Most of yins are on the New Calendar, I take it, and have had your Christmas Day by now. I’m on the Old Calendar and am still fasting in anticipation of the feast. But since you’re still in the twelve days of Christmas (between Christmas and Theophany/Epiphany), I’m sure you’ll be happy to indulge me writing a second Christmas post this season.
Christmas on the Orthodox calendar is uniquely shaped. Other great feasts of the Menaion typically have a single-day forefeast, then the feast day, then an afterfeast of varying lengths, capped at the end with an apodosis (“leave-taking”), at which time the service for the feast day is repeated, with some abbreviations. Forefeast, feast, afterfeast, apodosis — the substance of these formal distinctions is in the Menaion services for the day. I’m a reader in the Church (the lowest of clerical ranks), so I eat this liturgical stuff up. As a young man I felt unmoored from time, unable to perceive its passing, and feeling temporally lost more often than not. It was a great condition to be in for watching long, boring (but rewarding!) art films, but little else. When I converted to the Church while still a teenager, I found the liturgical services were like those long, boring (but rewarding!) art films that I loved, except they were embodied and holy. I looked then to the rhythm of the liturgical cycles to put my soul in temporal order, and I still do. So when I come upon Christmas in the calendar, and there’s an unheard of five-day forefeast, my ears perk up, and I look for meaning.
Not only is there a five-day forefeast, but then the afterfeast doesn’t kick in until after there’s a so-called second and third day of Nativity. The apodosis is still on the seventh day of the feast, which is normal; it anticipates the Holy Circumcision of the Lord on the eighth day, even as the eleven-day fast-free period continues until Theophany Eve (the twelfth day of Christmas). But the feast of Nativity itself being three days is still conspicuous, if less unique than a five-day forefeast. The Sunday of Pentecost, for example, is succeeded by the Day of the Holy Spirit on Monday and the Third Day of the Holy Trinity on Tuesday. Anyways, once I discovered in Scripture the octave pattern of 5 + 3, it wasn’t hard for me to conjecture what the Christmas season was up to on the Orthodox calendar.
On each of these days of the five-day forefeast and the three-day feast, there is a Menaion service celebrating the saint of the day, per usual (Christmas day of course being dedicated just to the Nativity). Looking at the identity of the saints celebrated, I see the themes of the octave pattern all laid out in their proper order.
α. Dec. 20: Hieromartyr Ignatius of Antioch
The chiastic/ksiastic forefeast opens (α.) with St. Ignatius of Antioch, who in his writings conspicuously calls himself ὁ Θεοφόρος, usually translated “the God-bearer”, but in historical context perhaps best understood as “Image-bearer”, the title of one who carries an image of deity in procession — appropriately enough as the leader of our own procession towards Christmas. The epithet, though, could also possibly be a reference to when Ignatius was “borne by God”, as when he legendarily was among the children held by Jesus either when the Lord said, “Suffer little children to come unto me” (Matt. 19:13–15), or when He pulled one aside as an example and said, “Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven” (Matt. 18:2–3). All grown up, St. Ignatius was a disciple of the Apostle John, and, as the bishop of Antioch and writer of letters, a leader of the first generation of the Church after the Apostles. In his letters is established what Church hierarchy looks like, with the ranks of bishops, priests, and deacons, and he describes theologically and spiritually why this is so. He explains how “Christianism” — or “Christianity”, the earliest known use of this word — is a religion distinct from “Judaism”, and he’s the earliest known source to describe the Church as “catholic”.
All of these reasons help establish why St. Ignatius is so foundational a figure as to merit being in the alpha-position in this chiastic forefeast. But no quality or action or word of his is more foundational to the Church than his holy martyrdom, about which he wrote so eloquently in his letter to the Romans as he was being transferred to Rome for that purpose. In the Colosseum, he was thrown to beasts, as he foretold, and, being perfected in his witness to Christ, he “reached God”.
