I. 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!

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 <greek>felonion</greek> and of the <greek>failonh</greek>, 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 <greek>imation</greek>, 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.

ON THE APPAREL OF WOMEN -- BOOK I

II. ON THE APPAREL OF WOMEN.[1]

[TRANSLATED BY THE REV. S. THELWALL.]

BOOK I.

CHAP. I.--INTRODUCTION. MODESTY IN APPAREL BECOMING TO WOMEN, IN MEMORY OF THE INTRODUCTION OF SIN INTO THE WORLD THROUGH A WOMAN.

If there dwelt upon earth a faith as great as is the reward of faith which is expected in the heavens, no one of you at all, best beloved sisters, from the time that she had first "known the Lord,"[2] and learned (the truth) concerning her own (that is, woman's) condition, would have desired too gladsome (not to say too ostentatious) a style of dress; so as not rather to go about in humble garb, and rather to affect meanness of appearance, walking about as Eve mourning and repentant, in order that by every garb of penitence[3] she might the more fully expiate that which she derives from Eve,--the ignominy, I mean, of the first sin, and the odium (attaching to her as the cause) of human perdition. "In pains and in anxieties dost thou bear (children), woman; and toward thine husband (is) thy inclination, and he lords It over thee."[4] And do you not know that you are (each) an Eve? The sentence of God on this sex of yours lives in this age:[5] the guilt must of necessity live too. You are the devil's gateway: you are the unsealer[6] of that (forbidden) tree: you are the first deserter of the divine law: you are she who persuaded[7] him whom the devil was not valiant enough to attack. You destroyed so easily God's image, man. On account of your desert--that is, death--even the Son of God had to die. And do you think about adorning yourself over and above your tunics of skins?[8] Come, now; if from the beginning of the world[9] the Milesians sheared sheep, and the Serians[10] spun trees, and the Tyrians dyed, and the Phrygians embroidered with the needle, and the Babylonians with the loom, and pearls gleamed, and onyx-stones flashed; if gold itself also had already issued, with the cupidity (which accompanies it), from the ground; if the mirror, too, already had licence to lie so largely, Eve, expelled from paradise, (Eve) already dead, would also have coveted these things, I imagine! No more, then, ought she now to crave, or be acquainted with (if she desires to live again), what, when she was living, she had neither had nor known. Accordingly these things are all the baggage of woman in her condemned and dead state, instituted as if to swell the pomp of her funeral.

CHAP. II.--THE ORIGIN OF FEMALE ORNAMENTATION, TRACED BACK TO THE ANGELS WHO HAD FALLEN.[11]

For they, withal, who instituted them are assigned, under condemnation, to the penalty of death,--those angels, to wit, who rushed from heaven on the daughters of men; so that this ignominy also attaches to woman. For when to an age[12] much more ignorant (than ours) they had disclosed certain well-concealed material substances, and several not well-revealed scientific arts--if it is true that they had laid bare the operations of metallurgy, and had divulged the natural properties of herbs, and had promulgated the powers of enchantments, and had traced out every curious art,[1] even to the interpretation of the stars--they conferred properly and as it were peculiarly upon women that instrumental mean of womanly ostentation, the radiances of jewels wherewith necklaces are variegated, and the circlets of gold wherewith the arms are compressed, and the medicaments of orchil with which wools are coloured, and that black powder itself wherewith the eyelids and eyelashes are made prominent.[2] What is the quality of these things may be declared meantime, even at this point,[3] from the quality and condition of their teachers: in that sinners could never have either shown or supplied anything conducive to integrity, unlawful lovers anything conducive to chastity, renegade spirits anything conducive to the fear of God. If (these things) are to be called teachings, ill masters must of necessity have taught ill; if as wages of lust, there is nothing base of which the wages are honourable. But why was it of so much importance to show these things as well as[4] to confer them? Was it that women, without material causes of splendour, and without ingenious contrivances of grace, could not please men, who, while still unadorned, and uncouth and--so to say--crude and rude, had moved (the mind of) angels? or was it that the lovers[5] would appear sordid and--through gratuitous use--contumelious, if they had conferred no (compensating) gift on the women who had been enticed into connubial connection with them? But these questions admit of no calculation. Women who possessed angels (as husbands) could desire nothing more; they had, forsooth, made a grand match! Assuredly they who, of course, did sometimes think whence they had fallen,[6] and, after the heated impulses of their lusts, looked up toward heaven, thus requited that very excellence of women, natural beauty, as (having proved) a cause of evil, in order that their good fortune might profit them nothing; but that, being turned from simplicity and sincerity, they, together with (the angels) themselves, might become offensive to God. Sure they were that all ostentation, and ambition, and love of pleasing by carnal means, was displeasing to God. And these are the angels whom we are destined to judge:[7] these are the angels whom in baptism we renounce:[8] these, of course, are the reasons why they have deserved to be judged by man. What business, then, have their things with their judges? What commerce have they who are to condemn with them who are to be condemned? The same, I take it, as Christ has with Belial.[9] With what consistency do we mount that (future) judgment-seat to pronounce sentence against those whose gifts we (now) seek after? For you too, (women as you are,) have the self-same angelic nature promised[10] as your reward, the self-same sex as men: the self-same advancement to the dignity of judging, does (the Lord) promise you. Unless, then, we begin even here to prejudge, by pre-condemning their things, which we are hereafter to condemn in themselves, they will rather judge and condemn us.

CHAP. III.--CONCERNING THE GENUINENESS OF "THE PROPHECY OF ENOCH."[11]

I am aware that the Scripture of Enoch,[12] which has assigned this order (of action) to angels, is not received by some, because it is not admitted into the Jewish canon either. I suppose they did not think that, having been published before the deluge, it could have safely survived that world-wide calamity, the abolisher of all things. If that is the reason (for rejecting it), let them recall to their memory that Noah, the survivor of the deluge, was the great-grandson of Enoch himself;[13] and he, of course, had heard and remembered, from domestic renown[14] and hereditary tradition, concerning his own great-grandfather's "grace in the sight of God,"[15] and concerning all his preachings;[16] since Enoch had given no other charge to Methuselah than that he should hand on the knowledge of them to his posterity. Noah therefore, no doubt, might have succeeded in the trusteeship of (his) preaching; or, had the case been otherwise, he would not have been silent alike concerning the disposition (of things) made by God, his Preserver, and concerning the particular glory of his own house.
If (Noah) had not had this (conservative power) by so short a route, there would (still) be this (consideration) to warrant[17] our assertion of (the genuineness of) this Scripture: he could equally have renewed it, under the Spirit's inspiration,[18] after it had been destroyed by the violence of the deluge, as, after the destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonian storming of it, every document[1] of the Jewish literature is generally agreed to have been restored through Ezra.
But since Enoch in the same Scripture has preached likewise concerning the Lord, nothing at all must be rejected by us which pertains to us; and we read that "every Scripture suitable for edification is divinely inspired.[2] By the yews it may now seem to have been rejected for that (very) reason, just like all the other (portions) nearly which tell of Christ. Nor, of course, is this fact wonderful, that they did not receive some Scriptures which spake of Him whom even in person, speaking in their presence, they were not to receive. To these considerations is added the fact that Enoch possesses a testimony in the Apostle Jude.[3]

CHAP. IV.--WAIVING THE QUESTION OF THE AUTHORS, TERTULLIAN PROPOSES TO CONSIDER THE THINGS ON THEIR OWN MERITS.

