, angelification, even in this corporal existence, is the aim of the Christian life for Clement. A contervailing major theme in his work is the possibility of the failure of this ascent. (Indeed, the main point of the Paedagogus is to elaborate practical strategies to prevent this failure). The usual language he uses is that of 'slippage' (ολισθανω and cognates) and 'falling' (πιπτω and cognates).
Given this interchangeability of humans and angels, it is thus logically honest for Clement to consider the fall of the angels through desire for women (Gen.6.2-4) as the most relevant of warnings, based on an historical fact.
This was not inevitable, as here he diverges radically from Philo, his source and guide in so much. For Philo, the actual angels never fell :
" 'And when the angels of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair, they took to themselves wives from all, those whom they chose.' It is Moses' custom to give the name of angels to those whom other philosophers call daemons, souls that is which fly in the air...Now some of the souls have descended into bodies, but others have never deigned to be brought into union with any parts of the earth. They are consecrated and devoted to the service of the Father and Creator whose wont it is to employ them as ministers and helpers, to have charge and care of mortal man. But the others descending [ καταβασαι] into the body as though into a stream, have sometimes been caught in the swirl of its rushing torrent and swallowed up thereby, at other times have been able to stem the current, have risen to the surface and then soared upwards back to the place from whence they came. These last, then, are the souls of those who have given themselves to genuine philosophy...So if you realize that souls and daemons and angels are but different names for the same one underlying object..you will not go wrong if you understand as 'angels' not only those who are worthy of the name, who are as ambassadors backwards and forwards between men and God and are rendered sacred and inviolate by reason of that glorious and blameless ministry, but also those who are unholy and unworthy of the title...the evil ones, cloaking themselves under the name of 'angels'. " (On the Giants, 6-17)
But for Clement the fall happened, and επιθυμια/'desire' (primarily, for sex) is the prime example of the psychology - of angels, and of humans qua angels - which diverts focus from contemplation of the divine. This interrupts the process/discipline of εγκρατεια, and accounts for the failure to achieve the fixed state of εγκρατεια and so απαθεια.
"For the mind is carried away by pleasure [ηδονης]; and the unsullied principle of reason, when not instructed by the Logos, slides down [κατολισθαινει] into licentiousness, and gets a fall [αποπτωμα] as the due reward for its lapse [παραπτωματος]. Evidence [δειγμα] of this are the angels, who renounced the beauty of God for a beauty which fades, and so fell [αποπεσοντες] from heaven to earth. The Shechemites, too, were punished by a downfall [καταπεπτωκοτες] for dishonouring the holy virgin. The grave was their punishment, and the reminder [μνημοσυνον] of their ignominy leads to salvation." (Paed.3.2.14)
"The angels who had obtained superior rank, having slipped [κατολισθησαντες] into pleasures [ηδονας], told to the women the secrets which had come to their knowledge.." (Strom.5.1.10)
"He who obeys the Lord and follows the prophecy given through him, is fully perfected after the likeness of his teacher, and thus becomes a god while still moving about in the flesh. It is from such a height then that they fall [αποπιπτουσιν] who do not follow God wherever he may lead them, and he leads them by way of the inspired writings. Certainly, though the number of human actions is infinite, it may be said that there are only two causes of all failure, both of which are in our own power, viz. ignorance and weakness on the part of those who are neither willing to learn nor to gain the mastery [κρατειν] over their desire [επιθυμιας]." (Strom.7.16.101)
"At the extreme end of the visible world there is the blessed ordinance of angels; and so, even down to ourselves, ranks below ranks are appointed, all saving and being saved..As then the remotest particle of iron is drawn by the influence of the magnet extending through a long series of iron rings, so also through the attraction of the holy spirit the virtuous are adapted to the highest mansion, and the others in their order even to the last mansion : but they that are wicked from weakness, having fallen [περιπεπτωκοτες] into an evil habit owing to unrighteous greed, neither keep hold [κρατουντες] themselves nor are held [κρατουμενοι] by another, but collapse and fall [αποπιπτουσι] to the ground, being whirled around by their passions. For this is the law from the beginning, that he who would have virtue must choose it." (Strom.7.2.9)
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So, to κατασπαω. The verb is used three times by Clement (1). This is within the normal frequency range of ancient authors, where a couple of instances in a volume is the norm. It occurs thirteen times in Josephus' Antiquities, but the real outlier is Strabo's Geography, with dozens of examples, where it describes the razing to the ground of city walls after a siege, a scene of ruin. So, 9.1.15,20 :
"The long walls were also demolished [ κατεσπαται] ... The insurgents pulled down [κατεσπασαν] more than three hundred of his statues."
There are twenty three examples in the LXX, all in Strabo's 'monumental' sense. So, 2 Kings 10.27, 11.18, 21.3, 23.12 :
"They dragged down [κατεσπασαν] the pillars of Baal...They came to the house of Baal and pulled it down [κατεσπασαν]...He rebuilt the high places which his father Hezekiah had pulled down [κατεσπασεν]...The king destroyed and dragged down [ κατεσπασεν] the altars.."
None of these references is used by Clement, nor is the 'monumental' sense : as we will see, Clement uses the verb in a very specific way, referring to a catastrophic fall of the soul, already in the process of moral and 'physical' transformation,caused by a fundamental reorientation of the will. As κατασπαω does not appear in the indices to the NT, Plato, or Philo, where does the ever-allusive Clement draw the word from ? Remarkably, when we look at his three examples, he is quite explicit about his source text...
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★A★
Strom.1.8.41 : "..these are those who 'drag down the masts and weave nothing', as the text has it"/ ουτοι οι τα καταρτια κατασπωντες και μηθεν υφαινοντες, φησιν η γραφη
This line is the crucial hinge of the argument of Strom.1.8, which is a high-end analogy to that of Ep.366. False teaching, in this case through the rhetorical arts, is described as a disease which diverts the focus and imperils the ascent of the believer.
