The civil dress of the higher classes amongst the ancient Romans consisted of a woollen tunic, over which, in public, was worn the toga. The toga was also of wool, and its colour, during the earlier ages, of its own natural yellowish hue. It was a robe of honour, which the common people were not permitted to wear, and it was laid aside in times of mourning and public calamities. The form of the toga has been a hotly-contested point; Dionysius of Halicarnassus says it was semicircular; and an ingenious foreigner,* who devoted many years to the inquiry, has practically demonstrated that, though not perfectly semicircular, its shape was such as to be better described by that term than any other.

The Roman tunic was of different lengths, according to the caprice of the wearer; but long tunics were deemed effeminate during the time of the republic. Cicero, speaking of the luxury of Catiline's companions, says they wore tunics reaching to their heels, and that their togas were as large as the sails of a ship. Some wore two or more tunics; the interior one, which held the place of the modern shirt, was called interula or subucula. The subucula of Augustus was of wool, according to Suetonius; and there does not appear any proof that linen was used for this garment by men before the time of Alexander Severus, who, according to Lampridius, was particularly fond of fine linen. Women, however, appear to have generally used it, for Varro mentions, as an extraordinary circumstance, that it had long been the custom of the females of a particular Roman family not to wear linen garments.

The common people wore over their tunics a kind of mantle or surtout, called lacerna, which was fastened before with a buckle, and had a hood attached to it (cucullus). It was generally made of wool, and dyed black or brown. In the time of Cicero it was a disgrace for a senator to adopt such a habit; but it was afterwards worn by the higher orders. The birrhus was a similar vestment, also with a hood, but usually of a red colour. When travelling, the heads of the higher classes were generally covered by the petasus, a broad-brimmed hat, which they had borrowed from the Greeks. The common people wore the pileus, a conical cap, which was also the emblem of liberty, because it was given to slaves when they were made free.t

Various kinds of covering are mentioned for the feet, and many were called by the Romans calceus which are found under their own names, as pero, mulleus, phæcasium, caliga, solea, crepida, sandalium, baxea, &c. The caliga was the sandal of the Roman soldiery, such has had nails or spikes at the bottom. The pero is supposed by some to be the boot worn by the senators; the phæcasium was also a kind of boot, covering the foot entirely. According to Appianus, it was of white leather, and worn originally by the Athenian and Alexandrian priesthood at sacrifices: it was worn in Rome by women and effeminate persons. Petronius, who wore it and called himself a soldier, was asked by a legionary if in his army soldiers marched with the phæcasium :

'Age vero, in exercitu vestro phæcasiati milites ambulant?"

The mulleus is described by Dion Cassius as coming up to the middle of the leg, though it did not cover the whole foot, but only the sole, like a sandal: it was of a red colour, and originally worn by the Alban kings.

The cothurnus, which Dion says it resembled both in colour and fashion, is described by Sidonius Apollinaris as having a ligature attached to the sole, which passed between the great and second toes, and then divided into two bands. And Virgil tells us that it was worn by the Tyrian virgins.§ The armour of the Romans at the commencement of the republic consisted, according to Livy, of

*The late Mons. Combre, costumier to the Théâtre Français, Paris. This intelligent person, at the recommendation of Talma and Mr. Charles Young, was engaged by Mr. Charles Kemble, during his management of Covent Garden Theatre, for the revival of Julius Cæsar, and made the beautiful togas which have since been worn in all the Roman plays at that theatre.

+ Vide Persius, Sat. 5, thus translated by Dryden :

"What further can we from our caps receive,
But as we please without control to live?"

Suetonius (in Nero, cap. Ivii.) says, "Mors Neronis tantum gaudium publicæ præbuit ut plebs pileata tota urbe discurreret."

Hence Juvenal (Sat. 16) and Suetonius (in Augustus, 25) use the term caligati for the common soldiers, without the addition of a substantive.

"Virginibus Tyriis mos est gestare pharetram,
Purpureoque alte suras vincire cothurno."-Æn. 2.

