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[TRANSLATED BY THE REV. S. THELWALL.]
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.
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?
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, in-
asmuch 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.
"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?
"'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! ELUCIDATIONS.
I. (The garment ... too quadrangular, p. 5.)
Speaking of the Greek priests of Korfou, the erudite Bishop of
Lincoln, lately deceased, has remarked, "There is something very
picturesque in the appearance of these persons, with their black caps
resembling the modius seen on the heads of the ancient statues of
Serapis and Osiris, their long beards and pale complexions, and their
black flowing cloak,—a relic, no doubt, of the old ecclesiastical
garment of which Tertullian wrote." These remarks[1] are illustrated by
an engraving on the same page.
He thus identifies the pallium with the gown of Justin Martyr;[2]
nor can there be any reasonable doubt that the pallium of the West was
the counterpart of the Greek felonion and of the failonh , which St.
Paul left at Troas. Endearing associations have clung to it from the
mention of this apostolic cloak in Holy Scripture. It doubtless
influenced Justin in giving his philosopher's gown a new significance,
and the modern Greeks insist that such was the apparel of the apostles.
The seamless robe of Christ Himself belongs to Him only.
Tertullian rarely acknowledges his obligations to other Doctors;
but Justin's example and St. Paul's cloak must have been in his
thoughts when he rejected the toga, and claimed the pallium, as a
Christian's attire. Our Edinburgh translator has assumed that it was
the "ascetics' mantle," and perhaps it was.[3] Our author wished to
make all Christians ascetics, like himself, and hence his enthusiasm
for a distinctive costume. Anyhow, "the Doctor's gown" of the English
universities, which is also used among the Gallicans and in Savoy, is
one of the most ancient as well as dignified vestments in
ecclesiastical use; and for the prophetic or preaching function of the
clergy it is singularly appropriate.[4]
"The pallium," says a learned author,[5] the late Wharton B.
Marriott of Oxford, "is the Greek imation , the outer garment or
wrapper worn occasionally by persons of all conditions of life. It
corresponded in general use to the Roman toga, but in the earlier Roman
language, that of republican times, was as distinctively suggestive of
a Greek costume as the toga of that of Rome." To Tertullian, therefore,
his preference for the pallium was doubtless commended by all these
considerations; and the distinctively Greek character of Christian
theology was indicated also by his choice. He loved the learning of
Alexandria, and reflected the spirit of the East.
II. (Superstition, p. 10, near note 9.)
The pall afterwards imposed upon Anglican and other primates by
the Court of Rome was at first a mere complimentary present from the
patriarchal see of the West. It became a badge of dependence and of
bondage (obsta principiis). Only the ornamental bordering was sent,
"made of lamb's-wool and superstition," says old Fuller, for whose
amusing remarks see his Church Hist., vol. i. p. 179, ed. 1845. Rome
gives primitive names to middle-age corruptions: needless to say the
"pall" of her court is nothing like the pallium of our author.