(NOTE: The electronic text obtained from The Electronic Bible Society was
not completely corrected. EWTN has corrected all mistakes found.)

Transliteration of Greek words: All phonetical except: w = omega; h serves
three puposes: 1. = Eta; 2. = rough breathing, when appearing intially
before a vowel; 3. = in the aspirated letters theta = th, phi = ph, chi =
ch. Accents are given immediately after their corresponding vowels: acute =
' , grave = `, circumflex = ^. The character ' doubles as an apostrophe,
when necessary.

TERTULLIAN.

ON THE PALLIUM.[1]

[TRANSLATED BY THE REV. S. THELWALL.]

CHAP. I.--TIME CHANGES NATIONS' DRESSES--

AND FORTUNES,

   MEN of Carthage, ever princes of Africa, ennobled by ancient memories,
blest with modern felicities, I rejoice that times are so prosperous with
you that you have leisure to spend and pleasure to find in criticising
dress. These are the "piping times of peace" and plenty. Blessings rain
from the empire and from the sky. Still, you too of old time wore your
garments--your tunics--of another shape; and indeed they were in repute for
the skill of the weft, and the harmony of the hue, and the due proportion
of the size, in that they were neither prodigally long across the shins,
nor immodestly scanty between the knees, nor niggardly to the arms, nor
tight to the hands, but, without being shadowed by even a girdle arranged
to divide the folds, they stood on men's backs with quadrate symmetry. The
garment of the mantle extrinsically--itself too quadrangular--thrown back
on either shoulder, and meeting closely round the neck in the gripe of the
buckle, used to repose on the shoulders.[2] Its counterpart is now the
priestly dress, sacred to AEsculapius, whom you now call your own. So, too,
in your immediate vicinity, the sister State[3] used to clothe (her
citizens); and wherever else in Africa Tyre (has settled).[4] But when the
urn of worldly[5] lots varied, and God favoured the Romans, the sister
State, indeed, of her own choice hastened to effect a change; in order that
when Scipio put in at her ports she might already beforehand have greeted
him in the way of dress, precocious in her Romanizing. To you, however,
after the benefit in which your injury resulted, as exempting you from the
infinity of age, not (deposing you) from your height of eminence,--after
Gracchus and his foul omens, after Lepidus and his rough jests, after
Pompeius and his triple altars, and Caesar and his long delays, when
Statilius Taurus reared your ramparts, and Sentius Saturninus pronounced
the solemn form of your inauguration,--while concord lends her aid, the
gown is offered. Well! what a circuit has it taken! from Pelasgians to
Lydians;[6] from Lydians to Romans: in order that from the shoulders of the
sublimer people it should descend to embrace Carthaginians! Henceforth,
finding your tunic too long, you suspend it on a dividing cincture; and the
redundancy of your now smooth toga[7] you support by gathering it together
fold upon fold; and, with whatever other garment social condition or
dignity or season clothes you, the mantle, at any rate, which used to be
worn by all ranks and conditions among you, you not only are unmindful of,
but even deride. For my own part, I wonder not (thereat), in the face of a
more ancient evidence (of your forgetfulness). For the ram withal--not that
which Laberius[8] (calls)

   "Back-twisted-horned, wool-skinned, stones-dragging,"

but a beam-like engine it is, which does military service in battering
walls--never before poised by any, the redoubted Carthage,

   "Keenest in pursuits of war,"[9]

is said to have been the first of all to have equipped for the oscillatory
work of pendulous impetus;[10] modelling the power of her engine after the
choleric fury of the head-avenging beast.[11] When, however, their
country's fortunes are at the last gasp, and the ram, now turned Roman, is
doing his deeds of daring against the ramparts which erst were his own,
forthwith the Carthaginians stood dumbfounded as at a "novel" and "strange"
ingenuity:

   "so much doth Time's long age avail to change!"[1]

Thus, in short, it is that the mantle, too, is not recognised.

CHAP. II. --THE LAW OF CHANGE, OR MUTATION, UNIVERSAL.

