Ante-Nicene Fathers/Volume IX/The Epistles of Clement/The First Epistle of Clement to the Corinthians/Chapter 6

by Various

Chapter VI.—Continuation.  Several Other Martyrs.

To these men who spent their lives in the practice of holiness, there is to be added a great multitude of the elect, who, having through envy endured many indignities and tortures, furnished us with a most excellent example.  Through envy, those women, the Danaids^[1] and Dircæ, being persecuted, after they had suffered terrible and unspeakable torments, finished the course of their faith with stedfastness,^[2] and though weak in body, received a noble reward.  Envy has alienated wives from their husbands, and changed that saying of our father Adam, “This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh.”^[3]  Envy and strife have overthrown^[4] great cities, and rooted up mighty nations.

Footnotes

1. Some suppose these to have been the names of two eminent female martyrs under Nero; others regard the clause as an interpolation.
2. Literally, “have reached to the stedfast course of faith.”
3. Gen. ii. 23.
4. I. κατέσκαψεν (razed to the ground).