Grant now that no mark of pre-condemnation has been branded on womanly pomp by the (fact of the) fate[4] of its authors; let nothing be imputed to those angels besides their repudiation of heaven and (their) carnal marriage:[5] let us examine the qualities of the things themselves, in order that we may detect the purposes also for which they are eagerly desired.
Female habit carries with it a twofold idea--dress and ornament. By "dress" we mean what they call "womanly gracing;"[6] by "ornament," what it is suitable should be called "womanly disgracing."[7] The former is accounted (to consist) in gold, and silver, and gems, and garments; the latter in care of the hair, and of the skin, and of those parts of the body which attract the eye. Against the one we lay the charge of ambition, against the other of prostitution ; so that even from this early stage[8] (of our discussion) you may look forward and see what, out of (all) these, is suitable, handmaid of God, to your discipline, inasmuch as you are assessed on different principles (from other women),--those, namely, of humility and chastity.

CHAP. V.--GOLD AND SILVER NOT SUPERIOR IN ORIGIN OR IN UTILITY TO OTHER METALS.

Gold and silver, the principal material causes of worldly[9] splendour, must necessarily be identical (in nature) with that out of which they have their being: (they must be) earth, that is; (which earth itself is) plainly more glorious (than they), inasmuch as it is only after it has been tearfully wrought by penal labour in the deadly laboratories of accursed mines, and there left its name of "earth" in the fire behind it, that, as a fugitive from the mine, it passes from torments to ornaments, from punishments to embellishments, from ignominies to honours. But iron, and brass, and other the vilest material substances, enjoy a parity of condition (with silver and gold), both as to earthly origin and metallurgic operation; in order that, in the estimation of nature, the substance of gold and of silver may be judged not a whit more noble (than theirs). But if it is from the quality of utility that gold and silver derive their glory, why, iron and brass excel them; whose usefulness is so disposed (by the Creator), that they not only discharge functions of their own more numerous and more necessary to human affairs, but do also none the less serve the turn of gold and silver, by dint of their own powers,[10] in the service of juster causes. For not only are rings made of iron, but the memory of antiquity still preserves (the fame of) certain vessels for eating and drinking made out of brass. Let the insane plenteousness of gold and silver look to it, if it serves to make utensils even for foul purposes. At all events, neither is the field tilled by means of gold, nor the ship fastened together by the strength of silver. No mattock plunges a golden edge into the ground; no nail drives a silver point into planks. I leave unnoticed the fact that the needs of our whole life are dependent upon iron and brass; whereas those rich materials themselves, requiring both to be dug up out of mines, and needing a forging process in every use (to which they are put), are helpless without the laborious vigour of iron and brass. Already, therefore, we must judge whence it is that so high dignity accrues to gold and silver, since they get precedence over material substances which are not only cousin-german to them in point of origin, but more powerful in point of usefulness.

CHAP. VI.--OF PRECIOUS STONES AND PEARLS.

But, in the next place, what am I to interpret those jewels to be which vie with gold in haughtiness, except little pebbles and stones and paltry particles of the self-same earth; but yet not necessary either for laying down foundations, or rearing party-walls, or supporting pediments, or giving density to roofs? The only edifice which they know how to rear is this silly pride of women: because they require slow rubbing that they may shine, and artful underlaying that they may show to advantage, and careful piercing that they may hang; and (because they) render to gold a mutual assistance in meretricious allurement. But whatever it is that ambition fishes up from the British or the Indian sea, it is a kind of conch not more pleasing in savour than--I do not say the oyster and the sea-snail, but--even the giant muscle.(1) For let me add that I know conchs (which axe) sweet fruits of the sea. But if that (foreign) conch suffers from some internal pustule, that ought to be regarded rather as its defect than as its glory; and although it be called "pearl," still something else must be understood than some hard, round excrescence of the fish. Some say, too, that gems are culled from the foreheads of dragons, just as in the brains of fishes there is a certain stony substance. This also was wanting to the Christian woman, that she may add a grace to herself from the serpent! Is it thus that she will set her heel on the devil's head,"(2) while she heaps ornaments (taken) from his head on her own neck, or on her very head?

CHAP. VII.--RARITY THE ONLY CAUSE WHICH MAKES SUCH THINGS VALUABLE.

It is only from their rarity and outlandishness that all these things possess their grace; in short, within their own native limits they are not held of so high worth. Abundance is always contumelious toward itself. There are some barbarians with whom, because gold is indigenous and plentiful, it is customary to keep (the criminals) in their convict establishments chained with gold, and to lade the wicked with riches--the more guilty, the more wealthy. At last there has really been found a way to prevent even gold from being loved! We have also seen at Rome the nobility of gems blushing in the presence of our matrons at the contemptuous usage of the Parthians and Medes, and the rest of their own fellow-countrymen, only that (their gems) are not generally worn with a view to ostentation. Emeralds(3) lurk in their belts; and the sword (that hangs) below their bosom alone is witness to the cylindrical stones that decorate its hilt; and the massive single pearls on their boots are fain to get lifted out of the mud! In short, they carry nothing so richly gemmed as that which ought not to be gemmed if it is (either) not conspicuous, or else is conspicuous only that it may be shown to be also neglected.

CHAP. VIII.--THE SAME RULE HOLDS WITH REGARD TO COLOURS. GOD'S CREATURES GENERALLY NOT TO BE USED, EXCEPT FOR THE PURPOSES TO WHICH HE HAS APPOINTED THEM.

Similarly, too, do even the servants(4) of those barbarians cause the glory to fade from the colours of our garments (by wearing the like); nay, even their party-walls use slightingly, to supply the place of painting, the Tyrian and the violet-coloured and the grand royal hangings, which you laboriously undo and metamorphose. Purple with them is more paltry than red ochre; (and justly,) for what legitimate honour can garments derive from adulteration with illegitimate colours? That which He Himself has not produced is not pleasing to God, unless He was unable to order sheep to be born with purple and sky-blue fleeces! If He was able, then plainly He was unwilling: what God willed not, of course ought not to be fashioned. Those things, then, are not the best by nature which are not from God, the Author of nature. Thus they are understood to be from the devil, from the corrupter of nature: for there is no other whose they can be, if they are not God's; because what are not God's must necessarily be His rival's.(5) But, beside the devil and his angels, other rival of God there is none. Again, if the material substances are of God, it does not immediately follow that such ways of enjoying them among men (are so too). It is matter for inquiry not only whence come conchs,(6) but what sphere of embellishment is assigned them, and where it is that they exhibit their beauty. For all those profane pleasures of worldly(7) shows--as we have already published a volume of their own about them(8)--(ay, and) even idolatry itself, derive their material causes from the creatures(9) of God. Yet a Christian ought not to attach himself(10) to the frenzies of the racecourse, or the atrocities of the arena, or the turpitudes of the stage, simply because God has given to man the horse, and the panther, and the power of speech: just as a Christian cannot commit idolatry with impunity either, because the incense, and the wine, and the fire which feeds(11) (thereon), and the animals which are made the victims, are God's workmanship;(12) since even the material thing which is adored is God's (creature). Thus then, too, with regard to their active use, does the origin of the material substances, which descends from God, excuse (that use) as foreign to God, as guilty forsooth of worldly(13) glory!