   Draw we now our material from some other source, lest Punichood either
blush or else grieve in the midst of Romans. To change her habit is, at all
events, the stated function of entire nature. The very world[2] itself
(this which we inhabit) meantime discharges it. See to it Anaximander, if
he thinks there are more (worlds): see to it, whoever else (thinks there
exists another) anywhere at the region of the Meropes, as Silenus prates in
the ears of Midas,[3] apt (as those cars are[4]), it must be admitted, for
even huger fables. Nay, even if Plato thinks there exists one of which this
of ours is the image, that likewise must necessarily have similarly to
undergo mutation; inasmuch as, if it is a "world,"[5] it will consist of
diverse substances and offices, answerable to the form of that which is
here the "world:"[5] for "world" it will not be if it be not just as the
"world" is. Things which, in diversity, tend to unity, are diverse by
demutation. In short, it is their vicissitudes which federate the discord
of their diversity. Thus it will be by mutation that every "world"[5] will
exist whose corporate structure is the result of diversities, and whose
attemperation is the result of vicissitudes. At all events, this hostelry
of ours[6] is versiform,-- a fact which is patent to eyes that are closed,
or utterly Homeric.[7] Day and night revolve in turn. The sun varies by
annual stations, the moon by monthly phases. The stars--distinct in their
confusion--sometimes drop, sometimes resuscitate, somewhat. The circuit of
the heaven is now resplendent with serenity, now dismal with cloud; or else
rain-showers come rushing down, and whatever missiles (mingle) with them:
thereafter (follows) a slight sprinkling, and then again brilliance. So,
too, the sea has an ill repute for honesty; while at one time, the breezes
equably swaying it, tranquillity gives it the semblance of probity, calm
gives it the semblance of even temper; and then all of a sudden it heaves
restlessly with mountain-waves. Thus, too, if you survey the earth, loving
to clothe herself seasonably, you would nearly be ready to deny her
identity, when, remembering her green, you behold her yellow, and will ere
long see her hoary too. Of the rest of her adornment also, what is there
which is not subject to interchanging mutation--the higher ridges of her
mountains by recursion, the veins of her fountains by disappearance, and
the pathways of her streams by alluvial formation? There was a time when
her whole orb, withal, underwent mutation, overrun by all waters. To this
day marine conchs and tritons' horns sojourn as foreigners on the
mountains, eager to prove to Plato that even the heights have undulated.
But withal, by ebbing out, her orb again underwent a formal mutation;
another, but the same. Even now her shape undergoes local mutations, when
(some particular) spot is damaged; when among her islands Delos is now no
more, Samos a heap of sand, and the Sibyl (is thus proved) no liar;[8] when
in the Atlantic (the isle) that was equal in size to Libya or Asia is
sought in vain;[9] when formerly a side of Italy, severed to the centre by
the shivering shock of the Adriatic and the Tyrrhenian seas, leaves Sicily
as its relics; when that total swoop of discission, whirling backwards the
contentious encounters of the mains, invested the sea with a novel vice,
the vice not of spuing out wrecks, but of devouring them! The continent as
well suffers from heavenly or else from inherent forces. Glance at
Palestine. Where Jordan's river is the arbiter of boundaries, (behold) a
vast waste, and a bereaved region, and bootless land! And once (there were
there) cities, and flourishing peoples, and the soil yielded its
fruits.[10] Afterwards, since God is a Judge, impiety earned showers of
fire: Sodom's day is over, and Gomorrah is no more; and all is ashes; and
the neighbour sea no less than the soil experiences a living death! Such a
cloud overcast Etruria, burning down her ancient Volsinii, to teach
Campania (all the more by the ereption of her Pompeii) to look expectantly
upon her own mountains. But far be (the repetition of such catastrophes)!
Would that Asia, withal, were by this time without cause for anxiety about
the soil's voracity! Would, too, that Africa had once for all quailed
before the devouring chasm, expiated by the treacherous absorption of one
single camp![11] Many other such detriments besides have made innovations
upon the fashion of our orb, and moved (particular) spots (in it). Very
great also has been the licence of wars. But it is no less irksome to
recount sad details than (to recount) the vicissitudes of kingdoms, (and to
show) how frequent have been their mutations, from Ninus the progeny of
Belus, onwards; if indeed Ninus was the first to have a kingdom, as the
ancient profane authorities assert. Beyond his time the pen is not wont (to
travel), in general, among you (heathens). From the Assyrians, it may be,
the histories of "recorded time"[1] begin to open. We, however, who are
habitual readers of divine histories, are masters of the subject from the
nativity of the universe[2] itself. But I prefer, at the present time,
joyous details, inasmuch as things joyous withal are subject to mutation.
In short, whatever the sea has washed away, the heaven burned down, the
earth undermined, the sword shorn down, reappears at some other time by the
turn of compensation.[3] For in primitive days not only was the earth, for
the greater part of her circuit, empty and uninhabited; but if any
particular race had seized upon any part, it existed for itself alone. And
so, understanding at last that all things worshipped themselves, (the
earth) consulted to weed and scrape her copiousness (of inhabitants), in
one place densely packed, in another abandoning their posts; in order that
thence (as it were from grafts and settings) peoples from peoples, cities
from cities, might be planted throughout every region of her orb.[4]
Transmigrations were made by the swarms of redundant races. The exuberance
of the Scythians fertilizes the Persians; the Phoenicians gush out into
Africa; the Phrygians give birth to the Romans; the seed of the Chaldeans
is led out into Egypt; subsequently, when transferred thence, it becomes
the Jewish race.[5] So, too, the posterity of Hercules, in like wise,
proceed to occupy the Peloponnesus for the behoof of Temenus. So, again,
the Ionian comrades of Neleus furnish Asia with new cities: so, again, the
Corinthians with Archias, fortify Syracuse. But antiquity is by this time a
vain thing (to refer to), when our own careers are before our eyes. How
large a portion of our orb has the present age[6] reformed! how many cities
has the triple power of our existing empire either produced, or else
augmented, or else restored! While God favours so many Augusti unitedly,
how many populations have been transferred to other localities! how many
peoples reduced! how many orders restored to their ancient splendour! how
many barbarians baffled! In truth, our orb is the admirably cultivated
estate of this empire; every aconite of hostility eradicated; and the
cactus and bramble of clandestinely crafty familiarity[7] wholly uptorn;
and (the orb itself) delightsome beyond the orchard of Alcinous and the
rosary of Midas. Praising, therefore, our orb in its mutations, why do you
point the finger of scorn at a man?

