COMING OF AGE AND PUTTING ON CHRIST:

THE TOGA VIRILIS CEREMONY, ITS PARAENESIS, AND

PAUL’S INTERPRETATION OF BAPTISM IN GALATIANS

by

J. ALBERT HARRILL
Boston

Abstract

This essay examines the toga virilis coming-of-age ceremony in the Roman house-
hold and argues that the gentile rite of passage is an important social context in
which to understand Paul’s interpretation of baptism, particularly of the pre-
Pauline baptismal formula of “putting on Christ” (Gal. 3:27). The moral exhor-
tation occasioned by the toga virilis warned the newly togaed youth against
succumbing to the  esh, the same fear that Paul expresses concerning the bap-
tized Galatians. This contextualization makes Paul’s paraenesis on responsible use
of freedom more intelligible than the standard history-of-religions reading. The
goal is to move the scholarship on baptism in Pauline theology beyond the lim-
ited hermeneutical framework of the “origins” of ritual language.1

The statement in Gal. 3:27 that at baptism one “puts on” (¤ndæesyai)
Christ like a garment has long been a crux interpretum.2 Scholars have
construed the early Christian dramatization of donning new clothes
variously, depending on which origin they ascribe to the language: (1)
certain aspects of the Adam legends that describe the Ž rst human
clothed in the image of God (Gen. 1:26-27) as a “garment of light”;3

1
Previous versions of this essay were presented to the Pauline Epistles Section,
Annual Meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature, Nashville, Tennessee (November
2000), and to the Association of Chicago Theological Schools (ACTS) New Testament
Discipline Group, Chicago, Illinois (December 2000), with Carolyn Osiek giving the
formal response. Thanks go to her and the participants, as well as to Charles Bobertz,
David Brakke, Fanny Dolansky, Margaret M. Mitchell, and Craig Williams for their
generous advice, criticism, and suggestions on earlier drafts. They are, of course, in
no way responsible for whatever errors and shortcomings may remain. Unless other-
wise noted, translations are from the LCL (altered when not suYciently literal for my
purposes).
2
For the pre-Pauline tradition, see D.R. MacDonald, There is No Male and Female:
The Fate of a Dominical Saying in Paul and Gnosticism (HDR 20; Philadelphia: Fortress
Press, 1987) 5-16.
3
J. Jervell, Imago Dei: Gen. 1, 26 f. im Spätjudentum, in der Gnosis und in den paulinischen
Briefen (FRLANT 76; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1960) 231-56; see W.A.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2002 Novum Testamentum XLIV, 3

Also available on line – www.brill.nl
 the TOGA VIRILIS ceremony and gal. 3:27 253

(2) lustration rites in Hellenistic mysteries during which initiates “put

on” a divine redeemer Ž gure;4 (3) the removal of vice and the “putting
on” of virtue in its place, familiar from the rhetoric of Greco-Roman
moral philosophy.5 This exclusive focus on “origins” is understandable,
given the pre-Pauline nature of the language and the in uence of the
history-of-religions approach on Pauline studies, but does not tell us
why Paul Ž nds the language rhetorically eVective in his assault against
opponents favoring circumcision. To answer this more meaningful
exegetical question, the present investigation moves decidedly in the
opposite interpretive direction. Rather than searching for origins, this
essay examines Paul’s interpretation of the prior baptismal formula
that he received from oral tradition, independent of (and beyond) its
possible causal antecedents.6 I argue that Paul turns the ritual formula
into paraenetic speech modeled after the paraenesis of the Roman toga
virilis ceremony that marks a boy’s coming of age. This thesis makes
intelligible both Paul’s exhortation of responsible use of new, adult
freedom and his theology that this freedom renders circumcision unnec-
essary for standing right before God.
To focus on Paul’s paraenetic interpretation of the baptismal for-
mula raises important exegetical questions. Why does Paul understand
baptism to bring a new familial identity and greater moral responsi-
bilities? Why does he craft his language with Greco-Roman household
imagery: being “no longer subject to a disciplinarian [paidagvgñw]”
(Gal. 3:25); leaving the time “when we were minors [n®pioi]” (4:3);7

Meeks, “The Image of the Androgyne: Some Uses of a Symbol in Earliest Christianity”
HR 13 (1974) 185-9.
4
R. Reitzenstein, Die hellenistischen Mysterienreligionen nach ihren Grundgedanken und Wirkungen
(3d ed.; Leipzig: Teubner, 1927) 42-46, 229-34, 350-1; H.D. Betz, Galatians: A Commentary
on Paul’s Letter to the Churches in Galatia (Hermeneia; Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1979)
188 n. 60; A.J.M. Wedderburn, Baptism and Resurrection: Studies in Pauline Theology against
Its Graeco-Roman Background (WUNT 44; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1987) 332-42;
S. Agersnap, Baptism and the New Life: A Study of Romans 6.1-14 (Aarhus: University Press,
1999) 102-11; note also U. Wilkens, Der Brief an die Römer (EKKNT 6.2; Zürich: Benziger,
Neukirchener, 1980) 53, 54-62.
5
See Meeks, “Image of the Androgyne,” 184.
6
For a powerful critique of the (mostly, Protestant) pursuit of origins, see J.Z. Smith,
Drudgery Divine: On the Comparison of Early Christianities and the Religions of Late Antiquity
(Chicago Studies in the History of Judaism; Jordan Lectures in Comparative Religion
14; Chicago: University Press, 1990).
7
The term n®pioi refers to children under the age of puberty, deŽ ned either med-
ically (e.g., Hippocrates, Epidemiae 6.1.4) or socially as a term connected to paÝdew (e.g.,
Polybius 4.20.8). The Latin equivalent is impubes. Roman Law technically deŽ ned minor
as a person under the age of twenty-Ž ve; B. Nicholas, An Introduction to Roman Law (3d
ed.; Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1962) 93-95.
254 j. albert harrill

and becoming legally an “heir [klhronñmow]” (4:7) who has come of

age (4:1-2)? In this household context, what does “freedom” (Gal. 5:1)
mean? How does Paul’s theology of baptism relate to his overarching
rhetorical purpose in the letter of dissuading the male Christian gen-
tiles from accepting circumcision (Gal. 5:2)? The possible allusion to
the Roman coming-of-age rite of toga virilis deserves a detailed study.
Other scholars, to be sure, have proposed the toga virilis before, but
very few and only tentatively, and never in light of Greco-Roman
moral philosophy and social history.8 Noted in some early philo-
logical commentaries,9 and abandoned all too quickly,10 the interpre-
tation fell casualty to modern theological polemics, principally the
Protestant–Catholic debate over the importance of ritual sacramen-
talism in Christian conversion and salvation.11 My aim here is to revive
this hypothesis, and to move the scholarship on baptism in Paul beyond

8
Most recently, in a paragraph by D.J. Williams, Paul’s Metaphors: Their Context and
Character (Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson, 1999) 94.
9
W.W.F. Blunt, The Epistle of Paul to the Galatians ( The Clarendon Bible; Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1925) 108; C.F. Hogg and W.E. Vine, The Epistle of Paul the Apostle
to the Galatians (London and Glasgow: Pickering & Inglis, 1923) 175; F. Rendall, The
Expositor’s Greek Testament, vol. 3, The Epistle to the Galatians (ed. W.R. Nicoll; New York
and London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1912) 174; R. Jamieson, A.R. Fausset, and
D. Brown, A Commentary, Critical and Explanatory, on the Whole Bible (1878; repr. Louisville,
Ky.: Pentecostal Publishing Company, 1925) 332; J.A. Bengel, Gnomon of the New Testament
(Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1860) 4:30; P.-A. Sardinoux, Commentaire sur l’épître de l’apôtre
Paul aux Galates (Valence: Marc Aurel Frères, 1837) 161; J.C. Wolf, Curae philologicae et
criticae, vol. 2, Curae philologicae et criticae in IV. priores S. Pauli Epistolas (Hamburg: Christian
Herold, 1737) 738-41.
10
T. George, Galatians (New American Commentary 30; Nashville, Tenn: Broadman
& Holman, 1994) 280; J. Bligh, Galatians: A Discussion of St Paul’s Epistle (Householder
Commentaries 1; London: St Paul Publications, 1969) 325; H.A.W. Meyer, Kritisch
exegetisches Handbuch über den Brief an die Galater (MeyerK 7; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck &
Ruprecht, 1870; trans. G.H. Venables as Critical and Exegetical Hand-Book to the Epistle
to the Galatians [New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1884] 156-7 n. 7); C.J. Ellicott, Commentary,
Critical and Grammatical, on St. Paul’s Epistle to the Galatians (Andover, Mass.: Warren F.
Draper, 1864) 89.
11
W.F. Flemington, The New Testament Doctrine of Baptism (London: SPCK, 1964) 79;
see also F.J. Matera, Galatians (SacPag 9; Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical Press, 1992)
145; W.A. Meeks, The First Urban Christians: The Social World of the Apostle Paul (New
Haven: Yale University Press, 1982) 140-63. The TDNT entry for ¤ndæv illustrates this
Protestant apologetic denial of any ritual in Paul: “The usage of Paul has nothing
whatever to do with the donning of the garment or mask of the god by the initiate.
The Ž gurative expressions in Dion[ysius] Hal[icarnassensis] and Lib[anius] are the near-
est to the imperative usage, though they hardly have the same content. There are no
parallels for Paul’s indicative usage. Behind this stands the eschatological conception
of Christ as the second Adam, as anima generalis” (A. Oepke, “dæv ktl.,” TDNT 2
[1964] 320).
 the TOGA VIRILIS ceremony and gal. 3:27 255

the limited hermeneutical framework of “origins.” Recent Ž ndings by

Catherine Bell and others in the emerging Ž eld of ritual studies prob-
lematize such search for singular meaning.12 Whatever its origin(s), the
call to “put on Christ” in the baptismal ritual was open to a variety
of interpretations by diVerent early Christians, and I make no claim
that the interpretation below is the only valid one. Reading Galatians
in the context of the toga virilis coming-of-age ceremony helps solve a
number of exegetical issues that should be seen as complementing other
interpretations—not least those stressing the “putting on” of the clothes
of a deity—rather than as a substitute for them.

