DRESS IN MEDITERRANEAN

ANTIQUITY
ii
 DRESS IN MEDITERRANEAN
ANTIQUITY

GREEKS,
ROMANS, JEWS,
CHRISTIANS
Edited by Alicia J. Batten and Kelly Olson
 T&T CLARK
Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
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First published in Great Britain 2021

Copyright © Alicia J. Batten, Kelly Olson and contributors, 2021

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Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Editors of this work.

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 Alicia dedicates this book to the memory of Andrew Bentham Batten (1963–2019),
beloved brother, dressed in bright colours …

Kelly dedicates this book to her colleague and friend James Miller, dandy extraordinaire.
vi
 CONTENTS

L ist of I llustrations  x
A cknowledgements  xiv
N otes on C ontributors  xv
L ist of A bbreviations  xix

1 I ntroduction
Alicia J. Batten and Kelly Olson 1

Section A Methods

2 Dress and Classical Studies

Kelly Olson 11

3 Dress and Religious Studies

Alicia J. Batten 19

4 Dress and Anthropology

Lynne Hume 27

5 Dress and Sociology

Beth E. Graybill 39

Section B Materials

6  lothing in Marble and Bronze: The Representation of Dress

C
in Greek and Roman Sculpture
Glenys Davies 53

7 Greek Dress from the Inscriptional Evidence

Laura Gawlinski 67

8 The Colours of Ancient Greek Dress

Cecilie Brøns 77

9 Ornamenta Muliebria: Jewellery and Identity in the Roman Period

Courtney Ward 95

10 D
 ress in the Desert: Archaeological Textiles as a Source
for Work Clothes in Roman Egypt
Lise Bender Jørgensen 109

11 R
 oman Women Dressing the Part: The Visual Vocabulary
from Paintings and Mosaics
Lisa A. Hughes 125
viii CONTENTS

12 ‘They Leave behind Them Portraits of Their Wealth, Not Themselves’:

Aspects of Self-Presentation in the Dress of the Deceased in Mummy
Portraits and Portrait Mummies from Roman Egypt
Lorelei H. Corcoran 137

Section C Meanings

13 D
 ress and Ceremony in Achaemenid Persia: The ‘*Gaunaka’
Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones 159

14 H
 air and Social Status in the Near East and Early Greece, c. 900–300 BCE
Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones 173

15 S tepping over the Line: Shoes and Boundary-Crossing in Ancient Greece

Sue Blundell 189

16 D
 ress and Religious Ritual in Roman Antiquity
Kelly Olson 201

17 A
 ndromeda Unbound: Possession, Perception and Adornment in the
House of the Dioscuri
Neville McFerrin 215

18 O
 n the Ambivalent Signification of Roman Crowns
Andrew Gallia 229

19 C
 lothes Make the Jew: Was There Distinctive Jewish Dress in the
Greco-Roman Period?
Joshua Schwartz 247

20 W
 hat Did Mary Magdalene Look Like?: Images from the
West, the East, Dura and Judaea
Joan E. Taylor 257

21 R
 obes of Transfiguration and Salvation in Early Christian Texts
Janelle Peters 279

22 W
 orn Stories: (Ad)dressing Wives in 1 Peter
Kelsi Morrison-Atkins 289

23 E
 xposed! Nakedness and Clothing in the Book of Revelation
Harry O. Maier 299

24 D
 irty Laundry in the Christ Cult
Alicia J. Batten 313

25 ‘He Must Buy Her New Clothes for Winter’: Women’s Attire in
the Rabbinic Imagination of the Tannaitic Period
Gail Labovitz 325
CONTENTS ix

26 T
 extual Problems in Textile Research: The Use of the Talmud in Studies
of Ancient Jewish Dress
Katie Turner 339

Bibliography of Secondary Sources 349

I ndex  397
 ILLUSTRATIONS

6.1 Statue (korē) dedicated by Cheramyes from the Heraion, Samos 55

6.2 Kore 675 from the Acropolis, Athens 56

6.3 Statue of a woman wearing the stola, from Pompeii 58

6.4 Bronze statue of L’Arringatore (The Orator) 59

6.5 Nereid (a figure representing a breeze) used on the Nereid Monument from Lycia,
c. 390–80 BCE 62

6.6 Hellenistic statue of a woman with diaphanous mantle: Statue of Diodora from Delos 63

7.1 The variety of stamped loomweights found in the Athenian Agora 70

7.2 Fragments of the Attic Stelai 73

8.1 The Chios Kore, circa 520/500 BCE 90

8.2 Funerary Statue of Phrasikleia, circa 550-540 BCE 91

8.3 (a) The Sciarra Amazon; (b) VIL-image of the border of her chitōniskos 92

8.4 (a) Statue of the so-called ‘Small Herculaneum Woman’, dated to the second
century BCE; (b) and (c) detail showing the elaborate border of her garment 93

8.5 (a) Terracotta figurine of a standing woman from Tanagra, fourth century BCE;
(b) close-up of the figurine showing the gilded border of the himation; (c) close-up
showing the gilded border of her tunic 94

9.1 Mummy mask depicting the deceased with rings on different fingers and necklaces
of various lengths, including one with a lunula, first century CE 99

9.2 Gold hemisphere bracelets from Moregine displaying gold foil construction
and simple design, first century CE 103

9.3 Gold hemisphere bracelet from Herculaneum displaying intricacy of design

and craftsmanship, first century CE 103

9.4 Gold armband of a snake from Moregine with the inscription DOM(I)NUS ANCILLAE
SUAE (from the master to his slave girl), mid-first century CE 104

9.5 Drawing of the mid-first-century CE funerary monument of Contuinda

and her family from Nickenich, Germany 107
ILLUSTRATIONS xi

10.1 Map of sites in the Eastern Desert of Egypt 110

10.2 (a) Roman tunic: construction; (b) heavily patched clavied tunic MC 1100
from Mons Claudianus 115

10.3 Rectangular Roman mantle (pallium) with gamma decoration at each corner 117

10.4 Semicircular hooded cloak: construction 118

10.5 Headwear: (a) pillbox hat in green felt MC 922 from Mons Claudianus;
(b) part of cento, cap made of triangular cut-offs MC 548 from Mons Claudianus 119

10.6 Yarn types 122

10.7 Weaves 122

10.8 Loom types of Antiquity: (a) ground loom; (b) warp-weighted loom; (c) two-beam
loom with revolving beams; (d) two-beam loom with tubular warp 123

11.1 Ceremony of cult of Isis. Herculaneum. Fresco, first century CE 128

11.2 Female Musician seated on a bed (klinē). Herculaneum. Fresco, first century CE 130

11.3 Two couples in a summer triclinium. Pompeii or Herculaneum. Fresco, first century CE 131

11.4 Tavern scene, Caupona of Salvius, VI, 14, 36. Pompeii. Fresco, first century CE 132

11.5 Women in the fullery, VI, 8, 20. Pompeii. Fresco, first century CE 133

11.6 Female painter before the statue of Dionysus. House of the Surgeon, VI. 1, 9–10.23,
Pompeii. Fresco, first century CE
­
135

12.1 Portrait mummy of a woman shown in full-length dress wearing a red tunic
with broad, dark clavi edged in gold and black sandals 142

12.2 Mummy portrait of a man wearing a white tunic with thin violet clavus and
a white mantle 143

12.3 Double portrait known as the ‘Tondo of the Two Brothers’ 148

12.4 Mummy portrait of a woman wearing pearl hoop earrings, a gold and ‘emerald’
necklace and a strand of large ‘pearls’ 151

12.5 Mummy portrait of a man wearing a botanically naturalistic-looking gold wreath 153

13.1 Tribute bearers carrying a set of clothes (left to right): trousers with built-in feet,
sleeved tunic, *gaunaka. East staircase. Audience Hall of Darius I (Apadana).  161

13.2 Relief showing Persian noblemen wearing riding dress. The figure at the far right
wears a *gaunaka draped over his shoulders. Persepolis, South Iran, sixth to fifth
century BCE. Relief sculpture on the stairway to the Audience Hall of Darius I
(548–486 BCE) 161

14.1 Bas-relief of King Darius I (detail) 184

xii ILLUSTRATIONS

14.2 King Ashurnasirpal seated between two attendants, Assyrian relief, c. 880 BCE 184

15.1 Young men courting women. Wine cup painted by Peithinos, 500 BCE 191

15.2 Eros tying a bride’s sandals 193

15.3 A servant ties Hippodamia’s sandals. Sculptures from the east pediment of
the temple of Zeus, Olympia 194

15.4 Woman tying or untying her sandal 196

15.5 Nike unfastening her sandal, from the parapet of the temple of Athena Nike,
fifth century BCE 198

16.1 Roman architectural relief showing a suovetaurilia, first century CE 203

16.2 Sacrificial scene. Roman relief 205

16.3 Flamines on the Ara Pacis, Rome 208

16.4 Bust of a Vestal virgin 211

17.1 Plan of the House of the Dioscuri, after Guglilmo Bechi 219

17.2 View of the peristyle of the House of the Dioscuri from the north oecus 220

17.3 Perseus and Andromeda, House of the Dioscuri (V1.9.6–7), Pompeii, c. 62–79 CE 220

17.4 Medea contemplating her children, House of the Dioscuri (VI.9.6–7), Pompeii,
c. 62–79 CE 223

17.5 Gold earring with pearl pendant, first century BCE to second century CE 226

17.6 Spiral earring with head pendants, Taranto, 350–320 BCE 227

18.1 Seleucid tetradrachm with obverse portrait of King Antiochus III wearing a diadem 231

18.2 Marble relief from the Sebasteion of Aphrodisias depicting Agrippina the Younger,
in the guise of Concordia, crowning Nero with a laurel wreath 233

18.3 Cistophorus with obverse portrait of Octavian wearing laurel crown with
fillets hanging down behind his neck 237

18.4 Colossal portrait of the emperor Claudius wearing an oak crown (corona civica)
with fillets hanging down in back and draped along his shoulders 238

18.5 Roman denarius with reverse image of Cleopatra wearing regal diadem 240

18.6 Fourth-century columnar sarcophagus with scenes of the Passion 245

20.1 Saint Mary Magdalene, probably about 1491–4 259

20.2 The Maskell Ivory, fifth century CE 262

20.3 Composite drawing of painting, Dura-Europos house church, third century CE 267
ILLUSTRATIONS xiii

20.4 Dura-Europos house church third century. Reconstruction of baptistery 268

20.5 Khirbet Qazone. Undyed tunic with purple stripes, second to the third centuries CE 274

20.6 Khirbet Qazone. Headscarf 276

20.7 Roman sestertius of the emperor Vespasian. Coin of Vespasian, 69–79 CE,
bronze sestertius, 71 CE in Rome 277

20.8 Mary Magdalene. Illustration by Joan E. Taylor 278

23.1 Relief of emperor with conquered figure and personified senate, Aphrodisias,
first century CE 309

23.2 Relief of Claudius’s victory in Britannia, Aphrodisias, first century CE 310

23.3 Relief of Nero’s victory in Armenia, Aphrodisias, first century CE 311
 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Alicia is grateful to Terry Rothwell for many hours of assistance on the bibliography as well as for
his valuable editorial help. Thanks are also due to Sandy Conrad and Carlo DeVito for their work
on the bibliography. She is grateful to Conrad Grebel University College, University of Waterloo,
for funding from the Academic Development and Research Fund to use colour images in the book.
Finally, many thanks to Kelly, for being such an insightful, fun and fashionable co-editor.
Kelly would like to thank the Department of Classical Studies at the University of Western
Ontario for help with administrative and research concerns, and Terry Rothwell for his work on
the bibliography. James Miller, dapper friend and colleague, has provided nearly twenty years of
cocktails and high fashion (I love our Fluevog Mondays!). And of course deep thanks to Alicia,
whose brainchild this volume was.
Alicia and Kelly would both like to thank Dominic Mattos at Bloomsbury, who first suggested
the idea of such a book, and Sarah Blake, at Bloomsbury, for guidance during its creation. We
would be remiss if we also did not thank the city of Stratford, Ontario, for its charm, beauty,
restaurants and shops. Meeting in Stratford to work on the book has been one of the many gifts of
a collaborative venture such as this!
 NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

Alicia J. Batten is Professor of Religious Studies and Theological Studies at Conrad Grebel
University College, University of Waterloo, Canada. She works in the area of the New Testament
and Christian origins. Publications include Friendship and Benefaction in James (2010; repr.,
2017), James, 1 and 2 Peter and Early Jesus Traditions (co-edited with John Kloppenborg, 2014)
and Dressing Judeans and Christians in Antiquity (co-edited with Carly Daniel-Hughes and Kristi
Upson-Saia, 2014, repr., 2016), as well as essays in edited collections and in journals, including
New Testament Studies, Harvard Theological Review, Catholic Biblical Quarterly and Annali di
storia dell’esegesi.

Lise Bender Jørgensen is Professor Emeritus of Archaeology at the NTNU – Norwegian University
of Science and Technology, Department of Historical and Classical Studies. She is an internationally
regarded expert in archaeological textiles from Europe and the Mediterranean world, with an
extensive publication record that includes the monographs Forhistoriske textile I Skandinavien
(Prehistoric Scandinavian Textiles) (1986) and North European Textiles until AD 1000 (1992).
She is co-author of Creativity in the Bronze Age. Understanding Innovation in Pottery, Textile, and
Metalwork Production (2018) and has published multiple articles on textiles from Roman Egypt.

Sue Blundell has lectured in Classical Studies at Birkbeck, University of London, and for the UK’s
Open University. Her main area of research is the history and representation of women in ancient
Greece. She has also published work on Greek and Roman theories of evolution; Emma Hamilton’s
‘Classical Attitudes’ and their place in the eighteenth-century Grand Tour; and the symbolism of
shoes in Greek art and thought.

Cecilie Brøns is a classical archaeologist and senior researcher at the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek
in Copenhagen. She is the director of the museum’s polychromy project, which carries out
interdisciplinary investigations of the original paint of the museum’s ancient artefacts. Her research
focuses on ancient colours, particularly the polychromy of Greco-Roman art, as well as ancient
textiles. She has published widely on the religious aspects of textile consumption in ancient Greece
and on the polychromy of ancient art.

Lorelei H. Corcoran is Professor of Art History and Director of the Institute of Egyptian Art &
Archaeology at the University of Memphis, TN. She received her BA in Classical Studies from
Tufts University and a PhD in Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations (Egyptology) from the
University of Chicago. Her publications include the multidisciplinary study, Portrait of a Child:
Historical and Scientific Studies of a Roman Egyptian Mummy (2019); Herakleides: A Portrait
Mummy from Roman Egypt (2010), with Marie Svoboda; and Portrait Mummies from Roman
Egypt (I–IVth Centuries A.D.) with a Catalog of Portrait Mummies in Egyptian Museums (1995).
xvi NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

Glenys Davies is Honorary Fellow in the School of History, Classics and Archaeology at the
University of Edinburgh, having retired four years ago from her post of lecturer/senior lecturer in
Classical Art and Archaeology there, which she held for thirty-eight years. Retirement has allowed
for the publication of her long-standing major project: Gender and Body Language in Roman Art
(Cambridge University Press, 2018). She continues to carry out research into various aspects of
Roman art, dress and society.

Andrew Gallia is Associate Professor of History at the University of Minnesota. He is the author of
Remembering the Roman Republic: Culture, Politics and History under the Principate (2012) and
several articles on Roman history and culture. He is currently working on a study of rudeness in
Roman society.

Laura Gawlinski is Associate Professor and Chair of Classical Studies at Loyola University Chicago.
She is co-editor with Megan Cifarelli of What Shall I Say of Clothes? Theoretical and Methodological
Approaches to the Study of Dress in Antiquity (Archaeological Institute of America, 2017) and the
author of The Sacred Law of Andania: A New Text with Commentary (De Gruyter, 2012). She has
been involved with the excavations of the Athenian Agora for twenty-five years and authored the
guide to its museum, which was published in 2014.

Beth E. Graybill is a qualitative sociologist whose research focuses exclusively on Anabaptist

peoples. She received her PhD in American Studies and certification in gender studies from the
University of Maryland in 2010. Prior to that, Graybill received the Kreider Fellowship at the
Young Center for Pietist and Anabaptist Studies at Elizabethtown College. She has served visiting
professor appointments at Franklin and Marshall College, Dickinson College and Millersville
University in Central Pennsylvania. Beth has published on Amish fiction, plain dress and gender,
women’s entrepreneurship and Amish tourism, using ethnographic methodology. She has been
researching topics related to Mennonite and Amish women for the past twenty years.

Lisa A. Hughes is Associate Professor of Classics and Religion at the University of Calgary. Hughes’s
research focuses on visual representations of non-elites in the late Republic and early Empire. She
has focused on the visual vocabulary of funerary monuments with an emphasis on gender. Her new
project explores the role of small-scale theatrical performances in the gardens of ancient Roman
houses. Publications include ‘Unveiling the Veil: Social, Cultic, and Ethnic Representations of Early
Imperial Freedwomen’ Material Religion: The Journal of Objects, Art and Belief 3.2 (2007): 218–41
and ‘Sculpting Theatrical Performance at Pompeii’s Casa Degli Amorini Dorati’ LOGEION: A
Journal of Ancient Theatre 4 (2014): 227–47.

Lynne Hume is Associate Professor and Honorary Research Consultant at the University of
Queensland, Australia. While her main focus has been anthropology and religion, her research
has led her in many different geographical, theoretical and thematic directions, the most recent
being anthropology of the senses and material anthropology. Recent work includes ‘Spiritual
Black’ (2020), in Little Black Dress, Georgina Ripley (ed.) Edinburgh: National Museums of
Scotland Enterprises Publishing; ‘Religious Dress’ (2019) in The International Encyclopedia
of Anthropology, Hilary Callan (ed.) Wiley & Sons, https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/
pdf/10.1002/9781118924396.wbiea2406; ‘Dress and Religion’ (2018). Bloomsbury Fashion
NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS xvii

Central. Online: DOI: 10.5040/9781474280655-BG006. Her full bibliography can be accessed

via https://uq.academia.edu/LynneHUME.

Gail Labovitz is Professor of Rabbinic Literature at the American Jewish University, where she
teaches for the Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies. She is the author of Marriage and Metaphor:
Constructions of Gender in Rabbinic Literature (Lexington Books, 2009) and the forthcoming
volume on tractate Moed Qatan for the Feminist Commentary on the Babylonian Talmud, as well
as numerous articles, chapters and reviews. Her teaching specialties include rabbinic literature,
Jewish law and gender theory.

Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones is Professor of Ancient History at Cardiff University. He is especially well

known for his work on ancient Iran, monarchic society in antiquity, and his studies of dress,
women and gender ideologies in the ancient Near East and the Mediterranean. He uses cross-
cultural and cross-temporal studies to inform his work on antiquity and is actively engaged in
research on reception studies too. Publications include Aphrodite’s Tortoise: The Veiled Woman of
Ancient Greece; King and Court in Ancient Persia; Ctesias’ Persica: Tales of the Orient; The Culture
of Animals in Antiquity; Designs on the Past: How Hollywood Created the Ancient World and the
forthcoming The Persians and Ancient Persia and the Book of Esther.

Harry O. Maier is Professor of New Testament and Early Christian Studies at Vancouver School
of Theology, Canada, and Fellow at the Max Weber Center for Advanced Cultural and Social
Studies at the University of Erfurt, Germany. His publications include Picturing Paul in Empire:
Imperial Image, Text, and Persuasion in Colossians, Ephesians, and the Pastoral Epistles (T&T
Clark/Bloomsbury, 2013) and New Testament Christianity in the Roman World (Oxford University
Press, 2018).

Neville McFerrin is Assistant Professor of Art History at the University of North Texas. Her
research focuses on the intersections between sense modalities, perception and materiality, utilizing
dress as a lens through which to explore the negotiation of intersectional identities on the sites of
Pompeii and Persepolis. Her publications on these topics include ‘The Tangible Self: Embodiment,
Agency, and the Functions of Adornment in Achaemenid Persia’, in Fashioned Selves: Dress and
Identity in Antiquity, edited by Megan Cifarelli, and ‘Masks, Mirrors, and Mediated Perception:
Reflective Viewing in the House of the Gilded Cupids’, in Regina Gee and Vanessa Rousseau (eds.)
Arts: Special Issue on Ancient Mediterranean Painting, vol. 2 (2019).

Kelsi Morrison-Atkins is a ThD candidate in New Testament and Early Christian Studies at
Harvard Divinity School. Her research engages the intersections of clothing, identity and power in
early Christian writings through the lens of feminist and queer theory. Kelsi is currently working
on a dissertation which analyses the ways in which early Christians in the first and second centuries
used clothing rhetoric to reproduce and reinforce ideologies of gender, race/ethnicity and class/
status in their communities.

Kelly Olson holds a PhD from the University of Chicago and is a professor in the Department of
Classical Studies at the University of Western Ontario, Canada. Her research focuses on Roman
society, sexuality and appearance, as well as fashion history more generally, and she is the author
xviii NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

of several articles and book chapters on clothing in Roman antiquity, published in Mouseion,
The American Journal of Ancient History, Fashion Theory, Classical World and The Journal of
the History of Sexuality. Her books include Dress and the Roman Woman: Self-Presentation and
Society (Routledge, 2008) and Dress and Masculinity in Roman Antiquity (Routledge, 2017).

Janelle Peters is a visiting assistant professor of Theological Studies at Loyola Marymount University
in Los Angeles. She has written essays on cloth production, veils and prophecy in early Christianity
for several journals, including Biblica, Journal of Early Christian History, Journal for the Study
of the Pseudepigrapha, Studia Patristica, and for edited volumes. Her forthcoming book is on the
apostle Paul.

Joshua Schwartz is Professor of Historical Geography of Ancient Israel, Department of Land of

Israel Studies and Archaeology, Bar-Ilan University. He is also Director of the Ingeborg Rennert
Center for Jerusalem Studies at Bar-Ilan and formerly was Dean of the Faculty of Jewish Studies and
Director, School of Basic Jewish Studies. He serves as Chair, Board of Directors, Israel Antiquities
Authority, State of Israel. His Jews and Christians in Roman-Byzantine Palestine, Vol I, Christianity
and Jerusalem, Vol II, History, Society and the Land of the Jews was published by Peter Lang, Bern,
in 2018.

Joan E. Taylor is Professor of Christian Origins and Second Temple Judaism at King’s College
London and is a leading expert on the world of Jesus, with a focus on history and archaeology.
She has authored numerous books and articles, most recently What Did Jesus Look Like? (2018).
She also works on the Bible in cultural reception (Jesus and Brian, 2015), women/gender and the
body (editing The Body in Biblical, Christian and Jewish Texts, 2014) and the Dead Sea Scrolls (The
Essenes, the Scrolls and the Dead Sea, 2006). She is currently writing a Very Short Introduction to
Mary Magdalene for the Oxford series.

Katie Turner recently completed her doctorate in Theology & Religious Studies from King’s College
London, entitled ‘The Representation of New Testament Figures in Passion Dramas’. Previous
publications include a chapter in Jesus and Brian (ed. Joan E. Taylor, 2015) and a review of the
2016 film Risen for the Journal of Religion & Film. Most recently she has curated a digital image
library for the T&T Clark Jesus Library (part of Bloomsbury Plc Theology & Religion Online). Two
articles for the Jesus Library are forthcoming (on the clothing and dress behaviour of the Second
Temple period and the reception of this period in Christian art).

Courtney Ward is a researcher at the Norwegian Institute in Rome. She received her DPhil in
Roman Archaeology from the University of Oxford. Her research focuses on the relationship
between jewellery and the expression of identity in the ancient world, particularly in Roman Italy.
She has published on the jewellery assemblages found with the skeletal remains at Oplontis B, and
Herculaneum, as well as jewellery from Roman Colchester.
 ABBREVIATIONS

AB Anchor Bible
AJA American Journal of Archaeology
AJP American Journal of Philology
AMI Archäologische Mitteilungen aus Iran
ANRW Temporini, Hildegard and Haase, Wolfgang, eds. Aufstieg und Niedergang
in der römischen Welt: Geschichte und Kultur Rom sim Spiegel der neueren
Forschung. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1972–
ANTC Abingdon New Testament Commentaries
ARW Archiv für Religionswissenschaft
AUSS Andrews University Seminary Studies
BA Biblical Archaeologist
BAR Biblical Archaeology Review
BAR-IS British Archaeological Reports International Series
BDAG Danker, Frederick W., Walter Bauer, William F. Arndt and F. Wilbur Gingrich.
Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian
Literature. 3rd edition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000.
BETL Bibliotheca Ephemeridum Theologicarum Lovaniensium
BibInt Biblical Interpretation: A Journal of Contemporary Approaches
BICS Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies
BNP Hubert Cancik, Helmuth Schneider, Christine Salazar and David Orton, eds.
Brill’s New Pauly: Encyclopedia of the Ancient World. Leiden: Brill, 2002–11.
BTB Biblical Theology Bulletin
CAJ Cambridge Archaeological Journal
CB Cultura biblica
CCSL Corpus Christianorum: Series Latina, Turnhout: Brepols, 1953–
CÉFR Collection de l’École française de Rome
CGRN Carbon, J.-M., S. Peels and V. Pirenne-Delforge. A Collection of Greek Ritual
Norms (CGRN), Liège 2016– (http://cgrn.ulg.ac.be, consulted in 2019).
CH Church History
CJ The Classical Journal
ConBNT Coniectanea Biblica: New Testament series
CP Classical Philology
xx ABBREVIATIONS

CQ Church Quarterly
CRINT Compendia rerum iudaicarum ad Novum Testamentum
DOP Dumbarton Oaks Papers
DSD Dead Sea Discoveries
ECA Eastern Christian Art
EPRO Études préliminaires aux religions orientales dans l’empire romain
FAT Forschungen zum Alten Testament
FIFAO Fouilles de l’institut français d’archéologie orientale
GCI Getty Conservation Institute
GHI Tod, M. N., ed. A Selection of Greek Historical Inscriptions. Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1933–48.
HTR Harvard Theological Review
HvTSt Hervormde teologiese studies
IG I2 Hiller von Gaertringen, Friedrich F., ed. Inscriptiones Atticae Euclidis anno
anteriores. 4 vols. Berlin: De Gruyter, 1913–40.
IG I3 Lewis, D. and L. Jeffery, eds. Inscriptiones Graecae. Editio Tertia. Berlin and
New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1981.
IG II Kirchoff, A., Friedrich Hiller von Gaertringen, Ulrich Koehler, and Wilhelm
Dittenberger, eds. Inscriptiones Graecae, consilio et auctoritate Academiae
Litterarum Borusssicae editae. 12+ vols. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1873–
IG II2 Kirchner, Johannes, ed. Inscriptiones Atticae Euclidis anno posteriores.
Inscriptiones Graecae II. 4 vols. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1913–40.
IG V, 1 Kolbe, W., ed. Inscriptiones Laconiae et Messeniae, part 1. Berlin: Georg
Reimer, 1913.
IG VII Dittenberg, W., ed. Inscriptiones Megaridis et Boeotiae, Berlin: Georg Reimer,
1893 [1903].
IG XII, 6 Hallof, Klaus, ed. Inscriptiones Graecae. Inscriptiones Chii et Sami cum
Corassiis Icariaque. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2000.
Matthaiou, Angelos, ed. Inscriptiones Icariae insulae. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter,
2003.
ILS Dessau, Hermann. Inscriptiones latinae selectae. 3 vols. Berlin: Weidmann,
1892–1916. Repr., Dublin: Weidmann, 1974; repr., Chicago: Ares, 1979.
Int Interpretation
JAH Journal of Ancient History
JBL Journal of Biblical Literature
JECS Journal of Early Christian Studies
JNES Journal of Near Eastern Studies
JNG Jahrbuch für Numismatik und Geldgeschichte
JRA Journal of Roman Archaeology
JRS Journal of Roman Studies
JSJSup Supplements to the Journal for the Study of Judaism
ABBREVIATIONS xxi

JSNT Journal for the Study of the New Testament

LCL Loeb Classical Library
LNTS Library of New Testament Studies
LSAM Sokolowski, Franciszek. Lois sacrées de l’Asie Mineure. École française
d’Athènes. Travaux et mémoires, fasc. 9. Paris: E de Boccard, 1955.
LSCG Sokolowski, Franciszek. Lois sacrées des cités grecques. École française
d’Athènes. Travaux et mémoires, fasc, 18. Paris: E de Boccard, 1969.
LSCGSup Sokolowski, Franciszek. Lois sacrées des cités grecques: supplément. École
française d’Athènes. Travaux et mémoires, fasc, 11. Paris: E de Boccard, 1962.
LSJ Liddell, Henry George, Robert Scott, Henry Stuart Jones. A Greek English
Lexicon. 9th edition with revised supplement. Oxford: Clarendon, 1996.
MANN Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli
MDAIR Mitteilungen des Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts, Römische Abteilung
NTL New Testament Library Series
NTS New Testament Studies
OpRom Opuscula Romana
PBSR Papers of the British School at Rome
PLOS The Public Library of Science
Proc R Microsc Proceedings of the Royal Microscopical Society
Soc
REG Revue des Études Grecques
RHR Revue de l’histoire des religions
RIC Roman Imperial Coinage. 10 vols. London: Spink. 1923–94.
RPC Burnett, Andrew M., and Michel Amandry. Roman Provincial Coinage.10 vols.
London: British Museum Press, 1993-.
RRC Crawford, Michael. Roman Republican Coinage. 2 vols. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1974.
RSR Recherches de science religieuse
SBL Society of Biblical Literature
SBLDS SBL Dissertation Series
SBLSymS Society of Biblical Literature Symposium Series
SEG Supplementum epigraphicum graecum. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1923–
SNTS Society for New Testament Studies
SNTSMS Society for New Testament Studies Monograph Series
SAOC Studies in Ancient Oriental Civilizations
TAPA Transactions of the American Philological Association
TSAJ Texts and Studies in Ancient Judaism
WUNT Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament
ZNW Zeitschrift für die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft
ZPE Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik
xxii
 CHAPTER ONE

Introduction
ALICIA J. BATTEN AND KELLY OLSON

WHY THIS BOOK?

Dress scholarship is on the rise. As the chapters in the ‘Methods’ section of this book demonstrate
collectively, there is now an established body of literature on dress history, as well as analyses of
dress practices and fashion in the current world. It is a burgeoning field and of interest to a wide
array of disciplines.1 The study of dress touches on so many elements of human life and behaviour:
identity, culture, religion, economics, gender, environmental questions … the list could continue.
Collections of essays on dress have been produced by classical historians, art historians and
archaeologists,2 as well as by scholars of ancient Judaism and Christianity,3 but it is less common to
bring these various fields together in a single volume. Moreover, many studies of Mediterranean
antiquity, including some of the chapters in this book, employ theories and ideas from the social
sciences (especially anthropology and sociology) as analytical tools for examining their evidence.
Thus, we wanted to assemble scholarship from a range of people working in different areas,
including some in the social sciences who study dress in the current day. By bringing together
essays from different disciplines, readers from a variety of backgrounds may see real or potential
links, whether material or theoretical, that foster further multidisciplinary and/or collaborative
research. There are many points of contact between the chapters presented here. However, we
hope that readers will find more and will be able to make connections to other examples of dress
and dress practices, whether historical or contemporary, that they have encountered. In addition to
providing information and analysis of dress in specific contexts, this book thus aims to encourage
and promote continued cross-disciplinary work as people study dress in a range of times and places.

TERMINOLOGY
Are we doing the history of clothing, dress, costume or fashion? Each of these words has different
meanings and connotations, even of different approaches.4 ‘Costume’ is problematic in that for

1
See, for example, the Bloomsbury Fashion Central website with access to a variety of dress and fashion databases. Online:
www.bloomsburyfashioncentral.com.
2
For example, Cynthia S. Colburn and Maura K. Heyn, eds., Reading a Dynamic Canvas. Adornment in the Ancient
Mediterranean World (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2008).
3
Kristi Upson-Saia, Carly Daniel-Hughes and Alicia J. Batten, eds., Dressing Judeans and Christians in Antiquity (Farnham:
Ashgate, 2014).
4
Negley Harte, ‘Review: John Styles, The Dress of the People’, Costume: The Journal of the Costume Society 43 (2009):
176.
2 DRESS IN MEDITERRANEAN ANTIQUITY

English speakers, the word denotes ‘exceptional’ dress: Halloween costume, masquerade costume
and so forth.5 ‘Fashion’ implies access to the status and lifestyle of the upper-class Euro-American,
a privileged position.6 A section on the nature of dress in ancient society in a recent book chapter
by Laura Gawlinski wonders if ancient Greece was a ‘clothing society’ (a sartorially static society)
or a ‘fashion society’ (tied to ‘consumerism, bulk production, swift changes, and innovation’), and
if so whether theories and comparative evidence on fashion are very useful for ancient society (and
concludes that perhaps we ought to see these categories as more ideological rather than economic).7
Many historians have settled on the term ‘clothing’ or ‘dress’ as the most neutral. As a perusal of the
table of contents in this book makes clear, the chapters address a variety of topics beyond clothing,
including shoes, hair and jewellery. Thus, we use the term ‘dress’ in a broad manner to include
clothing, to be sure, but also these other aspects of adornment and bodywear commonly worn by
people in the ancient Mediterranean.