His relevance to the Christian season, moreover, can be found in what he wrote to the Ephesians (18:2–19:3, trans. Michael W. Holmes):
For our God, Jesus the Christ, was conceived by Mary according to God’s plan, both from the seed of David and of the Holy Spirit. He was born and was baptized in order that by his suffering he might cleanse the water. Now the virginity of Mary and her giving birth were hidden from the ruler of this age, as was also the death of the Lord — three mysteries to be loudly proclaimed, yet which were accomplished in the silence of God. How, then, were they revealed to the ages? A star shone forth in heaven brighter than all the stars; its light was indescribable and its strangeness caused amazement. All the rest of the constellations, together with the sun and moon, formed a chorus around the star, yet the star itself far outshone them all, and there was perplexity about the origin of this strange phenomenon, which was so unlike the others. Consequently all magic and every kind of spell were dissolved, the ignorance so characteristic of wickedness vanished, and the ancient kingdom was abolished when God appeared in human form to bring newness of eternal life; and what had been prepared by God began to take effect. As a result, all things were thrown in ferment, because the abolition of death was being carried out.
β. Dec. 21: Virgin-martyr Juliana of Nicomedia
Our saint for the second day of the forefeast (β.) is a beautiful rich teenager from the great city of Nicomedia in Bithynia, on the eastern most tip of the Sea of Marmara, during the reign of Diocletian (286–305) when it served as the capital of the Roman Empire. The teenager’s name was Juliana, and she was the object of desire for a nobleman named Eleusius. However, she was secretly Christian and desired the Lord alone as her spouse. As a rouse, she declared she wouldn’t marry Eleusius unless he became prefect of the city, thinking such advancement unlikely. He, however, spent all his wealth bribing his way into the position. He then demanded her hand in marriage, but she, over the objection of her parents, demanded in return that he forswear the worship of idols and become a Christian. Enraged, he had her arrested and tortured instead. As she rebuffed the human prince of this world, so she spurned the inhuman prince of this world. The devil appeared to her in prison as an angel of light, tempting her to offer sacrifice to idols and save herself. She understood this pattern from her experience with a pagan suitor and was not fooled by it. Intending one final torture, Eleusius had her placed in a cauldron of hot molten lead, but Juliana’s love for the Lord miraculously kept her body whole and unharmed. Rather the cauldron split and poured hot lead on her guards. Several hundreds of people witnessing the event glorified God and offered themselves up as martyrs. They were beheaded one after the other in the presence of the virgin Juliana, who was beheaded last of all. She was eighteen years old when she was finally delivered into the arms of her Savior.
This type of deliverance from captivity to the heathen, from bondage to this world, into the promised land of holy love comprises the exodus imagery worthy of the beta-position in our sequence. Juliana’s virginal sacrifice corresponds, as we’ll see, chiastically with the fruitfulness of the Church as symbolized by the Ten Martyrs of Crete in the omicron-position, as well as ksiastically with the cross-dressing Nun-martyr Eugenia of Rome in the omega-position.
χ/ξ. Dec. 22: Great-martyr Anastasia of Rome
Marking the center of the fivefold chiasmus/ksiasmus (χ/ξ.) appropriately enough is a martyr named Anastasia, the feminine form of the word for resurrection, anastasis. There are multiple martyrs of Rome named Anastasia, but this one is the Great-martyr Anastasia, called the Deliverer from potions (Pharmakolytria), who gave her life for Christ in the time of Maximian, co-emperor with Diocletian (286–305). Her final contest was actually fought not in Rome, but in Sirmium, the capital of the province of Illyricum, in modern-day Serbia, and so she is sometimes known as Anastasia of Sirmium.
St. Anastasia had been raised in Rome by a wealthy pagan father, but also a pious Christian mother, St. Fausta, who arranged for her daughter’s instruction by St. Chrysogonus, a leader of the persecuted Christians in Rome at the time (he also died a martyr and together with his brightest pupil is celebrated this day). While Anastasia’s mother gave her to the Church, her father gave her to a pagan husband against her wishes. Not deterred from her faith, Anastasia feigned illness to avoid her husband while secretly going out at night to visit the Christians in prison and serve their needs. To be Christian in this time and place meant to be imprisoned or to serve those in prison. Her husband eventually discovered her secret and had her locked up in their house until his death in a shipwreck. Freed by widowhood, she who is named after the Resurrection continued her previous vocation of serving Christians imprisoned for their faith.
One day, however, she arrived at the prison and discovered that all the many Christians there had by imperial decree been executed the night before. Undone by grief, and deprived of her vocation, she publicly declared the reason for her sorrow and was arrested. She was tempted first with riches, but she who had been raised with riches saw through their vanity; then she was tempted with tortures, but she who had been instructed in the faith by a martyr, and had herself encouraged so many other martyrs, never wavered in her faith. Miraculously she was kept whole, and a pagan priest attempting to violate her was struck blind before he himself fell dead. St. Anastasia was delivered from captivity a second time and fled east.
