Clement of Alexandria, The Instructor 2

It is not the outward appearance of the outer person that matters, but the soul that must be adorned with the ornament of noble virtue; one might even say the body is to be adorned with the ornament of self-control. Yet those women who adorn the surface while neglecting the depths have forgotten themselves, precisely as the Egyptians adorn their temples. The Egyptians equip their shrines with grand gateways and columned porticoes, groves and gardens; their courts are wreathed with garlands, their walls gleam with imported stones and elaborate carvings that lack nothing in craftsmanship. Gold, silver, and electrum make the temples flash, and they glitter with variegated gems from India and Ethiopia, while the innermost sanctuaries are shaded by golden tapestries. But if you press into the depths of the precinct, eager to behold what is superior, you will look for the indwelling statue; a priest or some other temple attendant, wearing a solemn face, chants a hymn in the Egyptian tongue, lifts the curtain a little as if to reveal the god, and grants us a broad laugh at the object of reverence. For the god sought will not be found within—the goal of our haste—but a cat, or a crocodile, or a native snake, or some such beast, unworthy of the temple yet worthy of a dung-heap, a den, or the mud. The god of the Egyptians appears as a rolling beast on a purple cushion.

In just this way, it seems to me, the gold-wearing women—braiding their hair, painting their faces, lining their eyes, dyeing their locks, and devising every other folly—adorn the fleshly enclosure and, in effect, truly Egyptianize, seeking to attract superstitious lovers. But if someone should strip away the veil of the shrine—I mean the hair, the dye, the clothing, the gold, the purple, the cosmetics, in short the whole fabric woven from these things—expecting to find true beauty inside, he will be bitterly disappointed, I know well. He will not find the honored image of God dwelling within; instead a prostitute and adulteress of the soul has seized the inner sanctum. The real beast will be exposed, whitewashed like a trained monkey, and that treacherous serpent, threading through the human mind by way of vain ambition, makes the soul its lair. Having stuffed everything with deadly poisons and injected the venom of his own deceit, this dragon, the ringleader of corruption, has turned the women into harlots—for it is not a wife's love but a courtesan's love of adornment that drives them. These women care little for the household management owed to their husbands; they loosen their husbands' purse-strings and divert the household income into lusts, as if they needed many witnesses to their beauty. They spend the whole day planted at the dressing-table, attended by silver-adorned slaves.

Just as a bad dish corrupts the flesh, so they devote the day to the dressing-table, hiding away so they will not be caught turning pale. But at evening, like a counterfeit beauty, this sham creeps from its hole toward the lamp; for drunkenness and the dim light both cooperate with their assault.