SECTION A: METHODS
As dress is implicated in so many dimensions of human existence, it can be approached from
a variety of angles. Given that this book examines Mediterranean antiquity, including chapters
predominantly by classicists, archaeologists, biblical and rabbinic scholars, we have limited the
‘Methods’ section to four chapters, but there could have been more. People who study the ancient
world often borrow models and insights from anthropology and sociology, however, and therefore
we thought it appropriate to include a chapter from these respective fields. Readers will later see
that some chapters in the ‘Meanings’ section explicitly engage the ideas of social scientists as they
tackle specific dress questions in antiquity.
Kelly Olson (‘Dress and Classical Studies’) is one of the pioneers of Roman dress studies and
thus is well qualified to provide, as she does, an overview of dress studies written in English within
classics. She highlights some specific areas of interest then offers her thoughts on future directions,
including the importance of paying more attention to sensory experience and dress, as well as the
importance of thinking about social identity and dress.
Also noting the importance of the bodily senses in her chapter, Alicia J. Batten (‘Dress and
Religious Studies’) points out that the broad field of religious studies uses multiple methods, and
that some scholars are paying much more attention to materiality and the senses in the study of
that hard-to-define term, ‘religion’. She then describes a few areas in which the study of dress and
religion can be illuminating, both for historical questions and for today’s world.
Next, cultural anthropologist Lynne Hume (‘Dress and Anthropology’) provides a wide-ranging
and informative survey of scholarship on dress in anthropology and highlights in particular
the interrelationships between dress and culture, and the significance of dress as a form of

5
See Suzanne Baizerman, Joanne Eicher and Catherine Cerny, ‘Eurocentrism in the Study of Ethnic Dress’, Dress 20 (1993):
23; Emma Tarlow, Clothing Matters: Dress and Identity in India (London: Huest, 1996), 25; Lou Taylor, ‘Fashion and
Dress History: Theoretical and Methodological Approaches’, in The Handbook of Fashion Studies, ed. Sandy Black et al.
(London and New York: Bloomsbury, 2013), 27.
6
Baizerman, Eicher and Cerny, ‘Eurocentrism’, 26.
7
Laura Gawlinski, ‘Theorizing Religious Dress’, in What Shall I Say of Clothes: Theoretical and Methodological Approaches
to the Study of Dress in Antiquity, ed. M. Cifarelli and L. Gawlinski (Boston: Archaeological Institute of America, 2017),
164.
INTRODUCTION 3

communication. She demonstrates just how important it is to think about dress when examining
varying notions of identity, kinship, religious ideas and many other dimensions of human
existence.
Also comprehensive and valuable is Beth E. Graybill’s contribution (‘Dress and Sociology’).
Using examples from a diversity of contexts, including those of contemporary Amish and
Mennonite women (Graybill’s specific area of research), she supplies a helpful review of sociological
approaches to dress, including attention to concepts of modesty, agency, gender and the notion of
‘anti-fashion’.

SECTION B: MATERIALS
This volume has a wide chronological range, from c. 1200 BCE to CE 500, and takes the reader not
just to ancient Greece and Roman Italy but also to Egypt, Persia, North Africa and Judaea. Clothing
the body is ‘inherently complex’.8 One can access dress in the ancient world through literature, but
this needs to be supplemented by the study of material and visual culture such as sculpture, painting
and mosaic and inscriptions. These chapters are examinations of the building blocks of ancient
self-presentation: dyes, textile production and repair, and jewellery. They deal with the realia of
dress, as opposed to the social construction of appearance. And as each of these fields is large, the
chapters will focus on material culture in a given context.
Glenys Davies’s valuable contribution (‘Clothing in Marble and Bronze: The Representation of
Dress in Greek and Roman Sculpture’) asks if we can use sculpture as evidence for how clothing was
worn and what some of the pitfalls are in attempting to do so. Statues seem to give a strong visual
impression of how dress was supposed to look, how drapery might behave, and how garments
might be draped, but the dress historian looking at statues and relief sculpture as evidence needs to
bear in mind the artistic style of the time and the interests of the sculptor as an artist, as well as the
purpose of the statue and who it represents.
Laura Gawlinski’s chapter (‘Greek Dress from the Inscriptional Evidence’) focuses on what
inscriptions bring to the investigation of ancient Greek dress. She centres upon (often underused)
inscriptional evidence for what it might tell us of the production and sale of garments; the types
of dress objects that existed; and the use of garments in various social settings. Using such diverse
sources as loomweights and inventories of temple treasuries, she links dress to broader issues of
gender, religion and the economy, and the ways in which these spheres were intertwined.
Cecilie Brøns examines colour in her chapter (‘The Colours of Ancient Greek Dress’), and
argues that colour speaks to broader issues of gender, society and economy. Brøns adopts a multi-
methodological approach, juxtaposing the diverse source material consisting of preserved textiles,
practical knowledge of ancient dyes, written sources and iconography, and new methods for
looking at polychromy in ancient art and in ancient textile fragments.
Courtney A. Ward (‘Ornamenta Muliebria: Jewellery and Identity in the Roman Period’)
uncovers new evidence to show that women’s jewellery indicated such things as age, political,

Liza Cleland, Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones and Mary Harlow, ‘I Wear This Therefore I Am: The Clothed Body in the Ancient
8

World’, in The Clothed Body in the Ancient World, ed. Liza Cleland, Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones and Mary Harlow (Oxford:
Oxbow Books, 2005), xv.
4 DRESS IN MEDITERRANEAN ANTIQUITY

social and marital statuses (as well as economic background), and ethnicity, all interrelated to create
diverse identities that could have been displayed through personal adornment. While it has been
suggested that the main function of jewellery was to demonstrate the wealth and status of women
in the Roman world, she concludes that while ornamenta muliebria were not practically functional,
such adornment did have important cultural purposes in Roman society.
In a subsequent chapter, Lise Bender Jørgensen (‘Dress in the Desert: Archaeological Textiles
as a Source for Work Clothes in Roman Egypt’) employs the rich physical remains from Egypt to
examine ancient clothing. She uses the textile finds from the quarries, ports and praesidia of the
Eastern Desert, which primarily derive from rubbish dumps and which are rags, worn-out garments
and torn or cut-off scraps. Currently more than 12,000 dated and provenanced fragments have
been processed and recorded, and all are extremely useful for talking about the construction, reuse
and recycling of ancient garments.
Lisa A. Hughes (‘Roman Women Dressing the Part: The Visual Vocabulary from Paintings
and Mosaics’) gives us a detailed look at select wall frescos and mosaics from Roman Pompeii
and Herculaneum, with an aim of providing additional insights into the styles, textile colours
and textures of dress for female ritual participants, diners, entertainers and workers. She also
briefly highlights methodological considerations concerning conservation, preservation and
archaeological context. This foray into select Pompeian examples from the late Republican
and early Imperial periods discloses a rich source of evidence in terms of the diverse nature of
clothing.
Next, Lorelei H. Corcoran (‘“They Leave Behind Them Portraits of Their Wealth, Not
Themselves:” Aspects of Self-Presentation in the Dress of the Deceased in Mummy Portraits
and Portrait Mummies from Roman Egypt’) provides information not just about clothing and
adornment in Roman Egypt but about the mummy portraits themselves in this splendidly detailed
chapter. The men, women and children depicted in mummy portraits are shown in what might
appear to us to be very plainly made clothing but which was undoubtedly their most formal
attire, and Corcoran examines clavi, garment colour, gendered clothing, stereotypical motifs and
jewellery and gemstones. She concludes that the men and women who chose the mummy portraits
as a means of self-presentation for themselves and their children wished to be commemorated
for eternity in images that recorded them in an ideal state; thus much of what they wear must be
termed ‘aspirational’.

SECTION C: MEANINGS
It is in this section that we examine the social construction of appearance in antiquity and try to
recover aspects of ancient sartorial experience. Each of the chapters in this section is a meticulous
look at a small and focused area of dress studies, and they proceed more or less in chronological
order although there is overlap and some chapters engage multiple with eras and places.
The section begins with a chapter by Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones (‘Dress and Ceremony in Achaemenid
Persia: The ‘*Gaunaka’). Surprisingly, not as much work has been done in the area of ancient Near
Eastern dress as has been for ancient Greece and Rome.9 The study of ancient Persian appearance

9
See Olson, ‘Dress and Classical Studies’, this volume.
INTRODUCTION 5

is valuable in and of itself, but also for the influence it wielded on classical Greek clothing. This
chapter is not just about the coat but also about clothing and kingship. The *gaunaka was a kind of
overcoat with wide, often overlong, sleeves, usually worn hanging from the shoulders, a garment
of considerable cost and a clear indicator of wealth and status. Llewellyn-Jones examines how this
costly iconic court garment was an item of significant exchange in which notions of loyalty and
patronage were codified and through which gestures of humility, obedience, privilege and status
could be negotiated and played out.
Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones’s second chapter (‘Hair and Social Status in the Near East and Early
Greece, c. 900–300 BCE’) looks at hair in the ancient Near East and Homeric worlds. Hair was
crucial to an ancient man or woman’s self-presentation: the physical trait most conspicuously
stressed in Near Eastern images of kingship is the hair; hair in Homer is a vital part of that outward
code of inner worth which enables heroic governance. In this chapter Llewellyn-Jones explores
how notions of power and status were articulated through the cultural traditions of growing,
dressing and displaying hair in the ancient Near East and in Homeric Greece: both civilizations
shared similar preoccupations with hair as status display.
Sue Blundell’s piece (‘Stepping over the Line: Shoes and Boundary-Crossing in Ancient Greece’)
examines the fascinating subject of how shoes, shoe-handling and shoe-behaviour indicated
boundaries for the ancient Greeks. To the ancient Greeks shoes meant mobility and quite often
transitions or boundary-crossings. In fifth-century Athens, shoes could carry one across a number
of social and political boundaries: shoes could function as a badge of citizenship, and as a sign
of going off to battle or dressing for love, marriage or death. Shoe-handling could also signify a
movement between the secular and sacred spheres. In ancient Greece, shoes had many meanings,
but in almost every case we find the concept of movement at their core.
Kelly Olson’s contribution in this section (‘Dress and Religious Ritual in Roman Antiquity’)
examines the dress of Roman religious not by discrete categories of Roman male or female
religious (Vestal, flamen, etc.) but by qualities which were held to be important in religious dress:
apotropaism of wool and purple, the concern with girding or binding, the concept of ‘double’.
There was no special religious dress for priests and priestesses (with a few exceptions), but there
were special features of ritual dress.
Neville McFerrin (‘Andromeda Unbound: Possession, Perception and Adornment in the House
of the Dioscuri’) gives us a beautifully close and detailed reading of the two paintings through the
lens of clothing and ornament, much as Hughes’s chapter does (above). In this chapter McFerrin
juxtaposes depictions of Medea and Andromeda in the House of the Dioscuri (Pompeii VI.9.6-7).
She examines their spatial interplay and their relation to one another, and uses dress and adornment
to explore Roman constructions of femininity and self-presentation.
Andrew Gallia’s chapter (‘On the Ambivalent Signification of Roman Crowns’) is framed by two
significant moments: the refusal of Caesar to accept the diadem Mark Antony offered him at the
Lupercalia festival on February 15, 44 BCE, and a (much later) Christian soldier’s refusal to don a
laurel wreath (the subject of Tertullian’s de Corona). Gallia explores the significance that Romans
attached to the custom of adorning one’s head in this manner, and his chapter is an excellent and
much-needed overview of Roman crowns.
In the next contribution, Joshua Schwartz (‘Clothes Make the Jew: Was There Distinctive Jewish
Dress in the Greco-Roman Period?’) tackles the debated issue of whether there was distinctive dress
for Jews in Greco-Roman society and if so, would such dress be obvious to other Jews and to non-
Jews? Although Jews wore the same garb as most people, men may have worn specific items in
6 DRESS IN MEDITERRANEAN ANTIQUITY

public that would identify them as Jews, while women, if they followed specific rabbinic directives
on modest dress, would have been identifiable both by other Jews and by non-Jews.
Following up on her book What Did Jesus Look Like?,10 Joan E. Taylor asks the same question
about Mary Magdalene (‘What Did Mary Magdalene Look Like? Images from the West, the East,
Dura and Judaea’). Taylor engagingly traces the manner in which Mary Magdalene has been
depicted in Western film and art, then compares such depictions to the third-century image of the
figure at Dura Europos. She then considers some of the material evidence found near the Dead Sea
in order to imagine how Mary, as a first-century woman in Judaea, would have dressed thereby
offering a description that is much more authentic.
In the next contribution, Janelle Peters (‘Robes of Transfiguration and Salvation in Early Christian
Texts’) addresses the symbolic meanings of celestial robes in a great range of texts including the
gospels, Pauline traditions and non-canonical literature. She argues that the transfigured robes of
Jesus at the Transfiguration map onto the clothes of those around him. When believers don their
baptismal robes at baptism, therefore, their clothes reflect their identity in Christ.
Judith Butler’s theory of gender performativity and the notion of ‘citationality’ are at the
forefront of Kelsi Morrison-Atkins’s intriguing contribution (‘Worn Stories: (Ad)dressing Wives
in 1 Peter’). Morrison-Atkins analyses how the letter of 1 Peter constructs the figure of Sarah as a
model of submission and seeks to ensure wifely subordination by exhorting wives to specific dress
practices. She probes whether the need to construct such a model points to the possibility that there
were other traditions about Sarah to which wives could have appealed.
Harry O. Maier makes use of anthropological and sociological approaches to dress in his masterful
study of the Book of Revelation (‘Exposed! Nakedness and Clothing in the Book of Revelation’).
Maier compares the images of nakedness in Revelation to those in a variety of ancient literatures
(Hebrew Bible, Qumran, Apocalyptic literature) before turning to Roman imperial iconography.
He demonstrates how comparison with this range of materials in light of social scientific theory is
productive for the exegesis and interpretation of John’s Apocalypse.
Drawing from anthropological insights about dirt and pollution, Alicia J. Batten addresses
several NT texts that refer to dirty and clean dress (‘Dirty Laundry in the Christ Cult’). In some
literature, grimy dress connotes pollution and moral dissolution, while clean (and white) dress
points to upright behaviour (Letter of Jude, Revelation). However, there are moments when the
poor person in a dirty garment is designated an heir to the kingdom, such as in the Letter of James.
Images of soiled clothes can therefore have quite varied representative power in the literature of
the Christ cult.
Turning to rabbinic literature, Gail Labovitz’s examination of texts related to women’s clothing
during the period of the Tannaim (‘“He Must Buy Her New Clothes for Winter”: Women’s Attire
in the Rabbinic Imagination of the Tannaitic Period’) effectively demonstrates how attention to
dress can reveal insights about how the rabbis perceived the ideal married woman. Not only should
the proper wife be attractive and economically subordinate to her husband, she should be sexually
subordinate as well.
Finally, Katie Turner’s chapter returns to some methodological issues in her helpful
contribution (‘Textual Problems in Textile Research: The Use of the Talmud in Studies of

10
Joan E. Taylor, What Did Jesus Look Like? (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2018).
INTRODUCTION 7

Ancient Jewish Dress’). Turner reminds us of the importance of integrating both textual as well
as archaeological and artistic evidence when approaching ancient dress. She demonstrates that
while the Talmud is a key resource for studying dress within ancient Judaism, its study should be
supplemented with attention to material remains.
Taken together, we hope the chapters in this volume spark further interest in and new research
on ancient dress. The social role of the body and its self-presentation, the complexity of ancient
visual culture, the ways in which the ancients constructed social meaning – these are all highlighted
and made real by dress. In the ancient world, the clothed body was often the civilized body, ‘the
yardstick by which social behaviour was measured’.11 The cultural importance of ancient dress
cannot be overestimated.

11
Cleland et al., The Clothed Body, xii.
8
SECTION A

Methods
10
 CHAPTER TWO

Dress and Classical Studies

KELLY OLSON

There is much cultural importance embedded in the ‘trivial’ details of clothing which social and
economic historians have long ignored or derided.1 In 2009, Negley Harte was able to write (of
modern dress studies) that prior to the 1990s:
Historians were defeated by clothes. Archaeologists fussed about the surviving evidences of their
absence; art historians were interested only in the portraited upper classes; social historians were
torn between thinking clothes were either too trivial to bother with or too complex to master, and
economic historians could not count them and therefore paid no attention. Clothes were dismissed
from academic history … [and were] left to art colleges plus a few enthusiastic eccentrics.2

This ‘unhappy and unsatisfactory’ situation3 has now happily been corrected, and interest in dress
has exploded over the last three decades.

APPROACHES
There is a multitude of different approaches to dress, and the ancient dress historian does well
to acquaint himself or herself with contemporary approaches, some of which are applicable to
ancient dress, while others not. Theory is a large part of modern dress studies. Fashion theories
take into account the myriad of factors that shape why fashion is what it is: the history of dress; the
structure and economics of the fashion industry; artistic influences on taste; the social organization
of a culture (which determines categories such as ‘femininity’, for example); and factors that
shape continuity and change. The study of fashion as an academic subject is a relatively recent
phenomenon, and there are several ways of approaching it.
Early historians of Western dress began by cataloguing and classifying of articles of dress over
time,4 a necessary work but an approach which leaves many questions unanswered: Why are certain
styles fashionable at any one point? Why do fashions change over time? Do cycles of fashion
correlate with political changes to a society? How have changing gender norms/sexual codes
influenced fashion? Older anthropological5/ethnographic approaches to fashion were more often

1
Lou Taylor, ‘Fashion and Dress History: Theoretical and Methodological Approaches’, in The Handbook of Fashion
Studies, ed. Sandy Black et al. (London and New York: Bloomsbury, 2013), 29.
2
Negley Harte, ‘Review: John Styles, The Dress of the People’, Costume: The Journal of the Costume Society 43 (2009):
176.
3
Ibid., 177.
4
The section which follows here has been drawn from Jennifer Craik, Fashion: The Key Concepts (London: Bloomsbury,
2009), 8–14, 109–17.
5
See Hume, this volume.
12 DRESS IN MEDITERRANEAN ANTIQUITY

interested in ‘grand theories’ of culture and society, and used fashion as an instance of their general
principles. Sociologists (and social psychologists)6 were interested in individual motivations and
needs; the indiscriminate adoption of fashion items by groups; how clothes denote social status;
and the psychological dimensions and aesthetic impulses that underlay fashion behaviour.7 From
the 1960s and onward a more interdisciplinary model of fashion theory gained currency, which
draws on more than one branch of learning, looking at fashion as a cultural code rather than
‘seeing fashion as exemplifying general principles’. There is now a wealth of new approaches to
and developments in researching and theorizing dress and fashion history, and a ‘clear escalation
of interdisciplinary research’.8
Since the 1960s, there have emerged at least twenty different ways of theorizing fashion, some
of which are applicable to ancient dress.9 The following are the most popular approaches to dress
studies:

1. Historical approaches: dress and textile history, which looks at the formal properties of
clothes;10 social history, which locates clothing in its social context.11
2. Consumer culture: clothing items as material objects that are the building blocks of a
specific cultural formation;12 the history of consumption;13 marketing/management studies;
industrial relations and political studies (e.g. workers in the fashion industry).
3. Cultural forces: the cultural history of fashion (using the minutiae of fashion);14 sociology
of culture theory;15 diasporic/ethnic studies of fashion.16
4. Communicative relationships: semiotics (i.e. clothing as a system of signs, a theory which
applies a semiotic/linguistic model to garments themselves and the ways that clothes
enable or equip the body to perform as a social body through gesture and performance17);
subcultural analysis;18 art history and visual culture.19

6
See Graybill, this volume.
7
See Craik, Fashion, 9–10.
8
See Craik, Fashion; 10 Taylor, ‘Fashion and Dress History’, 23.
9
Set out in Craik, Fashion, 115–17.
10
For example, Lou Taylor, Mourning Dress: A Costume and Social History (London: Allen & Unwin, 1983).
11
For example, Christopher Breward, The Hidden Consumer: Masculinities, Fashion, and City Life 1860–1914 (Manchester,
UK: Manchester University Press, 1999).
12
See, for example, Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste, trans. R. Nice (Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press, 1984).
13
For example, Susan Mosher Stuard, Gilding the Market: Luxury and Fashion in Fourteenth-Century Italy (Philadelphia:
University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006).
14
For example, Daniel Roche, The Culture of Clothing: Dress and Fashion in the Ancien Régime, trans. J. Birrell (Cambridge
and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994).
15
For example, Joanne Finkelstein, The Fashioned Self (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1991); Joanne Eicher, Mary-
Ellen Roach-Higgins and Kim Johnson, Dress and Identity (London: Bloomsbury, 1995).
16
For example, Monica Miller, Slaves to Fashion: Black Dandyism and the Styling of Black Diasporic Identity (Durham:
Duke University Press, 2009).
17
For example, Roland Barthes, Système de la mode (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1983); Craik, Fashion, 110–12.
18
For example, Dick Hebdige, Subculture: The Meaning of Style (London and New York: Routledge, 1979).
19
For example, Anne Hollander, Seeing through Clothes (New York: Viking Press, 1978); Valerie Steele, ‘The Social and
Political Significance of Macaroni Fashion’, Costume 19 (1985): 89–101.
DRESS AND CLASSICAL STUDIES 13

5. Gendered and gender-dependent practices: feminist;20 psychological approaches/fashion as

subconscious;21 masculinity/queer studies.22

Many scholars combine two or more of the above approaches; many of these bleed together.
Christopher Breward holds that cultural studies is the defining framework for contemporary
fashion theory. Fashion theories can thus be filed under one of four main headings: textual analysis
(semiotics and visual culture); audience and consumption studies (ethnography, history, sociology);
ideology (hegemony, subcultures, pleasure); and political identity (race, gender, sexuality).23 And
of course, in using any theoretical approach we need to be aware of our own contemporary cultural
and historical assumptions. ‘These are often so deeply embedded in our minds that it is hard to
even realize their presence, and they can catch us unawares and lead to errors in dating garments
or a false decoding of their historical social place and cultural meanings.’24
Dress historians who have access to whole, worn garments have noted that clothes themselves
have agency:25 patterns of wear, repair and reuse have value to the social historian, speaking volumes
about the person who owned and wore the garment. Assessing historical clothing is another way
of ‘penetrating the heart of social history’.26 Of course, such dress historians use paintings and art
as well as literature as a way to breathe ‘life, emotion, and movement into our historical study of
clothing’; such work is done by all clothing historians working before 1550–1700 (before which
the survival of actual pieces is rare).27

DRESS AND CLASSICAL STUDIES

Ancient dress history is as demanding a field as any other type of ancient history.28 Often viewed as
soft or frivolous by more traditional scholars, cultural studies (of which ancient dress is a subfield) is
in actuality tremendously challenging, as the scholar must draw on vastly disparate types of sources
in research: visual in a range of media; sources written in a multiplicity of genres; inscriptions and
papyri. Just as in other historical subjects, one must have a firm grasp of bibliography and method.
Classicists for the most part cannot do object-based material cultural analysis of dress. Instead,
‘we rely heavily on visual representations in a range of media, and literary texts from a range of

20
For example, Kathy Peiss, ‘Making Faces: The Cosmetics Industry and the Cultural Construction of Gender 1890–1930’,
Genders 7 (1990): 143–69.
21
For example, John Flügel, The Psychology of Clothes (London: Hogarth Press, 1930).
22
For example, Shaun Cole, Don We Now Our Gay Apparel: Gay Men’s Dress in the Twentieth Century (Oxford and New
York: Berg, 2000).
23
Christopher Breward, ‘Cultures, Identities, Histories: Fashioning a Cultural Approach to Dress’, Fashion Theory 2, no. 4
(1998): 305.
24
Taylor, ‘Fashion and Dress History’, 39.
25
Daniel Miller, ‘Introduction’, in Clothing as Material Culture, ed. Susanne Kuchler and Daniel Miller (Oxford: Berg,
2005), 2.
26
Roche, The Culture of Clothing, 5.
27
Taylor, ‘Fashion and Dress History’, 33.
28
Steele, ‘Macaroni Fashion’, 96.
14 DRESS IN MEDITERRANEAN ANTIQUITY

genres’.29 In addition, Llewellyn-Jones reminds us that the historian of ancient costume is ‘coping
with an incomplete vocabulary of changing technical and colloquial terms’; many clothing terms
have unexplainable meanings. ‘We have probably lost many nuanced and colloquial terms for items
of clothing which varied according to time and place. The ancient Greeks themselves were very
relaxed about naming their items of dress’,30 as indeed are we: the word ‘jacket’ in English, for
instance, has a wide range of meanings and changes depending on context and speaker.
Writing on ancient Greek and Roman costume in English has not kept up with the output of
fashion studies in other fields, and until recently there was very little published, although important
observations concerning ancient dress occur in many modern studies of ancient art, literature and
religion.31 One scholar has termed clothing in ancient society ‘shamefully undervalued’;32 another
notes that until her own book (published 2015), no single-authored monograph on Greek dress had
appeared for more than a century.33 Happily, ‘scholars are now beginning to turn their attention
to major studies of dress in its social environment and are stressing more than ever the importance
of using dress, in ancient literary and visual representations, as a tool for investigating ancient life,
ancient mores, and ancient cultural responses’.34
Near Eastern and Egyptian clothing has not attracted as much attention as Greek and Roman
dress until a short time ago and is a growing field of dress studies.35 Margaret Miller has come to
important conclusions regarding ancient Persian dress,36 and three new collections which include
essays on ancient Near Eastern dress are especially noteworthy.37

29
Mary Harlow, ‘Dress in the Historia Augusta: The Role of Dress in Historical Narrative’, in The Clothed Body in the
Ancient World, ed. Liza Cleland, Mary Harlow and Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones (Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2005), 143.
30
Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones, Aphrodite’s Tortoise: The Veiled Woman of Ancient Greece (Swansea, Wales: Classical Press of
Wales, 2003), 25.
31
Mireille Lee, Body, Dress, and Identity in Ancient Greece (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 1.
32
Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones, ‘Introduction’, in Women’s Dress in the Ancient Greek World, ed. Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones (Swansea,
Wales: Classical Press of Wales, 2002), vii.
33
Lee, Body, Dress, and Identity, 1.
34
Mary Harlow, Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones and Liza Cleland, ‘Introduction’, in Cleland et al., The Clothed Body, xiii.
35
See Mary Galway Houston, Ancient Egyptian, Mesopotamian and Persian Costume and Decoration, 2nd edition (London:
A&C Black, 1954); Gillian Vogelsang-Eastwood, Pharaonic Egyptian Clothing. Studies in Textile and Costume History 2
(Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1993); Eleanor Guralnick, ‘Fabric Patterns as Symbols of Status in the Near East and Early Greece’, in
Reading a Dynamic Canvas: Adornment in the Ancient Mediterranean World, ed. Cynthia S. Colburn and Maura K. Heyn
(Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2008), 84–114; Benjamin R. Foster, ‘Clothing in Sargonic Mesopotamia:
Visual and Written Evidence’, in Textile Terminologies in the Ancient Near East and Mediterranean from the Third to the
First Millenia BC, ed. Cécile Michel and Marie-Louise Nosch, Ancient Textiles Series 8 (Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2010),
110–45; Mary Harlow, Cécile Michel and Marie-Louise Nosch, eds., Prehistoric, Ancient Near Eastern and Aegean Textiles
and Dress (Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2015); Kiersten Neumann, ‘Gods among Men: Fashioning the Divine Image in Assyria’,
in What Shall I Say of Clothes: Theoretical and Methodological Approaches to the Study of Dress in Antiquity, ed. Megan
Cifarelli and Laura Gawlinksi (Boston: Archaeological Institute of America, 2017), 3–23; Neville McFerrin, ‘Fabrics
of Inclusion: Deep Wearing and the Potentials of Materiality on the Apadana Reliefs’, in What Shall I Say of Clothes:
Theoretical and Methodological Approaches to the Study of Dress in Antiquity, ed. Megan Cifarelli and Laura Gawlinksi
(Boston: Archaeological Institute of America, 2017), 143–59; Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones, this volume.
36
Margaret Miller, Athens and Persia in the Fifth Century B.C.: A Study in Cultural Receptivity (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge
University Press, 1997); ‘Orientalism and Ornamentalism: Athenian Reactions to Achaemenid Persia’, Arts: The Proceedings
of the Sydney University Arts Association 28 (2006): 117–46; ‘Persians in the Greek Imagination’, Meditarch 19, no. 20
(2006/07): 109–23.
37
Colburn and Heyn, Reading a Dynamic Canvas; Cifarelli and Gawlinski, What Shall I Say of Clothes?; Megan Cifarelli,
ed., Fashioned Selves: Dress and Identity in Antiquity (Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2019).
DRESS AND CLASSICAL STUDIES 15

Greek clothing was not quite so ‘richly invested in symbolic meaning’ as Roman but is still a
fascinating subject of study.38 On Greek dress usage in English,39 Lady Maria Millington Evans
published her study of Greek dress in 1893; Ethel Abrahams published hers in 1908.40 E. Gullberg
and P. Åström published their work The Thread of Ariadne: A Study of Ancient Greek Dress in
1970.41 There were a few articles on Greek dress published in the late twentieth century,42 but the
field really began to explode in the 2000s, with the work of Llewellyn-Jones,43 Lee,44 Cleland,45
Brøns46 and others.47 Several important new collections cover Greek, Roman and Near Eastern
dress,48 or ancient textiles;49 one new volume concerns only footwear.50
Roman dress seems to have attracted slightly more attention than Greek. On the Roman side,
Lillian Wilson’s The Roman Toga and The Clothing of the Ancient Romans appeared in 1924 and
1938 respectively.51 Meyer Reinhold published two seminal studies on clothing: the history of

38
Jonathan Edmondson and Alison Keith, ‘Introduction: From Costume History to Dress Studies’, in Dress and the Fabrics
of Roman Culture, ed. Jonathan Edmondson and Alison Keith (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008), 7.
39
For reasons of space, for the most part I cover here only work on ancient costume published in English. For bibliography
in other languages, see Kelly Olson, Masculinity and Dress in Roman Antiquity (London and New York: Routledge, 2017),
2; Lee, Body, Dress, and Identity, 10–18.
40
Now published together conveniently as Ancient Greek Dress, ed. Marie Johnson (Chicago: Argonaut, 1964).
41
Elsa Gullberg and Paul Åström, The Thread of Ariadne: A Study of Ancient Greek Dress (Göteborg: P. Astrom, 1970).
42
Harrianne Mills, ‘Greek Clothing Regulations: Sacred and Profane’, Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 55 (1984):
255–65. A. G. Geddes, ‘Rags and Riches: The Costume of Athenian Men in the Fifth Century’, CQ 37.2 (1987): 307–31;
Margaret Miller, ‘The Ependytes in Classical Athens’, Hesperia 58, no. 3 (1989): 313–29.
43
Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones, ed., Women’s Dress; Aphrodite’s Tortoise.
44
Mireille Lee, ‘The Ancient Greek Peplos and the “Dorian Question”’, in Ancient Art and Its Historiography, ed. Alice A.
Donohue and Mark Fullerton (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 118–47; ‘Problems in Greek Dress
Terminology: Kolpos and Apoptygma’, Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 150 (2004): 221–4; ‘Constru(ct)ing
Gender in the Feminine Greek Peplos’, in The Clothed Body in the Ancient World, ed. Lisa Cleland, Mary Harlow and Lloyd
Llewellyn-Jones (Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2005), 55–64; Body, Dress, and Identity.
45
Liza Cleland, ‘The Semiosis of Description: Some Reflections on Fabric and Colour in the Brauron Inventories’, in Cleland
et al., The Clothed Body, 87–93.
46
Cecilie Brøns, ‘Sacred Colours: Purple Textiles in Greek Sanctuaries in the Second Half of the 1st Millennium BC’, in
Treasures From the Sea: Sea Silk and Shellfish Purple Dye in Antiquity, ed. Hedvig L. Enegren and Francesco Meo. Ancient
Textiles Series 30 (Oxford & Philadelphia: Oxbow Books, 2017), 109–17.
47
Linda Jones Roccos, ‘Back-Mantle and Peplos: The Special Costume of Greek Maidens in 4th Century Funerary and
Votive Reliefs’, Hesperia 69 (2000): 235–65; Beth Cohen, ‘Ethnic Identity in Democratic Athens and the Visual Vocabulary
of Male Costume’, in Ancient Perceptions of Greek Ethnicity, ed. Irad Malkin (Washington, DC: Center for Hellenic
Studies, 2001), 235–74; Hans Van Wees, ‘Clothes, Class and Gender in Homer’, in Body Language in the Greek and Roman
Worlds, ed. Douglas Cairns (Swansea: The Classical Press of Wales, 2005), 1–36; Silvia Milanezi, ‘Beauty in Rags: On
Rhakos in Aristophanic Theatre’, in Liza Cleland et al., The Clothed Body, 75–86. Laura Gawlinski, ‘Dress and Ornaments’,
in A Companion to the Archaeology of Religion in the Ancient World, ed. Rubina Raja and Jörg Rüpke (Malden, Mass:
Wiley-Blackwell, 2015); Gawlinski, ‘Theorizing Religious Dress’.
48
Colburn and Heyne Reading a Dynamic Canvas; Cifaraelli and Gawlinski, What Shall I Say of Clothes?; Liza Cleland,
Glenys Davies and Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones, Greek and Roman Dress from A-Z (London and New York: Routledge, 2007);
Cleland et al., The Clothed Body.
49
Carole Gillis and Marie-Louise Nosch eds., Ancient Textiles: Production, Craft, Society (Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2007);
Mary Harlow and Marie-Louise Nosch, Greek and Roman Textiles and Dress: An Interdisciplinary Anthology (Oxford:
Oxbow Books, 2014). Religious dress: Cecilie Brøns and Marie-Louise Nosch, eds., Textiles and Cult in the Ancient
Mediterranean. Ancient Textiles Series 31 (Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2017).
50
Sadie Pickup and Sally White, eds., Shoes, Slippers and Sandals: Feet and Footwear in Classical Antiquity (London and
New York: Routledge, 2019).
51
Lilian Wilson, The Roman Toga (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1924) and The Clothing of the Ancient
Romans (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1938).
16 DRESS IN MEDITERRANEAN ANTIQUITY

purple (1970) and the usurpation of status symbols (1971).52 Bonfante-Warren began her invaluable
work on the clothing of the Etruscans in 1973.53 But for many years studies of ancient clothing,
when they appeared at all, fell under the category of ‘costume history for antiquarians’: being
concerned with the exact shade of Tyrian purple, for example, or how to recreate a toga.54 Several
publications and a more sophisticated theoretical framework appeared in the 1990s, among them
Sebesta and Bonfante’s The World of Roman Costume, which looks at various aspects of male
and female dress.55 But it is really only since 2000 or so that interest in the field has exploded.
Alexandra Croom’s Roman Clothing and Fashion was published in 2002; there followed the
work of Harlow,56 Olson,57 Sebesta,58 Rothe,59 as well as collections of essays on various aspects
of Roman dress,60 and two volumes have been published concerning aspects of ritual or religious
dress in Roman antiquity.61 The Purpureae Vestes series, volumes which spring out of conferences,
have some English chapters and are also noteworthy.62