In Nicaea of Bithynia, she met and joined forces with another like herself, Theodota, a wealthy Christian widow with three children who was being forced into a second marriage with a wicked pagan, but whose true vocation was secretly assisting the persecuted Church. She and all three of her children would be discovered, arrested, tortured, and martyred — to be celebrated by the Church together with Sts. Anastasia and Chrysogonus on this day in the calendar. St. Anastasia, meanwhile, was to endure her third and final captivity in the province of Illyricum, in the capital city Sirmium. The prefect there greedily desired her wealth, but she declared her calling was to distribute riches to the poor, not to men like him. He imprisoned her without food for a month, and then delivered her to cruel jailers for a second month, and so, like Jephthah’s daughter, she was delivered to death after the space of three menstruations. She and a Christian man were placed on a ship with 130 criminals and put to sea with a pierced hull so that they would all drown. Except the holy Martyr Theodota appeared at the helm and miraculously steered them to safety on an island where other Christians were exiled. The 130 criminals converted to Christ and glorified God. For the third time, she whose name means resurrection was delivered from captivity. When the prefect in Sirmium heard, he sent soldiers to slay everyone on the island, if only because these magnificent saints could not possibly be deprived of the glory of martyrdom for Christ.
In the succeeding centuries in the West, St. Anastasia of Rome/Sirmium took on great importance, and her feast day was celebrated on Christmas day itself, December 25th, commemorated with a second mass. In the East, though, she has always been celebrated on the 22nd. Resurrection from death — symbolized by St. Anastasia’s name and in her lifetime three times over — is particularly apt symbolism for both dates, because both dates are associated with the winter solstice, the darkest day of the year, after which the daylight begins to increase.
When the Julian calendar was first instituted, in 45 BC, the winter solstice was understood to occur on December 25 — nine months after the vernal equinox on March 25, which Christians would early on come to observe as the day of Annunciation, when Christ was conceived at the dawn of the first century. Hence the winter solstice nine months later was directly linked with Christ’s birth, but due to the Julian calendar not accounting for the precession of the equinoxes, by the fourth century the observed solstice slipped forward a few days, and was reckoned on December 22. The fourth century was when the commemoration of St. Anastasia first took root, and when the emancipated Church regularized its calendar.
(Though the Church at this time, seeing the winter solstice had slipped forward a few days, did not adjust the calendar to maintain the solstice date of the 25th, but merely recognized it on the 22nd, the papal Gregorian calendar reform in the 16th century rather went to great lengths to reset the calendar and fix the winter solstice on [or very close to] the 22nd. Since 1900, and until 2100, the equivalent day on the Julian calendar has rested on December 9, when the Church celebrates the miraculous conception of the Theotokos by her mother St. Anna — once again apt symbolism for the winter solstice.)
Hence in the Eastern Church calendar, between December 25 in the first century and December 22 in the fourth, the winter solstice pulls double symbolic duty as both the advent of the Incarnation on which the world’s emergence from non-being is based, and, in the forefeast thereof, by way of St. Anastasia, the Resurrection on which the cosmos pivots away from sin and death and towards eternal life.
ο. Dec. 23: The Ten Martyrs of Crete
Fourth in the forefeast of Nativity (ο.) comes the feast of the Ten Martyrs of Crete. In contrast to the other saints in this sequence, not much is known of them, and their story is not very elaborate. Symbolism abounds in it all the same.
Their names are Theodulus, Saturninus, Euporus, Gelasius, Eunician, Zoticus, Pompeius, Agathopus, Basilides, and Evaristus. They came from different parts of the island of Crete, five from the capital city of Gortyna, and five from five other separate locations, but they suffered together as one during the reign of Emperor Decius, circa 250. What happened was that the magistrate of Crete, once having captured them all together, forced them to tour all of Crete’s main places of pagan worship in the space of a month, in each place torturing them when they refused to worship the demons there. The circuit of the island proved a gauntlet, giving every Cretan man, woman, and child a chance to punch a saint in the face, or spit on him, or see him dragged through dung. All these torments the martyrs endured heroically, never betraying their witness to the true faith. In the end — the pagans having achieved none of their goals — the martyrs’ limbs were broken and they were beheaded, attaining the glory of Christ in His eternal kingdom.
