This file contains the pre-publication version of the forthcoming

chapter:

Sizing up the Philosopher’s Cloak:

Christian Verbal and Visual Representations of the Tribōn

published in:

Dressing Judeans and Christians in Antiquity

ed. Kristi Upson-Saia, Carly Daniel-Hughes, Alicia J. Batten

Ashgate
Appearing in August 2014

http://www.ashgate.com/isbn/9781472422767
Dressing Judeans and Christians
in Antiquity

Kristi Upson-Saia
Occidental College, USA

Carly Daniel-Hughes
Concordia University, Canada

Alicia J. Batten
Conrad Grebel University College at the University of Waterloo, Canada
 Chapter 9
Sizing up the Philosopher’s Cloak:
Christian Verbal and Visual
Representations of the Tribōn
Arthur P. Urbano

In his work On the Pallium, the third-century North African Christian Tertullian
posed a question to his toga-clad audience: “How do you feel in a toga: dressed or
oppressed? Is it like wearing clothes or bearing them?”1 In defense of his decision
to doff the toga and don the pallium, Tertullian contrasted two commonly worn
male garments. The toga was the emblematic Roman garb, the formal public
attire of the citizen. The pallium, on the other hand, was associated with careers
in education and oratory, posts often held by non-citizen Greeks. The toga was
oblong and meticulously draped in a nexus of folds, almost ceremoniously,
with the help of a slave. The pallium, by contrast, was rectangular and lighter; it
simply wrapped around the waist and draped over the left shoulder. Originating
in the Greek world, and called a himation, it was ordinary male clothing. When
it became “worn out” (from the Greek: τρίβω) through exposure to the elements
and constant wear, the Greeks also called it a tribōn.2 Tertullian’s declaration that
“there is nothing so convenient as the pallium,” spoke not only to the garment’s
practicality and comfort when compared to the toga, but also to the political
and social meanings interwoven into the two garments.3

1
  This paper is the product of sabbatical research generously funded by the Shohet
Scholars Program of the International Catacomb Society. An earlier version was presented at
the 2012 Annual Meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature. Thanks are owed to all who
commented on this piece, in particular the editors of this volume.
Tertullian, On the Pallium 5.2.1 (Marie Turcan, ed., Tertullien: Le manteau, Sources
chrétienne 513 [Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 2007], 196; trans. Vincent Hunink, De pallio: A
Commentary [Amsterdam: J.C. Gieben, 2005], 57).
2
 I will use the terms pallium and tribōn interchangeably in this paper.
3
 Tertullian, On the Pallium 5.3.1 (SC 513, 198; trans. Hunink, De pallio, 57).
176 Dressing Judeans and Christians in Antiquity

As philosophers and orators were men of words, meticulous about public

image, they often spoke and wrote about their dress. Benefactors and patrons
also commissioned images in their honor—statues and portraits in paint
and mosaic—that carefully depicted the folds and wear of their garments.
These representations glorified these professions and enshrined the memory
of their subjects among a community of intellectual authorities. Tertullian’s
public declaration of his preference for the pallium over the toga engaged and
challenged these meanings through a “tailoring rhetoric” that brought the
garment into the service of Christianity. As an increasing number of learned
men like Tertullian received baptism in the second through fifth centuries
CE, some of them adopted or continued to wear the pallium. In so doing, they
engaged their polytheist rivals and colleagues in a competition of doctrines and
self-representation using words, images, and clothing.
In this chapter, I will examine Christian attitudes towards the tribōn,
focusing on verbal and visual representations of the garment. In his classic
work, Système de la mode (The Fashion System), the French theorist Roland
Barthes presented a semiotic analysis of dress and fashion in which garments
could be interpreted as “signifiers” in a “vestimentary code.” This code,
conditioned by social, cultural, and historical assumptions, provides a profuse,
though not limitless, array of significations that can be ascribed to garments
and their wearers.4 These significations can be delimited to varying degrees by
transforming the real garment into what Barthes called “image-clothing” or
“written-clothing.” “Image-clothing” is the visual representation of a garment,
as in a drawing or photograph. It makes the garment an object of observation
and displays it alongside other visual cues. Though “image-clothing” can
direct the significations of a garment, it is not definitive and always leaves the
possibilities of meaning open. On the other hand, verbalizations of garments,
or “written-clothing,” use language to privilege a set of meanings suggested by
the vestimentary code. Written descriptions, such as those found in fashion
magazines, infuse garments with definitive value and set them in relation
to particular circumstances, occupations, moods, and ideologies in order to
create fashion.5
While recent studies on early Christianity and dress have focused largely on
women’s dress and ascetic garb, this study of the tribōn calls important attention
to a simple article of male clothing that punctuated cultural, social, and religious

 Roland Barthes, The Fashion System, trans. Matthew Ward and Richard Howard
4

(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990), 98.

5
 Barthes, Fashion System, 13.
 Christian Verbal and Visual Representations of the Tribōn 177

developments in Greek and Roman antiquity.6 This chapter is not a history of

the tribōn, but a discussion of verbal and iconic representations of the garment
primarily in Christian contexts. Through a sample of literary and iconographic
evidence, I argue that transmutations of the garment into words and images
reflected and contributed to its perception. This had concrete implications in the
contexts of philosophical competition where the tribōn functioned as a contested
and negotiable object of cultural capital. The sizing-up of the philosopher’s cloak
by Christians spanned a range of positive and negative attitudes and reflected
the complexities of participating in ancient educational contexts.

Weaving a Garment of Words

In antiquity, philosophers were visibly identifiable by the clothing they wore.

The sophist and philosopher Dio Chrysostom (ca 45 BCE–15 CE) made the
visual recognition of the philosopher the subject of one of his public orations.
When people saw “someone un-tunicked in a tribōn letting his hair grow
long on head and chin,” they knew that he was a philosopher.7 As simple as it
was, the rectangular cloak with worn edges was the most identifying feature
of a philosopher’s appearance. The combination of shabby cloak, beard,
and unkempt hair was made “fashionable” through the iconic authority of
Socrates (Plate 9.1). In the Symposium, Alcibiades recounts how he tried to
seduce Socrates by creeping beneath his “worn-out cloak.” Plato links Socrates’
disciplined resistance to the young man’s advances to his perseverance as a
soldier on the frontlines at Potidaea where he withstood the severe cold wearing

