Great Names in History

She lay awake in bed and thought about the new day and what she would wear. It was still dark outside but all Rome was up. Everyone rose before daybreak. She could hear the crowds outside in the street, though her bedroom was at the back of her mansion and the single little window gave out onto a quiet peristyle with a splashing fountain.

She wore her underwear—a linen loincloth tied at the waist and, on top, a tunic, which was a long shirt. She usually kept her linen brassiere on too but her husband had been there last night and it was lying on the floor where he had thrown it. Rich Roman couples didn’t sleep in the same room.

When a man got out of bed, the first thing he did after slipping into his sandals and using the bedpan, was to wind his toga around him. He became rather good at doing that though he sometimes got it wrong and, with a curse, had to start over again. A rich man of course called his servant for help.
And a lady?

The lady rang a little silver bell. Her servant, a Greek slave, came in carrying oil lamps and hung them on hooks along the wall. “What became of my red shawl? Why hasn’t it come back from the dyer yet?”

Nobody washed. There was no bathroom. As soon as the lady was on her feet she sat back down on a stool to wait for the hairdresser. “Where is Irene? Do I have to ring again? I swear I’m going to have that girl whipped.”
Irene was the hairdresser, the ornatrix.

A good ornatrix was hard to find and prized, even loved, by her mistress; there are gravestones with the names of beloved hairdressers and the families they served so well. Bad ornatrices were of course cursed, and more than once.

They had to be very skilled to bring off all the tiers of hair and make them stay put. In the days of the good-old Republic a hairdo was a simple matter: a part down the middle and a bun at the back. A little later, in Caesar’s time, ladies braided their hair and then mounted the braids on pads above their forehead. That style was immortalized in the great busts of Livia and Octavia.

The tiers of braids got higher and higher. By Flavian times (50 AD) they became great towers studded with jewels. Juvenal the poet made fun of one lady who piled her hair up high: “From the front you would take her for Andromache, but from the back she isn’t so tall—you wouldn’t think you were looking at the same person!”

When the lady’s hair was made up, the ornatrix painted her face. She brought out her vast collection of bottles and pots and jars and pyxes and lay them on a table beside her lady, who ordered her to make sure the door to her room was locked. Her husband had a way of barging in; and you know what Ovid said: Art beautifies only when it is concealed.

Her forehead became snow-white, as well as her arms. That was done with chalk and lead-white. Irene reddened her cheeks and lips with the lees of wine or ochre; and she drew her eyebrows and the lines around her eyes with a paste of ashes or antimony. There were only bad hand mirrors of polished metal and the light in her room was not good, even with the door to the peristyle wide open, so a lady had to trust her ornatrix very far.

See Part Two and learn how the lady dressed to become a dazzling beauty in a full-length robe and silk shawl, and with a red ribbon in her hair.

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What did a Roman wear?
Why, a toga, of course.

Wasn’t that an unwieldy garment to walk around in?
Yes, it was heavy and you had to readjust it constantly. Walking and talking with gestures messed it up.
How big was it?
6 meters of fine wool cloth cut in a circle.
In a circle?
Yes; that was one of its distinguishing features. The Greek himation was rectangular and its folds hung squared off at the bottom. The Roman toga-folds hung in curves.
Was it hard to put on?
It was best to have help. Doing it by yourself without a mirror (and no one had big mirrors) gave pretty bad results.
If it was such a troublesome thing why did people wear it?
Tradition. It became the symbol of Romanness and all her fine virtues. Only Roman citizens were allowed to put it on. People got sentimental about it.
How long was the toga worn?
All thoughout the Republic and the Empire. Give it a good seven or eight hundred years.

(I’m afraid a Roman would sneer at this Hollywood actor-friendly version of a toga. Compare it with the ones on these two Roman statues. Notice the tongue or flap hanging out above the belly, and the tail hanging below the ankles.)

So much wool cut in a circle—it must have been expensive. How could the common Romans afford one?
Do you know about patrons and clients? In those days everyone except the emperor served somebody. Everyone was somebody’s “client”. A client made common cause with his patron, voted for him when he ran for office, walked around with him when he needed to show his support, served him in any way he asked. In return, the patron protected his client and saw to it that he was provided for. Once a year he gave him presents. One of those was a new toga.
Was the toga ALL they wore? Did they put on anything under it?
During the Republic they wore only a loin-cloth—just a linen cloth with the corners tied, as you see on a lot of Crucifixion pictures of Christ. Later they wore a long shirt—or two when it was cold. Augustus always felt chilly and Suetonius says he sometimes wore three and four of those linen shirts under his toga.
A man like Caesar was always conscious of how he looked and was forever watching his toga, making sure it hung properly and the folds were pretty. When the assassins began to stab him, his first thought was for his toga. He arranged it so that when he fell it would cover him decently. He had nothing on underneath but the loincloth.

How did they finally do away with the toga?
It wasn’t easy. Remember that, as it represented Romanness and Rome had great prestige, it looked very attractive to people. In a provincial town like Segóbriga in Spain, the natives must have looked with very wide eyes at the real Romans strutting proudly around in their togas. The statues of all the great figures of the past in the theater of Segóbriga (and everywhere) wore togas. It was the dress of heroes.

There was a ceremony when a youth first put on a man’s toga. In his home, in the presence of his relatives, he shed his boy’s toga with a purple band, the toga praetexta, and solemnly donned the pure-white toga virilis. Not only the living relatives looked on. The ceremony took place in the atrium with the masks and busts of his famous forefathers. Afterwards they all went to the Forum where he inscribed his name on the list of Roman citizens and walked over to the Temple of Juventus and made an offering to thank the deity for safeguarding him until manhood.

But in time, yes, people wanted to get rid of it. Several emperors had to issue edicts ordering citizens to wear it every time they went outdoors. To go to the Colosseum, for instance. Privately, even the rich began to cheat a little and pull off their togas whenever they could. They felt comfortable only in a tunic.

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