Symbolically, the ten-ness is relevant here, as is the martyrs’ completion of a full circuit of torture around their island country. Ten indicates the fullness of God’s law and the perfection of the faith, while Crete serves as a microcosm of the world. Such ecumenical fruitfulness in virtue fits precisely the omicron-theme that follows a central paschal pivot and corresponds chiastically with Virgin-martyr Juliana’s separation from the world in the beta-position and ksiastically with Hieromartyr Ignatius’s church-establishing sacrifice in the alpha-position.
ω. Dec. 24: Nun-martyr Eugenia of Rome
The fivefold forefeast concludes on Christmas Eve (ω.) when are commemorated the glorious exploits of Nun-martyr Eugenia of Rome in the time of Emperor Commodius (180–192). A number of female ascetics in the Church calendar are known to have disguised themselves as men so as to live in men’s communities, and St. Eugenia is among them. Cross-dressing is strictly forbidden under the Law of Moses (“an abomination,” Deut. 22:5), but it is necessary to understand the symbolic reason for this rule so as not to misapply it. God created the heavens and the earth, and His image within creation He created male and female, so as to express in pattern the relationship between Himself and His creation. To confuse in transgression either heaven and earth or male and female is by extension to confuse the Creator and creation, an idolatrous and blasphemous pattern of behavior. But in the marriage chamber of Christ, provided all idolatrous confusion of nature is in fact abominated, a hypostatic unity of all things is forged, collapsing all hierarchy upwards into the Lord.
Thus, as G.K. Chesterton has cleverly suggested,1 whenever a man wishes to do something important, such as serve as priest or king or judge, he dons a dress. Such formal apparel is intuitively understood not as the transgressive confusion of land with the waters beneath it, to speak symbolically, but the transcendent ascent of land to the waters above the firmament. Such is the case with all “cross-dressing” saints, both the men who wore formal attire as king or priest or monk, as Chesterton suggests, and the women ascetics who disguised themselves as men — whose actions bear special symbolic meaning to everyone because, relative to God, all souls are coded female. For a woman to dress as male not out of willfulness but for the sake of virtue is an image of transcendence, not transgression.
Another rich girl from the senatorial ranks in Rome, St. Eugenia moved with her father to Alexandria in Egypt when he was appointed prefect of that city. Her father — Philip was his name — was a pagan, but not one hostile to Christians. He provided for his daughter the best education he could, and that included Christian Scriptures such as the letters of St. Paul. Inflamed with zeal for what she read, she one night sneaked out of her residence along with two like-minded servants, who were eunuchs, Protas and Hyacinth, determined to become Christians. They found some place serving as a church outside the city, and from there they were advised to go to a community of men holding all things in common and dedicated to chastity, ascesis, and prayer — a second-century forerunner of the monastic communities which would later flourish in that country. St. Eugenia disguised herself as a eunuch from Rome so as to visit there, but the bishop overseeing the community, St. Helenus, who had already once miraculously survived martyrdom, perceived clairvoyantly the facts of her gender. He accepted her and her companions with thanksgiving nonetheless, baptizing them and joining them to the community, with Eugenia now permanently disguised as the eunuch Eugenius.
As years went by, they made progress in the spiritual life, and when the community’s abba passed away, all the men asked the humble and erudite “Eugenius” to be their new leader. Abba Eugenius served faithfully and honorably, such that the reputation of her spiritual might spread throughout the region. A high-born Alexandrian woman who had fallen very sick repeatedly summoned this abba to her home for healing. St. Eugenia eventually heard her cries, came and healed her, but the woman was infected instead with lust for whom she imagined was a handsome young man living a life of self-denial. Inviting this Abba Eugenius back under false pretenses, she made advances towards him but was roundly rebuffed and abandoned. Insulted and irate, the woman began publicly accusing the abba of having sexually assaulted her.
The disturbing news came to the attention of the city’s prefect, Philip. Seeking justice in favor of this dishonored noblewoman, he had the accused abba brought to him at court. St. Eugenia defended herself by revealing her identity, not only as a woman, but as the prefect’s own long-lost daughter. The prefect Philip and his family were so astonished at the wonder, as well as at the life of their daughter and sister Eugenia, that they all converted to Christ, joining the Church with many of their household. Philip himself was even made a bishop, but as prefect he was denounced by an enemy, removed from his position, and martyred for his faith. At this time Eugenia and her family moved back to their residence in Rome.