CHAP. III.--BEASTS SIMILARLY SUBJECT TO THE LAW OF MUTATION.

   Beasts, too, instead of a garment, change their form. And yet the
peacock withal has plumage for a garment, and a garment indeed of the
choicest; nay, in the bloom of his neck richer than any purple, and in the
effulgence of his back more gilded than any edging, and in the sweep of his
tail more flowing than any train; many-coloured, diverse-coloured, and
versi-coloured; never itself, ever another, albeit ever itself when other;
in a word, mutable as oft as moveable. The serpent, too, deserves to be
mentioned, albeit not in the same breath as the peacock; for he too wholly
changes what has been allotted him--his hide and his age: if it is true,
(as it is,) that when he has felt the creeping of old age throughout him,
he squeezes himself into confinement; crawls into a cave and out of his
skin simultaneously; and, clean shorn on the spot, immediately on crossing
the threshold leaves his slough behind him then and there, and uncoils
himself in a new youth: with his scales his years, too, are repudiated. The
hyena, if you observe, is of an annual sex, alternately masculine and
feminine. I say nothing of the stag, because himself withal, the witness of
his own age, feeding on the serpent, languishes--from the effect of the
poison--into youth. There is, withal,

   "A tardigrade field-haunting quadruped,
   Humble and rough."

The tortoise of Pacuvius, you think? No. There is another beastling which
the versicle fits; in size, one of the moderate exceedingly, but a grand
name. If, without previously knowing him, you hear tell of a chameleon, you
will at once apprehend something yet more huge united with a lion. But when
you stumble upon him, generally in a vineyard, his whole bulk sheltered
beneath a vine leaf, you will forthwith laugh at the egregious audacity of
the name, inasmuch as there is no moisture even in his body, though in far
more minute creatures the body is liquefied, The chameleon is a living
pellicle. His headkin begins straight from his spine, for neck he has none:
and thus reflection[1] is hard for him; but, in circumspection, his eyes
are outdarting, nay, they are revolving points of light. Dull and weary, he
scarce raises from the ground, but drags, his footstep amazedly, and moves
forward,--he rather demonstrates, than takes, a step: ever fasting, to
boot, yet never fainting; agape he feeds; heaving, bellowslike, he
ruminates; his food wind. Yet withal the chameleon is able to effect a
total self-mutation, and that is all. For, whereas his colour is properly
one, yet, whenever anything has approached him, then he blushes. To the
chameleon alone has been granted--as our common saying has it--to sport
with his own hide.

