EUBOULION: Most opportunely have you arrived, O Gregorion! I was just looking for you, wishing to learn about the gathering of Marcella with Theopatra and the rest of the virgins who were then present at the banquet—what the discourses on chastity were that they delivered. For they say that the women contended so very splendidly and powerfully that they fell short of nothing required for the subject at hand. So, if you came for some other purpose, put it off for another time and do not hesitate now to recount in full and in order everything we are asking of you. GREGORION: I have missed my hope, it seems, regarding the very things you ask about. For I, supposing that you had not yet heard anything of what took place, was greatly priding myself on this and plumed myself on being the first to announce it to you. That is exactly why I hurried to come here to you so quickly—for this very reason, that I might not be forestalled by another. EUBOULION: Take heart, my blessed one; for the one who reported it knew nothing precisely of what happened. He could relate nothing more than that there had been dialogues; but as to who spoke and how, when questioned further he was at a loss. GREGORION: Then do you wish, since I have come here for this very purpose, that you should hear everything from the beginning that was said? Or shall I pass over some things and recall others, those I judge worthy of remembrance? EUBOULION: By no means; rather from the beginning, O Gregorion. First set forth for us the assembly, where it took place, and the preparations of the food, and how you yourself poured the wine: "and with golden cups they pledged one another, gazing upon the great heaven." GREGORION: You are always clever in conversation and intensely fond of inquiry, O you who simply cross-examine everyone. EUBOULION: It is not worth your while to be contentious about these things now, O Gregorion; but, as we begged of you, narrate to us what happened from the beginning, and do not do otherwise. GREGORION: Then I will try. But first answer me this: you surely know Arete, the daughter of Philosophia? EUBOULION: What of it? GREGORION: At her invitation we were going to her garden, the one toward the east, to gather some of the seasonable fruits—I and Theopatra (for it was from her I inquired) and Procilla and Tysiane. How rough and hard-to-travel the path was that we journeyed, O Gregorion, a steep and uphill track! And when we drew near the place, Theopatra said, a certain tall and comely woman, walking quietly and gracefully, met us, clothed in a robe exceedingly bright as if of snow; and her whole appearance was of a beauty divine and beyond words. Much modesty bloomed upon her face together with dignity, and her gaze, stern yet so cheerfully tempered with gentleness, she said she had never seen the like of before; for she was wholly unadorned and bore nothing counterfeit. So this woman, coming forward with great joy, embraced and kissed each of us like a mother seeing her children after a long time, saying, "My daughters, whom I have so longed to bring into the meadow of incorruption, you have come at last—perhaps frightened along the way by serpents. For I often watched and saw you turning aside, and I feared lest somehow you might leap away and slip down through the precipices. But thanks be to him to whom I have betrothed you, O children, the Bridegroom, who has consented to bring all things to fulfillment for the prayers." And as she said this, she said, we reached the enclosure while the doors were still open, and entering we found Thecla and Agathe and Marcella already about to dine. At once, she said, Arete said, "Come now, you also, and recline here in order beside these companions of yours." We were, I think, all of us banqueters there, she told me, ten in number. And the place was exceedingly beautiful and filled with deep repose. For the air was diffused, blended with pure rays of light, lightly and with great orderliness, and a spring in the very center quietly bubbled up a most sweet draught smooth as oil, from which clear and pure water, flowing, formed fountains that, overflowing like rivers, watered the whole region, providing abundant streams. For there were various trees teeming with fresh fruits, the fruits hanging cheerfully into one beauty, and ever-blooming meadows crowned with fragrant and varied flowers, from which a breeze gently breathed, bearing much sweet scent. For nearby was a chaste-tree (agnos), a tall tree, beneath which we rested because it was very spreading and shady. EUBOULION: You seem to me, O blessed one, to be prophesying of a second dwelling-place of Paradise. GREGORION: You guess truly. So when we were now enjoying every kind of feast and varied gladness, so that we fell short of nothing delightful, she said that thereafter Arete, entering, introduced these words: "O young women, the boasts of my high-mindedness, O fair virgins who till the unplowed meadows of Christ with unwedded hands, of food and feasting we have now enough; for all things on our part are full. What then is it that I now further desire, and what do I look for? That each of you should deliver an encomiastic discourse concerning virginity. Let Marcella begin, since she reclines first and is at the same time the elder. As for the one who contends well, I should be ashamed of myself if I did not make her an object of emulation, crowning her with the undefiled petals of wisdom."