52
Meyer Reinhold, History of Purple as a Status Symbol in Antiquity (Brussels: Coll. Latomus 116, 1970) and ‘The
Usurpation of Status and Status Symbols in the Roman Empire’, Historia 20 (1971): 275–302.
53
Larissa Bonfante, Etruscan Dress, 2nd edition (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003).
54
For an excellent summary of the move within the field from costume history to modern dress studies, see Florence
Gherchanoc and Valérie Huet, ‘S’habiller et se déshabiller en Grèce et à Rome (I): pratiques politiques et culturelles du
vêtements: essai historiographique’, Revue Historique, no. 641 (2007): 5–10; Edmondson and Keith, ‘Introduction’; Lee,
Body, Dress, and Identity, 10–32.
55
Judith Sebesta and Lariussa Bonfante, eds., The Word of Roman Costume (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1994);
Judith Sebesta, ‘Tunica Ralla, Tunica Spissa: The Colors and Textiles of Roman Costume’, in Sebesta and Bonfante, World
of Roman Costume, 65–76; Caroline Vout, ‘The Myth of the Toga: Understanding the History of Roman Dress’, Greece
and Rome 43, no. 2 (1996): 204–20; Judith Sebesta, ‘Women’s Costume and Feminine Civic Morality in Augustan Rome’,
Gender and History 9, no. 3 (1997): 529–41; Alice Christ, ‘The Masculine Ideal of “The Race That Wears the Toga”,’ Art
Journal 56, no. 2 (1997): 24–30; Robert E. A. Palmer, ‘Bullae Insignia Ingenuitatis’, American Journal of Ancient History
14 (1998): 1–69.
56
Mary Harlow, ‘Dressing to Please Themselves: Clothing Choices for Roman Women’, in Dress and Identity, ed. Mary
Harlow (Oxford: Archeopress, 2012), 37–46; ‘Dressed Women on the Streets of the Ancient City: What to Wear?’ in
Women and the Roman City in the Latin West, ed. Emily Hemelrijk and Greg Woolf (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 225–42; ‘Little
Tunics for Little People: The Problems of Visualising the Wardrobe of the Roman Child’, in Children and Everyday Life in
the Roman and Antique World ed. Christian Laes and Ville Vuolanto (London and New York: Routledge, 2017), 43–59.
57
Kelly Olson, ‘Insignia lugentium: Female Mourning Garments in Roman Antiquity’, American Journal of Ancient History
3–4 (2004–05): 89–130; Dress and the Roman Woman: Self-Presentation and Society (London and New York: Routledge,
2008); Masculinity and Dress.
58
Judith Sebesta, ‘The Toga Praetexta of Roman Children and Praetextate Garments’, in Cleland et al., The Clothed Body,
113–20.
59
Ursula Rothe, The Toga and Roman Identity (London: Bloomsbury, 2019), and see below.
60
Cleland et al., The Clothed Body; Edmondson and Keith, Roman Dress; Harlow, Dress and Identity; Mary Harlow
ed.,  A Cultural History of Fashion vol I: Antiquity (London: Bloomsbury, 2017).
61
For example, Maureen Carroll and John Peter Wild, eds., Dressing the Dead in Classical Antiquity (Gloucestershire:
Amberley, 2012). For other works on clothing and Roman ritual, see Olson, this volume.
62
For example, Carmen Alfaro Giner, John Peter Wild and Benjamí Costa, eds., Purpureae Vestes: Actas del I Symposium
Internacional sobre Textiles y Tintes del Mediterráneo en época romana (Valencia: University of València, 2004); Carmen
Alfaro Giner and L. Karali, eds., Purpureae Vestes II: Vestidos, textiles y tintes. Estudios sobre la producción de bienes de
consumo en la Antigüedad (Valencia: University of València, 2008); Carmen Alfaro Giner, Jean-Pierre Brun, Philippe
Borgard and Rafaela Peirobon Benoit, eds., Purpureae Vestes III: Textiles y tintes en la ciudad Antigua (Valencia: University
of València, 2010).
DRESS AND CLASSICAL STUDIES 17

Other areas of dress have received scholarly attention as well: Roman military historians have
also achieved much in the area of military dress,63 for example. Dress in the Roman provinces has
also been investigated.64 There is also now a wealth of publications on dress in Late Antiquity and
on early Christian attitudes to clothing, with the work of Batten,65 Upson-Saia,66 Daniel-Hughes67
and Morgan,68 among others.69

FUTURE DIRECTIONS
The newest work on ancient dress stresses the interactiveness of dress. These scholars see dress
not just as a static marker of identity but as dynamic and transformative, as something that
shapes its wearer and their experience of being dressed, in all its haptic splendour.70 One scholar
reminds us that while we primarily engage with and understand ancient dress through sight,
an ancient wearer would have engaged with dress through scent, touch and hearing as well,
all of which would have reinforced the identity a garment conferred.71 The rattle of earrings,

63
On military dress, see most recently Graham Sumner, Roman Military Clothing I: 100 BC–AD 200 (Oxford: Osprey
Publishing, 2002) and Roman Military Dress (Gloucestershire: The History Press, 2009); and the essays in Marie-Louise
Nosch and H. Koefoed, eds., Wearing the Cloak: Dressing the Soldier in Roman Times (Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2012).
64
For example, Ursula Rothe, Dress and Cultural Identity in the Rhine-Moselle Region of the Roman Empire. BAR
International Series S2038 (Oxford: Archaeopress, 2009), and ‘Whose Fashion? Men, Women and Roman Culture as
Reflected in Dress in the Cities of the Roman North-West’, in Hemelrijk and Woolf, Women and the Roman City, 243–68.
See also Elizabeth Greene’s work: ‘If the Shoe Fits: Style and Function of Children’s Shoes from Vindolanda’, in Life in the
Limes: Studies of the People and Objects of the Roman Frontiers, ed. Rob Collins and Frances McIntosh (Oxford: Oxbow
Books, 2014), 29–36; ‘Footwear and Fashion on the Fringe: Stamps and Decoration on Leather and Shoes from Vindolanda
(1993–2016)’, in Embracing the Provinces: Society and Material Culture of the Frontier Regions, ed. Tatiana Ivleva, Jasper
De Bruin, Mark Driessen (Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2018), 143–52; and ‘Metal Fittings on the Vindolanda Shoes: Footwear
and Evidence for Podiatric Knowledge in the Roman World’, in Shoes, Slippers and Sandals, ed. Pickup and Waite, 310–24.
See also Judith Rosten, 2008. ‘Appearance, Diversity, and Identity in Roman Britain’, in Colburn and Heyn, Reading a
Dynamic Canvas, 194–215; Maura K. Heyn, ‘Western Men, Eastern Women? Dress and Cultural Identity in Roman
Palmyra’, in What Shall I Say of Clothes?, 203–19.
65
Alicia J. Batten, ‘Neither Gold nor Braided Hair (1 Timothy 2.9; 1 Peter 3.3): Adornment, Gender and Honour in
Antiquity’, New Testament Studies 55 (2009): 484–501; ‘Clothing and Adornment’, Biblical Theology Bulletin 40, no.
3 (2010): 148–59; and ‘(Dis)orderly Dress’, in Scribal Practices and Social Structures among Jesus’ Adherents: Essays in
Honour of John S. Kloppenborg, ed. William E. Arnal, Richard S. Ascough, Robert A. Derrenbacker and Philip Harland;
BETL 285 (Leuven: Peeters, 2016), 567–84.
66
Kristi Upson-Saia, Early Christian Dress: Gender, Virtue, and Authority (London and New York: Routledge, 2011).
67
Carly Daniel-Hughes, The Salvation of the Flesh in Tertullian of Carthage: Dressing for the Resurrection (New York:
Palgrave Macmillan, 2011).
68
Faith Pennick Morgan, Dress and Personal Appearance in Late Antiquity: The Clothing of the Middle and Lower Classes
(Leiden: Brill, 2018).
69
See the special issue of Antiquité Tardive 12 (2004): Tissus et vêtements dans l’antiquité tardive; Maria Parani, ‘Defining
Personal Space: Dress and Accessories in Late Antiquity’, in Objects in Context, Objects in Use: Material Spatiality in Late
Antiquity, ed. Luke Lavan, Ellen Swift and Toon Putzeys (Leiden: Brill, 2008), 497–529; and the essays collected in Kristi
Upson-Saia, Carly Daniel-Hughes and Alicia J. Batten, eds., Dressing Judeans and Christians in Antiquity (Farnham, UK:
Ashgate, 2014).
70
See the important essays by Alexis Caster, ‘Surface Tensions on Etruscan and Greek Jewelry’; McFerrin, ‘Fabrics
of Inclusion’; Megan Cifarelli, ‘Costly Choices: Signaling Theory and Dress in Period IVb Hasanlu, Iran’; Gawlinski,
‘Theorizing Religious Dress’, all collected in Cifarelli and Gawlinki, What Shall I Say of Clothes?
71
Cifarelli, ‘Costly Choices’, 155–6. See Hume, this volume; Graybill, this volume.
18 DRESS IN MEDITERRANEAN ANTIQUITY

the smooth sensuousness of drapery, the smell of Tyrian purple were all part of the ancient
wearer’s sensations. Items of dress were ‘active elements in the construction of identity, social
reproduction, and embodied personhood’, and Cifarelli urges dress historians to avoid reading
dress ‘like a text’ and instead examine how social identity is negotiated and re-negotiated through
dress.72 Clothes are important. Much social and cultural work was performed by artefacts,73 and
through study of the dress habits and dress artefacts of ancient societies we are brought very close
to ‘the breath of the past’.74

72
Cifarelli, ‘Costly Choices’, 104.
73
John Styles and Amanda Vickery, Gender, Taste and Material Culture in Britain and North America (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 2006), 21.
74
Taylor, ‘Fashion and Dress History’, 39.
 CHAPTER THREE

Dress and Religious Studies

ALICIA J. BATTEN

INTRODUCTION
Today one need not look far to find an issue in the world associated with dress and religion. In
Canada, for example, the province of Québec legislated in 2019 that public servants may not wear
visible religious symbols. The law, called Bill 21, restricts the display of such items as Muslim
headscarves, Sikh turbans, Jewish kippahs or Christian crosses while the individual is at work.
Although popular throughout the province, the law has attracted much controversy and critique as
it has derailed career prospects for many. Some individuals have moved elsewhere because wearing
a turban or hijab, for example, is a non-negotiable aspect of their religious practice. As critics of
the law have made clear, Bill 21 presupposes a very narrow idea of religion, as if ‘belief’ is the basic
component of faith, and does not take into account that for some religious traditions, how one
dresses is fundamental to religious identity and practice.1
Examples such as the one in Québec illustrate how dress is an important topic for the study
of religion and how the study of religion is helpful for understanding why people may dress in
the manner that they do. However, the analysis of dress, at least by those trained in religious
studies, is in its beginnings. Dress analysis in this area is not as developed as it is in sociology,
anthropology and classical studies, even though those disciplines are also in the early stages of this
area of research, as some of the other chapters in this ‘Methods’ section make clear.2 Fortunately,
the situation is changing. This chapter begins by providing a brief background of the discipline
of religious studies before turning to some of the contributions that studies of religion and dress
are making. Of course, this brief examination is by no means exhaustive and engages work not
exclusively but primarily in Western traditions that trace their roots to the cultures of the ancient
Mediterranean and Near East. It also must be clear that bringing together questions of religion and
dress is not exclusively the domain of scholars trained in religious studies but emerges from other
disciplines in the Humanities and Social Sciences as well.

RELIGIOUS STUDIES
The fact that there is ongoing debate about the discipline of religious studies, including whether or
not it is its own discipline given that it encompasses a wide range of methods and subject matter,

1
See Laura Morlock, ‘Quebec’s Controversial Secularism Bill Creates and Reinforces Division’, Waterloo Region Record (5
April 2019).
2
See the chapters by Graybill, Hume and Olson (‘Dress and Classical Studies’) in this volume.
20 DRESS IN MEDITERRANEAN ANTIQUITY

makes it difficult to describe succinctly. There is also no universally agreed-upon definition of

‘religion’. I will therefore only paint a few broad strokes about the field in general.3
Religious studies examines religious traditions such as Buddhism, Judaism and Christianity, but
it also considers a vast array of categories including belief, ritual, culture, text, notions of the human
person, space, time and so forth.4 The discipline does not presuppose that the scholar has religious
commitments, which makes it different from the theological enterprise as most theologians work,
however critically, within a religious tradition.5 Of course, scholars in religious studies do not claim
to be objective but situate themselves and identify their biases with regard to their subject as best
they can.
Subjectivity is one of the reasons why it is so difficult to come up with a universal definition of
‘religion’. A list of characteristics often privileges certain elements, such as doctrine, at the expense
of practice,6 especially because much of the early analysis of religion in the West emerged from
post-Enlightenment thinkers heavily influenced by Protestant Christianity. Therefore, any attempt
at a definition of ‘religion’ must be somewhat flexible and open to revision. Here, I have found
Bruce Lincoln’s work to be helpful. He determines four main features of religion:7

1. discourse that transcends the human, temporal and contingent. Religion makes claims to be
‘true’ and authoritative on the basis of something greater than humans. In this way, any act
or idea can claim to be religious;
2. a set of practices that provide expression for religious beliefs and values;
3. a community of people who construct their identity in relation to the discourse and
practices;
4. an institution that regulates the discourse, practices and community. Without an institution,
no matter how informal, a religion cannot continue to exist over time.

With this working definition, a variety of phenomena might be called ‘religious’ although they may
not identify themselves in such a way.
There is also no evidence that people in Mediterranean antiquity understood ‘religion’ to be
something separate from other elements of their lives. Indeed, they engaged in ritual activities,
sacrificed to the gods, wrote texts and in some cases linked their moral behaviour to transcendent
discourse, but they did not think about these things as ‘religion’ in the same fashion that many
moderns do. The Latin religio could refer to ‘binding’, while the Greek θρησκεία could simply
mean ‘practice’. Translating either word as ‘religion’ would not be accurate.8 Again, one could say

3
For discussion of key terms in the field of religion, see Willi Braun and Russell T. McCutcheon, eds., Guide to the Study
of Religion (London: Continuum, 2000).
4
For essays on some of the topics that religious studies may engage, see, for example, Mark C. Taylor, ed., Critical Terms
for Religious Studies (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1998) and John R. Hinnells, ed., The Routledge
Companion to the Study of Religion (London and New York: Routledge, 2005).
5
There is considerable discussion about the role and influence of theology in the development of the field of religious
studies in the West. See, for example, William E. Arnal, Willi Braun and Russell McCutcheon, eds., Failure and Nerve in the
Academic Study of Religion (New York: Routledge, 2014).
6
This is one of the critiques of Talal Asad, Genealogies of Religion: Discipline and Reasons of Power in Christianity and Islam
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993), 27–54.
7
See Bruce Lincoln, Holy Terrors. Thinking about Religion after September 11, 2nd edition (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 2010), 5–7.
8
See Carlin A. Barton and Daniel Boyarin, Imagine No Religion. How Modern Abstractions Hide Ancient Realities (New
York: Fordham University Press, 2016).
DRESS AND RELIGIOUS STUDIES 21

that people throughout antiquity engaged in what moderns think of as ‘religious’ activities, but the
ancients would not have categorized them as such, and some scholars of the ancient world therefore
avoid the term ‘religion’ altogether as it would be misleading when trying to describe antiquity.9
Methods in religious studies vary tremendously. In this volume, Graybill, Hume and Olson all give
examples of how scholars in their respective fields engage questions related to either contemporary
religious phenomena or various types of ritual life and behaviour in antiquity, and religious studies
scholars will employ such methods as well. Some scholars of religion may be trained primarily as
anthropologists, as sociologists or as linguists. Others may come from the fields of philosophy,
history, phenomenology, psychology or gender studies, and any introductory textbook in the field
will survey these different approaches.10 The fact that social scientists11 have explored questions of
dress and religion has fuelled work on dress within religious studies, and the historical research on
the ancient Near East, Classical Antiquity and the Middle Ages – when ritual life was embedded so
deeply in other aspects of existence – by classicists, archaeologists12 and medievalists13 has enriched
the study of religious practices in these periods. Those in religious studies working historically thus
interact with others who come from different disciplines but with whom they have mutually shared
interests. There is no single way to study what we now call ‘religion’ and as in any field, methods
and approaches are always evolving, and a certain degree of interdisciplinarity is a given.14

THE BODY, MATERIALITY AND RELIGIOUS STUDIES

As mentioned, Protestant Christianity in particular has heavily influenced notions of ‘religion’ in
the West whereby people think of religion as consisting primarily of ‘beliefs’, something internal
and personal, or they privilege ideas, concepts and doctrines over practices and materiality. Such
notions of religion have come under challenge in Western scholarship. This is not to say that beliefs
are not important to study but to point out that for many religious traditions, what one does is
much more significant than what one believes. And, by paying more attention to religious practice,
including how it interacts with beliefs, there is more sensitivity to materiality.
In addition, the rise of attention to the human body in the field of religion has fostered more
study of religion and material culture.15 As humans interact with the world through their bodies,

9
See, for example, John S. Kloppenborg, Christ’s Associations. Connecting and Belonging in the Ancient City (New Haven
and London: Yale University Press, 2019), 10–18.
10
For a sample ‘reader’ featuring many of these approaches, see Carl Olson, Theory and Method in the Study of Religion. A
Selection of Critical Readings (Belmont, CA: Thomson Wadsworth, 2003).
11
See, for example, the work of Lynne Hume, The Religious Life of Dress. Global Fashion and Faith (London: Bloomsbury,
2013), and Joanne B. Eicher who edits the ‘Dress, Body, Culture’ series for Berg.
12
For example, Cecilie Brøns and Marie-Louise Nosch, eds., Textiles and Cult in the Ancient Mediterranean (Oxford and
Philadelphia: Oxbow Books, 2017).
13
See, for example, Valerie R. Hotchkiss, Clothes Make the Man: Female Cross Dressing in Medieval Europe (New York and
London: Routledge, 2012).
14
For more on ‘interdisciplinarity’, see Joe Moran, Interdisciplinarity, 2nd edition, The New Critical Idiom (London and
New York: Routledge, 2010).
15
The American historian Colleen McDannell has been instrumental in illustrating the benefits of more attention to the
study of material culture, especially with her book, Material Christianity: Religion and Popular Culture in America (New
Haven: Yale University Press, 1995). See also the important collection of essays in David Morgan, ed., Religion and Material
Culture. The Matter of Belief (London and New York: Routledge, 2010), and in Benjamin J. Fleming and Richard D. Mann,
eds., Material Culture and Asian Religions: Text, Object, Image (New York and London: Routledge, 2014).
22 DRESS IN MEDITERRANEAN ANTIQUITY

scholarship has emerged that tries to understand the significance of the senses as they pertain to
religion. David Morgan has done considerable work on religious visual culture – the role of seeing
in religious life16 – while S. Brent Plate has explored the significance of the senses more broadly.17
Plate also co-founded the academic journal Material Religion: The Journal of Objects, Art, and
Belief, thereby furnishing a platform for scholars of religion to share their work on materiality. For
Plate, the senses are fundamental to religion. As he says:
Religion, at a certain base level, operates in accord with basic, natural experiences of eating and
breathing, seeing and speaking. The natural world – from flora and fauna to the sun, moon, and stars
– has its cycles, its seasons, and its smells and colors. Religious life grew up in correspondence with
these cycles, keeping humans in tune with nature’s rage and blessings.18

Plate does not ignore beliefs and ideas in the development of religion, but he is, along with other
scholars, attempting to recalibrate the field to some extent in order that researchers pay more
attention to the physicality and materiality of religious life.

DRESS AND RELIGIOUS STUDIES

The study of dress and religion fits well within the rising interest in materiality and sensory
perception in religious studies. We wear clothes on our bodies and as a result, various dimensions
of dress bear considerable consequence. For example, the origin of an item of dress can matter a
great deal. If a garment was worn by a founding figure or saint, then it is sometimes believed that
a certain sanctity is passed on through the clothing.19 Donning the item is understood to affect the
wearer. Dress can thus be a means of transferring spiritual power from a holy person to the next
person who wears his or her garments, as illustrated in a variety of traditions, including Sufi Islam.20
In addition, whether clothing is too loose or too tight can have an impact on how people move
and how they think. Umberto Eco has explained this phenomenon based on his own experience
of wearing jeans.21 Eco observes that monastic clothing fulfilled the ‘requirements of demeanor’
(majestic, flowing, all of a piece, so that it fell in statuesque folds), it left the body (inside,
underneath) completely free and unaware of itself … Thought abhors tights’.22 Monastic dress
could thus undergird a kind of intellectual freedom that constricting or uncomfortable clothing
could not because the wearer is much more aware of the physical presence of clothing on the body

16
David Morgan, Visual Piety: A History and Theory of Popular Religious Images (Berkeley: University of California Press,
1998), Protestants and Pictures: Religion, Visual Culture, and the Age of American Mass Production (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1999), The Sacred Gaze: Religious Visual Culture in Theory and Practice (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 2007), The Lure of Images: A History of Religion and Visual Media in America (London: Routledge, 2007), The
Embodied Eye. Religious Visual Culture and the Social Life of Feeling (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of
California Press, 2012).
17
S. Brent Plate, A History of Religion in 5½ Objects: Bringing the Spiritual to Its Senses (Boston: Beacon Press, 2014).
18
Ibid., 16.
19
Compare Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones, ‘Dress and Ceremony in Achaemenid Persia: The *Gaunaka’, this volume.
20
Wearing the robe of a Sufi master or patching a robe with fabric from a garment that was endowed with spiritual qualities
aids a Sufi to advance in mysticism. See Jamal J. Elias, ‘The Sufi Robe (Khirqa) as a Vehicle of Spiritual Authority’, in Robes
and Honor. The Medieval World of Investiture, ed. S. Gordon (New York: Palgrave, 2001), 275–89.
21
Umberto Eco, ‘Lumbar Thought’, in Fashion Theory: A Reader, ed. Malcom Barnard (Oxford: Routledge, 2007), 315–17.
Eco points out that his experience of wearing jeans changed his behaviour. As he says: ‘I lived for my jeans … I assumed a
demeanor’ (p. 316).
22
Eco, ‘Lumbar Thought’, 317.
DRESS AND RELIGIOUS STUDIES 23

and as a result, more conscious of the body itself. It is perhaps no surprise, then, that those who
have transitioned from wearing a religious ‘habit’ to donning regular ‘secular’ dress have sometimes
faced challenges, for they became more self-conscious about their body shape, and also of their
hair, which may have been covered up by a wimple which caused some of it to fall out.23 These
examples demonstrate that the topic of dress is an obvious one when thinking about the roles of
the body, the senses and religion.

RELIGION AND DRESS IN THE PRESENT DAY

Dress continues to cause friction today. Given the complex geopolitical situations throughout
the world, minority cultures and diaspora religions often struggle to engage in particular dress
practices. Issues of racism, politics and nationalism all figure in the resistance of dominant cultures
and religions to the dress of minorities. The head covering of Muslim women is probably the most
obvious example of a clothing practice that has become a target and sparked negative responses
in parts of North America and Europe.24 Globally, more countries restrict women’s religious dress
than require it.25 The study of the regulation of dress in the present day therefore highlights, in
some instances, systematic racism and discrimination in countries that claim to respect religious
freedom and cultural diversity.26
Dress can be a religious practice that is non-negotiable, that is, it is not something that a
community or individual can separate from their religious identity and faith, as illustrated by the
example in Québec with which I began this chapter. However, communities are influenced by a
variety of factors and thus the manner in which they engage in religious dress can be affected by
many elements. For example, being fashionable is of no less interest to many ‘religious’ people as it
is to those who do not identify with a particular religion. Again, probably the best example here is
the fashion world in Muslim majority countries, with runway shows and shops displaying gorgeous
outfits, scarves and head pieces that are fully compatible with prescriptions about modest dress.27 A
similar phenomenon occurs in other religious traditions, including Orthodox Judaism, where some
women seek to dress fashionably in styles consistent with the teachings in their communities about
what needs to be covered.28

23
See Susan O. Michelman, ‘Fashion and Identity of Women Religious’, in Religion, Dress, and the Body, ed. Linda B. Arthur
(Oxford, New York: Berg, 1999), 135–45.
24
See, for example, Eléonore Lépinard, ‘Migrating Concepts: Immigrant Integration and the Regulation of Religious Dress
in France and Canada’, Ethnicities 15 (2015): 611–32. Regional and local factors also make a considerable difference.
See, for example, Brenda A. Anderson and F. Volker Greifenhagen, ‘Covering Up on the Prairies: Perceptions of Muslim
Identity, Multiculturalism and Security in Canada’, in Islamic Fashion and Anti-Fashion: New Perspectives from Europe and
North America, ed. Annelies Moors and Emma Tarlo (London: Bloomsbury, 2013), 55–72.
25
Pew Research Center, ‘Restrictions on Women’s Dress’, 5 April 2016. Online: pewresearch.org (accessed 5 February
2020). See also Mohja Kahf, ‘From Her Royal Body the Robe Was Removed’, in The Veil, ed. Jennifer Heath (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 2008), 27–43.
26
On the discrimination against predominantly African American Muslim men in US prisons, see K. Morin, ‘Men’s Modesty,
Religion, and the State: Spaces of Collision’, Men and Masculinities 16 (2013): 307–28. Morin points out that prison
authorities in various states often forbid incarcerated Muslim men the ability to engage in religious dress practices such as
keeping a short beard or wearing a tarboosh (close-fitting hat) even though they allow others to wear baseball caps (p. 317).
The denial of particular forms of religious dress to certain groups reveals a clear anti-Muslim bias.
27
See Elizabeth Bucar, Pious Fashion. How Muslim Women Dress (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2017).
28
See, for example, the storefront and online shop, www.mimumaxi.com, based in New York City, which sells fashionable
clothing for women within the Hasidic Jewish community.
24 DRESS IN MEDITERRANEAN ANTIQUITY

In addition, increasing awareness of the amount of waste that discarded clothing creates, as well as
gender issues, has exerted their influence on the adaptations of religious dress. Dress is therefore an
interesting site for examining how various identities and commitments – religious, environmental,
gender – play out for particular groups. Zabeen Khamisa has examined, for example, how these
different aspects of identity function for some North American Sikhs who participate in the ‘Sikh
chic’ look within the competitive capitalist economic market.29
Christian images have also featured in the fashion industry in North America. One has only to
think of the glittery crosses that some people wear or the use of religious paintings and images
on dresses and shirts, and shoes.30 In the United States, the popularity of T-shirts with explicitly
evangelical Christian themes has sparked imitations from other companies, but it is not entirely
clear if such imitations are ‘authentically’ Christian or not.31 Some companies also produce explicit
parodies of this Christian fashion in order to criticize Christianity and advocate an atheist perspective.
Therefore, fashion becomes a site for advancing, potentially profiting from, or attacking particular
religious perspectives.

DRESS, POWER, RESISTANCE

As many have observed, dress can serve as an instrument of power. Sometimes dress invests a
person with a sense of strength because they feel good in what they are wearing.32 There are also
instances of religious groups that enforce dress codes on their members, especially upon women
within the community, as a means of wielding power over them.33 Dress becomes a measure against
which a person can be judged whether he or she is adhering to the regulations of the community
and as an indication of one’s degree of commitment. Because there are often many rules about
dress, what one wears and how one wears it is subject to scrutiny. The refusal to wear particular
types of dress can even cause schisms, leading to the formation of new communities.34
The representative power of dress is also very important to consider when thinking about
questions of power and religion. One witnesses the symbolic power of dress blatantly when there
is a conflict or controversy over it. In various historical contexts, some groups thought that dress
(or undress) was suffused with theological power. The early Christian theologian Tertullian, for
example, was so concerned about women’s, and especially virgins’, dress that he penned treatises on
the topic.35 For Tertullian, there were theological and even soteriological issues at stake in whether
or not Christian virgins veiled.36 In fourth- through eighth-century Egypt, certain Coptic Christians

29
Zabeen Khamisa, ‘Disruptive Garb: Gender Production and Millennial Sikh Fashion Enterprises in Canada’, Religions 11
(2020): 160. Online: doi: 10.3390/rei11040160 (accessed 13 April 2020).
30
See Lynn S. Neal, Religion in Vogue: Christianity and Fashion in America (New York: New York University Press, 2019).
31
Lynn S. Neal, ‘OMG: Authenticity, Parody, and Evangelical Christian Fashion’, Fashion Theory 21 (2016): 223–44. Neal
points out that some companies that produce these Christian T-shirts advertise with skimpily clad models in seductive poses,
which raises questions about their motives.
32
See the essays in Kim K. P. Johnson and Sharron J. Lennon, eds., Appearance and Power (Oxford: Berg, 1999).
33
For example, see Gayle Veronica Fischer, ‘The Obedient and Disobedient Daughters of the Church: Strangite Mormon
Dress as a Mode of Control’, in Religion, Dress, and the Body, 73–94.
34
As an example, see Marlene G. Epp, ‘Carrying the Banner of Nonconformity: Ontario Mennonite Women and the Dress
Question’, Conrad Grebel Review 8 (1990): 237–57.
35
Tertullian, Cult. Fem.; Virg. See Carly Daniel-Hughes, The Salvation of the Flesh in Tertullian of Carthage: Dressing for
the Resurrection (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011).
36
See Carly Daniel-Hughes, ‘“Wear the Armour of Your Shame!” Debating Veiling and the Salvation of the Flesh in
Tertullian of Carthage’, Studies in Religion/Sciences religieuses 39 (2010): 179–201.
DRESS AND RELIGIOUS STUDIES 25

wore tunics embroidered with scenes of Christ’s life during worship. Stephen Davis wonders if these
Copts perceived that by wearing such garb in ritual settings, they were ‘mimetically (and visually)
assimilating themselves to Christ’s incarnation’,37 given the kinds of theological discussions that
were occurring at the time. This practice instigated tension and conflict, as bishops condemned and
forbade such vestimentary behaviour. A response from church leaders of this nature is an indication
that wearing these ‘Christ-bearing’ tunics must have had a certain representational power and
influence such that it disturbed those higher up within the ecclesiastical hierarchy. My own work
on the varying perceptions and uses of the pearl in antiquity points to the underlying forces of
economics and trade that can contribute to the valuation or criticism of items of adornment, and
the degree to which it will take on a positive representational power or earn scorn as a symbol of
luxury and degradation.38
Despite the heavy emphasis upon the importance of conforming to gender dress expectations,39
women have sometimes worn male dress in order to participate in activities that were not generally
accessible to females. Joan of Arc may be the most famous instance in Western traditions,40 but there
are a variety of examples of women doing this in antiquity as well.41 For women, cross-dressing
could furnish a degree of power and protection, although it could earn condemnation too. Men in
the ancient world had to be very careful not to show signs of effeminacy, and therefore, not to adopt
elements of what was classified as female dress, but to clothe and comport themselves in a manner
consistent with the ideals of masculinity (strong, controlled, virile, etc.). In Late Antiquity we see
Christians clearly embracing the traits of Roman masculinity; as Maria Doerfler has written: ‘The
Christian God and his earthly representatives were supremely qualified to function as guarantors of
Roman manliness.’42 Such adoption meant that Christian men should by no means adopt the dress
of the opposite sex (and nor should women), as stipulated, for example, by Deuteronomic Law.
Assuming the dress associated with the model Roman male, Christian men allied themselves even
more with imperial power.
As intimated earlier, accepting or rejecting certain types of dress can be a form of resistance. In
a variety of Muslim majority countries, for example, some women (and men) oppose veiling (the
hijab) because for them, it represents an absence of choice for women. However, other women,
especially young female university students, have adopted wearing the hijab by choice, at least in
Egypt. They argue that wearing the veil is an ‘affirmation of an Islamic identity and morality and
a rejection of Western materialism, consumerism, commercialism, and values’.43 What may appear
to outsiders as an acquiescence to patriarchy is in fact, for these women, a feminist statement.
Thus both veiling and refusing to veil can be acts of resistance that are connected to different

37
Stephen J. Davis, ‘Fashioning a Divine Body: Coptic Christology and Ritualized Dress’, HTR 98, no. 3 (2005): 355.
38
Alicia J. Batten, ‘The Paradoxical Pearl: Signifying the Pearl East and West’, in Dressing Judeans and Christians in Antiquity,
ed. Kristi Upson-Saia, Carly Daniel-Hughes and Alicia J. Batten (Farnham: Ashgate, 2014), 233–50.
39
In Rabbinic Judaism the distinctions in dress between men and women were sharply defined. Women, moreover, were
expected to dress and adorn themselves in order to attract men, while men were supposed to be attractive to God. See
David Kraemer, ‘Adornment and Gender in Rabbinic Judaism’, in Envisioning Judaism, vol. 1, ed. Ra’anan S. Boustan, Klaus
Herrman, Reimund Leicht, Annette Yoshiko Reed and Giuseppe Veltri (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2013), 217–34.
40
See Hotchkiss, Clothes Make the Man, 49–68.
41
See Kristi Upson-Saia, Early Christian Dress: Gender, Virtue, and Authority (New York and London: Routledge, 2011).
42
Maria E. Doerfler, ‘Coming Apart at the Seams: Cross-dressing, Masculinity, and the Social Body in Late Antiquity’, in
Dressing Judeans and Christians in Antiquity, 49.
43
Fadwa El Guindi, ‘Veiling Resistance’, Fashion Theory 3 (2015): 58.
26 DRESS IN MEDITERRANEAN ANTIQUITY

sorts of feminisms that in turn may be rooted in different conceptions of gender.44 In addition, the
geopolitical context, culture and economics all play significant roles in contributing to some of
these complex developments.
Such forms of resistance also occur in North America, where some people choose to dress quite
‘conservatively’ or unusually in an effort not to conform to typical ways of dressing. Some women,
for example, choose to wear a head covering, whether they are Muslim, Jewish or Christian,
because they want to make it obvious that they are members of these religious traditions and
even when they experience odd looks from strangers and/or objections from family and friends.
Studies of women who choose to wear a head covering in a range of different faiths has shown that
they do this, at least in part, as acts of ‘resistance to the so-called mainstream and its underlying
assumptions’.45 Refusing to wear religious dress can be a form of resistance, but as this example of
women who adopt head coverings illustrates, so can donning it.