   Much had to be said in order that, after due preparation, we might
arrive at man. From whatever beginning you admit him as springing, naked at
all events and ungarmented he came from his fashioner's hand: afterwards,
at length, without waiting for permission, he possesses himself, by a
premature grasp, of wisdom. Then and there hastening to forecover what, in
his newly made body, it was not yet due to modesty (to forecover), he
surrounds himself meantime with fig-leaves: subsequently, on being driven
from the confines of his birthplace because he had sinned, he went,
skinclad, to the world[2] as to a mine.[3]

   But these are secrets, nor does their knowledge appertain to all. Come,
let us hear from your own store--(a store) which the Egyptians narrate, and
Alexander[4] digests, and his mother reads--touching the time of Osiris,[5]
when Ammon, rich in sheep, comes to him out of Libya. In short, they tell
us that Mercury, when among them, delighted with the softness of a ram
which he had chanced to stroke, flayed a little ewe; and, while he
persistently tries and (as the pliancy of the material invited him) thins
out the thread by assiduous traction, wove it into the shape of the
pristine net which he had joined with strips of linen. But you have
preferred to assign all the management of wool-work and structure of the
loom to Minerva; whereas a more diligent workshop was presided over by
Arachne. Thenceforth material (was abundant). Nor do I speak of the sheep
of Miletus, and Selge, and Altinum, or of those for which Tarentum or
Baetica is famous, with nature for their dyer: but (I speak of the fact)
that shrubs afford you clothing, and the grassy parts of flax, losing their
greenness, turn white by washing. Nor was it enough to plant and sow your
tunic, unless it had likewise fallen to your lot to fish for raiment. For
the sea withal yields fleeces, inasmuch as the more brilliant shells of a
mossy wooliness furnish a hairy stuff. Further: it is no secret that the
silkworm--a species of wormling it is--presently reproduces safe and sound
(the fleecy threads) which, by drawing them through the air, she distends
more skilfully than the dial-like webs of spiders, and then devours. In
like manner, if you kill it, the threads which you coil are forthwith
instinct with vivid colour.

   The ingenuities, therefore, of the tailoring art, superadded to, and
following up, so abundant a store of materials--first with a view to
coveting humanity, where Necessity led the way; and subsequently with a
view to adorning withal, ay, and inflating it, where Ambition followed in
the wake--have promulgated the various forms of garments. Of which forms,
part are worn by particular nations, without being common to the rest;
part, on the other hand, universally, as being useful to all: as, for
instance, this Mantle, albeit it is more Greek (than Latin), has yet by
this time found, in speech, a home in Latium. With the word the garment
entered. And accordingly the very man who used to sentence Greeks to
extrusion from the city, but learned (when he was now advanced in years)
their alphabet and speech--the self-same Cato, by baring his shoulder at
the time of his praetorship, showed no less favour to the Greeks by his
mantle-like garb.

CHAP, IV.--CHANGE NOT ALWAYS IMPROVEMENT.

   Why, now, if the Roman fashion is (social) salvation to every one, are
you nevertheless Greek to a degree, even in points not honourable? Or else,
if it is not so, whence in the world is it that provinces which have had a
better training, provinces which nature adapted rather for surmounting by
hard struggling the difficulties of the soil, derive the pursuits of the
wrestling-ground--pursuits which fall into a sad old age[6] and labour in
vain--and the unction with mud,[7] and the rolling in sand, and the dry
dietary? Whence comes it that some of our Numidians, with their long locks
made longer by horsetail plumes, learn to bid the barber shave their skin
close, and to exempt their crown alone from the knife? Whence comes it that
men shaggy and hirsute learn to teach the resin[1] to feed on their arms
with such rapacity, the tweezers to weed their chin so thievishly? A
prodigy it is, that all this should be done without the Mantle! To the
Mantle appertains this whole Asiatic practice! What hast thou, Libya, and
thou, Europe, to do with athletic refinements, which thou knowest not how
to dress? For, in sooth, what kind of thing is it to practise Greekish
depilation more than Greekish attire?