"But the art of sophistry, which the Greeks cultivated, is a fantastic power, which makes false opinions like true by means of words..These arts, therefore, if not conjoined with philosophy, will be injurious to everyone...But truth is not in these at all. With reason, therefore, the noble apostle, deprecating these superfluous arts occupied about words, says, 'If any man do not give heed to healthful words, but is puffed up by a kind of teaching, knowing nothing, but being diseased [νοσων] about questions and strifes of words, whereof come contention, envy, railings, evil surmisings, perverse disputings of men of corrupt minds, destitute of the truth.'
"You see how he is moved against them, calling their art of logic..a disease [νοσον]. Very beautifully, therefore, the tragic poet Euripides says in the Phoenician Women, 'But a wrongful speech is diseased [νοσων] in itself, and needs skilful medicines.' For the saving Logos is called healthful, he being the truth; and what is healthful remains ever deathless. But separation from what is healthful and divine is impiety, and a deadly infection [παθος]. These are the rapacious wolves hid in sheep-skins, men-stealers, plausible soul-traffickers, secretly, but proved to be robbers; striving by fraud and force to seize us who are unsophisticated and have less power of speech...
"Such are these debaters, whether they follow the sects, or practise miserable dialectic arts. These are they who 'drag down the masts and weave nothing', as the text has it; prosecuting a futile task, which the apostle has called 'cunning craftiness of men whereby they lie in wait to deceive'...
"Men are deprived of what is good unwillingly. Nevertheless they are deprived either by being deceived or beguiled, or by being compelled and not believing. He who believes not, has already made himself a willing captive; and he who changes his persuasion is tricked, while he forgets that time imperceptibly takes away some things, and reason others. And after an opinion has been entertained, pain and anguish, and on the other hand contentiousness and anger, compel. Above all, men are beguiled who are either bewitched by pleasure [ηδονης] or terrified by fear. And all these are involuntary changes, but by none of these will knowledge ever be attained."
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This source text, provenance unknown (2), takes some unpacking. The weaving reference can only be to Penelope's trick in the Odyssey, unpicking the thread from the loom at night so as to avoid completing the shroud and so having to choose a husband. As an image of futility in the context of moral progress, paradigmatic for Clement (it is quoted in 'B' below) is Plato's Phaedo 84A :
"No, for the soul of the philosopher would not reason as others do, and would not think it right that philosophy should set it free, and that then when set free it should give itself again into bondage to pleasures [ηδοναις] and pains and engage in futile toil, like a Penelope handling her web in the opposite way."
Yet nowhere in Homer or anywhere else does Penelope overturn the loom. The key is that the same word is used for 'mast' and 'loom'; ιστος in Homer and ever onwards, καταρτιον a later alternative. Context clarifies meaning, but that there was always the possibility for wordplay is evident from Artemidorus, On the Interpretation of Dreams 3.36 :
"If anyone at sea dreams of a loom [ιστον], he should be aware that it signifies the ship's mast [καταρτιον]. And whatever happens to the loom, will also happen to the mast."
So, whatever the source of the γραφη, the context in Strom.1.8 suggests he understood it as wordplay implying moral shipwreck. In the Odyssey (5.316, 12.422), two crucial shipwrecks involve the falling of a mast in a storm sent by a vengeful god. In Clement, self-driven moral shipwreck is vividly evoked in the Paedagogus :
"For old men's desires [ορεξεις] are not, for the most part, stirred to such agitation as to drive them to the shipwreck of drunkenness. For being moored by reason and time, as by anchors, they stand with greater ease the storm of the passions [επιθυμιων] which rushes down from intemperance." (2.2.22)
"You see the danger of shipwreck..When the body has once been sunken like a ship, it descends to the depths of turpitude, overwhelmed by the mighty billows of wine; the helmsman, the human mind, is tossed about in a surge of drunkenness, which swells aloft; and buried in the trough of the sea, is blinded by the dark of the tempest, having drifted away from the haven of truth, until, falling [περιπεσων] on the rocks beneath the sea, it perishes, driven by itself into pleasures [ηδονας]" (2.2.28)
"Delicacies spent on pleasures [ηδονας] become a dangerous shipwreck to men; for this voluptuous and ignoble life of the many is alien to the true love for the beautiful and to refined pleasures. For man is by nature a lofty and majestic being, aspiring after the Good as becomes the handiwork of the One." (3.7.37)
In short, the beauty of the source text for Clement is that, in his hands, in compressed form it conflates the Platonic trope of Penelope's weaving as a metaphor for the futility of being diverted from ascent, with his favourite cliché of moral shipwreck. And the essential verb is κατασπαω.
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In this light, given Clement's demonstrable liking for near-homophones, it is worth looking at another 'weaving' verb which might account for Clement's attraction to κατασπαω.
(κατα)σπαθαω is a weaving term, meaning to beat down on the loom's web with a 'sword' [σπαθη] to tighten it. Then it became a synonym for υφαινω, meaning simply 'to weave'. But by Clement's time, the verb had taken on the extended meaning of 'to waste'; 'to weave' took on the sense of 'to act in a futile manner'. So Plutarch, Life of Pericles 14 :
"Thucydides and his party kept denouncing Pericles for 'weaving' [i.e. wasting, σπαθωντος] the public monies and annihilating the revenues".
Clement uses the verb in the same way :
"..and they 'weave' [i.e. squander, σπαθωσι] and throw away their wealth.." (Paed.3.4.30)
"..being at once destitute of and desiring of what he had 'woven' [i.e. squandered, εσπαθησε] he is doubly grieved". (QDS 12)
The sense of σπαθαω meaning both 'to weave' and 'to waste' would link inevitably to the Phaedo passage, and so to the γραφη encapsulating the futility of compromising ascent, giving a particular resonance to κατασπαω.
