Chapter 7
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nature. We call Him, for instance, God of gods, we assume that He is benevolent, and we invoke Him as Judge.
Perhaps you have some doubt as to whether we should allow nature to be our guide in the enjoyment of God's creatures? To be sure, there is a danger that we be led astray in the direction in which God's rival has corrupted, along with man himself, the whole of creation which had been made over to man for certain services. Hence it is that the Apostle says that 'creation was made subject to vanity, but not by its own will,'4 first being subverted by vain, then by vile, wicked and ungodly use. Take, for instance, the pleasures derived from the spectacles. The creature is dishonored by those who have a natural feeling that all the components that make up the spectacles come from God, but lack the knowledge to understand that all these things have been changed by the Devil. But on this subject, I have written fully in Greek, for the benefit of our lovers of the shows.5
Chapter 7 (1) Let those advocates of crowns, then, acknowledge in the meantime the authority of nature, as men who are heirs of our common wisdom. Let them also do this as a testimony to their own religion, as intimate friends and worshipers of the God of nature,1 and let them thus, as it were, super4 Rom. 8.20.
5 Tertullian wrote with equal facility in Greek and Latin. Of his treatise on Spectacles, to which he refers here, he made a Greek and Latin edition. The former has been lost. In Ch. 2 of the treatise
Tertullian refutes the objection that everything used in the spectacles comes from God and hence is good. People who make this objection disregard the fact that Satan corrupted, along with man, the whole material world.
1 Cf. Spectacles 2.5, where Tertullian says that, while the heathen know God only by the law of nature and from afar, the Christians know Him by right of friendship and from intimate association.
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abundantly recognize the other reasons which forbid us especially to wear crowns on the head, and indeed, crowns of every sort. (2) For, I see myself compelled to turn from the teaching of nature, which we share with mankind in general, to the specific Christian teachings which alone must now be defended in relation to all the other kinds of crowns which seem to be intended for other uses, since they are made of different materials. The crowns (for instance, this laurel crown of the soldiers) are not made of flowers, the use of which nature has designated, and one might think they do not come under the ban of Christian religion, since they have escaped any objection of nature.
I realize that I must deal with this matter with the greatest care and in detail, from its beginnings, through the successive stages of its growth, down to its present condition. (3) For this purpose I shall have to draw on pagan literature; pro fane things should be established from their own documents.
What little I know [of pagan literature] will, I imagine, be sufficient.
If there ever was such a person as Pandora whom Hesiod2 tells us was the first woman, she was the first one who ever wore a crown. She received it from the Graces, at the time
2 The story of Pandora, told by Hesiod in Works and Days 50-105, is a part of the Prometheus myth. The creation of Pandora was con ceived by Zeus to wreak his vengeance upon Prometheus, the champion and benefactor of mankind. A number of gods contributed to the making of the first woman (69-82) : Hephaestus formed her out of wet clay; Athena breathed life into her and dressed her; the Charites (Graces) and Peitho (Persuasion) adorned her with jewelry; the Horae (Hours) crowned her with flowers, and Hermes instructed her in all manner of guile and deceit. Thus equipped. Pandora was sent to Prometheus' slow-witted brother, Epimetheus, who received her, though he had been cautioned by his brother against accepting any gift from Zeus. Pandora opened the famous box, containing all sorts of evils, and diseases. They escaped, plaguing men ever since; only Hope was left in the box.
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when all the gods bestowed gifts on her, and that is why she is called Pandora. Moses, who was a prophetic rather than a poetic shepherd, tells us that Eve was the first woman and that she girt her loins with leaves rather than her temples with flowers.3 Pandora, then, never existed. So we have to blush for the fictitious account of the origin of the crown, and no less, as it will soon appear, for the true stories about it.
(4) We know for certain that the inventors or propag ators of the custom were figures of doubtful character.
Pherecydes4 relates that Saturn was the first to be crowned.
Diodorus tells us that Jupiter was thus honored by the rest of of the gods after his victory over the Titans. To Priapus the same author assigns fillets, and to Ariadne a garland of gold and Indian jewels. This garland was made by Vulcan and given her by Bacchus, and afterwards it became a constel lation. Callimachus5 placed a vine-branch on the head of 3 Cf. Gen. 3.7.