   The transfer of dress approximates to culpability just in so far as it
is not custom, but nature, which suffers the change. There is a wide enough
difference between the honour due to time, and religion. Let Custom show
fidelity to Time, Nature to God. To Nature, accordingly, the Larissaean
hero[2] gave a shock by turning into a virgin; he who had been reared on
the marrows of wild beasts (whence, too, was derived the composition of his
name, because he had been a stranger with his lips to the maternal
breast[3]); he who had been reared by a rocky and wood-haunting and
monstrous trainer[4] in a stony school. You would bear patiently, if it
were in a boy's case, his mother's solicitude; but he at all events was
already be-haired, he at all events had already secretly given proof of his
manhood to some one,[5] when he consents to wear the flowing stole,[6] to
dress his hair, to cultivate his skin, to consult the mirror, to bedizen
his neck; effeminated even as to his ear by boring, whereof his bust at
Sigeum still retains the trace. Plainly afterwards he turned soldier: for
necessity restored him his sex. The clarion had sounded of battle: nor were
arms far to seek. "The steel's self," says (Homer), "attracteth the
hero."[7] Else if, after that incentive as well as before, he had
persevered in his maidenhood, he might withal have been married! Behold,
accordingly, mutation! A monster, I call him,--a double monster: from man
to woman; by and by from woman to man: whereas neither ought the truth to
have been belied, nor the deception confessed. Each fashion of changing was
evil: the one opposed to nature, the other contrary to safety.

   Still more disgraceful was the case when lust transfigured a man in his
dress, than when some maternal dread did so: and yet adoration is offered
by you to me, whom you ought to blush at,--that Clubshaftandhidebearer, who
exchanged for womanly attire the whole proud heritage of his name! Such
licence was granted to the secret haunts of Lydia,[8] that Hercules was
prostituted in the person of Omphale, and Omphale in that of Hercules.
Where were Diomed and his gory mangers? where Busiris and his funereal
altars? where Geryon, triply one? The club preferred still to reek with
their brains when it was being pestered with unguents! The now veteran
(stain of the) Hydra's and of the Centaurs' blood upon the shafts was
gradually eradicated by the pumice-stone, familiar to the hair-pin! while
voluptuousness insulted over the fact that, after transfixing monsters,
they should perchance sew a coronet! No sober woman even, or heroine[9] of
any note, would have adventured her shoulders beneath the hide of such a
beast, unless after long softening and smoothening down and deodorization
(which in Omphale's house, I hope, was effected by balsam and fenugreek-
salve: I suppose the mane, too, submitted to the comb) for fear of getting
her tender neck imbued with lionly toughness. The yawning mouth stuffed
with hair, the jaw-teeth overshadowed amid the forelocks, the whole
outraged visage, would have roared had it been able. Nemea, at all events
(if the spot has any presiding genius), groaned: for then she looked
around, and saw that she had lost her lion. What sort of being the said
Hercules was in Omphale's silk, the description of Omphale in Hercules'
hide has inferentially depicted.

   But, again, he who had formerly rivalled the Tirynthian[10]--the
pugilist Cleomachus--subsequently, at Olympia, after losing by efflux his
masculine sex by an incredible mutation--bruised within his skin and
without, worthy to be wreathed among the "Fullers" even of Novius,[11] and
deservedly commemorated by the mimographer Lentulus in his Catinensians--
did, of course, not only cover with bracelets the traces left by (the bands
of) the cestus, but likewise supplanted the coarse ruggedness of his
athlete's cloak with some superfinely wrought tissue.