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★B★
Paed.2.10.96 : "These women, who to hide their sluttishness [πορνειας] use abortive drugs which drag down absolutely dead matter, abort their human feelings at the same time as the fetus"/αυται γαρ πορνειας επικαλυμματι, τοις ες παντελη κατασπωσι φθοραν, φθοριοις συγχρωμεναι φαρμακοις, εξαμβλισκουσιν αμα τω εμβρυω την φιλανθρωπιαν
Paed.2.10 - the chapter where Clement references his treatise Περι Εγκρατειας (2.10.94) - deals with an eye-popping selection of sexual immorality to be avoided. The immediate context is his teaching that sex is only licit within marriage, and for the procreation of children. The use of κατασπαω in relation to the ultimate act of destruction fits, but how does this relate to the cluster of words/ideas sketched above ?
Well, closely following this instance of κατασπαω, there is an appearance of Penelope up front and central :
"Nature does not continually offer the opportunity to accomplish the marital union, and moreover, the embrace is all the more desired the more it is postponed.In any case, one must not indulge in licentiousness at night, under the pretext that one is in darkness, but one must lock up reserved feelings in one's soul as a light for reason. For we will not differ from Penelope weaving her web, if during the day we weave doctrines of chastity (3), and if, at night, we undo them when we go to bed [i.e. have sex, εις κοιτην ιωμεν]". (2.10.97)
There is no division here; the clear inference is that Penelope's nocturnal behaviour was suspect. Penelope as an exemplar of moral collapse, a slut, a πορνη. Some explanation is required.
There were versions of the Trojan war alternative to Homer. Mainstream was the story that Helen was chastely in Egypt throughout the war, only her simulacrum was taken to Troy; so, for instance, Euripides' play. Very recherché, on the other hand, was the strand that portrayed Penelope, through all antiquity the icon of the chaste and loyal wife, as a slut.
Herodotus (2.145.4) records that Hermes fathered the god Pan on Penelope.This seems to have suggested the naming of an individual suitor she slept with (Apollodorus, Epitome 7.38,39, two names). Pausanias (8.12.6) records a Mantinean tradition that Penelope died there, having been accused by Odysseus of taking lovers to his home, and so expelling her. Lycophron's Alexandra, a work referenced by Clement (Strom.5.8.50), describes Penelope as "the vixen..piously prostituting herself"/η δε βασσαρα..σεμνως κασωρευουσα (ll. 771-2). A scholion on this passage states that the C3 BC historian Duris of Samos "says that Penelope was lustful and had sex with all the suitors and so gave birth to Pan ['All'] " (FGH Jacoby, 76F21)
So Clement utiilises this obscure tradition, using an icon of probity as a warning against the catastrophic downfall which can befall the believer who succumbs to desire; and the link or prompt is κατασπαω.
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For Penelope to be an effective model of ακρασια, she would have to be depicted as a devout Christian. This indeed is what Clement does. His only other mention of her name is at Strom.4.22.142. It is seemingly positive, portraying her as a catechumen :
"Now purity is to think holy thoughts. Further, there is the image of baptism, which also was handed down to the poets from Moses as follows : 'And she, having drawn water, and wearing on her body clean clothes'; it is Penelope that is going to prayer."
However, she is centrally positioned in a chapter which oscillates wildly between the 'achieved' status of the gnostic and the temptations along the way, the Christian at the start of moral ascent. There is the classic formulation of the transmutation of εγκρατεια from 'process' to 'fixed state' :
"For the exertion of the intellect by exercise is prolonged to a perpetual exertion. And the perpetual exertion of the intellect is the essence of an intelligent being, which results from an uninterrupted process of admixture, and remains eternal contemplation, a living substance...Such a one is no longer εγκρατης, but has reached a state of απαθειας, waiting to put on the divine image...And when he shall do good by habit, he will imitate the nature of good, and his disposition will be his nature and his practise." (4.22.136-138)
Yet there is much disquisition on those seemingly pious, with a disoriented core affection, "the disposition of such people will be revealed." There are those who might suppose they "receive from God leave to do things forbidden with impunity", who could "persuade himself that God could be hoodwinked with reference to what he does."
Indeed, there is an elliptical introduction to Penelope in 4.22 before her named entrance. The rare combination υπαρ/οναρ (4) recalls Penelope's words in the Odyssey (19.547, 20.90) about her dream, leading to this passage delicate in its assessment of potential for good or ill :
"Wherefore also the Lord enjoins us 'to watch', so that our soul may never be perturbed with passion [παθαινεσθαι], even in dreams; but also to keep the life of the night pure and stainless, as if spent in the day." (4.22.139)
But as we know from the Paedagogus, Penelope was, at heart, a creature of the night.
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Strom.7.7.46 : και κατασπαται το δια πιστεως αναγομενον/"and that which faith would elevate is dragged down"
Compare :
Strom.3.7.59 : the angels "having been seized [αλοντες] by desire [επιθυμια]
Strom.7.7.45 : the gnostic "does not present his soul as susceptible to or seizable [αλωσιμον]
by either pleasure [ηδονη] or pain"
The interchangeability of angels and human souls in ascent is again apparent. Strom.7.7.46 again caveats the perfection possible with the inherent possibility of failure due to a diminution or disorientation of focus :
"The gnostic who has already arrived at the summit prays that his contemplation grows and endures, just as the common man prays for continual good health. Of course, he will also ask that we never fall [αποπεσειν] from virtue, while contributing [συνεργων] our best to remaining unfallen [απτωτος]. For he knows that even certain angels, through carelessness/relaxation [ραθυμιας], slipped [ολισθησαντας] backwards to the earth. They had not yet completely torn themselves away from the propensity to duality to reach this state [εξιν] of unity. But for him who, by his efforts, has risen from here below to the highest gnosis and to the super-eminence of the perfect man, everything that is temporal and local is profitable, because he has chosen a way of life which is not subject to a fall [αμεταπτωτως] and sticks to it, thanks to the absolutely uniform stability of his intention. All that have any corner/angle still left to depress them by its downward moment find that dragged down which faith would elevate. For those who, through gnostic training, have made their virtue not to be lost, the state becomes nature [φυσιουται η εξις], and, like weight in a stone, understanding for him remains not to be lost, not involuntarily, but voluntarily, by a power of reason, of gnosis, and of providence."