6
 Some recent examples include Rebecca Krawiec, “‘Garments of Salvation’:
Representations of Monastic Clothing in Late Antiquity,” Journal of Early Christian
Studies 17, no. 1 (2009): 125–50; Carly Daniel-Hughes, The Salvation of the Flesh in
Tertullian of Carthage: Dressing for the Resurrection (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011);
and Kristi Upson-Saia, Early Christian Dress: Gender, Virtue, and Authority (New York:
Routledge, 2011). Paul Zanker’s study of intellectual portraiture (The Mask of Socrates:
The Image of the Intellectual in Antiquity, trans. Alan Shapiro [Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1995]) provides a thorough formal and social analysis, mainly in non-
Christian contexts. On the role of clothing, appearance, and gestures in the performance of
masculinity in intellectual contexts, see Timothy Whitmarsh, The Second Sophistic (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2005), 23–30.
7
  Dio Chrysostom, Or. 72.2 (Text and translation are from H. Lamar Crosby,
Dio Chrysostom, 5 vols, Loeb Classical Library [Cambridge: Harvard University
Press, 1951], 5: 176; trans. Crosby, 5: 177, with modification).
178 Dressing Judeans and Christians in Antiquity

nothing but his tribōn.8 Here the simple, austere clothing became a sign of a self-
controlled (σωφροσύνη), masculine nature. By contrast, critics of Socrates and
his philosophical outlook used his clothing and appearance as an occasion for
disparagement. For example, the fourth-century Christian Clementine Homilies
represents Socrates’ tribōn as the location of illicit pleasure with Alcibiades.9
Socrates’ clothing was not unusual. Athenian men generally wore a himation
over a tunic. Instead, how he wore it—threadbare around the borders, dirty, and
torso exposed—enacted the values and way of life that became foundational for
later Greek philosophy and made Socrates “the model of the ideal philosopher.”10
His style of dress, therefore, became the “uniform” of the intellectual, the
“philosopher’s look” (φιλόσοφου σχῆμα).11 Portraits of a tribōn-clad Socrates
could serve as “a kind of extension of Socratic discourse into another medium.”12
Literature and portraiture attest that the look was fairly consistent down to
late antiquity.13 It became a signifier of professional identity, which, like later
monastic garb, signified “an accepted set of values that carried with it an expected
set of behaviors.”14 Academics, Stoics, and Epicureans all wore the tribōn.15 The
few surviving late antique portraits of Neopythagorean and Neoplatonist
philosophers represent them in more elegant tribōnes with long, flowing hair, a
style that “reflected their mainly aristocratic” and urban contexts.16 Despite the
affiliation of the tribōn with all of the major philosophical schools, the surviving

 Plato, Symposium 219b–220b (Plato, The Symposium, ed. Robert G. Bury, 2nd
8

ed. [Cambridge: Heffer, 1932], 156–60).

9
 See Clementine Homilies 5.18.
10
  For a concise synopsis of Socratic philosophy, see Pierre Hadot, What is Ancient
Philosophy? (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2002), 36–8.
11
  For the phrase, see Herodian, History of the Empire 1.9.3 (Herodian, History of the
Empire, ed. C.R.Whittaker, 2 vols, Loeb Classical Library [Cambridge: Harvard University
Press, 1969–70], 1: 54).
12
 Zanker, Mask of Socrates, 32–9 and 57–62.
13
  For an example from the late fourth century, see Augustine, On Order 2.2.4.
14
  Krawiec, “Garments of Salvation,” 131. See also Alison Lurie, The Language of
Clothes (New York: Random House, 1981), 18–19.
15
  Diogenes Laertius (Lives of Eminent Philosophers 7.26) reports that Zeno, the
founder of Stoicism and former Cynic, wore a “light” tribōn characteristic of his perseverance
and frugality. On Stoic and Epicurean portraiture, see Zanker, Mask of Socrates, 97–102
and 113–29, and Bernard Frischer, The Sculpted Word: Epicureanism and Philosophical
Recruitment in Ancient Greece (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982). A mosaic from
Pompeii (Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli (inv. 124545)), commonly identified as
Plato’s Academy, shows a gathering of philosophers dressed in tribōnes of different colors,
some with tunics, others without.
16
 Zanker, Mask of Socrates, 307–20.
 Christian Verbal and Visual Representations of the Tribōn 179

evidence most often associates the garment with the Cynics.17 The cloak of
Diogenes, founder of the Cynic way of life and student of Socrates’ student
Antisthenes, became emblematic of the Cynic lifestyle of self-mastery, physical
endurance, and rejection of social conventions.18 The bawdy and aggressive
behavior of Cynics dominated the popular perception of the garment to such
a degree that other intellectuals complained of receiving insult and abuse in
public, mistaken for Cynics by their dress.19
In addition to philosophers, other professionals—such as grammarians,
doctors, and poets—also donned the robe.20 Moreover, it became a cultural
asset and even a requirement for those seeking to climb social and political
ladders in late antiquity. It communicated one’s formation in paideia, a habitus
that translated into cultural, moral, and political power. Funerary portraits from
the third century often represent male elites dressed in the pallium, a significant
iconographic shift in the art of ancient sarcophagi that filtered the memory of
the dead through a visual code that evoked the practices and values of paideia.21
This move to display “Greek education” in self-representation became a “crucial
element” in the public self-definition of men of power.22 Some were touting actual
educational training, while others sought to create an “impression of learning”
through a display of cultural signs that could yield posthumous prestige.23
As those educated in Greek paideia joined Christian communities, they
brought with them their erudition and its vestimentary markers. Christians who
retained or adopted the pallium displayed their intellectual credentials as they
positioned themselves in the philosophical field. Teachers, priests, and monks,
they enacted a visual engagement and presented a visual challenge to other
intellectuals by proclaiming a “barbarian” philosophy that was highly critical
of the dominant modes of Greek thought.24 As we will see below, the garment
also proved to be controversial among Christians as the value and place of Greek

