The Toga

National Costume of Rome.

The toga was the national costume of the Romans. The Roman people were the gens togata—the "people that wear the toga." In his epic poem, the Aeneid the Roman poet Vergil used the term with pride to refer to the populus Romanus, that is, the "Roman People." Aliens—persons who were not Roman citizens—and Roman exiles were forbidden to wear it. It seems, however, that the law which forbade non-Romans to wear the toga was not universally enforced, for the provinces of Cisalpine Gaul and Transalpine Gaul were called, unofficially, Gallia togata—that is, "Gaul where the toga is worn"—which indicates that Romanized provincials sometimes wore the toga even before they received the citizenship. There was a tradition that the toga came to Rome from Etruria, the region of modern Tuscany in Italy which was inhabited by people the Romans called Etruscans and the Greeks Tyrrhenoi, who seem to have been immigrants from Asia Minor around 1000 b.c.e. Their underground tombs were decorated with wall paintings which show men wearing a short toga, though it is by no means the same as the Roman version of the same garment. The Roman toga probably began as a simple piece of woolen cloth which was worn with no undergarment and fastened in place with a safety pin, called in Latin a fibula. The name comes from the Latin verb, tegere, which means "to cover." The toga was a coverlet, used to cover a person's body by day and his or her bed at night. In the early period, women wore it as well as men. The Roman men even wore it to battle in the early days of Rome.

The Cinctus Gabinus.

In some rituals which were connected with warfare—such as opening the Gates of Janus, which the Romans threw open whenever they embarked on a war—they girded up their togas in what was called the cinctus Gabinus. They took the corners of their togas, threw them over the left shoulder, wound it under the right arm and around the chest, thus making their togas into garments that did not impede their movement. The origin of this curious custom was explained by the story of the ancient enmity between Rome and the town of Gabii, which dated back to the time before the last Roman king was expelled in 510 b.c.e. The Romans used the cinctus Gabinus when they fought Gabii. The 193 centuries, or battalions, of the early Roman citizen army were divided into five classes according to wealth, and only the first class could afford full body armor. A Roman in the lowest class in those faroff days tied up his toga around his waist so that his arms were free to wield a weapon, and went into battle to fight as best he could. His toga gave him little protection, but it was better than nothing.

Development.

Gradually, the toga grew more elaborate, and its usage became more restricted. Women replaced it with the stola, a long upper garment which became the conventional dress of a married woman. Soldiers gave it up for a more convenient cloak called the sagum. Even so, right up to the end of the republican period in the first century b.c.e. and even into the imperial period that followed it, togas were sometimes issued to Roman armies in winter camp. By that time, however, the toga had lost its military role and became a costume of peacetime and a symbol of citizenship. In Rome, a citizen was expected to wear his toga in public. The emperor Augustus (ruled 27 b.c.e.–14 c.e.) forbade citizens entry to the Roman Forum or to the circus if they were without togas. Outside, Rome, however, citizens quickly adopted foreign costumes which could be put on and taken off easily; the toga as it developed became so elaborate that a Roman needed help to put it on. Even in Rome itself, Greek fashions became increasingly popular in the first century c.e., and the toga was reserved more and more for official functions. Women abandoned it early, except for women who were courtesans or were found guilty of adultery. The stolawhich married women wore was denied to them, for it was the mark of the respectable Roman matrona—a woman who was properly married.

THE IMPORTANCE OF THE TOGA

introduction: The toga was the national dress of the Roman citizen. In fact, Romans were sometimes called simply the "togati" (the "men who wear togas"), and when dramas about Roman citizens were produced in the theater, they were called fabulae togatae, as distinct from dramas involving Greek characters which were called fabulae palliatae. Roman senators wore togas when they transacted public business, as did the members of the municipal councils of other cities in the Roman Empire even in the fourth and fifth centuries c.e. The following passage from the Roman history of Livy, who lived in the reign of the emperor Augustus, illustrates the importance of wearing the toga to conduct public business. In 458 b.c.e., the Roman republic faced possible disaster. Rome's enemies, the Aequi, had cut off a consular army led by one of the consuls, Lucius Minucius. In this crisis, the Roman senate decided to appoint Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus as dictator; the dictatorship in Rome was a six-month appointment that was made only in an emergency when the state was under threat and a strong leader was needed. Cincinnatus had a small farm across the Tiber from Rome, and he was working on his land when a deputation from the senate came to invite him to Rome. Prior to delivering the senate's invitation, the deputation asked Cincinnatus to put on his toga. Cincinnatus accepted the dictatorship, defeated the Aequi and, the crisis over, laid down the office after holding it for only fifteen days. Here Livy described the meeting of the deputation from the senate and Cincinnatus.