See many varieties of the mulleus and cothurnus in the paintings discovered at Herculaneum. sented wearing the cothurnus.

Diana is generally repre

the galea, the cassis, the clypeus, the ocrea or greaves, and the lorica, all of brass. This was the Etruscan attire, and introduced by Servius Tullius. The lorica, like the French cuirass, was so called from having been originally made of leather. It followed the line of the abdomen at bottom, and seems to have been impressed whilst wet with forms corresponding to those of the human body, and this peculiarity was preserved in its appearance when it was afterwards made of metal. At top, the square aperture for the throat was guarded by the pectorale, a band or plate of brass; and the shoulders were likewise protected by pieces made to slip over each other. The galea and cassis were two distinct head-pieces originally, the former, like the lorica, being of leather, and the latter of metal: but in the course of time the words were applied indifferently.*

Polybius has furnished us with a very minute account of the military equipment of the Romans of his time; and it is from his description, and not from the statues, which have been generally considered as authorities, but which are in truth of a considerably later date, that we must collect materials for the military costume of the latter days of the republic.

He tells us then that the Roman infantry was divided into four bodies: the youngest men and of the lowest condition were set apart for the light-armed troops (velites); the next in age were called the hastati; the third, who were in their full strength and vigour, the principes; and the oldest of all were called triarii.† The velites were armed with swords, light javelins (a cubit and a span The hastati wore complete armour, in length), and bucklers of a circular form, three feet in diameter; and they wore on their heads some simple covering, like the skin of a wolf or other animal which consisted of a shield of a convex surface, two feet and a half broad and four feet or four feet and a palm in length, made of two planks glued together, and covered, first with linen and then with calves' skin, having in its centre a shell or boss of iron; on their right thigh a sword, called the Spanish sword, made not only to thrust but to cut with either edge, the blade remarkably firm and strong; two piles or javelins, one stouter than the other, but both about six cubits long; a brazen helmet; and greaves for the legs. Upon the helmet was worn an ornament of three upright feathers, either black or red, about a cubit in height, which, being placed on the very top of their heads, made them seem much taller, and gave them a beautiful and terrible appearance. Their breasts were protected by the pectorale of brass: but such as were rated at more than ten thousand drachmæ wore a ringed lorica. The principes and triarii were armed in the same manner as the hastati, except only that the triarii carried pikes instead of javelins. The Roman cavalry, the same author tells us, were in his time armed like the Greeks, but that, anciently, it was very different, for they then wore no armour on their bodies, but were covered in the time of action with only an under garment; they were thereby enabled certainly to mount and dismount with great facility, but they were too much exposed to danger in close engagements. The spears, also, that were in use amongst them in former times, were in a double respect unfit for service: first, as they were of slender make, and always trembled in the hand, it was extremely difficult to direct them with any certainty, and they were sometimes shaken to pieces by the mere motion of the horse; and, secondly, the lower end not being armed with iron, they were formed only to strike with the point, and, when broken with this stroke, became useless. Their bucklers were made of the hide of an ox, and in form not unlike to the globular dishes which were used in sacrifices; but these were also of too infirm a texture for defence, and, when relaxed by weather, were utterly spoiled. Observing these defects, therefore, they changed their weapons for those of the Greeks.

The signiferi, or standard-bearers, seem to have been habited like their fellow-soldiers, with the exception of the scalp and mane of a lion which covered their heads and hung down on their shoulders. The eagles of Brutus and Cassius were of silver. The lictors, according to Petronius, wore white habits, and from the following passage of Cicero it would appear they sometimes wore the saga, or paludamentum, and sometimes a small kind of toga :-" Togulæ ad portam lictoribus præsto fuerunt quibus illi acceptis sagula rejecerunt." The fasces were bound with purple ribbons. The axes were taken from them by Publicola; but T. Lartius, the first dictator, Cicero uses the word "dibaphus," twice dyed, for the estored them. The augurs wore the trabea of purple and scarlet; that is to say, dyed first with one colour and then with the other.

Vide Sir S. Meyrick's 'Crit. Inquiry,' Introduction.