17
 On Cynic portraiture, see Zanker, Mask of Socrates, 129–33.
18
 See Diogenes Laertius, Lives 6.13; 6.22; 6.66.
19
 See Dio Chrysostom, Or. 72.9–10.
20
 See Tertullian, On the Pallium, 6.2.2.
21
 Zanker, Mask of Socrates, 270.
22
 Zanker, Mask of Socrates, 226.
23
 Zanker, Mask of Socrates, 206.
24
 See, for example, the Neoplatonist Porphyry’s critique of the Christian Origen in
Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History 6.19.7.
180 Dressing Judeans and Christians in Antiquity

literary and philosophical education were debated, especially in the wake of the
last polytheist emperor, Julian (361–63).25
If we are to understand the physical and vestimentary components of the
philosopher’s appearance as a sartorial utterance, it was indeed an equivocal one.
The tribōn was open to a multiplicity of associations, both positive and negative,
and subject to a range of significations. Contingencies such as historical period,
location, class, and gender would determine how someone intended to display
the garment and how observers perceived it.26 Unlike the world of modern
fashion, however, where “fashion” is periodically established by the arbitrary
judgment of a cultural elite, this ancient fashion was established through durable
dress practices that developed as part of the symbolic economy of an ancient
cultural and intellectual elite.27 Subject to a vestimentary code, it came to be
associated with other practices, behaviors, and personalities. A man in a tribōn
dealt in words, ideas, and books, and gathered with other men who did the same.
His simple garment connoted a simple, even a poor lifestyle, shunning economic
gain and frivolous delights. Poverty was a hallmark of the lived philosophy of
Socrates, as well as of the Cynics.28 If his mantle was tattered, he was likely an
itinerant Cynic. If not, he might be an orator, or an adherent of another school
of philosophy. Perception of the garment depended on one’s relation to the fields
of intellectual activity. Another philosopher would see a potential debating
partner. Those outside the intellectual class might feel threatened, “suspecting
that [philosophers] scorn them … holding that the unenlightened are all pitiable
creatures.”29 Or they might approach a philosopher, precisely because of his dress,
to ask a question or some advice.30 But one also had to beware of the “sartorial
lie,” charlatans hiding behind the philosopher’s dress, who took advantage of the
naive and turned people away from genuine philosophy.31

  For further discussion see Niels Hyldahl, Philosophie und Christentum: eine
25

Interpretation der Einleitung zum Dialog Justins (Kopenhagen: Munksgaard, 1966), 102–12;
and Arthur P. Urbano, “‘Dressing a Christian’: The Philosopher’s Mantle as Signifier of Moral
and Pedagogical Authority,” Studia Patristica 62.10 (2013): 213–29.
26
 Lurie, Language of Clothes, 12–14, and Barthes, Fashion System, 98.
27
 Barthes, Fashion System, 254–5. On the notion of “symbolic economy” and practice
theory in the context of cultural competition, see Pierre Bourdieu, The Field of Cultural
Production: Essays on Art and Literature (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993),
Chapter 2.
28
 See, for example, Plato, Apology 23b, and Ps.-Crates, Ep. 7.
29
  Dio Chrysostom, Or. 72.7 (LCL 180; trans. Crosby, 181).
30
  Dio Chrysostom, Or. 72.11. Cf. Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho 1.
31
 Lurie, Language of Clothes, 24. See Dio Chrysostom, Or. 32.9–12; 72.13–15; and
Lucian, The Death of Peregrinus 11–15.
 Christian Verbal and Visual Representations of the Tribōn 181

In the highly competitive arenas of professional philosophy and oratory,

the tribōn was a site of contention in the crafting of intellectual identity and
authority. Transforming their material garment into words, philosophers and
orators vied to establish its “proper custody,” defining who properly possessed
and wore it. Their professional skills, as well as their masculinity, fell constantly
under the scrutiny of their peers.32 Engaging in a spoken and written rhetoric
of dress, intellectuals fused the material stuff of clothing with language, shifting
the garment from the functional to the “spectacle.”33 This verbalization of
clothing “arrests the level of reading,” delimiting the garment’s signification by
privileging one set of meanings.34 The production of literary (and oratorical)
dress assigned signification to the garment, interpreting it in a way that images
could not, and guiding readers and listeners to associate it with the privileged
status of intellectuals. This rhetorical system, or “poetics of clothing,” evoked
nature, geography, historical figures, art, mythology, and divinity so as to infuse
it with dignity and sublimity.35
The tribōn became the object of this tailoring rhetoric in the early empire
as Cynics and Stoics disputed fundamental questions and their shared Socratic
heritage.36 Cynic oral and written traditions aimed to verbalize the garment as
emblematic of their ideology. The anecdotal sayings, or chreiai, about the acts,
sayings, and clothing of Diogenes, became enshrined in the rhetorical education
of young men.37 Diogenes’ tribōn and other accessories were written into Cynic
origins as it was said that he was the first “to fold his cloak because he was
obliged to sleep in it as well.”38 The Cynic Epistles developed the long-standing
chreiai tradition and contributed to an idealization of the Cynic way through
letters attributed to its iconic founders.39 The letters are replete with a poetic

32
  Maud Gleason, Making Men: Sophists and Self-Presentation in Ancient Rome
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995), xxii.
33
 Barthes, Fashion System, 235–9.
34
 Barthes, Fashion System, 13.
35
 Barthes, Fashion System, 239–41.
36
 On Stoicism, see Hadot, What is Ancient Philosophy?, 126–39.
37
 On the chreiai tradition, see R. Bracht Branham, “Defacing the Currency: Diogenes’
Rhetoric and the Invention of Cynicism,” in The Cynics: The Cynic Movement in Antiquity
and Its Legacy, eds R. Bracht Branham and Marie-Odile Goulet-Cazé (Berkeley: University
of California Press, 2000), 81–104; and Derek Krueger, “The Bawdy and Society: The
Shamelessness of Diogenes in Roman Imperial Culture,” in The Cynics, 222–39.
38
  Diogenes Laertius, Lives 6.22 (Diogenes Laertius, Vitae philosophorum, ed. Miroslav
Marcovich, 3 vols. Stuttgart: Teubner, 1999, 1: 389; trans. R.D. Hicks, Diogenes Laertius:
Lives of Eminent Philosophers, 2 vols [London: W. Heinemann, 1925], 2: 25).
39
 See M. Billerbeck, “The Ideal Cynic from Epictetus to Julian,” in The Cynics, 209–11.
182 Dressing Judeans and Christians in Antiquity

rhetoric that raises the tribōn and its accessories—staff and traveling bag—to
sublimity, transforming them into signifiers of an exalted philosophy: they are
“the weapons of the gods.”40 Similarly, when the tribōn enters as verbal clothing
into the discourse of the Stoic Epictetus, it is configured as part of the wardrobe
of the self-sufficient, but decorous, wise man. With rival Cynics in mind, he
laments those who rely on appearance to make them philosophers. Epictetus
declares the tribōn ought to be a kind of visual extension of the well-ordered soul,
not a mere status sign.41 He contrasts the material “stuff ” of appearance with the
spiritual “stuff ” that really makes a philosopher.42 The dress, however, need not
be abandoned by the authentic philosopher. Rather, the Cynic appearance and
lifestyle partake in a “great matter”—a divine mission to educate humanity.43