CONCLUSION
Just as other disciplines engage materiality, the body and the senses, so does religious studies. In
such a research context, dress becomes a fascinating lens through which scholars can analyse how
religious traditions and communities adapt and work themselves out in different ways. This chapter
has only highlighted a few aspects of the ways in which dress and religion intersect. Future work
could go in many directions with regard to both historical and contemporary studies. Contrary
to predictions from the past, there is no indication that religion is on decline throughout the
world, although it is changing. Today the fastest growing religion is Islam, and it is quite likely
that different forms of Islamic fashion will expand and develop globally. The discussion of gender
identities is also more complicated today,46 and it will be interesting to observe if and how forms
of religious dress shift, given the increasing challenges to binary notions of gender. Religious dress
will very likely continue to serve as a type of sartorial resistance, in certain contexts, and force
nations and governments to confront questions of human rights and religious diversity. We will
need scholars of religion to attend to such issues.

44
Ibid., 68.
45
Sally Campbell Galman, ‘Un/Covering: Female Religious Converts Learning the Problems and Pragmatics of Physical
Observance in the Secular World’, Anthropology and Education Quarterly 44 (2013): 423–41.
46
See Abby L. Ferber, Kimberly Holcomb and Tre Wentling, eds., Sex, Gender, and Sexuality: The New Basics. An Anthology
(New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009).
 CHAPTER FOUR

Dress and Anthropology

LYNNE HUME

INTRODUCTION
With the notable exception of Cordwell and Schwarz,1 ‘dress’ as an object of anthropological
study has been somewhat marginalized in the past, considered principally to be a woman’s domain
(and therefore of little importance to the scientific enterprise) or included as an aside to other
aspects of structural significance. This no doubt erroneously contributed to the notion that
dressing the body is not really of serious anthropological concern as a focus for anthropologists.
However, what one puts on the body can reveal much about both individuals and human groups.
Fortunately, anthropologists are now more inclined to acknowledge the importance of body and
dress, recognizing that the body itself can be a rich source for theoretical insights.
As defined by Eicher and Roach-Higgins, dress is ‘an assemblage of modifications of the body and/
or supplements to the body’,2 the purpose of which is to cover or to adorn. This broader definition
of dress encourages multidisciplinary research, for the body, whether covered or uncovered, in fact
reveals much information of interest to social scientists, especially anthropologists.
Rather than treating dress as merely one item of wearing apparel, which is of more interest to the
fashion industry, dress becomes a phenomenon in itself. ‘Getting dressed’ takes on a multiplicity of
cultural meanings. Whether in the ancient Mediterranean or contemporary Australia, the dressed
body as an epiphenomenon becomes highly pertinent and a significant tool for discovering what
anthropologists want to know – the threads that bind human groups or rip them apart.

ANTHROPOLOGY
Anthropology is the science or study of humans as sociocultural beings. It embraces four major
areas: biological anthropology (sometimes referred to as physical anthropology or primatology),
archaeology, anthropological linguistics and cultural anthropology. The branch which is most
pertinent to the study of dress is cultural anthropology. Anthropological knowledge allows us
to understand how cultures ‘work’, cultural similarities and differences, how people understand
their worlds, social change, politics, economy, religious beliefs and practices and a myriad of other
aspects of what it is to be human and live in a society.

1
Justine M. Cordwell and Ronald A. Schwarz, The Fabrics of Culture: The Anthropology of Clothing and Adornment (The
Hague, Paris, New York: Mouton Publishers, 1979).
2
Joanne B. Eicher and Mary Ellen Roach-Higgins, ‘Definitions and Classifications of Dress’, in Dress and Gender: Making
and Meaning in Cultural Context, ed. R. Barnes and J. B. Eicher (Oxford: Berg, 1992), 15.
28 DRESS IN MEDITERRANEAN ANTIQUITY

The early nineteenth-century ‘armchair’ anthropologists, so-called because they contemplated

other cultures from the comfort of their own homes, surmised what life might be like in far-
flung places principally from traveller’s tales and missionary accounts. It was when anthropologists
moved out of their living rooms and into ‘the field’ to explore first-hand what a culture was like
that anthropology as a discipline took a great leap forward. To wake up in situ and go about the
daily rounds of activities with others, to hear the sounds, learn the language, smell the food and feel
the heartbeat of a culture led to rich cultural data and invaluable insights that cannot be obtained
in any other way. Thus, long stints of fieldwork using participant-observation became the research
strategy par excellence for learning about all things cultural. This continues to be an important
facet of the discipline.3 Indeed, one’s first stint of ‘fieldwork’ could be said to be a rite of passage
for the fledgling anthropologist.
The questions that a researcher takes into the chosen field of study might necessitate years of
submersion and/or multiple visits to a particular culture. Some questions might require a wide
comparison among several different cultures to articulate the diversity of practices cross-culturally.
Alan Barnard describes these aspects as:

a) observing a society as a whole, to see how each element of that society fits together with, or
is meaningful in terms of, other such elements;
b) examining each society in relation to others, to find similarities and differences and account
for them.4

Following Barnard, in (a), for example, one might want to know how politics is linked with
economy or with social relationships, or (employing a dress focus) how might dress inform us about
kinship, religion or political hierarchies within a particular society? With respect to (b), how might
one culture differ from another with regard to such questions and why?
The ‘field’ might necessitate multi-sited locations,5 with the anthropologist travelling to more than
one location for the information sought. As well, a geographically broad, yet focused, approach on
a particular aspect of culture could require the combined efforts of several ethnographers working
in different cultures, enhancing analysis from various perspectives.
During the two hundred or so years of the discipline of anthropology there have been
concentrations of particular theoretical approaches to the study of humans and culture, the
major ones being evolutionism, diffusionism, historical particularism, functionalism, culture and
personality, structuralism, neo-evolutionism, cultural ecology and cultural materialism.6 At times
there have been debates about the appropriateness of each one for the focus of any particular
research and surges of interest from one theoretical line of thinking to another (one might almost
say ‘fashions’ of theory).
In longitudinal studies (diachronic) a researcher might want to follow changes in a culture
over a long period of time that might affect the social fabric of other parts of the society. A
good example of long-term research is the work of environmental and cognitive anthropologist

3
Daniel Bradbury, Being There: The Necessity of Fieldwork (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1998).
4
Alan Barnard, History and Theory in Anthropology (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 6.
5
George Marcus, ‘Ethnography in/of the World System: The Emergence of Multi-Sited Ethnography’, Annual Review of
Anthropology 24 (1995): 95–117.
6
See Nurazzura Mohamad Diah, Dewan Mahboob Hossain, Sohela Mustari and Noor Syafika Ramli, ‘An Overview of the
Anthropological Theories’, International Journal of Humanities and Social Science 4, no. 10 (2014): 155–64.
DRESS AND ANTHROPOLOGY 29

Susan Crate,7 who began research with indigenous communities in Siberia in 1988. With long stints of
fieldwork and many visits over a period of more than twenty-five years, she documented convincing
and cataclysmic climate changes in the villages under study. To the naysayers of climate change, her
thorough research from year to year leaves no doubt as to the effect of climate change. She has since
followed through on the subject of climate change elsewhere, comparing communities as far apart
as Canada, Peru and Kiribati,8 to show how climate changes have effected not only the land itself
but other important aspects of the economy and social life in these different geographical locations.
A synchronic focus looks at the relations of things together at a particular time. Attention might
turn to themes or areas such as gender relations and power, religion and hierarchy or the effects
of tourism on a small island community, creating new theories and adding to the anthropological
enterprise as a whole. The introduction of a single material item from outside a small subsistence
culture can result in cataclysmic shake-ups with enormous repercussions, as exemplified in the
classic anthropological study of Lauriston Sharp9 who studied the effect of the introduction of steel
axes into a remote Australian Aboriginal community. Because of the function of stone axes in the
Yir Yiront culture, this innovation caused far-ranging and disruptive consequences. Nowadays,
with globalization, the effects of high technology (such as smartphones and other artefacts of social
media – or even introduced items of dress) might have effects of a different, but equally disruptive,
nature, or conversely, bring people together in positive new ways.
It was thought for some time that as anthropology was a social science, the fieldworker could
engage with members of a culture and participate in everyday events while maintaining objectivity, a
requirement of the scientific method. However, it became apparent that complete objectivity is not
possible. Each of us carries with us our own viewpoints, interpretations and biases no matter how hard
we try to be objective. In trying to understand the ‘other’, we may only be seeing mirrored images of
ourselves, and our own interests and assumptions will be reflected back to us in the answers we receive
from the questions we ask. While the participant-observation method was always recognized as being
highly valid, the researcher needed to be aware of his or her own bias in the collection of data.
The thoroughly scientific and objective view of reality began to be questioned when
ethnographers noted that a reflexive research practice10 could lead the researcher to more valuable,
in-depth information. In reflexive anthropology, one reflects on one’s own subjective experiences
of engagement and process of observing, and includes the voices and perspectives of people in their
actual worlds,11 paying close attention to their viewpoints. In some studies, ‘radical participation’
in events will lead to an experiential component that allows the fieldworker to understand what
a subject is describing. Examples might include the full participation in rituals that entail altered
states of consciousness or engaging in the everyday lives of individuals through experiencing the
everyday as they do, rather than merely observing them.12

7
Susan Crate, Anthropology and Climate Change: From Action to Transformation (London: Routledge, 2016).
8
Ibid.
9
Lauriston Sharp, ‘Steel Axes for Stone-Age Australians’, Human Organization 11, no. 2 (1952): 17–22.
10
James Clifford and George Marcus, Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1986).
11
See Dan Rose, Living the Ethnographic Life (Newbury Park, CA: Sage, 1990); Jay Ruby, ed., A Crack in the Mirror:
Reflexive Perspectives in Anthropology (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1982).
12
See David E. Young and Jean-Guy Goulet, eds., Being Changed by Cross-cultural Encounters: The Anthropology of
Extraordinary Experience (Peterborough, ON: Broadview Press, 1994).
30 DRESS IN MEDITERRANEAN ANTIQUITY

Reflexivity can change the lives and viewpoints of the anthropologists themselves, as Jim
Birckhead13 revealed in his reflections on absorbing the experiential worlds of fundamentalist
Christian serpent-handlers in the southern United States. Others have recognized that even the
difficulties and challenges that are encountered in doing fieldwork provide rich information that is
valuable to others. Susan Beckerleg and Gillian Lewando Hundt,14 who worked among heroin users
in a coastal Kenyan town, realized that a difficult and sensitive situation required ‘physical, ethical,
and emotional strategies’ that involved a great deal of subjective involvement with the people with
whom they worked. Sylvie Tourigni’s research on the survival strategies of disadvantaged minority
families in inner-city Detroit took her even deeper into the dangerous zone that some fieldworkers
encounter, to the point that she found herself having a shotgun muzzle pointed into the window of
the car she was in and needing to think very quickly how to deal with the situation.15 Anthropology
can place one in highly dangerous situations, on the one hand, but on the other there may also be
long stints of boredom and loneliness. Nevertheless, one can come out of the field in either case,
with new theoretical insights. Such theoretical insights are subsequently useful for those scholars,
such as historians, who obviously cannot engage in participant-observation of peoples and cultures
of the past.
With the increase of women and indigenous anthropologists, feminism and standpoint theory,
gender studies, identity, symbolism, postmodernism and reflexivity, social scientists turned
attention to the body as an important focus in itself.

ANTHROPOLOGY AND THE BODY

Erving Goffman demonstrated that the body, and what is put on the body, is a form of non-verbal
communication, full of symbolic meanings through which individuals locate themselves within their
society, giving them personal and social identity.16 The suggestion, by Pierre Bourdieu, that the
body is an unfinished entity which develops according to social forces17 placed the body squarely
in the area of anthropology. The interface of body and society continued with Mary Douglas’s
positing how the social body is played out symbolically through the physical body.18 The body
became recognized as a social metaphor for identity that brought into play ‘culturally anchored
ambivalences’.19
Skin marking in the form of scarification, tattooing, piercing, painting and staining (such as
henna) has been part of early anthropological interest in indigenous practices. The visible outer
boundary of the body has appeared in the ethnographic literature generally in relation to questions
of identity, gender, age, political status and religious beliefs. While bodily inscriptions might be

13
Jim Birckhead, ‘Reading “Snake Handling”: Critical Reflections’, in Anthropology of Religion: A Handbook, ed. Stephen
D. Glazier (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1997), 19–84.
14
Susan Beckerleg and Gillian Lewando Hundt, ‘Reflections on Fieldwork among Kenyan Heroin Users’, in Anthropologists
in the Field: Cases in Participant Observation, ed. Lynne Hume and Jane Mulcock (New York: Columbia University Press,
2004), 127–39.
15
Sylvie Tourigny, ‘“Yo Bitch …” and Other Challenges: Bringing High-Risk Ethnography into the Discourse’, in
Anthropologists in the Field, 111–26.
16
Erving Goffman, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (New York: Overlook Press, 1973).
17
Pierre Bourdieu, ‘Cultural Reproduction and Social Reproduction’, in Knowledge, Education and Social Change, ed.
R. Brown (London: Tavistock), 71–112.
18
Mary Douglas, Natural Symbols (New York: Pantheon Books, 1982).
19
Fred Davis, Fashion, Culture and Identity (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), 25.
DRESS AND ANTHROPOLOGY 31

publicly viewed, their symbolism generally requires deep probing on the part of the fieldworker.
Body painting, scarification or items of apparel might be of a secret-sacred nature, gleaned only
through the methodological skills of the anthropologist. The full spectrum of a society’s sacred
knowledge might only be revealed by a series of rituals, each performance peeling off ignorance
like layers of winter clothing with the coming of summer.
Rites of passage often involve many painful bodily procedures to mark the transition from one
developmental stage in human life to another (particularly puberty rites that mark the status of
a person entering adulthood). They have been described in great detail by many ethnographers
since van Gennep first introduced the topic of rites de passage.20 As puberty rites indicate that the
person is expected to act and behave as a man (or woman) from that time on, it is a precise event,
acknowledged by the whole community in which the individual belongs. Thus, marking the body
itself through scarification, tattooing or painting is a sign to all that certain necessary community
procedures have been fulfilled and indicates the individual’s social place as an adult. Here, the body
becomes of prime importance in linking other aspects of social structure, practices and relationships.
Western puberty rites are much more nebulous, indeed mostly they do not exist unless it is within a
specific religious context and teenagers approaching adulthood can be flummoxed as to when they
are actually considered an adult, unlike the passage from single to married person, where marriage
elicits an elaborate display of dress and a public recognition of the change in status.
Anthropologists such as A. Strathern and M. Strathern (on New Guinea),21 James Faris (on
the African Nuba)22 and A. Gell (on Polynesia)23 showed how both temporary and permanent
forms of inscribing the body can involve boundaries, belonging and exclusion, social stratification,
spirits, warfare, gender distinctions and the quest for beauty. Modern Western representations of
invasive (tattooing, scarification and piercing) and non-invasive (painting) skin-marking practices
have been shown to articulate interfaces between individuals and contemporary society, as well as
interfaces between indigeneity and modernity. Travellers seeking out cultural ways of decorating
their own bodies have brought back cultural designs to Western tattoo parlours or have had their
skin inscribed on location.24
As decorative practices (rather than indicating psychological problems such as cutting and self-
harm), skin modifications in contemporary Western cultures have been attributed to the search for
the exotic, group allegiances, religious identity, personal adornment, spiritual leanings and even
memorial markers. The return of indigeneity through a revival of tattooing practices, sometimes
lost through the ruptures of diaspora, has also been investigated,25 reflecting the postmodern turn
in anthropology. The body as a phenomenon in itself has been approached via many disciplines,
each offering new theoretical insights. For an overview of history and theoretical approaches with
regard to inscribing the body, refer to Enid Schildkrout.26 What is done to the body as punishment
in one epoch might emerge in another epoch or culture as fashionably decorative.

20
Arnold van Gennep, Les rites de passage (Paris: E. Noury, 1909).
21
A. Strathern and M. Strathern, Self-Decoration in Mount Hagen (London: Duckworth, 1971).
22
James Faris, Nuba Personal Art (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1972).
23
A. Gell, Wrapping in Images: Tattooing in Polynesia (Oxford; Clarendon: Oxford University Press, 1993).
24
For photographic depictions of indigenous and modern urban revivals, see Rufus C. Camphausen, Return of the Tribal
(Rochester, VT: Park Street Press, 1997).
25
C. Balme and A. Carstenssen, ‘Home Fires: Creating a Pacific Theatre in the Diaspora’, Theatre Research International
26, no. 1 (2001): 35–46.
26
Enid Schildkrout, ‘Inscribing the Body’, Annual Review of Anthropology 16 (1987): 409–48.
32 DRESS IN MEDITERRANEAN ANTIQUITY

The body as an object of religious significance has been of interest to scholars of religious studies
for some time. If one tunnels through religious resource material, there is a wealth of information
to be unearthed. Ioan P. Culianu27 suggested that in studies of the body in Western civilization,
there has been a shift in emphasis through various periods of history. In very sweeping terms, Late
Antiquity focused more on the male body and male sexuality; in the Middle Ages the emphasis was
on women’s bodies and nutrition; and in the modern period, emphasis turned to women’s bodies,
fashion and what he referred to as the ‘secularization of penitential practice’. Howard Eilberg-
Schwartz wrote that after taking feminist criticism seriously, he recognized that gender, sexuality,
desire and the body were indispensable in understanding religion.28
The body has variously been viewed as a sacred temple containing the soul or as unimportant
to the religious endeavour. It has been preened and punished, decorated and flagellated, despised
and desired. Missionaries in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when missionary zeal was
at its pinnacle throughout the world, had their own particular notions of morality, one of which
was that the nude or semi-naked body needed to be covered appropriately. Many photographs
from those decades show puzzled indigenes stiffly posing in the same style of dress as that worn by
their masters and mistresses. In some religions when negative asceticism has been at its height, the
body has been treated as an object of fleshly sins necessitating punitive measures in order to quell
sexuality or as a mimetic object to reflect the suffering of the divine figure, such as Christ.
In the Hindu festival of Thaipusam,29 what began as a simple festival to celebrate the triumph
of good over evil has become a visual and startling display of physical mortification. A devotee’s
gratitude and devotion to Lord Murugan for favours granted during the year (such as the blessing
of a child, overcoming an illness, good fortune or a better life) can be shown by simple austerities –
such as giving up food, alcohol, sexual intercourse – or through intense demonstrations of painful
bodily piercing. One method of piercing is the insertion of metal fish hooks into the skin on
the back with weights attached, another by perforating the tongue or cheeks with steel spikes.30
The most extreme of these bodily austerities is called the kavadi, or ‘burden’, which, in its most
striking form, consists of a large heavy metal arc frame attached to the body, weighing up to thirty
kilos, with numerous needles or spikes extending from the frame to pierce the bare flesh of the
kavadi bearer. Different parts of the face might also be inserted with hooks and spikes, creating a
spectacular form of self-torture.31
If researchers were to ponder, with an anthropological eye, the kavadi as a phenomenon in itself,
they might ask an individual Hindu bearer questions about their kavadi burden that would lead to
information of great anthropological interest: Why and how they had chosen to attend the festival?
How it felt to carry such a painful weight on the body? What was its significance? Could women
don such a burden? What had happened during the year that they might choose to show gratitude
in such a way? From there, they might learn the details of the origins of the festival, the intricacies
of Hindu beliefs, other rituals, household composition, social status, kinship relations, social
structure and so on. To discover more about the kavadi might entail engaging in multidisciplinary

27
Ioan P. Culiani, ‘Introduction: The Body Reexamined’, in Religious Reflections on the Human Body, ed. Jane Marie Law
(Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1995), 1–18.
28
Howard Eilberg-Schwarz, ‘God’s Body: The Divine Cover-Up’, in Religious Reflections on the Human Body, 137–48.
29
Held in honour of Lord Subramaniam, one the major gods in the Hindu pantheon and a son of Lord Shiva in his aspects
as Lord Murugan.
30
A. Hullet and A. Roces, ‘Thaipusam’, Geo: Australasia’s Geographical Magazine 3, no. 4 (1981): 70–97.
31
Lynne Hume, The Religious Life of Dress: Global Fashion and Faith (London and New York: Bloomsbury, 2013).
DRESS AND ANTHROPOLOGY 33

research into the production of the frame itself, the history of the festival, the significance of pain
in religious ceremonies, the sensorial nature of kavadi, the personal experience of bearing kavadi,
and so on, all of which could result in a complex research-based study leading to a fully extended,
highly evocative publication and perhaps new theoretical insights.
The importance of the body and its interface with society and culture has led to a plethora of
publications that address the politics and mores around the gender divide: power, subordination,
modesty, ownership and control –not only of the body per se but specific parts of the body. Hair,
for example, is laden with social, political and religious connotations: short hair/long hair/shaved
heads have each at different epochs and different places articulated power, shame, control, male/
female expectations, rebellion, piety and spiritual meanings.32

ANTHROPOLOGY, THE BODY AND DRESS

The phenomenon of the ‘dressed’ body brought more attention to the cultural symbols and
meanings to be harvested through bodily additions and supplements.
Early humans donned clothing for at least three reasons: protection from the environment,
protection from their enemies and protection from supernatural sources. Later, as several of the
chapters in this volume illustrate, clothing and adornment developed into ways of displaying
power, importance in the community, wealth, personal attraction and social status. Yet, as Ronald
A. Schwarz commented, ‘descriptions of clothing are so rare in some texts of social anthropology
that the casual reader might easily conclude the natives go naked’.33 An exception to this is the
following paragraph from Lhote’s 1955 colourful description of the seminomadic Islamic people
of North Africa, the Tuareg, where it is the males who wear a veil:

With blue veils falling from the bridge of the nose to below the chin, little shows of them except
hands, feet and the area around their eyes. Even the small exposed sections of skin have a blue
tinge, the result of the dye rubbing off the cloth, and the overall impression given by one of the
fully armed warriors is almost awesome.
The style of wearing the veil, of placing the different parts about the head, may vary from
one tribe to another and some individuals give their preference, according to personal taste, to
certain local styles …. But beside these different fashions, there is also the turn, the knack which
makes it more or less elegant.
Similarly there is a psychology of the veil; by the way in which it is set, one can gain an
idea of the mood of the wearer just as among us the angle of the cap or hat permits analogous
deductions. There is the reserved and modest style used when one enters a camp where there
are women, the elegant and recherché style for going to courting parties, the haughty manner of
warriors conscious of their own importance, like the whimsy of the blustering vassal or slave.
There is also the detached and lax fashion of the jovial fellow, the good chap, or the disordered
one of the unstable man of irritable character. The veil may also express a transient sentiment.
For example, it is brought up to the eyes before women or prestigeful persons, while it is a sign

See, for example, Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones’s chapter on hair in this volume.

32

Ronald A. Schwarz, ‘Uncovering the Secret Vice: Toward an Anthropology of Clothing and Adornment’, in The Fabrics of
33

Culture: The Anthropology of Clothing and Adornment, ed. Justine M. Cordwell and Ronald A. Schwarz (The Hague; Paris;
New York: Mouton Publishers, 1979), 23.
34 DRESS IN MEDITERRANEAN ANTIQUITY

of familiarity when it is lowered. To laugh from delight with a joke, the Tuareg will lift up the
lower part of his veil very high on his nose, and, in case of irritation, will tighten it like a chin
strap to conceal his anger.34

The visible signs of dress, when read correctly, contain a multitude of symbolic significances
pertaining both to the individual and to the society in which the body is located.
This colourfully written piece detailing the nuances of how and why the veil is manipulated
to convey certain messages takes us to the heart of Tuareg male vanity: sexual attraction in the
marriage marketplace, selection of partners for marriage and subsequent important kinship
connections involving economy and politics.
Robert Murphy’s question with regard to the Tuareg was: Why do Tuareg males cover their
faces so completely that only areas around the eyes and nose may be seen?35 The question led to
an anthropological analysis that included detailed descriptions of male clothing, the way the cloth
is wrapped around the head, the differences between male and female clothing, kinship lineages
and relationships, how the veil is cleverly left on while a man is eating, how it is manipulated to
reveal status, and even the difficulty of smoking given the veil’s restrictions, and the age at which
a male begins to veil. The veil, as a means of symbolic communication, he wrote, provides ‘the
idiom of privacy upon its wearer and allows him to stand somewhat aloof from the perils of social
interaction while remaining a part of it’.36 Murphy started with the veil and used it to articulate the
Tuareg social system and the importance of social distance.37
The invisible signs of dress (clothing items hidden from view, body parts not permitted to be
viewed) also contain information of great cultural and personal significance. The extent to which
the body is required to cover itself varies over time. In Queen Victoria’s era, the nineteenth-century
British woman’s body was well covered, with glimpses of ankles considered risqué. However,
‘covered’ does not always conceal the lure of the female body. The fashion of the day focused
on the morally respectable and demurely feminine shape of a woman’s body which resulted in
the top half of the body accenting unnaturally tiny waists, brought about by way of punishingly
tight whale-boned corsets. These were eventually abandoned due to the health problems they
caused. The nineteenth century also heralded the introduction of the pantaloon for women and
accompanied the suffragette movement. By the 1920s, much more of women’s bodies was revealed
in the scandalous short hemlines of the more liberating Roaring Twenties flappers. When the bikini
was introduced to swimwear in the 1950s, beach inspectors in Australia scanned the sandy beaches
to measure the permissible height of the bikini bottoms, and in the 1960s miniskirts (long by later
standards) were considered shocking only when they first came on to the fashion scene.
Since the 1980s, social scientific academic scholarship on dress has grown through journal articles,
monographs and edited collections. Berg’s book series, Dress, Body, and Culture, has been responsible
for a plethora of academic books concentrating on the topic of dress from across disciplines to such

34
Quoted in Schwarz.
35
Robert F. Murphy, ‘Social Distance and the Veil’, American Anthropologist 66, no. 6 (1964): 1257–74. It is interesting to
note that Tuareg females did not veil at the time of Murphy’s writing and enjoyed high status and privileges not known in
other Muslim societies.
36
Murphy, ‘Social Distance and the Veil’, 1257.
37
For another perspective, see Susan Rasmussen, ‘Veiling without Veils: Modesty and Reserve in Tuareg Cultural Encounters’,
in Veiling in Africa, ed. Elisha Renne (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2003), 34–57.
DRESS AND ANTHROPOLOGY 35

an extent that the combined efforts of Berg and Bloomsbury Publishers could be said to be the first
port of call for multidisciplinary academic works in English on the subject of dress as a whole. The
focus on agency, practice, performance and globalization as theoretical underpinnings in cultural
research formed no small part in this burgeoning interest in body and dress.
In 2004, Karen Tranberg Hansen articulated the upsurge of anthropological interest in clothing
research and the dressed body over the two decades since the 1980s,38 and her more recent
bibliographic guide provides a wealth of information on anthropological dress scholarship.39 One
reason for the increase of interest, she posits, is that globalization is a process in which the local
and the global interact, but the most important factor, she writes, is that consumption, usually
viewed through markets and economic actors, can be seen to entail cultural processes that construct
identity.
Fashions,40 textiles,41 the production and consumption of clothing manufacture and their
anthropological significance42 together with religion43 and competing discourses around politics
and women’s dress44 fast-forwarded attention to the significance of all facets of dress to disciplines
outside the fashion, design and business industries. Archaeological textile studies have ranged from
analysing degraded fibres to the comparative history of textile studies and clothing traditions.45
The advent of sensorial anthropology46 highlighting a ‘senses’ approach provided even wider
scope for researchers and an additional impetus to dress as embodied practice – to smell, feel,
hear and touch47 the decorative items that we put on our bodies and move with a total ensemble:
‘jewellery that glitters, tinkles and clangs; fabrics that rustle, shine, cling and change bodily form;
the sparkling light from a woman’s nose ring; or the constant adjusting and straightening of an
unfixed or free-flowing piece of fabric’, such as the sari or the veil of the Tuareg male, embraces
even more of the essence of the cultural aspects of dress.48

38
Karen Tranberg Hansen, ‘The World in Dress: Anthropological Perspectives on Clothing, Fashion, and Culture’, Annual
Review of Anthropology 33 (2004): 369–92.
39
Karen Tranberg Hansen, ‘The Anthropology of Dress and Fashion’, in Bibliographical Guides (London: Bloomsbury
Academic, 2015). http://dx.doi.org/10.5040/9781474280655BG004 (accessed 5 September 2018).
40
N-G. K. Singh, ‘Sacred Fabric and Sacred Stitches: The Underwear of the Khalsa’, History of Religions 43, no. 4 (2004):
284–302.
41
John Gillow, Textiles of the Islamic World (London, UK: Thames and Hudson, 2013); Irene Good, ‘Archaeological
Textiles: A Review of Current Research’, Annual Review of Anthropology 30 (2001): 209–26. https://doi.org/10.1146/
annurev.anthro.30.1.209
42
Jianhua Zhao, The Chinese Fashion Industry: An Ethnographic Approach (London and New York: Bloomsbury, 2013);
Clare Wilkinson-Weber, Fashioning Bollywood: The Making and Meaning of Hindi Film Costume (London and New York:
Bloomsbury, 2012).
43
Hume, The Religious Life of Dress; E. Silverman, A Cultural History of Jewish Dress (London: Bloomsbury, 2013); Linda
Arthur, ed., Undressing Religion: Commitment and Conversion from A Cross-Cultural Perspective (London and New York:
Berg, 2010); Linda Arthur, ed., Religion, Dress and the Body (Oxford: Berg, 1999).
44
F. El Guindi, Veil: Modesty, Privacy and Resistance (Oxford: Berg, 1999); Emma Tarlo, Visibly Muslim: Fashion, Politics,
Faith (London and New York: Berg, 2010).
45
See Good, ‘Archaeological Textiles’; Jane Schneider, ‘The Anthropology of Cloth’, Annual Review of Anthropology
16 (1987): 409–48; Annette Weiner and Jane Schneider, Cloth and Human Experience (Washington, DC: Smithsonian
Institution Press, 1989).
46
David Howes, ed., The Varieties of Sensory Experience: A Sourcebook in the Anthropology of the Senses (Toronto:
University of Toronto Press, 1991); ed., Empire of the Senses: The Sensual Cultural Reader (Oxford: Berg, 2005).
47
Constance Classen, The Book of Touch (Oxford: Berg, 2005); The Deepest Sense: A Cultural History of Touch (Champagne:
University of Illinois Press, 2012).
48
Hume, The Religious Life of Dress, 2.
36 DRESS IN MEDITERRANEAN ANTIQUITY

Dress is what some refer to as a hybrid subject with its eclectic mix of cultures and religions.
On the subject of piety and modesty, much has been said about the Islamic practice of women and
veiling. Elizabeth Bucar writes that while modest clothing can be used as a form of social control
in some Islamic cultures (as some assert), and religion is an important factor in what Muslim
women choose to wear, Muslim women negotiate a variety of aesthetic and moral pressures in their
selection of what to put on their bodies.49 This can vary enormously.
While maintaining the religious foundations of dress, modern interpretations of long-held
traditions allow a certain leverage, enhancing their adaptability to fashion and making them more
culturally relevant or modernizing them to appeal to a wider audience.
For example, in Australia, with the majority of the population living on the extensive coastline
of the continent, the beach is home for many, and the hot summer climate has little regard for
clothing that makes heavy top-to-toe modesty appealing. Beach dress consists mainly of various
ways to uncover the body without being completely nude. Young Muslims living in Australia who
want to adhere to Muslim dress codes, yet participate in beach culture and water sports, are faced
with a dilemma: the Australian choice of minimal coverage or adhering to the Islamic code of total
coverage. This dilemma was creatively resolved by Lebanese Australian designer Aheda Zanetti
and her invention of the burqini (a conflation of burqa and bikini). The head, neck and arms are
completely covered by a thigh-length, long-sleeve dress, which is worn over fitted pants reaching
to the ankles. The only parts of the body revealed are the face, hands and feet. It is a swimsuit
that is chlorine-resistant with low water absorbency, is very quick to dry and available in different
colours.
The national Skin Cancer Council’s slogan advises all Australians to ‘slip, slop, slap’,50 don
protective hats and cover themselves with suntan lotion when exposed to the punitive Australian
summers. The Council also promotes bodily coverage in the form of long-sleeve Lycra Rash Guards
(known popularly as ‘rashies’) and hats that have a back extension to cover the neck, in order to
avoid the highly prevalent problem of skin cancer in this sun-loving country. Because of this health
trend to protect the body, the burqini, in spite of its almost total bodily coverage, fails to attract
more than a passing glance. Some young Muslim women have even joined local Surf patrols, their
burqinis matching the colours of the local lifeguards’ swim apparel. As well, there is an increasing
number of successful Muslim clothes designers opening up shops of their own, and/or supplying
and promoting their more creatively appealing ‘modesty’ designs (with or without head apparel)
to mainstream stores and boutiques, thus catering for a more expansive clientele while maintaining
their Islamic preference for coverage.
The modernization of religious dress can also be seen in other religions. Eric Silverman gives a
comprehensive account of the history and culture of Jewish dress in A Cultural History of Jewish
Dress51 and includes a section on the hybrid nature of being young and Jewish in modern America,
one that is ‘hip, sexy, and cheeky’ and at the same time ‘cool’. Traditional non-leather shoes worn
at Yom Kippur, for example, might appear as canvas sneakers or colourful plastic Crocs, and
yarmulkes (male head coverings) might be promoted as ‘lids for Yids’.

