Cups, Songs, and Laughter

So cups made of silver and gold, and others inlaid with precious stones, are out of place. They are nothing but a trick played on the eyes. Pour anything warm into them and the metal heats up until it hurts to hold. Pour in something cold and the metal alters it, spoiling the mixture, so that the costly drink does you harm. Away, then, with Thericlean cups and Antigonides and canthari and goblets and lepastae, and the endless shapes of drinking vessels, and wine-coolers and wine-pourers too. On the whole, gold and silver, in public life and in private, are possessions that attract ill will once they go past what is needed: hard to come by, hard to keep, and no use for anything. And that elaborate vanity, cut glass — likelier to shatter for all the art that went into it, and teaching us to be nervous while we drink — must be banished from our well-ordered community. [a]

Silver couches; pans and vinegar dishes; platters and bowls; and besides these, vessels of silver and gold, some for serving food and some for uses I am ashamed to name; furniture of split cedar and citron wood and ebony; three-legged tables carved from ivory; couches with silver feet and ivory inlay; bed frames whose folding panels are studded with gold and mottled with tortoiseshell; bedding dyed purple and in other colors that are hard to produce — all of it proves a taste ruined by luxury, all of it is the clever contrivance of envy and softness, and all of it is to be let go, since none of it is worth the trouble. “For the time is short,” as the apostle says. What remains, then, is that we not cut a ridiculous figure, like the men one sees at the public shows, oiled and got up on the outside for effect and wretched inside. Making the point plainer, he adds: “What remains is that those who have wives live as though they had none, and those who buy as though they owned nothing.” And if he speaks that way about marriage — the very thing about which God said, “Multiply” — how can you fail to see that senseless display is banished on the Lord’s own authority? That is why the Lord says: “Sell what you have and give to the poor; and come, follow me.”

Follow God stripped of arrogance, stripped of display that fades, holding on to what is really yours, what is good, the one thing that cannot be taken away: faith toward God, confession of the one who suffered, and doing good to people, which is the most precious possession there is. For my part I approve of Plato, who lays it down flatly as a law that no one is to work for wealth in gold or silver, and that no one is to own a useless vessel that serves no necessary purpose. Keep possessions moderate, so that one thing may serve many uses and the need for a variety of things disappears. So the divine Scripture speaks admirably when it addresses boasters and men in love with themselves: “Where are the rulers of the nations, and the men who lorded it over the wild animals of the earth, who play with the birds of the sky, who hoarded up silver and gold — the gold people trusted in — whose property had no end — who worked silver and gold and were eaten up with worry? There is no trace of their works. They have vanished and gone down to Hades.” That is what display earns.

Those of us who farm need a hoe and a plow, but none of us is going to have a mattock made of silver or a sickle of gold. We use the material that does the job in a field, not the one that costs the most. So what stops anyone who can follow a comparison from thinking the same way about household goods, where the measure ought to be usefulness and not price? Tell me: does the carving knife not cut unless it is studded with silver and handled with ivory? Do we have to have Indian steel forged just to divide the meat, as though we were calling for a weapon before a fight? What if the washbasin is earthenware — will it not take the dirt off your hands? Or the footbath the dirt off your feet? Will a table with ivory legs be insulted at having to hold a cheap loaf? Will the lamp give no light because a potter made it and not a goldsmith? I say that a low pallet gives no worse rest than an ivory couch, and that a goatskin spread over the bed is plenty; there is no need of purple or scarlet covers. And yet people condemn plain living, because luxury, the source of all the mischief, has made them stupid. What a monstrous error, what senseless conceit!

Look at it. The Lord ate out of a plain bowl. He had his disciples lie down on the grass, on the ground. He washed their feet with a linen towel tied around him — he, the humble-minded God, the Lord of the universe. He did not bring down a silver basin from heaven. He asked the Samaritan woman for a drink, and she drew the water from the well in an earthenware jar; he was not after royal gold, but was teaching us how simply thirst is satisfied. His aim was usefulness, not extravagance. And he ate and drank at dinners without digging metals out of the ground and without gold and silver vessels — vessels that give off the smell of rust, the fumes that come off smoking metal.

In short — in food, in clothes, in dishes, in everything else that belongs to a house — my whole rule is this: follow the settled practice of the Christian, so far as it is useful and suits your person, your age, your work, and your time of life. It is fitting that people who serve one God should have possessions and furnishings that show the marks of one good and beautiful life, and that each of them should be seen in a faith that makes no distinctions, doing everything else in a way that fits this single manner of living and keeps to this one design.

What we get without trouble and use without fuss, we think well of, keep without effort, and share freely. Useful things are the ones to prefer, and so cheap things are better than expensive ones. In short, wealth that is not kept in hand is a fortress of evil. Many keep their eyes on it and will never reach the kingdom of heaven, sick with longing for the things of this world and living in the arrogance that luxury breeds. People who are serious about salvation must settle this in their minds beforehand: the whole creation is given us to use, and owning is for having enough, and enough can be reached with few things. It is foolish to take delight, out of greed, in what you have piled up. “Whoever earns wages,” it is said, “earns them into a bag full of holes.” That is the man who gathers grain and locks it away — and the man who gives to no one grows poorer.

