Toga


The toga, a distinctive garment of Ancient Rome, was a roughly semicircular cloth, between in length, draped over the shoulders and around the body. It was usually woven from white wool, and was worn over a tunic. In Roman historical tradition, it is said to have been the favored dress of Romulus, Rome's founder; it was also thought to have originally been worn by both sexes, and by the citizen-military. As Roman women gradually adopted the stola, the toga was recognized as formal wear for male Roman citizens. Women found guilty of adultery and women engaged in prostitution might have provided the main exceptions to this rule.
The type of toga worn reflected a citizen's rank in the civil hierarchy. Various laws and customs restricted its use to citizens, who were required to wear it for public festivals and civic duties.
From its probable beginnings as a simple, practical work-garment, the toga became more voluminous, complex, and costly, increasingly unsuited to anything but formal and ceremonial use. It was and is considered ancient Rome's "national costume"; it had great symbolic value. However, even among Romans, it was hard to put on, uncomfortable and challenging to wear correctly, and never truly popular. When circumstances allowed, those otherwise entitled or obliged to wear it opted for more comfortable, casual garments. It gradually fell out of use, firstly among citizens of the lower class, then those of the middle class. Eventually, it was worn only by the highest classes for ceremonial occasions.

Varieties

The toga was an approximately semi-circular woollen cloth, usually white, worn draped over the left shoulder and around the body: the word "toga" probably derives from tegere, to cover. It was considered formal wear and was generally reserved for citizens. The Romans considered it unique to themselves, thus their poetic description by Virgil and Martial as the gens togata. There were many kinds of toga, each reserved by custom to a particular usage or social class.
  • ' also known as toga alba or toga pura: A plain white toga, worn on formal occasions by adult male commoners, and by senators not having a curule magistracy. It represented adult male citizenship and its attendant rights, freedoms and responsibilities; traditionally given at a father's discretion to his son during the feast of Liberalia, to mark the onset of puberty and legal "coming of age", at around 14-17 years of age.
  • ': a white toga with a broad purple stripe on its border, worn over a tunic with two broad, vertical purple stripes. It was formal costume for:
  • *Curule magistrates in their official functions, and traditionally, the Kings of Rome.
  • *Freeborn boys, and some freeborn girls, before they came of age. It marked their protection by law from sexual predation and immoral or immodest influence. A praetexta was thought effective against malignant magic, as were a boy's bulla and a girl's lunula.
  • *Some priesthoods, including the Pontifices, Tresviri Epulones, the augurs, and the Arval brothers.
  • Toga candida: "Bright toga"; a toga rubbed with chalk to a dazzling white, worn by candidates for public office. Thus Persius speaks of a cretata ambitio, "chalked ambition". Toga candida is the etymological source of the word candidate.
  • Toga pulla: a "dark toga" was supposed to be worn by mourners at elite funerals. A toga praetexta was also acceptable as mourning wear, if turned inside out to conceal its stripe; so was a plain toga pura. Wearing a toga pulla at the feast that ended mourning was irreligious, ignorant, or plain bad manners. Cicero makes a distinction between the toga pulla and an ordinary toga deliberately "dirtied" by its wearer as a legitimate mark of protest or supplication.
  • Toga picta : Dyed solid purple, decorated with imagery in gold thread, and worn over a similarly decorated tunica palmata. Worn by early Roman kings, later used by generals in their triumphs. During the Empire, it was worn by consuls and emperors. Over time, it became increasingly elaborate, and was combined with elements of the consular trabea.
  • Trabea, associated with citizens of equestrian rank; thus their description as trabeati in some contemporary Roman literature. It may have been a shorter form of toga, or a cloak, wrap or sash worn over a toga. It was white with some form of decoration. In the later Imperial era, trabea refers to elaborate forms of consular dress. Some later Roman and post-Roman sources describe it as solid purple or red, either identifying or confusing it with the dress worn by the ancient Roman kings or reflecting changes in the trabea itself. More certainly, equites wore an angusticlavia, a tunic with narrow, vertical purple stripes, at least one of which would have been visible when worn with a toga or trabea, whatever its form.
  • Laena, a long, heavy cloak worn by Flamen priesthoods, fastened at the shoulder with a brooch. A lost work by Suetonius describes it as a toga made "duplex".