4 Pherecydes is not the direct source of Tertullian, but Diodorus'
Bibliotheca, whence, according to the immediately following state ment, he also took the stories of the crowning of Jupiter, Priapus, and Ariadne (cf. Bibl., Fragments of Book 6.4). The Ariadne story is recounted by a number of ancient authors (for instance: Aratus,
Phaenomena 71-73; Eratosthenis Catasterismorum Reliquiae nr. 5; Diodorus, Bibl. 4.61.5; Ovid, Fasti 3.459-516; Metamorphoses 8.176182) . Ariadne, forsaken by Theseus on the lonely island of Dia
(Naxos) , was rescued by Bacchus (Dionysus) and made his bride.
Venus and the Hours gave her a wedding crown of gold and Indian gems, wrought by Hephaestus (Vulcan). After her death the crown was placed in the sky, where the gems were turned to stars, forming the constellation of the Northern Crown, still sometimes called
'Ariadne's Crown.'
5 Again, the Alexandrian poet Callimachus is hardly the direct source of Tertullian; he probably took this information from Claudius
Saturninus, a second-century writer, whose Crowns he praises (Ch.
7.6-7) as an exhaustive source on the subject of crowns, dealing with 'their origins, causes, varieties and the ceremonies pertaining to them.' Tertullian quotes Claudius thrice more in this treatise (10.9;
12.1; 13.8) . Concerning Claudius Saturninus, see W. S. Teuffel, W.
Kroll and F. Skutsch, Geschichte der romischen Literatur, 6th ed., 3 (Leipzig and Berlin) 85.
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Juno. So, too, at Argos, her statue, crowned with a vine-sprig, with a lion's skin placed beneath her feet, exhibits the step mother exulting over the spoils won from her two step-sons.6
Hercules is sometimes portrayed with a crown of poplar leaves,7 again with wild olive leaves8 or with parsley.9 (5) You have the tragedy of Cerberus;10 you have Pindar,11 and Callimachus as well who tells us that Apollo put on a crown of laurel as a suppliant, after he had killed the serpent at Delphi.12 For, among the ancients, suppliants always wore crowns.13 Harpocration argues that Bacchus—Osiris to the Egyptians—crowned himself purposely with ivy because it is
6 The two stepsons of Juno (Hera) are Bacchus (Dionysus) and Her cules (Heracles), whom Zeus begot from Semele and Alcmene respectively. Angry because of the love affairs of her husband, Hera did everything in her power to destroy these two sons of Zeus, who had been born out of wedlock. Vine-sprig and lion's skin—'the spoils won from her two stepsons'—are the symbols of Bacchus and Hercules respectively.
7 Cf. Ovid, Heroides 9.64.
8 Cf. Pausanias, Descriptio Graeciae 5.7.7.
9 Cf. Plutarch, Quaestiones convivalium 5.3.3.
10 The text of this passage is corrupted. Tertullian may have had in mind the Heracles of Euripides or Seneca's Hercules Furens. The main outline of the story is the same in both plays. The opening scene of Euripides' tragedy shows Amphitryon, Heracles' reputed father, Megara, the hero's wife, and his children, taking refuge at the altar of Zeus. While Heracles is absent to undertake the latest and greatest of his labors, namely, to go down to the nether regions and bring Cerberus back with him, a certain Lycus has usurped the royal power of Thebes, and now intends to take advantage of the hero's absence in order to kill his family. As suppliants, Amphitryon,
Megara, and the children wear wreaths on their heads. When Heracles appears to rescue his family, he immediately tells them to cast from their heads 'these chaplets of death' (line 562; cf. Seneca,
Hercules Furens 626-28). He then slays Lycus, but, visited with a dread madness, he also slays his wife and children.
11 Cf., for instance, Olympian Odes 3.1 Iff.; 4.10-12; 11.11-15; 13.24ff.; Nemean Odes 1.16-18.
12 Cf. Aetia, frg. 88 Pfeiffer (364 Schneider) ; Aelianus, Varia Historia 3.1.
13 The source material on this ancient custom has been collected by J.
Kochling, De coronarum apud antiquos vi atque usu (Religionsgeschichtliche Versuche und Vorarbeiten 14.2; Giessen 1914) 16-18.