1. The Toga Virilis: Rite of Passage, Household, and Spectacle

The toga virilis consisted of a series of progressive rituals marking a
boy’s coming of age (or “social puberty”) in the Roman household
and society, decided by the father but often celebrated between the
ages of Ž fteen and sixteen.13 The rite had a familial dedication and a
public procession to the Forum. In the familial dedication, the boy lay
aside his apotropaic amulet (bulla) and his childhood toga praetexta prior
to donning the “toga of manhood” (toga virilis), also called the “gown
of freedom” (toga libera) or the “white dress” (toga pura).14 To do this,

12
C. Bell, Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992)
esp. p. 183: “most symbolic action, even the basic symbols of a community’s ritual
life, can be very unclear to participants or interpreted by them in very dissimilar ways.”
The importance not to harmonize into a single meaning the varieties of Paul’s bap-
tismal language is recognized by Betz, Galatians, 186-7.
13
The best study is F. Dolansky, “Coming of Age in Rome: The History and Social
SigniŽ cance of Assuming the Toga Virilis” (M.A. thesis, University of Victoria, Canada,
1999), who lists primary sources in an Appendix (pp. 187-91); see also J.-P. Neraudau,
La jeunesse dans la littérature et les institutions de la Rome républicaine (Collection d’études anci-
ennes; Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1979) 147-63; H. Blümner, Die römischen Privataltertümer
(3d ed.; Handbuch der klassischen Altertums-Wissenschaft 4.2.2; München: Beck, 1911)
335-9. My use of social puberty is pointed, for there is no evidence that the Romans
understood the rite to celebrate the onset of physical puberty: the age at which boys
donned the toga was variable and seems primarily dependent upon the father’s whims
or wishes and not inspection of sexual maturity; see Dolansky, “Coming of Age,” 33-
34 ( pace A. Rousselle, Porneia: De la maîtrise du corps à la privation sensorielle, II e-IV e siècles
de l’ère chrétienne [Chemins de l’histoire; Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1983];
trans. F. Pheasant as Porneia: On Desire and the Body in Antiquity [Family, Sexuality and
Social Relations in Past Times; Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1988] 59).
14
Roman private law restricted the toga virilis to Roman citizens, but this limitation
does not mean that the ceremony was irrelevant or unknown as a conceptual category
for non-Romans: Pliny remarks that two of his attendant slaves were teenagers who
“would only have just assumed the toga [togas sumpserint] if they were citizens” (Epistulae
256 j. albert harrill

the boy stood with the family before the hearth—the center of domes-
tic worship—where often “with trembling hands” he hung his bulla
onto the lares. He had worn the necklace, made of gold (if families
could aVord it) or leather ( Juvenal, Satirae 5.165), since his dies lustri-
cus (infant name-giving ceremony on the ninth day after birth). The
bulla functioned to indicate freebirth status and to avert the Evil Eye,
an apotropaic property that his toga praetexta’s purple edging shared.15
The familial, domestic context is important to stress. The ritual ded-
ication and exchange of togas took place in the home, convened and
conducted by the father,16 with “rich pomp” before both the whole
family and the paternal gods (Statius, Silvae 5.3.118-20). 17 A procession
to the Forum (deducere in forum) followed (Seneca, Epistulae morales 4.2).
Although still technically under the potestas of the paterfamilias, the togaed
youth nonetheless now enjoyed new status as an adult, normally entered
a period of military training (tirocinium), and had relative freedom away
from the constraints of a pedagogue.18
Often brie y or in passing, primary sources refer to the toga virilis
without elaboration as one of the milestones of a man’s life (Suetonius,

2.14.6); Greeks used a variety of terms for toga virilis, including kayarŒ ¤sy®w (or sim-
ply kayar‹), lamprŒ t®benna, stol¯ tÇn teleÛvn, and any combination of Žndrikñw
or ŽndreÝow or t¡leiow and xitÅn or ßm‹tion or ¤sy®w. The ceremony was alternatively
known in Latin as deducere in forum, which was translated into Greek as katabaÛnein
(or kat‹gein) eÞw t¯n Žgor‹n, or by Hellenization equated with the entry into the
ephebate: eÞw toçw ¤f®bouw ¤ggr‹fein or eÞw ndraw ¤ggr‹fein.
15
R.E.A. Palmer, “Bullae Insignia Ingenuitatis,” American Journal of Ancient History 14
(1989) 1-69; H.R. Goethe, “Die Bulla,” Bonner Jahrbücher des Rheinischen Landesmuseums in
Bonn 186 (1986) 133-64.
16
E.g., Cicero to young Marcus (Epistulae ad Atticum 9.6.1); Brutus to his son (Plutarch,
Brutus 14.4); Claudius to Britannicus (although “impubes tenerque”; Suetonius, Divus Claudius
43) and to Nero (as “maturata”; Tactius, Annales 12.41), both unusually early at age 13;
and Phaedrus’s Ž ctional father to his son (Phaedrus 3.10.10). The death of a father
before he could “take oV the purple of boyhood” from “slender arms” and cover his
son’s shoulders “with the white robe” became a literary topos for the cruelty of fate
(Statius, Silvae 5.2.64-67).
17
Propertius describes the rite taking place “before your mother’s gods” (4.1.131),
his emphasis on the maternal (and not paternal) gods being an exception.
18
S. Dixon, The Roman Family (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992)
101-2; J.A. Crook, Law and Life of Rome, 90 B.C.–A.D. 212 (Ithaca: Cornell University
Press, 1967) 114. For pedagogue, see K.R. Bradley, Discovering the Roman Family: Studies
in Roman Social History (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991) 49-55; N.H. Young,
“Paidagogos: The Social Setting of a Pauline Metaphor,” NovT 29 (1987) 150-76.
Emancipation (emancipatio) of an adult child constituted a separate event and legal insti-
tution, creating sui iuris status (e.g., Philostratus, Vita Apollonii 1.13); for Roman law,
see Nicholas, Introduction, 90-96; cf. Th. Zahn, Der Brief des Paulus an die Galater (Kommentar
zum Neuen Testament 9; Leipzig and Erlangen: Werner Scholl, 1922) 188-97.
 the TOGA VIRILIS ceremony and gal. 3:27 257

Tiberius 7.1; Tacitus, Annales 4.4), so obvious was the allusion to Greco-
Roman audiences.19 Virtually every genre of Latin literature mentions
the rite, from poetry and history to speeches and letters (along with
many Greek sources). Seneca includes the ceremony among the most
anticipated in the family life cycle. He laments that even the reality
of misfortune does not dissuade the commonplace currency of the lan-
guage: “So many funerals pass our doors, yet we never think of death!
So many deaths are untimely, yet we make plans for our own infants—
how they will don the toga [nos togam nostrorum infantium], serve in the
army, and succeed to their father’s property” (Seneca, De consolatione
ad Marciam 9.2). Cicero expressed excitement over coming home to
Arpinum to celebrate the toga virilis of his son Marcus as a “delight-
ful relief ” from the disconcerting action of the civil wars (Epistulae ad
Atticum 9.6.1; 9.17.1; 9.19.1). It was a source of pride for a parent to
boast, “Four of our sons wear the toga of manhood [togas viriles habent]”
(Livy 42.34.4-5). The mere expression “toga” or “putting on the toga”
marked the end of childhood and the beginning of public life for the
subjects of biography and history.20
The speciŽ c forms of the ceremony appear Ž xed according to the
literary sources but in actuality may have varied according to local

