Clothing in ancient Rome
Clothing in ancient Rome generally comprised a short-sleeved or sleeveless, knee-length tunic for men and boys, and a longer, usually sleeved tunic for women and girls. On formal occasions, adult male citizens could wear a woolen toga, draped over their tunic, and married citizen women wore a woolen mantle, known as a palla, over a stola, a simple, long-sleeved, voluminous garment that modestly hung to cover the feet. Clothing, footwear and accoutrements identified gender, status, rank and social class. This was especially apparent in the distinctive, privileged official dress of magistrates, priesthoods and the military.
The toga was considered Rome's "national costume," privileged to Roman citizens but for day-to-day activities most Romans preferred more casual, practical and comfortable clothing; the tunic, in various forms, was the basic garment for all classes, both sexes and most occupations. It was usually made of linen, and was augmented as necessary with underwear, or with various kinds of cold-or-wet weather wear, such as knee-breeches for men, and cloaks, coats and hats. In colder parts of the empire, full length trousers were worn. Most urban Romans wore shoes, slippers, boots or sandals of various types; in the countryside, some wore clogs.
Most clothing was simple in structure and basic form, and its production required minimal cutting and tailoring, but all was produced by hand and every process required skill, knowledge and time. Spinning and weaving were thought virtuous, frugal occupations for Roman women of all classes. Wealthy matrons, including Augustus' wife Livia, might show their traditionalist values by producing home-spun clothing, but most men and women who could afford it bought their clothing from specialist artisans. The manufacture and trade of clothing and the supply of its raw materials made an important contribution to the Roman economy. Relative to the overall basic cost of living, even simple clothing was expensive, and was recycled many times down the social scale.
Rome's governing elite produced laws designed to limit public displays of personal wealth and luxury. None were particularly successful, as the same wealthy elite had an appetite for luxurious and fashionable clothing. Exotic fabrics were available, at a price; silk damasks, translucent gauzes, cloth of gold, and intricate embroideries; and vivid, expensive dyes such as saffron yellow or Tyrian purple. Not all dyes were costly, however, and most Romans wore colourful clothing. Clean, bright clothing was a mark of respectability and status among all social classes. The fastenings and brooches used to secure garments such as cloaks provided further opportunities for personal embellishment and display.
Formal wear for citizens
Roman society was graded into several citizen and non-citizen classes and ranks, ruled by a powerful minority of wealthy, landowning citizen-aristocrats. Even the lowest grade of citizenship carried certain privileges denied to non-citizens, such as the right to vote for representation in government. In tradition and law, an individual's place in the citizen-hierarchy – or outside it – should be immediately evident in their clothing. The seating arrangements at theatres and games enforced this idealised social order, with varying degrees of success.In literature and poetry, Romans were the gens togata, descended from a tough, virile, intrinsically noble peasantry of hard-working, toga-wearing men and women. The toga's origins are uncertain; it may have begun as a simple, practical work-garment and blanket for peasants and herdsmen. It eventually became formal wear for male citizens; at much the same time, respectable female citizens adopted the stola. The morals, wealth and reputation of citizens were subject to official scrutiny. Male citizens who failed to meet a minimum standard could be demoted in rank, and denied the right to wear a toga; by the same token, female citizens could be denied the stola. Respectable citizens of either sex might thus be distinguished from freedmen, foreigners, slaves and infamous persons.
