The Dress of Roman Women

A Girl's Dress.

Freeborn girls, that is, girls whose parents were not slaves, wore the same costume as free-born boys: a toga worn over a tunic. The toga was the toga praetexta with a purple border that had to be made of wool. The purple border was, at least in origin, apotropaic—that is, it protected the wearer against the Evil Eye or other unseen dangers that might attack a child. She would wear her hair carefully combed, braided and tied with a single band of wool cloth called in Latin a vitta, or in English, a "fillet." The fillet was probably white and it signified purity. A boy would also wear a bulla or a locket, which contained an amulet—that is a charm which was worn to ward off evil spirits or miasmas that might infect him—but it seems that girls did not wear them. Few sculptures have survived of young Roman girls wearing the toga praetexta but those that have do not show bullas. However, a girl might wear a necklace of some sort which could have served the same purpose as an amulet. Once a girl reached puberty, she put off her toga praetexta and dedicated it to the goddess "Fortuna Virginalis"—Venus in her capacity as the guardian goddess of young maidens. This was the signal that she was now ready for marriage.

The Costume of the Roman Bride.

On the night before her wedding day, a bride put on the tunica recta, so called because it was woven on the ancient upright loom which weavers had abandoned for regular cloth manufacture. The rite of marriage demanded that a bride weave her tunic of white wool on the upright loom, as well as her hairnet, which was dyed yellowish-orange, the color of flame. On her wedding day, the fillets in her hair as well as her hairnet would signal her chastity, in Latin, her pudor. Around her tunic she put a belt made of the wool of a ewe—a female sheep. The belt was knotted in a knot that her husband would undo when they went to the marriage bed together. Then the bride put on the marriage veil that was dyed yellowish-red. It would protect her from evil spirits as she made the journey from her father's house to her husband's, or, in ritual terms, when she left the protection of the Lares (household gods) of her own family to the Lares of her husband. Her new husband gave her fire and water as she entered his house, and she placed a coin on the little altar of her husband's Lares that would be in a niche in a wall near the entrance. If she was moving to a new district of the city, she would place another coin on the altar of the Lar of the district, the Lares compitales.

The Married Woman.

The standard dress of the Roman matrona—that is, a married woman—was the stola. It was a dress held to the shoulders by straps; it hung to the feet and resembled a modern slip, except that the skirt was fuller and fell in distinctive folds called rugae. Over her shoulders and covering her head was a cloak called a palla. Proper Roman women wore their head covered and the repercussions of neglecting this element of fashion could be severe. In the second century

b.c.e. a Roman called Sulpicius Gallus who was consul in 166 b.c.e. divorced his wife because she had left the house with her head unveiled. A Roman woman's hair also signaled her status as a married woman; her hair should be carefully dressed and bound with fillets. The stola and the fillets that tied up her hair would remain the costume of a chaste married woman throughout her life.

Disgraced Women.

In the same way that clothing demonstrated the purity of the young Roman girl and the fidelity of the Roman wife, adulteresses and prostitutes also wore distinctive clothes. If a husband divorced his wife because she had an affair with another man, she would wear a plain white toga; she no longer had the right to wear a stola. The proper costume for a prostitute was also a toga. This particular way of branding impure women seems to have relaxed as time went on. Juvenal, the sour satirist of Roman life who lived in the second century c.e., claimed that a virtuous woman was hard to find in Rome of his day and yet nobody wore the toga.

EPITAPHS OF A DRESSMAKER AND A HAIRDRESSER

introduction: Wealthy women in Rome had their own hairdressers and dressmakers who generally were slaves. Dressmakers and hairdressers were at the beck and call of mistresses who could be demanding. A mistress who found her coiffeur unsatisfactory would not hesitate to beat her slave. Many slaves who died left no trace of their existence, except for perhaps a tombstone erected by a friend or fellow slave. The epitaphs on the two tombstones that are cited below are, first, for a dressmaker named Italia and, second, for a hairdresser named Psamate. Note how young they were when they died; Italia was twenty and Psamate only nineteen.