Now I would solicit the particular attention of those numerous people who imagine that money is everything in this world, and that rank and ability are inseparable from wealth: let them observe that Cincinnatus, the one man in whom Rome placed all her hope of survival, was at that moment working a little three-acre farm (now known as the Quinctian meadows) west of the Tiber, just opposite the spot where the shipyards are today. A mission from the city found him at work on the land—digging a ditch, maybe, or ploughing. Greetings were exchanged, and he was asked—with a prayer for God's blessing on himself and his country—to put on his toga and hear the Senate's instructions. This naturally surprised him, and asking if all were well, he told his wife Racilia to run to their cottage and fetch his toga. The toga was brought, and wiping the grimy sweat from his hands and face, he put it on; at once the envoys from the city saluted him, with congratulations, as Dictator, invited him to enter Rome, and informed him of the terrible danger of Minucius' army. A state vessel was waiting for him on the river, and on the city bank he was welcomed by his three sons who had come to meet him, then by other kinsmen and friends, and finally by nearly the whole body of senators.

source: Livy, The Early History of Rome. Trans. Aubrey de Sélincourt (Harmondsworth, England: Penguin Books, 1960): 213.

Rite of Passage.

In many cultures, a young man's transition from boyhood to manhood is marked by what is called a "rite of passage." In Rome, the rite of passage involved changing from the toga of adolescence to the toga of a man. A Roman youth of free birth wore the toga praetexta, a toga with a band of purple woven along the edge of the garment. Under it, he wore a tunic which had two purple woven stripes which extended from his shoulders to the hemline, and around his neck he wore a locket called a bulla which might be made of gold, silver, bronze, or even leather. When the youth came of age, he exchanged the toga praetexta for the toga virilis, the man's toga, which was all white, the natural color of the wool. In the early days of Rome, well down into the second century b.c.e., a youth gave up the toga praetexta at age sixteen. Later, the ceremony often took place at the end of the youth's fifteenth year. There were exceptions: the emperor Tiberius would not allow the future emperor Caligula to assume the toga virilis until his twentieth year, and the future emperor Nero assumed it at age fourteen. The toga praetexta was also worn by important state officials, and the fact that children wore it as well was perhaps a recognition of the vulnerability and, at the same time, the importance of childhood. Children were as important to the future of the state as the men who held prestigious magistracies. The ceremony in which a young man gave up the toga praetexta usually took place during the festival of Bacchus known as the Liberalia on 16 March. The night before, the boy took off his toga praetexta and put on a white tunic to sleep in; this tunic was known as the tunica recta (the "straight tunic"), so-called because it was woven on the old-fashioned upright loom. The ceremony started the next morning with a sacrifice offered to the Lares, the household gods of the family. The boy dedicated his toga praetexta to the Lares and along with it, his bulla, the locket containing the amulet or charm which he wore around his neck as a boy to ward off evil influences and protect him in the vulnerable years of childhood. It was rather like a modern good luck charm except that Roman society really did believe in the "Evil Eye" and assorted malign influences so hex signs to ward them off were more significant than good luck charms are in modern times. It also marked the wearer as the child of a freeborn Roman citizen. The young man then put on his new toga. It was the toga pura, which did not mean that it was "pure," but rather that it was not dyed, i.e. it was the natural color of the wool. This was the "toga of a man," the so-called toga virile. It signified that he was now an adult male. His family and friends escorted him in his new toga virile to the forum where they presented him to the Roman people, the populus Romanus, who would henceforth regard him as one of their members. The young man then went to the Capitoline Hill, and in the Temple of Jupiter he offered sacrifice to the gods of the state, the divine triad Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva. He was not yet of an age to begin a public career, but old enough to take an interest in public affairs and learn from his elders how to conduct the business of the state. He had crossed the divide between vulnerable youth and manhood.

