Ante-Nicene Fathers/Volume VIII/Pseudo-Clementine Literature/The Clementine Homilies/Homily V/Chapter 18

Chapter XVIII.&#8212;The Philosophers Advocates of Adultery.

&#8220;&#8216;But why?&#160; Do not the celebrated philosophers extol pleasure, and have they not had intercourse with what women they would?&#160; Of these the first was that teacher of Greece, of whom Ph&#339;bus himself said, &#8220;Of all men, Socrates is the wisest.&#8221;&#160; Does not he teach that in a well-regulated state women should be common? and did he not conceal the fair Alcibiades under his philosopher&#8217;s gown?&#160; And the Socratic Antisthenes writes of the necessity of not abandoning what is called adultery.&#160; And even his disciple Diogenes, did not he freely associate with Lais, for the hire of carrying her on his shoulders in public?&#160; Does not Epicurus extol pleasure?&#160; Did not Aristippus anoint himself with perfumes, and devote himself wholly to Aphrodite?&#160; Does not Zeno, intimating indifference, say that the deity pervades all things, that it may be known to the intelligent, that with whomsoever a man has intercourse, it is as with himself; and that it is superfluous to forbid what are called adulteries, or intercourse with mother, or daughter, or sister, or children.&#160; And Chrysippus, in his erotic epistles, makes mention of the statue in Argos, representing Hera and Zeus in an obscene position.