   Of Physco and Sardanapalus I must be silent, whom, but for their
eminence in lusts, no one would recognise as kings. But I must be silent,
for fear lest even they set up a muttering concerning some of your Caesars,
equally lost to shame; for fear lest a mandate have been given to
canine[12] constancy to point to a Caesar impurer than Physco, softer than
Sardanapalus, and indeed a second Nero.[13]

   Nor less warmly does the force of vainglory also work for the mutation
of clothing, even while manhood is preserved. Every affection is a heat:
when, however, it is blown to (the flame of) affectation, forthwith, by the
blaze of glory, it is an ardour. From this fuel, therefore, you see a great
king[1]--inferior only to his glory--seething. He had conquered the Median
race, and was conquered by Median garb. Doffing the triumphal mail, he
degraded himself into the captive trousers! The breast dissculptured with
scaly bosses, by covering it with a transparent texture he bared; punting
still after the work of war, and (as it were) softening, he extinguished it
with the ventilating silk! Not sufficiently swelling of spirit was the
Macedonian, unless he had likewise found delight in a highly inflated garb:
only that philosophers withal (I believe) themselves affect somewhat of
that kind; for I hear that there has been (such a thing as) philosophizing
in purple. If a philosopher (appears) in purple, why not in glided
slippers[2] too? For a Tyrian[3] to be shod in anything but gold, is by no
means consonant with Greek habits. Some one will say, "Well, but there was
another[4] who wore silk indeed, and shod himself in brazen sandals."
Worthily, indeed, in order that at the bottom of his Bacchantian raiment he
might make some tinkling sound, did he walk in cymbals! But if, at that
moment, Diogenes had been barking from his tub, he would not (have trodden
on him[5]) with muddy feet--as the Platonic couches testify--but would have
carried Empedocles down bodily to the secret recesses of the Cloacinae;[6]
in order that he who had madly thought himself a celestial being might, as
a god, salute first his sisters,[7] and afterwards men. Such garments,
therefore, as alienate from nature and modesty, let it be allowed to be
just to eye fixedly and point at with the finger and expose to ridicule by
a nod. Just so, if a man were to wear a dainty robe trailing on the ground
with Menander-like effeminacy, he would hear applied to himself that which
the comedian says "What sort of a cloak is that maniac wasting?" For, now
that the contracted brow of censorial vigilance is long since smoothed
down, so far as reprehension is concerned, promiscuous usage offers to our
gaze freedmen in equestrian garb, branded slaves in that of gentlemen, the
notoriously infamous in that of the freeborn, clowns in that of city-folk,
buffoons in that of lawyers, rustics in regimentals; the corpse-bearer, the
pimp, the gladiator trainer, clothe themselves as you do. Turn, again, to
women. You have to behold what Caecina Severus pressed upon the grove
attention of the senate--matrons stoleless in public. In fact, the penalty
inflicted by the decrees of the augur Lentulus upon any matron who had thus
cashiered herself was the same as for fornication; inasmuch as certain
matrons had sedulously promoted the disuse of garments which were the
evidences and guardians of dignity, as being impediments to the practising
of prostitution. But now, in their self-prostitution, in order that they
may the more readily be approached, they have abjured stole, and chemise,
and bonnet, and cap; yes, and even the very litters and sedans in which
they used to be kept in privacy and secrecy even in public. But while one
extinguishes her proper adornments, another blazes forth such as are not
hers. Look at the street-walkers, the shambles of popular lusts; also at
the female self-abusers with their sex; and, if it is better to withdraw
your eyes from such shameful spectacles of publicly slaughtered chastity,
yet do but look with eyes askance, (and) you will at once see (them to be)
matrons! And, while the overseer of brothels airs her swelling silk, and
consoles her neck--more impure than her haunt--with necklaces, and inserts
in the armlets (which even matrons themselves would, of the guerdons
bestowed upon brave men, without hesitation have appropriated) hands privy
to all that is shameful, (while) she fits on her impure leg the pure white
or pink shoe; why do you not stare at such garbs? or, again, at those which
falsely plead religion as the supporter of their novelty? while for the
sake of an all-white dress, and the distinction of a fillet, and the
privilege of a helmet, some are initiated into (the mysteries of) Ceres;
while, on account of an opposite hankering after sombre raiment, and a
gloomy woollen covering upon the head, others run mad in Bellona's temple;
while the attraction of surrounding themselves with a tunic more broadly
striped with purple, and casting over their shoulders a cloak of Galatian
scarlet, commends Saturn (to the affections of others). When this Mantle
itself, arranged with more rigorous care, and sandals after the Greek
model, serve to flatter AEsculapius,[8] how much more should you then
accuse and assail it with your eyes, as being guilty of superstition--
albeit superstition simple and unaffected? Certainly, when first it clothes
this wisdom[9] which renounces superstitions with all their vanities, then
most assuredly is the Mantle, above all the garments in which you array
your gods and goddesses, an august robe; and, above all the caps and tufts
of your Salii and Flamines, a sacerdotal attire. Lower your eyes, I advise
you, (and) reverence the garb, on the one ground, meantime, (without
waiting for others,) of being a renouncer of your error.