49
Elizabeth Bucar, Pious Fashion: How Muslim Women Dress (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2017).
50
A health campaign in Australia and New Zealand exhorting people to ‘slip on a shirt, slop on sunscreen, and slap on a hat’
when they go out in the sun in order to prevent skin cancer.
51
Eric Silverman, A Cultural History of Jewish Dress (London: Bloomsbury, 2013).
DRESS AND ANTHROPOLOGY 37

Other contemporary dress studies embrace conflations of styles and ideas, demonstrating
the unbounded nature of creativity with which to convey messages of anthropological interest.
Anthropologist Brent Luvaas has investigated the phenomenon of ‘street style’ blogging, its rise
in popularity and how bloggers with no formal training in fashion or photography can influence
tastes and trends.52 He explores the structural shifts in the global fashion industry, the evolution of
street style photography, and adds early anthropological fieldwork photos into the mix, to arrive at
a unique ethnographic account of style that blurs street style with New York fashion. Photographer
Daniele Tamagni’s Fashion Tribes: Global Street Style53 covers a broad cultural view of world
dress and the power of clothing to create personal style in subcultures wherein individuals might
come from marginalized fringes of society, from heavy metal rockers in Botswana to dandies in the
Congo.
British anthropologist Emma Tarlo won the Victor Turner Prize for Ethnographic Writing
in 2017, with her book Entanglement: The Secret Lives of Hair,54 demonstrating new ways
anthropologists can approach, and write about, any aspect of dress and the body in a colourfully
exciting and engaging manner. There are still so many ways that social scientists, among others, can
fruitfully and imaginatively convey the dressed body and the experience of being dressed.
A theme of the 2018 New York Met Gala fashion show turned religious piety on its head and
showed yet another way of bringing religion into the fashion spotlight. The theme, ‘Heavenly
Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination’, was designed to create a dialogue between fashion,
religious art and ecclesiastical garb. Organizers even persuaded the Vatican to approve not only
the theme itself but the loan and shipping of clothing and paraphernalia from the Sistine Chapel
sacristy, much of which had never been seen outside the Vatican. Roman Catholic ecclesiastical
vestments as fashion statements worn by high-profile entertainers resulted in some original ‘profane’
twists to ‘sacred’ clothing usually donned only by males of the Roman Catholic hierarchy. This
public interface of faith and fashion could have provided anthropological analysis and commentary
with regard to the relationship between the material, the social and the religious as constitutive
of each other.

CONCLUSION
As a phenomenon in itself, dress benefits from the theory and analysis of a host of disciplines,
among them history, art history, textile, design, politics, economics and studies in religion. In 2010
the ten-volume Encyclopaedia of World Dress and Fashion was published by Berg Publishers; it is
a major reference work covering dress from all over the world and from different disciplines.55
Another encyclopaedia focusing on religion and dress is underway, as well as an anthology of the
seminal writings of anthropology.56 Bloomsbury’s categories of existing publications under the

52
Brent Luvaas, Street Style: An Ethnography of Fashion Blogging (London and New York: Bloomsbury, 2016).
53
Daniele Tamagni, Fashion Tribes: Global Street Style (New York: Abrams, 2015).
54
Emma Tarlo, Entanglement: The Secret Lives of Hair (London: Oneworld Publications, 2016).
55
Joanne B. Eicher and Phyllis G. Tortora, eds., Berg Encyclopedia of World Dress and Fashion (Oxford and New York:
Berg, 2010).
56
Brent Luvaas and Joanne B. Eicher, eds., The Anthropology of Dress and Fashion: A Reader (London and Oxford:
Bloomsbury, 2019).
38 DRESS IN MEDITERRANEAN ANTIQUITY

rubric of Anthropology in the Academic and Professional section of their webpage lists twenty-four
subsections, almost all of which could include in some manner the topic of dress, from Animals
and Society, at the top of the list, to Visual Anthropology, at the end. It is clear that dress plays a
pivotal part in all aspects of culture, from thousands of years ago to today, and there is no end to
the possibilities that can arise from a phenomenology of dress. We have only begun to tap into the
wealth of raw material for researchers with an eye for the unusual, the creative and its link with
culture and society.
 CHAPTER FIVE

Dress and Sociology

BETH E. GRAYBILL

INTRODUCTION
Sociology studies human behaviour, patterns of social interaction and relationships, societal groups
and cultures of everyday life. As a social science, sociology draws on history, psychology, statistics
and economics while sharing some methods with anthropology, notably ethnography. (Applied
sociology, a specific type of sociological practice, is led by the research questions and concerns of
clients and centrally concerned with social change.)
Sociologist Thomas Reed argues that the goal of sociological explanation ‘is to get inside the
various layers of social meanings’, particularly salient when we examine dress, since clothing is
a means of multi-layered communication.1 Interviews and participant observation are two long-
standing modes of inquiry into the interpretation of meaning. Scholars in sociology look to clothing
for information about social roles (age, gender, sexuality, racial/ethnic identity), social systems and
institutions (education, the family, religion), social stratification (e.g. economic status as conveyed
through work uniforms2 or professional dress standards) and societal change by examining sartorial
differences through time.

DRESS AND COMMUNICATION

For sociologists, dress can be analysed as non-verbal communication in diverse ways such as the
study of the materials used in dress construction and their look and feel on the body. (The term
‘somaesthetics’ has been used to describe this experience of felt bodily perception and presentation
through clothing.3) Another angle of vision is clothing production, fabrication and marketing,
which moves us into the realm of style and fashion, a relatively recent area of study for sociologists.

1
Isaac Reed, ‘Justifying Sociological Knowledge: From Realism to Interpretation’, Sociological Theory 26 (2008): 101–29.
2
In fact, uniforms perform important identification in a variety of jobs, from manual labour workers to police to religious
organizations and to the military. For more on uniforms, see Jennifer Craik, Uniforms Exposed: From Conformity to
Transgression (Oxford: Berg Publishers, 2005) and Nathan Joseph, Uniforms and Nonuniforms: Communication through
Clothing (New York: Greenwood Press, 1986). I have written elsewhere of how, for conservative Mennonite women, a
particular style of plain dress functions almost like a uniform, identifying their belonging to a defined religious group. See
Beth E. Graybill, ‘“To Remind Us of Who We Are”: Multiple Meanings of Conservative Women’s Dress’, in Strangers
at Home: Amish and Mennonite Women in History, ed. Kimberly D. Schmidt, Diane Zimmerman Umble and Steven D.
Reschly (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002), 53–77.
3
The philosopher Richard Shusterman coined the term ‘somaesthetics’. For its use in analysing clothing, see Giovanni
Matteucci and Stefano Marino, eds., Philosophical Perspectives on Fashion (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2017). Hume
discusses this concept in her chapter in this volume.
40 DRESS IN MEDITERRANEAN ANTIQUITY

This aspect includes changes in retailing and manufacturing (home-tailoring, ready-made clothing,
sweatshop production, runway fashion shows, Internet shopping) and the economics of fashion.
We can also study how clothing is cared for (wash-and-wear fabrics or delicate brocades) and by
whom (servants or owners), and consider what this implies about the social value and place in
society of a given article of clothing. Finally, we can compare clothing from various locations and
eras in history: What comparisons can we make between articles of dress made decades or centuries
apart, and what does this suggest about cultural connection or difference across time and space?
Using these multiple angles of observation to assess clothing yields insights into the meanings of
dress in any given society, fundamental to cultural understanding.

SOCIOLOGICAL METHODS AND MATERIAL CULTURE

Sociologists employ a variety of research methods in meaning-making that generally fall into
broad categories of quantitative and qualitative approaches. Sociologists may analyse existing
quantitative sources, such as demography, or develop their own measures, such as social surveys,
audits and questionnaires. Qualitative approaches include interviews, focus groups, case studies
and observational research, especially participant-observation and ethnographic fieldwork.
(Additionally, sociologists may employ controlled human experiments to generate original data,
with test hypotheses to prove or disprove.) Through these methods, sociologists develop interpretive
cultural analyses.
One particular methodology used in the social sciences, and beneficial in interpreting cultural
meanings of dress, is the framework of material culture studies, also known as materiality and
meaning.4 Beginning with many of its earliest writings, sociology has a long tradition of theorizing
the relationship between artefacts and social relations. By definition, material culture study refers to
the physical objects that people use to define their culture and the meanings associated with those
objects. Clothing is material culture (as are tools, architecture, food and hundreds of other artefacts
and objects from quilts and kitchen tools to motorcycles and shaving gear). Material culture refers
to the ‘stuff’ of our daily lives, and analysing it yields valuable insights for sociologists.
Using the prism of material culture to study dress illuminates the variety of meanings – both
tangible and practical, as well as figurative and emotive – that attach to it. In every society, clothing
serves functional properties such as warmth (insulation), protection (from sun, wind or rain) and
safety (e.g. hard hat, hiking shoes). But dress also demonstrates emotive, intangible dialectics such
as modesty or impropriety, comfort or confinement, simplicity or ostentation, mundaneness or
originality, respectability or offensiveness, refinement or decadence. In these and other ways,
clothing communicates as a powerful repository of meanings, and the framework of material
culture makes this visible.

4
See Susanne Küchler and Daniel Miller, eds., Clothing as Material Culture (Oxford: Berg Publishers, 2005). An example
of the power of material culture as a sociological frame of analysis is the fact that the Journal of Material Culture, a peer-
reviewed, academic journal concerned with the relationship between artefacts and social relations, has been published
since 1996. See also Dominik Bartmański and Jeffrey C. Alexander, ‘Introduction: Materiality and Meaning in Social
Life: Toward an Iconic Turn in Cultural Sociology’, in Iconic Power: Materiality and Meaning in Social Life, ed. Jeffrey
C. Alexander, Dominik Bartmański and Bernhard Giesen (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 1–14. These authors
introduce the concept of iconicity, which is applicable to clothing: ‘Objects become icons when they have not only material
force but also symbolic power’, 1.
DRESS AND SOCIOLOGY 41

Contemporary sociologists Diana Crane and Laura Bovone analyse fashionable clothing as a
form of material culture through the attribution of symbolic values. These authors argue that dress
can be read as a symbolic text that contributes to cultural understanding and identity formation.
As they write, ‘clothing worn by youth subcultures, counter cultures, metropolitan tribes, and gay
cultures contributes to our understanding of how values associated with specific social identities
are expressed through clothing and how perceptions of social identity by members of these groups
change over time’.5 These authors argue that symbolic values in clothing are socially constructed
through the collective activities of consumers, the media, elites and tastemakers. Thus, fashion has
the capacity to shift or reinforce symbolic values in consumers when they acquire and wear these
articles of material culture.
Beyond symbolic values, decorative arts scholar Barbara Carson suggests looking at an object of
material culture – in this case, clothing – in several ways. First, evaluate its design, aesthetics and
workmanship: Why does it look this way? How do we assess its artistry or craftwork? This may
suggest the esteem in which the article of dress was held. Second, evaluate its function and use.
What was its purpose (e.g. fashionability, religiosity or some combination of both?) Consider its
distribution, availability and affordability. (Was it for elites or working people? For royalty, clergy
or laity?) Third, in Carson’s analysis, consider whether the article of clothing was personal and/
or communal, in order to understand its relationship to society. For what activity or according to
what tradition was it made (e.g. social gathering? religious devotion?) Was the article of clothing
part of individual or group ceremony or custom? Was it part of gift exchange and circulation?
Carson’s provocative questions provide another guide for cultural understanding through the lens
of material culture that yields useful insights into the study of clothing.6 In addition, several recent
books, beyond the scope of our discussion here, address dress through the sociological lens of
material culture.7
In the remainder of this chapter, I will explore the role of sociological meaning-making in dress,
first through a history of sociology and dress, then briefly addressing anti-fashion, as well as dress
and belonging, gender, religion and agency.

SOCIOLOGY AND DRESS – A BRIEF HISTORY

To understand fully the role of clothing within the academic discipline of sociology, a brief historical
summary is requisite. In general, until recently, sociology has tended to neglect the field of dress
and fashion, viewing it as outside the social sciences and more in line with the arts and costume

5
Diana Crane and Laura Bovone, ‘Approaches to Material Culture: The Sociology of Fashion and Clothing’, Poetics: Journal
of Empirical Research on Culture, the Media and the Arts 34 (2006): 319–33 and 321.
6
Barbara G. Carson, personal communication, March 1996. See also Barbara G. Carson, ‘Interpreting History through
Objects’, The Journal of Museum Education 10, no. 3 (1985): 2–5.
7
See Lydia Edwards, How to Read a Dress: A Guide to Changing Fashion from the 16th to the 20th Century (London:
Bloomsbury, 2017), which analyses dresses from eleven different time periods, 1550 to 1970. See also Ingrid E. Mida and
Alexandra Kim, The Dress Detective: A Practical Guide to Object-Based Research in Fashion (London: Bloomsbury, 2019),
especially ‘Appendix I, Checklist for Observation’, 216–19. In addition, see also Peter Corrigan, The Dressed Society:
Clothing, the Body and Some Meanings of the World (London: Sage, 2008). In this book, sociologist Corrigan demonstrates
how dress shapes and is shaped by social processes and phenomena such as beauty, time, the body, gift exchange, class,
gender and religion. Corrigan analyses topics such as the Islamic clothing controversy in state schools, the Dress Reform
movement, the social construction of the body in fashion magazines and the role of the Internet in fashion.
42 DRESS IN MEDITERRANEAN ANTIQUITY

studies. When attire was considered by sociologists, it often was little more than one example of
overarching social theories related to social development and the economic class structure.
The nineteenth-century social scientist Herbert Spencer, often referred to as a founder of
sociology, included manners and style in his understanding of how civilization evolves. While not a
major focus of his work, Spencer was one of the first to publish on fashion and society. He viewed
manners and fashion as forms of social constraint, structured by symbols and rituals, for example
from Quaker coats to nonconformist beards, from the adoption of coats of arms to the civility of
removing hats indoors. Spencer argued that male attire and comportment established social rank
and status, implying that what was important was not the actual clothes worn but the wearer’s
social placement, which had the power to uplift society.8
In a similar vein but with a sharper critique, the economist and sociologist Thorstein Veblen was
concerned with status emulation and consumer culture, including fashion. In a book first published
at the turn of the century, and later reprinted in mid-twentieth century as a classic in the field,
Veblen coined the term ‘conspicuous consumption’ to illustrate the display of ostentatious wealth
and status by society’s elites. The term referred to consumers who bought luxury items to display
status and income rather than to cover their actual needs. For the wealthy, maintaining status
required that patterns of consumption – including clothing and particularly women’s fashion –
demonstrate lavish expenditure and conspicuous extravagance. Impractical and elaborate clothing
were hallmarks of the leisure class of people who did not need to engage in physical labour to earn
a living.
Although concerned with consumption of goods in general, Veblen singled out clothing for
special consideration. Noting the desire for fashion over comfort, he wrote, ‘it is by no means
an uncommon occurrence, in an inclement climate, for people to go ill clad in order to appear
well dressed’.9 According to Veblen, conspicuous consumption, in relation to dress, included both
quantity – that is, possessing a far greater number of shoes or suits than needed for reasonable daily
wear – and quality, or ownership of garments distinguished by the expensiveness of their materials
or the time-consuming methods of garment construction. Since clothing is a universal item, Veblen
argued that it is difficult for anyone to ignore the pressures of conspicuous consumption in dress.
Contemporaneous with Veblen and similarly influential in her day, social reformer Charlotte
Perkins Gilman serialized in her magazine the book-length study The Dress of Women, in 1915.
While outside the formal, academic discipline of sociology, her work was a major analytical treatise
on fashion and gender by one of America’s foremost sociological theorists. Recently republished in
complete book form, The Dress of Women examined the social and functional basis for clothing and
the degrading aspects of women’s clothing in patriarchal societies.10 Concerned with dress reform,
Gilman outlined aesthetic and economic principles of socially responsible clothing design. Hers
was the earliest full-length sociological analysis of clothing and the fashion industry.
Georg Simmel was another early twentieth-century social scientist interested in fashion. Simmel
is notable for our purposes in that he wrote an academic study of the sociology of fashion in

8
Herbert Spencer, ‘On Manners and Fashion’, in Essays: Scientific, Political, and Speculative. Volume 3 (London: Williams
& Norgate, 1891), 1–51
9
Thorstein Veblen, The Theory of the Leisure Class (New York: Macmillan, 1899; repr., 1965), 124. The book is still in
print today.
10
Charlotte Perkins Gilman, The Dress of Women: A Critical Introduction to the Symbolism and Sociology of Clothing
(London and Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2002).
DRESS AND SOCIOLOGY 43

modern urban life. He argued that society, in general, consists of two opposing forces: unity/
inclusion/generalization and difference/exclusion/specialization. For Simmel, fashion was a type of
social horizon point where individual interests came up against those of the collective. Simmel’s
argument was largely based on trickle-down, class theory; he wrote that the fashions of the upper
stratum ‘are never identical with that of the lower; in fact, they are abandoned by the former as
soon as the latter prepares to appropriate them’.11 Fashion’s constant renewal is driven by imitation
from below motivated by the desire for social distinction from above, according to Simmel.
By contrast, sociologist Herbert Blumer, writing at mid-century, disputed Simmel’s trickle-down
analysis. Blumer argued that influence can move both ways: fashions can rise up from the working
class (e.g. hoodies and shredded jeans as fashion statements) as well as move laterally across social
groups. Blumer believed that fashion gave all classes of people the opportunity to both identify with
a group and distinguish themselves from it through innovative clothing choices. He thus rejected
the class-differentiation model as outdated; although what people wear can shed light on their
social standing, that is not all that dress communicates, and under many circumstances, not the
most important variable. Instead, Blumer argued for approaching fashion as a massive ‘collective
selection’ process with diverse meanings under the transient and elusive influence of modernity,
wherein choices were guided by the development of new tastes in a changing world.12
Sociologist Fred Davis, an intellectual descendant of Blumer’s in the late twentieth century,
shared with Blumer the view that fashion and apparel elucidate the collective aspects of our social
identities. According to Davis, as one’s identity becomes progressively multiple in modern society, the
meaning of fashion becomes increasingly ambivalent. While Davis believed that dress communicates
about identity, he was careful to note that these communications are not straightforward. In his
pivotal 1992 book Fashion, Culture and Identity, Davis discussed ambivalence in the dress of
contemporary Western society, corresponding to the fragmented nature of postmodern identity.
He discussed tensions over gendered versus androgynous dress, the ambiguity of social status in
clothing (what he called fashion ‘flaunts and feints’) and the sartorial dialectic of erotic versus chaste.
Indeed, Davis claimed that these identity oppositions are what fuels fashion. That is, ambivalence
is exploited to ensure that fashion keeps moving. In these ways, individuals use clothing choices to
construct fluid identities within a modern social system.13
Following Davis and into the present, post-modern moment, sociological study of dress and
fashion has become increasingly interdisciplinary, wide-ranging and diverse. In addition to
clothing, scholars have written about headwear, jewellery, shoes (e.g. high heels and sneakers),
body piercing and tattooing. Rather than focusing on high-culture fashion, many sociologists today
examine aspects of clothing from the perspective of ordinary people’s daily practices; these include
new books on urban street style,14 Goth style, superhero costuming, thrift style and organic, vegan,
fair-trade and eco-style clothing choices.

11
Georg Simmel, ‘Fashion’, The American Journal of Sociology 62 (1957): 546. While Simmel acknowledged reverse trickle-
down theory – that is, when consumers stop buying a product because too many others are buying it – and he also noted
differentiation that happens within social groups, Simmel nevertheless believed that the upper class drove the dress and
fashion cycle. In his framework, trickle-down fashion served to unite upper classes and segregate lower classes.
12
Herbert Blumer, ‘Fashion: From Class Differentiation to Collective Selection’, Sociological Quarterly 10, no. 3 (1969):
275–91.
13
Fred Davis, Fashion, Culture, and Identity (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992).
14
Street style is a specific type of fashion that looks at stylish, urban, ordinary people that comes originally from British
fashion culture. See Brent Luvaas, Street Style: An Ethnography of Fashion Blogging (London: Bloomsbury, 2016).
44 DRESS IN MEDITERRANEAN ANTIQUITY

Recent writing on Muslim women’s clothing bears special mention, as it reflects on dress in
counter-intuitive ways. Tarlo and Moors’s edited collection on Islamic fashion in northern Europe
and North America reveals how such dress can be both devout and stylish. Their book puts to rest
simplistic accounts that women whose clothing marks them as visibly Muslim are passive victims
of patriarchy. Tarlo and Moors describe how Muslim women have developed ‘modest dress’ as a
subset of fashion that integrates discreet covering with fashionability, combining secular European
fashions with religiously mandated items like head scarves in distinctive ‘hybrid hijabis’.15 Moreover,
veiling practices and the meanings associated with them are not uniform. Sociologist Caitlin Killian
discusses how Islamic veiling demonstrates resistance to Western standards of feminine beauty that
demand exposure. In addition, for some immigrant Muslim women, she writes, the veil is a symbol
of ethnic pride while for others the headscarf is simply convenient and routine.16 Thus, these
authors challenge our presumptive stereotypes through sociological accounts.

ANTI-FASHION
Muslim women’s sartorial choices illustrate a key element in religious dress: that is, the interplay
between compliance and individuality. In many religious traditions, prohibitions and prescriptions
regarding dress are applied primarily to women.17 In some cases, as for the conservative Mennonite
women I studied, their dress codes fit the definition of ‘anti-fashion’, developed by authors Patricia
Cunningham and Susan Voso Lab. They defined anti-fashion as clothing which goes against what
is currently fashionable, a deliberate dis-identification with the cultural mainstream. As they wrote:
‘Dress functions as a sign of rejection of the norm and hence the status quo. … [Anti-fashion]
makes a statement through its style that clearly says no to the hegemony of the prevailing style of
fashion.’18 They discussed anti-fashion in reference to counter-cultural punk style or oppositional
nineteenth-century dress reformers railing against tight corsets, yet anti-fashion also was applicable
to the contemporary Mennonite women I studied.
The discipline used by the particular group of Mennonites in my fieldwork specifically prohibited
‘fashionable, sporty, or Western styles’ of clothing, footwear or headwear for men and women,
and reminded male and female members that dress ‘should not follow the unhealthful and sensual
designs of the world’.19 Now obviously, a member must have some sense of what the prevailing

15
See Emma Tarlo and Annelies Moors, eds., Islamic Fashion and Anti-Fashion: New Perspectives from Europe and North
America (New York: Bloomsbury, 2013). Only in recent decades have Islamic communities migrated to northern Europe
in large enough numbers to construct and maintain their own Islamic identity. The interviews conducted with Muslim
women reveal fascinating new insights into generational conflicts, gender construction and Islamic immigrant identity. One
interesting example of being both modest and Islamic, yet fashionable and contemporary, is development of the burqini,
discreet Islamic swimwear designed to facilitate Muslim women’s participation in beach and swimming sports, discussed
in the Tarlo and Moors’s book and by Lynne Hume in this volume. See also Anna-Mari Almila and David Inglis, eds., The
Routledge International Handbook to Veils and Veiling Practices (New York: Routledge, 2017).
16
Caitlin Killian, ‘Why Do Muslim Women Wear a Hijab?’, The Conversation US, Inc. https://theconversation.com/why-do-
muslim-women-wear-a-hijab-109717 (accessed 27 February 2019).
17
Exceptions to this are clergy and, at least in the past, religious orders in the Catholic Church, as well as Orthodox Jewish
men. See Sally Dwyer-McNulty, Common Threads: A Cultural History of Clothing in American Catholicism (Chapel Hill:
University of North Carolina Press, 2014) and Eric Silverman, A Cultural History of Jewish Dress (London: Bloomsbury
Publishers, 2013).
18
Patricia A. Cunningham and Susan Voso Lab, eds., Dress in American Culture (Bowling Green, Ohio: Bowling Green State
University Press, 1991), 13–14.
19
Statement of Christian Doctrine and Rules and Discipline of the Eastern Pennsylvania Mennonite Church and Related Areas
(Ephrata, PA: Publication Board of the Eastern Pennsylvania Mennonite Church, 1993), 15–21.
DRESS AND SOCIOLOGY 45

fashion is in order to dress unfashionably, thus making anti-fashion a conscious, deliberate choice.
Likewise, in her study of Holdeman Mennonite women, Arthur described an official anti-fashion
dress code, which she defined as ‘modest clothing that loosely covered most of the female body’
meant to exemplify decency and simplicity within that particular subgroup. Arthur described this
as oppositional dress, wherein dress codes were created in defiance of the norms of the larger
society.20
However, as several of the Mennonite women in my study reminded me, anti-fashion has much
to recommend it. Janet told me, ‘I don’t have to worry about keeping up with the latest style. What
I wear is what I wear all the time. It’s economical. I mean, styles change constantly, and I don’t have
to think about it.’ Or, as Rebecca noted, ‘I spend very little money on clothing, because I can wear
the same dress for five years or so, until it wears out. To me, it cuts out a lot of the frivolousness
and the worry that I would have about dress otherwise.’21 In these ways, anti-fashion dress codes
may offer practicality and freedom.

DRESS AND BELONGING

In general, all clothing choices reflect some level of interplay between group belonging and
individuality.22 We can either distance ourselves by flaunting convention and dressing to suit
ourselves, or we can identify ourselves through dress and appearance as part of a larger collective.
Just as my musician friend deliberately wears his hair long to identify with others in the music
field, teenage girls may dress in skinny jeans and designer sneakers to show identification with their
particular subculture. Our dress choices are influenced by a sense of sartorial belonging.
To give another illustration from my own field of study, for conservative Mennonite and Amish
women, the head covering is a powerful symbol, imbued with special meaning. Apart from the
biblical rationale (drawing on passages from the book of I Corinthians), used to justify the reasons
for women covering their heads (for prayer and to show male headship), the head covering is
freighted with other symbolic significance. In a recent blog post, a formerly Amish woman reflected
on it this way:
I feel like a head covering is a symbol. I don’t think we can analyze it separately from what it
symbolizes: usually belonging and community. … Let’s face it, we have all coveted the sense of
community that the Amish have. And yet we don’t want to make the sacrifices that it would take to
become part of that community. There are days when I would gladly don my Amish covering again
to feel a part of an Amish quilting or community event. But being Amish, and wearing the covering to
show that you are, is not a part-time thing. The Amish preachers used to say, ‘You are either Amish
or not, there is no in-between.’ They have a point. You can have the freedom of an individual, or else

20
Linda B. Arthur Bradley, ‘Anti-Fashion as a Social Boundary Marker among Holdeman Mennonite Women’, Journal of
Mennonite Studies 37 (2019): 259–77.
21
Graybill, ‘“To Remind Us”’, 63.
22
All of us acquiesce to social group convention to some degree, for example by wearing sombre colours to funerals and
brighter colours to weddings. Peers can also become dress code enforcers: a recent article on college women documented
how they use the discourse of slut-shaming. High-status women from affluent families defined themselves as classy compared
to other women whom they viewed as trashy for similar clothing choices. See Elizabeth A. Armstrong, Laura T. Hamilton,
Elizabeth M. Armstrong and J. Lotus Seeley, ‘“Good Girls”: Gender, Social Class, and Slut Discourse on Campus’, Social
Psychology Quarterly 77, no. 2 (2014): 100–22.
46 DRESS IN MEDITERRANEAN ANTIQUITY

you have to sacrifice personal freedom to be part of the community. That usually involves some kind
of visual symbol to show that you are part of the group.23

For Amish women, prayer coverings are important sartorial markers, carrying symbolic values of
community and belonging, values that affect many of our own clothing choices to one degree or
another.

GENDER AND DRESS – SOCIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES

Cultural critic Grant McCracken has written that consumer goods, such as clothing, are encoded
with private and public meanings by which societal categories such as gender, age, class and
occupation are made manifest. ‘Consumer goods are one of our most important templates for the
self’, he writes, because goods help us choose how we will define ourselves.24
In my work on the social category of gender, I have found that dress conveys important aspects
of gendered identity. Specifically, clothing may exhibit important ideas about sexuality, morality
and availability for marriage; it can illuminate the social constructions of physical attractiveness
vis-à-vis dress in a given subculture. When studying the past, clothing as a key element of material
culture reveals information about women unavailable via other means. Throughout history,
women’s records and documents seldom were considered important to conserve, yet often the
stuff of their lives was preserved intransient. Items of clothing and ornamentation (buttons, sashes),
household textiles, needlework, samplers, as well as paintings and photographs thereof, were often
passed down through generations, encapsulating women’s history in tangible, concrete ways that
can shed light on female societal roles and responsibilities in the past.
Specifically, as indicators of gendered identity, dress and fashion can make visible the properties
associated with socially constructed categories of masculinity and femininity in a given era.
Acknowledging that gender is a fluid concept – exemplified by recent scholarship on unisex
clothing, queer fashion and androgyne dress – nevertheless, comparing and contrasting male and
female clothing in a given time period highlights gender identities of that era, offering revealing
insights into the qualities that the wearers and their culture associated with men and women. For
example, Kidwell and Paoletti suggested that American dress historically ‘reflects social differences
between the sexes, such as women’s more restricted public lives, the need for men to project
authority and the emphasis on physical attractiveness as the measure of a woman’s value’.25 They
note that women adopted more masculine clothing styles in America – from bloomers to trousers

23
See comment by Saloma Furlong on 19 February 2014, in Shirley Hershey Showalter, ‘Mennonite Bonnet and Covering
Stories: Part One’, www.shirleyshowalter.com/mennonite-bonnet-and-covering-stories-part-one/. (accessed 3 March 2019).
For more on Amish and Mennonite head coverings, see memoirs by Saloma Furlong, Bonnet Strings: An Amish Woman’s
Ties to Two Worlds (Harrisonburg, VA: Herald Press, 2014), and Shirley Hershey Showalter, Blush: A Mennonite Girl Meets
a Glittering World (Harrisonburg, VA: Herald Press, 2013). See also Jana M. Hawley, ‘The Amish Prayer Cap as a Symbol
that Bounds the Community’, in The Routledge International Handbook to Veils and Veiling Practices, ed. Anna-Mari Almila
and David Inglis (New York: Routledge, 2017), 292–301.
24
Grant McCracken, Culture and Consumption II: Market, Meaning, and Brand Management (Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 2005), 176–7 and 3.
25
They note: ‘We find that not only has truly androgynous dress never existed for adult men and women, but the closest we
have ever come to androgyny is for women to dress like men.’ See Claudia Brush Kidwell and Jo B. Paoletti, ‘Conclusion’,
in Men and Women: Dressing the Part, ed. Claudia Brush Kidwell and Valerie Steele (Washington: Smithsonian Institution
Press, 1989), 158–9.
DRESS AND SOCIOLOGY 47

to shoulder pads to power suits – with the advancing of women’s rights, but the reverse, with men
adopting everyday feminine styles, has seldom occurred, short of cross-dressing as performance.
In fact, there is often a performative element in dressing the part.26 Yet gendered dressing is
more than role-playing; power relations are inextricably involved. Ann Hollander argued that
honour and prestige have more often been ascribed to perceived masculine dress, such as suits.27
Joanne Entwistle noted that ‘we take for granted that the jacket worn by a man exaggerates his
broad shoulders and décolletage emphasizes a woman’s throat and breasts’, thus clothing draws
attention to the body and imbues it with layers of cultural meanings signifying masculine or
feminine attributes.28 Entwistle notes that the skirt remains the one article of clothing still coded
female. No one can dispute the freedom of movement that slacks allow in contrast to dresses;
culturally this may translate into greater mobility and bodily expression for men (e.g. consider
manspreading), hence a power differential is illustrated sartorially. In sum, McCracken notes that
the fact that consumer goods contain a variety of meanings – some freeing and others confining –
should not surprise us, since consumer goods such as clothing ‘reflect the benign meanings as well
as the imprisoning ones’.29

RELIGION AND DRESS – SOCIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES

Not only gendered meanings but religious ones can be inferred from a study of clothing. Cultural
anthropologist Lynne Hume reminds us that religious dress communicates ‘that the wearer chooses
to follow a certain set of ideological or religious principles and practices’ that function to ‘set one
religious community apart from other religious communities’.30 Religious dress illustrates belief
and ideology, gender distinctions and ideas of modesty, the latter most often applied to women’s
dress.
How one clothes the body may offer sartorial clues to religious devotion and one’s place in
a spiritual community. In my study of conservative Mennonite women in Lancaster County,
Pennsylvania, I found that small but significant differences in dress were barely distinguishable
to my inexpert eye but included the length, colour and tying of head covering strings, and minor
ornamentation on dresses (top-stitching with contrasting thread, extra trim, a small ruffle). As Ellen
told me about the preceding examples, ‘You know, it seems like such a small thing. But it’s finally
an expression of pride, or rebellion, that’s really what it is. … Anything that attracts attention we
feel is not consistent with our meek and quiet spirit, like the bible says.’31 Deeper spiritual meanings
were ascribed to dress variations.

