Exhortation
Clement of Alexandria, Protrepticus (Exhortation to the Heathen)
Clement of Alexandria
A Christian who had read everything the Greeks wrote, and did not think he had wasted the time.
- Catch rate
- 70 / 255
- Base research
- 148
- Stat total
- 252
Base stats
Every stat is a checkable fact about the actual book, not a designer's mood. Bars are drawn against the highest value any book reaches.
Why these numbers
The game's own explanation, as a reader sees it in the backpack.
Clement argues at the Greeks in Greek, out of Homer, Euripides, Plato and the tragedians, and never once pretends he has not read them. An argument made in the room’s own language hits hard in that room.
The text is secure but the manuscript tradition is narrow — nearly everything of Clement descends from one eleventh-century codex.
The short, quotable Clement. Where a debate reaches for him, it reaches for this.
Cited for this book
Clement ran the catechetical school at Alexandria and taught Origen. The Exhortation is addressed to educated pagans and it is built out of their own reading — he lists the Greek singers who were said to move stones and tame beasts, Amphion and Arion and Orpheus, and then tells them what song actually did it. The last chapter takes Odysseus lashed to the mast so he could hear the Sirens and live, and hands the picture back with the mast turned into a cross. He fled Alexandria in the persecution of 202 and died somewhere in Cappadocia.
Development
A book develops as it is read — the fragment becomes the work, the work becomes the corpus.
Moves learned
By levelling up. A book that develops keeps what it knew and learns the rest on its new schedule.
| Lv | Move | Type | Cat. | Pwr | Acc | PP |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | The New Song | Rationality | Argument | 66 | 100% | 15 |
| 1 | Random Verse | Bible | Argument | 10 | 100% | 30 |
| 8 | Their Own Poets | Rationality | Argument | 65 | 100% | 10 |
| 13 | Seed of the Word | Rationality | Argument | 50 | 100% | 20 |
| 17 | Chapter… | Bible | Scripture | — | — | 12 |
| 21 | Avoid Custom | Anthropology | Argument | 72 | 100% | 10 |
| 26 | Bound to the Wood | Christology | Argument | 88 | 95% | 10 |