Tertullian's Chameleon

Abstract

Tertullian's treatise De pallio is the briefest and most difficult of the North African's works. Its purpose, ostensibly, is to advocate for a change in clothing from the toga to the pallium. This sartorial shift functions, in turn, as a metaphor for conversion to the philosophical life, which, at the end of the treatise, is revealed to be the Christian life. Towards the centre of the work, Tertullian turns to nature to support his argument, citing the example of five different animals. This essay analyses his description of the chameleon, arguing that it is a riddle: drawing on the natural historians, Tertullian paints a realistic picture of the small lizard, but at the same time, skews the description of these features to depict the philosopher. The purpose of this central sketch is to alert listeners to the nature of the speech as a guessing game, and to point to the complex identity of the speaker.