+ Our business here is only with the dress of the soldiery; but those who wish for further particulars respecting the Roman legions will do well to consult Mons. le Beau's luminous account in the 'Académie des Inscriptions,' tome xxxv.

221

augural robe (Epist. Fam., lib. ii. 16); and in another passage calls it "our purple," being himself a member of the college of augurs. The shape of the aforesaid trabea is another puzzle for the antiquaries. Dionysius of Halicarnassus says plainly enough that it only differed from the toga in the quality of its stuff; but Rubenius would make it appear from the lines of Virgil—

"Parvaque sedebat

Succinctus trabea."-Æn. 7

that it was short, and resembled the paludamentum, for which reason he says the salii (priests of Mars), who are sometimes termed "trabeati," are called "paludati" by Festus.

The Roman women originally wore the toga as well as the men, but they soon abandoned it for the Greek pallium, an elegant mantle, under which they wore a tunic descending in graceful folds to the feet, called the stola.*

Another exterior habit was called the peplum, also of Grecian origin. It is very difficult, says Montfaucon, to distinguish these habits one from the other. There was also a habit called crocota, most probably because it was of a saffron colour, as we are told it was worn not only by the women, but effeminate men, revellers, and buffoons.+

Vittee and

Ovid par

The fashions of ladies' head dresses changed as often in those times as they do now. fascia, ribbons or fillets, were the most simple and respectable ornaments for the hair. ticularly mentions the former as the distinguishing badges of honest matrons and chaste virgins.‡ The calantica was, according to some, a coverchief. Servius says the mitra was the same thing as the calantica, though it anciently signified amongst the Greeks a ribbon, a fillet, a zone.§ Another coverchief called flammeum, or flammeolum, was worn by a new-married female on the wedding-day. According to Nonius, matrons also wore the flammeum, and Tertullian seems to indicate that in his time it was a common ornament which Christian women wore also. The caliendrum, mentioned by Horace (i. Sat. viii. 48), and afterwards by Arnobius, was a round of false hair which women added to their natural locks, in order to lengthen them and improve their appearance. The Roman ladies wore bracelets (armilla) of silver, or gilt metal, and sometimes of pure gold, necklaces, and earrings. Pliny says, "they seek the pearl in the Red Sea, and the emeralds in the depths of the earth. It is for this they pierce their ears." These earrings were extremely long, and sometimes of so great a price, says Seneca, that "a pair of them would consume the revenue of a rich house;" and again, that "the folly of them (the women) was such, that one of them would carry two or three patrimonies hanging at her ears." Green and vermi lion were favourite colours, both with Greek and Roman females. Such garments were called "vestes herbidæ," from the hue and juice of the herbs with which they were stained. The rage for green and vermilion was of long duration, for Cyprian and Tertullian, inveighing against luxury, name particularly those colours as most agreeable to the women; and Martian Capella, who wrote in the fifth century, even says, "Floridam discoloremque vestem herbida palla contexuerat." At banquets, and on joyful occasions, white dresses were made use of. Among the many colours in request with gentlewomen, Ovid reckons "albentes rosas" (de Art. iii. v. 189); and at v. 191 he says

"Alba decent fuscas: albis, es Cephei placebas."

In Tibullus we meet with the following passage:

"Urit seu Tyria voluit procedere palla;

Urit seu nivea candida veste venit."-Eleg. iv. 2.

Having thus given a sketch of the general costume of the Romans, we will proceed to notice

*"Ad talos stola et demissa circumdata palla."-Horace, lib. i., Sat. 2, 99.

Yellow was always considered effeminate amongst the Romans, and the votaries of pleasure are generally described in it. See also a painting of vocal and instrumental performers found at Portici, A.D. 1761. "Este procul vittæ tenues insigne pudoris."-Metam., lib. i., fab. 9.

And describing the chaste Daphne, he says,

"Vitta coercebat positos sine lege capillos."-Met. lib. i.

"Unde mitram solvere quod metaphorice significabat cum virgine concumbere."-Montfaucon, Ant. Expliq tome iii. p. 44.