The only explication required here is the use of the Stoic notion, "the comparison of the sage, the perfect man, to the perfect figure, the sphere of the divine and perfect universe and the perfect soul" (5). So Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 11.12 :
"The spherical form of the soul maintains its figure, when it is not extended towards any object, nor contracted inwards, nor dispersed nor sinks down, but is illuminated by light, by which it sees the truth, the truth of all things,, and the truth that is in itself."
The somewhat anomalous (because depersonalised) use of this conceit to hint at a fatal flaw, at least serves to point to the strong presence in this passage of Clement's theme of the constant effort of the will required to achieve a 'fixed' state, indeed that constant effort is still an intrinsic part of the 'fixed' state.
And again κατασπαω appears in the specific context of the potential failure of ascent even when well underway, applicable to both gnostics and angels because of their interchangeability.
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In conclusion, the use of κατασπαω in Ep.366 is entirely consistent with Clement's very particular deployment of the term. It's all about balance of probabilities; but again it raises the question, if Ep.366 is a mere forgery, why was it necessary to make it so ultra-Clementine to pass as a letter of Basil ?
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(1) There may be a fourth instance. Pseudo-Caesarius' Questions and Answers is a C6 work supposedly written by Gregory Nazianzen's brother (C4). The answers are culled (uncredited ) from a wide variety of patristic authors, in précis form. 'If' Riedinger's arguments are accepted, ch.44-48 derive from Clement's lost Hypotyposes. Ch.44 states that angels are 'changeable' [τρεπτοι], and that those who defected "changed not by nature but by will" [ου φυσει αλλα γνωμη τραπεντας]. Applying the template to humans, it states that "the farmer and vinedresser of our nature and of the church..uproots and rips off him who was about to drag down [κατασπαν] others by his destructive works and doctrines."
In 222 pages of Greek, the only other instance of κατασπαω comes in a passage where we can compare the source. Ch.116 refers to tales of witches dragging down [κατασπασθεισαν] the moon. This 'monumental' usage is faithfully reproduced from the source, which happens to be Basil (Hexaemeron, Homily 6.11).
So far, so good. However, in ch.47 there is a polemic against those (like Clement) who believed that angels could lust after and mate with women. The 'sons of God' of Gen.6.2 were not angels but the sons of Seth and Enoch. This is a C4 argument used by John Chrysostom and Theodoret of Cyrrhus. So even if Riedinger's identification is correct, the chapters have been too extensively over-written to provide reliable evidence here.
(2) Listed as an agraphon of Jesus by Resch in 1889, dismissed as such by Ropes in 1896, seemingly disregarded ever since.
(3) σωφροσυνης : περιφρων is Penelope's customary epithet in the Odyssey.
(4) Clement also uses the combination in modified form at Strom.4.18.116, in a chapter on erotic fantasies : υπαρ δε ονειρωττει ο προς επιθυμιαν βλεπων/'he dreams in a waking state who looks so as to lust'.
(5) So J.P. Postgate in his article 'On the Text of the Stromateis of Clement of Alexandria', who provides plenty of illustrative texts. Postgate's interpretation was taken up by Alain Le Boulluec in his Sources Chrétiennes edition of Strom.7, and it is his translation which I have followed.
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A Brief Excursus on Origen
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At the opening to book 4 of his Contra Celsum, Origen presents a short sermon not dissimilar to Strom.1.8, and likewise uses a text including κατασπαω. The difference is illuminating.
"May words be given to us, like those which are described in Jeremiah {1.9-10}, where the Lord said to the prophet : 'Behold, I have put my words in thy mouth as fire. Behold, I have this day set thee over nations and kingdoms, to root out and to destroy, to abolish and to pull down [κατασπαν], to build up and to plant'. For now we also need words to root out ideas contrary to the truth from every soul which has been distressed by Celsus' treatise or by opinions like his. And we also need ideas to destroy buildings of all false opinions and the arguments in Celsus' treatise which are like the building of those who said : 'Come let us build ourselves a city and a tower, of which the top shall reach to heaven'. Furthermore, we need wisdom to pull down [κατασπωσης] every proud thought that exalts itself against the knowledge of God and Celsus' proud boasting which exalts itself against us..."
The 'monumental' sense of κατασπαω in the source text is retained, applied to the 'architecture' of ideas and argument. There is no association with an individual's fatal flaw as in Clement.
Clement never quotes Jer.1.10, and indeed the version including κατασπαν was likely not available to him anyway, even had he wished to use it. The Hebrew has six verbs in three doublets; the LXX has five verbs. In his twenty or so citations of Jer.1.10, Origen always uses the LXX version, except in this case, where he (correctly) inserted κατασπαν to restore the three doublets, presumably due to his work on the Hexapla. Jerome in his Commentary on Jeremiah, ad loc., is clearly dependant here on c.Cels.4.1 for his 'own' insight : "That which we have added from the Hebrew - 'dissipes', sive 'deponas' - is not found in the LXX."
But, of course, κατασπαω of itself was not a trigger word for Clement. If my reading is correct, it is its occurrence in the source text he uses at Strom.1.8.41 which he finds attractive, as a condensed epitome of Phaedo 84A.
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Ep.366 : "For we have heard that even angels, having become ακρατεις, were dragged down [κατασπασθεντας] from heaven because of desire [επιθυμιαν]. For they were seized, they did not {voluntarily} descend."
Strom.3.7.59 : "Even some angels, becoming ακρατεις, seized by desire [επιθυμια], fell down [καταπεπτωκασιν] here from heaven."