Christians, Philosophy, and Dress

Though the evidence for tribōn-wearing Christians is not overwhelming,

Christians nevertheless helped shape its vestimentary code through participation
in the arenas of paideia. Christians were educated alongside other Romans
and Greeks through the fourth century. Some of the most prominent figures
of late antique Christianity—Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nazianzus, John
Chrysostom—studied in major centers such as Antioch and Athens with
“pagan” teachers of rhetoric and philosophy. The philosopher’s look was familiar
to them. They imbibed significations of the tribōn through the texts they
studied, as well as through the men they encountered. The chreiai, for example,
remained a fundamental component of education that assured Diogenes’
cloak a place in the literary and moral training of young men.44 Honorific
statues of philosophers and orators punctuated the urban landscape. Teachers,
colleagues, and fellow students wore the garment, and some Christian students
likely wore it. Though it is unclear how a philosopher obtained his mantle, late
antique sources indicate it was ritually bestowed upon students of oratory at

40
 Ps.-Crates, Ep. 16.4–6 (Abraham J. Malherbe, ed., The Cynic Epistles: A Study
Edition, Society of Biblical Literature Sources for Biblical Study 12. [Missoula: Scholars
Press, 1977], 66).
41
 Epictetus, Discourses 4.8.15–16.
42
 Epictetus, Discourses 4.8.12.
43
 Epictetus, Discourses 3.22.23.
44
  Derek Krueger, “Diogenes the Cynic Among the Fourth Century Fathers,” Vigiliae
Christianae 47, no. 1 (March 1993): 31–3.
 Christian Verbal and Visual Representations of the Tribōn 183

Athens.45 It advertised one’s educational achievement and served as “a mark of

accomplishment and standing in Athens, and a means of differentiating status
among the student population.”46 Thus the significations of the tribōn were
communicated and received through texts, images, and the educational and
social practices of schools, producing and reproducing the vestimentary code of
the male intellectual class. In this section, I identify three trends in the Christian
verbalization of the philosopher’s mantle: first, instances rooted in the general
cultural vestimentary code that recognized the garment’s moral and pedagogical
significations; second, instances in the defense of the intellectual legitimacy of
Christianity; and third, instances of disparagement intended to create a divide
between Christians and non-Christians.
Educated Christians were not left unaffected by the intellectual and social
formation of schools. Even when they assailed the philosophical positions of
their “pagan” rivals, they still could impart the meanings and values attached
to the philosopher’s dress conveyed to them in their educational training.47
Diogenes and his cloak could be simultaneously retained and “revalued” as
illustrating “appropriate Christian behavior”—such as self-mastery through
ascetic practice.48 Never shy to flaunt his literary learning, Jerome (ca 347–420)
evoked the “palliolum” of Diogenes in his defense of Christian monasticism. In
the treatise Against Jovinian, he cited Diogenes as a model of virtue and “self-
restraint” (continentia), a type of the Christian monk.49 Christian verbalizations
45
 See Olympiodorus, fragment 28 (= Photius, Cod. 80). On education in late antique
Athens, see Edward Watts, City and School in Late Antique Athens and Alexandria (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 2006).
46
  Dallas DeForest, “Between Mysteries and Factions: Initiation Rituals, Student
Groups, and Violence in the Schools of Late Antique Athens,” Journal of Late Antiquity 4,
no. 2 (2011): 315–42.
47
 In Dialogue with Trypho 4–5, for example, Justin Martyr takes issue with the
Platonists’ teaching on the nature of the soul and its transmigration. Also writing in
the second century, Clement of Alexandria provides extensive citations of the classical
Greek poets and philosophers. Eusebius of Caesarea’s encyclopedic Preparation for the
Gospel, written in the fourth century, aims to expose the contradictions within the Greek
philosophical tradition so as to demonstrate its insufficient grasp of truth. Books 14 and 15,
in particular, target the philosophers’ views on first principles, providence, and the origin and
structure of the universe, among other topics. Theodoret of Cyrrhus’ Cure for Greek Maladies
and Augustine’s City of God represent fifth-century examples of Christian apologetic works
that directly engage and critique Greek literary and philosophical texts from Homer to the
third-century Neoplatonist Porphyry.
48
  Krueger, “Diogenes the Cynic,” 36.
49
 Jerome, Against Jovinian 2.14 (PL 23.305). See David G. Hunter, Marriage,
Celibacy, and Heresy in Ancient Christianity: The Jovinianist Controversy (New York: Oxford
184 Dressing Judeans and Christians in Antiquity

of the tribōn replicated the established associations from the philosophical

field, while claiming it as proper dress for another “philosophy.” Thus verbal
representations of the garment could speak in favor of Christians as legitimate
participants in arenas of philosophical activity.
One of the earliest examples of the tribōn appearing as written-clothing in a
Christian context is found in Justin Martyr’s Dialogue with Trypho (ca 160). Here
the philosopher’s mantle, worn by a Christian, functions as a sign of pedagogical
and moral authority. The Dialogue’s opening scene finds the unnamed narrator
(presumably Justin) strolling beneath the colonnade of a gymnasium, centers of
education in antiquity. Thus the garment is situated in relation to other familiar
signs of paideia.50 The Judean Trypho, attracted by the sight of the garment, greets
Justin as “philosopher!” Not knowing what school Justin represented, Trypho
explains, “I was taught by Corinthus, the Socratic philosopher, never to slight or
ignore those who wrap themselves in this garment (σχῆμα).”51 Justin emphasizes
the visual attraction of the cloak as the narrative provides instruction on how to
engage a person dressed in it: he is “to be greeted respectfully” and approached in
the hope of deriving “some benefit.”52 The reference to “Corinthus the Socratic,”
otherwise unknown, appeals to the long history of the garment and its origins
with Socrates, who figures prominently in the writings of Justin.53 Perhaps this
implies that Christians properly received the teaching and dress of this “proto-
Christian.” Relying on the established symbolic authority of the garment, Justin
seeks to make it a suitable signifier of the “only true and useful philosophy” that
he professes: Christianity.
The Latin writer Tertullian also touted his garment as a fashion suitable for
the “better philosophy.” On the Pallium is an unusual and extraordinary text
that explores the origins and meanings of clothing.54 Like Justin’s Dialogue,
Tertullian’s verbalization of the pallium reinforces the existing vestimentary code

