Pallium (Roman cloak)

Catullus reading poems to his friends. (Stefan Bakałowicz, 1885)

Pallium over a chiton.

The pallium (dim: palliolum) was the Roman cloak that was worn by both men and women (called a palla in the latter case). It was a rectangular piece of cloth, square in form,^[1] as was the himation in ancient Greece. It is not to be confused with the pallium, in the Catholic Church, which is related to the omophorion.

The pallium, which was considered at first to be exclusively Greek and despised by Romans, was taken into favour by ordinary people, philosophers, and pedagogues, and eventually replaced the toga in the 2nd century BC.

The material of this cloak was usually made of wool^[2] or flax, but for the higher classes it could be made of silk with the use of gold threads^[3] and embroideries.

The garment varied in fineness, colour and ornament. It could be white, purple red (purpurea from murex), black,^[4] yellow, blue, pale green, etc.

It could be used as a blanket, to spread over beds or cover the body during sleep.

In Tertullian's mind, the pallium, which he adopted a toga ad pallium, was the cloak of philosophers and Christians.^[5]

References

1. Tertullian, De Pallio, I
2. Plautus, Miles Gloriosus, III, 1 93
3. Virgil, Æneid, IV 262-264
4. Apuleius, The Golden Ass, XI 3
5. (French) French article about De Pallio

Bibliography

• Tertullian, De Pallio
• Suetonius, De Genere Vestium
• Judith Lynn Sebesta, The World of Roman Costume, Madison WI, University of Wisconsin Press, 1994
• (French) Gaston Boissier, Le traité du manteau de Tertullien in "la Revue des Deux Mondes", 94/5, 1889, pp. 50–78