Togas for Girls.

Girls also wore the toga praetexta, but they gave it up at age twelve upon reaching puberty. From then on until marriage, girls wore a palla, or mantle. A girl over twelve is shown wearing a palla on the south relief of the "Altar of Peace" in Rome which the Roman senate commissioned in 13 b.c.e.; it can still be seen reconstructed in modern Rome, on the bank of the Tiber River. Unlike the toga, it was a rectangular swatch of cloth, but on the "Altar of Peace" it is shown folded over the girl's body in a manner so similar to a toga that it might be mistaken for one, except that its squared lower border gives it away.

The Shape of the Toga.

The toga was simply a piece of cloth that was folded and wrapped around the body. In the early days of Rome, when the cloth was a piece of woolen homespun, it probably kept the shape that it had when it came off the loom: rectangular. The evidence from ancient authors, scanty though it is, indicates that the toga was a semi-circular piece of cloth with one straight edge, and when a purple stripe was woven along the edge—a wide one (latus clavus) for senators and a narrow one (angustus clavus) for members of the equestrian class—it could have been woven only along the straight edge. There have been many modern attempts to reproduce the sort of toga of the monuments and it seems likely that it was not a piece of cloth that was a true semi-circle, but rather that it was half an ellipse with one straight edge that was broad enough to allow the purple stripes to be woven parallel to it. Conservative though the Romans were, the toga styles changed over time; the toga of the late empire bore a general resemblance to the toga of the Roman republic, but it was not the same garment. Yet stone-cutters in the late empire turned out toga-clad figures for official statues of emperors and public officials which were erected across the empire.

How the Toga was Worn.

The toga of republican Rome, in its simplest form, was thrown over the left shoulder, drawn across the back and under the right arm and then thrown back again over the left shoulder so that there was an oblique fold across the chest. The right shoulder and arm were left unencumbered, but not bare, for a man would wear a tunic under his toga. There is a statue in the Archeological Museum in Florence, Italy, known as Il Arringatore (The Orator) which shows the kind of toga that might have been worn in the second century or the beginning of the first century b.c.e. The skirt does not reach the feet, and along its lower edge there is what seems to be a row of embroidery. The toga that Roman politicians Cicero or Julius Caesar might have worn in the last days of the Roman Republic, however, covered both shoulders. Under the Roman emperors, togas became elaborate with folds carefully arranged. The toga of the imperial period had two added features: an overfold of cloth called a sinus that ran diagonally across the chest, and a clump of drapery called an umbo that was a sort of decorative knot made by pulling up the folds on the left side in order to hold the drapery together. Apparel this elaborate cannot have been easy to put on or take off. The proper arrangement of the folds of the toga was a mark of elegance, and there were slaves trained to do the task, called vestiplici if they were male slaves, or vestiplicae if they were women. If a Roman magistrate was to officiate at a ceremony in imperial Rome where a toga must be worn, his slaves might have to sit up the night before to prepare the pleats and folds by squeezing them with tongs. The sinus in particular needed care, for in some portrayals of toga-clad figures it hangs loosely but elegantly across the chest and almost touches the ground. The toga which began as a practical piece of clothing ended up as an elaborate ceremonial costume.

The Lacerna.

Since the toga gave poor protection against inclement weather, the Romans adopted a hoodless woolen outer cloak which was popular in the army: the lacerna. It was worn over the toga and was open at the side, leaving the arms free. The Romans fastened it with a brooch or buckle on the right shoulder so it could be tossed back over the shoulder. It was dark colored when it was used as a military cape, but when it was adopted as civilian dress, it was often made of bright colors and lighter cloth, particularly for upper-class men and women. In cold weather, the spectators in the amphitheater or theater who were wearing togas needed their lacernae to keep warm.

Types of Toga.