CHAP. IX.--GOD'S DISTRIBUTION MUST REGULATE OUR DESIRES, OTHERWISE WE BECOME THE PREY OF AMBITION AND ITS ATTENDANT EVILS.

For, as some particular things distributed by God over certain individual lands, and some one particular tract of sea, are mutually foreign one to the other, they are reciprocally either neglected or desired:(desired) among foreigners, as being rarities; neglected (rightly), if anywhere, among their own compatriots, because in them there is no such fervid longing for a glory which, among its own home-folk, is frigid. But, however, the rareness and outlandishness which arise out of that distribution of possessions which God has ordered as He willed, ever finding favour in the eyes of strangers, excites, from the simple fact of not having what God has made native to other places, the concupiscence of having it. Hence is educed another vice--that of immoderate having; because although, perhaps, having may be permissible, still a limit(1) is bound (to be observed). This (second vice) will be ambition; and hence, too, its name is to be interpreted, in that from concupiscence ambient in the mind it is born, with a view to the desire of glory,--a grand desire, forsooth, which (as we have said) is recommended neither by nature nor by truth, but by a vicious passion of the mind,--(namely,) concupiscence. And there are other vices connected with ambition and glory. Thus they have withal enhanced the cost of things, in order that (thereby) they might add fuel to themselves also; for concupiscence becomes proportionably greater as it has set a higher value upon the thing which it has eagerly desired. From the smallest caskets is produced an ample patrimony. On a single thread is suspended a million of sesterces. One delicate neck carries about it forests and islands.(2) The slender lobes of the ears exhaust a fortune; and the left hand, with its every finger, sports with a several money-bag. Such is the strength of ambition--(equal) to bearing on one small body, and that a woman's, the product of so copious wealth:

ON THE APPAREL OF WOMEN -- BOOK II

BOOK II.

CHAP. I.--INTRODUCTION. MODESTY TO BE OBSERVED NOT ONLY IN ITS ESSENCE, BUT IN ITS ACCESSORIES.

Handmaids of the living God, my fellow-servants and sisters, the right which I enjoy with you--I, the most meanest(1) in that right of fellow-servantship and brotherhood--emboldens me to address to you a discourse, not, of course, of affection, but paving the way for affection in the cause of your salvation. That salvation--and not (the salvation) of women only, but likewise of men--consists in the exhibition principally of modesty. For since, by the introduction into an appropriation(2) (in) us of the Holy Spirit, we are all" the temple of God,"(3) Modesty is the sacristan and priestess of that temple, who is to suffer nothing unclean or profane to be introduced (into it), for fear that the God who inhabits it should be offended, and quite forsake the polluted abode. But on the present occasion we (are to speak) not about modesty, for the enjoining and exacting of which the divine precepts which press (upon us) on every side are sufficient; but about the matters which pertain to it, that is, the manner in which it behoves you to walk. For most women (which very thing I trust God may permit me, with a view, of course, to my own personal censure, to censure in all), either from simple ignorance or else from dissimulation, have the hardihood so to walk as if modesty consisted only(4) in the (bare) integrity of the flesh, and in turning away from (actual) fornication; and there were no need for anything extrinsic to boot--in the matter (I mean) of the arrangement of dress and ornament,(5) the studied graces of form and brilliance:--wearing in their gait the self-same appearance as the women of the nations, from whom the sense of true modesty is absent, because in those who know not God, the Guardian and Master of truth, there is nothing true.(6) For if any modesty can be believed (to exist) in Gentiles, it is plain that it must be imperfect and undisciplined to such a degree that, although it be actively tenacious of itself in the mind up to a certain point, it yet allows itself to relax into licentious extravagances of attire; just in accordance with Gentile perversity, in craving after that of which it carefully shuns the effect.(7) How many a one, in short, is there who does not earnestly desire even to look pleasing to strangers? who does not on that very account take care to have herself painted out, and denies that she has (ever) been an object of (carnal) appetite? And yet, granting that even this is a practice familiar to Gentile modesty--(namely,) not actually to commit the sin, but still to be willing to do so; or even not to be willing, yet still not quite to refuse--what wonder? for all things which are not God's are perverse. Let those women therefore look to it, who, by not holding fast the whole good, easily mingle with evil even what they do hold fast. Necessary it is that you turn aside from them, as in all other things, so also in your gait; since you ought to be "perfect, as (is) your Father who is in the heavens."(1)

CHAP. II.--PERFECT MODESTY WILL ABSTAIN FROM WHATEVER TENDS TO SIN, AS WELL AS FROM SIN ITSELF. DIFFERENCE BETWEEN TRUST AND PRESUMPTION. IF SECURE OURSELVES, WE MUST NOT PUT TEMPTATION IN THE WAY OF OTHERS. WE MUST LOVE OUR NEIGHBOUR AS OURSELF.