In Ep.366, the insertion of the verb κατασπαω/'to drag down', into what is basically a reproduction of Strom.3.7.59, is a matter of interest. Its use is sufficiently rare to provoke the question as to why it's here. On the assumption of a C4/C5 forger using Clement as a base text, there are two explanations. Firstly, as we do not have multiple manuscripts of the Stromateis, it could be a genuine variant reading. Secondly, if the letter was composed from a notebook of 'passages of interest', the proximity of Clement's actual usages could be much closer, and so more suggestive, than is apparent to us.
If, however, there is a (cumulative) case to be made that the letter was written by Clement, we need to examine his use of κατασπαω. If it can be demonstrated that he only uses it in a specific context, and that context coheres with Ep.366, it adds to the argument that the letter was written by Clement, using natural variation in the recycling of his material.
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As a preliminary, let us put Clement's angels in context. As previously described, angelification, even in this corporal existence, is the aim of the Christian life for Clement. A contervailing major theme in his work is the possibility of the failure of this ascent. (Indeed, the main point of the Paedagogus is to elaborate practical strategies to prevent this failure). The usual language he uses is that of 'slippage' (ολισθανω and cognates) and 'falling' (πιπτω and cognates).
Given this interchangeability of humans and angels, it is thus logically honest for Clement to consider the fall of the angels through desire for women (Gen.6.2-4) as the most relevant of warnings, based on an historical fact.
This was not inevitable, as here he diverges radically from Philo, his source and guide in so much. For Philo, the actual angels never fell :
" 'And when the angels of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair, they took to themselves wives from all, those whom they chose.' It is Moses' custom to give the name of angels to those whom other philosophers call daemons, souls that is which fly in the air...Now some of the souls have descended into bodies, but others have never deigned to be brought into union with any parts of the earth. They are consecrated and devoted to the service of the Father and Creator whose wont it is to employ them as ministers and helpers, to have charge and care of mortal man. But the others descending [ καταβασαι] into the body as though into a stream, have sometimes been caught in the swirl of its rushing torrent and swallowed up thereby, at other times have been able to stem the current, have risen to the surface and then soared upwards back to the place from whence they came. These last, then, are the souls of those who have given themselves to genuine philosophy...So if you realize that souls and daemons and angels are but different names for the same one underlying object..you will not go wrong if you understand as 'angels' not only those who are worthy of the name, who are as ambassadors backwards and forwards between men and God and are rendered sacred and inviolate by reason of that glorious and blameless ministry, but also those who are unholy and unworthy of the title...the evil ones, cloaking themselves under the name of 'angels'. " (On the Giants, 6-17)
But for Clement the fall happened, and επιθυμια/'desire' (primarily, for sex) is the prime example of the psychology - of angels, and of humans qua angels - which diverts focus from contemplation of the divine. This interrupts the process/discipline of εγκρατεια, and accounts for the failure to achieve the fixed state of εγκρατεια and so απαθεια.
"For the mind is carried away by pleasure [ηδονης]; and the unsullied principle of reason, when not instructed by the Logos, slides down [κατολισθαινει] into licentiousness, and gets a fall [αποπτωμα] as the due reward for its lapse [παραπτωματος]. Evidence [δειγμα] of this are the angels, who renounced the beauty of God for a beauty which fades, and so fell [αποπεσοντες] from heaven to earth. The Shechemites, too, were punished by a downfall [καταπεπτωκοτες] for dishonouring the holy virgin. The grave was their punishment, and the reminder [μνημοσυνον] of their ignominy leads to salvation." (Paed.3.2.14)
"The angels who had obtained superior rank, having slipped [κατολισθησαντες] into pleasures [ηδονας], told to the women the secrets which had come to their knowledge.." (Strom.5.1.10)
"He who obeys the Lord and follows the prophecy given through him, is fully perfected after the likeness of his teacher, and thus becomes a god while still moving about in the flesh. It is from such a height then that they fall [αποπιπτουσιν] who do not follow God wherever he may lead them, and he leads them by way of the inspired writings. Certainly, though the number of human actions is infinite, it may be said that there are only two causes of all failure, both of which are in our own power, viz. ignorance and weakness on the part of those who are neither willing to learn nor to gain the mastery [κρατειν] over their desire [επιθυμιας]." (Strom.7.16.101)
"At the extreme end of the visible world there is the blessed ordinance of angels; and so, even down to ourselves, ranks below ranks are appointed, all saving and being saved..As then the remotest particle of iron is drawn by the influence of the magnet extending through a long series of iron rings, so also through the attraction of the holy spirit the virtuous are adapted to the highest mansion, and the others in their order even to the last mansion : but they that are wicked from weakness, having fallen [περιπεπτωκοτες] into an evil habit owing to unrighteous greed, neither keep hold [κρατουντες] themselves nor are held [κρατουμενοι] by another, but collapse and fall [αποπιπτουσι] to the ground, being whirled around by their passions. For this is the law from the beginning, that he who would have virtue must choose it." (Strom.7.2.9)
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So, to κατασπαω. The verb is used three times by Clement (1). This is within the normal frequency range of ancient authors, where a couple of instances in a volume is the norm. It occurs thirteen times in Josephus' Antiquities, but the real outlier is Strabo's Geography, with dozens of examples, where it describes the razing to the ground of city walls after a siege, a scene of ruin. So, 9.1.15,20 :
"The long walls were also demolished [ κατεσπαται] ... The insurgents pulled down [κατεσπασαν] more than three hundred of his statues."
There are twenty three examples in the LXX, all in Strabo's 'monumental' sense. So, 2 Kings 10.27, 11.18, 21.3, 23.12 :
"They dragged down [κατεσπασαν] the pillars of Baal...They came to the house of Baal and pulled it down [κατεσπασαν]...He rebuilt the high places which his father Hezekiah had pulled down [κατεσπασεν]...The king destroyed and dragged down [ κατεσπασεν] the altars.."
None of these references is used by Clement, nor is the 'monumental' sense : as we will see, Clement uses the verb in a very specific way, referring to a catastrophic fall of the soul, already in the process of moral and 'physical' transformation,caused by a fundamental reorientation of the will. As κατασπαω does not appear in the indices to the NT, Plato, or Philo, where does the ever-allusive Clement draw the word from ? Remarkably, when we look at his three examples, he is quite explicit about his source text...