19
Some later, Latin Christian fathers mention the toga virilis, but I have found no
patristic author connecting the rite to baptism or Gal. 3:27. Tertullian states that “in
our Christian community” boys may wear the toga praetexta “if it is necessary” because
it is among the signs of descent (nativitatis insignia) and not of power ( potestas), lineage,
oYce, rank (ordo), or superstitio (De idololatria 18.3). Although his point is rhetorical—he
compares the purple robes of Joseph and Daniel with the Roman toga puerilis praetexta—
presumably those Christian boys in Tertullian’s North African community changed
their togas when they came of age. The reference, then, may suggest something beyond
Christian familiarity with the toga virilis, perhaps even practice or some degree of emu-
lation of the rite out of necessity. Tertullian does allow Christians to attend sollemnitas
togae purae and other pagan family celebrations (betrothals, weddings, infant name-giv-
ings), though not their sacriŽ ces (De idololatria 16.1-4); see J.H. Waszink and J.C.M.
van Winden, Tertullianus. De Idololatria: Critical Text, Translation and Commentary (VCSup
1; Leiden: Brill, 1987) 54-57, 58-59, 248-52, 259-61; D.P. Harmon, “The Family
Festivals of Rome,” ANRW 2.16.2 (1978) 1597-8. As late as the Ž fth century, Augustine
makes reference to the rite (De civitate Dei 4.11), though not Christians participating in
it. And the Christian poet Prudentius (ca. 348-after 405) laments the sophistic rhetor-
ical training and adolescent “wanton indulgence” that followed his own assumption of
the toga (Cathemerina, praefatio 812).
20
Suetonius, Divus Augustus 26.3; Tiberius 15.1; Gaius Caligula 15.2; Livy 26.19.5;
Tacitus, Annales 4.4.1; Germania 13.1; G. Amiotti, “Religione e politica nell’iniziazione
romana: L’assunzione della toga virile,” in Religione e politica nel mondo antica (ed.
M. Sordi; Contributi dell’Istituto di storia antica 7; Milano: Università Cattolica del
Sacro Cuore, 1981) 131-40; Dolansky, “Coming of Age,” 22-29.
258 j. albert harrill

and family means.21 The three distinct stages of rites de passage that
Arnold van Gennep discovered cross-culturally are evident in the rite.22
First was separation from childhood, marked by a private dedication of
the bulla to the familial gods (lares) and a daybreak procession to the
Forum. The procession, ultimately to the Capitol (ad Capitolium ire) and
sometimes with other initiates, was a regular part of the pageantry.
Appian writes, for example, that “Atilius, who was just assuming the
man’s toga [tÇn teleÛvn periy¡menow stol®n], went, as was customary,
with a procession of friends to sacriŽ ce in the temples” (Bella civilia
4.5.30). The procession sometimes occurred in conjunction with the
feast of Liberalia, on 17 March in honor of the fertility god Liber Pater
(commonly identiŽ ed with Dionysus), during which a phallus was
paraded through Ž eld and town in a carnival of crude, rustic songs.23
The second stage was liminality. On the threshold of manhood, the
candidates stood within the sacred precinct oVering sacriŽ ce (normally,
honey cakes) at the temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus that also
housed the small shrine to Juventas, goddess of youth. In the temple,
the youths with the toga of manhood were introduced publicly as cit-
izens (cives), and had their full names (tria nomina) entered into the reg-
istry of gentile family groups (gentes). (The rite itself did not confer
Roman citizenship but only proclaimed and registered the Roman cit-
izenship into which the boy had already been born.) The Ž nal stage
involved reaggregation. The father-and-son pair returned to the house-
hold to join the rest of the family for additional sacriŽ ces and the

21
For example, in the distribution of the sportula (food or money for the mass of
clients and other attendees), few parents could have aVorded to dole out the Ž fty thou-
sand sesterces that Pudentilla did for the toga virilis of her son Pudens (Apuleius, Apolo-
gia 88).
22
A. van Gennep, Les rites de passage (Paris: E. Nourry, 1909; trans. M.B. Vizedom
and G.L. CaVe as The Rites of Passage [Chicago: University Press, 1960]), although not
mentioning the toga virilis; V.W. Turner, The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure
(Lewis Henry Morgan Lectures; Chicago: Aldine, 1969) 94-130; B.G. MyerhoV, L.A.
Cambio, and E. Turner, “Rites of Passage,” Encyclopedia of Religion (ed. M. Eliade; New
York: Macmillan, 1987) 12:380-7; Dolansky, “Coming of Age,” 133-4.
23
Ovid, Fasti 3.771-790; Cicero, Epistulae ad Atticum 6.1.12 (cf. Varro, De lingua Latina
6.14); H.H. Scullard, Festivals and Ceremonies of the Roman Republic (Ithaca: Cornell University
Press, 1981) 92. Pliny suggests, as does Plutarch above, that the ceremony could occur
on any given day (Pliny, Epistulae 1.9.2); A.N. Sherwin-White, The Letters of Pliny: A
Historical and Social Commentary (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1966 ) 106. The Romans cus-
tomarily held birthday parties on public festival days, such as the Kalends of the month,
rather than on the individual’s actual birthday, which explains how a group of boys
could celebrate the toga virilis on the same day; cf. H. Lucas, “Martial’s Kalendae Nataliciae,”
Classical Quarterly 32 (1938) 5-6.
 the TOGA VIRILIS ceremony and gal. 3:27 259

usual family party. The ceremonial passage functioned in antiquity’s

system for constructing gender by conŽ guring its participants as hav-
ing achieved not merely adulthood, but manhood.
Although evident, Van Gennep’s Ž xed ritual stages prove in the end
too static a model to capture the dynamics of the Roman experience.
“Liminality,” for example, needs nuance. Although there were spatial
aspects to the new togatus’s liminality, the focus was more on the fact
that he had assumed the outward appearance of an adult male but
had yet to assume the character and qualities of one. Liminality thus
could have continued for some time (even many years) until the youth
was no longer thought of as a novus togatus and was just viewed as a
togatus, a Roman man like any other.24
The outward appearance of Roman manhood was dramatized by
the toga donning itself. The toga (by the late Republic) had become
a complicated woolen garment, so large and unwieldy that it was
mostly ceremonial. Putting it on properly required assistance and led
to household theater. First, the mantel was folded nearly in half, and
the double cloth then rolled onto the body with loose folds around
the chest, to form the overfold (sinus). Next, from the folds that ran
up the left side of toga, a decorative drapery knot (umbo) was pulled
up, to hold the ensemble together.25 The folding, rolling, and draping
had to conform to exacting speciŽ cations—down to the positioning of
the edges—to make the body of its wearer “distinguished and manly”
and to give “the impressive eVect of breadth at the chest” (Quintilian
11.3.137-142). “Putting on” the toga virilis was a spectacle of Roman
manhood exhibiting dignitas and personal power.26
While forum spectacle, the toga virilis was also a deeply familial
event—moving, life-changing, and full of joy. Paying homage to his
Stoic tutor L. Annaeus Cornutus, Persius recalls:

24
On the reconstruction of the toga virilis as a rite of passage, see Dolansky, “Coming
of Age,” 40-47. For the Roman gender construction of manhood as an achieved state,
see C.A. Williams, Roman Homosexuality: Ideologies of Masculinity in Classical Antiquity (New
York: Oxford University Press, 1999) 141-2; J.F. Gardner, “Sexing a Roman: Imperfect
Men in Roman Law,” in When Men were Men: Masculinity, Power and Identity in Classical
Antiquity (ed. L. Foxhall and J. Salmon; Leicester-Nottingham Studies in Ancient Society
8; London: Routledge, 1998) 142; M.W. Gleason, Making Men: Sophists and Self-Presentation
in Ancient Rome (Princeton: University Press, 1995) 59-60, 70-73.
25
S. Stone, “The Toga: From National to Ceremonial Costume,” in The World of
Roman Costume (ed. J.L. Sebesta and L. Bonfante; Wisconsin Studies in Classics; Madison:
University of Wisconsin Press, 1994) 17.
26
A.T. Christ, “The Masculine Ideal of the ‘The Race that Wears the Toga,’” Art
Journal 56.2 (1997) 29-30; F. Dupont, La vie quotidienne du citoyen romain sous la République
260 j. albert harrill

When Ž rst the guardianship of the purple [custos purpura, sc. the childhood “toga
praetexta” with apotropaic purple edging] was removed from me, trembling
[ pavido], and the bulla was hung up as a gift to the girted Lares, when my com-
panions were coaxing, my toga, now white, allowed me to cast my glances over
the whole Subura with impunity; at a time when the path is uncertain, waver-
ing and ignorant of life, and leads tremulous minds down the branching cross-
roads—I placed myself in your care. And you, Cornutus, took up my tender
years in your Socratic bosom. (Satirae 5.30-37) 27

Similarly, Statius in his lament for his father mentions the “rich reli-
gious ceremony” (dives ritus) that accompanied the removal of “the pur-
ple garb given in honor of your birth and the proud gold from oV
your breast” (Silvae 5.3.119). And the verb auspicor (lit. “to take the
auspices”) best captured the religious awe for Apuleius (Apologia 73.9).
The new freedom that the toga virilis bestowed brought much youth-
ful joy (Catullus 68.15); while a shared, joint ceremony of the assump-
tion of the toga virilis bonded some males as friends into later adulthood
(Horace, Carmina 1.36.9). “You remember what joy you felt,” Seneca
writes Lucilius, “when you laid aside the garment of boyhood and
donned the man’s toga [sumpsisti virilem togam], and were escorted to
the Forum” (Epistulae morales 4.2).
Parents took the responsibility seriously. Brutus even had the mur-
der of Caesar wait until after the performance of this fatherly duty:
When the day came, Brutus girt on a dagger, to the knowledge of his wife alone,
and went forth, while the rest assembled at the house of Cassius and conducted
his son, who was about to assume the so-called toga virilis [tò kaloæmenon ŽndreÝon
ßm‹tion] down to the Forum. Thence they all hastened to the portico of Pompey
and waited there, expecting that Caesar would straightway come to the meeting
of the senate. (Plutarch, Brutus 14.4-5)