You must know that in the eye of perfect, that is, Christian, modesty, (carnal) desire of one's self (on the part of others) is not only not to be desired, but even execrated, by you: first, because the study of making personal grace (which we know to be naturally the inviter of lust) a mean of pleasing does not spring from a sound conscience: why therefore excite toward yourself that evil (passion)? why invite (that) to which you profess yourself a stranger? secondly, because we ought not to open a way to temptations, which, by their instancy, sometimes achieve (a wickedness) which God expels from them who are His; (or,) at all events, put the spirit into a thorough tumult by (presenting) a stumbling-block (to it). We ought indeed to walk so holily, and with so entire substantiality(2) of faith, as to be confident and secure in regard of our own conscience, desiring that that (gift) may abide in us to the end, yet not presuming (that it will). For he who presumes feels less apprehension; he who feels less apprehension takes less precaution; he who takes less precaution runs more risk. Fear(3) is the foundation of salvation; presumption is an impediment to fear. More useful, then, is it to apprehend that we may possibly fail, than to presume that we cannot; for apprehending will lead us to fear, fearing to caution, and caution to salvation. On the other hand, if we presume, there will be neither fear nor caution to save us. He who acts securely, and not at the same time warily, possesses no safe and firm security; whereas he who is wary will be truly able to be secure. For His own servants, may the Lord by His mercy take care that to them it may be lawful even to presume on His goodness! But why are we a (source of) danger to our neighbour? why do we import concupiscence into our neighbour? which concupiscence, if God, in "amplifying the law,"(4) do not(5) dissociate in (the way of) penalty from the actual commission of fornication,(6) I know not whether He allows impunity to him who(7) has been the cause of perdition to some other. For that other, as soon as he has felt concupiscence after your beauty, and has mentally already committed (the deed) which his concupiscence pointed to,(8) perishes; and you have been made(9) the sword which destroys him: so that, albeit you be free from the (actual) crime, you are not free from the odium (attaching to it); as, when a robbery has been committed on some man's estate, the (actual) crime indeed will not be laid to the owner's charge, while yet the domain is branded with ignominy, (and) the owner himself aspersed with the infamy. Are we to paint ourselves out that our neighbours may perish? Where, then, is (the command), "Thou shall love thy neighbour as thyself?"(10) "Care not merely about your own (things), but (about your) neighbour's?"(11) No enunciation of the Holy Spirit ought to be (confined) to the subject immediately in hand merely, and not applied and carried out with a view to every occasion to which its application is useful.(12) Since, therefore, both our own interest and that of others is implicated in the studious pursuit of most perilous (outward) comeliness, it is time for you to know(13) that not merely must the pageantry of fictitious and elaborate beauty be rejected by you; but that of even natural grace must be obliterated by concealment and negligence, as equally dangerous to the glances of (the beholder's) eyes. For, albeit comeliness is not to be censured,(14) as being a bodily happiness, as being an additional outlay of the divine plastic art, as being a kind of goodly garment(15) of the soul; yet it is to be feared, just on account of the injuriousness and violence of suitors:(16) which (injuriousness and violence) even the father of the faith,(17) Abraham,(18) greatly feared in regard of his own wife's grace; and Isaac,(19) by falsely representing Rebecca as his sister, purchased safety by insult!(1)

CHAP. III.--GRANT THAT BEAUTY BE NOT TO BE FEARED: STILL IT IS TO BE SHUNNED AS UNNECESSARY AND VAINGLORIOUS.

Let it now be granted that excellence of form be not to be feared, as neither troublesome to its possessors, nor destructive to its desirers, nor perilous to its compartners;(2) let it be thought (to be) not exposed to temptations, not surrounded by stumbling-blocks: it is enough that to angels of God(3) it is not necessary. For, where modesty is, there beauty is idle; because properly the use and fruit of beauty is voluptuousness, unless any one thinks that there is some other harvest for bodily grace to reap.(4) Are women who think that, in furnishing to their neighbour that which is demanded of beauty, they are furnishing it to themselves also, to augment that (beauty) when (naturally) given them, and to strive after it when not (thus) given? Some one will say, "Why, then, if voluptuousness be shut out and chastity let in, may (we) not enjoy the praise of beauty alone, and glory in a bodily good ?" Let whoever finds pleasure in "glorying in the flesh"(5) see to that. To us in the first place, there is no studious pursuit of "glory," because "glory" is the essence of exaltation. Now exaltation is incongruous for professors of humility according to God's precepts. Secondly, if all "glory" is "vain" and insensate,(6) how much more (glory) in the flesh, especially to us? For even if "glorying" is (allowable), we ought to wish our sphere of pleasing to lie in the graces(7) of the Spirit, not in the flesh; because we are "suitors''(8) of things spiritual. In those things wherein our sphere of labour lies, let our joy lie. From the sources whence we hope for salvation, let us cull our "glory." Plainly, a Christian will "glory" even in the flesh; but (it will be) when it has endured laceration for Christ's sake,(9) in order that the spirit may be crowned in it, not in order that it may draw the eyes and sighs of youths after it. Thus (a thing) which, from whatever point you look at it, is in your case superfluous, you may justly disdain if you have it not, and neglect if you have. Let a holy woman, if naturally beautiful, give none so great occasion (for carnal appetite). Certainly, if even she be so, she ought not to set off (her beauty), but even to obscure it.(10)

CHAP. IV.--CONCERNING THE PLEA OF "PLEASING THE HUSBAND,"

As if I were speaking to Gentiles, addressing you with a Gentile precept, and (one which is) common to all, (I would say,) "You are bound to please your husbands only."(11) But you will please them in proportion as you take no care to please others. Be ye without carefulness,(12) blessed (sisters): no wife is "ugly" to her own husband. She "pleased" him enough when she was selected (by him as his wife); whether commended by form or by character. Let none of you think that, if she abstain from the care of her person,(13) she will incur the hatred and aversion of husbands. Every husband is the exactor of chastity; but beauty, a believing (husband) does not require, because we are not captivated by the same graces(14) which the Gentiles think (to be) graces:(15) an unbelieving one, on the other hand, even regards with suspicion, just from that infamous opinion of us which the Gentiles have. For whom, then, is it that you cherish your beauty? If for a believer, he does not exact it: if for an unbeliever, he does not believe in it unless it be artless.(16) Why are you eager to please either one who is suspicious, or else one who desires it not?

CHAP. V.--SOME REFINEMENTS IN DRESS AND PERSONAL APPEARANCE LAWFUL, SOME UNLAWFUL. PIGMENTS COME UNDER THE LATTER HEAD.

These suggestions are not made to you, of course, to be developed into an entire crudity and wildness of appearance; nor are we seeking to persuade you of the good of squalor and slovenliness; but of the limit and norm and just measure of cultivation of the person. There must be no overstepping of that line to which simple and sufficient refinements limit their desires--that line which is pleasing to God. For they who rub(17) their skin with medicaments, stain their cheeks with rouge, make their eyes prominent with antimony,(18) sin against HIM. To them, I suppose, the plastic skill(19) of God is displeasing! In their own persons, I suppose, they convict, they censure, the Artificer of all things! For censure they, do when they amend, when they add to, (His work;) taking these their additions, of course, from the adversary artificer. That adversary artificer is the devil.(1) For who would show the way to change the body, but he who by wickedness transfigured man's spirit? He it is, undoubtedly, who adapted ingenious devices of this kind; that in your persons it may be apparent that you, in a certain sense, do violence to God. Whatever is born is the work of God. Whatever, then, is plastered on(2) (that), is the devil's work. To superinduce on a divine work Satan's ingenuities, how criminal is it! Our servants borrow nothing from our personal enemies: soldiers eagerly desire nothing from the foes of their own general; for, to demand for(your own) use anything from the adversary of Him in whose hand(3) you are, is a transgression. Shall a Christian be assisted in anything by that evil one? (If he do,) I know not whether this name (of "Christian") will continue (to belong) to him; for he will be his in whose lore he eagerly desires to be instructed. But how alien from your schoolings(4) and professions are (these things)! How unworthy the Christian name, to wear a fictitious face, (you,) on whom simplicity in every form is enjoined!--to lie in your appearance, (you,) to whom (lying) with the tongue is not lawful!--to seek after what is another's, (you,) to whom is delivered (the precept of) abstinence from what is another's!--to practise adultery in your mien,(5) (you,) who make modesty your study! Think,(6) blessed (sisters), how will you keep God's precepts if you shall not keep in your own persons His lineaments?

