INTRODUCTION.

CHAPTER I.

ON THE TITLE STROMATEIS.

It is unnecessary to repeat here what may be found in Bishop Westcott’s excellent article on Clement in the Dictionary of Christian Biography published in 1877. I shall confine my remarks to a more detailed treatment of some points he only touched upon lightly. First, what did Clement mean by giving his third treatise the title Stromateis—or, more fully, as it appears at the end of Books I, III, and V: The Stromateis of the Gnostic Notes according to the True Philosophy?

Regarding the literal meaning of the word, Moeris in his Attic Lexicon tells us: "stromatodesmos a bag for bed-clothes is Attic; stromateus is Hellenic." Pollux and Phrynichus suggest the same. Accordingly, we read in Theophrastus of the use of coconut fibers to make rings for the striped bags in which bed-clothes were tied, and in the Anteuergeton of Apollodorus of Carystus, we find the phrase "they loosened the stromateis." Consequently, the name was applied to a striped fish found in the Red Sea. Athenaeus describes it as "called stromateus because it has golden stripes running throughout its whole body." Casaubon, in his notes on Athenaeus, says that both the coverlets (stromata) and the bag that contained them (stromatodesmos or stromateus) were typically variegated in color; though the coverlets were usually purple and the bags were striped.