Although reserved for citizens, there is evidence that the rite was
not exclusive to the aristocratic elite but went far down the economic
scale. Cicero reports it “quite usual” for him and fellow senators to
be asked to escort to the Forum at Ž rst light the sons of the humblest
citizens—and often from the remotes parts of the city (Pro Murena 69).
And Phaedrus tells a fable concerning the toga virilis in a nonaristo-
cratic family (3.10.10).
Interestingly, a Greek writer from the East (with close ties to Judaism)
provides the most detailed extant description of the actual rite.28 Tutor

(Paris: Hachette, 1989); trans. C. Woodall as Daily Life in Ancient Rome (Oxford: Blackwell,
1992) 229-32.
27
Trans. Dolansky, “Coming of Age,” 101-2.
28
Nicolaus’s description of the rite may be so detailed “possibly because the intended
 the TOGA VIRILIS ceremony and gal. 3:27 261

to the children of Marcus Antonius (“Mark Antony”) and Cleopatra

and advisor of Herod the Great (who employed him on diplomatic
missions), Nicolaus of Damascus includes the toga virilis in his biogra-
phy of Augustus.
[ The young Octavian] came down into the Forum, when he was about fourteen
years old, so that he might lay aside at that time the purple-edged toga and
assume the pure white toga [kayar‹ ], which is the symbol of enrollment in
manhood. He was gazed upon by all the people because of his Ž ne appearance
and the brilliance of his high birth, and his name was enlisted in the priesthood
in the place of Lucius Domitius who had died. The people applauded him
very enthusiastically, and at the same time as he changed his toga, this honour
was bestowed upon the young man; and he sacriŽ ced to the gods. (Vita Caesaris
4.8-10) 29

Nicolaus omits any domestic elements of the rite (this is the only
extant source in which a boy actually exchanged togas in the Forum).
The author’s highlight of both the public celebration and its political
implication is due to his genre (ancient biography), subject matter (the
life of a future emperor), and overarching goal (to promote Augustan
propaganda and imperial cult). The narrative also shares the problem
of literary sources generally in that it represents the behavior of the
aristocratic elite. Nonetheless, many features of the spectacle are imme-
diately apparent: (1) public procession; (2) gaze of an audience; (3) dra-
matic gesture of election to the oYce of pontifex; (4) verbal conveyance
of high priestly honors inherited from the deceased (L. Domitius
Ahenobarbus, killed at Pharsalus); (5) sacriŽ cial oVering; and (6) cere-
monial costume exchange, “taking oV ” the childhood toga praetexta and
“putting on” the toga virilis. The toga virilis of Octavian broadcasts pietas
and communitas through spectacle and public exhibition. The ritual story
legitimates Augustan rule, connecting the Republican past to the impe-
rial present and future, and forges the necessary dynastic links under
the auspices of the Roman gods.30 By its spectacle, the scene becomes

audience was Greek-speaking and less well-acquainted with certain features of Roman
life” (Dolansky, “Coming of Age,” 23-24). But Dolansky herself admits that other Greek
authors such as Appian, Plutarch, Dionysius Halicarnassensis, Cassius Dio are allusive
and brief, like the Latin writers who mention toga virilis.
29
Trans. J. Bellemore, Nicolaus of Damascus: Life of Augustus (Bristol: Bristol Classical
Press, 1984) 4; cf. Suetonius, Divus Augustus 94.10; Cassius Dio 45.2.5, who both report
an omen of tunic-rending during the donning ceremony.
30
Dolansky, “Coming of Age,” 158-62; see also E.S. Evans, “Ritual,” Encyclopedia of
Cultural Anthropology (ed. D. Levinson and M. Ember; New York: Henry Holt, 1996 )
3:1122. The new family ties were, of course, to Julius Caesar, who requested Octavian’s
election to the oYce of pontifex.
262 j. albert harrill

a literary monument of imperium, a visual display of the “realities” of

power.31
While a Roman rite, the toga virilis custom was practiced in the
Greek East. Cicero, for example, was asked to celebrate the toga assump-
tion of Atticus’s nephew in Laodicea (Epistulae ad Atticum 5.20.9). Pliny
expressed concern to Trajan that festivals in Bithynia, such as the toga
virilis and others, have gotten out of hand and too political, particu-
larly in their distribution of sportulae (gifts) by overzealous parents:
It is general practice for boys at their coming-of-age [virilem togam sumunt] or mar-
riage, and on entering upon oYce or dedicating a public building, to issue invi-
tations to all the local senators and even to quite a number of the common
townsfolk [ plebs] in order to distribute presents of one or two denarii. Please let
me know whether you think this practice should be allowed, if at all. My own
thinking is that invitations of this kinds may sometimes be permissible, especially
on ceremonial occasions, but the practice of issuing a thousand or even more
seems to go beyond all reasonable limits, and could be regarded as a form of
corrupt practice. (Pliny, Epistulae 10.116) 32

The problem is not sportula per se, but the excesses and political
overtones of the invitations. Trajan replies, “You have every reason
to fear that the issuing of invitations might lead to corrupt practices,
if the numbers are excessive and people are invited in groups to a
sort of oYcial present-giving rather than individuals as personal friends,”
and shows impatience at Pliny asking the emperor rather than rely-
ing on common sense “in exercising a moderating in uence on the
behavior of the people in your province” (Pliny, Epistulae 10.117).
Plutarch reports a toga virilis ceremony in Alexandria. After the defeat
at Actium, to rally fading popular support, Mark Antony decided to
grant the toga to his son, Antyllus.
[Antony] turned the city to the enjoyment of suppers and drinking-bouts and dis-
tributions of gifts, inscribing in the list of ephebi the son of Cleopatra and Caesar,
and bestowing upon the son of Fulvia the manly toga [t¡leion ßm‹tion] without
purple hem, in celebration of which, for many days, banquets and revels and
feasting occupied Alexandria. (Plutarch, Antonius 71.3)

The former triumvir and Cleopatra celebrated the Roman toga virilis
rite in conjunction with enrollment among the ¦fhboi, making the

31
Important in my analysis is the examination of literary “spectacle” in Roman
writing, see A. Feldherr, Spectacle and Society in Livy’s History (Berkeley and Los Angeles:
University of California Press, 1998) 12-14 and passim (although with a diVerent topic
under study).
32
For other examples of sportulae at toga virilis ceremonies, see Tacitus, Annales 3.29.3;
Apuleius, Apologia 87.10; Suetonius, Nero 7.2; Dolansky, “Coming of Age,” 159.
 the TOGA VIRILIS ceremony and gal. 3:27 263

occasion a city-wide holiday. Strikingly, Plutarch, like Pliny above,

makes speciŽ c reference to the toga virilis and does not con ate it with
Hellenistic custom, such as donning the ephebic cloak.33 The speciŽ city
of reference demonstrates that this Roman cultural practice retained
its distinctiveness when practiced in eastern provinces.34
An important question for our study of Paul is whether the toga vir-
ilis would have been known in Galatia. The urban populations of the
annexed territories collectively called “Galatia” experienced a high
degree of Romanization. Augustus established in Galatia an impres-
sively large number of Roman cities for a province of the second rank,
including nine full Roman colonies in the south, which must have
accommodated a substantial settlement of Roman veterans. The coastal
coloniae were linked to one another and to the Pamphylian plain in the
Anatolian interior by the via Sebaste. In north Galatia, three new
Augustan city foundations arose—Pessinus, Tavium, and Ancyra—with
constitutions laid down by Roman laws, the terms of the lex Pompeia
(for Bithynia and Pontus) serving as a model. In these Roman cities
of north Galatia and at Pisidian Antioch, monumental public archi-
tecture, the imperial cult, development of a monetarized economy,
imposition of Equestrian procurators for taxation collection, and local
army recruitment all promulgated the fundamental institutions of Roman
imperial society and culture. Indeed, regarding the imperial cult, Galatia
provides the most detailed evidence for the spread of emperor wor-
ship in the central Anatolian provinces, including the fullest surviving
copy of the Res Gestae (aYxed to the temple of Rome and Augustus
at Ancyra, with small fragments of other copies found at Apollonia
and Pisidian Antioch, also in the province of Galatia).35 Along with
the imperial cult, the toga virilis was introduced.
The Res Gestae itself provides the evidence. Among the achievements
listed on the inscription are the extraordinary honors bestowed on