CHAP. VI.--OF DYEING THE HAIR.

I see some (women) turn (the colour of) their hair with saffron. They are ashamed even of their own nation, (ashamed) that their procreation did not assign them to Germany and to Gaul: thus, as it is, they transfer their hair(7) (thither)! Ill, ay, most ill, do they augur for themselves with their flame-coloured head,(8) and think that graceful which (in fact) they are polluting! Nay, moreover, the force of the cosmetics burns ruin into the hair; and the constant application of even any undrugged moisture, lays up a store of harm for the head; while the sun's warmth, too, so desirable for imparting to the hair at once growth and dryness, is hurtful. What "grace" is compatible with "injury?" What "beauty" with "impurities?" Shall a Christian woman heap saffron on her head, as upon an altar?(9) For, whatever is wont to be burned to the honour of the unclean spirit, that--unless it is applied for honest, and necessary, and salutary uses, for which God's creature was provided--may seem to be a sacrifice. But, however, God saith, "Which of you can make a white hair black, or out of a black a white?"(10) And so they refute the Lord! "Behold!" say they, "instead of white or black, we make it yellow,--more winning in grace."(11) And yet such as repent of having lived to old age do attempt to change it even from white to black! O temerity! The age which is the object of our wishes and prayers blushes (for itself)! a theft is effected! youth, wherein we have sinned,(12) is sighed after! the opportunity of sobriety is spoiled! Far from Wisdom's daughters be folly so great! The more old age tries to conceal itself, the more will it be detected. Here is a veritable eternity, in the (perennial) youth of your head ! Here we have an "incorruptibility" to "put on,"(13) with a view to the new house of the Lord(14) which the divine monarchy promises! Well do you speed toward the Lord; well do you hasten to be quit of this most iniquitous world,(15) to whom it is unsightly to approach (your own) end!

CHAP. VII.--OF ELABORATE DRESSING OF THE HAIR IN OTHER WAYS, AND ITS BEARING UPON SALVATION.

What service, again, does all the labour spent in arranging the hair render to salvation? Why is no rest allowed to your hair, which must now be bound, now loosed, now cultivated, now thinned out? Some are anxious to force their hair into curls, some to let it hang loose and flying; not with good simplicity: beside which, you affix I know not what enormities of subtle and textile perukes; now, after the manner of a helmet of undressed hide, as it were a sheath for the head and a covering for the crown; now, a mass (drawn) backward toward the neck. The wonder is, that there is no (open) contending against the Lord's prescripts! It has been pronounced that no one can add to his own stature.(16) You, however, do add to your weight some kind of rolls, or shield-bosses, to be piled upon your necks! If you feel no shame at the enormity, feel some at the pollution; for fear you may be fitting on a holy and Christian head the slough(17) of some one else's(1) head, unclean perchance, guilty perchance and destined to hell.(2) Nay, rather banish quite away from your "free"(3) head all this slavery of ornamentation. In vain do you labour to seem adorned: in vain do you call in the aid of all the most skilful manufacturers of false hair. God bids you "be veiled."(4) I believe (He does so) for fear the heads of some should be seen! And oh that in "that day"(5) of Christian exultation, I, most miserable (as I am), may elevate my head, even though below (the level of) your heels! I shall (then) see whether you will rise with (your) ceruse and rouge and saffron, and in all that parade of headgear:(6) whether it will be women thus tricked out whom the angels carry up to meet Christ in the air(7) If these (decorations) are now good, and of God, they will then also present themselves to the rising bodies, and will recognise their several places. But nothing can rise except flesh and spirit sole and pure.(8) Whatever, therefore, does not rise in (the form of)(9) spirit and flesh is condemned, because it is not of God. From things which are condemned abstain, even at the present day. At the present day let God see you such as He will see you then.

CHAP.VIII.--MEN NOT EXCLUDED FROM THESE REMARKS ON PERSONAL ADORNMENT.

Of course, now, I, a man, as being envious(10) of women, am banishing them quite from their own (domains). Are there, in our case too, some things which, in respect of the sobriety(11) we are to maintain on account of the fear(12) due to God, are disallowed?(13) If it is true, (as it is,) that in men, for the sake of women (just as in women for the sake of men), there is implanted, by a defect of nature, the will to please; and if this sex of ours acknowledges to itself deceptive trickeries of form peculiarly its own,--(such as) to cut the beard too sharply; to pluck it out here and there; to shave round about (the mouth); to arrange the hair, and disguise its hoariness by dyes; to remove all the incipient down all over the body; to fix (each particular hair) in its place with (some) womanly pigment; to smooth all the rest of the body by the aid of some rough powder or other: then, further, to take every opportunity for consulting the minor; to gaze anxiously into it:-while yet, when (once) the knowledge of God has put an end to all wish to please by means of voluptuous attraction, all these things are rejected as frivolous, as hostile to modesty. For where God is, there modesty is; there is sobriety? her assistant and ally. How, then, shall we practise modesty without her instrumental mean,(15) that is, without sobriety?(16) How, moreover, shall we bring sobriety(17) to bear on the discharge of (the functions of) modesty, unless seriousness in appearance and in countenance, and in the general aspect(18) of the entire man, mark our carriage?

CHAP. IX.--EXCESS IN DRESS, AS WELL AS IN PERSONAL CULTURE, TO BE SHUNNED. ARGUMENTS DRAWN FROM I COR. VII.

Wherefore, with regard to clothing also, and all the remaining lumber of your self-elaboration,(19) the like pruning off and retrenchment of too redundant splendour must be the object of your care. For what boots it to exhibit in your face temperance and unaffectedness, and a simplicity altogether worthy of the divine discipline, but to invest all the other parts of the body with the luxurious absurdities of pomps and delicacies? How intimate is the connection which these pomps have with the business of voluptuousness, and how they interfere with modesty, is easily discernible from the fact that it is by the allied aid of dress that they prostitute the grace of personal comeliness: so plain is it that if (the pomps) be wanting, they render (that grace) bootless and thankless, as if it were disarmed and wrecked. On the other hand, if natural beauty fails, the supporting aid of outward embellishment supplies a grace, as it were, from its own inherent power.(20) Those times of life, in fact, which are at last blest with quiet and withdrawn into the harbour of modesty, the splendour and dignity of dress lure away (from that rest and that harbour), and disquiet seriousness by seductions of appetite, which compensate for the chili of age by the provocative charms of apparel. First, then, blessed (sisters), (take heed) that you admit not to your use meretricious and prostitutionary garbs and garments: and, in the next place, if there are any of you whom the exigencies of riches, or birth, or past dignities, compel to appear in public so gorgeously arrayed as not to appear to have attained wisdom, take heed to temper an evil of this kind; lest, under the pretext of necessity, you give the rein without stint to the indulgence of licence. For how will you be able to fulfil (the requirements of) humility, which our (school) profess,(1) if you do not keep within bounds(2) the enjoyment of your riches and elegancies, which tend so much to "glory?" Now it has ever been the wont of glory to exalt, not to humble. "Why, shall we not use what is our own?" Who prohibits your using it? Yet (it must be) in accordance with the apostle, who warns us "to use this world(3) as if we abuse it not; for the fashion(4) of this world(5) is passing away." And "they who buy are so to act as if they possessed not."(6) Why so? Because he had laid down the premiss, saying, "The time is wound up."(7) If, then he shows plainly that even wives themselves are so to be had as if they be not had,(8) on account of the straits of the times, what would be his sentiments about these vain appliances of theirs? Why, are there not many, withal, who so do, and seal themselves up to eunuchhood for the sake of the kingdom of God,(9) spontaneously relinquishing a pleasure so honourable,(10) and (as we know) permitted? Are there not some who prohibit to themselves (the use of) the very "creature of God,"(11) abstaining from wine and animal food, the enjoyments of which border upon no peril or solicitude; but they sacrifice to God the humility of their soul even in the chastened use of food? Sufficiently, therefore, have you, too, used your riches and your delicacies; sufficiently have you cut down the fruits of your dowries, before (receiving) the knowledge of saving disciplines. We are they "upon whom the ends of the ages have met, having ended their course."(12) We have been predestined by God, before the world(13) was, (to arise) in the extreme end of the times.(14) And so we are trained by God for the purpose of chastising, and (so to say) emasculating, the world.(15) We are the circumcision(16)--spiritual and carnal--of all things; for both in the spirit and in the flesh we circumcise worldly(17) principles.

