De Pallio

Ever leaders of Africa, men of Carthage, noble in your antiquity, fortunate in your newness, I rejoice that you are so prosperous in your times, since you are thus at leisure and find it pleasant to take note of dress. These are the leisures of peace and of plenty. From the empire and from heaven all is well. Yet for you too the fashion of the tunic was once otherwise — and indeed of good repute, by reason of the care of the woof and the gathering of the light and the temperance of the measure, in that it was neither prodigal below the legs nor immodest above the knees, neither sparing to the arms nor tight to the hands, but, not even using a girdle to divide the folds, it stood foursquare, of a well-shaded propriety, upon the men. The cloak too, in its outward fashion, itself foursquare, thrown back from either flank and drawn close about the neck, rested upon the shoulders in the bite of a clasp. The likeness of it is, today, the priesthood already of your own Aesculapius. Thus too your sister city near at hand was wont to clothe herself, and wherever else in Africa Tyre had set foot. But when the urn of worldly lots was changed, and God preferred the Romans, the sister city, indeed, by her own decision hastened to change, so that, when Scipio landed, she had already before greeted him from her dress, anticipating the Roman early. But to you, after the benefit of an injury — once you were exempted from senility rather than from your eminence — after the obscene omens of Gracchus and the violent mockeries of Lepidus, after the triple altars of Pompey and the long delays of Caesar, when Statilius Taurus set the walls in place and Sentius Saturninus proclaimed the solemnities — when concord brings its pleasure — the toga was offered. Ah, how far it has travelled round, from the Pelasgians to the Lydians, from the Lydians to the Romans, that from the shoulders of a loftier people it might embrace the Carthaginians! Thenceforth you hang up a longer tunic, the girdle being its arbiter, and you prop up the now smooth redundance of the cloak by a gathering into folds; and if besides this rank or dignity or the season clothes you with anything, yet, forgetful, you mark even the cloak as generally your own. For my part, I wonder not at all, in view of an earlier precedent. For the ram too — not the one which Laberius makes with curving horn and woolly hide and dragging its testes, but the engine, a beam, which campaigns to break walls — though never yet had it been swung against anyone, that Carthage, fiercest in the pursuits of war, is said first of all to have armed, into the swinging of a pendent assault, having devised the force of the engine from the rage of a beast that defends its head with its horns. Yet when the last days of her country come, and the ram, now Roman, dares against walls in a manner her own, the Carthaginians were thereupon astounded, as at a new, foreign device: So much can the long lapse of antiquity avail to change! So, in fine, not even the cloak is recognized.

Let the matter now be drawn from elsewhere, lest the Punic should either blush or grieve among the Romans. Surely to change one's fashion is a solemn function of all nature. Even this very world that we tread performs it. Let Anaximander look to it, if he thinks there are many; let him look to it, if anyone anywhere else holds there are men among the Meropes, as Silenus prattled into the ears of Midas — tales suited, to be sure, to grander fables. But even if anyone follows the estimate of Plato — Plato, of whom this world is the image — that other world too must needs change likewise. Indeed, if the world shall consist of diverse substances and offices, it will be after the form of that which this world is; for it would not be a world, unless it were so as a world. Diverse things drawn into one are diverse by mutation. In short, alternations league together the discord of diversity. Thus by changing will that whole world be, which is corporated of diversities and tempered by alternations. Our own surveyed sphere, at any rate — as is clear even to closed, nay, wholly Homeric eyes — is throughout of changing form. Day and night turn about by turns. The sun varies by its yearly stations, the moon by its monthly modulations. The marked-out confusion of the stars now casts something down, now raises it up again. The circuit of the heaven is now splendid under open sky, now squalid with cloud; or showers rush down, and whatever missiles come with the showers; then a drizzle, and then again clear weather. Thus too the sea's faith is ill-famed, while, by the winds equally changing, from a calm it grows honest, from a