33
The ephebic cloak ( xlamæw, xlamædion) was a small, broach-fastened garment
worn by soldiers; see Plutarch, Alexander 26.5; Cato Minor 13.1; Heliodorus, Aethiopica
1.10; Apuleius, Metamorphoses 10.30 (“ephebica chlamida”); F.B. Tarbell, “The Form of the
Chlamys,” CP 1 (1906) 283-9; Ph. Gauthier, “Les chlamydes et l’entretien des éphèbes
athéniens: Remarques sur le décret de 204/3,” Chiron 15 (1985) 156-8; with idem, “A
propos des chlamydes des éphèbes: Note rectiŽ cative,” Chiron 16 (1986) 15-16.
34
Dolansky, “Coming of Age,” 115 n. 58.
35
S. Mitchell, Anatolia: Land, Men, and Gods in Asia Minor, vol. 1, The Celts in Anatolia
and the Impact of Roman Rule (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993) 70-117; idem, “Galatia
under Tiberius,” Chiron 16 (1986) 17-33; idem, “Population and Land in Roman
Galatia,” ANRW 2.7.2 (1980) 1053-79; idem, “Legio VII and the Garrison of Augustan
Galatia,” Classical Quarterly 70 (1976 ) 298-308. I leave aside the thorny question whether
264 j. albert harrill

Augustus’s late grandsons and adoptive heirs, Gaius and Lucius Caesar.
Each youth, the document reads, was hailed as princeps iuventutis and
“took part in the councils of state” immediately “from the day when
they were led into the Forum” (deducti sunt in forum)—a technical phrase
for the toga virilis.36 It is likely that copies of this document were erected
widely in all the provinces, thus announcing the toga virilis as an essen-
tial part of the Augustan eéagg¡lion and imperial cult.
Additional evidence for the toga virilis custom in Roman imperial
cult propaganda comes from neighboring Asia, in Sardis. An inscrip-
tion found there, dating from 5 bce decrees that the toga virilis (at age
Ž fteen) of Augustus’s grandson and adoptive heir, Gaius, was to be a
sacred day celebrated annually, on which the people are to wear
wreaths and festal clothing, perform sacriŽ ces to the gods, and make
supplications for Gaius’s health at his image consecrated in his father’s
temple. The inscription reads:
Since Gaius Julius Caesar, the oldest of the sons of Augustus, has taken oV the
purple-bordered toga and assumed the most prayed for brilliant white toga [t¯n
eéktaiot‹thn ¤k periporfærou lamprŒn tÒ pantÜ kñ<s>mÄ ŽneÛlhfe t®bennon] in all
its splendour and all mankind is rejoicing at the sight of their prayers on behalf
of his children coming to fruition for Augustus; and since our city, at a time of
such great good fortune, has adjudged the day sacred when he came to man-
hood from childhood [t¯n ²m¡ran t¯n ¤k paidòw ndra telhoèsa], a day on which,
every year, all should wear white and crowns on their heads and the annual
strategi should sacriŽ ce to the gods and should pray through the sacred heralds
for his safety and should dedicate a statue of him, placing it in the temple of his
father; and as for the day on which the city received the glad tidings [eéangelÛsyh]
and on which the decree was made, crowns should be worn on this day too and
the most outstanding sacriŽ ces made to the gods; and since our city has decided
to send an embassy to Rome on these matters to congratulate both him and
Augustus, the council and the people have decided to send envoys chosen from
the best men to give him the city’s greetings and to deliver to him a copy of
this decree, sealed with the public seal, and to discuss with Augustus the state of
Asia and the city both.37

“the churches of Galatia” (Gal. 1:2; 1 Cor. 16:1) can be identiŽ ed with congregations
in the Roman colonies mentioned in Acts; see Meeks, First Urban Christians 42-43;
S. Mitchell, Anatolia: Land, Men, and Gods in Asia Minor, vol. 2, The Rise of the Church
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993) 3-10.
36
Res Gestae 14.1-2; P.A. Brunt and J.M. Moore, Res Gestae Divi Augusti: The Achievements
of the Divine Augustus (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978) 24 (text), 25 (transla-
tion), 55-56 (commentary).
37
V. Ehrenberg and A.H.M. Jones, Documents Illustrating the Reigns of Augustus and
Tiberius (2d ed.; Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1955) 84-85 (text); D.C. Braund, Augustus to
Nero: A Sourcebook on Roman History, 31 BC-AD 68 (Totowa, N.J.: Barnes and Noble
Books, 1985) 59-60 (translation); R.K. Sherk, Roman Documents from the Greek East: Senatus
Consulta and Epistulae to the Age of Augustus (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1969) 346-7
(commentary).
 the TOGA VIRILIS ceremony and gal. 3:27 265

Under this document lies a copy of the letter that Augustus sent to
Sardis in reply. In it, Augustus thanks the envoys for the decree “in
which you display your measures for your city and rejoice that my
elder son has come to manhood [¤pÜ t°i teleiÅsei toè presbut¡rou mou
tÇn paÛdvn],” and congratulates the city’s zeal and gratitude to the
imperial family.38 The annual sacriŽ ce commemorating Gaius’s coming
of age and the dedication of the statue would have served as public
reminders of the importance of the ceremony in Greco-Roman cul-
ture. Even if one presumes that Christians would have not been enter-
ing the temple of Augustus where the statue was placed, it would have
been diYcult not to notice the annual celebrations of everyone wear-
ing white and making elaborate sacriŽ ces and thus not to know of the
toga virilis rite. The stele erected with the decree would have served a
similar communicative purpose. The Sardian decree and embassy were
not isolated but part of a world-wide expression of loyalty to the
emperor and his public introduction of Gaius as his future successor
princeps by the toga virilis. Importantly, the special day to honor the
toga virilis of the emperor’s adoptive heir realigns not only civic festi-
vals in the city of Sardis but also the religious calendar of the entire
koinon of Asia.39 This evidence, along with that of Nicolaus’s above on
Octavian’s own assumption of the toga, shows the important role that
toga virilis proclamations played in the establishment and diVusion of
emperor worship in the eastern provinces. Combined with the attes-
tation of toga virilis in other parts of the Greek East (the Younger Pliny
regarding Bithynia, Cicero concerning Cilicia, Plutarch regarding
Alexandria), and in light of the archaeological evidence for consider-
able Romanization in urban areas of central Anatolia, this inscription
from the neighboring province of Asia and the Res Gestae itself make
awareness of toga virilis highly likely for Paul and his Ž rst-century
Galatian audience.
The toga virilis, then, was a proclaimed, celebrated, and recogniz-
able Roman institution in the Greek East. Household-based, the rit-
ual constructed manhood within individual families (including the
imperial family), with an important public stage of spectacle in the
Forum. The public procession with the donned white toga displayed
familial piety and the Roman image of manhood. That manhood also

38
Ehrenberg and Jones, Documents, 85; Braund, Augustus to Nero, 60.
39
Sherk, Roman Documents, 347; see also P. Zanker, The Power of Images in the Age of
Augustus ( Jerome Lectures 16; Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1988) 215-23.
266 j. albert harrill

meant freedom from the relative constraints of a pedagogue. The free-

dom, however, posed a danger—the temptation toward disobedience and
licentiousness—which could in behavior undo a manhood only recently
achieved in ritual. Inseparable from the toga virilis discourse was parae-
nesis exhorting errant youths to remember the day they “put on” the
toga and to behave accordingly. The toga virilis directed vulnerable and
morally ambiguous youth toward responsible use of freedom.

2. Freedom from Pedagogue and Succession to Heir: Vulnerability and

Moral Ambiguity
Although donning the toga virilis turned the “boy” ( puer) into a “man”
(vir), the new stage of life into which he entered was a precarious one,
called adulescentia (adulescentes, adulescentuli, or iuventus).40 The “toga of a
freer life” (Ovid, Tristia 4.10.28)—its hereditary succession and release
from a pedagogue—brought ambiguity and moral vulnerability. The
new togatus required moral exhortation not to abuse this new freedom
for foolish allure, receiving, then, the togas virilis for nothing.
Such is the concern of Plutarch’s “On Listening to Lectures.” Plutarch
delivered and later wrote out this lecture for his pupil at Chaeronea
(in Boeotia) upon young Nicander’s recent assumption of the toga vir-
ilis. (The location of Boeotia provides further evidence of the ritual’s
practice and recognition in the Greek East.) Appealing to the youth’s
sense of reason, Plutarch exhorts:
The discourse which I gave on the subject of listening to lectures I have written
out and sent to you, my dear Nicander, so that you may know how rightly to
listen to the voice of persuasion, now that you are no longer subject to author-
ity, having assumed the garb of a man [tò ŽndreÝon ŽneilhfÆw ßm‹tion]. Now the
absence of control, which some of the young men, for want of an education,
think to be freedom, establishes the sway of a set of masters, harsher than the
teachers and attendants [paidagvgoÛ] of childhood, in the form of desires [¤piyumÛai],
which are now, as it were, unchained. And just as Herodotus says that women
put oV their modesty along with their undergarments, so some of our young men,
as soon as they lay aside the garb of childhood [tò paidikòn ßm‹tion Žpoy¡syai],