    As "national dress"

The toga's most distinguishing feature was its semi-circular shape, which sets it apart from other cloaks of antiquity like the Greek himation or pallium. To Rothe, the rounded form suggests an origin in the very similar, semi-circular Etruscan tebenna. Norma Goldman believes that the earliest forms of all these garments would have been simple, rectangular lengths of cloth that served as both body-wrap and blanket for peasants, shepherds and itinerant herdsmen. Roman historians believed that Rome's legendary founder and first king, the erstwhile shepherd Romulus, had worn a toga as his clothing of choice; the purple-bordered toga praetexta was supposedly used by Etruscan magistrates, and introduced to Rome by her third king, Tullus Hostilius.
In the wider context of classical Greco-Roman fashion, the Greek enkyklon was perhaps similar in shape to the Roman toga, but never acquired the same significance as a distinctive mark of citizenship. The 2nd-century diviner Artemidorus Daldianus in his Oneirocritica derived the toga's form and name from the Greek tebennos, supposedly an Arcadian garment invented by and named after Temenus. Emilio Peruzzi claims that the toga was brought to Italy from Mycenaean Greece, its name based on Mycenaean Greek te-pa, referring to a heavy woollen garment or fabric.

In civil life

Roman society was strongly hierarchical, stratified and competitive. Landowning aristocrats occupied most seats in the senate and held the most senior magistracies. Magistrates were elected by their peers and "the people"; in Roman constitutional theory, they ruled by consent. In practice, they were a mutually competitive oligarchy, reserving the greatest power, wealth and prestige for their class. The commoners who made up the vast majority of the Roman electorate had limited influence on politics, unless barracking or voting en masse, or through representation by their tribunes. The Equites occupied a broadly mobile, mid-position between the lower senatorial and upper commoner class. Despite often extreme disparities of wealth and rank between the citizen classes, the toga identified them as a singular and exclusive civic body.
File: Contemporary portrayal of a toga picta.jpg|thumb|left|upright|Illustration of an Etruscan wall painting from the François Tomb at Vulci. Some scholars believe this shows a toga picta, largely based on its colour and decorative detail; others suggest that the straight edges make it a Greek-style cloak, and not a toga.
Togas were relatively uniform in pattern and style but varied significantly in the quality and quantity of their fabric, and the marks of higher rank or office. The highest-status toga, the solidly purple, gold-embroidered toga picta could be worn only at particular ceremonies by the highest-ranking magistrates. Tyrian purple was supposedly reserved for the toga picta, the border of the toga praetexta, and elements of the priestly dress worn by the inviolate Vestal Virgins. It was colour-fast, extremely expensive and the "most talked-about colour in Greco-Roman antiquity". Romans categorised it as a blood-red hue, which sanctified its wearer. The purple-bordered praetexta worn by freeborn youths acknowledged their vulnerability and sanctity in law. Once a boy came of age he adopted the plain white toga virilis; this meant that he was free to set up his own household, marry, and vote. Young girls who wore the praetexta on formal occasions put it aside at menarche or marriage, and adopted the stola. Even the whiteness of the toga virilis was subject to class distinction. Senatorial versions were expensively laundered to an exceptional, snowy white; those of lower ranking citizens were a duller shade, more cheaply laundered.
Citizenship carried specific privileges, rights and responsibilities. The formula togatorum listed the various military obligations that Rome's Italian allies were required to supply to Rome in times of war. Togati, "those who wear the toga", is not precisely equivalent to "Roman citizens", and may mean more broadly "Romanized". In Roman territories, the toga was explicitly forbidden to non-citizens; to foreigners, freedmen, and slaves; to Roman exiles; and to men of "infamous" career or shameful reputation; an individual's status should be discernable at a glance. A freedman or foreigner might pose as a togate citizen, or a common citizen as an equestrian; such pretenders were sometimes ferreted out in the census. Formal seating arrangements in public theatres and circuses reflected the dominance of Rome's togate elect. Senators sat at the very front, equites behind them, common citizens behind equites; and so on, through the non-togate mass of freedmen, foreigners, and slaves. Imposters were sometimes detected and evicted from the equestrian seats.
Various anecdotes reflect the toga's symbolic value. In Livy's history of Rome, the patrician hero Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus, retired from public life and clad in tunic or loincloth, is ploughing his field when emissaries of the Senate arrive, and ask him to put on his toga. His wife fetches it and he puts it on. Then he is told that he has been appointed dictator. He promptly heads for Rome. Donning the toga transforms Cincinnatus from rustic, sweaty ploughman – though a gentleman nevertheless, of impeccable stock and reputation – into Rome's leading politician, eager to serve his country; a top-quality Roman. Rome's abundant public and private statuary reinforced the notion that all Rome's great men wore togas, and must always have done so.