swell tempered, and on a sudden, with the great rollers, grows unquiet. Thus too, if you review the earth, which loves to be clothed by seasons, you would be near to denying it the same, remembering that you behold it green when it is tawny, and presently to behold it hoary too. The rest of its adornments also — what do they not change, one thing from another, both the shoulders of mountains by running down, and the veins of springs by failing, and the courses of rivers by silting up? The whole globe too has changed at some time, beset by all the waters. To this day the shells and trumpets of the sea wander as strangers among the mountains, eager to prove to Plato that even the heights have floated. But by swimming out again, again the globe changed in its form, another yet the same. It changes even now its fashion locally, when a site is damaged, when among the islands there is no longer any Delos, sands made of Samos, and the Sibyl no liar; when in the Atlantic a Libya or an Asia is sought after, equalling it; when the side of Italy, once shaken away as far as the middle by the Adriatic and the Tyrrhenian, leaves its relics, making Sicily; when that whole tract of the cleaving, twisting back the contentious meetings of the waters into narrow straits, has put a new vice upon the sea — not of spewing out shipwrecks, but of devouring them. The mainland too suffers, whether from heaven or from itself. Look toward Palestine. Where the river Jordan is the arbiter of the boundaries, there is a vast wilderness, and an orphaned region, and a field to no purpose. And there were cities once, and frequent peoples, and it had a voice. Then, since God is a censor, the impiety of fire deserved showers: thus far is Sodom, and there is no Gomorrah, and ashes are all things, and the nearness of the sea, together with the soil, lives a death. From a cloud of this sort Tuscany too, having burnt up its ancient Volsinii — that Campania may the more hope from its own mountains — snatched away Pompeii. But far be it. Would that Asia too were now secure from the gluttony of its soil! Would that Africa had once for all glutted the chasm, expiated by the cheating of a single camp! Many other losses too of this kind have renewed the fashion of the globe and moved its sites. To wars too very much has been permitted. But it is irksome to review sad things no less than the vicissitudes of kingdoms — how often even these have changed, from Ninus onward, the offspring of Belus; if indeed Ninus was the first to reign, as the profanity of older times asserts. With you the pen generally goes no further. From the Assyrians, if anywhere, the histories of the age lie open. But we who read often the divine writings are competent witnesses from the very birthdays of the world itself. But I now prefer glad things — for glad things too change. In short, if anything the sea has washed away, the sky burned up, the earth withdrawn, the sword shorn off, it returns again at another time by the requital of compensation. For at first too the earth had a larger circuit, empty and void of men; and wherever any race had occupied it, it was to itself alone. And so, understanding at last that all things must be cultivated, with abundance crowding in one place, deserting in another, it took counsel to weed and to grub up, that from thence, as it were from slips and layers, peoples might be planted from peoples, cities from cities, throughout the whole globe. The swarms of overflowing nations flew across. The Scythians overflow the Persians, the Phoenicians belch forth into Africa, the Phrygians bring forth the Romans, the Chaldaean seed is brought up into Egypt; then, when from there it is led across, it is the Jewish race. So too the posterity of Hercules, by occupying the Peloponnese together with Temenus, produce it. So too the Ionians, companions of Neleus, furnish Asia with new cities; so too the Corinthians, with Archias, fortify Syracuse. But antiquity is now a vain thing, when our own racecourses are before us. How much has this present age reformed of the globe! how many cities has the threefold virtue of the present empire either produced or augmented or restored! With God favouring so many Augusti in one, how many censuses transcribed? how many peoples beaten back? how many orders made illustrious? how many barbarians shut out? Truly the globe is the most cultivated country-estate of this empire, every aconite of hostility uprooted, and the cactus and bramble of treacherous familiarity torn out, and it is more pleasant than the orchard of Alcinous and the rose-garden of Midas. Praising therefore the changing globe, why do you mark down a man?

