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.

In January or February of 384 c.e., the Christian pilgrim known to us as Egeria left Jerusalem, where she had been based, and headed east. According to her own account, she felt impelled by God to climb Mount Nebo. With her traveled “some holy men from Jerusalem, a presbyter and deacons, and several brothers (monks).” The trip, which took them through Jericho and Livias, went very well. Her guides were able to point out further local sites, and, after some instructive detours, they reached their goal. Mount Nebo was high and steep, but the group of pilgrims, now swollen in number by the addition of local monks, made the climb successfully. Close to the summit they found a church commemorating the site of Moses's death. After a short service consisting of readings from Scripture and prayers, the local holy men asked Egeria if she would like to see “the places which are described in the Books of Moses.” This proposal “delighted” her, and together they climbed up to the actual summit.

Few themes so dominate the homilies of John Chrysostom (ca. 347–407 CE) as the plight of the poor and the necessity of almsgiving. His picture of the poor, however, is always set against the prosperous marketplace of late antiquity. It seems therefore scarcely surprising that his sermons on almsgiving resound with the language of investment. With such imagery, Chrysostom tried not only to prod wealthy Christians into acts of charity but also, and perhaps more importantly, to dislodge his rich parishioners from their conviction that an uncrossable social gulf separated them from the poor. The rhetorical strategy he used is typical of all his polemical attacks. On the one hand, he denigrated the pursuit of money and social status as fundamentally unattractive; it is both unchristian and unmasculine. On the other hand, he insisted that real wealth and lasting prestige should indeed be pursued, but more effectively through almsgiving. I shall first examine how Chrysostom effected this recalculation of wealth, and then I shall turn to the question of whether there may have been some advantage for him in pleading so eloquently on behalf the poor.