26
Scholar Elizabeth Patterson applies performance theory to fashion and explores how clothing is a kind of performance of the
self. See Elizabeth Patterson, Fashion as Performance (London: Bloomsbury, 2015). Cross-dressing, gender impersonation,
burlesque and masquerade have occurred throughout American history; examining these illuminates the ways in which
all costuming and dress have elements of playing the part. Since in most Western societies demonstrating masculinity is
more highly prized than displaying femininity, men dressing as women occurs most often among gay or transvestite men,
sometimes for erotic pleasure and sometimes for the fun of dressing in drag. See Vern L. Bullough and Bonnie Bullough,
Cross Dressing, Sex, and Gender (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1993).
27
Anne Hollander, Sex and Suits: The Evolution of Modern Dress, reprint edition (London: Bloomsbury, 2016).
28
Joanne Entwistle, The Fashioned Body: Fashion, Dress and Social Theory, 2nd edition (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2015),
141.
29
McCracken, Culture and Consumption, 4.
30
See Lynne Hume, The Religious Life of Dress: Global Fashion and Faith (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2013), 1.
31
Graybill, ‘To Remind Us’, 64.
48 DRESS IN MEDITERRANEAN ANTIQUITY

Conservative faith traditions have more prescriptions about dress than do liberal traditions, and
religious dress may elicit religious behaviours in those who wear it. Daniel Miller argues for an
understanding of clothing that assumes a particular relationship between the interior and exterior.
He demonstrates through various ethnographic case studies how clothes affect the wearer, that
‘clothing plays a considerable and active part in constituting the particular experience of the self,
in determining what the self is’.32 This connects to my own work. A key informant in my research
named Lydia articulated it this way:
We want people to look at us and think of God. And the way you dress changes how you feel about
yourself. … Just because you dress plain isn’t the answer. It’s the life that must back it up. But the
dress, the plain dress, is a help to remind us of who we are.33

For certain religious traditions, dress codes serve to assess the religiously minded and cement their
identity.
In a similar vein, Linda Arthur Bradley noted that dress was used to interpret levels of spirituality
in her research on Holdeman Mennonite women, another conservative group. Traditional women
followed the plain dress code very closely, while marginalized women pushed the boundaries
on smaller issues such as fabric pattern and construction details. While both groups of women
complied with the uniform requirements of the dress code, the marginalized members expressed
their individuality through subtle visual cues. How closely believers subscribe to the dress codes
of their religious tradition or, conversely, to what degree individuals push the sartorial limits can
become important boundary markers as we analyse sociological meaning of clothing.
Finally, the expectations that observers have can also influence members’ behaviour. In my
research I found that Mennonite women are aware of the expectations they believe outsiders have
of them because they dress distinctively. Lydia related how when she caught herself speeding in her
plain dress, she worried what observers would think of her faith. Miriam told me that she tended
to forgo putting on her heavy black stocking during the summer at home, although she worried
that not doing so when she walked to her mailbox at the end of the lane might weaken her witness
to her neighbours. In this way, for religious women for whom dress is a key distinctive indicator,
uniform clothing enlists onlookers as norm enforcers.34

AGENCY IN DRESS
One question in relation to religious dress is the degree of autonomy and self-determination that
women exercise regarding dress codes. In the past, scholarship problematically assumed that women
in conservative religious traditions lacked agency. However, we have discussed how contemporary
Muslim women in Europe make strategic decisions as they thoughtfully negotiate dress and veiling
practices according to fashion, custom, culture and religion.
In addition, my own historical research on mid-twentieth-century Lancaster, Pennsylvania,
Mennonite women has shown how they collectively took initiative to incorporate small changes in
dress codes (reducing the size of the women’s head covering, trimming hair, adopting flesh-coloured

32
Daniel Miller, Stuff (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2009), 40.
33
Graybill, ‘To Remind Us’, 65.
34
Graybill, ‘To Remind Us’, 66, 73.
DRESS AND SOCIOLOGY 49

stockings in lieu of black ones, raising hems, replacing the cape dress with standard dress designs,
moving from home-made to store-bought clothing). As lay historian Grace Wenger reflected in an
interview with me:
In Lancaster, change has come about because people do things and if they aren’t stopped, they keep
on doing them. Women would try something, and if it wasn’t stopped, then it became accepted. …. I
don’t think there was any philosophy of change for the roles and dress of women. It’s just that women
were changing things and were more and more accepted.35

These sartorial changes predated official changes in the church dress codes that eventually altered
to ratify women’s existing clothing practices. This illustrates the sociological process known as
cultural drift, that is, incremental cultural change, usually towards modernization.36
To give an example from Bradley’s research on Holdeman women, she noted how women
collectively incorporated small changes away from the traditional shirtwaist-style dresses with high
necklines and long sleeves. As women banded together to incorporate collectively other small
changes, gradually the norm itself changed. While their dresses are still plain, the style fits more
closely to the body and short sleeves are permitted. Moreover, women cover the dresses with
fashionable jackets and sweaters, worn with stylish shoes. According to Bradley, the ministers do
not challenge these variations so long as many other women are making the same changes at the
same time. Illustrating female solidarity and women’s agency in adapting worldly fashion into
the anti-fashion requirements, Bradley argues that women changed dress norms while upholding
the spirituality that undergirds their religion.37 I learned through my own research with conservative
women that subtle changes in dress (covering strings are discontinued, size of the head covering
becomes smaller, it moves farther back on the head) may be the first sign that a woman is planning
to leave her community. Thus, these examples remind us of the importance of recognizing women’s
agency within religious dress codes.

CONCLUSION
I conclude with a word of caution. Unlike Alison Lurie’s book title, there is no straightforward
language of clothing.38 One must approach the assessing of sartorial meaning with studied
consideration. Meaning-making in regard to dress is subject to imitation, artifice and appropriation
and what dress historian Jo Paoletti has called ‘levels of performance’.39 Moreover, sociologist

35
Wenger interview, 15 April 1994. Beth E. Graybill, ‘Nonconformed Women and Nonresistant Men: A Feminist Look at
“The Anabaptist Vision” and Its Impact on Women, 1940–1960’ (unpublished paper, Goshen, IN: Goshen College, 1994).
36
Historically, some sociologists have referred to this type of slow, almost imperceptible change as cultural drift, a slow
modernization of traditional practices without direct action, a cultural analogy of biology genetic drift. See Fred Eggan,
‘Cultural Drift and Social Change’, Current Anthropology 4, no. 4 (October 1963): 347–55. See also Henry C. Koerper
and E. Gary Stickel, ‘Cultural Drift: A Primary Process of Culture Change’, Journal of Anthropological Research 36, no. 4
(Winter, 1980): 463–9.
37
Bradley, ‘Anti-Fashion as a Social Boundary Marker among Holdeman Mennonite Women’.
38
Alison Lurie, The Language of Clothes (New York: Random House, 1981). It is true that at particular moments in the past,
certain clothing styles have had symbolic and widely recognized meanings: Lurie notes how in eighteenth-century Scotland,
tartan was banned by an Act of the British Parliament as a political act, and that following the Irish Rebellion of 1798,
wearing emerald-coloured clothing was a life-threatening act. Yet these are exceptions that prove the rule.
39
Jo B. Paoletti, Pink and Blue: Telling the Boys from the Girls in America (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University
Press, 2012), 9.
50 DRESS IN MEDITERRANEAN ANTIQUITY

Peter Corrigan differentiates between more knowable, public meanings and more hidden, private
motives (such as gifts and appropriation, see below) that may be invisible to the sociologist:
For example, we cannot tell by mere observation that the shirt worn by that man walking down the
street was a present from his daughter, nor that the scarf bedecking the teenage girl who has just
moved into our line of vision was surreptitiously removed from her older sister’s wardrobe that
morning. … That is, the meanings carried by dress are both the public ones familiar to sociology and
relatively private ones that may be just as important to the wearers.40

Thus, while public meanings can be deduced from clothing, private motivations may be harder
to ascertain. Likewise, Davis urged caution when attempting to assign precise meanings to clothing
because such interpretation is highly ‘context-dependent’, based on factors such as the identity
of the wearer, the occasion, the place, the company, the nuances of the wearer’s social group
and ‘even something as vague and transient as the wearer’s and the viewers’ moods’.41 With the
possible exception of tee shirts, whose slogans one author has described as embodied texts and
‘living graffiti’,42 the meaning of any item of apparel is seldom so concrete or concise. We do well
to hold our dress interpretations lightly until backed by additional evidence of the wearers’ private
intentions.
In conclusion, this review of sociological theories, methods and interpretive themes/frameworks
raises provocative questions and suggests productive agendas for approaching the study of dress
as a significant scholarly and sociological subject applicable to many places and time periods.
Within sociology and beyond, the study of dress and fashion is gradually gaining the respect and
recognition that it rightly deserves.

40
Peter Corrigan, ‘The Clothes-Horse Rodeo: Or, How the Sociology of Clothing and Fashion Throws Its (w)Reiters’,
Theory, Culture & Society 10 (1993): 145–6.
41
Davis, Fashion, Culture, and Identity, 8.
42
T. R. Young, ‘Dress, Drama, and Self: The Tee Shirt as Text’, in The Drama of Social Life: Essays in Post-Modern Social
Psychology (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1990), 339–56.
 SECTION B

Materials
52
 CHAPTER SIX

Clothing in Marble and Bronze:

The Representation of Dress in
Greek and Roman Sculpture
GLENYS DAVIES

Sculptural representations, especially free-standing statues, ought to be useful as evidence for Greek
and Roman dress: the figures are represented in 3-D, often life-size; they allow the sculptor to
demonstrate his virtuosity by reproducing drapery and clothing details in a lifelike and convincing
manner. But modern writers on dress tend to be wary of the evidence provided by sculpture and
advise using it with caution.1 Sculptors might take liberties by representing dress in a schematic
way, obscuring its details, or reproducing old fashions they no longer fully understood, and they
might conceivably make up costumes that never actually existed. Yet early writers such as Lillian
Wilson and Margarete Bieber relied heavily on statues for their analysis and description of Greek
and Roman costumes.2 Both experimented with reproducing on living models the garments and
drapery seen on classical statues, with quite convincing results: it is possible to make garments and
drape them on modern men and women, suitably posed, so that they look like the dress of the
statues.
Greek and Roman sculptors used drapery in ways which might not involve strict fidelity to
‘real’ dress. The focus of artists differed from period to period and the representation of dress was
subject to changing artistic styles. Bieber’s Entwicklungsgeschichte der Griechischen Tracht (1934)3
includes numerous photographs of marble statues which illustrate the history of the representation
of dress in Greek art rather than (as the title suggests) the development of the costume itself. In
her later work on Roman copies of Greek statues4 her main thesis is that while the replication of
costume by the original (Greek Classical or Hellenistic) sculptors can be relied on as accurate,

1
Mireille Lee, Body, Dress and Identity in Ancient Greece (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 5–6; Mary
Harlow and Marie-Louise Nosch, eds., Greek and Roman Textiles and Dress (Oxford: Oxbow, 2014), 8: ‘Clothing in
images does not translate easily into clothing as worn in real life.’
2
Lillian M. Wilson, The Clothing of the Ancient Romans (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1938); also The Roman
Toga idem 1924; Margarete Bieber, Griechische Kleidung (Berlin, Leipzig: De Gruyter, 1928).
3
Margarete Bieber, Entwicklungsgeschichte der Griechischen Tracht von der vorgriechischen Zeit bis zur römischen Kaiserzeit
(Berlin: Gebrüder Mann, 1934; 2nd ed. 1967).
4
Margarete Bieber, Ancient Copies. Contributions to the History of Greek and Roman Art (New York: New York University
Press, 1977).
54 DRESS IN MEDITERRANEAN ANTIQUITY

Roman copyists often got it wrong: some statues reproduce costume more accurately than others,
and on some the costume is misunderstood and so may become unintelligible. Even if the dress
represented appears to make sense, it may not represent what was actually worn by contemporary
people, and at the very least, is likely to be idealized.
Let us assume, however, that statues give a strong visual impression of how dress was supposed
to look, how drapery might behave and how garments might be draped. Bieber maintains she
identified 12 basic ways and 96 variations on the way the large mantle (himation) might be draped
by Greek men,5 and various statue types show how it could be kept under control, by women in
particular, using the hands and arms. But statues may provide unreliable evidence for the question
of whether women routinely wore the mantle over their head as a veil. This chapter aims to explore
the extent and ways in which draped statuary can be used as evidence for Greek and Roman dress
and some of the pitfalls in attempting to do so.

GARMENT DESIGN AND IDENTIFICATION

When looking at a clothed statue an obvious question is ‘What are they wearing?’ One wants to
define the garments and work out how they were made and worn. How easy this is often depends
on the artistic style of the time and the interests of the artist. The three korē figures dedicated
by Cheramyes at the Heraion on Samos, dating to c. 560 BCE, at first sight look so stylized
that they cannot reproduce a ‘real’ costume, but they do provide a lot of information about the
garments worn (see Figure 6.1 for the statue in Vathy).6 These korai wear three or possibly four
garments. Each wears a belted dress identifiable as a chitōn by the row of fastenings down her left
arm with groups of folds radiating out from each one; the skirt is represented by the narrowly
spaced parallel grooves running vertically down from her waist and fanning out at the bottom in
a ‘fishtail’. The dress is long and cut away over her feet to make them visible. Over the chitōn she
wears a small diagonal himation or mantle, which is fastened on her right shoulder with a similar
row of fasteners to those of the chitōn on the left arm, but the radiating folds are represented
by bolder and more widely spaced grooves which run diagonally across her upper body. The
himation is draped under her left arm; its lower edge arches up in the centre so her belt is visible,
and its ends fall down on either side, lower on her right than the left. The third garment, usually
identified as an epiblēma is the most difficult to fathom. This is a large piece of probably quite
thin material represented without the grooves that indicated folds on the other two garments; it
appears to be rectangular in shape and is worn wrapped round the korē. From the frontal view
(Figure 6.1a) we can see that one corner has been tucked into her belt at the centre front with
one edge (hem or selvedge) running vertically down on top of her skirt and the other curving
down to pass under, and then probably along, her left arm (there is damage at this point which
makes it unclear). Another long edge runs down her right arm which hangs down her side and
grasps it in her hand (Figure 6.1b). At the lower edge the epiblēma ends a little above the hem
of the dress, and this can also be seen on the back of the figure (Figure 6.1c). All these edges are
marked by a groove running parallel to the edge itself. The epiblēma covers all of the back of the

5
Ibid., 119–20.
6
Kore in the Louvre, Paris, MA 686; kore in Berlin Staatliche Museum Sk 1750; kore in the Vathy Archaeological Museum,
Samos. Katerina Karakasi, Archaic Korai (Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2003), 13–34, nos. 6, 6A and 7, pl. 4–9;
Gisela M. A. Richter, Korai. Archaic Greek Maidens (New York: Hacker Art Books, 1988), 44–6, nos. 55 and 56, figs. 183–9.
CLOTHING IN MARBLE AND BRONZE 55

(a) (b) (c)

FIGURE 6.1 Statue (kore­¯

­­­ ) dedicated by Cheramyes from the Heraion, Samos, in Vathy Museum:
(a) front; (b) side; (c) back. Photos: DAI Athens 1985 0466A, 0476, 0479.

figure except for the little bit of the skirt, with its closely spaced grooves, emerging at the bottom.
It was probably worn draped over the head as a veil. But there also appear to be two parallel
grooves running down the back of the figure, suggesting there were two layers of the epiblēma-
style drapery here. Although it is not visible on the Vathy statue illustrated (because of damage),
on the korē in the Louvre it is possible to see that there were two hems, one above the other on
the left side of the back of the figure, and the two parallel grooves running down the back form
a corner with the upper of the two hems, suggesting a layer over the main part of the epiblēma.
What is not clear is whether this upper layer of cloth was part of the epiblēma, folded over on
itself, or a separate piece of material, possibly worn as a veil. Did the sculptor have a clear idea in
his own mind of how the epiblēma was draped, or has he created confusion by adding extra hems
and edges that would not exist in reality?
Similar confusion arises with the later korē from the Athenian Acropolis (no. 675, see Figure
6.2).7 Her costume again consists of a small diagonal mantle worn over a chitōn, but looking much
fussier and more decorative than the Cheramyes korai’s elegant simplicity because of the addition
of more complex folds and the survival of added colour and patterns. One question is how the
purple-coloured drapery of small crinkly folds seen on her left breast, right upper arm and both
shoulders (presumably her chitōn) relates to the skirt seen below the himation – its colour, apparent
texture and decoration having more in common with the himation than the chitōn. It has also been
7
Richter, Korai, 79–80, no. 123, figs. 394–7; Karakasi, Archaic Korai, pl. 174–5, 266–8.
56 DRESS IN MEDITERRANEAN ANTIQUITY

FIGURE 6.2 Kore 675 from the Acropolis, Athens (in the Acropolis Museum). Photo: DAI Athens
Acropolis 1338.

suggested that this form of diagonal small himation (seen on several other Acropolis korai) looks
implausible and cannot easily be replicated to look like this.8
In addition to dress typical of large numbers of statues (such as korai) sculptors also recorded
some unusual costumes and garments worn by smaller numbers of people, such as charioteers,9 or
the long-sleeved garment worn by the maidservant attending Hegeso on her grave stele,10 or the
laena and characteristic headgear worn by the Roman Flamines (priests of the major gods).11

8
Lee states that such draping of the mantle is impossible to replicate in reality (Lee, Body, 6). But see Bieber (Copies, fig.
768) which illustrates such a himation convincingly draped on a living model. Presumably the himation consisted of a
rectangular piece of material, pinned on the right shoulder but with the two ends allowed to hang freely on either side of the
right arm. What is not clear to me is how the frill along the top was achieved, either on korai or in Bieber’s reconstruction.
9
Such as the bronze statue of a charioteer at Delphi (Judith M. Barringer, The Art and Archaeology of Ancient Greece
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 215, fig. 4.21) or the ‘Motya charioteer’ (Lee, Body, 112, fig. 4.16): both
wear long dresses held in place by strings round the upper body.
10
Usually identified as the chitōn cheirodotos: Lee, Body 121–2, fig. 4.22; see also stele of Myttion in the J. Paul Getty
Museum: a sleeved garment which may be the kandys (ibid., 123, fig. 4.24).
11
See the group of priests on the South Frieze of the Ara Pacis (Carly Daniel-Hughes, ‘Belief’, in A Cultural History of Dress
and Fashion in Antiquity, ed. Mary Harlow (London: Bloomsbury, 2017), 76, fig. 4.3) and statues in Copenhagen (IN 2027,
cat. 544a: Vagn Poulsen, Les Portraits Romains, vol. 2 (Copenhagen: Ny-Carlsberg Glyptotek, 1974), 96, no. 78 pl CXXV)
and Mérida National Museum (Jonathan Edmondson, ‘Public Dress and Social Control in Rome’, in Roman Dress and the
Fabrics of Roman Culture, ed. J. Edmondson and A. Keith (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008), fig. 1.5).
CLOTHING IN MARBLE AND BRONZE 57

Several historians of Greek and Roman dress have found it useful to make replicas of garments
to be worn by living models: this necessitates working out the garment’s shape and construction,
how it was draped on the body and how it was held in place. Such information is hardly ever found
in the literary sources and is primarily deduced from artistic sources, especially statues. A good
case in point is the Roman toga: changes in its shape and draping over time were charted by togate
statues.12 Quintilian’s remarks on the appropriate way of wearing the toga for the Roman orator of
the first century CE give a certain amount of information,13 but the size and shape to which the toga
was woven and the way it was draped have to be worked out by observing the many statues made
of Roman men wearing the toga. Similarly, the different ways of draping the peplos and chitōn
have mostly been deduced from artistic evidence: the way the peplos was left open down one side
(usually the wearer’s right), the fasteners on the shoulders of both garments and the use of belts at
the waist or under the bust are all documented by marble statues and reliefs.
Although literature seldom gives adequate descriptions or practical information about how
garments were made and worn, it does provide names for garments and indicates their sociological
and ideological importance. Scholars have felt the need to name garments seen in statuary with
reference to literature, but art and literature do not always tally. An example of such an inexact fit
is the form taken by the Roman matron’s stola. As far as sculpture is concerned, several statues and
portrait busts of Roman women show them wearing over their dress a garment which is suspended
from shoulder straps of various kinds, resulting in characteristic V-shaped folds at the neckline
(see Figure 6.3).14 It is difficult to tell what happens below this level even on full-length statues, as
the garment is usually covered in the palla, a voluminous mantle, but it is likely that the drapery
which emerges below the palla is part of the same garment as the shoulder straps. This drapery is
very full, with lots of small crinkly folds, and falls over the feet, trailing on the ground. It is usually
identified, plausibly, as the stola. Discussion has focused on the precise structure of this garment,
based on interpretations of a number of literary references to the stola and the instita, interpreted
as a part of the stola.15 Wilson asserted that the instita was a border or band sewn onto the lower
edge of the dress, possibly a ‘flounce’; Bieber was equally convinced that the term instita referred
to the shoulder straps seen on the statues, also ‘sewn’ onto the stola, and had nothing to do with
flounces.16 Bieber’s interpretation became the standard view,17 but more recent commentators have
resuscitated the idea that the instita was an added border at the bottom of the stola while still seeing
the shoulder straps as a defining part of the garment.18 So what was the instita, and what part did

12
See Wilson, Clothing and Toga; Hans Ruprecht Goette, Studien zu Römischen Togadarstellungen (Mainz am Rhein: von
Zabern, 1990). It is generally agreed that the Republican toga was an elongated approximately semicircular shape (though
opinions differ about its exact shape), while the later imperial toga was more of an ellipse, folded over lengthways.
13
Quintilian, Institutio Oratoria 11.3.137-144.
14
Statue of a woman from Pompeii, in Naples Archaeological Museum, inv. 6041.
15
For instita: Horace Satire I.2.29; Ovid Ars Amatoria 1.32 and Tristia II.248; for stola: Tibullus I.65; Ovid, Ex Ponto III
653; Fasti VI 654; Tristia II.253.
16
Wilson, Clothing, 156–9; Bieber, Copies 23.
17
Judith Lynn Sebesta, ‘Symbolism in the Costume of the Roman Woman’, in The World of Roman Costume, ed. J. L.
Sebesta and Larissa Bonfante (Madison, WI: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1994), 49, gives a spirited defence of
Bieber’s view against that of Wilson. Lena Larsson Lovén also identifies the shoulder straps as institae: ‘Roman Art: What
Can It Tell Us about Dress and Textiles?’ Greek and Roman Textiles, 268; also in ‘Visual Representation’, in A Cultural
History, 148–9, where she represents the straps as the defining feature without mentioning the instita.
18
Edmondson, ‘Public Dress’, 24; Kelly Olson, Dress and the Roman Woman. Self-presentation and Society (London and
New York: Routledge, 2008), 27–33.
58 DRESS IN MEDITERRANEAN ANTIQUITY

FIGURE 6.3 Statue of a woman wearing the stola, from Pompeii, in Naples Museum, inv. 6041.
Photo: DAI Rome 76.1157.

it play in the structure of the stola? There does not appear to be any indication on the statues that
there was a border sewn onto the bottom of the garment that has the straps, though such a border,
if in a contrasting colour to the rest of the stola, might have been indicated in paint (which no
longer survives).19
The straps of the (presumed) stola on statues and busts take such varied forms and are shown
in such detail that they would seem to represent features the sculptor observed in real life. Other
details of clothing also give the sculpted forms an air of verisimilitude, and the representation of
selvedges, starting and closing borders and cords which end in small bobbles, knots, loops or tassels
indicate how the garment was made. Hero Granger-Taylor’s analysis of the tunic of the bronze
togate statue known as L’Arringatore or The Orator (Figure 6.4) shows that the sculptor carefully
reproduced details from which its method of manufacture can be deduced, even though only one

19
Edmondson, ‘Public Dress’, 24, maintains in relation to the statue of a woman illustrated in his fig. 1.2 that ‘to its bottom
hem was attached a ruffle (instita) that covered the ankles’. However, I cannot see any evidence of the attachment of a piece
of material on this image. Olson (Dress, 30) suggests that the border was a limbus and that it made the stola visible and
recognizable even if the straps were covered by the palla. A contrasting colour could have been woven into the fabric of the
garment rather than made separately and sewn on.
CLOTHING IN MARBLE AND BRONZE 59

FIGURE 6.4 Bronze statue of L’Arringatore (The Orator), detail of head and shoulders. Photo:
DAI Rome 63.608.

shoulder is visible.20 The tunic was made from two pieces of cloth, sewn together at the sides
(leaving room for the armhole) and on the shoulders (leaving a space for the neck). Both pieces of
cloth are used sideways on: the top and bottom of the tunic were formed by the selvedges, while the
two starting edges were sewn together down the figure’s left side, and the two closing edges were
on his right side (the side visible on the statue). Granger-Taylor deduces this from her identification
of the representation of the closing cords visible down the side of the tunic and the marking of
the selvedges along the top edge and neck-hole by three rows of tiny scratches. The shoulder
seams show that the two pieces were sewn together with cross-stitches. Granger-Taylor similarly
examines the Orator’s toga, deducing that the weaving began with the straight edge: the end of
the starting cord has been clearly marked at the corner on the back of the statue; the ‘border’ seen
at the lower edge of the toga on the front of the statue, assumed by most commentators to be the
purple band of the toga praetexta, sewn onto the curved edge of the toga, she asserts (convincingly
to my mind) to be no such thing. It cannot be described as praetexta (woven first) and is better
explained as a reinforced closing band. The artist who made this statue seems to have had a detailed

The statue is in the Florence Archaeological Museum. Hero Granger-Taylor, ‘Weaving Clothes to Shape in the Ancient
20

World: The Tunic and Toga of the Arringatore’, Textile History 13, no. 1 (1982): 3–25.
60 DRESS IN MEDITERRANEAN ANTIQUITY

understanding of the structure of the garments represented, but this is rare, and few statues, Greek
or Roman, reach this standard. Nevertheless, statues of the later Classical, Hellenistic and Roman
periods often show details such as the small weights placed at the corners of the peplos overhang
or himation,21 and some drapery shows press fold lines (the marks left when garments were stored
folded up in a chest): these take the form of lightly incised lines crossing at right angles to form
squares. They were originally identified on drapery worn by male figures22 but have more recently
been seen on Hellenistic statues of women.23 Their presence on a statue has been explained as an
indicator of (or pretension to) high status.24

CHANGES IN CLOTHING FASHION AND ARTISTIC STYLE

Sculpture also documents some changes in fashion, such as the various ways of draping the toga25
or the popularity of the peplos as opposed to the chitōn, but it is not a reliable guide to the fashions
actually worn at the time the statue was made. The Roman sculptors who made portrait statues
of women, for example, reiterated types such as the large and small Herculaneum women which
represent not contemporary fashions but those of a much earlier era.26 Similarly in the Classical
period it seems the peplos, popular with sculptors, was in real life an old-fashioned garment, worn
primarily on special ritual occasions.27
The representation of drapery in sculpture manifests quite dramatic changes in artistic style,
which raises the question of the extent to which, and how, these artistic changes relate to the
appearance of clothing worn at the time. Sculptors were interested in drapery for a variety of
reasons and used it for a number of artistic purposes which made mimetic accuracy a secondary
consideration. So can we rely on them to represent drapery that looks like the fabrics and garments
available in their day, draped in ways people actually wore them and behaving as drapery really
did? Early Archaic sculptors experimented with the representation of drapery in stone, at first

21
See Bieber, Ancient Copies, 91, fig. 409 (statue of a maenad in the Villa Albani); 153, figs. 664–5 (the original ‘large
Herculaneum woman’ in Dresden); and 169, figs. 752–5 (statues of Vestal Virgins in the Atrium Vestae, Rome).
22
Rhys Carpenter, Greek Sculpture. A Critical Review (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1960), 210–11, 215, noted
press folds on the himation of some Hellenistic statues (such as ‘Maussolus’) but thought they were only used on statues
of men. Fold or press lines have also been identified on the Arringatore (Granger-Taylor, op. cit.) and a bronze statue of
Marcus Aurelius (Edmondson and Keith, Roman Dress, fig. 3.8)
23
Sheila Dillon, The Female Portrait Statue in the Greek World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 78 (Nikeso)
and 92–3, fig. 42 (a statue from Kos); Joan Breton Connelly, Portrait of a Priestess (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton
University Press, 2007), 151–2, fig. 5.20 (statue of Theophania).
24
Michael Koortbojian, ‘The Double Identity of Roman Portrait Statues: Costumes and Their Symbolism at Rome’, Roman
Dress, 80; Kelly Olson, ‘Status’, in Harlow, Cultural History, 113–14.
25
Goette provides a typological catalogue of the various ways the toga could be draped according to the many extant statues
of men wearing the toga. Although some of these styles came into vogue later than others, different styles could coexist as
the so-called Brothers Sarcophagus in Naples (inv. 6603; Goette, Togadarstellungen, 161, S32, pl. 74) shows.
26
For these two statue types, see Jens Daehner, ed., The Herculaneum Women: History, Context, Identities (Los Angeles:
The J. Paul Getty Museum, 2007), esp. chapters 3–5; for their dress, see Glenys Davies, ‘Clothes as Sign: The Case of the
Large and Small Herculaneum Women’, in Women’s Dress in the Ancient Greek World, ed. Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones (London
and Swansea: Classical Press of Wales, 2002), 227–42; for an explanation of their replication, see Jennifer Trimble, Women
and Visual Replication in Roman Imperial Art and Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011).
27
Mireille Lee, ‘Constru(ct)ing Gender in the Feminine Greek Peplos’, in The Clothed Body in the Ancient World, ed. L.
Cleland, M. Harlow and L. Llewellyn-Jones (Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2005), 59–61; Dillon, Female Portrait Statue, 78–82;
Larsson-Lovén, ‘Visual Representation’, 138–9.
CLOTHING IN MARBLE AND BRONZE 61

representing clothing as solid foldless masses,28 but by the time of the Cheramyes korai (Figure 6.1)
sculptors are beginning to use grooves forming repeated patterns to represent folds and to suggest
different weights and textures of cloth. The late Archaic style of the end of the sixth century
as seen in the series of korai from the Acropolis develops this further: on Kore no. 675 (Figure
6.2) the texture of the upper part of the chitōn (crinkly and crepe-like, painted purple) contrasts
with the skirt and diagonal mantle, which shows the flat stacked folds and zigzag ends typical of
the time. Bieber maintains that even these highly stylized drapery patterns reflect observation of
how drapery behaves: each ‘motif’ is realistic in itself, though its repetition may result in what
looks like an unrealistic pattern.29 For the dress historian the question is how far this artistic style
reflects the actual drapery styles of the time: did young women attempt to drape their clothing
to form flat pleats and zigzag folds, and if so, how?30 Early Classical sculpture saw a dramatic
change: out went fussy and regimented sharp-edged folds and instead we see softly modelled
peploi with more naturalistically varied folds, giving the impression they are made of soft wool.31
Later Classical periods saw further experimentation with more natural-looking drapery, but at the
same time sculptors were interested in other aspects of the representation of drapery, in particular
its relationship with the body it covers. Since female figures could not at this time be represented
completely nude, drapery, paradoxically, became one tool for exploring the contours of the naked
female body, and sculptors found ways of showing the female form through a layer of cloth. The
backs of some late Archaic korai already show the fabric of their chitōn pulled so tightly across
their buttocks and thighs that their shape is revealed, and this use of transparency was developed
further by Classical sculptors. Carpenter identified a number of formal devices:32 transparency is
one, but also catenaries (the U-shaped folds created when cloth is suspended from two points),33 the
modelling line and motion line. At its most extreme in the High Classical style the body may look
nude apart from raised ridges representing fabric running across it, resulting in what is sometimes
described as ‘wetlook’ drapery (Figure 6.5):34 these ridges and folds were used to form complex
irregular patterns that help to articulate the body and reflect the mood of the figure wearing it, as
can be seen on the well-known figure of ‘Aphrodite’ from the east pediment of the Parthenon.35

28
Such as the Lady of Auxerre and Nikandre: Barringer, Art and Archaeology, 104, fig. 2.37.
29
Bieber, Copies, 20–1.
30
Lee (Body, 95) suggests the pleated look could be achieved by gathering fine cloth (as with the modern sari), fixing by
sewing, or even glue, but she also questions whether these late archaic statues are accurate reflections of the clothing styles
of the time.
31
For example, the headless statue from Xanthos in the British Museum c. 470–60 BCE (see John Boardman, Greek
Sculpture: The Classical Period (London: Thames and Hudson, 1985), 32, fig. 15). Similar statues can be seen in the Ny-
Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen and in the Capitoline Collection (Centrale Montemartini). Also similar are the figures
of Sterope and Hippodameia on the east pediment of the temple of Zeus at Olympia: see Barringer, Art and Archaeology,
210, fig. 4.15.
32
Carpenter, Greek Sculpture, 139–57: these formal devices are useful to think with but do not entirely answer the questions
raised by the dress historian.
33
Used, for example, to stabilize the rather ungainly pose of the Nike adjusting her sandal from the parapet round the
temple of Nike on the Acropolis, Athens, c. 410 BCE. Carpenter, Greek Sculpture, 143, pl. XXIII, left; Barringer, Art and
Archaeology, 244–5, fig. 4.53b.
34
Nereid (a figure representing a breeze) used on the Nereid Monument from Lycia, now in the British Museum, c. 390–80
BCE.
35
The group is variously identified but may represent Aphrodite reclining in the lap of her mother Dione. The drapery of
this figure is often singled out by art historians as an example of High Classical virtuosity in carving drapery: see Barringer,
Art and Archaeology, 232.
62 DRESS IN MEDITERRANEAN ANTIQUITY

On figures supposed to be in motion areas of transparent ‘windblown’ drapery contrast with the
deep folds billowing out behind the figure, making the two areas of cloth seem impossibly different
in weight and texture.36 Even when not representing figures in dramatic movement or near nudity
sculptors still delighted in exploring the ways in which fabrics behave, the patterns created by
folds and their own virtuosity in recreating the different textures of fabric in marble or bronze.
Particularly impressive in this respect is the ‘fabric-through-fabric’ effect developed by Hellenistic
sculptors and used especially on portrait statues of women in the second century BCE. These
figures appear to wear a large himation so thin and see-through that the folds of the dress are
visible through it (see Figure 6.6).37 With all of these sculptural representations the dress historian
wants to know to what extent the sculptor has reproduced reality and how much is fantasy and
embellishment. What fabrics could have produced effects like this?

FIGURE 6.5 Nereid (a figure representing a breeze) used on the Nereid Monument from Lycia,
now in the British Museum, c. 390–80 BCE. Photo: Art Resource 438346.

36
For example, Nike of Paionios in Olympia, c. 420 BCE: see Carpenter, Greek Sculpture, 149, pl. XXIV; Barringer, Art
and Archaeology, 213–14, fig. 4.20; the Nike of Samothrace (in the Louvre): Barringer op. cit. 330, fig. 6.42 (c. 170–155
BCE).
37
Carpenter, Greek Sculpture, 209–10, dates the popularity of this device to the second century BCE; examples of its use
can be seen in Dillon, Female Portrait Statues, figs. 38 (Diodora on Delos), 39–41 (Cleopatra on Delos), 42 (statue in the
Asklepieion, Kos).
CLOTHING IN MARBLE AND BRONZE 63

FIGURE 6.6 Hellenistic statue of a woman with diaphanous mantle: Statue of Diodora from
Delos. Photo: DAI Rome 62.1991.