Beasts too change their form in place of dress; although for the peacock too the plumage is its dress — and indeed of the choicest kind — nay, more pressing than every purple where his necks bloom, and more gilded than every fringe where his back gleams, and looser than every trailing robe where his tail lies, many-coloured and party-coloured and changing-coloured, never the same, always another, even if always the same when another — to be changed, in short, as often as he is moved. The serpent too must be named, though after the peacock; for he too changes what was allotted him, his skin and his age. Since, as soon as he perceives old age, he stuffs himself into narrow places, and, at one and the same time entering his hole and going out of his skin, scraped from the very threshold, his slough left behind on the spot, he unfolds new; with his scales his years too are refused. The hyena, if you observe, is of a yearly sex, alternating male and female. I say nothing of the stag, who likewise, the arbiter of his own age, fed upon the poison of a serpent, languishes back into youth. There is too A four-footed thing, slow-paced, rustic, lowly, rough. You think it Pacuvius's tortoise? It is not. Another little beast too suits the little verse — of the very middling sort, but with a grand name. The chameleon — if you have heard the word, not before acquainted with it, you will now fear something more, along with a lion. But when you have come upon it near a vineyard, generally wholly under a vine-leaf, you will laugh on the spot at the surpassing audacity of the name; since indeed there is no juice in the body, which in much smaller creatures is plain. The chameleon lives by its little hide. Its little head is straight from the back; for the neck is wanting. And so it is hard for it to bend back; but for looking round, its prying little eyes — nay, the points of its light — swivel. Dull, weary, it scarcely lifts itself from the earth, struggles, astounded, at a gait and moves forward, shows its step rather than unfolds it, fasting of course always and unfailing; gaping it feeds, puffing it ruminates, its food is of the wind. Yet the chameleon too is able to change wholly, and nothing else. For since it has one property of colour, when anything has approached, it is from that thence suffused. To the chameleon alone is given that which is commonly said, to play out of its own hide. Much had to be said, that I might come, by way of building beforehand, to man. By whatever beginning you receive him, naked at least and unclothed he stood before his potter; only afterward at last he gets possession of wisdom, snatched away while not yet permitted. There, in his new body, hastening to cover what was as yet not owed to shame, he girds himself for the time with fig-leaves; then, when he is banished from the place of his origin — since he had transgressed — he is given to the globe, clothed in skins as to a mine. But these are secret things, nor for all to know. Come now, take from your own store what the Egyptians relate, and Alexander sets in order, and his mother reads, concerning the time of Osiris, when Ammon comes to him out of Libya, rich in sheep. In short, with these very people they tell that Mercury, having by chance been delighted with the softness of a ram he stroked, flayed the little ewe, and, while he tries it, and — as the pliancy of the material suggested — draws out the thread by a continuing pull, wove it, after the manner of the net he had before joined to strips of linden-bark. But you preferred to assign all the dispensing of wool-work and the construction of looms to Minerva, though with Arachne the workshop was more diligent. Then the material: nor do I speak of the Milesian and Selgic and Altine sheep, or what Tarentum or Baetica is famed for, with nature for the colourer, but because even shrubs clothe us, and the grassy threads of flax, after their greenness, grow snowy in the washing; nor was it enough to plant and to sow the tunic, unless it had also befallen to fish for clothing. For from the sea too come fleeces, where the more elegant shells grow hairy with a mossy wooliness. Furthermore, it does not escape notice that the silkworm — it is a kind of little worm — by liquefying through the air spreads out a web fitter than the horoscopes of spiders, then devours it, presently to render it again unspoiled. Accordingly, if you kill it, you will wind off now living threads. So great a furnishing of materials the devices of the clothing-craft followed up — first for covering man, where necessity went before, then for adorning him too, nay, for puffing him up, where ambition succeeded — to promulgate the various forms of garments. Of which one part is inhabited by particular nations, common to none of the rest; another part is for all alike, useful to all — as this cloak, even if rather Greek, yet in tongue it is now with Latium. With its name the dress came in. And indeed that very Cato, who would have the Greeks reckoned beyond the city, an old man already learned in their letters and tongue — the same Cato, with shoulder bared in time for his jurisprudence, no less favoured the Greeks in the fashion of the cloak.

