Clement of Alexandria · a new plain-English translation from the original language
Since marriage seems to fall under pleasure and desire, we must give an account of it as well. Marriage, then, is the first union of a man and a woman according to law, for the begetting of legitimate children. Thus the comic poet Menander says, "for the plowing of legitimate children I give you my own daughter." We ask whether one ought to marry — a question belonging to the class of things said to be relative in a certain manner. For to whom ought one to marry, and being in what condition, and marrying whom, and she being in what condition? For one ought not to marry just anyone, nor at just any time, but there is a season proper to it, a person suited to it, and a limit of years within which it remains fitting. So one ought not to marry every woman, nor at every time, nor altogether without restraint, but the man must be in a fitting condition, and must marry the sort of woman, and at the time, that is proper, and for the sake of children, and with a partner alike in all respects, who cherishes her loving husband not by force or compulsion.
Hence Abraham, speaking of his wife under the pretext that she was his sister, says: "Her father is mine, though her mother is not; she became my wife, yet she is counted my sister," teaching that those sharing one mother ought not to be joined together in marriage.
Let us run briefly through the history of opinion. Plato ranks marriage among external goods, providing for the immortality of our race and a kind of continuity handed down like a torch from children to children's children. Democritus, on the other hand, declines marriage and child-rearing on account of the many discomforts and distractions from more necessary things that arise from them. Epicurus agrees with him, as do all who place the good in pleasure and freedom from disturbance, and further in freedom from pain. Again, according to the Stoics marriage and the raising of children are indifferent, while according to the Peripatetics they are a good. In sum, these men, carrying their doctrines only as far as the tongue, were enslaved to pleasures — some to concubines, others to courtesans, and most of them to boy-favorites. And that famous wise foursome in the Garden, together with the courtesan, exalted pleasure by their deeds.
Those, then, who do not judge a thing to be to their own advantage and yet urge others to do it — or the reverse — cannot escape the curse of Bouzyges. Scripture has briefly shown this, saying: "What you hate, you shall not do to another." Yet those who approve of marriage say that nature has made us fit for marriage, as is plain from the constitution of the bodies of male and female, and they continually cite "increase and multiply." But even if this is so, let it seem shameful to them that man, fashioned by God, should be more incontinent than the irrational animals, which do not indulge in intercourse promiscuously with many, but with one of their own kind, as do the wood-pigeons and the doves and the turtle-dove kind and whatever is similar to these. Further, they say, the childless man falls short of the perfection that accords with nature, since he has not set up in his place a successor of his own household; for he is perfect who has produced from himself one like himself, and even more so when he has seen that offspring in turn do the same, that is, when the one begotten is established in the same nature as the one who begot it.
One ought, then, by all means to marry, both for the sake of one's country and for the succession of children and for the completion of the world so far as lies in our power. For the poets even pity a marriage that is incomplete and childless, but call blessed the one flourishing on both sides with offspring. And bodily illnesses in particular reveal why a wife is indispensable; the devotion of her care and the steadiness of her attendance seem to outdo what other relatives and friends provide, since out of sympathy she chooses to surpass everyone else and remain at hand, being in truth, as Scripture puts it, a fitting helper for him.
So the comic poet Menander, though running down marriage, nevertheless sets its advantages against it, and answers the one who said, "I am badly off in the matter." "B: You take it the wrong way." Then he adds: "You see in it the hardships and what will grieve you, but you do not look at the good things," and so on. And marriage also helps those advanced in years, presenting a wife who cares for them and children by her who nourish them in old age. "Children are tokens of remembrance to a man who has died"; "like corks they buoy up the net," saving from the deep the thread of the line, as the tragedian Sophocles says. And lawgivers do not permit those who have not married to hold the highest offices. For instance the lawgiver of the Spartans established a penalty not only for remaining unmarried, but for marrying badly, marrying late, and living apart. And the noble Plato even orders the man who does not marry to pay the maintenance of a wife into the public treasury, and to render the appropriate expenses to the magistrates; for if men, by not marrying, will not beget children, they will, so far as lies in them, produce a scarcity of men and will destroy both the cities and the world that comes from them.