40
A. Fraschetti, “Roman Youth,” in Storia dei giovani, vol. 1, Dall’antichità all’età mo-
derna (ed. G. Levi and J.-C. Schmitt; Roma: Laterza, 1994; trans. C. Naish as A History
of Young People in the West, vol. 1, Ancient and Medieval Rites of Passage [Cambridge, Mass.:
Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1997] 51-82); E. Eyben, De jonge Romein
(Brussels: Paleis der Academien, 1977; trans. P. Daly as Restless Youth in Ancient Rome
[London: Routledge, 1993] 5-41); pace M. Kleijwegt, Ancient Youth: The Ambiguity of Youth
and the Absence of Adolescence in Greco-Roman Society (Dutch Monographs on Ancient History
and Archaeology 8; Amsterdam: J.C. Gieben, 1991) 51-73.
 the TOGA VIRILIS ceremony and gal. 3:27 267

lay aside also their sense of modesty and fear, and, undoing the habit that invests
them, straightway become full of unruliness. But you have often heard that to
follow God and to obey reason are the same thing, and so I ask you to believe
that in persons of good sense the passing from childhood to manhood is not a
casting oV of control, but a recasting of the controlling agent, since instead of
some hired person or slave purchased with money they now take reason as the
divine guide of their life, whose followers alone may deservedly be considered
free [¤leæyeroi]. For they alone, having learned to wish for what they ought, live
as they wish; but in untrained and irrational impulses and action there is some-
thing ignoble, and changing one’s mind many times involves but little freedom
of will. (Moralia 37C-E, De recta ratione audiendi 1)

Plutarch urges his young pupil Nicander toward the higher study
of philosophy and away from the low juvenile interests of horses and
hunting, prostitutes and taverns, and other temptations of the  esh.41
He continues with an analogy from Roman citizenship and the
identiŽ cation of the real toga virilis:
We may Ž nd a comparison in the case of newly naturalized citizens; those among
them who were alien born and perfect strangers Ž nd fault with many of the
things that are done, and are discontented; whereas those who come from the
class of resident aliens, having been brought up under our laws and grown to be
well acquainted with them, have no diYculty in accepting what devolves upon
them and are content. And so you, who have been brought up for a long time
in contact with philosophy, and have from the beginning been accustomed to
philosophic reasoning as an ingredient in every portion of early instruction and
information, ought to feel like an old friend and familiar when you come to phi-
losophy [eémen° kaÜ oÞkeÝon ´kein eÞw filosofÛan], which alone can array young
men in the manly and truly perfect adornment that comes from reason [ ¶ mñnh
tòn ŽndreÝon kaÜ t¡leion Éw ŽlhyÇw ¤k lñgou toÝw n¡oiw peritÛyhsi kñsmon]. (Moralia
37F, De recta ratione audiendi 2)

According to Plutarch, real toga virilis was not the actual ßm‹tion
but the abstract lñgow (“the manly and truly perfect adornment”) that
philosophy was wrapping around the youth through many years of study.
In the ideal, the study of philosophy went hand in hand with the
toga virilis. Precocious youths like Nicander were held up as role mod-
els for lesser youths to emulate. The orator Fronto praises Marcus
Aurelius, “For before you were old enough to be trained, you were
already perfect and complete in all noble accomplishments, before ado-
lescence a good man, before the toga of manhood [toga virilis] a prac-
ticed speaker. But of all your virtues this even more than the others
is worthy of admiration, that you unite all your friends in harmony”
(Epistulae ad M. Aurelium 4.1.2). Fronto and Plutarch urge new togati
toward the self-control needed for further training, and away from

41
Cf. Terence, Andria 50-60.
268 j. albert harrill

licentious desires that bring a slavery worse than the constraints of a

pedagogue.42
The prodigal togatus was a rhetorical topos about moral corruption,
especially sexual vice that unmade masculinity. Because the toga virilis
entitled a youth to the right to recline at convivia, the abuse of this
freedom—falling into sexually scandalous behavior at banquets—became
proverbial.43 Statius asks, “Who has not been corrupted by unrestrained
youth and the too hasty freedom of the toga?” (Silvae 5.2.68-69; see
also Juvenal, Satirae 14.4-10). In the language of vituperation, refer-
ence to toga virilis was a piece of invective to accuse young togati of
sexual immorality and, by implication, loss of manhood. Cicero, for
example, condemns Mark Antony for his youthful association with
Curio:
You assumed the man’s toga [sumpsisti virilem] and then immediately turned it
into a loose woman’s toga [muliebrem togam]. First you were a common whore, the
price for your shame being Ž xed and not small. But Curio soon intervened, res-
cuing you from your profession as prostitute and, as if he had given you a matron’s
robe [stolam dedisset], settling you down in a lasting and stable marriage. No boy
purchased for sex was ever under his master’s control as much as you were under
Curio’s. (Orationes philippicae 2.18.44-45) 44

Cicero claims that in his youth Antony served as Curio’s receptive

sexual partner, thus acting like a female prostitute, the reference to
the muliebris toga being the speciŽ c charge of gender ruin. Cicero sug-
gests, even worse, that Antony lived like Curio’s slave boy, both a gen-
der and a social order (ordo) violation. By reference to the stola,45 Cicero
decries the relationship between Curio and Antony as wedlock in
drag—a kind of domination no slave boy bought for sexual purposes
ever had to undergo, yet Antony gave himself freely and nightly.46 The

42
Dolansky, “Coming of Age,” 105-7.
43
A. Booth, “The Age for Reclining and its Attendant Perils,” in Dining in a Classical
Context (ed. W.J. Slater; Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1991) 105-20.
44
Trans. Williams, Roman Homosexuality, 42.
45
Stola in Latin referred to the long robe that the Roman matron wore in public;
Varro, De lingua Latina 9.48; E. Fanthan et al., Women in the Classical World: Image and
Text (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994) 232-3.
46
Williams, Roman Homosexuality, 42. Note a double standard in Cicero’s oratory,
when he pleads the innocence, of his client Caelius, of association with the conspira-
tor Catiline. In Pro Caelio 4.9-10, an eVort to defend young Caelius’s pudicitia after
assuming to the toga virilis, Cicero exploits the themes of lubrica adulescentia and sexual
vulnerability to the “selŽ sh passions of others,” an allowance not granted Antony; C.
Gill, “The Question of Character-Development: Plutarch and Tacitus,” Classical Quarterly
77 (1983) 476.
 the TOGA VIRILIS ceremony and gal. 3:27 269

connection between toga donning and prostitution appears also in

Apuleius’s Apologia. Apuleius rebukes his wayward novus togatus stepson,
Sicinius Pudens, and berates the relative, RuŽ nus, who emasculated
the boy by giving the toga virilis too soon. Lacking the direction of
proper paraenesis, young Pudens fell to sexual and other immorality:
You took him from us a mere boy and straightway gave him the garb of man-
hood [toga virilis]. While he was under our guardianship, he used to go to school:
now he has bidden a long farewell to study and betaken himself to the delights
of the tavern. He despises serious friends, and, boy as he is, spends his tender
years in reveling with the most abandoned youths among harlots and wine-cups.
He rules your house, orders your slaves, directs your banquets. He is a frequent
visitor to the gladiatorial school and there—as a boy of position should!—he
learns from the keeper of the school the names of the gladiators, the Ž ghts they
have fought, the wounds they have received. He never speaks any language save
Punic, and though he may occasionally use a Greek word picked up from his
mother, he neither will nor can speak Latin.47

Apuleius condemns Aemilianus for kidnapping young Pudens and

conferring the toga virilis prematurely, at a time not set by the step-
father (Apuleius himself ). Illegitimate, the ceremony has dangerous con-
sequence: Pudens remains a mere boy who abuses his household and
togatus freedom, having abandoned proper study and the Latin lan-
guage itself for stupid teenage carousal with harlots and gladiators.
Another piece of invective, attacking a youth for abusing his free-
dom and ruining his masculinity, comes from the words of a charac-
ter in Petronius’s Satyrica. Encolpius condemns the “boy who put on
women’s clothes the day he assumed the toga virilis [qui tanquam die
togae virilis stolam sumpsit],” a bitter re ection on his young boyfriend
Giton, who has abandoned him (Satyrica 81.5). Similar to Cicero’s con-
demnation of Antony, the point of Encolpius’s invective is to make a
speciŽ c accusation against a young man, namely that when young he
played “the woman’s role” in sexual relations with older men. Sexual
immorality unmade that very manhood which the toga virilis had only
recently achieved. The invective reveals Roman ideologies of man-
hood: while still considered normative and “natural,” masculinity had
to be achieved and maintained. Manhood was understood to be frag-
ile,  uid, and incomplete until anchored by Ž rm discipline and con-
stant moral behavior.48 And, according to Cicero, new manhood was
so fragile that it had to be physically constrained—hence the practice

