Chapter 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 age36    Male senescentia.  Rig. (as quoted by Oehler) seems to interpret, “which entail a feeble old age.”  Oehler himself seems to take it to mean “pursuits which are growing very old, and toiling to no purpose.” and labour in vain—and the unction with mud,37    Or, as some take it, with wax (Oehler). 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 resin38    Used as a depilatory. 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 Larissæan hero39    Achilles. 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 breast40    ᾽Αχιλλεύς:  from ἀ privative, and χεῖλος, the lip.  See Oehler.); he who had been reared by a rocky and wood-haunting and monstrous trainer41    The Centaur Chiron, namely. 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,42    Deianira, of whom he had begotten Pyrrhus (Oehler). when he consents to wear the flowing stole,43    See the note on this word in de Idol., c. xviii. 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.”44    Hom., Od., xvi. 294 (Oehler).  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,45    Jos. Mercer, quoted by Oehler, appears to take the meaning to be, “to his clandestine Lydian concubine;” but that rendering does not seem necessary. 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 heroine46    Viraginis; but perhaps =virginis.  See the Vulg. in Gen. ii. 23. 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 Tirynthian47    i.e., Hercules.—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,48    Or, “which are now attributed to Novius.”  Novius was a writer of that kind of farce called “Atellanæ fabulæ;” and one of his farces—or one attributed to him in Tertullian’s day—was called “The Fullers.” 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 Cæsars, equally lost to shame; for fear lest a mandate have been given to canine49    i.e., cynical; comp. de Pa., c. ii. ad init. constancy to point to a Cæsar impurer than Physco, softer than Sardanapalus, and indeed a second Nero.50    i.e., Domitian, called by Juv. calvum Neronem, Sat. iv. 38.

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 king51    Alexander.—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 gilded slippers52    Comp. de Idol., c. viii. med. too?  For a Tyrian53    i.e., one who affects Tyrian—dresses in Tyrian purple. to be shod in anything but gold, is by no means consonant with Greek habits.  Some one will say, “Well, but there was another54    Empedocles (Salm. in Oehler). 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 him55    I have adopted Oehler’s suggestion, and inserted these words.) with muddy feet—as the Platonic couches testify—but would have carried Empedocles down bodily to the secret recesses of the Cloacinæ;56    i.e., of Cloacina or Cluacina (="the Purifier,” a name of Venus; comp. White and Riddle), which Tertullian either purposely connects with “cloaca,” a sewer (with which, indeed, it may be really connected, as coming derivatively from the same root), and takes to mean “the nymphs of the sewers” apparently. in order that he who had madly thought himself a celestial being might, as a god, salute first his sisters,57    The nymphs above named (Oehler). 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 Cæcina Severus pressed upon the grave 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 Æsculapius,58    i.e., are worn by his votaries. 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 wisdom59    i.e., Christianity.  Cf. 1 Cor. ii. 6, 7. 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.

CAPUT IV.