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★A★
Strom.1.8.41 : "..these are those who 'drag down the masts and weave nothing', as the text has it"/ ουτοι οι τα καταρτια κατασπωντες και μηθεν υφαινοντες, φησιν η γραφη
This line is the crucial hinge of the argument of Strom.1.8, which is a high-end analogy to that of Ep.366. False teaching, in this case through the rhetorical arts, is described as a disease which diverts the focus and imperils the ascent of the believer.
"But the art of sophistry, which the Greeks cultivated, is a fantastic power, which makes false opinions like true by means of words..These arts, therefore, if not conjoined with philosophy, will be injurious to everyone...But truth is not in these at all. With reason, therefore, the noble apostle, deprecating these superfluous arts occupied about words, says, 'If any man do not give heed to healthful words, but is puffed up by a kind of teaching, knowing nothing, but being diseased [νοσων] about questions and strifes of words, whereof come contention, envy, railings, evil surmisings, perverse disputings of men of corrupt minds, destitute of the truth.'
"You see how he is moved against them, calling their art of logic..a disease [νοσον]. Very beautifully, therefore, the tragic poet Euripides says in the Phoenician Women, 'But a wrongful speech is diseased [νοσων] in itself, and needs skilful medicines.' For the saving Logos is called healthful, he being the truth; and what is healthful remains ever deathless. But separation from what is healthful and divine is impiety, and a deadly infection [παθος]. These are the rapacious wolves hid in sheep-skins, men-stealers, plausible soul-traffickers, secretly, but proved to be robbers; striving by fraud and force to seize us who are unsophisticated and have less power of speech...
"Such are these debaters, whether they follow the sects, or practise miserable dialectic arts. These are they who 'drag down the masts and weave nothing', as the text has it; prosecuting a futile task, which the apostle has called 'cunning craftiness of men whereby they lie in wait to deceive'...
"Men are deprived of what is good unwillingly. Nevertheless they are deprived either by being deceived or beguiled, or by being compelled and not believing. He who believes not, has already made himself a willing captive; and he who changes his persuasion is tricked, while he forgets that time imperceptibly takes away some things, and reason others. And after an opinion has been entertained, pain and anguish, and on the other hand contentiousness and anger, compel. Above all, men are beguiled who are either bewitched by pleasure [ηδονης] or terrified by fear. And all these are involuntary changes, but by none of these will knowledge ever be attained."
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This source text, provenance unknown (2), takes some unpacking. The weaving reference can only be to Penelope's trick in the Odyssey, unpicking the thread from the loom at night so as to avoid completing the shroud and so having to choose a husband. As an image of futility in the context of moral progress, paradigmatic for Clement (it is quoted in 'B' below) is Plato's Phaedo 84A :
"No, for the soul of the philosopher would not reason as others do, and would not think it right that philosophy should set it free, and that then when set free it should give itself again into bondage to pleasures [ηδοναις] and pains and engage in futile toil, like a Penelope handling her web in the opposite way."
Yet nowhere in Homer or anywhere else does Penelope overturn the loom. The key is that the same word is used for 'mast' and 'loom'; ιστος in Homer and ever onwards, καταρτιον a later alternative. Context clarifies meaning, but that there was always the possibility for wordplay is evident from Artemidorus, On the Interpretation of Dreams 3.36 :
"If anyone at sea dreams of a loom [ιστον], he should be aware that it signifies the ship's mast [καταρτιον]. And whatever happens to the loom, will also happen to the mast."
So, whatever the source of the γραφη, the context in Strom.1.8 suggests he understood it as wordplay implying moral shipwreck. In the Odyssey (5.316, 12.422), two crucial shipwrecks involve the falling of a mast in a storm sent by a vengeful god. In Clement, self-driven moral shipwreck is vividly evoked in the Paedagogus :
"For old men's desires [ορεξεις] are not, for the most part, stirred to such agitation as to drive them to the shipwreck of drunkenness. For being moored by reason and time, as by anchors, they stand with greater ease the storm of the passions [επιθυμιων] which rushes down from intemperance." (2.2.22)
"You see the danger of shipwreck..When the body has once been sunken like a ship, it descends to the depths of turpitude, overwhelmed by the mighty billows of wine; the helmsman, the human mind, is tossed about in a surge of drunkenness, which swells aloft; and buried in the trough of the sea, is blinded by the dark of the tempest, having drifted away from the haven of truth, until, falling [περιπεσων] on the rocks beneath the sea, it perishes, driven by itself into pleasures [ηδονας]" (2.2.28)
"Delicacies spent on pleasures [ηδονας] become a dangerous shipwreck to men; for this voluptuous and ignoble life of the many is alien to the true love for the beautiful and to refined pleasures. For man is by nature a lofty and majestic being, aspiring after the Good as becomes the handiwork of the One." (3.7.37)
In short, the beauty of the source text for Clement is that, in his hands, in compressed form it conflates the Platonic trope of Penelope's weaving as a metaphor for the futility of being diverted from ascent, with his favourite cliché of moral shipwreck. And the essential verb is κατασπαω.
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In this light, given Clement's demonstrable liking for near-homophones, it is worth looking at another 'weaving' verb which might account for Clement's attraction to κατασπαω.
(κατα)σπαθαω is a weaving term, meaning to beat down on the loom's web with a 'sword' [σπαθη] to tighten it. Then it became a synonym for υφαινω, meaning simply 'to weave'. But by Clement's time, the verb had taken on the extended meaning of 'to waste'; 'to weave' took on the sense of 'to act in a futile manner'. So Plutarch, Life of Pericles 14 :
"Thucydides and his party kept denouncing Pericles for 'weaving' [i.e. wasting, σπαθωντος] the public monies and annihilating the revenues".
