In the Letter to Theodore Clement is apparently responding to something that Theodore has asked about the γυμνὸς γυμνῷ Theod. III.13). Charles Hedrick has noted that there are two possibilities for this passage - i.e. something regarding 'naked with naked' or 'naked on naked.' Yet there is another possibility which no one else has considered - 'naked to naked' and it doesn't have to be a sexual reference.
Cassius Maximus Tyrius was an influential Platonist who flourished under the rule of the Antonines and Commodus. In short he was active while Clement was writing and he happened to write an influential dissertation where the concept of 'naked to naked' - γυμνὸν γυμνῷ - is explicitly referenced.
Maximus is talking about the disposing of the body - τὸ σῶμα - which is a neuter noun in Greek. This is why 'naked' is spelled like this γυμνὸν rather than γυμνὸς which is presumably connected with the Greek word for 'man' which is of course a masculine noun.
The dissertation (a speech which Maximus gave sometime before Clement wrote to Theodore) can be found here (
http://books.google.com/books?id=0nB...an.%22&f=false). It is a response to a group who argued in some way that one should take the body seriously and help protect against its corruption. Reiske has proposed that the Cyrenaics, the earliest Socratic school founded by Aristippus the Elder, are the group being attacked here. I wonder whether Maximus has the Christian resurrection in mind with its attainment of a 'perfect body' after death.
The dissertation begins with a citation of a popular prayer for 'health' or hygene (ὑγεία) and Maximus says that we should hope this is bestowed upon the soul rather than the mind. The section of text we are interested in begins:
Quote:
The body is diseased, disturbed, and corrupted, but if you place over it as a ruler a robust soul it will pay no attention to the disease and will despise the evil. In this manner Pherecydes despised it when lying in Syrus, his flesh, indeed, being in a corrupt state, but his soul standing erect, and expecting the liberation from this cumbersome vestment.
I, indeed, should say, that neither is the corruption of the body unpleasing to the generous soul. Just as if you conceive a man in chains, who, while he sees the wall of his prison decaying and crumbling in pieces, waits for the egression and liberation from his bonds, that, from the abundant and profound darkness in which he has hitherto been buried, he may survey the aetherial regions and be filled with splendid light. Or do you think that a man who has been well exercised, and who has strenuously laboured with his body, would be disturbed in consequence of his garments being torn; and that he would not willingly throw them away, and deliver his body to the air, the naked to the naked (γυμνὸν γυμνῷ), the friend to the friend, and the free to the free? what else, then, do you think this skin, these bones, and this flesh are to the soul than a diurnal robe and slender and effeminate rags? these the sword cuts, fire liquifies, and ulcers consume. Hence the worthy soul, that has been inured to labour and exercise, desires to be divested of these with the utmost celerity ; so that some one, on surveying a generous man diseased in body, may exclaim, in the language of the suitors to Ulysses, "See what a hip the old-man's rags disclose!"
But the degenerate soul being buried in body, as' some sluggish reptile in its place of retreat, loves its den, and is never willing to be liberated from, nor to creep out of it ; but when the body is burnt' it burns with it, is dilacerated when it is torn in pieces, is pained when it is in pain,; and when it bellows exclaims: "Must I, O foot ! then leave thee? says Philoctetes. Leave it, O man ! and do not bellow, nor revile your dearest friends, nor disturb the land of the Lemnians : " O death !' of evils the physician +." If you thus speak, being about to exchange evil for evil, I do not accept the prayer : but if you think in reality that death is the physician of, and liberator from, this evil, insatiable, and diseased thing the body, you think well pray and invoke the physician.
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It is worth noting that the 'naked with naked' is only taken to be a homosexual reference because it is assumed that it refers to 'naked man with naked man.' If Theodore was somehow citing Maximus's dissertation, it really only deals with a dead body being thrown naked to the air. Even if this isn't true, it is possible to envision an original reference to γυμνὸς γυμνῷ or γυμνὸν γυμνῷ (Clement may have changed the original reference from 'body' to 'man' consciously, unconsciously, deliberately, accidentally etc.) in something Theodore wrote (now lost) which has nothing to do homosexuality or sex. It might have been a reference to metempsychosis or to Maximus's original treatise.
The point is that we just don't know; it's just a two word citation of an unknown text now forever lost.
03-27-2011, 11:00 AM
Theodore's Original Reference to γυμνὸς γυμνῷ Doesn't Have to Be a Sexual Allusion