47
Apuleius, Apologia 98; trans. H.E. Butler, The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of
Madaura (1909; repr. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1970) 151.
48
Gleason, Making Men, 80-81.
270 j. albert harrill

of wearing the toga “ad cohibendum brachium” by new togati (discussed

below)—in addition to requiring discipline and moral behavior.49
Proverbial was youthful squander not only of sexuality but also of
newly acquired inheritance. Gambling and the games made new togati
easy targets for predators and loan sharks. Horace satirizes one noto-
rious shark in particular: “he aims to get notes-of-hand from youths
who have just donned the toga of manhood, and have stern fathers”
(Satirae 1.2.16 ).50 And some parents were stern, especially after the toga
virilis ceremony. Atia, the mother of Augustus, was one such parent.
Nicolaus of Damascus writes:
However, although in the eyes of the law he had been enrolled in the citizen-
lists, his mother prevented him from putting foot outside the door, except to go
where he had previously gone when still a boy, and she compelled him to main-
tain the same way of life and to go to bed in the same room, in which he had
before. In legal terms alone he was a man, but in other respects he was treated
as a boy. He changed no aspect of his toga, but always wore the style of his
ancestors. He went out also on the prescribed days to the temples, but by night,
because of the attention drawn to his person, since he in amed many women
with his handsome appearance and the brilliance of his lineage. Although he was
the object of their conniving, it is clear that he was never compromised. In some
respects, his mother kept women at bay, protecting him and taking no chances,
while, on the other hand, he already had common-sense because he was advanced
for his age. (Vita Caesaris 4.10-5.12) 51

Likewise, Cicero assures Atticus that when he gives “your nephew

Quintus his white toga [toga pura] . . . I shall keep him on a tighter
rein” (Epistulae ad Atticum 5.20.9).
Unusual was the case of the future emperor Claudius. His incon-
sequential toga virilis festival revealed his lack of Roman manhood, a
major theme of his biography. Claudius took the toga probably at the
age of 14, in 5-6 ce, but was not allowed to wear it publicly. He still
remained under the care of a slave pedagogue whose previous posi-
tion was overseeing the mule stables. Suetonius describes the pecu-
liarity of the situation:
Even after he reached the age of independence he was for a long time in a state
of pupillage and under a guardian [ post tutelam receptam alieni arbitrii et sub paeda-
gogo fuit], of whom he himself makes complaint in a book of his, saying that the
pedagogue was a barbarian and a former chief of muleteers, put in charge of
him for the express purpose of punishing him with all possible severity for any

49
See L. Richardson Jr. and E.H. Richardson, “Ad Cohibendum Brachium Toga: An
Archaeological Examination of Cicero, Pro Caelio 5.11,” YCS 19 (1966 ) 151-68.
50
Dolansky, “Coming of Age,” 107-19; Eyben, Restless Youth, 19-21.
51
Bellemore, Nicolaus, 6-8.
 the TOGA VIRILIS ceremony and gal. 3:27 271

cause whatever. It was also because of his weak health that contrary to all prece-
dent he wore a cloak [ palliolatus] when he presided at the gladiatorial games
which he and his brother gave in honor of their father. On the day when he
assumed the toga of manhood he was taken in a litter to the Capitol about mid-
night without the usual escort. (Suetonius, Divus Claudius 2.2)

The passage shows Claudius to be an exception that conŽ rms the

rule that in Roman society “putting on the toga” meant “release from
one’s pedagogue.” In the Ž rst lines above, Suetonius uses a variation
of the technical clause in suam tutelam venire, “to come into his own
tutelage”—that is, to come of age by the toga virilis (the formula appears
in Cicero, De inventione rhetorica 2.62; Brutus 194-98; and De oratore 1.180,
the causa Curiana discussed below).52 Old enough to come “into his own
tutelage” (for he had assumed the toga virilis), the novus togatus Claudius
was instead held back under a pedagogue. Because of its Roman cus-
tom and particular importance within the imperial family (for obvious
political reasons, such as dynastic concerns), the toga ceremony for
Claudius had to be completed but was discharged at nighttime with-
out public spectacle to avoid embarrassment. Although Claudius had
assumed the toga virilis, he nonetheless appeared publicly swathed in a
pallium, the concealing dress of an invalid, and accompanied by a tutor
cum attendant when he “presided” at the gladiatorial games in honor
of his dead father (in 6 ce). The surprising garb of Claudius at these
games was the Ž rst public acknowledgment that he was diVerent from
normal boys.53
Normal novi togati were released from a pedagogue and underwent
a period of military training (tirocinium militiae), paralleled by prepara-
tion for the lawcourts (tirocinium fori). In this task, Aulus Gellius boasts
of his own initiative: “I was already a young man at Rome, having
laid aside the purple-bordered toga of boyhood, and was on my account
seeking masters of deeper knowledge” (Noctes atticae 18.4.1). Likewise,
Cicero recalls of his apprenticeship: “Now, I, upon assuming the toga
virilis, had been introduced by my father to Scaevola with the under-
standing that, so far as I could and he would permit, I should never
leave the old man’s side” (De amicitia 1). He was serious about the
need for training:

52
J.C. Rolfe, Suetonius: Volume II (LCL; Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press,
1997) 6 (translator’s note); W. Kierdorf, Sueton: Leben des Claudius und Nero (UTB für
Wissenschaft, Uni-Taschenbücher 1715; Paderborn: F. Schöningh, 1992) 78-79.
53
B. Levick, Claudius (London: Batsford, 1990) 13, 15.
272 j. albert harrill

When I was young, we usually spent a year “keeping our arms conŽ ned in our
toga” [ad cohibendum brachium toga] and, in tunics, undergoing our physical train-
ing on the Campus, and, if we began our military service at once, the same prac-
tice was followed for our training in camp and in operations. At that age, unless
anyone could defend himself by his own strength of character and clean living,
by good home training [disciplina domestica] and also by some inborn virtue, how-
ever carefully he might be guarded by his own friends, he could not escape a
scandal backed by truth. (Pro Caelio 5.11-12)

This military training was of particular importance among the upper

aristocratic orders (Velleius Paterculus 2.29.5; Suetonius, Divus Augustus
38.2). The toga virilis brought entry into public life and responsibility
to act Roman.54
It also brought new domestic responsibilities. The toga virilis was
the time when a son became an heir, a potential paterfamilias himself. The
famous causa Curiana (ca. 92 bce) provides the best example of the
important implications in law. Cicero writes about a father who had
drawn up a will. In a common practice, the father named an as-yet-
unborn son as his heir and appointed a certain Manius Curius as sub-
stitute heir in the event that the son should die before achieving tes-
tamentary capacity, by the toga virilis. The father, however, died, and
no son was ever born. Curius entered the inheritance on the ground
that the substitution remained valid since no son had “come of age”
(in suam tutelam venire). A family relative named Marcus Coponius (the
proximus agnatus), however, sued for revocation of the will on the ground
that a prior condition (namely, the birth of a son) had not been fulŽ lled.
The case is important because it shows the connection between suc-
cession as heir and the assumption of the toga virilis.55 Another exam-
ple of this connection includes Phaedrus, who tells the legal ramiŽ cations
in a fable: once a father was “on the point of providing a white toga
for his son” but was “taken aside privately by his freedman, who hoped
to have himself substituted as the nearest heir” (3.10.10; cf. Cassius
Dio 61.34.1-2; Suetonius, Divus Augustus 66.4). The freedman hoped to
be named heir before it was too late, when the son became togatus.
There is a further, possible legal connection. Adoption (and its cre-
ation of an heir) may have been linked to the toga virilis ceremony,

54
Dolansky, “Coming of Age,” 67-85; Th. Wiedemann, Adults and Children in the
Roman Empire (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989) 114-18.
55
Cicero, De oratore 1.180; J.W. Vaughn, “Law and Rhetoric in the Causa Curiana,”
Classical Antiquity 4 (1985) 208-22; cf. R.P. Saller, “Roman Heirship Strategies in Principle
and in Practice,” in The Family in Italy: From Antiquity to the Present (ed. D.I. Kertzer and
R.P. Saller; New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991) 26-47.
 the TOGA VIRILIS ceremony and gal. 3:27 273

although this claim is disputed among scholars. Evidence for the link-
age is the case of Caligula, who adopted Tiberius Gemellus, the epony-
mous grandson of the emperor, on the day he “assumed the toga virilis”
(Cassius Dio 59.8.1; Suetonius, Gaius Caligula 15.2). However, some
scholars object that such connection between adoption and toga virilis
was more coincidental than actual because the age of the adopted
child just happened to match the time for coming of age, and that
the case cannot be generalized to all Roman practice because it was
peculiar to imperial family dynastic needs.56
In any event, the assumption of the toga virilis brought relative free-
dom from a pedagogue, but not invariably as with an incompetent
youth like Claudius. Nonetheless, the unusual case of Claudius conŽ rms
the rule that freedom normally was understood to follow the toga cer-
emony, and that such freedom was a topos of epideictic rebuke and
paraenesis about the vulnerability and moral ambiguity of adulescentia.
The vulnerability was legal, social, and moral. Legally, the togatus
became an heir and so a target for predators and enemies of the fam-
ily. Socially, the boy’s attainment of social puberty opened opportu-
nity to participate in convivia, banquets notorious for corruption of
youth. Morally, the youth faced temptation and needed Ž rm anchor-
age in discipline (skhsiw), military training, and the constant moral
guidance of an advanced teacher.
Paul’s moral paraenesis in Galatians should be contextualized in the
epideictic rhetoric of the toga virilis. Important to my contextualization
is the recognition that Pauline Christianity was a household-based
movement. Toga virilis, as recent studies prove, was a family rite at a
date set by the father and performed within the household.57 The evi-
dence for toga virilis in the Greek East (especially Asia Minor) shows
that the toga virilis was not an obscure Roman rite about which Paul
and his gentile converts in Galatia would never have heard.