TEXTURES AND TEXTILES

Sculptors experimented with the representation of different textures and weights of cloth,
especially in the fifth century BCE, a time when the two main fibres used for clothing were
flax (linen) and wool. The different textures of these fabrics appear to have been explored
in the drapery of female figures of the early part of the century, but draped figures were also
represented wearing fabrics which appear crepe-like (the purple garment worn by Kore 675 in
Figure 6.2) or very thin and clingy and in places transparent (Figure 6.5). Until recently little was
known about Greek textiles of this period because very little actual fabric has been preserved
and what there was had not been fully analysed with modern techniques, but this is changing.38
A combination of scientific investigation and experimental archaeology has made it possible

38
For work on ancient textiles in general, see the Centre for Textile Research in Copenhagen and the Hellenic Centre
for Research and Conservation of Archaeological Textiles. Also, the publications in the Oxbow Ancient Textiles Series,
especially Carole Gillis and Marie-Louise Nosch, eds., Ancient Textiles: Production, Craft and Society (Oxford: Oxbow
Books, 2007); Harlow and Nosch, Greek and Roman Textiles, and Stella Spantidaki, Textile Production in Classical Athens
(Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2016).
64 DRESS IN MEDITERRANEAN ANTIQUITY

to suggest what spinning and weaving techniques might have produced the effects visible on
the statues. Spantidaki’s study of the textiles preserved from fifth-century Attica suggests that
a crinkly, crepe-like effect could be produced by using hard-twisted threads, and transparency
could be achieved by using fine-spun threads (most likely linen) and a loose weave/low thread
count, possibly with the help of a coating of olive oil.39 A wide variety of fabrics, with different
appearances and textures, could be made using flax and wool by varying the fineness and degree
of twist in the thread and the thread count of both warp and weft. The sculptors may well have
reproduced the appearance of linen and woollen fabrics available in their own day, even the
most extreme ‘wetlook’ varieties (Figure 6.5), but modern commentators are often seduced
by the possibility that the material represented is silk. This is perhaps more plausible for the
later diaphanous fabrics represented on Hellenistic portrait statues (see Figure 6.6), but the
availability of silk is still debatable.40 In literature (especially Roman) silk is seen as the epitome of
decadence and immorality, not just because of its transparency but also because it was expensive
and exotic. This reputation applied especially to clothing from Kos (‘Coan vestes’), which was
probably made from wild silk (though silk too could be woven in ways that create a variety of
textures and was not necessarily transparent, despite its reputation).41 But luxury and unusual
fabrics could have been made from fibres other than silk, and their fibre content is not easily
discernible from the sculpted image.42
The lengths to which sculptors might go to represent the texture of fabric in marble can be seen
in a recent analysis of the surface treatment of the togate statue of Fundilius in Copenhagen: the
tunic was finished using files, rasps and abrasives on a smoothed surface, allowing the contours of
the chest to be visible, while the toga is carved with chisels and the running drill to represent a
heavier fabric with deep folds, and the surface was polished then scratched in a criss-cross pattern
to suggest the soft nap.43 The best-quality togate statues, such as that of Augustus from the Via
Labicana,44 also express in marble not only the complexity of the draping of the imperial toga, and
the superb control of it by its wearer, but also the texture of the softly draped wool from which it
was made: one wonders whether this was one of the garments reputedly made for him at home by
his female relatives, as Suetonius suggests.45 Modern reconstructions of garments such as the toga
seldom look quite convincing, mainly because the materials used are not of quite good enough

39
Spantidaki, Textile Production, 37 and 44, for crepe; 27 and 54–5, for transparency of linen woven loosely with fine
threads; 27 for the suggestion that olive oil could be used to increase transparency.
40
Silk may have been available by the late Hellenistic period, but most of the literary references are later than this:
Wilson, Clothing 4–5; Lee, Body, 91. For a discussion of the possible presence of silk in the fabric remains dating
to the Classical period and earlier, see Spantidaki, Textile Production, 24. Carpenter (Greek Sculpture, 210) suggests
that fine diaphanous fabrics made of ‘vegetable silk’ were in use from the early third century BCE, but it is not clear
what he means by this.
41
Olson, Dress, 14 and 95; Lee, Body, 196.
42
For example the himation worn by Nikeso, the subject of a marble portrait statue from Priene, in Berlin Antikensammlung
Sk 1928, may well reproduce the appearance of a textile made in the later Hellenistic period and actually worn by her.
See Dillon, Female Portrait Statue, 16, fig. 2 (cast), 77–8, 124–7, fig. 65 (back); Connelly, Priestess, 136, fig. 5.12. Dillon
(Female Portrait Statue, 78) comments that Nikeso’s mantle looks like a pleated silk Fortuny dress.
43
Amalie Skovmøller, ‘Where Marble Meets Colour: Surface Texturing of Hair, Skin and Dress on Roman Marble Portraits
as Support for Painted Polychromy’, Greek and Roman Textiles, 286–93.
44
National Museum of Rome, inv. 56230, on display in the Palazzo Massimo: Goette, Togadarstellungen, Ba32.
45
Suetonius, Augustus, 73.
CLOTHING IN MARBLE AND BRONZE 65

quality to match the sculptures46 – or is it that the artists represented an ideal that improved upon
the actual clothing of their day?

CONCLUSION
The dress historian looking at statues and relief sculpture as evidence needs to bear in mind the
artistic style of the time and the interests of the sculptor as an artist, but also the purpose of the
statue and who it represents. While it is possible that a portrait statue such as that of Diodora
(Figure 6.6) represents a costume this individual actually wore,47 even statues with portrait heads
usually have bodies dressed in an ideal costume, appropriate clothing for their position and role in
society, but not necessarily worn by the individual concerned. The costume chosen for the statue
might reflect the represented person’s role as priest/priestess, magistrate, respected matron or as a
young unmarried maiden taking part in a religious ceremony, rather than everyday dress.48 Even
the toga appears to have been a garment only worn on specific occasions, and for many Roman
citizens might not have been worn at all, despite the large number of togate statues.49 Many clothed
statues indeed do not represent real people at all but divinities and heroes (such as the Nereid in
Figure 6.5), who wear costumes that would hardly be suitable for respectable mortal women. But it
seems some priestesses were represented dressed like the goddesses they served, and it is not always
easy to tell the two apart.50 Nevertheless, these statues remain the best evidence we have for how
Greek and Roman clothing might have looked, especially how it was draped, the range of textiles
available and how fashions changed over time.

46
Wilson remarks that to make a convincing toga ‘the material used must be exceedingly pliable and of such texture that
it will fall naturally into graceful curving folds’. She suggests as ideal ‘a soft, pliable flannel’ – but points out that as the
average toga requires 12 to 15 yards, the cost would be prohibitive (Clothing, 49: photographs of her reconstructions on
living models appear in figs. 28, 30, 32, 36, 38, 40, 42, 44). These togas drape better than those reconstructed by Goette
(Togadarstellungen, colour plate and beilage 2), whose fabric is too thick and heavy, like a blanket.
47
Dillon notes that the later Hellenistic style of dress, with a thin mantle worn so the chitōn’s folds could be seen through
it, seems to have been a fashion only used for statues of mortal women, not goddesses, who tend to wear more traditional
‘Classical’ drapery (especially the peplos worn without a tunic underneath). See Dillon, Female Portrait Statue, 62–3
(dating); 78–9 (goddesses); 87–9 (portrait statues, Pudicitia format).
48
For example, the amount of concealing drapery worn by mature women in statue types such as the large Herculaneum
woman or the peplos and back mantle which seem to have been worn by young women specifically on ceremonial occasions
in the Classical period.
49
The average toga would also not have been in reality so splendid a garment as the statues suggest. See Michele George,
‘The “Dark Side” of the Toga’, in Roman Dress, 94–112.
50
Connelly, Portrait of a Priestess, 104–7; Dillon, Female Portrait Statue, 79–82; Daniel-Hughes, ‘Belief’, 77–9.
66
 CHAPTER SEVEN

Greek Dress from the

Inscriptional Evidence
LAURA GAWLINSKI

One of the challenges of studying the past is the fragmentation of information across multiple
kinds of sources.1 No single source-type provides all the answers, and each category comes with
particular challenges and opportunities. This chapter focuses on what inscriptions bring to the
investigation of ancient Greek dress.2 Rather than striving to be exhaustive, I present the types of
evidence epigraphy offers, outlining the main categories and the major documents that are the most
valuable. Most of the texts cited cluster in the classical and Hellenistic periods, and although they
skew towards Attica, where the epigraphic habit was so pronounced, there are also some important
classes of texts (like priest sales) that are strikingly non-Athenian.3 It is notable that the bulk of
the relevant inscriptions are related to ritual practices and religious spaces in some way, whether
explicitly, as in lists of dedications to deities, or more tangentially, as in accounts of clothing
supplied for the construction workers in sanctuaries.
Inscriptions contain data that can be applied to a range of aspects of ancient Greek dress:
production and sale, the types of dress objects that existed and their use in various social settings.
There is overlap across these broad categories, of course; a document whose purpose is to regulate
garments typically includes details about the form and colour of those garments. The study of
much of this material has tended to concentrate on textiles, but all components of dress are
attested, from accessories and cosmetics to the way it all came together on a living body in a wider
community.

1
I am grateful to the staff at the excavations of the Athenian Agora for coordinating access to material and photographs:
Sylvie Dumont, Pia Kvarnström, Aspasia Efstathiou, Maria Tziotziou and Craig Mauzy. I benefited from discussions with
Edward Harris about the Greek economy, and I thank Katherine Harrington for sharing her work on textile production in
Building Z in the Kerameikos.
2
The most useful introduction to Greek epigraphy in English remains Arthur G. Woodhead, The Study of Greek
Inscriptions, 2nd edition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981). The texts of many Greek inscriptions are
available through The Packard Humanities Institute (PHI)-Searchable Greek Inscriptions, last updated July 13, 2020,
https://inscriptions.packhum.org. A number of Attic inscriptions with translation and brief commentary can be found at
Attic Inscriptions Online (AIO), last updated July 23, 2020, https://www.atticinscriptions.com. Standard abbreviations
used in this chapter include IG = Inscriptiones Graecae (Berlin: De Gruyter) and SEG = Supplementum Epigraphicum
Graecae (Leiden: Brill).
3
For the evidence from Linear B for cloth production in the Mycenaean Bronze Age, see Brendan Burke, From Minos to
Midas: Ancient Cloth Production in the Aegean and in Anatolia (Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2010), 64–107.
68 DRESS IN MEDITERRANEAN ANTIQUITY

PRODUCTION AND SALE

Greek inscriptions are not especially rich in the particulars of the process of creating dress items
nor in the specifics about their function in the economy. There is a single inscribed law, probably
from Erythrai in Asia Minor, that regulates the wool trade (IErythrai 15, fourth century BCE).4
It demands honesty in weighing (lines 2–4), denotes when and in what circumstances wool can
be sold (only till mid-day, never when it rains, lines 7–9) and polices the quality of wool (e.g.
no one can sell from a year-old sheep, lines 9–11). The remainder of the texts offer information
that is far more incidental. A major point of contention concerns textiles: because they are
principally associated with women’s work, scholars question how they fit into the wider Greek
economy, particularly how much was produced for home use and how much might have been
sold externally on the market.5 Epigraphy plays an important role in this and other economic
debates through two types of texts, inscriptions that refer to items of manufacture and their
manufacturers, and writing found on the actual objects used in production, such as stamps on
loomweights.
Inscriptions occasionally mention the titles of professions involved in the production or sale of
textiles and other dress items. Taken together with similar references in the literary sources, these
help build a technical vocabulary, attest the existence of particular professionals and suggest the
methods by which labour was organized.6 Some of these citations take on additional value when
read in context. For example, a decree honouring foreigners who had joined Thrasyboulos in the
uprising of the democracy against the Thirty after the Athenian defeat in the Peloponnesian War
(401/0 BCE) lists their occupations: among them are a tanner ([β]υ̣ρσο, col. iii, line 3), shoe-seller
(σκυτοπώ, col. iii, line 11), wool-seller (ἐριοπ, col. iv, line 18) and fuller (γναφ, col. iv, line 21).7 This
text is a glimpse into the specialization of tasks behind dress fabrication and, because the men listed
are not citizens, also into the social and political positions of at least some of those who did these
tasks. In a document that collates the expenses and revenues for the Eleusinian sanctuaries, one
finds an entry for the purchase of felt hats made by a woman named Thettale: πῖλοι/τοῖς δημοσίοις

4
Helmut Engelmann and Reinhold Merkelbach, Die Inschriften von Erythrai und Klazomenai. Inschriften griechischer
Städte aus Kleinasien I (Bonn: Rudolf Habelt, 1972), 69–74. For an English translation with brief commentary, see Ilias
Arnaoutoglou, Ancient Greek Laws: A Sourcebook (London: Routledge, 1998), no. 38, 40–1.
5
On this issue, see Barbara Tsakirgis, ‘Whole Cloth: Exploring the Question of Self-Sufficiency through the Evidence for
Textile Manufacture and Purchase in Greek Houses’, in The Ancient Greek Economy: Markets, Households and City-States,
ed. Edward M. Harris, David M. Lewis and Mark Woolmer (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016), 166–86; and
Giorgos Sanidas, ‘Artisanat en Grèce et espace économique: le textile et la métallurgie’, in L’artisanat en Grèce ancienne.
Filières de production: bilans, méthodes et perspectives, ed. Francine Blondé (Villeneuve-d’Ascq: Presses universitaires du
Septentrion; Athens: ​École française d’Athènes, 2016), 15–30.
6
Stella Spantidaki, Textile Production in Classical Athens (Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2016), 145–72, lists terms related to textile
manufacture. On professions in Athens more generally, see Edward M. Harris, ‘Workshop, Marketplace and Household:
The Nature of Technical Specialization in Classical Athens and Its Influence on Economy and Society’, in Money, Labour
and Land: Approaches to the Economies of Ancient Greece, ed. Paul Cartledge, Edward E. Cohen and Lin Foxhall (London:
Routledge, 2002), 67–99, especially the testimonia for occupations, 88–97. See also Harris’s list of women’s occupations:
Edward M. Harris, ‘Wife, Household, and Marketplace: The Role of Women in the Economy of Classical Athens’, in
Donne che contano nella Storia greca, ed. Umberto Bultrighini and Elisabetta Dimauro (Lanciano: Carabba, 2015), 203–4.
7
P. J. Rhodes and Robin Osborne, Greek Historical Inscriptions, 404–323 BC (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003),
20–7 (no. 4). I follow their arrangement and numbering of the text here.
GREEK DRESS FROM THE INSCRIPTIONAL EVIDENCE 69

παρὰ Θεττάλης: ∆ΙΙ (I.Eleusis 177 [IG II2 1672], 329/8 BCE, lines 70–1).8 This is a rare but striking
example that shows a woman – a named woman, no less – participating in the extra-domestic
economy.
The most significant corpus of inscriptions that have a bearing on textile production for the
market and the identity of the producers are the Athenian phialai-inscriptions of the latter part
of the fourth century BCE. This series of stelai record the dedication of silver phialai (offering
bowls) by individuals who had been acquitted in a trial, generally following the formula ‘x, living
in [deme], [profession], escaped y, son of yy, of [deme], phialē by weight 100’.9 The social status
of the dedicators and the nature of the trial have been much disputed; traditionally, these texts had
been read as related to the manumission of slaves, but Elizabeth Meyer’s reinterpretation of them
as inventories of dedications resulting from the unsuccessful prosecution of metics (resident aliens)
for failure to pay the metic tax has gained much support. These lists are relevant for Greek dress
because many of the metics are listed as being talasiourgoi, wool-workers. The term appears at
least fifty-one times, and when the associated name is preserved, that name is female; talasiourgoi
make up about 81 per cent of the occupations done by women in these inscriptions.10 Views on
the identity of these female producers are divided; especially at issue is the possible connection
between wool-working and sex work. Many scholars are convinced that these statistics are proof
that textiles were produced for the wider Athenian market by skilled specialists, but others have
argued that these women were involved in prostitution, perhaps only doing wool-working on the
side.11 These debates over the precise identification of the talasiourgoi have clear ramifications for
how we understand the connections between women and work, the social status of workers and the
participants in the ancient Athenian economy.
Objects used in the home – instrumenta domestica – also allow for fruitful pursuit of the
economics of Greek textiles. Of the writing found on textile implements, stamps pressed into

8
Kevin Clinton, Eleusis. The Inscriptions on Stone: Documents of the Sanctuary of the Two Goddesses and Public Documents
of the Deme, vol. 1A (Athens: The Archaeological Society at Athens, 2005), 188–206; vol. 2 (Athens: The Archaeological
Society at Athens, 2008), 176–241. These hats were purchased to clothe the slaves who worked on building projects in the
sanctuary. Cf. IEleusis 159 (IG II2 1673), 336/5 or 333/2 BCE, lines 45–9 (Clinton, Eleusis, 1A:163-169 and 2:151-64),
where the slaves working in the sanctuary are fitted with tunics (exomides), felt caps (piloi) and shoes (hypodumata) from
the sanctuary funds.
9
Elizabeth A. Meyer, Metics and the Athenian Phialai-Inscriptions. Historia Einzelschriften 208 (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner
Verlag, 2010), 12–13. Meyer provides commentary and interpretation alongside a full republication of the texts: IG II2
1553–78; Agora inv. I 3183 (SEG 18.36); and SEG 21.561, 25.178, 25.180, 44.68 and 46.180.
10
Guy Labarre, ‘Les métiers du textile en Grèce ancienne’, Topoi 8 (1998): 792–8; see also Meyer, Metics, 15, n. 19, who
restores two additional talasiourgoi and summarizes the variant interpretations concerning number of occupations. There
are occupations in these texts that relate to the manufacture of other dress items, but it is the talasiourgoi who have received
the most attention.
11
Edward E. Cohen, ‘Free and Unfree Sexual Work. An Economic Analysis of Athenian Prostitution’, in Prostitutes and
Courtesans in the Ancient World, ed. Christopher A. Faraone and Laura K. McClure (Madison: University of Wisconsin
Press, 2006), 101–8; and Kelly L. Wrenhaven, ‘The Identity of the “Wool-Workers” in the Attic Manumissions’, Hesperia
78 (2009): 367–86, both hold that the talasiourgoi were involved in sex work, with the latter arguing the term was
euphemistic. Meyer, Metics, 70; Labarre, ‘Les métiers’, 795–9; and Morris Silver, Slave-Wives, Single Women and ‘Bastards’
in the Ancient Greek World: Law and Economics Perspective (Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2018), 157–8, argue that they were
female textile workers, not hetairai-spinners. The suggestion that the term referred to ‘wives’ of fellow manumitted men
has mostly fallen out of the debate, Vincent J. Rosivach, ‘Talasiourgoi and Paidia in IG 22 1553–78: A Note on Athenian
Social History’, Historia 38 (1989): 365–6. For an accessible introduction to the debate around the relationship between
prostitution and textile manufacturing, see also James N. Davidson, Courtesans and Fishcakes: The Consuming Passions of
Classical Athens (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1997), 83–91.
70 DRESS IN MEDITERRANEAN ANTIQUITY

loomweights are of particular interest since their application before firing associates them with the
point of production rather than use.12 In order to get a broader view of how loomweights fit into
the economic system, Mark Lawall has studied them alongside amphoras, focusing on regionalism,
distinctive shapes and permanent markings.13 He traces an intensification of economic complexity
and specialization, partly attested by stamping, that peaks in the Late Hellenistic period. The most
complicated system of loomweight stamps first appears in Corinth in the second half of the fourth
century BCE: the double-stamped loomweights, many of which have also been found in Athens,
feature a stamp with letters, paired with a smaller gem-stamp or die with an image (Figure 7.1).14
How these stamps functioned is still not fully understood. They must be associated with workshops
in some way, but the fact that many of the same stamp types are found on both Corinthian and
Athenian loomweights, and that there were multiple stamps with variations on the same words
(e.g. both ΜΕΛ and ΜΕΛΙ are attested), prevents a simple answer. Similarly, Simone Killen has
catalogued fifty lead loomweights marked with parasema (official markings), almost all from Ionia
and Caria; although most lack a solid findspot they are probably Late Hellenistic.15 Parasema do
not necessarily indicate state use, and Killen proposes several possible functions for these weights,
such as the production of official votive garments or the regulation of textiles. The practice of
stamping loomweights – despite the elusive details – indicates that although most textile production
was domestic, there were larger community or even civic influences involved. Greek women had
to acquire their loomweights from ceramicists, connecting the two crafts, and the interest in textile
manufacturing, to varying degrees, extended beyond the household.

FIGURE 7.1 The variety of stamped loomweights found in the Athenian Agora: (a) Agora MC
355; (b) MC 397; (c) MC 498; (d) MC 593; and (e) MC 964. Photos: American School of Classical
Studies at Athens, Agora Excavations.

12
Important, but less pertinent to this study of dress, are loomweights inscribed after firing to mark ownership or dedication
as a votive.
13
Mark L. Lawall, ‘Transport Amphoras and Loomweights: Integrating Elements of Ancient Greek Economies?’ in Greek
and Roman Textiles and Dress: An Interdisciplinary Anthology, ed. Mary Harlow and Marie-Louise Nosch (Oxford: Oxbow
Books, 2014), 168–80.
14
Lawall, ‘Transport Amphoras’, 168–9. For Corinth, Gladys R. Davidson, The Minor Objects. Corinth: Results of
Excavations Conducted by the American School of Classical Studies at Athens 12 (Princeton: American School of Classical
Studies at Athens, 1952), 146–72 (with brief references to the Agora loomweights illustrated here). For the Pnyx at Athens,
Gladys R. Davidson and Dorothy Burr Thompson, Small Objects from the Pnyx I. Hesperia Suppl. 7 (Princeton: American
School of Classical Studies at Athens, 1943), 65–94. See Gloria S. Merker, The Greek Tile Works at Corinth: The Site and
the Finds. Hesperia Suppl. 35 (Princeton: American School of Classical Studies at Athens, 2006), 57–72, for other, earlier
stamps and inscriptions at Corinth.
15
Simone Killen, Parasema: Offizielle Symbole griechischer Poleis und Bundesstaaten. Archäologische Forschungen 36
(Weisbaden: Reichert Verlag, 2017), 38–43.
GREEK DRESS FROM THE INSCRIPTIONAL EVIDENCE 71

TYPES OF DRESS OBJECTS

What kind of dress objects were popular in ancient Greece? What were their materials, decorations
and styles? These kinds of questions can be addressed through the study of assorted inscribed lists,
especially inventories that track dedications, and, to a lesser extent, registries of property sales.
These records are extraordinarily valuable because there are so few preserved textiles from Greece
in this period, and other items of dress like jewellery often lack a secure provenance. The bulk of
our evidence about form, fabric, colour and design elements derives from inscriptions.
Most famous of the inscribed lists of clothing dedications are those associated with the worship
of Artemis Brauronia. These stelai were found both at her sanctuary in Brauron and as copies set
up on the Acropolis at her ‘satellite’ shrine, the Brauronion; the latter are the ones that have been
published and studied thus far (IG II2 1514–25, 1528–31).16 They represent inventories of the items
dedicated at Brauron in several different years between 349/8 and 336/5 BCE, the greatest portion
of which were garments. This short excerpt provides a glimpse at the kind of information included
(IG II2 1514, col. ii, lines 12–20):

Θεμιστοκλέους ἄρχοντος· χιτωνίσκος ἁλουργὸ- v

ς ποικίλος ἐμ πλαισίωι, Θυαίν(η) καὶ Μαλθάκη ἀνέθ[η]-
κεν· χιτωνίσκος ποικίλος ἐμ πλαισίωι ἁλουργός, v?
15 Ο[.]ΤΑΣΩ[.]Α, Εὐκολίνη ἀνέθηκεν· Φίλη ζῶμα· Φείδυλλ[α]
ἱμάτιον λευκὸν γυναικεῖον ἐμ πλαισίωι· Μνησὼ β[α]-
τραχίδα· Ναυσὶς ἱμάτιον γυναικεῖον πλατυαλουρ-
γὲς περι[κυ]μάτιον· Κλεὼ ἀμπέχονον· Φίλη περιήγητ-
ον· Τ[ε]ισικράτεια κάνδυν ποικίλον· Μέλιττα ἱμάτι-
20 ον λευκὸν καὶ χιτωνίσκον, ῥάκος
When Themistokles was archon (348/7): a purple chitōniskos,
patterned all over, in a case, dedicated by Thuaine and Malthake:
a chitōniskos, patterned, purple, in a case
[indecipherable] dedicated by Eukoline: Phile, a girdle: Pheidulla
a white woman’s himation in a case: Mneso a
frog-coloured garment: Nausis a woman’s himation with a wide purple
wavy border all around: Kleo an ampechonon-wrap: Phile, a bordered garment:
Teisikrateia, a patterned kandys: Melitta, a white
himation and a chitōniskos rhakos.17

Cecilie Brøns has investigated these lists alongside the other extant records of textile dedications
and identified the salient features about the identity of the deities, description of the clothing and

16
The clothing sections of these texts have been examined by Liza Cleland, The Brauron Clothing Catalogues: Text, Analysis,
Glossary and Translation BAR-IS 1428 (Oxford: John and Erica Hedges Ltd., 2005). See also Tullia Linders, Studies in the
Treasure Records of Artemis Brauronia Found in Athens (Stockholm: Swedish Institute at Athens, 1972), which also includes
discussion of the other objects inventoried. For Brauron, see also Cecilie Brøns, this volume.
17
Translation by Cleland, Brauron, 132, with my minor adaptations to the IG text and the translation for the unreadable
portion of line 15.
72 DRESS IN MEDITERRANEAN ANTIQUITY

the representation of the dedicators.18 The quoted sample text displays the richness of the types of
garments, materials and even their condition. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the predominant garments
are the himation and chitōn, though here as chitōniskos, the diminutive, which refers to the short
version of this common women’s garment. But next to these typical Greek garments is a kandys
(line 19), a sleeved garment deriving from Persia. One chitōniskos is described as being a rhakos (line
20), or rag. This term appears frequently in the Brauron texts and its precise meaning is debated;
it refers to the state of the garment at the time of dedication and indicates it was worn beforehand,
too. Finally, even this short passage is instructive for just how much we need to remember to see
the ancient world in colour and patterns: there are purple, white and delightfully descriptive ‘frog-
coloured’ garments (lines 16–17), with various patterns and borders.19
Other types of dress items in inventories have received somewhat less attention but are also
present. The Brauron inventories, for example, are arranged by material of dedicated objects,
and some sections include jewellery offered by women (e.g. IG II2 1517A, a list of gold). Among
the dedications stored in various parts of the Parthenon, records mention stone bead bracelets,
sealstones of precious stone and glass, earrings of gold and silver, headbands and gold belts; for
some, the entry is elaborated, such as a gold necklace decorated with twenty rosettes and a ram’s
head (IG II2 1376, lines 1–3, c. 400 BCE).20 Jewellery appears in these and other sanctuary lists
at least partly because of its intrinsic value; when made of metal, pieces can be melted down if
necessary, and usually the weight is even noted. But these offerings also reflect deeply personal
decisions, since most of the objects were likely worn at some time, and they thus testify to the dress
of ancient Greece.
In addition to dedication and inventory lists, there are also the so-called Attic Stelai, the inscribed
lists that were set up in the city Eleusinion, recording the sale of the items confiscated from those
who were put on trial for profaning the mysteries or mutilating the herms (IG I3 421–30, 414
BCE).21 These are a window into what the aristocracy owned: in addition to assets like land and
houses, the inscriptions also record the moveable property that was within those households.22
Of particular interest for dress are the lists of clothing and shoes (Figure 7.2); jewellery and other
kinds of adornment are absent.23 These include many himatia, a number of them grouped together

18
Cecilie Brøns, ‘Textiles and Temple Inventories: Detecting an Invisible Votive Tradition in the Greek Sanctuaries in the
Second Half of the First Millennium BC’, in Tradition: Transmission of Culture in the Ancient World, ed. Jane Fejfer, Mette
Moltesen and Annette Rathje (Copenhagen: Collegium Hyperboreum and Museum Tusculanum Press, 2015), 57–70. The
other lists containing a substantial number of textile dedications include several from the sanctuaries of Delos as well
as inscriptions from Tanagra (SEG 43.212, face B), Thebes (IG VII 2421), Samos (IG XII 6,1 261) and Miletus (Peter
Herrmann, Wolfgang Günther and Norbert Ehrhardt, Inschriften von Milet 6.3 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2006), no. 1357,
213–15).
19
On these terms, see Cleland, Brauron, 110–11 (chitōniskos), 116–17 (kandys), 126 (rhakos), 109 (batrachis). On colour,
see also Cecilie Brøns, this volume.
20
Diane Harris, The Treasures of the Parthenon and Erechtheion (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), 40–103. Similar types
of offerings are found in inventories from Delos (Richard Hamilton, Treasure Map: A Guide to the Delian Inventories
[Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2000]) and the sanctuary of Asklepius at Athens (Sara B. Aleshire, The Athenian
Asklepieion: The People, Their Dedications, and the Inventories [Amsterdam: J. C. Gieben,1989]).
21
For the texts with commentary, see the two articles by W. Kendrick Pritchett, ‘The Attic Stelai, Part I’, Hesperia 22
(1953): 225–99, and ‘Five New Fragments of the Attic Stelai’, Hesperia 30 (1961): 23–9. See also Robin Osborne and P.
J. Rhodes, Greek Historical Inscriptions, 478–404 BC (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), no. 172, 428–47 (excerpts
with translation and commentary).
22
For an index of items, see Pritchett ‘Attic Stelai’, 292–9.
23
Clothing and shoes are discussed by W. Kendrick Pritchett and Anne Pippen, ‘The Attic Stelai, Part II’, Hesperia 25 (1953):
203–10, and Osborne and Rhodes, GHI, 445–6. Perhaps the lack of jewellery indicates its ownership by the women in the
household. The lists include other kinds of non-dress textiles, like pillows and bed coverings.
GREEK DRESS FROM THE INSCRIPTIONAL EVIDENCE 73

FIGURE 7.2 Fragments of the Attic Stelai: (a) himatia from stele 1 (Agora I 236; IG I3 421, lines
235–42); (b) tribones from stele 2 (Agora I 2040; IG I3 422, lines 120–7). Photos: American School
of Classical Studies at Athens, Agora Excavations.

under a single owner (IG I3 421, lines 182–3, 222–49; IG I3 427, lines 101–5, the latter followed
by a group of tunics, exomides, lines 107–11), a group of several tribones (IG I3 422, lines 120–6),
an ampechonon (IG I3 421, line 160) and a few kinds of shoes including krepidia, sandals (IG I3
422, line 246). Although the Attic Stelai are not fully preserved, there are enough full ‘property
portfolios’ to draw some conclusions. The lists show the monetary value of clothing and shoes,
even when already used. None of the garments stand out as particularly luxurious, and foreign or
foreign-inspired items seem to be absent. Though the aristocracy of Athens were property barons
and avid consumers, their consumption was less conspicuous than might be expected. Their closets
were full of clothing that were presumably of good quality but not particularly ostentatious.