It is a farce, a thing to laugh at out loud: men who have silver urinals and crystal chamber pots carried in as ceremoniously as they usher in their advisers, and foolish rich women who have gold vessels made to receive their excrement — so that being rich, they cannot even relieve themselves except in style. I wish that all their lives long they reckoned gold fit for dung. As it turns out, the love of money is the fortress of evil. The apostle says it “is the root of all evils; some have craved it and have wandered away from the faith and run themselves through with many griefs.”

The best wealth is poverty of desires, and real greatness of soul is not to be proud of wealth but to think nothing of it. Boasting about your dinner service is thoroughly low. It is plainly wrong to care much about what anyone who wants it can buy in the market. But wisdom is not bought with the coin of earth, and it is not sold in the marketplace — it is sold in heaven, and it is sold for the true coin: the immortal Word, the royal gold.

Let the revel stay away from our reasonable entertainments, and the foolish all-night parties too, that make a revel out of excess. A revel is a drunken restlessness, a maker of lovesick anguish. Let erotic love and drunkenness and mindless passions be put out of our choir. An all-night party over drink is a drunken riot that keeps the revel company: it invites drunkenness, provokes intercourse, and grows bold enough for shameful acts. When people fill their time with pipes and harps and choirs and dancing and Egyptian hand-clapping and other disorderly frivolities, they turn shameless and unmanageable; they bang on cymbals and drums and make a racket on instruments meant to deceive. A dinner like that, it seems to me, is plainly a theater of drunkenness. For the apostle lays it down that we should “put off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light, and walk decently as in the daytime, not in carousing and drunkenness, not in sleeping around and shameless behavior.” [n]

Leave the pipe to shepherds and the flute to the superstitious, who are wrapped up in idol worship. Instruments like these really do have to be banished from a sober dinner; they suit animals better than people, and the more unreasoning sort of people at that. We have heard of stags charmed by the pipe and drawn by the music straight into the nets when the hunters are after them. And when mares are being bred, a tune is played on the flute — a wedding song, so to speak; musicians call it the Horse-Mounting tune. In a word, every unfit sight and sound, and every shameful sensation that goes with loose living — which is really the loss of sensation — must be shut out altogether, and we must be on our guard against any pleasure that tickles the eye and the ear and softens us. The assorted spells of broken melodies and the whining measures of the Carian muse corrupt a person’s character; the loose and mischievous side of the art of music draws the mind into turmoil.

The Spirit, marking off worship from that kind of revel, sings: “Praise him with the sound of the trumpet” — for with the sound of a trumpet he will raise the dead. “Praise him on the harp” — for the tongue is the Lord’s harp. “And praise him on the lyre” — by the lyre he means the mouth, struck by the Spirit as if by a plectrum. “Praise him with the drum and the dance” refers to the church, thinking on the resurrection of the flesh in the resounding skin. “Praise him with strings and instrument” — our body is the instrument he means, and its sinews are the strings, which is how it was given its harmonious tension; and when the Spirit strikes it, it gives out human voices. “Praise him on the clashing cymbals” — he calls the tongue the cymbal of the mouth, which rings out as the lips beat against it. And so he called out to the human race, “Let everything that breathes praise the Lord,” because he cares for every breathing thing he has made. A human being is truly an instrument of peace; look into the others and you will find them warlike, inflaming lust, or kindling love affairs, or rousing anger.

In war, then, the Etruscans use the trumpet, the Arcadians the pipe, the Sicilians the pektis, the Cretans the lyre, the Spartans the flute, the Thracians the horn, the Egyptians the drum, and the Arabians the cymbal. We use the one instrument of peace: the Word alone, by which we honor God. We no longer use the old harp and trumpet and drum and flute, which men expert in war, who despised the fear of God, used to bring into the choruses at their festivals as well, so that such strains could lift their sagging spirits. But let our good cheer over a drink be twofold, in keeping with the law. Since it says “you shall love the Lord your God,” and then “your neighbor,” let the first showing of it go toward God in thanksgiving and psalm-singing, and the second toward our neighbor in decent companionship. For the apostle says, “Let the Word of the Lord live in you richly.” And this Word fits himself to seasons, to persons, to places.

