Clement of Alexandria, Miscellanies 24

Moses is therefore, for us, prophetic, lawgiving, tactical, strategic, and philosophical. How he was prophetic will be discussed later, when we take up prophecy. The tactical element belongs to the strategic, and the strategic to the royal; likewise the lawgiving element belongs to the royal, just as the judicial does. The divine aspect of the royal is that which accords with God and his Holy Son, from whom come both earthly goods and those beyond, and perfect blessedness; for it is said, "Ask for the great things, and the small things will be added to you." A second kind of kingship follows the pure and divine administration: it employs only the spirited part of the soul for rule; Hercules ruled Argos and Alexander the Macedonians according to this pattern. A third kind aims at victory alone and at subjugation — whether the victory serves good or evil does not concern it; the Persians, when they marched against Greece, resorted to this. The spirited part has only the love of contention, making dominion its end for the sake of power, and the love of beauty, when the soul uses passion for the noble. A fourth, the worst of all, is the kingship ordered by desires, like that of Sardanapalus and those who make desires their goal, gratifying them as much as possible. The tactical element is the instrument both of the royal that conquers by virtue and of that which conquers by force — each according to a different nature and material. In weapons and fighting animals, whether living or lifeless, the soul is what arranges, and mind; in the passions of the soul, which we master by virtue, reason is the tactical element, sealing self-control and sobriety together with holiness and good knowledge with truth, referring the end to the reverence of God. For those who use virtue, prudence is what arranges: divine things by wisdom, human things by politics, and all things by the royal art. A king, therefore, is one who rules according to laws, possessing the knowledge of ruling the willing — such as the Lord, who receives those who believe in him and through him. For God has given all things and subjected all things to Christ our King, so that in the name of Jesus every knee may bow, of those in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father (Philippians 2:10-11). Strategy is involved with three ideas: the safe, the cunning, and the mixed from these; each of these is composed of three things, whether through word, through deeds, or through both at once. These things serve to accomplish everything either by persuading, by forcing, or by doing wrong in self-defense — which includes either doing what is right, or lying, or speaking truth, or using some of these together at the same time. The Greeks, having received these things and how to use each from Moses, have benefited. By way of illustration I will mention one or two strategic paradigms. Moses led the people out and, suspecting the Egyptians would pursue, left the short, direct road and turned into the desert, traveling mostly by night. For there was another economy, by which the Hebrews were trained through much desert and long time to believe in God alone, being habituated to sobriety through endurance. The strategy of Moses teaches that before dangers one must perceive what is useful and then act upon it. What he suspected came to pass: the Egyptians pursued on horses and chariots, but perished the more quickly when the sea burst apart and overwhelmed them, horses and chariots alike, so that not even a remnant of them was left. After these things a pillar of fire, following — for it went before them — guided the Hebrews by night through the impassable, in hardships and journeys, training and habituating them to courage and endurance, so that the good things of the land might appear pleasant after the ordeal of what seemed terrible, into which he was sending them. And indeed he also routed and killed the enemies who held the land beforehand, attacking them from the desert and rough road — for such is the virtue of the strategic; for it was a work of experience and strategy to take the enemy's land. Miltiades, the general of the Athenians who won the battle at Marathon against the Persians, imitated this method: he led the Athenians by night, marching through the rough road and deceiving the barbarians who watched him; for Hippias, the apostate of the Athenians, had brought the barbarians into Attica and guarded the advantageous positions, having the experience of the land. It was a task, therefore, to elude Hippias; rightly Miltiades, using the rough road and night, attacked the Persians under Datis and won the contest with them. And also a pillar became a guide for Thrasybulus, who was bringing back those who had escaped from Phyle and wished to escape notice, through the rugged paths as he went. When it was a moonless, stormy night, a fire was seen going before them, which led them unerringly through Munychia, where now the altar of Phosphorus stands. Our traditions, therefore, are trustworthy even from this to the Greeks: that it is possible for the Almighty God to make a pillar of fire go before the Hebrews by night and guide them on the way. It is said also in a certain oracle: "A pillar to the Thebans, Dionysus, rich in crops," from the history among the Hebrews. And Euripides says in the Antiope: "And within the chambers of the shepherds, a pillar, wreathed with ivy, of the god Euius." The pillar signifies the unfigured nature of God, and the illuminated pillar, besides signifying the unfigured, shows the stable and immovable character of God and his unchangeable and formless light. Before the forms of statues were defined, the ancients set up pillars and revered them as the foundations of God. The author of the Phoroneis writes: "Callithoe, key-bearer of Olympias' palace, of Argive Hera, who first adorned the queen's long pillar with wreaths and sacrifices." And the author of the Europa relates that the statue of Apollo at Delphi is a pillar, through these words: "So that we may hang a tithe and firstfruit of the weights from the pure things and a high pillar to the god." Apollo, however, is mystically understood as the one God, through the negation of the many. That fire, therefore, which resembles a pillar, and the fire through the bush, is a symbol of the holy light which passes from earth and returns again to heaven through the wood, through which also the power of seeing has been given to us intellectually.