MARCELLA: So Marcella, beginning from this point, she said, immediately said that virginity is something exceedingly great and wonderful and glorious; and, if one must speak plainly in keeping with the Scriptures, it alone is the udder of the Church, its flower and firstfruits, this best and fairest of pursuits. And for this reason the Lord too promises to bring into the kingdom of heaven those who have made themselves virgins, where in the Gospels he enjoins concerning the various kinds of eunuchs. For chastity is something very rare among men and hard to attain, and the more lofty and magnificent it is, the greater the dangers it entails. It therefore needs robust and noble natures, who, suddenly diverting the stream of sensual pleasure, steer the chariot of the soul aloft on high, never ceasing from their aim until, lightly leaping over the world with the swiftest speed of thought and standing upon the heavenly vault, they truly gaze with sincerity upon incorruption itself as it springs up from the undefiled bosom of the Almighty. This draught the earth had no power to bring forth; the heaven alone knows how to make it gush. For one must hold that virginity walks indeed upon the earth, but touches the heavens; and some, desiring it and looking only to its goal, having approached imperfectly with unwashed feet through vulgarity, turned back from the midst of the road, having taken up no thought worthy of the pursuit. For not only must the bodies be kept undefiled—just as the temples are not declared superior to the images—but the souls, which are the images within the bodies, must be tended and adorned with righteousness. And they are then more truly tended and scoured clean whenever they strive untiringly to give ear to the divine words and do not cease before laying hold of that which is true, arriving at the doors of the wise. For just as by salt the rotten humors and putrefactions and all corrupting matter are drawn out of meats, in the same way too all the irrational desires of the body are dried up in the virgin by her studies. For the soul that is not salted, as it were, by the words of Christ must of necessity stink and breed worms, just as indeed David's wounds "festered and rotted," while he, confessing with tears, cried out as king upon the mountains, because he had not dried himself by salting himself with admonitions, but, growing slack, was dragged into frenzy and stank with adultery. Therefore in Leviticus every gift, unless it be first salted with salt, is forbidden to be offered as a whole burnt-offering to the Lord God. For salt for us—the biting and, for our benefit, astringent thing—is every spiritual study of the Scriptures, without which it is impossible for a soul to be offered through the word to the Almighty; for "you are the salt of the earth," the Lord said to the apostles. The virgin, then, must ever love what is good and be conspicuous among those foremost in wisdom, and have nothing slack or soft, but rather think thoughts worthy of virginity, scouring away by the word those things ever tending to sensual pleasure, lest somehow a small putrefaction, going unnoticed, breed the worm of licentiousness; for "the unmarried woman cares for the things of the Lord, how she may please the Lord, that she may be holy both in body and in spirit," as the blessed Paul says. But many, regarding the hearing as a side-matter, suppose they confer a great favor if they lend their ears even briefly; and these are to be rejected. For with one petty by nature and lowly and merely feigning wisdom one ought not to share divine teachings. For is it not absurd to prattle on to those who, in matters of little worth, strain to do everything so as to have what they accomplish most precise, but in necessary matters—by which the very love of self-control is rather increased—do not count exactness as of the greatest importance?
For truly by a great excess was the plant of virginity sent down to men from heaven, and for this reason it was not revealed to the first generations. For man was still few in number, and it was necessary that, having first increased to a multitude, he should be brought to maturity. This is why the ancients, taking their own sisters as wives, were in no way ashamed, until the Law came and made a distinction and, forbidding what before had seemed to be good, declared it sin, calling "accursed the one who uncovers the nakedness of his sister"—God earnestly bringing to our race at one time and another what was fitting, just as fathers also do for their sons. For they do not from the outset set tutors over them, but, allowing the childish age to play like little calves, first send them to teachers who teach them to lisp out their letters, until, casting off the boyish down of the mind, they may be passed on to the practice of higher studies, and from there again to that of still higher ones. In this way one must hold that God and Father of all dealt with those before us. For the world, still unfilled with men, was as it were an infant, and it was necessary that it first be filled to a multitude, having grown to manhood from these. But when at last it was settled from end to end, mankind being poured out toward infinity, God no longer permitted man to remain in the same practices, considering how, passing on from these things, they might advance to come nearer—until, attaining at last to the greatest and loftiest lesson, virginity, they might be perfected. So they journeyed first from union with sisters to the taking of wives from outside, and from there to no longer mounting many after the manner of quadrupeds, as though born for coupling, and from there to not committing adultery, and again to self-control, and from self-control to virginity, where, having practiced to despise the flesh, they anchor fearlessly in the serene region of incorruption.