University Press, 2007), 232. See also Jerome, Life of Paul 12–13 (PL 23.26), and Life of
Hilarion 44 (PL 23.52) and 46 (PL 23.52), for the terms pallium and palliolum used of
monastic garb.
50
  Cf. Xenophon, Memoribilia 1.1.10. For the setting, see J.C.M. van Winden, An
Early Christian Philosopher: Justin Martyr’s Dialogue with Trypho, Chapters One to Nine
(Leiden: Brill, 1971), 20–21.
51
  Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho 1.2 (PG 6.473; trans. Thomas B. Falls, St. Justin
Martyr: Dialogue with Trypho, ed. Michael Slusser, Fathers of the Church 3 [Washington,
DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2003], 3, with modification).
52
  Cf. Dio Chrysostom, Or. 72.11.
53
 See Justin Martyr, 1 Apology 5 and 46.
54
 See the commentary by Vincent Hunink (De pallio) and the studies by T. Corey
Brennan (“Tertullian’s De Pallio and Roman Dress in North Africa,” in Roman Dress and the
 Christian Verbal and Visual Representations of the Tribōn 185

and introduces a new context for its “proper custody.” Relating a pre-Roman
history of the garment, Tertullian suggests that those who customarily wore the
pallium—that is, those dedicated to study—engaged in activities that conflicted
with the public duties introduced by Roman social and political life. Thus the
pallium was a sign of withdrawal from these duties. Tertullian has the garment
“speak” for itself: “I owe nothing to the forum, nothing to the campus, nothing
to the curia … A better life can be enjoyed in seclusion than out in the open.”55
The “voice” of the pallium is authoritative and speaks from its “nature.” It rejects
these arenas of Roman life and asserts its proper place in the arenas of intellect
and soul. However, Tertullian does not deny a public role to the pallium-wearer.
His clothing is a visual sign of moral authority: “A philosopher is heard when he
is seen. Just by showing up I make vices feel embarrassed!”56 Tertullian’s closing
line declares the proper custody of the pallium to be with the professor of the
“divine sect and discipline”: “A better philosophy has deigned you worthy, from
the moment that it is the Christian whom you started to dress.”57
While the evidence for tribōn-wearing Christians in the third and fourth
centuries is minimal, the garment remained a potent image in Christian
rhetoric.58 Almost two centuries after Tertullian’s wardrobe apology, the
Athenian-educated bishop Gregory of Nazianzus would enlist the philosopher’s
cloak to defend the philosophical enterprise, but this time against Christian
anti-intellectualism. The garment was not Gregory’s own, but that of the
Alexandrian priest Maximus, an adherent of the Cynic way of life, a thoroughly
educated philosopher, and zealous defender of Nicene orthodoxy.59 Maximus
was an eccentric figure, who wore long hair, cosmetics, and the emblematic
tribōn.60 In 380 Gregory delivered two orations in honor of Maximus in
Constantinople, transmitted under the title “In Praise of Hero the Philosopher.”
Gregory’s verbalization of Maximus’ “novel dress” reveals the ambiguities and

Fabrics of Roman Culture, eds Jonathan Edmondson and Alison Keith [Toronto: University
of Toronto Press, 2008]) and Daniel-Hughes, Salvation of the Flesh, Chapter 2.
55
 Tertullian, On the Pallium 5.4.2, 3 (SC 513, 202; 206; trans. Hunink, 59,
with modification).
56
 Tertullian, On the Pallium 6.1.3 (SC 513, 218; trans. Hunink, 63, with modification).
Cf. Dio Chrysostom, Or. 72.7–8.
57
 Tertullian, On the Pallium 6.2.5 (SC 513, 224; trans. Hunink, 63).
58
 Origen of Alexandria wrote that his student Heraclas continued to dress as a
philosopher while a Christian priest. See Eusebius of Caesarea, Ecclesiastical History 6.19.14.
59
  For discussion of Maximus in relation to Cynicism, see Krueger, “Diogenes the
Cynic,” 40–42.
60
  Martha Vinson, St. Gregory of Nazianzus: Select Orations, Fathers of the Church
(Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2003), 157n1.
186 Dressing Judeans and Christians in Antiquity

tensions in his defense of paideia. On the one hand, it belongs to those Greeks
who “make a pretense of solemnity with their robes (τρίβωνι) and beards.”61
Thus, Gregory can call the garment “foreign” to Christians. Yet, with Maximus
present, Gregory attempts to verbalize his embodied robe into a proper fashion,
not to be adopted by other Christians, but to function iconically. He tailors
the cloak of Socrates and Diogenes into an instrument of Christian pedagogy,
not cutting it off completely from the vestimentary code of philosophical
significations, but situating its moral and pedagogical authority within the
context of Christian intellectual life. Gregory harnessed Maximus’ robe into
an apology for the harmony, and necessary union, of rational philosophy with
revealed faith, not just for Greeks, but also for Christians. Maximus’ appearance
gave him leverage with philosophers. He “takes up a middle position between
their empty boasting and our wisdom and assumes their garb and manner while
adopting our truth and sublimity.”62 But, perhaps more importantly, his dress
also confirmed the legitimacy of philosophical inquiry for Christians, contrary
to “the studied simplicity of some in our own camp.”63 Therefore as Gregory
defended philosophy and Nicene orthodoxy on the eve of the council of
Constantinople, Maximus visually represented their marriage.

A Garment Unfit for Christians

Verbalization of a garment could also work towards making it unfashionable.

The voices disparaging the tribōn became louder and more frequent in the fourth
century, as Christian intellectuals aimed to distinguish themselves from their
non-Christian colleagues and rivals both in doctrine and self-representation.
Responding to philosophical and political justifications for the persecution of
Christians, Lactantius wrote his Divine Institutes (ca 305–10) expounding the
principles of his faith and making a case for religious toleration.64 He attacks
a self-professed “high priest of philosophy”—“such a corrupt person that as
a teacher of continence he burned no less with avarice than with inordinate

