A variety of cloaks were worn by men during inclement
weather; in general they resembled the Greek chlamys, but often
had a hood (cucullus) which could be drawn over the head.
Such were the birrus (so-called from its red colour), abolla and
lacerna. The paenula, which was the garment most commonly
worn, especially by soldiers when engaged on peace duties, was
an oblong piece of cloth with a hole in the centre for the neck;
a hood was usually attached to the back. It survives in the
ritual chasuble of the Western Church. The Greek military
chlamys appears in two forms—the paludamentum of the
general (e.g. Trajan as represented on the Arch of Constantine,
Roman Art, Plate III., fig. 16), and the sagum worn by the
common soldier (e.g. by some of the horsemen on the base of the
Antonine column, Roman Art, Plate V., fig. 21). When the
toga went out of use as an article of everyday wear, the pallium,
i.e. the Greek himation, was at first worn only by Romans
addicted to Greek fashions, but from the time of Tiberius, who
wore it in daily life, its use became general. Long robes bearing
Greek names (synthesis, syrma, &c.) were worn at dinner-parties.
The Romans often wore sandals (soleae) or light shoes (socci), but in full dress (i.e. with the toga) it was necessary to wear the calceus, which had various forms by which classes were distinguished, e.g. the calceus patricius, mulleus (of red leather) and senatorius (of black leather). This was a shoe with slits at the sides and straps knotted in front; its forms may be seen on the relief from the Ara Pacis. The senators’ calceus had four such straps (quattuor corrigiae), which were wound round the ankle (cf. the flamen on the Ara Pacis), and was also adorned with an ivory crescent (lunula). A leathern tongue (lingula) is often seen to project from beneath the straps. The soldier’s boot (caliga, from which the emperor Gaius derived his nickname, Caligula) was in reality a heavy hobnailed sandal with a number of straps wound round the ankle and lower leg. A high hunting boot was called compagus. Women at times wore the calceus, but are generally represented in art with soft shoes or sandals.
Hats were seldom worn except by those who affected Greek fashions, but the close-fitting leather pileus seems to have been an article of early wear in Italy, since its use survived in the ceremony of manumission, and the head-dress of the pontifices and flamines (cf. the relief of the Ara Pacis already referred to) consisted in such a cap (galerus) with an apex, or spike, of olive wood inserted in the crown.
For personal ornament finger-rings of great variety in the material and design were worn by men, sometimes to the extent of one or more on each finger, many persons possessing small cabinets of them. But at first the Roman citizen wore only an iron signet ring, and this continued to be used at marriages. The jus annuli aurei, or right of wearing a gold ring, originally a military distinction, became a senatorial privilege, which was afterwards extended to the knights and gradually to other classes. Women’s ornaments consisted of brooches (fibulae), bracelets (armillae), armlets (armillae, bracchialia), ear-rings (inaures), necklaces (monilia), wreaths (coronae) and hair-pins (crinales). The tore (torques), or cord of gold worn round the neck, was introduced from Gaul. A profusion of precious stones, and absence of skill or refinement in workmanship, distinguish Roman from Greek or Etruscan jewelry; but in the character of the designs there is no real difference.
See Marquardt-Mau, Privatleben der Römer, pp. 550 seq. (gives a full collection of literary references); Cybulski, op. cit., pls. xix., xx., with Amelung’s text; articles by W. Helbig, especially Sitzungsberichte der bayrischen Akademie (1880), pp. 487 seq. (on headgear); Hermes xxxix. 161 seq. (on toga and trabea), and Mémoires de l’Académie des inscriptions, xxxvii. (1905) (on the costume of the Salii); articles by L. Heuzey in Daremberg and Saglio’s Dictionnaire des antiquités, also in Revue de l’art, i. 98 seq., 204 seq., ii. 193 seq., 295 seq. (on the toga). See also the general bibliography at the end. (H. S. J.)
II. Costume in Medieval and Modern Europe
i. Pre-Roman and Roman Britain.—Men who had found better clothing than the skins of beasts were in Britain when Caesar landed. Little as we know of England before the English, we have at least the knowledge that Britons, other than the poorer and wilder sort of the north and the fens, wore cloaks and hats, sleeved coats whose skirts were cut above the knee and loose trousers after the fashion of the Gauls. They were not an armoured race, for they would commonly fight naked to the waist, dreadful with tattooing and woad staining, but Pliny describes their close-woven felts as all but sword-proof. Dyers as well as weavers, their cloaks, squares of cloth like a Highland plaid, were of black or blue, rough on the one side, while coats and trousers were bright coloured, striped and checkered, red being the favourite hue. For ornament the British chiefs wore golden torques about their necks and golden arm-rings with brooches and pins of metal or ivory, beads of brass, of jet and amber from their own coasts, and of glass bought of the Southern merchants. Their women had gowns to the ankle, with shorter tunics above them. The Druid bards had their vestments of blue, while the star-gazers and leeches went in green.
Agricola’s Romanizing work must have made great changes in dress as in policy. The British chief with the Latin tongue in his mouth, living in a Roman villa and taking his bath as did the Romans, wore the white woollen toga and the linen tunic, his wife having the stole, the pall and the veil.
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| Fig. 25.—Old English Dress. From the Benedictional of St Æthelwold (c. 963–984). |
Fig. 26.—The Blessed Virgin. From the Benedictional of St Æthelwold (c. 963–984). |
ii. Old English Dress.—The skill of their artists gives us many accurate pictures of the dress of the English before the Norman Conquest, the simple dress of a nation whose men fight, hunt and plough. The man’s chief garment is Before the Conquest.a sleeved tunic hanging to the knee, generally open at the side from hip to hem and in front from the throat to the breast. Sleeves cut loosely above the elbow are close at the forearm. The legs are in hose like a Highlander’s or in long breeches bandaged or cross-gartered below the knee. A short mantle to the calf is brooched at the shoulder or breast (fig. 25). There are long gowns and toga-like cloaks, but these as a rule seem garments for the old man of rank. In the open air the cloak is often pulled over the head, for hats and caps are rare, the Phrygian bonnet being the commonest form. Girdles of folded cloth gather the loose tunic at the waist. Most paintings show the ankle shoe as black, cut with a pointed tab before and behind, the soles being sometimes of wood like the sole of the Lancashire clog of our own days. A nobleman will have his shoes embroidered with silks or coloured yarns, and the like decoration for the hem and collar of his tunic. Poor men wear little but the tunic, often going barelegged, although the hinds in the well-known pictures of the twelve months have shoes, and the shepherd as he watches his flock covers himself with a cloak. In every graveyard of the old English we find the brooches, armlets, rings and pins of a people loving jewelry. Women wore a long gown covering the feet, the loose sleeves sometimes hanging over the hands to the knee. Over this there is often a shorter tunic with short sleeves. Their mantles were short or long, the hood or