Togas were made of wool—a light woolen fabric for summer and a heavier one for winter wear. Unless they were dyed, they remained the natural color of the wool, which was off-white, though given the absence of good laundry facilities, many of the togas worn in Rome must have been a rather dirty grey. It was important for a citizen who presented himself as a candidate for office to have a pure-white toga, and he would use chalk to give his toga the requisite color—hence, the Latin word for "candidate" (candidatus) came from the word for "white" (candidus). The toga praetexta worn by children and by state officials had a purple border. So did the togas worn by senators and men of the equestrian order. Senators had a wide purple border (the latus clavis or "laticlave") to mark their status, whereas men of the equestrian order, the so-called equites or "horsemen" whose minimum income requirement was less than half a senator's, had a narrow stripe. The equites by the second century b.c.e. were men of property who stayed away from a career in politics; they included in their ranks businessmen and tax farmers—that is, private entrepreneurs who contracted with the government to collect taxes. A variety of toga with stripes known as the trabea was worn by the Flamen Dialis and the Flamen Martialis, the high priests of Jupiter and of Mars, and also by the augurs, the priestly officials who took the auspices, but it is unclear how the stripes were arranged. A toga called the trabea was also worn by men of the equestrian order who paraded on horseback in the festival of Castor and Pollux (Rome's legendary founders) to commemorate the semi-mythical Battle of Lake Regillus. Their trabea, however, seems to have been a short mantle like the Greek chlamys. It was the distinctive costume of the equites, for when Roman theaters staged comedies where the characters were citizens of the equestrian order, they were known as comoediae trabeatae—comedies where the actors are costumed in trabeae. Dark-colored togas were worn as a sign of mourning. This type of toga was known as the togapulla: the "dark-colored toga." A pullum was a garment dyed dark-grey. A toga known as the toga picta, or trabea triumphalis, was decorated with patterns and must have taken great skill to weave; it was worn in the period of the Roman Republic by generals returning from a victorious campaign who were granted the right of holding a triumph. The triumphant general paraded his spoils and captives through the streets of Rome, and finally made his way along the Sacred Road (Via Sacra) through the Roman Forum to the temple of Jupiter on the Capitoline Hill. In the rear of the procession came the general himself in a chariot, wearing a toga picta. The general did not actually own this toga, for these togas were kept among the treasures of Jupiter, and brought out only on special occasions. Under the Roman Empire, however, triumphs were reserved for the emperor, and the first emperor, Augustus, made the toga picta his official costume.

The End of the Toga.

Juvenal, the Roman satirist who probably wrote in the first quarter of the second century c.e., wrote in his third satire that throughout most of Italy no man was seen in a toga until the day he died, when he was laid out in one. When shows were staged in the country theaters on holidays, everyone, magistrates included, wore a plain white tunic. Yet the toga remained the proper ceremonial garment until the fourth century c.e. as evidenced by developments from Roman sculpture. A relief sculpture of Marcus Aurelius, emperor from 161–180 c.e., which was re-used on the Arch of Constantine in Rome, shows a figure wearing a short toga which comes only to the knees; another panel of the same emperor, now in the Conservatori Museum in Rome, shows a person with a similar short toga, who is playing the reed pipe known as the aulos. It has been suggested that this short toga was the toga of the Roman common man, but the absence of such figures in art makes it difficult to come to a conclusion. Marcus Aurelius' predecessor, Hadrian, appears in one statue wearing a toga that resembled a Greek himation. Hadrian was a lover of Greek culture, which may account for his toga in the Greek style, but the fashion did not endure for long. In the third century c.e. a new style developed with a broad fold running from under the right arm across the chest and over the left shoulder, giving the appearance of a baldric, or sash running diagonally across the chest. This was the "banded toga" and a man needed the help of a valet to put it on. It was not a costume for everyday wear. Sometimes it seems that the bands were held in place with concealed stitching. Difficult though it might be to put on, the banded toga remained popular through the fourth century as ceremonial garb. As we reach the fifth century, a toga-clad statue of a consul in the Capitoline Museum in Rome shows the final stage of the toga's evolution. The statue dates to about 400 c.e., and it portrays a man wearing a tunic with short sleeves over a long-sleeved tunic. Over that he wears a toga with a long sinus in front, which the magistrate had to hold up with his left arm to prevent it dragging on the ground. This was clearly a purely ceremonial costume for it did not allow the wearer to move freely. By the time the toga reached the end of its long history, it had become unfitted for physical movement. Nonetheless it was not without an offspring. It mutated into the vestment of a Roman Catholic priest which is known as a stola—not to be confused with the costume of a Roman married woman which was known by the same name.

sources

F. Courby, "Toga," in Dictionnaire des antiquités grecques et romaines. Ed Charles Victor Daremberg and Edmond Saglio (Paris: Hachette, 1877; reprint, Graz: Akademisch Druck und Verlagsanstalt, 1962): 347–353.

