Clement of Alexandria · a new plain-English translation from the original language
It was not philosophy alone, but almost every art as well, whose discoverers were barbarians.
The Egyptians, at any rate, were the first to bring astrology forth among men, and likewise the Chaldeans also. The Egyptians were again the first to show how to light lamps, and they divided the year into twelve months, and they forbade intercourse with women in temples and made it law that no one should enter a temple from a woman's bed unwashed; and the same people became the discoverers of geometry as well. There are some who say it was the Carians who devised prognostication by means of the stars. The Phrygians were the first to observe the flights of birds, and the Tuscans, neighbors of Italy, perfected the sacrificial art. The Isaurians and the Arabs worked out augury, just as, of course, the Telmisians worked out divination through dreams. The Tyrrhenians devised the trumpet, and the Phrygians the pipe; for Olympus and Marsyas were both Phrygians.
Cadmus the Phoenician was the discoverer of letters for the Greeks, as Ephorus says, whence Herodotus writes that the letters were called Phoenician; but others say it was the Phoenicians and Syrians together who first devised letters. They say that Apis the Egyptian, a native, practiced the medical art before Io came to Egypt, and that afterward Asclepius increased that art. Atlas the Libyan was the first to build a ship and to sail the sea. Celmis and Damnameneus in turn, the Idaean Dactyls, were the first to discover iron, in Cyprus, while another Idaean, Delas, discovered the mixing of bronze, or, as Hesiod says, it was a Scythian. Indeed the Thracians discovered the weapon called harpē, a sword bent into a curve, and they were first to employ light bucklers when mounted on horses. Likewise the Illyrians discovered the so-called parma. They say further that the Tuscans devised the plastic art, and that Itanus (a Sabine) was the first to construct a shield. For Cadmus the Phoenician discovered stone-cutting and devised the gold mines around Mount Pangaeus. Then again another nation, the Cappadocians, were the first to discover the instrument called the nabla, just as the Assyrians discovered the two-stringed instrument. The Carthaginians were the first to build a quadrireme, and it was Bosporus who built it on the spot.
Medea the Colchian, daughter of Aeetes, was the first to devise the dyeing of hair. But also the Noropes (a Paeonian nation, now called Norici) worked bronze and were the first to purify iron. Amycus, king of the Bebryces, was the first to discover boxing-thongs. In music Olympus the Mysian crafted the Lydian harmony as an art; and the people called the Troglodytes discovered the sambyca, a musical instrument. They say that Satyrus the Phrygian discovered the slanting pipe (syrinx), and likewise that Agnis, also a Phrygian, discovered the three-stringed instrument and the diatonic harmony; that Olympus, likewise the Phrygian, discovered percussive strokes, just as Marsyas, of the same region as those mentioned before, discovered the Phrygian harmony and the mixophrygian and mixolydian, and that Thamyris the Thracian devised the Dorian. It is reported to us that among the Persians the wagon, the couch, and the footstool were first constructed, and that the Sidonians constructed the trireme. The Sicels who dwell near Italy were the first to discover the phorminx, not much inferior to the cithara, and they devised castanets. They record that in the time of Semiramis, king of the Egyptians, fine linen garments were discovered. And Hellanicus says that Atossa, who reigned as queen of the Persians, was the first to compose letters.
Scamon of Mitylene and Theophrastus of Eresus and Cydippus of Mantinea, and further Antiphanes together with Aristodemus, Aristotle too, and beyond them Philostephanus, plus Straton the Peripatetic in his treatise On Discoveries, are the ones who set these matters down. I have set out a few of their reports to establish the inventive and life-benefiting nature found among barbarians, from whom the Greeks derived benefit for their own pursuits.
But if anyone disparages the barbarian tongue, then, as Anacharsis says, 'to me all Greeks talk like Scythians.' This was the man the Greeks admired, the one who declared, 'what wraps my body is a rough mantle, and cheese with milk make up my meal.' You see a barbarian philosophy professing deeds, not words.
The apostle speaks in this way: 'And you, if through the tongue you do not give a clear word, how will what is spoken be known? You will simply be talking to empty wind. Perhaps there exist countless varieties of sound throughout the world, and not a single one lacks sense; if then I do not know the meaning of the voice, I will be a barbarian to the one speaking, and the one speaking will be a barbarian to me. Let the one who speaks in a tongue pray that he may interpret.'
Yes indeed, it was only late that the teaching and writing of discourse passed over to the Greeks.
Alcmaeon, son of Perithous, of Croton, was at any rate the first to compose a treatise on nature. Others record that Anaxagoras, son of Hegesibulus, of Clazomenae, was the first to publish a book in writing. Terpander of Antissa was the first to set melody around poems and set to melody the laws of the Lacedaemonians; Lasus of Hermione devised the dithyramb; Stesichorus, native of Himera, the hymn; Alcman, a Lacedaemonian, the choral dance; Anacreon, from Teos, erotic verse. Pindar the Theban was the first to sing the hyporcheme, and Timotheus of Miletus the first to sing nomes to the accompaniment of chorus and cithara.
Yes indeed, Archilochus of Paros devised the iambus, and Hipponax of Ephesus the limping iambus, and Thespis of Athens tragedy, and Susarion of Icaria comedy. The children of the grammarians hand down the dates of these men; it would take too long to set them out with precision here, though Dionysus himself shows the way — he on whose account there are also the Dionysiac spectacles — a man later than Moses by, at the very least, a great many generations. They say too that Antiphon Sophilus of Rhamnus was the discoverer of set speeches for practice and of the properties of rhetoric, and the first to plead for hire and to write out a forensic speech for publication, as Diodorus says; while Apollodorus of Cyme was the first to introduce the term 'grammarian' in place of 'critic,' and was so called; though some say it was Eratosthenes of Cyrene, since he published two books entitled Grammatical. And Praxiphanes, son of Dionysophanes, of Mitylene, was the first to be called 'grammarian' in the sense we now use the word. Zaleucus the Locrian is on record as the first to have established laws, though others say it was Minos, son of Zeus, in the time of Lynceus. This man comes after Danaus, eleven generations removed from Inachus and from Moses, as will be demonstrated a bit later in this account. Lycurgus, who lived many years after the fall of Troy, one hundred and fifty years before the Olympiads, gave laws to the Lacedaemonians; for we have already stated the dates of Solon.
Draco, who was likewise a lawgiver, is found to have lived around the thirty-ninth Olympiad. Antilochus, in turn, who treated historical matters running from the era of Pythagoras up to the demise of Epicurus, an event occurring on the tenth of Gamelion, calculates the entire span as three hundred twelve years. They say further that the heroic hexameter was discovered by Phanothea, the wife of Icarius, though others say it was Themis, one of the Titanides. Didymus, in his work On Pythagorean Philosophy, records that Theano of Croton was the first woman to practice philosophy and to write poems.
Greek philosophy, then, according to some, has laid hold of the truth by mere chance, in some fashion, but dimly and not in its entirety; while according to others it derives its impulse from the devil. Some have supposed that certain lower powers breathed the whole of philosophy into being. But even if Greek philosophy does not grasp the greatness of the truth, and is still too weak to carry out the Lord's commandments, still it prepares the way beforehand for the most kingly teaching, in some fashion disciplining the character and molding it in advance, and stamping it beforehand for the reception of the truth, in the man who glorifies providence.
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