CHAP. X.--TERTULLIAN REFERS AGAIN TO THE QUESTION OF THE ORIGIN OF ALL THESE ORNAMENTS AND EMBELLISHMENTS.(18)

It was God, no doubt, who showed the way to dye wools with the juices of herbs and the humours of conchs! It had escaped Him, when He was bidding the universe to come into being,(19) to issue a command for (the production of) purple and scarlet sheep! It was God, too, who devised by careful thought the manufactures of those very garments which, light and thin (in themselves), were to be heavy in price alone; God who produced such grand implements of gold for confining or parting the hair; God who introduced (the fashion of) finely-cut wounds for the ears, and set so high a value upon the tormenting of His own work and the tortures of innocent infancy, learning to suffer with its earliest breath, in order that from those scars of the body--born for the steel!--should hang I know not what (precious) grains, which, as we may plainly see, the Parthians insert, in place of studs, upon their very shoes! And yet even the gold itself, the "glory" of which carries you away, serves a certain race (so Gentile literature. tells us) for chains! So true is it that it is not intrinsic worth,(20) but rarity, which constitutes the goodness (of these things): the excessive labour, moreover, of working them with arts introduced by the means of the sinful angels, who were the revealers withal of the material substances themselves, joined with their rarity, excited their costliness, and hence a lust on the part of women to possess (that) costliness. But, if the self-same angels who disclosed both the material substances of this kind and their charms--of gold, I mean, and lustrous(21) stones--and taught men how to work them, and by and by instructed them, among their other (instructions), in (the virtues of) eyelid-powder and the dyeings of fleeces, have been condemned by God, as Enoch tells us, how shall we please God while we joy in the things of those (angels) who, on these accounts, have provoked the anger and the vengeance of God?
Now, granting that God did foresee these things; that God permitted them; that Esaias finds fault with no garment of purple,(22) represses no coil,(23) reprobates no crescent-shaped neck ornaments;(24) still let us not, as the Gentiles do, flatter ourselves with thinking that God is merely a Creator, not likewise a Downlooker on His own creatures. For how far more usefully and cautiously shall we act, if we hazard the presumption that all these things were indeed provided(25) at the beginning and placed in the world(26) by God, in order that there should now be means of putting to the proof the discipline of His servants, in order that the licence of using should be the means whereby the experimental trials of continence should be conducted? Do not wise heads of families purposely offer and permit some things to their servants(1) in order to try whether and how they will use the things thus permitted whether (they will do so) with honesty, or with moderation? But how far more praiseworthy (the servant) who abstains entirely; who has a wholesome fear(2) even of his lord's indulgence! Thus, therefore, the apostle too: "All things," says he, "are lawful, but not all are expedient."(3) How much more easily will he fear(4) what is unlawful who has a reverent dread(5) of what is lawful?

CHAP. XI.--CHRISTIAN WOMEN, FURTHER, HAVE NOT THE SAME CAUSES FOR APPEARING IN PUBLIC, AND HENCE FOR DRESSING IN FINE ARRAY AS GENTILES. ON THE CONTRARY, THEIR APPEARANCE SHOULD ALWAYS DISTINGUISH THEM FROM SUCH.

Moreover, what causes have you for appearing in public in excessive grandeur, removed as you are from the occasions which call for such exhibitions? For you neither make the circuit of the temples, nor demand (to be present at) public shows, nor have any acquaintance with the holy days of the Gentiles. Now it is for the sake of all these public gatherings, and of much seeing and being seen, that all pomps (of dress) are exhibited before the public eye; either for the purpose of transacting the trade of voluptuousness, or else of inflating "glory." You, however, have no cause of appearing in public, except such as is serious. Either some brother who is sick is visited, or else the sacrifice is offered, or else the word of God is dispensed. Whichever of these you like to name is a business of sobriety(6) and sanctity, requiring no extraordinary attire, with (studious) arrangement and (wanton) negligence.(7) And if the requirements of Gentile friendships and of kindly offices call you, why not go forth clad in your own armour; (and) all the more, in that (you have to go) to such as are strangers to the faith? so that between the handmaids of God and of the devil there may be a difference; so that you may be an example to them, and they may be edified in you; so that (as the apostle says) "God may be magnified in your body."(8) But magnified He is in the body through modesty: of course, too, through attire suitable to modesty. Well, but it is urged by some, "Let not the Name be blasphemed in us,(9) if we make any derogatory change from our old style and dress." Let us, then, not abolish our old vices! let us maintain the same character, if we must maintain the same appearance (as before); and then truly the nations will not blaspheme! A grand blasphemy is that by which it is said, "Ever since she became a Christian, she walks in poorer garb!" Will you fear to appear poorer, from the time that you have been made more wealthy; and fouler,(10) from the time when you have been made more clean? Is it according to the decree(11) of Gentiles, or according to the decree of God, that it becomes Christians to walk?

CHAP. XII.--SUCH OUTWARD ADORNMENTS MERETRICIOUS, AND THEREFORE UNSUITABLE TO MODEST WOMEN.