But if anyone shall dare to fault the argument as unattested by the Scriptures, come then, let us set alongside it also the testimonies of the prophets and demonstrate yet more truly what has been said. Abraham, at any rate, who first received circumcision in the covenant, seems to hint at nothing else, in circumcising that member of his flesh, than this: teaching each one no longer to cut off the pleasure of intercourse with the flesh fashioned from his own blood—that is, with his own sister. Thus the approaching and the using of one's own sisters as bedfellows has ceased from the times of Abraham; and the joining oneself to many women through exchanges is done away with from the times of the prophets. "Go not after your lusts," he says, "and refrain from your appetites; for wine and women will make men of understanding fall away." And in another place: "Let your fountain of water be your own, and rejoice with the wife of your youth"—plainly already declining the many. And Jeremiah openly calls those who rage after various women "lustful horses"; for he says, "the prolific multitude of the ungodly shall be of no use, and from bastard slips it shall not give a root to take deep hold." But, that we may not draw out the discourse at length gathering up the prophetic utterances, come, let us again establish how self-control succeeds the exchange limited to one woman, until it wholly loosens the habitual proclivity toward intercourse, for a little while removing the sensual pleasures of the flesh. At once, accordingly, someone is now plainly introduced declining this very distraction, saying, "O Lord, Father and Master of my life, leave me not to their counsel; remove from me the lifting up of the eyes, and let not the appetite of the heart and intercourse take hold of me." And in the all-virtuous Wisdom too the Holy Spirit, now nakedly drawing the hearers to continence and self-control, sings such strains as these, crying aloud: "Better is childlessness with virtue; for there is immortality in the memory of it, because it is acknowledged both by God and by men. When present, men honor it, and when departed they long for it; and in the age to come, wearing a crown, it marches in triumph, having conquered the contest for the undefiled prizes."
Concerning, then, the ages of humanity—how, beginning from union with sisters, it journeyed on to continence—it has been said; virginity remains. As far as is possible, then, we must try to expound it. First we must inquire for what reason, when many prophets and righteous men taught and accomplished many fine things, none of them either praised or chose virginity. For it was reserved for the Lord alone to be the herald of this lesson, since he alone, surpassing man, also taught man to make room for God. For it was fitting that he be addressed as the High Priest and Chief Prophet and Archangel, and as this Chief Virgin as well. But of old man was not yet perfect, and for this reason he had not yet the strength to make room for the perfect thing, virginity. For, having come into being according to the image of God, he still needed also to receive that which is according to the likeness; and to accomplish this the Word was sent down into the world, and first took up our form, branded as it was with many sins, so that we, for whose sake he himself bore it, might again have power to make room for it. For one can then be made exact according to the likeness of God whenever, like skilled painters, we stamp upon ourselves as upon tablets the same features of the manner of life that is according to the Man, being unharmed disciples of the path which he himself revealed. For it was for this reason that, being God, he chose to clothe himself in human flesh: that, beholding as in a picture the divine model of life, we too might have the One who painted it to imitate. For he did not think one thing and do another, nor did he, considering certain things to be good, teach others; but the very things that were truly profitable and good, these he both taught and did.
What then did the Lord—the Truth, the Light—accomplish in coming down into the world? He kept the flesh he had adorned undefiled in virginity. And we therefore, if we are to be according to the likeness of God, should be zealous to honor the virginity of Christ; for likeness to God is the avoidance of corruption. And that the Word, when he became man, also became the Chief Virgin of the Church—in the same way as he became Chief Shepherd and Chief Prophet—the Christ-inspired John presents to us in the book of the Revelation, saying: "And I looked, and behold, the Lamb standing upon Mount Zion, and with him a hundred and forty-four thousand, having his name and the name of his Father written upon their foreheads. And I heard a voice from heaven like the voice of many waters and like the voice of great thunder; and the voice that I heard was like that of harpers harping on their harps. And they sing a new song before the throne and before the four living creatures and the elders; and no one could learn the song except the hundred and forty-four thousand who had been purchased from the earth. These are they who were not defiled with women; for they are virgins. These are they who follow the Lamb wherever he goes"—showing the Lord to be the leader of the choir of virgins. And note besides this how the rank of virginity is greatest in God's sight. "These were purchased from among men as firstfruits to God and to the Lamb, and in their mouth was found no lie; they are blameless. They follow," he says, "the Lamb wherever he goes." He clearly wishes to teach us from this as well that in so great a number—that is, in a hundred and forty-four thousand—the multitude of virgins was from above set within fixed bounds, while the rest of the saints throng in an unbounded multitude. For one must attend to what he enjoins when speaking concerning the others too: "And I saw, from every tongue and tribe and every nation, a great multitude which no one could number." Therefore it is established, as I said, that in the case of the other saints he brings in an unspeakable throng, but in the case of those in virginity a very small number, by comparison with those reckoned into an innumerable multitude. This, O Arete, is the discourse from me to you concerning virginity, she said. But if I have left anything out, let Theophila, taking over from me, fill it up.