What now, if Roman citizenship is the salvation of all, yet not very honourably are you Greeks? Or, if it is not so, whence among the nations, in the better-trained provinces — which nature has rather adapted to wrestling with the field — come the pursuits of the palaestra, ill growing old and labouring in vain, and the muddy anointing and the dusty rolling and the dry stuffing? whence, among some Numidians, even with their horses long-maned, the barber close to the skin, and the crown of the head alone exempt from the knife? whence, among the shaggy and the hairy, the resin so rapacious from the armpit, the tweezers so thievish from the chin? It is a portent that these things should be done without a cloak. The whole of this business belongs to Asia. What have you, Libya and Europe, to do with the niceties of the wrestling-school, which you know not how to clothe? For in truth what kind of thing is it, to be depilated Greek-fashion rather than wrapped about? To transfer one's fashion is then at last near to fault, if not custom but nature be changed. It makes a great difference between the honour of the age and religion. Let custom give faith to the age, nature to God. Nature, then, the Larissaean hero shook, in changing himself into a maiden — he who was reared on the marrows of wild beasts (whence too the conferring of his name, since his lips had been void of the taste of the breast), he who, under the rough rustic and forest-dweller and monster as his trainer, was schooled in a rocky school. If he, while a boy, endures his mother's anxiety; though now a stripling, though now having played the man secretly for someone, he yet endures to let down the woman's robe, to dress his hair, to fashion his skin, to consult the mirror, to soothe his neck, his ear too effeminately pierced; which that round-shielded one keeps for him at Sigeum. Plainly, afterward he is a soldier; for necessity restored his sex. The battle had sounded, nor were the arms far off. The very iron, he says, draws the man on. But if, after the incentive too, he had persevered as a girl, he might even have married. Behold, then, a change. A twofold monster indeed — from a man a woman, presently from a woman a man — when neither ought the truth to have been denied nor the falsehood confessed. Each fashion of changing is evil, the one against nature, the other against safety. Yet more basely did lust transfigure a man by adornment than any motherly fear, although he is adored by you who ought to make you blush — that wearer of club and arrows and skin, who balanced the whole lot of his epithet against a woman's adornment. So much was permitted to the secret Lydian woman, that Hercules was prostituted in Omphale, and Omphale in Hercules. Where was Diomedes and his bloody stalls? where Busiris and his sacrificial altars? where Geryon, thrice one in one? His club still preferred to reek of their brains, when it was offended with unguents. The old blood of the Hydra and the Centaurs in the arrows was now shut out by the pumice of the dart, luxury insulting, that after the monsters transfixed they might perhaps stitch a garland. Not even the shoulders of a sober woman, or of some virago, could have entered beneath the spoils of so great a beast, unless long softened and stripped of vigour and perfumed away — which with Omphale I suppose was done by balsam or fenugreek-oil; I believe too the mane suffered the comb — lest the lion-like callosity should chafe the unnerved neck. The yawning mouth stuffed with hair, the back-teeth shadowed among the front-locks, the whole insult of the face would have bellowed, if it could. Nemea certainly, if there is any genius of the place, groaned; for then it looked about itself and saw that it had lost its lion. What sort of Hercules that was in Omphale's silk, Omphale, designated as Hercules's harlot, has already described. But he too, who before had come to the Tirynthian — the boxer Cleomachus, after at Olympia, with an incredibility of change, he had melted from male, cut within the skin and beyond, now to be crowned among the Novian Fullers, and deservedly commemorated by the mime-writer Lentulus in his Catinensians — surely, just as he occupied the tracks of the boxing-thongs with bracelets, so too he thrust out the coarse weave of the wrestler's mantle with some fine-spun dinner-suit. Of Physcon and Sardanapalus one must keep silence; who, were they not signal for their lusts, no one would otherwise know to have been kings. But one must keep silence, lest those people too should mutter something about certain of your own Caesars, equally shameful — lest perchance it should be entrusted to a dog-like constancy to designate as more impure than Physcon and softer than Sardanapalus a certain Caesar, and indeed an under-Nero. No less heated is the force of empty glory too, when garments are to be changed, even with the man kept safe. Heat is every passion; but when it is fanned into affectation, it is now an ardour from the conflagration of glory. You have, then, from this kindling, that great king seething, less only by his glory. He had conquered the Median race, and was conquered by Median dress. Having put off the triumphal coat of mail, he sank down into captive trousers; his breast, sculptured with the seals of the scales, he laid bare by covering it with a transparent texture, still panting from the work of war, and — that he might be softer — with silk fanning it, he quenched it. The Macedonian, swelling in mind, was not satisfied, unless a more inflated dress too had pleased him; except that even the philosophers themselves, I think, affect something of this kind. For I hear of one who philosophized even in purple. If