CHAP. V.--VIRTUES OF THE MANTLE. IT PLEADS IN ITS OWN DEFENCE.

   "Still," say you, "must we thus change from gown[1] to Mantle?" Why,
what if from diadem and sceptre? Did Anacharsis change otherwise, when to
the royalty of Scythia he preferred philosophy? Grant that there be no
(miraculous) signs in proof of your transformation for the better: there is
somewhat which this your garb can do. For, to begin with the simplicity of
its uptaking: it needs no tedious arrangement. Accordingly, there is no
necesSity for any artist formally to dispose its wrinkled folds from the
beginning a day beforehand, and then to reduce them to a more finished
elegance, and to assign to the guardianship of the stretchers[2] the whole
figment of the massed boss; subsequently, at daybreak, first gathering up
by the aid of a girdle the tunic which it were better to have woven of more
moderate length (in the first instance), and, again scrutinizing the boss,
and rearranging any disarrangement, to make one part prominent on the left,
but (making now an end of the folds) to draw backwards from the shoulders
the circuit of it whence the hollow is formed, and, leaving the right
shoulder free, heap it still upon the left, with another similar set of
folds reserved for the back, and thus clothe the man with a burden! In
short, I will persistently ask your own conscience, What is your first
sensation in wearing your gown? Do you feel yourself clad, or laded?
wearing a garment, or carrying it? If you shall answer negatively, I will
follow you home; I win see what you hasten to do immediately after crossing
your threshold. There is really no garment the dolling whereof
congratulates a man more than the gown's does.[3] Of shoes we say nothing--
implements as they are of torture proper to the gown, most uncleanly
protection to the feet, yes, and false too. For who would not find it
expedient, in cold and heat, to stiffen with feet bare rather than in a
shoe with feet bound? A mighty munition for the tread have the Venetian
shoe-factories provided in the shape of effeminate boots! Well, but, than
the Mantle nothing is more expedite, even if it be double, like that of
Crates.[4] Nowhere is there a compulsory waste of time in dressing yourself
(in it), seeing that its whole art consists in loosely covering. That can
be effected by a single circumjection, and one in no case inelegant:[5]
thus it wholly covers every part of the man at once. The shoulder it either
exposes or encloses:[6] in other respects it adheres to the shoulder; it
has no surrounding support; it has no surrounding tie; it has no anxiety as
to the fidelity with which its folds keep their place; easily it manages,
easily readjusts itself: even in the dolling it is consigned to no cross
until the morrow. If any shirt is worn beneath it, the torment of a girdle
is superfluous: if anything in the way of shoeing is worn, it is a most
cleanly work;[7] or else the feet are rather bare, --more manly, at all
events, (if bare,) than in shoes. These (pleas I advance) for the Mantle in
the meantime, in so far as you have defamed it by name. Now, however, it
challenges you on the score of its function withal. "I," it says, "owe no
duty to the forum, the election-ground, or the senate-house; I keep no
obsequious vigil, preoccupy no platforms, hover about no praetorian
residences; I am not odorant of the canals, am not odorant of the lattices,
am no constant wearer out of benches, no wholesale router of laws, no
barking pleader, no judge, no soldier, no king: I have withdrawn from the
populace. My only business is with myself: except that other care I have
none, save not to care. The better life you would more enjoy in seclusion
than in publicity. But you will decry me as indolent. Forsooth, 'we are to
live for our country, and empire, and estate.' Such used,[8] of old, to be
the sentiment. None is born for another, being destined to die for himself.
At all events, when we come to the Epicuri and Zenones, you give the
epithet of 'sages' to the whole teacherhood of Quietude, who have
consecrated that Quietude with the name of 'supreme' and 'unique' pleasure.
Still, to some extent it will be allowed, even to me, to confer benefit on
the public. From any and every boundary-stone or altar it is my wont to
prescribe medicines to morals--medicines which will be more felicitous in
conferring good health upon public affairs, and states, and empires, than
your works are. Indeed, if I proceed to encounter you with naked foils,
gowns have done the commonwealth more hurt than cuirasses. Moreover, I
flatter no vices; I give quarter to no lethargy, no slothful encrustation.
I apply the cauterizing iron to the ambition which led M. Tullius to buy a
circular table of citron-wood for more than �4000,[1] and Asinius Gallus to
pay twice as much for an ordinary table of the same MooriSh wood (Hem! at
what fortunes did they value woody dapplings!), or, again, Sulla to frame
dishes of an hundred pounds' weight. I fear lest that balance be small,
when a Drusillanus (and he withal a slave of Claudius!) constructs a
tray[2] of the weight of 500 lbs.!--a tray indispensable, perchance, to the
aforesaid tables, for which, if a workshop was erected,[3] there ought to
have been erected a dining-room too. Equally do I plunge the scalpel into
the inhumanity which led Vedius Pollio to expose slaves to fill the bellies
of sea-eels. Delighted, forsooth, with his novel savagery, he kept land-
monsters, toothless, clawless, hornless: it was his pleasure to turn
perforce into wild beasts his fish, which (of course) were to be forthwith
cooked, that in their entrails he himself withal might taste some savour of
the bodies of his own slaves. I will forelop the gluttony which led
Hortensius the orator to be the first to have the heart to slay a peacock
for the sake of food; which led Aufidius Lurco to be the first to vitiate
meat with stuffing, and by the aid of forcemeats to raise them to an
adulterous[4] flavour; which led Asinius Celer to purchase the viand of a
single mullet at nearly �50;[5] which led Aesopus the actor to preserve in
his pantry a dish of the value of nearly �800, made up of birds of the
selfsame costliness (as the mullet aforesaid), consisting of all the
songsters and talkers; which led his son, after such a titbit, to have the
hardihood to hunger after somewhat yet more sumptuous: for he swallowed
down pearls--costly even on the ground of their name--I suppose for fear he
should have supped more beggarly than his father. I am silent as to the
Neros and Apicii and Rufi. I will give a cathartic to the impurity of a
Scaurus, and the gambling of a Curius, and the intemperance of an Antony.
And remember that these, out of the many (whom I have named), were men of
the toga-such as among the men of the pallium you would not easily find.
These purulencies of a state who will eliminate and exsuppurate, save a
bemantled speech?