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the function of ivy to clear the head after drinking.14 But also in other passages Bacchus is considered as the originator of the crown—that is, of the laurel crown15 which he wore on the occasion of his triumphal return from India.16 Even the man on the street acknowledges this, since he calls the festal days dedicated to him 'The Great Crown.' (6) If you open the books of Leo the Egyptian you will find that Isis was the first who discovered and wore on her head ears of corn, though they rather pertain to the belly.17 If you want further
14 Tertullian refers, perhaps, to the lexicographer Valerius Harpocration of Alexandria. According to Pliny (Naturalis historia 24.47.75) ivy not only deranges the mind, but also clears the head. Ovid (Fasti
3.767-770) says that ivy was 'most dear' to Bacchus (Dionysus) be cause, when his stepmother Hera (Juno) sought to destroy her husband's bastard child, 'the nymphs of Nysa screened the cradle with ivy leaves.' In the Attic township of Acharnae the god was worshiped under the title of Ivy Dionysus (Pausanias, Descriptio
Graeciae 1.31.6).
15 This agrees with a statement in Pliny's Naturalis historia (16.4.9) in so far as Bacchus is said to have been the first to set a crown on his head. But, according to Pliny, it was ivy (not laurel) with which the god wreathed himself.
16 Again, according to Pliny (ibid. 16.62), it was wreaths of ivy (not laurel) which, 'in imitation of Father Liber' (Bacchus), Alexander's victorious army wore on their return from the Indian campaign.
There existed a fairly early saga according to which Dionysus pene trated far into the interior of Asia. Euripides alludes to these feats in his Bacchae (13ff.) . After the real conquests of Alexander, Diony sus' fabled exploits were extended, and he was represented as having reached India. That the laurel, too, was of some significance in the cult of Dionysus may be seen from the fact that in his temple at Phigalia in Arcadia the lower part of his image was hidden in laurel leaves and ivy (Pausanias, Descriptio Graeciae 8.39.6). Laurel and ivy also are the attributes of the god in the 'Homeric' Hymn to Dionysus (line 9).
17 Leo, an Egyptian priest, is also mentioned by St. Augustine, City of God 8.27: 'Consider, for example, Isis, the wife of Osiris, the Egyptian goddess . . . While offering a sacrifice to her forebears, she discovered a field of barley and carried some of the ears to the king, her husband, and to his councilor. Mercury [the Egyptian Thoth], and so she has come to be identified with Ceres. Now, anyone who wants to find out how many and monstrous were their wickednesses, as re ported by poets and the mystic writings of the Egyptians, can get an
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information, look up Claudius Saturninus. On all matters, including this subject, you will find him an excellent com mentator. (7) Now, he has a book, entitled On Crowns, which treats so completely of their origins, causes, varieties and ceremonies pertaining to them that you will see that there is not one beautiful flower, not one luxuriant leaf, no sod or vine-shoot that has not been consecrated to the head of some one or other.
All this makes it sufficiently clear to us how repugnant this custom of wearing a crown on the head should be to Christians. It was first invented and afterwards dedicated to the honor of those the world.calls 'gods.' (8) Now, if the Devil, who was a liar from the beginning even in this matter,18 produced the phantom of godhead, there is no doubt that he had very wisely also produced those who could be his agents in pretending to divinity. What, then, should be the opinion of men dedicated to the true God, of a thing introduced by the minions of Satan and from the beginning attached to their service and which even then was begun as worship of idols, by idols that were still alive? Not, of course, that the idols really were anything,19 but because whatever men offer to idols pertains to demons. (9) In fact, if the things that other men offer to idols pertain to demons, how much more what idols offered to themselves while they were still alive! The very demons undoubtedly made provision idea from the letter which Alexander wrote to his mother, Olympia, describing the facts as revealed to him by the priest Leo' (cf. ibid.
8.5; 12.11). Leo has remained a somewhat enigmatic figure (cf. W.
Otto, Priester und Tempel im hellenistischen Aegypten 2 [Leipzig' and Berlin 1908] 217 n. 2) . However this may be, Leo is hardly the direct source of Tertullian, but Claudius Saturninus (see above, Ch.
7 n. 5), to whose Crowns he refers his readers for further information in the following sentence. There he found whatever earlier writers had said on the subject. Tertullian applies the same technique, common among ancient authors, in his Spectacles.
18 Cf. John 8.44.
19 Cf. 1 Cor. 10.19.