In Rome, St. Eugenia became acquainted with the youthful maiden Basilla, another rich girl trapped in pagan society who yearned to be a Christian and to maintain her virginity. Eugenia encouraged and instructed her, arranging for her secret baptism and becoming close friends with her. Basilla had one of these awful pagan suitors, however, and when he was tipped off to her conversion, he had her arrested and handed over to the authorities, who then beheaded her for not offering sacrifices to the false gods. The servants Protas and Hyacinth were likewise arrested and deemed worthy of martyrdom. Once St. Eugenia was rooted out and brought before the emperor, her prayers proved so powerful they shattered the idols she was supposed to worship and shook the temple to its foundation. She was then immersed in the Tiber River but miraculously survived drowning. After a period of imprisonment and torture, she was beheaded on December 25, Christmas day, though in deference to the feast, her commemoration is shifted to the day before.
In her transcendence of gender, patterned after the theosis in Christ by which man becomes God, and in her apocalyptic (‘revelatory’) reunion with her father, the holy Nun-martyr Eugenia of Rome ably fulfills the omega-symbolism which completes the cosmic chiasmus. She corresponds chiastically to St. Ignatius by showing the end of the hierarchy described by that holy father in his letters, and ksiastically to St. Juliana by showing monastic obedience as the natural elaboration of virginal life, should someone of zeal be blessed to live past the age of eighteen.
ς. Dec. 25: The Nativity of the Lord
On the sixth day, God created man from earth and breath, and on the sixth day of this festal sequence (ς.), He re-creates him from the Virgin and the Spirit.
Maybe one would be surprised to see the eponymous day of this sequence neither at the center of its structure nor at its culmination. But a birth is a beginning, and so Christmas day begins the threefold ascent that caps the octave. In truth the Lord recapitulates all symbolism within Himself, and so the feast of His Nativity will be found adaptable to different contexts. It is, after all, the culmination of a forty-day fast, and in its association with the winter solstice, it is the center of a seasonal cycle, when the sunrise reaches its southerly limit along the horizon and turns back towards the north.
But in what I’m calling the Christmas octave, Christmas day itself takes the stigma-position, which circumscribes the five-day forefeast the way the sixth day of creation circumscribes the first five (as I describe at the end of my piece “The Cosmic Chiasmus”) and instigates the threefold process of creation’s theotic transformation into deity. This first of three stages, which are contained fractally within each other, I associate with the Crucifixion, as with the triad of Friday–Saturday–Sunday, and with purification, or the practice of the virtues, as spoken about by many Church fathers.
For when we are purified through the activation of the virtues, our nature is renewed, and we are made a new man. In being born, Christ emerges from the darkness of the womb and from the darkness of the cave, just as in resurrecting He emerges from the darkness of the tomb — just as we are brought forth from the darkness of sin whenever by grace we are cleansed of the passions. This is how we make a beginning of participating in the life of Christ. It’s our nativity.
Christ’s Nativity relates to the Crucifixion, meanwhile, as the beginning and ending of Christ’s life. For the purpose of dying was Christ born — this is the plan of salvation. It’s also the meaning behind the magi’s gift of myrrh and the slaughter of innocents perpetrated by King Herod, that which sends the Christ Child on a sojourn into Egypt like a descent into hades before returning to the promised land. The arc of Crucifixion and Resurrection, speaking of which, is the same typological pattern as Incarnation and Ascension. Whenever that which is higher pours itself into that which is lower, it’s a type of death. So when God becomes flesh in the midst of the four corners of the earth, this self-emptying into a body already amounts to a type of crucifixion.
ζ. Dec. 26: The Synaxis of the Theotokos
The seventh day (ζ.) is a sabbath rest — rest in the sense of enthronement in one’s kingdom. The Panagia Theotokos, the All-holy Mother of God, is that throne and that kingdom. She is the one in whom the Lord rests, even as He who is uncontainable deigns to be contained within her womb for the span of human gestation. Just as on Holy Saturday, the Great Sabbath, the Lord rests in the tomb, so He rests in her body. The all-consuming fire of divinity is held in her arms as a babe and fed at her breast — and yet she is not consumed! Rather she is illuminated. God becomes like her, and so she becomes like Him. Through her all creation is invested with the fire of divine energy, and this is the epitome of theoria, of the illumination that comprises the middle stage of the spiritual triad.