Right now he is a guest at our table. For the apostle goes on: “teaching and warning one another in all wisdom, with psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your heart to God.” And again: “Whatever you do in word or in deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God and his Father.” This is our revel, and it is a thankful one. And even if you want to sing and play to the harp or the lyre, there is nothing to blame. You will be imitating the righteous Hebrew king in his thanksgiving to God. “Rejoice in the Lord, you righteous; praise suits the upright,” says the prophecy. “Give thanks to the Lord on the lyre; play to him on the ten-stringed harp. Sing him a new song.” And does the ten-stringed harp not point to Jesus the Word, who is made known by the letter that stands for ten? And just as it is fitting to bless the Creator of everything before we take food, so in drinking it is right to praise him as we take what he has made. A psalm is a blessing set to music and kept sober; the apostle calls the psalm “a spiritual song.”

Finally, before we take our sleep, it is a sacred duty to give thanks to God for the kindness and love we have enjoyed, so that we go to our sleep in a godly way. “And give thanks to him with songs from your lips,” he says, “because at his command everything he is pleased with is done, and there is nothing lacking in his salvation.”

Among the old Greeks, too, at their banquets over the brimming cups, a song was sung called a skolion, after the manner of the Hebrew psalms: all of them raising the paean together, and sometimes taking the song by turns while the healths went around, while those more musical than the rest sang to the lyre. But send love songs far away, and let our songs be hymns to God. “Let them praise his name in the dance,” it says, “and let them play to him on the drum and the harp.” And what is the choir that plays? The Spirit will show you: “Let his praise be in the assembly of the holy ones; let them be joyful in their King.” And he adds, “The Lord takes pleasure in his people.” Sober harmonies are to be let in; but those liquid harmonies are to be banished as far as possible from our sturdy minds, since by damaging tricks in the modulation of the notes they train people to softness and coarseness. Grave and modest strains say goodbye to the uproar of drunkenness. So the chromatic harmonies are to be left to shameless revels and to florid, whorish music.

People who make a business of imitating ridiculous feelings — or rather, feelings that deserve to be laughed at — are to be driven out of our community. Since every kind of speech flows out of the mind and the character, no one could utter ridiculous talk if it were not coming out of ridiculous habits. The saying applies here: “A good tree does not produce rotten fruit, and a rotten tree does not produce good fruit.” Speech is the fruit of the mind. So if jokers are to be thrown out of our society, we certainly must not be allowed to raise a laugh ourselves. It would be absurd to be caught imitating what we are forbidden even to listen to, and more absurd still for a man to set about making himself a laughingstock — the target of insult and mockery. If we could not stand to cut a ridiculous figure the way some do in the processions, how could we decently put up with having the inner person made ridiculous, and to our own face at that? So we should never of our own accord take on the part of a clown. How, then, can we give ourselves to being and looking ridiculous in the way we talk, making a burlesque out of speech, the most valuable thing a human being has? It is disgraceful to set out to do it, since the talk of jokers like that is not fit for our ears: by the very words it uses, it makes us comfortable with shameful acts. [aa]

Good humor is allowed; clowning is not. And laughter itself has to be kept in check. Let out the right way, it is a mark of good order; let out any other way, it shows a lack of self-control. In a word, whatever is natural to people we must not root out of them; we must set limits on it and fit it to the right times. A man is not to laugh on every occasion because he is an animal that laughs, any more than a horse neighs on every occasion because he is an animal that neighs. As reasoning beings we are to govern ourselves properly, loosening the severity and the over-tightness of our serious pursuits in a way that keeps them in tune, not snapping them apart altogether out of tune.

The becoming relaxation of the face, done harmoniously, the way an instrument is slackened, is called a smile; and that is the name for laughter on the face of a well-ordered man as well. But the discordant slackening of the face is called, in a woman, a giggle, and it is the laugh of a prostitute; in a man it is called a guffaw, and it is savage and insulting laughter. “A fool raises his voice when he laughs,” says the Scripture, “but a clever man smiles so you can hardly see it.” By “clever” here he means the wise man, since he is moved differently than the fool is. On the other hand, there is no need to be gloomy — only serious. I would much rather a man with a stern face smiled than the other way around, since that way his laughter is less likely to be laughed at. Even smiling needs to be brought under discipline. If the smile is at something disgraceful, we ought to blush instead, so that we do not look as though we shared the pleasure of it; if it is at something painful, it is fitting to look sad rather than pleased. The first is a sign that a person is thinking like a human being; the second raises the suspicion of cruelty.

We are not to be laughing all the time, since that goes past the limit; nor in front of older people, or others who deserve respect, unless they are joking to amuse us. We are not to laugh in front of just anybody, or in every place, or with everyone, or about everything. For children and women especially, laughter is what starts the slide into scandal. Even looking stern serves to keep those around us at a distance; a serious face can fend off the approaches of loose behavior with nothing but a look. In a word, wine

turning soft manners softer still. We should notice, too, how loose speech leads impropriety on to filthy talk:

So it is over drink above all that crafty men’s characters get seen through, stripped as they are of their mask by the wretched license of intoxication — under which reason, weighed down in the soul itself by drunkenness, is lulled to sleep, and unruly passions are roused that overmaster a mind too feeble to hold them.