Stuckius, Ant. Con. ii. 26.

such peculiarities as are requisite to distinguish the dramatis persona of the Roman plays of Shakspere.

The dress of the ancient Roman consuls consisted of the tunic, called from its ornament laticlavian, the toga prætexta (i. e. bordered with purple), and the red sandals called mullei. Of all the disputed points before alluded to, that which has occasioned the most controversy is the distinguishing mark of the senatorial and equestrian classes.

The latus clavus is said to have been the characteristic of the magistrates and senators, and the angustus clavus that of the equites or knights.

That it was a purple ornament we learn from Pliny* and Ovid; but concerning its shape there are almost as many opinions as there have been pages written on the subject, not one of the ancients having taken the trouble to describe what to them was a matter of no curiosity, or by accident dropped a hint which might serve as a clue to the enigma. Some antiquarians contend that it was a round knob or nail with which the tunic was studded all over; others that it was a flower; some that it was a fibula; some that it was a ribbon worn like a modern order; and others, again, that it was a stripe of purple wove in or sewn on the tunic; but these last are divided among themselves as to the direction in which this stripe ran.†

The learned Père Montfaucon, in his 'Antiquité Expliquée par les Figures,' observes that Lampridius, in his 'Life of Alexander Severus,' says that at feasts napkins were used adorned with scarlet clavi, "clavata cocco mantilia." These clavi were also seen in the sheets that covered the beds on which the ancients lay to take their meals. Ammianus Marcellinus also tells us that a table was covered with cloths so ornamented, and disposed in such a manner, that the whole appeared like the habit of a prince.

Upon this Montfaucon ingeniously remarks, that, presuming the clavus to be a stripe or band of purple running round the edges of these cloths, it would not be difficult by laying them one over the other to show nothing but their borders, and thereby present a mass of purple to the eye, which might of course be very properly compared to the habit of a prince, but that this could not be effected were the cloths merely studded with purple knobs, or embroidered with purple flowers, as in that case the white ground must inevitably appear. In addition to this, he observes that St. Basil, in explanation of a passage in Isaiah, says, he blames the luxury of women "who border their garments with purple, or who insert it into the stuff itself;" and that St. Jerome, on the same passage, uses the expression of "clavatum purpura."

Now, though these observations go some way towards proving the clavus to have been a band or stripe (broad for the senators and narrow for the knights), we are as much in the dark as ever respecting the direction it took. It could not have bordered the tunic, or surely, like that of the Spaniards, it would have been called prætexta (as the toga was when so ornamented). On the line in Horace

"Latum demisit pectore clavum."-Sat. 1, 6, 28

a commentator (Torrentius) says, "recto ordine descendebat insuti clavi vel intexti ”—the clavi sewn on, or woven into, the garment, descended in a right line; but if he founded this conjecture simply on the word "demisit," he did not recollect that the ornament gave its name to the garment, and that the tunic itself is repeatedly called the latus clavus by the ancient writers. Horace might, therefore, merely allude to the tunic of the wearer hanging loosely and negligently down upon the breast, an affectation of wearing it which is imputed to Julius Cæsar. Nothing, in short, appears likely to solve this difficulty but the discovery of some painting of Roman times, in which colour may afford the necessary information.

Noble Roman youths wore the prætexta, and the bulla, a golden ornament, which, from the rare specimen in the collection of the late Samuel Rogers, we should compare to the case of what is called a hunting-watch.§ It has generally been described as a small golden ball; but, unless the one we

Lib. 9, cap. xxxix.

Those of our readers who would like to plunge into the depths of this unfathomable controversy are recommended to a perusal of the essays of Rubenius and Ferrarius.

Livy, speaking of the tunics of the Spaniards, says they were of a dazzling whiteness, and bordered with purple-." id est pretexta."