Such conduct is impious, since it destroys the divine process of generation. And already it is unmanly and weak to flee from a shared life with wife and children. For that whose loss is an evil is, in every case, a good to possess; and this holds true in other matters as well. But surely, so people claim, having children taken from you ranks among the worst of evils. Therefore the possession of children is a good. And if this is so, marriage is too. For without a father, it is said, there could never be a child, and without a mother not even the conception of a child.
Marriage makes a man a father, as it makes a woman a mother. Hence Homer too counts man and household the greatest of prayers — not simply so, but together with noble likemindedness; for the marriage of other men agrees together for the sake of pleasure, but the marriage of those who love wisdom leads to concord according to reason, a marriage that permits wives to be adorned not in outward form but in character, and does not bid husbands treat their wives as mere objects of desire, making the outrage of bodies their aim, but rather to secure marriage as a help for the whole of life and for the highest self-mastery. For, I think, more honorable than wheat and barley seeds cast down each in its proper season is the man who is sown, from whom all things grow, and even those seeds the farmers cast down while sober. Therefore every filthy and defiled practice must be purged away from marriage, lest we be reproached with a union of irrational animals rather than a human partnership that, according to the accepted definition, is in accord with nature.
Some of these animals, indeed, having sprung forth at the season appointed to them, immediately depart, leaving the work of generation to providence's management. But the tragic poets record that Polyxena, even while being slaughtered, took great forethought, even in dying, to fall becomingly, hiding what it was fitting to hide from the eyes of men. And for her too, marriage was her misfortune. To fall beneath the passions, then, and yield to them, is the utmost slavery, just as, of course, to master them is the only freedom. Thus divine Scripture says that those who transgress the commandments have been sold to foreigners, that is, to sins alien to their nature, until, having turned back, they repent.
Marriage, then, must be kept pure, like some sacred image, from those who would defile it — rising from sleep with the Lord in mind, and returning to sleep with gratitude and petition offered up, "whenever you lie down to rest and whenever the holy dawn arrives," calling the Lord to witness through the whole of our life, possessing piety toward God in the soul, and carrying self-mastery through to the body as well. For it is truly pleasing to God to guide what is orderly from the tongue to one's deeds; shameful speech is a road to shamelessness, and the end of both is shameful conduct. And that Scripture counsels marrying, and never permits departing from the marriage bond, it plainly legislates: "You shall not put away your wife, except on the ground of fornication"; and it regards it as adultery for one to marry again while the other of the separated pair still lives.
It is a woman free from suspicion of slander who does not adorn herself, nor even ornament herself beyond what is fitting, but devotes herself continually to prayers and supplications, guarding against frequent excursions from the house, and shutting herself off as far as possible from being seen by those who are not her own, counting the keeping of the house of more importance than idle chatter out of season. And he who takes a divorced woman commits adultery, it is said; for if anyone divorces his wife, he makes her commit adultery, that is, forces her to be made an adulteress. And not only is the one who divorces her responsible for this, but also the one who receives her, giving her the occasion to sin; for if he did not receive her, she would return to her husband.
What then does the Law say? To check the ready inclination of the passions, it commands that the woman convicted of adultery, having been proven guilty of this, be put to death; and if she is a priestess, it commands that she be handed over to fire. The adulterer too is stoned, but not in the same place, so that death may not even be shared in common by them. The Law, then, is not opposed to the Gospel, but is in harmony with it. How could it be otherwise, since the Lord is the one provider of both? For the woman who has committed fornication lives to sin, but has died to the commandments; but she who repents, as though born again through the conversion of her life, has a regeneration of life, the old harlot having died, and she who has been begotten anew through repentance having passed into life once more. The Spirit bears witness to what has been said, speaking through Ezekiel: "I do not desire the death of the sinner, so much as that he should turn back." At once, those stoned to death die by the Law, to which they did not yield obedience, because of hardness of heart; but for the priestess the penalty is intensified, because to whom more was given, of him more will be required.
Let this second Stromateus of ours here be brought to a close, on account of the length and the number of its topics.
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