Clement uses the verb in the same way :
"..and they 'weave' [i.e. squander, σπαθωσι] and throw away their wealth.." (Paed.3.4.30)
"..being at once destitute of and desiring of what he had 'woven' [i.e. squandered, εσπαθησε] he is doubly grieved". (QDS 12)
The sense of σπαθαω meaning both 'to weave' and 'to waste' would link inevitably to the Phaedo passage, and so to the γραφη encapsulating the futility of compromising ascent, giving a particular resonance to κατασπαω.
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Paed.2.10.96 : "These women, who to hide their sluttishness [πορνειας] use abortive drugs which drag down absolutely dead matter, abort their human feelings at the same time as the fetus"/αυται γαρ πορνειας επικαλυμματι, τοις ες παντελη κατασπωσι φθοραν, φθοριοις συγχρωμεναι φαρμακοις, εξαμβλισκουσιν αμα τω εμβρυω την φιλανθρωπιαν
Paed.2.10 - the chapter where Clement references his treatise Περι Εγκρατειας (2.10.94) - deals with an eye-popping selection of sexual immorality to be avoided. The immediate context is his teaching that sex is only licit within marriage, and for the procreation of children. The use of κατασπαω in relation to the ultimate act of destruction fits, but how does this relate to the cluster of words/ideas sketched above ?
Well, closely following this instance of κατασπαω, there is an appearance of Penelope up front and central :
"Nature does not continually offer the opportunity to accomplish the marital union, and moreover, the embrace is all the more desired the more it is postponed.In any case, one must not indulge in licentiousness at night, under the pretext that one is in darkness, but one must lock up reserved feelings in one's soul as a light for reason. For we will not differ from Penelope weaving her web, if during the day we weave doctrines of chastity (3), and if, at night, we undo them when we go to bed [i.e. have sex, εις κοιτην ιωμεν]". (2.10.97)
There is no division here; the clear inference is that Penelope's nocturnal behaviour was suspect. Penelope as an exemplar of moral collapse, a slut, a πορνη. Some explanation is required.
There were versions of the Trojan war alternative to Homer. Mainstream was the story that Helen was chastely in Egypt throughout the war, only her simulacrum was taken to Troy; so, for instance, Euripides' play. Very recherché, on the other hand, was the strand that portrayed Penelope, through all antiquity the icon of the chaste and loyal wife, as a slut.
Herodotus (2.145.4) records that Hermes fathered the god Pan on Penelope.This seems to have suggested the naming of an individual suitor she slept with (Apollodorus, Epitome 7.38,39, two names). Pausanias (8.12.6) records a Mantinean tradition that Penelope died there, having been accused by Odysseus of taking lovers to his home, and so expelling her. Lycophron's Alexandra, a work referenced by Clement (Strom.5.8.50), describes Penelope as "the vixen..piously prostituting herself"/η δε βασσαρα..σεμνως κασωρευουσα (ll. 771-2). A scholion on this passage states that the C3 BC historian Duris of Samos "says that Penelope was lustful and had sex with all the suitors and so gave birth to Pan ['All'] " (FGH Jacoby, 76F21)
So Clement utiilises this obscure tradition, using an icon of probity as a warning against the catastrophic downfall which can befall the believer who succumbs to desire; and the link or prompt is κατασπαω.
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For Penelope to be an effective model of ακρασια, she would have to be depicted as a devout Christian. This indeed is what Clement does. His only other mention of her name is at Strom.4.22.142. It is seemingly positive, portraying her as a catechumen :
"Now purity is to think holy thoughts. Further, there is the image of baptism, which also was handed down to the poets from Moses as follows : 'And she, having drawn water, and wearing on her body clean clothes'; it is Penelope that is going to prayer."
However, she is centrally positioned in a chapter which oscillates wildly between the 'achieved' status of the gnostic and the temptations along the way, the Christian at the start of moral ascent. There is the classic formulation of the transmutation of εγκρατεια from 'process' to 'fixed state' :
"For the exertion of the intellect by exercise is prolonged to a perpetual exertion. And the perpetual exertion of the intellect is the essence of an intelligent being, which results from an uninterrupted process of admixture, and remains eternal contemplation, a living substance...Such a one is no longer εγκρατης, but has reached a state of απαθειας, waiting to put on the divine image...And when he shall do good by habit, he will imitate the nature of good, and his disposition will be his nature and his practise." (4.22.136-138)
Yet there is much disquisition on those seemingly pious, with a disoriented core affection, "the disposition of such people will be revealed." There are those who might suppose they "receive from God leave to do things forbidden with impunity", who could "persuade himself that God could be hoodwinked with reference to what he does."
Indeed, there is an elliptical introduction to Penelope in 4.22 before her named entrance. The rare combination υπαρ/οναρ (4) recalls Penelope's words in the Odyssey (19.547, 20.90) about her dream, leading to this passage delicate in its assessment of potential for good or ill :
"Wherefore also the Lord enjoins us 'to watch', so that our soul may never be perturbed with passion [παθαινεσθαι], even in dreams; but also to keep the life of the night pure and stainless, as if spent in the day." (4.22.139)
But as we know from the Paedagogus, Penelope was, at heart, a creature of the night.
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★C★
Strom.7.7.46 : και κατασπαται το δια πιστεως αναγομενον/"and that which faith would elevate is dragged down"
Compare :
Strom.3.7.59 : the angels "having been seized [αλοντες] by desire [επιθυμια]
Strom.7.7.45 : the gnostic "does not present his soul as susceptible to or seizable [αλωσιμον]
by either pleasure [ηδονη] or pain"
The interchangeability of angels and human souls in ascent is again apparent. Strom.7.7.46 again caveats the perfection possible with the inherent possibility of failure due to a diminution or disorientation of focus :
"The gnostic who has already arrived at the summit prays that his contemplation grows and endures, just as the common man prays for continual good health. Of course, he will also ask that we never fall [αποπεσειν] from virtue, while contributing [συνεργων] our best to remaining unfallen [απτωτος]. For he knows that even certain angels, through carelessness/relaxation [ραθυμιας], slipped [ολισθησαντας] backwards to the earth. They had not yet completely torn themselves away from the propensity to duality to reach this state [εξιν] of unity. But for him who, by his efforts, has risen from here below to the highest gnosis and to the super-eminence of the perfect man, everything that is temporal and local is profitable, because he has chosen a way of life which is not subject to a fall [αμεταπτωτως] and sticks to it, thanks to the absolutely uniform stability of his intention. All that have any corner/angle still left to depress them by its downward moment find that dragged down which faith would elevate. For those who, through gnostic training, have made their virtue not to be lost, the state becomes nature [φυσιουται η εξις], and, like weight in a stone, understanding for him remains not to be lost, not involuntarily, but voluntarily, by a power of reason, of gnosis, and of providence."