Habitum transferre ita demum culpae prope est, si non consuetudo, sed natura mutetur. Sat refert inter honorem temporis et relligionem. Det consuetudo fidem tempori, natura Deo. Naturam itaque 1041A concussit Larissaeus heros in virginem mutando: ille ferarum medullis educatus, unde et nominis concilium, quandoquidem labiis vacuerat ab uberum gustu; ille apud rupicem, et sylvicolam, et monstrum eruditorem scrupea schola eruditus. Feras, si in puero matris sollicitudinem patiens, certe jam histriculus , certe jam virum alicui clanculus functus, adhuc sustinet stolam fundere, comam struere, cutem fingere, speculum consulere, collum demulcere, aurem quoque foratu effoeminatus, quod illi apud Sigaeum strongyla servat. Plane postea miles est: necessitas enim reddidit sexum. De praelio sonuerat, nec arma longe. Ipsum, inquit, ferrum virum attrahit. Caeterum si post incentivum quoque puellam perseverasset, potuit et nubere. Ecce 1041B itaque mutatio, monstrum equidem geminum, de viro foemina, mox de foemina vir, quando neque veritas negari debuisset, neque fallacia confiteri. Uterque habitus mutandi malus: alter adversus naturam, alter contra salutem. Turpius adhuc libido virum cultu transfiguravit, quam aliqua materna formido, tametsi adoratur a vobis qui potius erubescendus est, scytalosagitti pelliger ille, qui totam epitheti sui sortem cum muliebricultu compensavit. Tantum Lydiae clanculariae licuit, ut Hercules in Omphale, et Omphale in Hercule prostitueretur. Ubi Diomedes, et cruenta praesepia? ubi Busiris et bustuaria altaria? ubi Geryon ter unus? Cerebris adhuc eorum clava foetere malebat, cum unguentis offunderetur. Vetus jam Hydrae 1042A Centaurorumque sanguis in sagitis pumice speculi excludebatur, insultante luxuria, ut post monstra transfixa coronam forsitan suerent. Ne sobriae mulieris quidem aut viraginis alicujus scapulae, sub exuvias bestiae tantae introire potuissent, nisi diu mollitas, et evigoratas, et exeduratas , quod apud Omphalem balsamo aut telino spero factum. Credo et jubas pectinem passas. Ne cervicem enervem inureret sciria leonina, hiatus crinibus infarsus, genuini inter antias adumbrati . Tota oris contumelia mugiret, si posset: Nemea certe, si quis loci genius, ingemebat: tunc enim se circumspexit leonem perdidisse. Qualis ille Hercules in serico Omphales fuerit, jam Omphale in Herculis scorto designata descripsit. Sed et qui ante Tirynthium accesserat 1042B pugil Cleomachus, post Olympiae cum incredibili mutatu de masculo fluxisset, intra cutem caesus et ultra, inter fullones jam Novianos coronandus, meritoque mimographo Lentulo in Catinensibus commemoratus, utique sicut vestigia cestuum viriis occupavit, ita et endromidis solocem aliqua multicia synthesi extrusit . Physconem et Sardanapalum tacendum est, qui nisi insignes libidinum, alias reges nemo nosset. Tacendum autem, ne quid et illi de Caesaribus quibusdam vestris obmussitent, pariter propudiosis: ne caninae forte constantiae mandatum sit, impuriorem Physcone, et molliorem Sardanapalo Caesarem designare, et quidem Subneronem. Nec tepidior vis vanae quoque gloriae mutandis 1043A induviis, et jam viro salvo. Calor est omnis affectus: verum cum in affectationem flabellatur, jam de incendio gloriae ardor est. Habes igitur ex isto fomite aestuantem magnum regem, sola gloria minorem. Vicerat Medicam gentem, et victus est Medica veste. Triumphalem cataphracten amolitus, in captiva sarabara decessit: pectus squamarum signaculis disculptum, textu pellucido tegendo nudavit, et anhelum adhuc ab opere belli, ut mollius, ventilante serico extinxit. Non erat satis animi tumens Macedo, ni illum etiam vestis inflatior dejectasset. Nisi quod et philosophi puto ipsi aliquid ejusmodi affectant. Audio enim in purpura philosophatum. Si philosophus in purpura, cur non et in baxa? Tyrium calciari nisi auro, minime graecatur. 1043B Dicet , atquin alius et sericatus, et crepidam aeratus incessit? digne quidem, ut bacchantibus indumentis aliquid subtinniret, cymbalo incessit. Quod si jam tunc locorum Diogenes de dolio latraret, non caenulentis pedibus, ut rhori platonici sciunt, sed omnino totum Empedoclem in adyta cloacinarum detulisset, ut qui se coelitem delirarat, sorores prius suas, dehinc homines deus salutaret. Tales igitur habitus qui de natura et modestia transferunt, et acie figere, et digito destinare, et nutu tradere merito sit. Prorsus si quis Menandrico fluxu delicatam vestem humi protrahat, audiat penes se et comicus, qualem demens iste chlamydem disperdit? 1044A Enimvero jamdudum censoriae intentionis episcynio disperso quantum denotatui, passivitas offert libertinos in equestribus , subverbustos in liberalibus, dediticios in ingenuis, rupices in urbanis, scurras in forensibus, paganos in militaribus: vespillo, leno, lanista tecum vestiuntur. Converte et ad foeminas, habes spectare quod Caecina Severus graviter senatui impressit, matronas sine stola in publico. Denique Lentuli auguris consultis, quae ita sese exauctorasset, pro stupro erat poena: quoniam quidem indices custodesque dignitatis habitus, ut lenocinii factitandi impedimenta, sedulo quaedam desuefecerant. At nunc in semetipsas lenocinando, quo planius adeantur, et stolam, et supparum, et crepidulam, et caliendrum, ipsas quoque jam lecticas, 1044B et sellas, queis in publico quoque domestice ac secrete habebantur, ejeravere. Sed alius extinguit sua lumina, alius non sua accendit. Aspice lupas popularium libidinum nundinas, ipsas quoque fictrices, et si praestat oculos abducere ab ejusmodi propudiis occisae in publico castitatis, aspice tamen vel sublimis, jam matronas videbis. Et cum latrinarum antistes sericum ventilat, et immundiorem loco cervicem monilibus consolatur, et armillis quas ex virorum fortium donis ipsae quoque matronae temere usurpassent, omnium pudendorum conscias manus inserit, impuro cruri purum aut mulleolum inducit calceum: cur istos non spectas, vel illos 1045A item habitus qui novitati suae stare relligionem menliuntur? cum ob cultum omnia candidatum, et ob notam vittae, et privilegium galeri Cereri initiantur: cum ob diversam affectionem tenebricae vestis, et tetrici supra caput velleris, in Bellonae, mentes fugantur: cum latioris purpurae ambitio, et galatici ruboris superjectio Saturnum commendat: cum ipsum hoc pallium morosius ordinatum, et crepidae graecatum Aesculapio adulantur. Quanto tunc magis arguas illud, et urgeas oculis, etsi jam simplicis et inaffectatae, tamen superstitionis reum? Enimvero cum hanc primum sapientiam vestit, quae vanissimis superstitionibus renuit, tunc certissime pallium super omnes exuvias et peplos augusta vestis superque omnes apices et tutulos sacerdos suggestus. Deduc oculos suadeo, 1045B rexerere habitum unius interim erroris tui renuntiatorem.