61
 Gregory of Nazianzus, Or. 25.5 (PG 35.1204; trans. Vinson, St. Gregory of
Nazianzus, 161).
62
 Gregory of Nazianzus, Or. 25.5 (PG 35.1204; trans. Vinson, St. Gregory of
Nazianzus, 161, with modification).
63
 Gregory of Nazianzus, Or. 25.6 (PG 35.1205; trans. Vinson, St. Gregory of
Nazianzus, 161).
64
 See Elizabeth DePalma Digeser, The Making of a Christian Empire: Lactantius and
Rome (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2000).
 Christian Verbal and Visual Representations of the Tribōn 187

desires.”65 His clothing betrayed his pretension to truth: “He used to cover
his faults by his beard (capillis) and the pallium and, which is the greatest veil,
by his wealth.”66 Lactantius contends that the philosopher’s hair and mantle
acted to veil, rather than reveal, the true disposition of his soul. Echoing the
trope of the charlatan’s lying exterior, familiar in Dio Chrysostom and Lucian,
Lactantius’ attack styles the pallium as a deceptive “cloak” specifically worn by
Greek philosophers.
Not surprisingly, after the reign of the emperor Julian (361–63), Christian
attitudes towards the philosopher’s robe became increasingly critical.
Remembered as the “apostate” because of his renunciation of Christianity and
embrace of polytheism, Julian promoted policies intended to revitalize Roman
religion and to reform paideia with a view to excluding Christians from teaching.
He surrounded himself with philosophers. As the fifth-century Christian
historian Socrates later wrote, men wearing tribōnes and long beards flocked
to the imperial court to enjoy Julian’s patronage, “more conspicuous for their
costume than their erudition.”67 With Julian’s sudden death in battle, a sudden
change in fashion occurred: “the tribōn-wearers (τριβωνοφόροι) put aside their
tribōnes and they changed into the common dress (σχῆμα).”68 Although Julian
did not order violent actions against Christians, his policies were traumatic for
Christians and provoked reflection on the place of traditional education.69 This
period also saw the rhetoric of clothing used by some to deconstruct the symbolic
power and authority of Greek pedagogues, their history, and their schools.
In contrast to the nuanced approach of Gregory, John Chrysostom
(347–407), monk, priest, and bishop of Constantinople, stands out as the most
vocal critic of fourth-century philosophic fashion. A native of Antioch, John
received an education in literature, philosophy, and rhetoric. A student of the
famous polytheist orator Libanius, he rejected a public career in oratory and
turned to asceticism and theological studies.70 Putting his rhetorical training to
the service of homiletics, John received the moniker “Golden Mouth” because

65
 Lactantius, Divine Institutes 5.2.3 (PL 6.553; trans. Digeser, The Making of a
Christian Empire, 94).
66
  Digeser makes a strong case that Lactantius is referring to Porphyry, see pp. 93–107.
67
 Socrates Scholasticus, Ecclesiastical History 3.1 (PG 67.380; trans. Schaff, NPNF,
ser. 2, 2: 78).
68
 Socrates Scholasticus, Ecclesiastical History 3.24 (PG 67.449; my translation)
69
 Susanna Elm, Sons of Hellenism, Fathers of the Church: Emperor Julian, Gregory of
Nazianzus, and the Vision of Rome (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012), 139–43.
70
 Socrates, Ecclesiastical History 6.3.
188 Dressing Judeans and Christians in Antiquity

of his excellent oratorical skills.71 He also became a harsh critic of his former
teachers.72 Exhibiting a “disenchantment” with “traditional Hellenic culture
and education,” Chrysostom encouraged parents to educate their children
in alternative ways, whether at home or by sending them to monasteries.73
He told them not to make their sons orators, but philosophers, taught not
by “men worthless as they are, and dogs” who impress many by “wearing the
threadbare cloak (τρίβωνα) and letting their hair grow” but by one who is a “true
philosopher,” that is, a monk.74 Plato, the “chief ” of the philosophers, falls under
John’s condemnation for the “state of gross darkness” and “corruption” before the
coming of Christ. Singling out the philosopher’s views on women’s participation
in wrestling and war, he condemns “those who had a long beard and threw their
tribōn over themselves” as “subverters of all decency,” who do “the work of the
devil.”75 Rooted in Second Sophistic tropes attacking the pseudo-philosopher,
John’s rhetoric unraveled the clothing of professional orators and philosophers,
and, in its place, exalted the garment of a different class of shabby-robed men
who inhabited caves and cells.
Verbalizations of the philosopher’s cloak could serve to reify and reinforce
distinctions between Christian and non-Christian intellectuals. For some in the
western empire the pallium no longer signified erudition and moral authority
as it had for Tertullian. Instead it became a sign of an “other” who was Greek,
“pagan,” and unbelieving. Reacting to the attempt by Maximus the Cynic to
supplant Gregory of Nazianzus as bishop of Constantinople, Pope Damasus’
condemnation accentuated his clothing. By clothing himself in the “garb of
philosophers” (habitum philosophorum), Maximus attempted to dress faith in
a philosophy that was “hostile to faith” and not suited (non convenire) for any
Christian to wear.76 Moreover, Damasus associated the habitum philosophorum
with the habitum idoli, the robe worn by the statues of divinities, regarding it
as an infectious and idolatrous threat to Christianity.77 Interestingly, when
 On John Chrysostom’s youth and education, see J.N.D. Kelly, Golden Mouth:
71

The Story of John Chrysostom, Ascetic, Preacher, Bishop (Ithaca: Cornell University
Press, 1995), 4–8.
72
 See Raffaella Cribiore, The School of Libanius in Late Antique Antioch (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 2007), 140.
73
 Kelly, Golden Mouth, 51–4 and 85–7.
74
  John Chrysostom, Homilies on Ephesians 21.3 (PG 62.153; trans. Schaff, NPNF,
ser. 1, 13: 155).
75
  John Chrysostom, Homilies on Titus 5.4 (PG 62.694; trans. Schaff, NPNF,
ser. 1, 13: 539, with modification).
76
 See Damasus, Ep. 5.1–2 (PL 13: 365).
77
  Cf. Dio Chrysostom, Or. 72.5.
 Christian Verbal and Visual Representations of the Tribōn 189

Gregory Nazianzen wrote condemning Maximus’ actions, he ridiculed his hair

and cosmetics, passing over his tribōn in silence.78 Perhaps Gregory still regarded
the cloak as a signifier of philosophic virtue, even if its wearer betrayed it.
Claudianus Mamertus (ca 425–74) furnishes an example of a Christian
monk who continued to embrace philosophical learning while insisting on a
visual distinction from non-Christian peers. In a letter mourning Claudianus’
death, his close friend Sidonius Apollinaris, bishop of Clermont and literary man
who “placed himself firmly in the classical tradition,” 79 explains how the “man
of wisdom, prudence, and learning” differentiated himself from his polytheist
colleagues:80 “It was only by his faith, and by his adoption of ordinary dress,
that he dissociated himself from his friends of the Platonic school (a collegio …
conplatonicorum); for he never let his hair and beard grow long and would make
fun of the pallium and staff, sometimes with much bitterness.”81 Claudianus
never abandoned his intellectual pursuits and continued to defend Neoplatonic
positions, but in fifth-century Gaul the Christian intellectual was to make a clear
visual distinction between himself and contemporary philosophers, abandoning
the iconic look of Socrates. Sidonius’ emphasis on Claudianus’ short hair, short
beard (or no beard), and “ordinary dress” acknowledges the social distance and
class distinction communicated by the apparently simple and austere robe of
the philosophers. By the fifth century the garment that gave visibility to the
philosophy of Justin and Tertullian became a fashion unfit for Christians.