CHAP. VI.--FURTHER DISTINCTIONS, AND CROWNING GLORY, OF THE PALLIUM.

   "'With speech,' says (my antagonist), 'you have tried to persuade me,--
a most sage medicament.' But, albeit utterance be mute--impeded by infancy
or else checked by bashfulness, for life is content with an even tongueless
philosophy--my very cut is eloquent. A philosopher, in fact, is heard so
long as he is seen. My. very sight puts vices to the blush. Who suffers
not, when he sees his own rival? Who can bear to gaze ocularly at him at
whom mentally he cannot? Grand is the benefit conferred by the Mantle, at
the thought whereof moral improbity absolutely blushes. Let philosophy now
see to the question of her own profitableness; for she is not the only
associate whom I boast. Other scientific arts of public utility I boast.
From my store are clothed the first teacher of the forms of letters, the
first explainer of their sounds, the first trainer in the rudiments of
arithmetic, the grammarian, the rhetorician, the sophist, the medical man,
the poet, the musical timebeater, the astrologer, and the birdgazer. All
that is liberal in studies is covered by my four angles. 'True; but all
these rank lower than Roman knights.' Well; but your gladiatorial trainers,
and all their ignominious following, are conducted into the arena in togas.
This, no doubt, will be the indignity implied in 'From gown to Mantle!'"
Well, so speaks the Mantle. But I confer on it likewise a fellowship with a
divine sect and discipline. Joy, Mantle, and exult! A better philosophy has
now deigned to honour thee, ever since thou hast begun to be a Christian's
vesture!


Taken from "The Early Church Fathers and Other Works" originally published
by Wm. B. Eerdmans Pub. Co. in English in Edinburgh, Scotland beginning in
1867. (ANF 4, Roberts and Donaldson). The digital version is by The
Electronic Bible Society, P.O. Box 701356, Dallas, TX 75370, 214-407-WORD.

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