Let us only wish that we may be no cause for just blasphemy! But how much more provocative of blasphemy is it that you, who are called modesty's priestesses, should appear in public decked and painted out after the manner of the immodest? Else, (if you so do,) what inferiority would the poor unhappy victims of the public lusts have (beneath you)? whom, albeit some laws were (formerly) wont to restrain them from (the use of) matrimonial and matronly decorations, now, at all events, the daily increasing depravity of the age(12) has raised so nearly to an equality with all the most honourable women, that the difficulty is to distinguish them. And yet, even the Scriptures suggest (to us the reflection), that meretricious attractivenesses of form are invariably conjoined with and appropriate(13) to bodily prostitution. That powerful state(14) which presides over(15) the seven mountains and very many waters, has merited from the Lord the appellation of a prostitute.(16) But what kind of garb is the instrumental mean of her comparison with that appellation? She sits, to be sure, "in purple, and scarlet, and gold, and precious stone." How accursed are the things without (the aid of) which an accursed prostitute could not have been described! It was the fact that Thamar "had painted out and adorned herself" that led Judah to regard her as a harlot,(17) and thus, because she was hidden beneath her "veil,"--the quality of her garb belying her as if she had been a harlot,--he judged (her to be one), and addressed and bargained with (her as such). Whence we gather an additional confirmation of the lesson, that provision must be made in every way. against all immodest associations(1) and suspicions. For why is the integrity of a chaste mind defiled by its neighbour's suspicion? Why is a thing from which I am averse hoped for in me? Why does not my garb pre-announce my character, to prevent my spirit from being wounded by shamelessness through (the channel of) nay ears? Grant that it be lawful to assume the appearance of a modest woman:(2) to assume that of an immodest is, at all events, not lawful.

CHAP.XIII.--IT IS NOT ENOUGH THAT GOD KNOW US TO BE CHASTE: WE MUST SEEM SO BEFORE MEN. ESPECIALLY IN THESE TIMES OF PERSECUTION WE MUST INURE OUR BODIES TO THE HARDSHIPS WHICH THEY MAY NOT IMPROBABLY BE CALLED TO SUFFER.

Perhaps some (woman) will say: "To me it is not necessary to be approved by men; for I do not require the testimony of men:(3) God is the inspector of the heart."(4) (That) we all know; provided, however, we remember what the same (God) has said through the apostle: "Let your probity appear before men."(5) For what purpose, except that malice may have no access at all to you, or that you may be an example and testimony to the evil? Else, what is (that): "Let your works shine?"(6) Why, moreover, does the Lord call us the light of the world; why has He compared us to a city built upon a mountain;(7) if we do not shine in (the midst of) darkness, and stand eminent amid them who are sunk down? If you hide your lamp beneath a bushel,(8) you must necessarily be left quite in darkness, and be run against by many. The things which make us luminaries of the world are these--our good works. What is good, moreover, provided it be true and full, loves not darkness: it joys in being seen,(9) and exults over the very pointings which are made at it. To Christian modesty it is not enough to be so, but to seem so too. For so great ought its plenitude to be, that it may flow out from the mind to the garb, and burst out from the conscience to the outward appearance; so that even from the outside it may gaze, as it were, upon its own furniture,(10)--(a furniture) such as to be suited to retain faith as its inmate perpetually. For such delicacies as tend by their softness and effeminacy to unman the manliness(11) of faith are to be discarded. Otherwise, I know not whether the wrist that has been wont to be surrounded with the palmleaf-like bracelet will endure till it grow into the numb hardness of its own chain! I know not whether the leg that has rejoiced in the anklet will suffer itself to be squeezed into the gyve! I fear the neck, beset with pearl and emerald nooses, will give no room to the broadsword! Wherefore, blessed (sisters), let us meditate on hardships, and we shall not feel them; let us abandon luxuries, and we shall not regret them. Let us stand ready to endure every violence, having nothing which we may fear to leave behind. It is these things which are the bonds which retard our hope. Let us cast away earthly ornaments if we desire heavenly. Love not gold; in which (one substance) are branded all the sins of the people of Israel. You ought to hate what mined your fathers; what was adored by them who were forsaking God.(12) Even then (we find) gold is food for the fire.(13) But Christians always, and now more than ever, pass their times not in gold but in iron: the stoles of martyrdom are (now) preparing: the angels who are to carry us are (now) being awaited! Do you go forth (to meet them) already arrayed in the cosmetics and ornaments of prophets and apostles; drawing your whiteness from simplicity, your ruddy hue from modesty; painting your eyes with bashfulness, and your mouth with silence; implanting in your ears the words of God; fitting on your necks the yoke of Christ. Submit your head to your husbands, and you will be enough adorned. Busy your hands with spinning; keep your feet at home; and you will "please" better than (by arraying yourselves) in gold. Clothe yourselves with the silk of uprightness, the fine linen of holiness, the purple of modesty. Thus painted, you will have God as your Lover!

ELUCIDATION.

(The Prophecy of Enoch, p. 15.)

DR. DAVIDSON is the author of a useful article on "Apocalyptic Literature," from which we extract all that is requisite to inform the reader of the freshest opinion as seen from his well-known point of view. He notes Archbishop Lawrence's translation into English, and that it has been rendered back again into German by Dillman (1853), as before, less accurately, by Hoffmann. Ewald, Lucke, Koestlin, and Hilgenfeld are referred to, and an article of his own in Kitto's Cyclopoedia. We owe its re-appearance, after long neglect, to Archbishop Lawrence (1838), and its preservation to the Abyssinians. It was rescued by Bruce, the explorer, in an AEthiopic version; and the first detailed announcement of its discovery was made by De Sacy, 1800. Davidson ascribes its authorship to pre-Messianic times, but thinks it has been interpolated by a Jewish Christian. Tertullian's negative testimony points the other way: he evidently relies upon its "Christology" as genuine; and, if interpolated in his day, he could hardly have been deceived.
Its five parts are: I. The rape of women by fallen angels, and the giants that were begotten of them. The visions of Enoch begun. II. The visions continued, with views of the Messiah's kingdom. III. The physical and astronomical mysteries treated of. IV. Man's mystery revealed in dreams from the beginning to the end of the Messianic kingdom. V. The warnings of Enoch to his own family and to mankind, with appendices, which complete the book. The article in Smith's Dictionary of the Bible is accessible, and need only be referred to as well worth perusal; and, as it abounds in references to the entire literature of criticism respecting it, it is truly valuable. It seems to have been written by Westcott.(1)
The fact that St. Jude refers to Enoch's prophesyings no more proves that this book is other than apocryphal than St. Paul's reference to Jannes and Jambres makes Scripture of the Targum. The apostle Jude does, indeed, authenticate that particular saying by inspiration of God, and doubtless it was traditional among the Jews. St. Jerome's references to this quotation may be found textually in Lardner.(2) Although the book is referred to frequently in the Patrologia, Tertullian only, of the Fathers, pays it the respect due to Scripture.
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ON THE VEILING OF VIRGINS

III. ON THE VEILING OF VIRGINS.(1)

[TRANSLATED BY THE REV. S. THELWALL.]

CHAP. I.--TRUTH RATHER TO BE APPEALED TO THAN CUSTOM, AND TRUTH PROGRESSIVE IN ITS DEVELOPMENTS.