56
Dolansky, “Coming of Age,” 89-92, criticizing Neraudau, Jeunesse, 147. Adoption
(adoptio) in law was the transfer of a person from one potestas to another, see Crook,
Law and Life of Rome, 111-3; Nicholas, Introduction, 77-80.
57
For household context and familial signiŽ cance of toga virilis, see Dolansky, “Coming
of Age,” 22, 25, 40. For the household role in establishing Pauline congregations, see
C. Osiek and D.L. Balch, Families in the New Testament World: Households and House Churches
(The Family, Religion, and Culture; Louisville, Ky.: Westminster John Knox, 1997)
32-35 and passim; Meeks, First Urban Christians, 29-30, 75-77; H.-J. Klauck, Hausgemeinde
und Hauskirche im frühen Christentum (SBS 103; Stuttgart: Katholisches Bibelwerk, 1981)
21-68.
274 j. albert harrill

3. Galatians: Maturity in Christ

The case that Paul’s interpretation of baptism in Galatians echoes
the paraenesis surrounding the toga virilis begins on the level of genre.
The letter of Galatians corresponds to epideictic rhetoric known as
rebuke (¤pitimhtikñw), often paternal. The expressions “I am amazed”
(Gal. 1:6) and Paul’s denunciation of the Galatians as “fools” (3:1, 3)
are characteristic of this censorious mode of discourse, like that of a
father upbraiding his teenage son for stupid, dangerous behavior.
Harsher than admonition (nouyethtikñw), rebuke aimed to cause shame
by pointing out fundamental  aws of character, and a basic pattern
of immoral behavior, to a youth who should know better because he
has come of age.58 Paul exhorts the Galatians that they came of age
through baptism which replaces circumcision, an immature sign of
being underage. Paul shames his Christians for their stupidity—for-
getting the day they “put on” Christ—in order to dissuade them from
the bewitching allure of gospel “perversion.” Because through baptism
they already have adulthood and full membership as God’s people
(Gal. 1:6-7; 3:1), they should know better. As a letter of rebuke, there-
fore, Galatians corresponds to the epideictic speech characteristic of
toga virilis rhetoric.
Paul’s diction provides further evidence of this connection. He tells
the Galatians to “work” like an adult “household member” in the
“family of faith” (6:10). Wanting circumcision is an immature “desire”
to remain “subject to the law” (4:21)—no diVerent from being “conŽ ned”
and “shut in” under a pedagogue. It destroys the growth of family
members to come of age. Circumcision acceptance means retrogres-
sion back to childhood and that Paul has to start all over again, moth-
ering his congregation in birth and to maturity (4:19). For emulation,
Paul includes the autobiographical example of his own life. Although
Paul “advanced in Judaism beyond many among my people of the
same age” (Gal. 1:14), he himself would have remained immature had
God not “called me through his grace” and “was pleased to reveal
his Son to [in] me” (1:15-16). Paul then provides other examples “of
daily life” (3:15), one the father’s will, the other a son’s coming of age

58
See S.K. Stowers, Letter Writing in Greco-Roman Antiquity (Library of Early Christianity;
Philadelphia: Westminster, 1986 ) 133-39; idem, “Social Typication and the ClassiŽ cation
of Ancient Letters,” in The Social World of Formative Christianity and Judaism: Essays in
Tribute to Howard Clark Kee (ed. J. Neusner et al.; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1988) 78-90.
Stowers, however, does not make the connection to toga virilis and coming of age.
 the TOGA VIRILIS ceremony and gal. 3:27 275

(4:1-2). In the middle of this extended series of examples appears the

language of baptism. At baptism each believer “puts on” Christ, a rit-
ual that makes people mature and gives responsibilities in the house-
hold of God. Paul urges believers not let the new status achieved in
ritual and activated by the power of the Holy Spirit be unmade in
the  eshly act of circumcision. Circumcision is a masculine condition,
but it conveys neither masculinity nor manhood for Paul.
In this way, Paul’s language for maturity “in Christ” resembles ide-
ologies of masculinity in wider classical culture: while considered nor-
mative and a natural result of baptism, maturity “in Christ” (like
Roman masculinity) is fragile,  uid, and incomplete until anchored by
Ž rm discipline and constant moral behavior—working hard, constantly
testing, taking pride in the eVort, and each sharing the load (6:4-5)
without weariness (6:9). Such language would have been heard in
Roman imperial society as a command to act like a man. This gen-
der contextualization makes more pointed Paul’s angry wish that his
opponents not stop at circumcision but cut “the whole thing oV” (5:12).
It also Ž ts Paul’s apocalyptic language of baptism as less a cleansing
and more an assumption of a new garment for eschatological warfare
(1 Thess. 5:8-10; 1 Cor. 15:53-54; Rom. 13:12), a decidely manly aVair
in Roman military culture.59
Paul’s reference to control by a pedagogue, and subsequent release,
connects also to a toga virilis social and legal context.60 He writes that
the law was “our pedagogue until Christ came” (3:24) and that before
now “we were minors” (4:3) and “no better than slaves” though own-
ers “of all the property” (4:1), remaining “under guardians and man-
agerial slaves until the date set by the father” (4:2-3). Here Paul uses
Roman law as a tool to develop his theology of baptism. The speciŽ c
legal device is tutela impuberis, the proprietary incapacity of prepubes-
cent, underage children in Roman law to inherit family assets until
the time of coming of age—by toga virilis—at a time set by the father.61

59
See J.L. Martyn, Galatians: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (AB
33A; New York: Doubleday, 1997) 376.
60
On pedagogue, see Young, “Paidagogos,” 150-76; T.D. Gordon, “A Note on
Paidagvgñw” in Galatians 3.24-25,” NTS 35 (1989) 150-4; D.J. Lull, “‘The Law was
our Pedagogue’: A Study in Galatians 3:19-25,” JBL 105 (1986 ) 481-98. None men-
tions toga virilis.
61
See P. Garnsey, “Sons, Slaves—and Christians,” in The Roman Family in Italy:
Status, Sentiment, Space (ed. B. Rawson and P. Weaver; Canberra: Humanities Research
Center; Oxford: Clarendon, 1997) 105-6, although without reference to toga virilis.
276 j. albert harrill

Yet the best correspondence to the paraenesis of toga virilis is Paul’s

stress on responsible use of the new freedom attained in Christ. The
apostle’s command “not to use your freedom as an opportunity for
the  esh” (Gal. 5:13) alludes to the concept of going astray, a theme
familiar from Greco-Roman moral exhortation to libertine youth not
to abuse the new freedom of toga virilis. “For freedom Christ has set
us free,” Paul exhorts, “Stand Ž rm, therefore, and do not again sub-
mit to a yoke of slavery” (5.1). “Live by the spirit, I say, and do not
gratify the desires of the  esh” (5:16 ), the immorality of which Paul
describes in a traditional Greco-Roman vice list that includes “forni-
cation,” “licentiousness,” “drunkenness,” and “carousing” (5:19-21). “If
you sow to your own  esh,” Paul shames, “you will reap corruption
from the  esh” (6:8). Such language is similar to proverbial shaming
of wayward teenage togati.
Here is the value of my toga virilis thesis. The contextualization makes
the paraenesis on responsible use of freedom—after the release of a
pedagogue—more intelligible than the standard religion-of-religions
interpretation of the language alluding only to “putting on” the cloth-
ing of a deity in ancient Judaism or paganism. However, I make no
claim for interpretive hegemony. I do not deny that the baptismal lan-
guage could also allude to, or have been heard as, the “putting on” the
clothing of a deity, as in the dromena of Greco-Roman mystery reli-
gions (e.g., Plutarch. Moralia 352B, De Iside et Osiride 3; Apuleius,
Metamorphoses 24; cf. Philo, De fuga et inventione 110). Those Greco-
Roman parallels are impressive but lack the speciŽ c paraenesis to
responsible use of adult freedom. The epideictic rhetoric of toga virilis
is closer to Paul’s paraenesis.

4. Conclusion
Paul quotes prior baptismal language that he received from tradi-
tion—at baptism one “puts on” (¤ndæesyai) Christ like a garment—
but interprets it through the gentile experience of the Roman toga vir-
ilis rite. The evidence for the toga virilis as a better social context in
which to read Paul’s theology of baptism, especially the crux of Gal.
3:27, includes Paul’s choice of genre (epideictic rebuke), diction (achieved
masculinity in the Roman household), legal terminology (release from
pedagogue, tutela impuberis), and paraenesis about responsible freedom.
The moral exhortation occasioned by the toga virilis warned the newly
togaed youth against succumbing to the  esh, the same fear that Paul
 the TOGA VIRILIS ceremony and gal. 3:27 277

expresses concerning the baptized Galatians. Baptism alone, not cir-

cumcision, grants participation in the Christ event. The rhetorical move
illustrates Paul’s production of a theology which attempts to create
meaning for gentiles of the Christ event in a manner that makes imme-
diate sense ritually and in direct contact with the Roman household
experience.