Clement of Alexandria · a new plain-English translation from the original language
What baths these women have! Houses skillfully made, fitted together and carried about, covered over with transparent linen; gilded chairs, silver footstools, and countless vessels of gold and silver — some carried around for toasts, some for food, some for the bath itself; yes, and braziers of coals as well, for they have reached such an extreme of soft living that they eat and grow tipsy while still in the bath. The silver plate with which they parade themselves they set out tastelessly right there in the bathhouses — perhaps partly out of excessive ostentation of wealth, but chiefly out of that self-willed want of discipline by which they stand convicted before unmanly men who are mastered by women, displaying it and in some way proving that they themselves are not able to be at ease and cannot even sweat apart from their many vessels; for the poor women too, who have no share in the procession, share equally in the same baths. So it is that the filth of abundance carries with it a great mantle of blasphemy. With this, as with bait, they hook the wretched men who gape at the glitter of the gold; for by dazzling the tasteless with it they contrive to make their lovers marvel at them — lovers who shortly afterward insult them while naked. And indeed they would not strip before their own husbands, pretending a show of modesty they do not have, yet it is open to any other man who wishes it to behold naked, in the bathhouses, women who are kept shut up at home; for there they are not ashamed to strip before onlookers as before dealers in bodies. But Hesiod counsels that a man should not even brighten his skin at a woman's bath. Yet the baths stand open in common to men and women together, and from this they strip down into self-indulgence: 'for from looking, men come to loving,' as though modesty were washed away from them there in the baths. Those who have not become quite so shameless shut out strangers, but bathe together with their own household servants, and strip naked before slaves and are rubbed down by them, granting to the cowering slave license for the fearless touch of desire; for those brought in beside the baths of their naked mistresses get practice in stripping, toward boldness in desire, erasing fear through a wicked habit. And the ancient athletes, ashamed to display a man naked, performed their contests girded, so guarding their sense of shame; but these women, stripping off their tunic and their shame together, wish to appear beautiful, and yet against their will they are just as much convicted of being base; for the very flesh betrays how unrestrained the craving is, just as in those with dropsy the moisture pent up within shows through on the surface — the sickness of both is known from the sight of them. Men, therefore, who ought to become a noble example of truth to women, should be ashamed to strip with them and should guard against slippery glances — 'for he who has looked,' it says, 'too curiously has already sinned.' At home, then, one must show reverence toward one's parents and household servants; on the roads, toward those one meets; in the baths, toward women; in solitary places, toward oneself; and in every place toward the Word, who fills every place, and 'apart from him nothing came into being.' For only in this way will a person remain unstumbling, if he considers that God is present with him at all times.
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