To Italia, dressmaker of Cocceia Phyllis. She lived twenty years. Acastus, her fellow slave, paid for this tombstone because she was poor.

Psamate, hairdresser of Furia, lived nineteen years. Mithrodates, the baker of Flaccus Thorius, set up this tombstone.

source: Jo-Ann Shelton, "Working Women," in As the Romans Did: A Sourcebook in Roman Social History. 2nd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998): 303–304.

The Widow.

If a woman's husband died, she took off her stola and replaced it with a ricinium, a word derived from the Latin verb meaning "to throw back." The ricinium was a shawl made of a square piece of cloth which a woman folded and then threw back half of it apparently over her shoulder. Wearing it was a sign of mourning and thus it was probably dark-colored, made from wool that was naturally dark. The widow wore the ricinium for the year prescribed for mourning. She may have continued to wear it longer if she did not remarry, but this cannot be proven conclusively.

The Unmarried Woman.

Roman marriages were generally arranged. Fathers found proper husbands for their daughters. Romantic love sometimes upset their plans, and it is significant that the god who caused young men and women to fall in love was Cupid, the son of Venus, who shot poisoned arrows at his victims. In other words, romantic love was a poison that caused youths and maidens to neglect their duty to their families and seek improper unions. There were probably not a large number of unmarried women in ancient Rome. In Roman law, an unmarried woman and a widow were considered the same, but it is not clear that they dressed the same. Neither is it clear what the appropriate costume was for a woman who was divorced for reasons other than adultery, particularly in an era when some Roman men married and divorced for political advantage. It is understood, however, that the costumes prescribed for women belonged to the customs of early Rome known as the mos maiorum by the Romans—the way of life of our ancestors. While the Romans revered the ways of their ancestors, they did not always adhere to them religiously, so the guidelines for what women in different stations of life should wear may not have been closely followed.

ALLURING DRESS IN AUGUSTAN ROME

introduction:

[This text has been suppressed due to author restrictions]

source:

The Latest Style.

Though fashions changed much more slowly in ancient Greece and Rome than nowadays, it was important to keep up to date. Well-to-do Roman women had their own dressmakers and hair-dressers, who were generally slaves; if they did not satisfy the whims of their mistresses, they could be flogged. Evidence for hairstyles comes from portrait sculpture and painting. In the sixth century b.c.e. in Greece, both young men and young girls had their hair done in elaborate coiffeurs, to judge from the so-called kouros and kore sculptures—that is, freestanding statues showing nude young men and clothed young women which were erected in the archaic period. The marcelling (crimping of the hair into rows of waves) and plaiting of their hair must have taken hours of primping. In the classical period hairstyles became simpler. In Rome in the Augustan period, the emperor Augustus set the style with short hair combed forward on his forehead, and his wife Livia is shown with her hair parted in the middle and marcelled. By the end of the first century tight curls piled up on top of the head was the fashion. Hair dyes turned brunettes blonde, which was the most fashionable color. Sometimes the results were disastrous; the Latin poet Ovid wrote a poem of commiseration to his girlfriend who had lost her hair as a result of using harsh hair dyes.

sources

George M. A. Hanfmann, Classical Sculpture (Greenwich, Conn.: New York Graphic Society, 1967).

Mary G. Houston, Ancient Greek, Roman and Byzantine Costume. 2nd ed. (London, England: Adam and Charles Black, 1947).

Laetitia La Follette, "The Costume of the Roman Bride," in The World of Roman Costume. Eds. Judith Lynn Sebesta and Larissa Bonfante (Madison, Wisc.: University of Wisconsin Press, 1994): 54–64.

Judith Lynn Sebesta, "Symbolism in the Costume of Roman Women," in The World of Roman Costume. Eds. Judith Lynn Sebesta and Larissa Bonfante (Madison, Wisc.: University of Wisconsin Press, 1994): 46–53.