HAVING already undergone the trouble peculiar to my opinion, I will show in Latin also that it behoves our virgins to be veiled from the time that they have passed the turning-point of their age: that this observance is exacted by truth, on which no one can impose prescription--no space of times, no influence of persons, no privilege of regions. For these, for the most part, are the sources whence, from some ignorance or simplicity, custom finds its beginning; and then it is successionally confirmed into an usage, and thus is maintained in opposition to truth. But our Lord Christ has surnamed Himself Truth,(2) not Custom. If Christ is always, and prior to all, equally truth is a thing sempiternal and ancient. Let those therefore look to themselves, to whom that is new which is intrinsically old. It is not so much novelty as truth which convicts heresies. Whatever savours of opposition to truth, this will be heresy, even (if it be an) ancient custom. On the other hand, if any is ignorant of anything, the ignorance proceeds from his own defect. Moreover, whatever is matter of ignorance ought to have been as carefully inquired into as whatever is matter of acknowledgment received. The rule of faith, indeed, is altogether one, alone immoveable and irreformable; the rule, to wit, of believing in one only God omnipotent, the Creator of the universe, and His Son Jesus Christ, born of the Virgin Mary, crucified under Pontius Pilate, raised again the third day from the dead, received in the heavens, sitting now at the right (hand) of the Father, destined to come to judge quick and dead through the resurrection of the flesh as well (as of the spirit). This law of faith being constant, the other succeeding points of discipline and conversation admit the "novelty" of correction; the grace of God, to wit, operating and advancing even to the end. For what kind of (supposition) is it, that, while the devil is always operating and adding daily to the ingenuities of iniquity, the work of God should either have ceased, or else have desisted from advancing? whereas the reason why the Lord sent the Paraclete was, that, since human mediocrity was unable to take in all things at once, discipline should, little by little, be directed, and ordained, and carried on to perfection, by that Vicar of the Lord, the Holy Spirit. "Still," He said, "I have many things to say to you, but ye are not yet able to bear them: when that Spirit of truth shall have come, He will conduct you into all truth, and will report to you the supervening (things)."(3) But above, withal, He made a declaration concerning this His work.(4) What, then, is the Paraclete's administrative office but this: the direction of discipline, the revelation of the Scriptures, the reformation of the intellect, the advancement toward the "better things?"(5) Nothing is without stages of growth: all things await their season. In short, the preacher says, "A time to everything."(6) Look how creation itself advances little by little to fructification. First comes the grain, and from the grain arises the shoot, and from the shoot struggles out the shrub: thereafter boughs and leaves gather strength, and the whole that we call a tree expands: then follows the swelling of the germen, and from the germen bursts the flower, and from the flower the fruit opens: that fruit itself, rude for a while, and unshapely, little by little, keeping the straight course of its development, is trained to the mellowness of its flavour.(1) So, too, righteousness--for the God of righteousness and of creation is the same--was first in a rudimentary state, having a natural fear of God: from that stage it advanced, through the Law and the Prophets, to infancy; from that stage it passed, through the Gospel, to the fervour of youth: now, through the Paraclete, it is settling into maturity. He will be, after Christ, the only one to be called and revered as Master;(2) for He speaks not from Himself, but what is commanded by Christ.(3) He is the only prelate, because He alone succeeds Christ. They who have received Him set truth before custom. They who have heard Him prophesying even to the present time, not of old, bid virgins be wholly covered.

CHAP. II.--BEFORE PROCEEDING FARTHER, LET THE QUESTION OF CUSTOM ITSELF BE SIFTED.

But I will not, meantime, attribute this usage to Truth. Be it, for a while, custom: that to custom I may likewise oppose custom.
Throughout Greece, and certain of its barbaric provinces, the majority of Churches keep their virgins covered. There are places, too, beneath this (African) sky, where this practice obtains; lest any ascribe the custom to Greek or barbarian Gentilehood. But I have proposed (as models) those Churches which were founded by apostles or apostolic men; and antecedently, I think, to certain (founders, who shall be nameless). Those Churches therefore, as well (as others), have the self-same authority of custom (to appeal to); in opposing phalanx they range "times" and "teachers," more than these later (Churches do). What shah we observe? What shall we choose? We cannot contemptuously reject a custom which we cannot condemn, inasmuch as it is not "strange," since it is not among "strangers" that we find it, but among those, to wit, with whom we share the law of peace and the name of brotherhood. They and we have one faith, one God, the same Christ, the same hope, the same baptismal sacraments; let me say it once for all, we are one Church.(4) Thus, whatever belongs to our brethren is ours: only, the body divides us.
Still, here (as generally happens in all cases of various practice, of doubt, and of uncertainty), examination ought to have been made to see which of two so diverse customs were the more compatible with the discipline of God. And, of course, that ought to have been chosen which keeps virgins veiled, as being known to God alone; who (besides that glory must be sought from God, not from men(5)) ought to blush even at their own privilege. You put a virgin to the blush more by praising than by blaming her; because the front of sin is more hard, learning shamelessness from and in the sin itself. For that custom which belies virgins while it exhibits them, would never have been approved by any except by some men who must have been similar in character to the virgins themselves. Such eyes will wish that a virgin be seen as has the virgin who shall wish to be seen. The same kinds of eyes reciprocally crave after each other. Seeing and being seen belong to the self-same lust. To blush if he see a virgin is as much a mark of a chaste(6) man, as of a chaste(7) virgin if seen by a man.

CHAP. III.--GRADUAL DEVELOPMENT OF CUSTOM, AND ITS RESULTS. PASSIONATE APPEAL TO TRUTH.

But not even between customs have those most chaste s teachers chosen to examine. Still, until very recently, among us, either custom was, with comparative indifference, admitted to communion. The matter had been left to choice, for each virgin to veil herself or expose herself, as she might have chosen, just as (she had equal liberty) as to marrying, which itself withal is neither enforced nor prohibited. Truth had been content to make an agreement with custom, in order that under the name of custom it might enjoy itself even partially. But when the power of discerning began to advance, so that the licence granted to either fashion was becoming the mean whereby the indication of the better part emerged; immediately the great adversary of good things--and much more of good institutions--set to his own work. The virgins of men go about, in opposition to the virgins of God, with front quite bare, excited to a rash audacity; and the semblance of virgins is exhibited by women who have the power of asking somewhat from husbands,(9) not to say such a request as that (forsooth) their rivals--all the more "free" in that they are the "hand-maids" of Christ alone(10)--may be surrendered to them. "We are scandalized," they say, "because others walk otherwise (than we do);" and they prefer being "scandalized" to being provoked (to modesty). A "scandal," if I mistake not, is an example not of a good thing, but of a bad, tending to sinful edification. Good things scandalize none but an evil mind. If modesty, if bashfulness, if contempt of glory, anxious to please God alone, are good things, let women who are "scandalized" by such good learn to acknowledge their own evil. For what if the incontinent withal say they are "scandalized" by the continent? Is continence to be recalled? And, for fear the multinubists be "scandalized," is monogamy to be rejected? Why may not these latter rather complain that the petulance, the impudence, of ostentatious virginity is a "scandal"