a philosopher in purple, why not also in a sandal? To be shod, after the Tyrian fashion, with nothing but gold is by no means Greek. He will say, But another walked both clothed in silk and brazen-soled. Worthily indeed, that, in his bacchanalian garments, something should ring — he walked with a cymbal. But if even then, in those places, Diogenes from his tub had barked, not with mud-fouled feet, as the couches of Plato know, but he would have carried the whole Empedocles, mud and all, into the shrines of Cloacina — Empedocles, who in his madness had declared himself a heaven-dweller, that as a god he might first salute his sisters, then men. Such fashions, then, as transfer a man from nature and modesty, deserve to be fixed with the eye and pointed out with the finger and handed over by a nod. Plainly, if anyone in the Menandrian flow draws a delicate garment along the ground, let him hear of his own that which the comic poet says, What a chlamys does that madman waste? But indeed, this long while now, the censorious frown of intentness having been scattered, how much for marking down does the indiscriminate mixing offer — freedmen among the knights, the branded among the liberal, the surrendered among the freeborn, rustics among the city-folk, buffoons among the forensic, civilians among the military: the corpse-bearer, the pander, the trainer of gladiators are clothed along with you. Turn now to the women too. You have to behold what Caecina Severus gravely impressed upon the senate — matrons in public without the stole. In short, by the decrees of Lentulus the augur, for her who had thus discharged herself, the penalty was as for fornication; since indeed certain women had sedulously disused the marks and guardians of dignity in dress, as impediments to the carrying-on of harlotry. But now, pandering against their own selves, that they may the more plainly be approached, they have forsworn both the stole and the linen wrapper and the little sandal and the wig — nay, even the very litters and chairs, in which, even in public, they used to be kept domestically and secretly. But one puts out his own lights, another kindles those not his own. Look at the she-wolves, the market-stalls of the people's lusts; the very harlots too; and if it is better to draw the eyes away from such shameful sights of a chastity slain in public, look nonetheless, even from on high — you will now see them matrons. And when the priestess of the latrines fans her silk, and consoles a neck filthier than the place with necklaces, and with armlets — which even matrons themselves should rashly have usurped from the gifts of brave men — inserts hands conscious of all things shameful, and draws upon her impure leg a pure or reddish shoe, why do you not look at these, or likewise at those fashions which falsely pretend that religion stands by their newness? — when, for the sake of an all-white attire and the mark of the fillet and the privilege of the cap, women are initiated to Ceres; when, for the sake of the opposite affection, of dark dress and a gloomy fleece upon the head, minds are put to flight into Bellona's; when the ambition of a broader purple and the over-spreading of a Galatian red commends Saturn? When this very cloak, more peevishly arranged, and sandals Greek-fashion, flatter Aesculapius — how much the more then would you arraign that cloak, and press it with your eyes, as guilty, even if now of a simple and unaffected, yet still a superstition? But indeed, when this cloak first clothes that wisdom which renounces the most vain superstitions, then most surely is the cloak, above all spoils and robes, an august garment, and, above all peaked caps and headdresses, a priestly elevation. Lower your eyes, I urge; revere a dress that is the renouncer, for the time being, of one error of yours.

Yet, you say, thus from the toga to the cloak? Why, what if it were from the diadem and the sceptre? Did Anacharsis change otherwise, when he preferred philosophy to the kingdom of Scythia? Granted there be no signs of one who has passed over to the better, yet this dress has something it may do. First even as to the simple management of it: it costs no tedium. So far so that there is no need of an artificer to form the wrinkles from the beginning the day before, and thence to bring them down more elegantly, and to assign the whole figment of the gathered boss to keeping forceps; then at dawn, the tunic first being caught up by a girdle — which one had done better to have woven more moderate — the boss being again inspected, and whatever has strayed reformed, to let down indeed a part from the left, but to draw back the circuit of it, from which the fold is born, the panels now failing, from the shoulders, and, the right hand being excluded, to heap it yet upon the left, with another like panel devoted to the back, and thus to clothe a man with a burden. In short, I will question your own conscience: what you first feel yourself in the toga — clothed, or loaded? whether you have a garment, or carry one? If you deny it, I will follow you home; I will see what you hasten to, straight from the threshold. Surely the laying-aside of no other garment gives such cause for thanksgiving as that of the toga. Of shoes we say nothing — the proper torment of the toga, the most unclean protection of the feet, nay, a false one too. For whom would it not be more advantageous, in cold and heat, to be stiff bare-footed than fettered-footed in a shoe? A great defence for walking the Venetian shoemakers' shops have provided — effeminate boots. But for the cloak nothing is readier, even if it be double, as that of Crates. Nowhere is mere expense imposed in the