Clement of Alexandria, The Instructor 2

It is not the outward appearance of the body that must be adorned, but the soul, with the ornament of goodness and beauty; one might even say that the body should be adorned with the ornament of self-control. But women who beautify the surface while neglecting the depths have forgotten themselves, just as the Egyptians adorn their temples. Those temples have gateways and porticoes, groves and orchards, and their courts are crowned with countless wreaths. Their walls shine with exotic stones and artistic inscriptions that lack nothing; the shrines gleam with gold, silver, and ivory, and sparkle with variegated stones from India and Ethiopia, while their innermost sanctuaries are shaded by golden canopies. Yet if you press into the depths of the precinct, eager to see the greater thing, you will look for the indwelling statue. A priest or some other temple servant, looking solemn, will draw back a corner of the curtain as if to reveal the god, and will show you the ridiculous object of worship. For the god you sought will not be found within — the one you hurried to see — but a cat, or a crocodile, or a native snake, or some such creature, unworthy of the temple yet fit for a dung-heap, a den, or a sewer. The god of the Egyptians appears as a rolling beast on a purple couch.

In the same way, it seems to me, the gold-wearing women — anointing their elaborate hairstyles, painting their faces, dyeing their eyebrows, coloring their hair, and devising every other foolishness — adorn the fleshly enclosure, and by so doing they truly Egyptianize, striving to attract superstitious lovers. But if someone should pull back the veil of the shrine, that is, the hairstyle, the dye, the clothing, the gold, the purple, the ornaments — in short, the whole fabric woven from these things — expecting to find the true beauty within, he will be disgusted, I know well. For he will not find the honorable image of God dwelling inside, but a prostitute and adulteress of the soul has occupied the inner sanctuary. The true beast will be exposed as a monkey smeared with cosmetics, and that treacherous snake, slipping through the human mind by way of ambition, has made the soul its dung-heap. Having filled everything with deadly poisons and poured out the venom of his own deceit, this dragon, the promoter of corruption, has turned the women into harlots — for the love of adornment belongs not to a wife but to a courtesan. These women care little for the household duties that belong to wives, yet they loosen their husbands' purses and divert the household resources toward their own desires, as if they needed many witnesses to attest their beauty. They spend the whole day seated at their toilette, idle, attended by hired servants.

Just as bad food corrupts the flesh, so they devote the entire day to cosmetics, cloistered in their chambers lest they be caught looking sallow. But at evening, like something creeping from a hole, this counterfeit beauty steals toward the lamplight; for drunkenness and the dimness of the light both cooperate in their assault.