The only explication required here is the use of the Stoic notion, "the comparison of the sage, the perfect man, to the perfect figure, the sphere of the divine and perfect universe and the perfect soul" (5). So Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 11.12 :
"The spherical form of the soul maintains its figure, when it is not extended towards any object, nor contracted inwards, nor dispersed nor sinks down, but is illuminated by light, by which it sees the truth, the truth of all things,, and the truth that is in itself."
The somewhat anomalous (because depersonalised) use of this conceit to hint at a fatal flaw, at least serves to point to the strong presence in this passage of Clement's theme of the constant effort of the will required to achieve a 'fixed' state, indeed that constant effort is still an intrinsic part of the 'fixed' state.
And again κατασπαω appears in the specific context of the potential failure of ascent even when well underway, applicable to both gnostics and angels because of their interchangeability.
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In conclusion, the use of κατασπαω in Ep.366 is entirely consistent with Clement's very particular deployment of the term. It's all about balance of probabilities; but again it raises the question, if Ep.366 is a mere forgery, why was it necessary to make it so ultra-Clementine to pass as a letter of Basil ?
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(1) There may be a fourth instance. Pseudo-Caesarius' Questions and Answers is a C6 work supposedly written by Gregory Nazianzen's brother (C4). The answers are culled (uncredited ) from a wide variety of patristic authors, in précis form. 'If' Riedinger's arguments are accepted, ch.44-48 derive from Clement's lost Hypotyposes. Ch.44 states that angels are 'changeable' [τρεπτοι], and that those who defected "changed not by nature but by will" [ου φυσει αλλα γνωμη τραπεντας]. Applying the template to humans, it states that "the farmer and vinedresser of our nature and of the church..uproots and rips off him who was about to drag down [κατασπαν] others by his destructive works and doctrines."
In 222 pages of Greek, the only other instance of κατασπαω comes in a passage where we can compare the source. Ch.116 refers to tales of witches dragging down [κατασπασθεισαν] the moon. This 'monumental' usage is faithfully reproduced from the source, which happens to be Basil (Hexaemeron, Homily 6.11).
So far, so good. However, in ch.47 there is a polemic against those (like Clement) who believed that angels could lust after and mate with women. The 'sons of God' of Gen.6.2 were not angels but the sons of Seth and Enoch. This is a C4 argument used by John Chrysostom and Theodoret of Cyrrhus. So even if Riedinger's identification is correct, the chapters have been too extensively over-written to provide reliable evidence here.
(2) Listed as an agraphon of Jesus by Resch in 1889, dismissed as such by Ropes in 1896, seemingly disregarded ever since.
(3) σωφροσυνης : περιφρων is Penelope's customary epithet in the Odyssey.
(4) Clement also uses the combination in modified form at Strom.4.18.116, in a chapter on erotic fantasies : υπαρ δε ονειρωττει ο προς επιθυμιαν βλεπων/'he dreams in a waking state who looks so as to lust'.
(5) So J.P. Postgate in his article 'On the Text of the Stromateis of Clement of Alexandria', who provides plenty of illustrative texts. Postgate's interpretation was taken up by Alain Le Boulluec in his Sources Chrétiennes edition of Strom.7, and it is his translation which I have followed.
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A Brief Excursus on Origen
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At the opening to book 4 of his Contra Celsum, Origen presents a short sermon not dissimilar to Strom.1.8, and likewise uses a text including κατασπαω. The difference is illuminating.
"May words be given to us, like those which are described in Jeremiah {1.9-10}, where the Lord said to the prophet : 'Behold, I have put my words in thy mouth as fire. Behold, I have this day set thee over nations and kingdoms, to root out and to destroy, to abolish and to pull down [κατασπαν], to build up and to plant'. For now we also need words to root out ideas contrary to the truth from every soul which has been distressed by Celsus' treatise or by opinions like his. And we also need ideas to destroy buildings of all false opinions and the arguments in Celsus' treatise which are like the building of those who said : 'Come let us build ourselves a city and a tower, of which the top shall reach to heaven'. Furthermore, we need wisdom to pull down [κατασπωσης] every proud thought that exalts itself against the knowledge of God and Celsus' proud boasting which exalts itself against us..."
The 'monumental' sense of κατασπαω in the source text is retained, applied to the 'architecture' of ideas and argument. There is no association with an individual's fatal flaw as in Clement.
Clement never quotes Jer.1.10, and indeed the version including κατασπαν was likely not available to him anyway, even had he wished to use it. The Hebrew has six verbs in three doublets; the LXX has five verbs. In his twenty or so citations of Jer.1.10, Origen always uses the LXX version, except in this case, where he (correctly) inserted κατασπαν to restore the three doublets, presumably due to his work on the Hexapla. Jerome in his Commentary on Jeremiah, ad loc., is clearly dependant here on c.Cels.4.1 for his 'own' insight : "That which we have added from the Hebrew - 'dissipes', sive 'deponas' - is not found in the LXX."
But, of course, κατασπαω of itself was not a trigger word for Clement. If my reading is correct, it is its occurrence in the source text he uses at Strom.1.8.41 which he finds attractive, as a condensed epitome of Phaedo 84A.