C. F. Ross, "The Reconstruction of the Later Toga," American Journal of Archaeology 15 (1911): 24–31.

Shelley Stone, "The Toga: From National to Ceremonial Costume," in The World of Roman Costume. Eds. Judith Sebesta and Larissa Bonfante (Madison, Wisc.: University of Wisconsin Press, 1994): 13–45.

Lillian W. Wilson, The Roman Toga (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1924).

THE COSTUME OF THE EMPEROR AUGUSTUS

introduction: The author known as John the Lydian lived in the reign of the emperor Justinian (527–565 c.e.), and worked in the imperial bureaucracy in Constantinople for forty years. Three of his works survive, the best known titled De Magistratibus (On the Offices of the State), De Ostentis (On Omens), and De Mensibus (On the Months) which collected information about the ancient Roman religious calendar and the various festivals which had their dates set by the calendar. In his On the Offices of the State he describes the costumes worn by various officials, and the passage below describes the dress of the emperor Augustus. John lived five centuries after Augustus' death, and no doubt he confused the costume of Augustus to some extent with the costumes of later emperors; the outer cloak of Augustus, for instance, was not made of silk, but silk was regularly used for the apparel of later emperors, and jewel-encrusted garments were a feature of imperial apparel in the later Roman Empire. John reports correctly that Augustus was high priest of Rome (pontifex maximus)—he became high priest in 12 b.c.e. after the death of the previous incumbent, and all his successors until the emperor Gratian (367–383 c.e.) held the office after him. The word pontifex does mean "bridge-builder"—John is correct on that score—and the reason is that when Rome was still pagan, it was believed that every river had a divine spirit of its own that would be offended if a priest failed to perform the prescribed rites when it was yoked by a bridge connecting its two banks.

In time of peace he [Augustus] used to wear the garb of a pontifex—the name stands for chief priest, connected with bridges—of purple reaching to the feet, priestly, ornamented with gold, and a cloak likewise of purple, which had pleats of gold at its extremities. He used to cover his head for the reasons which I gave in the treatise On the Months which I have written. For the wars he wore the paludamenta—these are scarlet mantles of double thickness spun from top-quality raw silk, caught up at the shoulders by a golden brooch inset with precious stones. We call this a fibula as Italians do, but people in the palace even nowadays speak of it, with a sort of special term, as a cornucopia. At festivals he would wear the limbus—this is a purple cloak which covers the body down to the feet, with a Meander pattern; on the shoulders it has a brilliant spray of tabulamenta—that is, material woven into piping—and a paragauda embroidered with the golden letter gamma [in other words a tunic with little figures like the Greek letter "gamma" embroidered on it]. From the border at the feet and the bottom end of the garment, on both sides these little figures trick out the tunic with gold to form a letter gamma. In the senate he would wear a mantle of purple (of course) and, at the edge of the border near the person who wore it, it was bedecked with squares outlined in pure gold—the court functionaries call these squares segmenta, meaning "gold embroidery on the hemline," whereas the man on the street calls embroideries of this sort on the mantles of private individuals sementa. This mantle is called bracteolate (covered with gold plaques), gemosa (encrusted with precious stones), and lanceolate (ornamented with embroidered spear-heads). He also wore the rest of the emperor's official regalia, concerning which I resume a detailed description to be excessive. …

source: John the Lydian, De Magistratibus, in Bureaucracy in Traditional Society: Romano-Byzantine Bureaucracies Viewed from Within. Trans. by T. F. Carney (Lawrence, Kans.: Coronado Press, 1971): 44. Text modified by James Allan Evans.