It is common, more practically speaking, whenever a feast of the Lord also represents the crowning achievement of someone else, for that other helper to be celebrated the next day in a “synaxis,” a gathering of all their accomplishments in recognition of their greatness. Hence the day after Theophany, we celebrate the synaxis of St. John the Baptist, and the day after Annunciation, we celebrate the synaxis of the holy Archangel Gabriel, for a couple examples. They’re not called synaxes, but when we celebrate Sts. Symeon the God-receiver and the Prophetess Anna the day after the Meeting of the Lord, or the Righteous Joachim and Anna the day after the Nativity of the Theotokos, it’s the same principle.
Here, at Christmastime, God has been born a child to her who is known as the Mother of God, and we celebrate her synaxis the day after, recognizing this event as the telos and source of her existence.
η. Dec. 27: Protomartyr Stephen
The crown of the feast (η.) falls to the holy Archdeacon and Protomartyr Stephen, bringing our octave to its never-ending zenith. The prophets and the holy Maccabees gave their lives for Christ. So did the holy innocents slaughtered by King Herod, when Rachel wept over her children. But since Christ died and rose again for us, since He ascended into heaven and sent down the Spirit to animate His Body the Church, St. Stephen was the first Christian to give his life the way Christ did.
For Jesus to save the world, it was not necessary for Him to encounter everyone on earth personally in the flesh, as with His body before the Ascension. It was enough for Him to take His disciples unto Himself, to anoint them with the Holy Spirit, thus to transform them in His likeness, and to send them out to the lost sheep of Israel. For those who never met Jesus but met an apostle, that apostle was a christ to them. All the holy apostles behaved as, and were, the Body of Christ, and so can be called christs, the One becoming many in the mystery of Pentecost. Theological writer Panayiotis Nellas calls it “christification”, a natural way of describing deification in a christological context.
Even Peter — he who fought so stridently against Christ’s Passion happening and then denied Him when it did happen — even he was converted to Christ’s likeness, was made a member of Christ’s Body, and even he came to be crucified for his love for God the Father and the world that He created. Peter’s was not a new sacrifice, but a joining to that one holy sacrifice of the Lamb slain before the foundation of the world. Those disciples of his that witnessed it in Rome were witnessing the crucifixion of the Body of Christ. This martyrdom is the foundation of the Church and the perfection of of what began at Christ’s Nativity.
But before it happened to Peter in Rome, there was Stephen in Jerusalem, the Protomartyr. St. Stephen in his martyric ecstasy saw the Son of God at the right hand of the Father, but the Lord wasn’t seated. The Lord was standing at the right hand of the Father, standing at attention, in respect for the sacrifice Stephen was making, which Christ recognized as His own. Scripture says Stephen was full of the Holy Spirit when he saw Jesus standing next to God. This is a description of divinization, of induction into the life of the Holy Trinity. Scripture says he saw the glory of God, but before that, when he started preaching to the Judeans, it already said his face shown as the face of an angel. He saw the glory of God because he was in the glory of God. In truth he was being made the glory of God.
This is what the Incarnation means. St. Irenaeus of Lyons (2nd c.) speaks of “the Word of God, our Lord Jesus Christ, who did, through His transcendent love, become what we are, that He might bring us to be even what He is Himself.” As St. Athanasius the Great (4th c.) says more plainly, “[The Word of God] was made man that we might be made God.” In the christification of the holy Archdeacon and Protomartyr Stephen, the dispensation of the Incarnation is made perfect. This is the meaning of the Lord’s day, the eighth day, the octave of creation, a day that never ends. Glory to God in the highest! And on earth, peace, goodwill toward men!
Merry Christmas!
G.K. Chesterton, in What’s Wrong with the World: “It is quite certain that the skirt means female dignity, not female submission; it can be proved by the simplest of all tests. No ruler would deliberately dress up in the recognized fetters of a slave; no judge would appear covered with broad arrows. But when men wish to be safely impressive, as judges, priests or kings, they do wear skirts, the long, trailing robes of female dignity. The whole world is under petticoat government; for even men wear petticoats when they wish to govern.”