Exhortation to the Greeks 6.67

Greek text · Stählin 1:51

Καὶ πολύς μοι ἐπιρρεῖ τοιοῦτος ὄχλος, οἱονεὶ μορμώ τινα, δαιμονίων παρεισάγων ξένων ἄτοπον σκιαγραφίαν, μυθολογῶν ὕθλῳ γραϊκῷ· πολλοῦ γε δεῖ ἀνδράσιν ἐπιτρέπειν ἀκροᾶσθαι τοιούτων λόγων, οἳ μηδὲ τοὺς παῖδας τοὺς ἑαυτῶν, τοῦτο δὴ τὸ λεγόμενον, κλαυθμυριζομένους ἐθίζομεν παρηγορεῖσθαι μυθίζοντες, ὀρρωδοῦντες συνανατρέφειν αὐτοῖς ἀθεότητα τὴν πρὸς τῶν δοκησισόφων δὴ τούτων καταγγελλομένην, μηδέν τι νηπίων μᾶλλον τἀληθὲς εἰδότων. τί γάρ, ὢ πρὸς τῆς ἀληθείας, τοὺς σοὶ πεπιστευκότας δεικνύεις ῥύσει καὶ φορᾷ δίναις τε ἀτάκτοις ὑποβεβλημένους; τί δέ μοι εἰδώλων ἀναπίμπλης τὸν βίον, ἀνέμους τε ἢ ἀέρα ἢ πῦρ ἢ γῆν ἢ λίθους ἢ ξύλα ἢ σίδηρον, κόσμον τόνδε, θεοὺς ἀναπλάττουσα, θεοὺς δὲ καὶ τοὺς ἀστέρας τοὺς πλανήτας, τοῖς ὄντως πεπλανημένοις τῶν ἀνθρώπων διὰ τῆς πολυθρυλήτου ταύτης ἀστρολογίας, οὐκ ἀστρονομίας, μετεωρολογοῦσα καὶ ἀδολεσχοῦσα;

English · Claude translation

A great crowd of this kind streams in on me, bringing in, like some bogey, a strange and absurd sketch of foreign daemons, telling myths with old wives' nonsense. We are far from allowing men to listen to such stories, we who do not even soothe our own children, as the saying goes, with fairy tales when they cry, afraid of rearing them in the godlessness proclaimed by these men who seem wise but know the truth no better than infants. Why, in the name of truth, do you show those who have believed you subject to flux and motion and random whirls? Why do you fill my life with idols, fashioning winds or air or fire or earth or stones or wood or iron, this world, into gods, and making gods of the planets too, talking idly and prating about the heavens to those human beings who have truly wandered (planaō), through this much-vaunted astrology, not astronomy?

About this passage

Source

Stählin 1:51 · Otto Stählin, ed., Clemens Alexandrinus, vol. 1, Protrepticus und Paedagogus, GCS 12 (Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1905) · Greek text: Otto Stählin, Clemens Alexandrinus 1: Protrepticus und Paedagogus (GCS 12, 1905), digitized by the First Thousand Years of Greek project (Open Greek and Latin), CC BY-SA 4.0

Text

As printed in Stählin, GCS 12. Manuscript variants and the editor's apparatus are not reproduced; no textual problem is noted in this passage.

Translation

Claude translation (claude-opus-5-5), 2026-09-26 · Translated by Claude from the Greek text of Stählin (1905); made independently of existing English translations.

Compare

Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 2 (1885) (an older public-domain English translation, whole volume at CCEL; checked against ours only after ours was made)

Notes

Translation notes

The word-play is on πλανήτης (“planet,” literally “wanderer”) and πεπλανημένοις (“those who have wandered, gone astray”).

Cite this passage

Clement of Alexandria, Protr. 6.67 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/clement-protrepticus/6/67/).

Plain text

Clement of Alexandria, Protr. 6.67 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/clement-protrepticus/6/67/).