clothing; since the whole working of it is to cover loosely. That is possible by a single throwing-round, in no way, for my part, inhuman; thus it covers all the parts of a man at once. Veiling the shoulder, it either exposes or includes; for the rest, it clings to the shoulder, props nothing round about, binds nothing round about, labours nothing for the faithfulness of panels, easily governs itself, easily refits itself; even when it is laid aside, it is consigned to no cross of torment for the morrow. If there is any under-tunic beneath, the torment of the belt is wanting; if any shoeing is put on, it is most clean work, or rather the feet are bare, certainly more manly than in shoes. These things in the meantime on behalf of the cloak, in so far as you have arraigned it by name. But now in truth it challenges you also concerning its business. I, it says, owe nothing to the forum, nothing to the campus, nothing to the senate-house; I keep watch for no office, forestall no rostra, attend upon no praetoria; I do not nose the conduits, do not adore the lattices, do not pound the benches, do not throw the laws into confusion, do not bark out causes, do not judge, do not soldier, do not reign; I have withdrawn from the people. My one business is with myself; except that I care for nothing other than not to care. A better life you would enjoy more in withdrawal than in public view. But you will defame it as slothful. Forsooth, one must live for one's country and the empire and the commonwealth. That was the opinion of old. No one is born for another, who is to die for himself. Certainly when it comes to the Epicuruses and the Zenos, you call wise the whole mastership of quiet, who have consecrated it under the name of the highest and only pleasure. Yet I too shall be permitted, after a fashion, to do public good. I am wont, from any margin or altar, to declare medicines for morals, which will confer good healths upon public affairs and cities and empires more happily than your labours. Indeed, if I proceed to keen contest with you, more harm has been done to the commonwealth by togas than by cuirasses. But I am added to no vices, spare no lethargies, no scab. I drive the cautery into the ambition by which Marcus Tullius bought an orb of citron-wood for five hundred thousand sesterces, by which Asinius Gallus pays twice as much for a table of the same Mauritanian wood. Ah, at what great resources have they valued wooden veinings! likewise that by which Sulla works platters of a hundred pounds' weight! I fear, to be sure, that this balance is small, when Drusillanus — a slave indeed of Claudius — builds a five-hundred-pound dessert-tray, perhaps necessary for the tables above-written, for which, if a workshop was constructed, a dining-room too was due. I plunge likewise the scalpel into that bitterness by which Vedius Pollio threw slaves to be attacked by lampreys. With a new cruelty, forsooth, delighted in the earthly beast, both toothless and clawless and hornless; from fishes it pleased him to make wild beasts — to be cooked, of course, at once, that in their bowels he too might taste something from the bodies of his own slaves. I will cut off the gullet by which Hortensius the orator was first able to kill a peacock for food's sake, by which Aufidius Lurco first vitiated bodies by stuffing and, by forced foods, advanced them to an adulterated flavour, by which Asinius Celer brought down a relish of one mullet for six thousand sesterces, by which Aesopus the actor confiscated in a single dish, costing a hundred thousand, birds of the same preciousness — all such as are songful and talkative — by which his son, after such a tidbit, was able to hunger after something yet more costly. For he drank down pearls, precious by their very name, lest, I believe, he should have dined more meanly than his father. I say nothing of the Neros and the Apiciuses and the Rufuses. I will give a cathartic to the impurity of Scaurus and the gaming of Curius and the wine-bibbing of Antonius. And remember that these, for the time, were of the toga'd among many; such as among the cloak are not easily found. These purulences of the city, who shall draw them out and suppurate them, if not the cloaked discourse?

By discourse, it says, you have persuaded me, with the wisest medicine. But even if eloquence rest — whether withdrawn by speechlessness or held back by modesty (for philosophy is content even with a tongueless life) — the very dress speaks. So in fine a philosopher is heard, while he is seen. By my mere meeting, I make vices blush. Who, when he sees his own rival, does not endure it? Who can bear with his eyes him whom he cannot bear with his mind? Great is the benefit of the cloak, under the very thought of which depraved morals blush. Let philosophy now look to what good it does; for it is not alone with me. I have other arts too, useful in public. From my store are clothed both the first informer of letters and the first untier of the voice and the first sand-reckoner of numbers, and the grammarian and the rhetor and the sophist and the physician and the poet, and he who strikes the music, and he who conjectures from the stars, and he who watches the flight of birds. All the liberality of studies is covered by my four corners. Plainly, after the Roman knights. But the prize-fighters too and all the ignominy of gladiators are produced toga'd. This, no doubt, will be the indignity — From the toga to the cloak. But these things the cloak says. But I now confer upon it the fellowship even of a divine sect and discipline. Rejoice, O cloak, and exult! A better philosophy has now deigned to honour you, from the time you began to clothe a Christian.