Mantles in Marble and Mosaic

If the practices and skills of paideia served as a “distinguishing mark of the

diffused governing class of the empire,” the public display of learning in material
self-representations was its visual marker.82 Visual representations of intellectuals
punctuated the many landscapes of the late Roman world. Tribōn-wearing
men, eternally occupied by the labor of thoughts and words, adorned political,
domestic, funerary, educational, and liturgical settings. In these representations,

78
 See Gregory of Nazianzus, Concerning His Own Life, 750–773 (PG 37: 1081–2).
79
  Jill Harries, Sidonius Apollinaris and the Fall of Rome, AD 407–485 (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1994), 2.
80
 Harries, Sidonius Apollinaris, 107.
81
 Sidonius Apollinaris, Ep. 4.11.1 (PL 58.515; trans. O.M. Dalton, The Letters of
Sidonius, 2 vols [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1915], 2: 21).
82
 Peter Brown, Power and Persuasion in Late Antiquity: Towards a Christian Empire
(Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1992), 36.
190 Dressing Judeans and Christians in Antiquity

the material tribōn was carefully crafted into an impliable, static garment
presented to viewers in a spatial relation of “forms, lines, surfaces and colors.”83
Instances of “image-clothing” differ from verbal-clothing in that they do not
restrict perception to the same degree. If verbal-clothing “arrests” meaning,
image-clothing “freezes an endless number of possibilities” and “provokes
a fascination” with the garment as an object of observation.84 Yet unlike new
fashions, the tribōn had a long, culturally authorized history, more potent than
the ambiguous iconic fashion of Barthes’ analysis. Thus “readers” of these visual
garments had more to inform their perceptions.
Late antique statues, busts, and funerary portraits commonly depicted
subjects with the physical and vestimentary attributes of philosophers and
orators. Just about all classes of Roman society commissioned portraits of
themselves in the style of the intellectual.85 While for some these were displays
of intellectual achievement, for others they might have represented no more
than a fascination with the fashion of elite culture. Late second- and early third-
century sarcophagi, mainly from Rome, display the deceased surrounded by
the signs of paideia.86 With pallia, beards, and scrolls of stone, they are engaged
in reading or declaiming, often surrounded by Muses or philosophers. The
sarcophagus of Lucius Pullius Peregrinus represents a Roman centurion dressed
in a pallium with tunic, seated and reading from a scroll.87 He and his wife are
flanked by six tribōn-wearing male figures with torso exposed, long hair and
beards, and engaged in discussion or contemplation. This representation of
Peregrinus saturates him in the contemplative activity taking place around him.
However, his distinctly Roman hairstyle, shaved face, and tunic simultaneously
distance him from the “Greek” figures that surround him. While invoking the

 Barthes, Fashion System, 3.

83

 Barthes, Fashion System, 13.

84

85
 The Historia Augusta (Tacitus 16) notes that the emperor Tacitus (274–75) was
depicted in a palace fresco in a number of different garments, including the philosopher’s
robe. The third-century Mausoleum of the Aurelii in Rome contains fresco portraits of
philosophers, some of whom may be portraits of the freed slaves buried there. For the range
of interpretations, see Agnese Pergola, “Il quadrante delle interpretazioni,” in L’ipogeo degli
Aureli in Viale Manzoni: restauri, valorizzazione e aggiornamenti interpretative, ed. Fabrizio
Bisconti (Città del Vaticano: Pontificia Commissione di Archeologia Sacra, 2011), 81–124.
86
 See Björn Christian Ewald, Der Philosoph als Leitbild: Ikonographische
Untersuchungen an römischen Sarkophagreliefs (Mainz: Von Zabern, 1999) for a typological
analysis. The classic study remains Henri Irénée Marrou, Mousikos Anēr. Étude sur les scènes
de la vie intellectuelle figurant sur les monuments funéraires romains (Grenoble: Didier &
Richard, 1938).
87
 See Ewald, Der Philosoph als Leitbild, 152 [C1] and Zanker, Mask of Socrates, 272–5.
 Christian Verbal and Visual Representations of the Tribōn 191

cultural superiority of Greeks, the piece also evokes the colonization of Greece
and its culture. The stylized Greek philosophers here serve as cultural capital
and ornamentation.88
In Christian contexts, visual representations of the tribōn are found most
commonly in funerary and liturgical contexts. These instances of iconic-
clothing served to provoke a fascination with a panoply of positive associations
and to produce a sapiential saturation. Iconically robed Christians signified
approbation of the practices taking place in their presence. Ironically, while the
philosopher’s look became unwelcome dress for flesh and blood Christians, its
presence expanded in Christian art, dressing the marble and mosaic portraits of
apostles, martyrs, and Christ himself.
In the third century, a Christian visual vocabulary began to emerge from the
semantics of Roman art. It developed a distinct, but related, order and system
of values encoded in its images.89 The intellectual in his tribōn was a shared sign,
and Christian art contributed to its coding through iconic representations both
in familiar and new ways. The third-century Santa Maria Antiqua sarcophagus is
one of the earliest extant Christian examples (Plate 9.2).90 A seated male figure,
dressed in a tribōn, reads from a scroll, but instead of Muses and philosophers, he
is flanked by images of the prophet Jonah and the baptism of Jesus. Clearly, the
commissioner of this piece invested in the cultural and social prestige of being
memorialized as a literate intellectual, “in-vesting” his memory in a sign, or type
that already belonged to a visual vocabulary of self-representation.91 The biblical
scenes provide the hermeneutic for understanding this tribōn in the arena of
contested fashion, a bold move on the cusp of the Great Persecution (303–13).
This tribōn, like Justin’s, attributes its wisdom to the prophets of Israel and the
acts of Christ, not, like Peregrinus’, to the Greeks.
Post-Constantinian Christian sarcophagi continued to include portraits of
the deceased marked by the insignia of learning. Produced in workshops across
the Roman world, their similarities attest to how a “shared paideia bridged the