§ An exactly similar one is engraved in Montfaucon.

have seen has been by accident much compressed or flattened, we should say they were not more globular than an old-fashioned watch Macrobius says they were sometimes in the shape of a heart, and that they frequently contained preservatives against envy, &c. On arriving at the age of puberty, which was fourteen, youths abandoned the bulla, and exchanged the toga pratexta for the toga pura, which was also called the "toga virilis," and "libera :”—“ virilis," in allusion to the period of life at which they had arrived; and libera, because at the same time, if they were pupilli, they attained full power over their property, and were released from tutela. There is no ascertaining the age of young Marcius, in the tragedy of Coriolanus; but as he only appears in the scene before the Volscian camp when he is brought to supplicate his father, he should wear nothing but a black tunic, the toga and all ornaments being laid aside in mourning and times of public calamity.

Of Julius Cæsar we learn the following facts relative to his dress and personal appearance. Suetonius tells us that he was tall, fair-complexioned, round-limbed, rather full-faced, and with black eyes; that he obtained from the senate permission to wear constantly a laurel crown (Dion Cassius says on account of his baldness); that he was remarkable in his dress, wearing the laticlavian tunic with sleeves to it, having gatherings about the wrist, and always had it girded rather loosely, which latter circumstance gave origin to the expression of Sulla, "Beware of the loose-coated boy," or "of the man who is so ill girt." Dion Cassius adds that he had also the right to wear a royal robe in assemblies;* that he wore a red sash and the calcei mullei even on ordinary days, to show his descent from the Alban kings.† A statue of Julius Cæsar, armed, is engraved in Rossi's 'Racolta di Statue Antiche e Moderne,' folio, Rome, 1704, pl. 15; also one of Octavianus, or Augustus Cæsar :-the latter statue having been once in the possession of the celebrated Marquis Maffei. Octavius affected simplicity in his appearance, and humility in his conduct; and, consistently with this description, we find his armour of the plainest kind. His lorica, or cuirass, is entirely without ornament, except the two rows of plates at the bottom. The thorax is partly hidden by the paludamentum, which was worn by this emperor and by Julius Cæsar of a much larger size than those of his successors. Although he is without the cinctura, or belt, he holds in his right hand the paragonium, a short sword, which, as the name imports, was fastened to it. Suetonius tells us that Octavius was in height five feet nine inches, of a complexion between brown and fair, his hair a little curled and inclining to yellow. He had clear bright eyes, small ears, and an aquiline nose, his eyebrows meeting. He wore his toga neither too scanty nor too full, and the clavus of his tunic neither remarkably broad nor narrow. thicker in the sole than common, to make him appear taller than he was. a thick toga, four tunics, a shirt, a flannel stomacher, and wrappers on his legs and thighs. He could not bear the winter's sun, and never walked in the opon air without a broad-brimmed hat on his head.

His shoes were a little
In the winter he wore

From the time of Caius Marius the senators wore black boots or buskins reaching to the middle of the leg, with the letter C in silver or ivory upon them, or rather the figure of a half-moon § or crescent. There is one engraved in Montfaucon, from the cabinet of P. Kircher. It was worn above the heel, at the height of the ankle; but this last honour, it is conjectured, was only granted to such as were descended from the hundred senators elected by Romulus.

In conclusion, it may not be amiss to say a few words respecting the purple of the ancients. Gibbon says "it was of a dark cast, as deep as bulls' blood."-See also President Goguet's 'Origine des Loix et des Arts,' part ii. 1. 2, c. 2, pp. 184, 215. But there were several sorts of purple, and each hue was fashionable in its turn. "In my youth," says Cornelius Nepos (who

* Cicero also says that Cæsar sat in the rostra, in a purple toga, on a golden seat, crowned: "Sedebat in rostris collega tuus, amictus toga purpurea, in sella aurea, coronatus."-Phil., 2, 34.

Rubenius thinks he wore the sleeved tunic for the same reason, to show his descent, through those monarchs, from the Trojans, to whom Numanus objects, in Virgil, as a proof of their effeminacy

mutari," to become a senator, as they then exchanged one sort of chaussure for another.-Cieere.

Hence also "calceos
Phil. xiii. 13.

§ Therefore called "Calcei lunali."-Rubenius apud Philostratus.

The crescent is seen upon the standards of the Roman centuries, probably to denote the number 100.