Toga
The toga virilis was a semi-elliptical, white woolen cloth some in width and in length, draped across the shoulders and around the body. It was usually worn over a plain white linen tunic. A commoner's toga virilis was a natural off-white; the senatorial version was more voluminous, and brighter. The toga praetexta of curule magistrates and some priesthoods added a wide purple edging, and was worn over a tunic with two vertical purple stripes. It could also be worn by noble and freeborn boys and girls, and represented their protection under civil and divine law. Equites wore the trabea over a white tunic with two narrow vertical purple-red stripes. The toga pulla, used for mourning, was made of dark wool. The rare, prestigious toga picta and tunica palmata were purple, embroidered with gold. They were originally awarded to Roman generals for the day of their triumph, but became official dress for emperors and Imperial consuls.From at least the late Republic onward, the upper classes favoured ever longer and larger togas, increasingly unsuited to manual work or physically active leisure. Togas were expensive, heavy, hot and sweaty, hard to keep clean, costly to launder and challenging to wear correctly. They were best suited to stately processions, oratory, sitting in the theatre or circus, and self-display among peers and inferiors while "ostentatiously doing nothing" at salutationes. These early morning, formal "greeting sessions" were an essential part of Roman life, in which clients visited their patrons, competing for favours or investment in business ventures. A client who dressed well and correctly – in his toga, if a citizen – showed respect for himself and his patron, and might stand out among the crowd. A canny patron might equip his entire family, his friends, freedmen, even his slaves, with elegant, costly and impractical clothing, implying his entire extended family's condition as one of "honorific leisure", buoyed by limitless wealth.
The vast majority of citizens had to work for a living, and avoided wearing the toga whenever possible. Several emperors tried to compel its use as the public dress of true Romanitas but none were particularly successful. The aristocracy clung to it as a mark of their prestige, but eventually abandoned it for the more comfortable and practical pallium.
Tunics and undergarments
The basic garment for both genders and all classes was the tunica. In its simplest form, the tunic was a single rectangle of woven fabric, originally woolen, but from the mid-republic onward, increasingly made from linen. It was sewn into a wide, sleeveless tubular shape and pinned around the shoulders like a Greek chiton, to form openings for the neck and arms. In some examples from the eastern part of the empire, neck openings were created in the weaving. Sleeves could be added, or formed in situ from the excess width. Most working men wore knee-length, short-sleeved tunics, secured at the waist with a belt. Some traditionalists considered long sleeved tunics appropriate only for women, very long tunics on men as a sign of effeminacy, and short or unbelted tunics as marks of servility; nevertheless, very long-sleeved, loosely belted tunics were also fashionably unconventional and were adopted by some Roman men; for example, by Julius Caesar. Women's tunics were usually ankle or foot-length, long-sleeved, and could be worn loosely or belted. For comfort and protection from cold, both sexes could wear a soft under-tunic or vest beneath a coarser over-tunic; in winter, the Emperor Augustus, whose physique and constitution were never particularly robust, wore up to four tunics, over a vest. Although essentially simple in basic design, tunics could also be luxurious in their fabric, colours and detailing.Loincloths, known as subligacula or subligaria could be worn under a tunic. They could also be worn on their own, particularly by slaves who engaged in hot, sweaty or dirty work. Women wore both loincloth and strophium under their tunics; and some wore tailored underwear for work or leisure. Roman women could also wear a fascia pectoralis, a breast-wrap similar to a modern women's bra. A 4th-century AD Sicillian mosaic shows several "bikini girls" performing athletic feats; in 1953 a Roman leather bikini bottom was excavated from a well in London.
Stola and palla
Besides tunics, married citizen women wore a simple garment known as a stola which was associated with traditional Roman female virtues, especially modesty. In the early Roman Republic, the stola was reserved for patrician women. Shortly before the Second Punic War, the right to wear it was extended to plebeian matrons, and to freedwomen who had acquired the status of matron through marriage to a citizen. Stolae typically comprised two rectangular segments of cloth joined at the side by fibulae and buttons in a manner allowing the garment to be draped in elegant but concealing folds, covering the whole body including the feet.Over the stola, citizen-women often wore the palla, a sort of rectangular shawl up to 11 feet long, and five wide. It could be worn as a coat, or draped over the left shoulder, under the right arm, and then over the left arm. Outdoors and in public, a chaste matron's hair was bound up in woollen bands in a high-piled style known as tutulus. Her face was concealed from the public, male gaze with a veil; her palla could also serve as a hooded cloak. Two ancient literary sources mention use of a coloured strip or edging on a woman's "mantle", or on the hem of their tunic; probably a mark of their high status, and presumably purple. Outside the confines of their homes, matrons were expected to wear veils; a matron who appeared without a veil was held to have repudiated her marriage. High-caste women convicted of adultery, and high-class female prostitutes, were not only forbidden public use of the stola, but might have been expected to wear a toga muliebris as a sign of their infamy.