88
 Ewald, Der Philosoph als Leitbild, 66.
89
 See Tonio Hölscher, The Language of Images in Roman Art (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2004).
90
  Friedrich Wilhelm Deichmann, Giuseppe Bovini, and Hugo Brandenburg,
Repertorium der christlich-antiken Sarkophage I. Bd., Rom und Ostia (Wiesbaden:
Steiner, 1967), 306–7.
91
 On consumer’s input to sarcophagus production, see Ben Russell, “The Roman
Sarcophagus Industry: A Reconsideration,” in Life, Death and Representation: Some
New Work on Roman Sarcophagi, eds Jas Elsner and Janet Huskinson (New York: De
Gruyter, 2010), 123, 137–8.
192 Dressing Judeans and Christians in Antiquity

distances of a vast empire.”92 Portraits in roundrels often depict husband and

wife, with the male figure (and sometimes the female figure)93 wearing a pallium,
making an oratorical gesture, and holding a scroll. The famous Junius Bassus
and Dogmatic Sarcophagi, both from late fourth-century Rome, demonstrate
how this fashion of image-clothing became woven into the fabric of Christian
art (Plate 9.3). The iconography of these pieces emphasizes the “majesty” of
Christian theology and rule, contrasting these “with the dying aspects of Roman
traditional paganism.”94 Moreover, the clothing may be informed by theological
formulations of Christ as Wisdom incarnate and the Apostles as the theological
architects of a Christian philosophical worldview.
There also seems to be an element of archaizing in Christian depictions of
the tribōn. Appeal to ancient authority, particularly in language, literature, and
customs, and the replication of these were common tropes of paideia from the
Second Sophistic to late antiquity. Archaizing aimed at “cultural purity” and
mastery of the past.95 Imitation of the archaic philosophic fashion was the way
intellectuals identified themselves with the authority of the past. Justin and
Tertullian did this, but later generations of Christians (Maximus aside) rejected
this fashion, opting for other dress. Nevertheless the figures who stood at the
origins of Christian history continued to be adorned by the tribōn in visual
depictions. The fourth-century grammarian Theodosius defined the tribōn as
the clothing of ancient teachers.96 This is precisely who Christ, the prophets,
and the apostles were. In Christian art, the garment as image-clothing suggested
a signification of a past epoch of revelation.
Christian liturgical spaces are filled with tribōn-wearers in brilliant white, and
sometimes gold, garments. Stylized in two dimensions, they bear resemblance
to sarcophagi portraits and depictions of philosophers. In the naves and apses
of basilicas and the domes of baptisteries from the fourth century on, Christ,
the incarnate Logos, and his angels and sages, dressed as philosophers, hovered
over Christian communities as they were initiated through baptism, instructed
through reading and explication of sacred texts, and fed the body of the Lord.
Gregory of Nazianzus had made the visual link between the dazzling white

 Brown, Power and Persuasion, 41.

92

  For example, the sarcophagus of Crispina in the Pio Cristiano collection of the
93

Vatican Museums (inv. 31552) represents a Christian woman reading from a codex and
flanked by biblical scenes.
94
 Robin Jensen, Understanding Early Christian Art (New York: Routledge, 2000), 98.
95
 Graham Anderson, The Second Sophistic: A Cultural Phenomenon in the Roman
Empire (New York: Routledge, 1993), 101–5 and Whitmarsh, The Second Sophistic, 42–3.
96
  Theodosius of Alexandria, Grammatica 18.5.
 Christian Verbal and Visual Representations of the Tribōn 193

garments of figures of angels and the tribōn of Maximus.97 Depictions of Christ

with long hair, scroll, and tribōn, accompanied by similarly dressed saints, was
one of the most common motifs in early apse decoration.98
The decorative program of the so-called Orthodox, or Neonian, baptistery
in Ravenna (dated to the mid fifth century) shows how image-clothing could
saturate liturgical space, creating an aura of wisdom and binding the liturgical
actors to the sages of the past.99 In the dome, the Apostles circle around an
image of the baptism of Jesus. At window level, a register of white stucco figures,
framed by columns and dressed in pallia and tunic, hold scrolls and codices,
gesturing in oratorical fashion. Above the spandrels of the lower arcades, men
dressed in mosaic pallia and posed as orators punctuate gold acanthus scrolling
(Plate 9.4). Deichmann interpreted these figures as the prophets, heralds of
the salvation history ushered in by Christ.100 The display reminds one of the
portraits of philosophers, gods, and other mythological figures that adorned
domestic spaces into late antiquity. These learned collections linked identity
formation to practice, expressing “status, education, distinguished background,
and leisured pursuits.”101 Educated men often gathered in villas for intellectual
discussion in the presence of ancient philosophers.102 Similarly, these sages of
Christian wisdom dressed in dazzling pallia participate in the “illumination” of
the newly baptized.103 Observing and frozen in acts of speaking and reading,
they attest to the working of divine grace.

97
 Gregory of Nazianzus, Or. 25.2.
98
 Jensen, Understanding Early Christian Art, 108–12. See also, Beat Brenk, The
Apse, the Image, and the Icon: An Historical Perspective of the Apse as a Space for Images
(Wiesbaden: Reichert, 2010). The early iconography of Jesus is too large a topic to treat here.
Two important studies are Thomas Mathews, The Clash of Gods: A Reinterpretation of Early
Christian Art (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993) and Robin Jensen, Face to Face:
Portraits of the Divine in Early Christianity (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2005).
99
  Deborah Mauskopf Deliyannis, Ravenna in Late Antiquity (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2010), 89.
100
  Friedrich Wilhelm Deichmann, Ravenna: Hauptstadt des spätantiken Abendlandes
Bd I, Geschichte und Monumente (Wiesbaden: Steiner, 1969), 137–41.
101
 Lea Stirling, The Learned Collector: Mythological Statuettes and Classical Taste in
Late Antique Gaul (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2005), 227.
102
 See Cicero, Brutus 24 and Lucian, Nigrinus 2.
103
  For baptism as “illumination,” see Justin Martyr, 1 Apology 61.
194 Dressing Judeans and Christians in Antiquity

Conclusion

Transforming the intellectual’s clothing into words and images belonged to

the field of cultural production in Greco-Roman antiquity. Representations of
clothing and appearance were also fundamental aspects of identity formation
and competition among intellectuals; they could affirm one’s own authority
and disparage a rival’s. The verbal and visual vestimentary representations of
Christians from the second through fifth centuries testify to the complexities of
the perception of clothing and the reception of paideia. Christians could affirm
or critique the value and prestige of the garment, while ascribing it new layers of
signification. When making the tribōn a verbal garment, Christians aligned or
distanced themselves from their polytheist peers and established the conditions
for their own relationship to the curricula and institutions of paideia. When
making the tribōn a visual garment, Christians gave expression to a cosmic
structure, rooted in a sapiential theology that encompassed and permeated the
environments of Christian ritual. These new significations became part of the
language of competition by which educated Christians struggled with outsiders
and with each other.