the place of the missing string. So it was not Eunomus that drew the grasshopper by his song, as the legend would have it, when it set up the bronze figure at Pytho, showing Eunomus with his lyre and his ally in the contest. No, the grasshopper flew of its own accord, and sang of its own accord, although the Greeks thought it to have been responsive to music.
How in the world is it that you have given credence to worthless legends, imagining . . .
and blasts of theology ensue. But how grateful one is to Clement for mentioning the grasshopper, and how probable it seems, from the way he tells the story, that he had a faint consciousness of its beauty—just as his risqué passages emanate a furtive consciousness of their riskiness. His learning is immense: he is said to allude to three hundred Greek writers of whom we should not otherwise have heard, and one gladly follows him through the back-yards of the Classical world. The results of his ramble are most fully stated in two other of his treatises, the "Rug roll" and the "Tutor." His verdict is that, though the poetry of Hellas is false and its cults absurd or vile, yet its philosophers and grasshoppers possessed a certain measure of divine truth; some of the speculations of Plato, for instance, had been inspired by the Psalms. It is not much of a verdict in the light of modern research; but it is a moderate verdict for a Father; he spares his thunders, he does not exalt asceticism, he is never anti-social.
Till the ground if you are a husbandman; but recognize God in your husbandry. Sail the sea, you who love sea-faring; but ever call upon the heavenly pilot. Were you a soldier on campaign when the knowledge of God laid hold of you? Then listen to the commander who signals righteousness.
Here he shows his respect for the existing fabric