DRESS IN CONTEXT
A series of inscribed documents that concern the administration of festivals and funerals, from
postings at sanctuary entrances to formally passed laws and decrees, illustrate more fully not just
what was worn and by whom but also what was socially appropriate.24 These regulations enable

24
Most of these inscriptions have been collected under the rubric of ‘sacred laws’, or leges sacrae, a modern catch-all term
for a variety of proscriptive and descriptive documents about ancient Greek religion. An excellent introduction to the
designation and corpora is Andrej Petrovic, ‘Sacred Law’, in The Oxford Handbook of Ancient Greek Religion, ed. Esther
Eidinow and Julia Kindt (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 339–52. See also Jan-Mathieu Carbon, Saskia Peels and
Vinciane Pirenne-Delforge, A Collection of Greek Ritual Norms (CGRN), Liège 2016–, http://cgrn.ulg.ac.be, which provides
many of these texts alongside translations and commentary, as well as links to scholarship concerning the questions of the
corpus as a whole.
74 DRESS IN MEDITERRANEAN ANTIQUITY

the reader to (at least partially) recreate the visual experience of public events, and they speak to
the social conventions of dress, many of which were in play even outside the particular context
of the text (e.g. women’s dress drew legislative attention because it involved women). They come
from a wide range of locations and time periods, which helps balance the Athenocentrism that
affects much of this overview. There are some aspects in common across space and time that reveal
dress was a panhellenic concern, such as a focus on gender and an interest in particular elements
and accessories (e.g. colours, shoes and gold are featured frequently). But local and regional flavour
is also apparent, and details like the specific deity being worshipped also matter.
The reason that funerals and festivals get so much attention is that rituals like these were social.25
They were group activities that highlighted public display, especially during processions. Discussion
of the texts regulating dress at these events tends to focus on their sumptuary nature because
they often impose limitations, but this attention downplays the importance of ritual and aesthetic
considerations. The sumptuary aspect is especially apparent in funeral contexts: typically the corpse
receives the most regulatory interest, as it is the focal point of the spectacle. For example, a law
about funerals from Iulis on Keos (late fifth century BCE) opens with instructions about burial
dress.26 The body to be buried is restricted to coverage by no more than three white cloths costing
a total of no more than 100 drachmas (lines 1–6). But even this law includes regulations revolving
around actions and behaviour, and it deals extensively with purity issues, not just the number and
costs of garments. Other texts do address the mourners. A law from Gambreion in Asia Minor
(CGRN 108, c. 300 to 200 BCE) states that of the mourners, the women must wear grey but clean
garments, while the men and children should also wear grey, unless they want to wear white instead
(lines 5–9). These stricter policies for women are the norm in dress regulations since their gathering
outside the house for public activities could be a source of anxiety for the community. But the lack
of interest in cost and number of garments is telling: the rules are more about creating conformity
appropriate for the occasion, on both a social and religious level. There is emphasis as well on
visual communication and aesthetic experience.
Epigraphic sources about religious festivals regularly address the dress of officials. Particularly
instructive are the documents related to the sale of priesthoods; they are not laws but a mix of
advertisements and contracts. They are quite limited in geography and chronology, primarily to
cities in Asia Minor during the Hellenistic period. The hiereus (priest) is authorized to stand out
through his gold accessories and the colour of his garments. For example, the purchaser of a
priesthood of Nike at Kos (CGRN 163 [IG XII, 4 330], first century BCE) is instructed to wear
a purple chitōn, gold rings and an olive wreath (κιτῶνα π[ορ]φύρεον καὶ δακτυλίος χρυσέος καὶ
στέφ[ανο]ν θάλλινον, lines 8–10) during a procession in the month Petageitnyos (lines 5–6), as
well as whenever in the sanctuary and during all other sacrifices (lines 11–12). The fact that he
is also given the additional mandate to wear white at all other times ([λ]ευχιμονίτω δὲ διὰ βίου,

25
For an examination that treats these two categories together, see Harrianne Mills, ‘Greek Clothing Regulations: Sacred
and Profane?’ ZPE 55 (1984): 255–65.
26
Osborne and Rhodes, GHI, no. 194, 564–73, and CGRN 35 (IG XII, 5 593). For more background on these kinds of
funerary regulations, see Robert Garland, ‘The Well-Ordered Corpse: An Investigation into the Motives behind Greek
Funerary Legislation’, BICS 36 (1989): 1–15. For another example that deals with the corpse and its adornment, see the
regulations on Face A of the Labydai stele from Delphi, fifth to fourth centuries BCE, Rhodes and Osborne, GHI, no. 1,
2–12, and CGRN 82.
GREEK DRESS FROM THE INSCRIPTIONAL EVIDENCE 75

line 12) reveals the contextualization of these priestly outfits; they are only appropriate when
acting in an official capacity. The outfits across different priesthoods were not the same. There was
no standardized ‘priest dress’ as in many modern religions, but there were commonalities in the
methods employed to signal authority. The frequency of dress clauses in priesthood sales are tied
to class and wealth.27 The purchaser gained visible status markers in return for their investment in
the city, and many certainly bought their way into prestige in this way.
The fullest example of dress regulations is found in an inscription that organizes a religious
festival at a sacred grove near the site of Andania (CGRN 222 [IG V, 1 1390], 91 BCE or
23 CE). The extensive details about dress cover headwear for the initiation, modifications for the
procession, mimesis of the goddesses, how the officials deal with infractions and accessories for
the highest officials (lines 13–28, 177–9).28 This excerpt outlines the female attire for the initiation
(lines 16–20):

αἱ δὲ γυναῖκες μὴ διαφανῆ μηδὲ τὰ σαμεῖα ἐν τοῖς εἱματίοις πλατύτερα ἡμιδακτυλίου, καὶ αἱ/ μὲν ἰδιώτιες
ἐχόντω χιτῶνα λίνεον καὶ εἱμάτιον μὴ πλείονος ἄξια δραχμᾶν ἑκατόν, αἱ δὲ παῖδες καλάσηριν ἢ σιν-/
δονίταν καὶ εἱμάτιον μὴ πλείονος ἄξια μνᾶς, αἱ δὲ δοῦλαι καλάσηριν ἢ σινδονίταν καὶ εἱμάτιον μὴ
πλείονος ἄξια δρα-/χμᾶν πεντήκοντα· αἱ δὲ ἱεραί, αἱ μὲν γυναῖκες καλάσηριν ἢ ὑπόδυμα μὴ ἔχον
σκιὰς καὶ εἱμάτιον μὴ πλέονος ἄξια δύο/ μνᾶν, αἱ δὲ [παῖδε]ς καλάσηριν καὶ εἱμάτιον μὴ πλείονος ἄξια
δραχμᾶν ἑκατόν.

And the women [should wear] neither transparent clothes nor stripes on their himations more
than half a daktylos wide. And the free adult women must wear a linen chitōn and himation
worth in total no more than 100 drachmas, the girls a kalasiris or a sindonites and a himation
worth in total no more than one mina, and the female slaves a kalasiris or a sindonites and
a himation worth in total no more than 50 drachmas. Of the sacred women, the adults must
wear a kalasiris or a hypoduma without decorations and a himation worth in total no more
than two minas, and the girls a kalasiris and himation worth in total no more than 100
drachmas.

Although what may leap out from this passage are the prices and numbers of garments, similar
to the features of the regulation of funerary shrouds at Iulis, it is essential to recognize the
complicated purposes of those designations. There is an emphasis on the visual manifestation of
social categories and the communication of multiple layers of identity: gender, age, free versus
slave status and religious authority. The names and descriptions of the garments are as valuable
as the evidence from the dedication lists for identifying types of dress items, but the context
is far broader and allows us to see how items were combined and who wore what. The rules

27
For the dress regulations in priesthood sales at Kos, see Stéphanie Paul, ‘Roles of Civic Priests in Hellenistic Cos’, in Cities
and Priests: Cult Personnel in Asia Minor and the Aegean Islands from the Hellenistic to Imperial Period, ed. Marietta Horster
and Anja Klöckner (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2013), 262–5. For the relationship of the dress regulations to the issue of ‘priests’
dress’, see Laura Gawlinski, ‘“A Religion without Priests”? Dressing the Dynamic Identities of Greek Religious Personnel’,
in Outward Appearance vs. Inward Significance: Addressing Identities through Attire in the Ancient World, ed. Alexandra
Hallmann (Chicago: The Oriental Institute, forthcoming).
28
For these regulations, see Laura Gawlinski, The Sacred Law of Andania: A New Text with Commentary (Berlin: De Gruyter,
2012), 107–34, 239. Text and translation are my own.
76 DRESS IN MEDITERRANEAN ANTIQUITY

provide additional qualifications about other aspects of dress, including cosmetics, hairstyles and
accessories like hats and shoes (lines 22–3). Regulations like this one offer a holistic picture of
dressed persons and their interactions, through which we can better reconstruct lived religious
experience.

CONCLUSION
In exploring topics like dress in the ancient world, it is of course ideal to be as interdisciplinary
as possible. Greek inscriptions have a particular role to play in that interdisciplinary exploration.
Inscribed lists of dedications and sales, stamps on loomweights and ritual regulations furnish
important evidence about production, garments and visual communication. They speak to
broader issues of gender, religion and the economy, and the ways in which these spheres were
intertwined.
 CHAPTER EIGHT

The Colours of Ancient

Greek Dress
CECILIE BRØNS

INTRODUCTION
Clothing can provide a wealth of information about different aspects of identity including gender,
ethnicity, age, social status and affiliation. One’s choice of garments and accessories and how one
wears them is thus a language to be deciphered,1 and the choice of colours can lead to further
insight. Although there have been numerous studies on ancient dress, the focus is rarely – with the
possible exception of purple – on the actual colours of these garments. That the textiles themselves,
as well as the colours, have in most cases disappeared from the archaeological record makes a study
of the colours of ancient Greek dress a double challenge. However, upon closer investigation,
there are several sources that can provide important information. This chapter will review these
different sources with a focus on archaeological textiles, ancient dyes and written sources, as well
as polychrome sculpture.

PRESERVED ARCHAEOLOGICAL TEXTILES

Due to their perishable nature, textiles are preserved in Greek contexts only in rare instances.2
Yet some evidence, almost all of which derives from funerary contexts, has been preserved in
the archaeological record.3 It is important to emphasize, however, that these preserved textiles
primarily consist of mineralized remains preserved on metal – so-called pseudomorphs.

I am very grateful to the Carlsberg Foundation, which has generously funded the research project ‘Sensing the Ancient
World: The Multiple Dimensions of Ancient Art’, of which this study forms part, as well as the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek
which houses the project. My deepest gratitude is also due to the Harvard Center for Hellenic Studies, where I was a fellow
when writing this article. Warm thanks are also due to my colleagues Signe Buccarella Hedegaard, for assisting with various
questions about ancient polychromy, and to Neil Stanford for assistance with the English language. All mistakes, however,
remain my own. The section on the temple inventory lists includes research from my monograph Gods and Garments.
Textiles in Greek Sanctuaries in the 7th to the 1st Centuries BC (Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2016).
1
See Roland Barthes, The Fashion System, trans. Matthew Ward and Richard Howard (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1990).
2
For a discussion of textiles in the ancient Egyptian context, see Bender Jørgensen, this volume.
3
Scientific research into Greek archaeological textiles did not truly begin until 2000 and therefore this is a relatively new
field of study and even now only limited published studies are available. See Yulie Spantidaki and Christophe Moulherat,
‘Greece’, in Textiles and Textile Production in Europe, ed. Margarita Gleba and Ulla Mannering (Oxford: Oxbow Books,
2012), 185.
78 DRESS IN MEDITERRANEAN ANTIQUITY

The earliest archaeological textiles from Greece date from the Bronze Age. Textiles from this
period have been recovered at Akrotiri,4 Chania,5 Mycenae,6 Pylona7 and Salamis.8 In addition,
recent excavations at Stamna in Aetolia have revealed textiles in three burials inside bronze
cauldrons.9 The textiles from Stamna include a wide range of qualities, from net-like structures
of coarse threads to very fine fabrics, and can be dated to the period from c. 1200 to 1000 BCE.10
From the Geometric period textiles have been recovered at Athens,11 Eretria12 and particularly
the necropolis of Lefkandi, from which we have several textile fragments (some of them in a
mineralized state preserved on metal artefacts) and a remarkably well-preserved shroud recovered
from the Heroon.13 A few textiles have been preserved in Archaic burial contexts from Corfu as
well as from a bronze urn from Vergina.14
The practice of cremation in Attica during the classical period has greatly contributed to the
preservation of textiles, which have especially been recovered inside funerary urns, including those at
Kalyvia, Kamatero and Maroussi. Particularly interesting are the textiles from Koropi. One of these
attests to the use of embroidery in gold or silver thread, although only the needle holes remain to
indicate the pattern of diamonds each enclosing a striding lion.15 Another important find is the textile
fragments from a bronze urn from a fifth-century burial at Kerameikos. The textiles are exceptionally
fine, one of them with embroidery.16 In addition, a piece of mineralized textile is preserved on an iron
spearhead from a fifth-century grave-group from Karabournaki, Northern Greece.17
Textile remains from the Hellenistic period have been recovered at different sites: at Demetrias,
two mineralized textiles were discovered in a bronze urn and several finds have been made in

4
Twenty-five carbonized fragments of a textile of flax was recovered from pillar pit 52. Another textile fragment made of
plant fibres was recovered from pillar pit 68a and from pillar pit 1b was recovered fragments of a tabby made of plant fibres;
see Spantidaki and Moulherat, ‘Greece’, 187–9.
5
A carbonized band of linen, nettle and goat hair. Archaeological Museum of Chania, inv. nos. GSE 84 Misc17; see
Spantidaki and Moulherat, ‘Greece’, 189.
6
A linen tabby preserved on three metal weapons recovered from Tomb N of Circle B in Mycenae. National Museum of
Athens, inv. nos. 8591 and 8592 (daggers) and 8589 (spearhead); see Spantidaki and Moulherat, ‘Greece’, 192.
7
Three ceramic vessels from Tomb 1 of the Mycenaean cemetery of Pylona on Rhodes preserved remains of calcified
textiles, possibly of linen; see Spantidaki and Moulherat, ‘Greece’, 192.
8
Linen textiles were recovered from one of the tombs in the Mycenaean necropolis of Agia Kyriaki on Salamis; see Spantidaki
and Moulherat, ‘Greece’, 192–4.
9
L. Kolonas et al., ‘Heirs from the Loom? Funerary Textiles from Stamna (Aitolia, Greece). A Preliminary Analysis’, in
Hesperos. The Aegean Seen from the West, ed. M. Fotiadis, R. Laffineur, Y. Lolos and A. Vlachopoulos, Aegaeum 41
(Leuven: Peeters, 2017), 533–44.
10
Kolonas et al., ‘Heirs from the Loom?’
11
Mineralized textile remains from an Attic amphora, National Archaeological Museum of Athens, inv. no. 21267; see
Spantidaki and Moulherat, ‘Greece’, 194.
12
Fragments of a linen textile recovered from a bronze urn, Eretria Archaeological Museum, inv. no. unknown; see
Spantidaki and Moulherat, ‘Greece’, 194.
13
Spantidaki and Moulherat, ‘Greece’, 194, tables 7.2 and 7.3.
14
Spantidaki and Moulherat, ‘Greece’, 194.
15
Victoria and Albert Museum, nos. T.220 to B-1953, dated to 500 to 440 BCE. See Kerstin Droß-Krüpe and Annette
Paetz Gen Schieck, ‘Unravelling the Tangled Threads of Ancient Embroidery’, in Greek and Roman Textiles and Dress. An
Interdisciplinary Anthology, ed. Mary Harlow and Marie-Louise Nosch (Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2014), 207–35.
16
Christina Margariti et al., ‘Recent Analyses of the Excavated Textile Find from Grave 35 HTR73, Kerameikos Cemetery,
Athens, Greece’, Journal of Archaeological Science 38, no. 3 (2011): 522–7.
17
Jo Cutler and Margarita Gleba, ‘Classical Textile Remains in the British Museum Collection’, in Purpureae Vestes V.
Ancient Textiles, Basketry, and Dyes in the Ancient Mediterranean World, ed. J. Ortiz et al. (Universitat de València:
València, 2016), 45.
THE COLOURS OF ANCIENT GREEK DRESS 79

Attica, many in the form of textile traces on metal artefacts.18 The most spectacular Hellenistic
textile find in Greece is that from the so-called Tomb of Philip II at Vergina, dated to the fourth
century BCE. This example is rectangular in shape and made in the tapestry technique with purple
wool and gold thread.19
Only a very few of these preserved textile remains show any signs of colour or dyes. One of
the Bronze Age textiles from Stamna has broad, coloured bands of purple-dyed weft threads. High
performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) analyses identified the colourant as murex dye (on
HPLC, see below).20 From the Archaic period, two of the textiles from Corfu are made with purple
wool.21 From the classical period, four textile fragments retain traces of purple colour. Analyses
of the textiles from Kalyvia and Maroussi have identified the use of murex purple dye.22 Two
other examples from Kerameikos have similar traces of purple colour.23 The dye is used for purple
stripes near the selvedge of the cloth, providing us with insight into how the ancient textiles were
decorated. Two textile fragments from Koropi have preserved traces of colour consisting of black-
dyed threads inserted into the cloth.24 We thus have very little direct archaeological evidence of the
colours of ancient Greek dress, and we must therefore seek other sources.

ANCIENT DYES
The dyeing of textiles began at a very early date: some of the earliest evidence includes dyed textiles
from Çatalhöyük in Turkey, dating from the fourth millennium BCE. However, we can generally
prove very little about ancient dyes, and much of what we know is only circumstantial: botanical,
zoological and geological evidence and chemical analyses have identified potential dyestuffs and
colourants available in antiquity, although this does not necessarily mean that they were used. For
example, heaps of murex shells or the famous wall paintings from Thera depicting the gathering
of crocus flowers are possible attestations of the acquisition of dyestuffs. Yet it is in fact hard to
prove that these depictions reflect materials exclusively used for dyeing textiles and not simply food
sources or for other purposes, such as pigments.25
Where textiles are dyed, detailed information on the dye composition, and therefore on the
original appearance of the ancient textiles, is obtainable via HPLC. This method has to date made
possible the identification of the largest number of colourants in textiles but requires sampling.26

18
See Spantidaki and Moulherat, ‘Greece’, table 7.7.
19
Spantidaki and Moulherat, ‘Greece’, 196; S. Drougou, ‘The Cloth from Vergina. Preliminary Observations’, in Ametos,
Festschrift in Honour of Professor M. Andronikos Part I (Thessaloniki: Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, 1987).
20
Kolonas et al., ‘Heirs from the Loom?’, 535–6.
21
Spantidaki and Moulherat, ‘Greece’, 195.
22
C. Moulherat and Y. Spantidaki, ‘A Study of Textile Remains from the 5th Century BC Discovered in Attica’, in Ancient
Textiles: Production, Craft and Society, ed. C. Gillis and ML. Nosch (Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2007), 165; Spantidaki and
Moulherat, ‘Greece’, 195.
23
C. Margariti et al., ‘Identification of Purple Dye from Molluscs on an Excavated Textile by Non-destructive Analytical
Techniques’, Dyes and Pigments 96 (2013): 779.
24
Stella Spantidaki, ‘Colour and Textiles in Classical Attica’, in Purpureae Vestes V, 212.
25
Elizabeth Barber, Prehistoric Textiles: The Development of Cloth in the Neolithic and Bronze Ages with Special Reference
to the Aegean (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991), 223.
26
Frederica Pozzi et al., ‘Multi-technique Characterization of Dyes in Ancient Kaitag Textiles from Caucasus’, Archaeological
and Anthropological Sciences 4, no. 3 (2012): 185.
80 DRESS IN MEDITERRANEAN ANTIQUITY

Since the preserved archaeological textiles are so few and fragmentary, the performance of such
chemical dye analyses is rarely an option. Recently developed methods, such as multi-spectral
imaging (MSI), are potential tools to identify dyestuffs without requiring sampling.27 But again,
such examinations obviously require preserved textiles with visible colours, which are a rarity in
Greek archaeological contexts. Nevertheless, although we often do not have clear archaeological
evidence of the use of dyes, in many instances their use can be attested to in the written sources. By
combining this evidence with the botanical and limited archaeological evidence, we can establish
that some dyes must certainly have been used, of which a few will be mentioned below.

ANIMAL DYES
The most famous dye of antiquity is the so-called Royal purple or Tyrian purple. It is so far
the only dye attested among the preserved Greek textiles. This dye is exclusively derived from
animal sources, more precisely molluscs. Several species of molluscs were used in antiquity to
produce purple dye: two of them are murexes, Bolinus brandaris (=Murex brandaris) and Hexaplex
trunculus (=Murex trunculus), and one is a type of rock shell, Stramonita haemastoma (=Thais
haemastoma). All three species were abundant in the Mediterranean Sea. The dye itself derives from
the tiny hypobranchial gland situated diagonally opposite the aperture of the shell.28 For the dyeing
process immense numbers of glands extracted from fresh molluscs are required. The production of
purple dye was thus generally a labourious process, and the final product was therefore extremely
costly.29 Knowledge of purple dyeing processes was lost during Late Antiquity or the early Medieval
period but was rediscovered in 1684.30 Since then, many scholars have conducted experiments to
determine the exact methods of dye extraction, the dyeing process and the range of colours that
can be obtained from this type of dye. These experiments have shown that the outcome of purple
dyeing is never exactly the same. The colour of the dyed fibre depends on whether it is exposed
to sunlight, the number of glands used, the freshness of the molluscs, the species of mollusc,31the
dyeing process and many other factors. This means that mollusc purple dye can provide a wide
variety of colours, ranging from red to violet to blue.32

27
Joanne Dyer et al., ‘A Multispectral Imaging Approach Integrated into the Study of Late Antique Textiles from Egypt’,
PLOS ONE 13, no. 10 (2018). Online: https://doi.org/10/1371/journal.pone.0204699
28
I. Kanold and R. Haubrichs, ‘Tyrian Purple Dying: An Experimental Approach with Fresh murex trunculus’, in Purpureae
Vestes II. Vestidos, textiles y tintes. Estudios sobre la producción de bienes de consume en la Antigüedad, ed. C. Alfaro and
L. Karali (València: Universitat de València, 2008), 253.
29
L. Karali and F. Megaloudi, ‘Purple Dyes in the Environment and History of the Aegean: A Short Review’, in Purpureae
Vestes II, 182.
30
R. J. H. Clark et al., ‘Indigo, Woad, and Tyrian Purple: Important Vat Dyes from Antiquity to the Present’, Endeavour 17,
no. 4 (1993): 196; William Cole, ‘A Letter from Mr. William Cole of Bristol, to the Phil. Society of Oxford; Containing
His Observations on the Purple Fish’ (1685).
31
Bolinus brandaris and Stramonita haemastoma produces a violet-red purple, while Hexaplex trunculus produces a violet-
blue purple. Dominique Cardon, Natural Dyes. Sources, Tradition, Technology and Science (London: Archetype Books,
2007), 579–80.
32
A. V. Levides, ‘Why Did Plato Not Suffer of Color Blindness? An Interpretation of the Passage on Color Blending of
Timaeus’, in Color in Ancient Greece: The Role of Color in Ancient Greek Art and Architecture 700–31 BC, ed. M. A.
Tiverios and D. S. Tsiafakis (Thessaloniki: Aristotelio Panepistēmo Thessalonikēs, Hidryma Meletōn Lamprakē, 2002), 13.
For further studies on purple dye, see Hedvig Enegren and Francesco Meo, ed., Treasures from the Sea: Sea Silk and Shellfish
Purple Dye in Antiquity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017).
THE COLOURS OF ANCIENT GREEK DRESS 81

Another very costly dye is kermes. This is obtained from a small insect called Kermococcus
vermilio of the family Kermesidiae, which lives exclusively on the Kermes oak (Quercus coccifera)
native to the Mediterranean region.33 It produced a brilliant and colour fast dye and is said to be
the source of the most highly prized and expensive red dye that has ever existed, known in the
medieval West as ‘scarlet’.34 It is mentioned by several ancient authors including Theophrastus,
Pausanias, Dioscurides and Pliny35 as well as in the Hebrew Bible (denoted by the terms karmīl and
tōlaʿat šānī).36 Direct evidence of this dye has been found in a very early Neolithic cave burial in
France37 and in the burial towers at Palmyra.38

PLANT DYES
A wealth of dyes was obtainable from plants, fruits, as well as lichens, barks and fungi. The most
renowned ancient plant dye was saffron, made from the dried stigmas of the crocus flower (crocus
sativus). The production process used with saffron is very labour-intensive and the resulting dyestuff
is therefore expensive.39 Saffron is a direct dye, light- as well as water-fast and an extract of the
dried stigmas in boiling water will rapidly dye fibres yellow or orange even without a mordant,
the intensity depending on the amount of colourant used.40 Examples of ancient, archaeological
textiles dyed with saffron are generally extremely rare, which possibly indicates that saffron was a
rare textile dye or simply that it is difficult to detect.41
Among the blue dye plants, woad (Isatis tinctoria) was probably the most commonly used during
the first millennium BCE in Greece. Isatis was the Greek name for the plant, borrowed from
Hebrew and mentioned in the Talmud attesting to its use from an early period onwards.42 The use
of woad for dyeing is also attested in documents from the Pharaonic and Ptolemaic periods, as well
as in the Stockholm papyri. Furthermore, analyses of organic remains from caves near Marseilles
have revealed that woad was already used to dye textile fibres from the Neolithic period.43
The most widespread of the red plant dyes is madder (Rubia tinctorum L.), which in Latin
means ‘dyer’s red’. Madder, obtained from the roots of the plant, played a prominent role in

33
Red dye was also extracted from the bodies of insects belonging to the family of Coccoidae. The most famous is cochineal –
a New World insect that lives on cacti. Other types are Polish grains or St. John’s Blood, which live on the roots of certain
northern European plants. Another variant was used for millennia in an area at the foot of Mount Ararat, where an insect
like cochineal lives on certain types of grass; see Barber, Prehistoric Textiles, 231; R. Forbes, Studies in Ancient Technology,
102.
34
Cardon, Natural Dyes, 614.
35
Theophrastus. Hist. plant. 3.16; Pausanias Descr. 10.36.2; Dioscurides, Mat. Med. 4.48; Pliny, Nat. 9.65; 16.12; 21.22;
22.3; 24.4.
36
Agnes Korn and Warming, ‘Armenian karmir, Sogdian karmīr ‘red’, Hebrew karmīl and the Armenian Scale Insect Dye in
Antiquity’, in Textile Terminologies from the Orient to the Mediterranean and Europe, 1000 BC to 1000 AD, ed. Salvatore
Gaspa, Cécile Michel and Marie-Louise Nosch (Lincoln, NE: Zea Books, 2017).
37
Barber, Prehistoric Textiles, 230.
38
Cardon, Natural Dyes, 616.
39
Jo Day, ‘Counting Threads. Saffron in Aegean Bronze Age Writing and Society’, Oxford Journal of Archaeology 30, no. 4
(2011): 339.
40
Day, ‘Counting Threads’, 365; Cardon, Natural Dyes, 304.
41
Cardon, Natural Dyes, 304–5. A rare example is the linen and wool textiles recovered in Israel from the Cave of Letters.
The textiles date to 132 to 135 CE. For further discussion, see especially the chapter by Katie Turner in this volume.
42
See b. Šabb. 68a.
43
Cardon, Natural Dyes, 367, 374.
82 DRESS IN MEDITERRANEAN ANTIQUITY

dyeing during antiquity. The earliest example of textiles dyed with madder is from Egypt from the
Eighteenth Dynasty (c. 1350 BCE). In Mesopotamia madder is mentioned in an Akkadian text from
1900 BCE by the name hurratu, thus attesting its early use.44 It is also recorded in several Linear B
texts by the name po-ni-ki-jo45 as well as in several Assyrian texts.46 Another important ancient red
plant dye is safflower (Carthamus tinctorius).47 The plant is already mentioned in Linear B (ka-na-
ko)48 and in later Greek sources (knekos), attesting its early use in the Mediterranean.49
Finally, minerals, particularly ochres, could be used for colouring textiles, sometimes simply by
painting them. This illustrates an interesting overlap with pigments for painting, also relevant in
the case of madder and murex, for example, which were used for dyes as well as lakes for painting.
These are of course only a few examples of the dyestuffs used in ancient Greece, and many more
options have probably been available. Yet they illustrate that a wealth of colours was possible,
obtainable from different dyestuffs and mixtures of these.

WHITE TEXTILES, BLEACHING AND POLISHING

White was not necessarily the natural colour of sheep’s and goat’s wool. The colour of the coat
changed with the domestication of sheep: the coats of wild sheep are brown, while a domesticated
sheep’s coat is black, grey, spotted or (the rarest) white.50 The natural pigmentation of wool could
thus range from yellowish white to shades of dark brown and grey. Linen fibres contain natural
pigments, which in their natural colours fall in the blonde, cream to grey range and which can be
enhanced or modified during fibre processing, since linen bleaches well.
The natural sheen of linen textiles could be enhanced by ‘polishing’.51 This is the case, for
example, with the so-called amorgina textiles, recorded in ancient texts.52 These textiles seem to
be related to olive oil extraction and olive oil residue. From the Bronze Age onwards, fabrics were
thus treated with olive oil in order to accentuate the effect of transparency of very fine threads as
well as to make the textiles softer and shinier.53
Scarcely anything is known of the art of bleaching as practised in ancient Greece. One of the few
ancient authors to mention the practice is Pliny:

44
Cardon, Natural Dyes, 119.
45
Marie-Louise Nosch, ‘Textile Crops and Textile Labour in Mycenaean Greece’, in Land, Territory and Population in the
Ancient Greece: Institutional and Mythical Aspects, ed. Marta Oller et al. (Mering: Utopica Verlag, 2017), 22, 24.
46
See Salvatore Gaspa, Textiles in the Neo-Assyrian Empire: A Study of Terminology (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2018).
47
Cardon, Natural Dyes, 55.
48
Nosch, ‘Textile Crops and Textile Labour’, 22, 25.
49
For example, Theophrastus, Hist. plant. 6.1.3; 6.4.5; 1.13.3; Caus. plant. 5.18.4; Galen, Nat. Fac. 1.13; Hippocrates,
Acut. 64.
50
Catherine Breniquet, ‘The Archaeology of Wool in Early Mesopotamia: Sources, Methods, Perspectives’, in Wool Economy
in the Ancient Near East and the Aegean from the Beginnings of Sheep Husbandry to Institutional Textile Industry, colloque
ESF 6-8 nov 2012, Nanterre, ed. C. Breniquet and C. Michel, Ancient Textile Series 17 (Oxford: Oxbow, 2013), 55.
51
Liza Cleland, Glenys Davies and Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones, Greek and Roman Dress from A to Z (Oxford and New York:
Routledge, 2007).
52
For example Aristophanes, Lys. 150; Plato, Ep. 363a.4; Aeschines, Tim. 97.8; Antiphanes, Fr. 151.See also Stella
Spantidaki, ‘Textile Production in Iron Age Greece: The Case of the Amorgina Textiles’, in Origini XL. Prehistory and
Protohistory of Ancient Civilizations, ed. M. Gleba and R. Laurito (Rome: Gangemi Editore, 2017), 293–303.
53
Spantidaki, ‘Colour and Textiles’. Oily and shiny textiles are mentioned, for instance, in Homer: ‘And from the closely
woven fabrics the soft olive oil drips down’ (Od. 7.107 [Murray]). Hippocrates recommends wearing oiled garments during
summer (Hippocrates, Vict. salubr. 3.6).
THE COLOURS OF ANCIENT GREEK DRESS 83

There is another kind of wild poppy, known as ‘heraclion’ by some persons, and as ‘aphron’ by
others. The leaves of it, when seen from a distance, have all the appearance of sparrows; the root lies
on the surface of the ground, and the seed has exactly the colour of foam. This plant is used for the
purpose of bleaching linen cloths in summer.54

Theophrastus of Eresos also attributed bleaching qualities to a plant called Herakleia, which he
compares to the plant soap-wort.55 Soap-wort, Saponaria officinalis in Latin or strouthos in Greek,
is not a dye plant in the strictest sense but was used for cleaning and for whitening or bleaching
linen.56 Other methods of bleaching included recipes with bleaching agents such as salt, potash,
vinegar or ammonia.57
More is known about bleaching from ancient Egypt. Middle Kingdom paintings depict cloth
being wetted beside a river and rubbed with natron or potash, then beaten over a stone or wood
base and rinsed in flowing water, before being bleached in the sun. In the New Kingdom linen was
sometimes boiled with potash in a vat to bleach it.58 The same method of bleaching was likely to have
been used in ancient Greece. Wool was not bleached in the same manner as linen, since this method
would ruin the fibres, but wool fibres are ideal for dyeing because they take dyes very well. Linen
is much more difficult to dye than wool, which makes it unlikely that brightly coloured garments
were made from this fibre.59 (We do, however, have examples of dyed linen in the archaeological
record, so this possibility cannot be wholly excluded.60) It is probable, however, that linen was used
primarily in its natural colours or bleached and only rarely dyed – and thus an ideal choice for white
garments, whereas wool would be the obvious choice for dyed garments. White textiles appear to
have required a lot of work to obtain (and maintain), possibly just as much as dyed garments.61

GOLD TEXTILES
Although not specifically a colour, gold was used for embellishing textiles. This could be in the form
of appliqués, sewn onto garments, such as the ones recovered from burials from the sixth century
BCE at Pella.62 Gold could also be used in the form of bands, sewn onto the textiles, as illustrated
by the finds in the tomb of ‘the Lady of Aigai’, which revealed several gold bands, originally
decorating her funeral garments, although this evidence obviously does not necessarily indicate that
this form of decoration was used for garments worn in life.63 The textiles themselves could also be

54
Pliny, Nat. 20.79 (Bostock).
55
Theophrastus, Hist. plant. 9.12.5.
56
Peder Flemestad, ‘Theophrastus of Eresos on Plants for Dyeing and Tanning’, in Purpureae Vestes IV: Textiles and Dyes in
Antiquity, ed. C. Alfaro et al. (València: Universitat de València, 2014), 206.
57
Spantidaki, ‘Colour and Textiles’, 214.
58
Joan Allgrove-McDowell, ‘Ancient Egypt, 5000–332 BC’, in The Cambridge History of Western Textiles, ed. David Jenkins
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 26.
59
Mireille Lee, Body, Dress, and Identity in Ancient Greece (New York: Cambridge, 2015), 95.
60
Jenny Balfour-Paul, Indigo in the Arab World (London and New York: Routledge, 1997), 6.
61
On the significance of white garments, see chapters by Maier and Batten, this volume.
62
Pavlos Chrystomou and Anastasia Chrystomou, ‘The Lady of Archontiko’, in Princesses of the Mediterranean in the Dawn
of History, ed. Nikolaos Chr. Stampolides and Mimika Giannopoulou, trans. Maria Xanthopoulou (Athens: Museum of
Cycladic Art, 2012), 370, 378. See also British Museum, inv. GR 1977.9-10.15; GR 1976.5-17.11.
63
Angeliki Kottaridi, ‘The Lady of Aigai’, in Alexander the Great. Treasures from an Epic Era of Hellenism, ed. D. Pandermalis
(New York: A. S. Onassi Foundation, 2004), 143; Angeliki Kottaridi, ‘The Lady of Aigai’, in Princesses of the Mediterranean,
417, 431.
84 DRESS IN MEDITERRANEAN ANTIQUITY

made with gold: archaeological finds illustrate that gold could be employed in different ways for
textiles – it could be woven alone, interwoven with other material (as the famous gold and purple
textile from Vergina64) or used for embroidery. The gold thread itself was usually made by twisting
thin gold wire or gold strips around a fibre core (silk, wool, vegetal fibre or animal gut)65 or as so-
called lamellae, made from hammered gold foil cut into fine strips. Such gold strips, dated to the
fourth century BCE, have been recovered at the Mausoleum at Halikarnassos.66
The use of gold garments is confirmed by ancient written sources, the earliest being Homer, who
describes Athena as wearing an aegis with tassels woven of gold67 and in the Odyssey he describes
a nymph wearing a white garment and a girdle of gold.68 Other examples include Herodotus’
description of the linen corselet given by Amasis to Athena Lindia on Rhodes, which was decorated
with gold and cotton.69

COLOURS OF DRESS IN THE WRITTEN SOURCES

Many ancient Greek written sources provide information on the colours of dress. However,
it is important to keep in mind that there are several methodological challenges regarding the
interpretation of ancient colour terms. Among the most important is that it is often impossible
to make a literal translation from one language to another, in this case from ancient Greek to
English, since texture, size and shape are not always separable from colour in ancient Greek, and
it is not always clear what counts as a colour term and what does not.70 Ancient Greek colour
terms were often at the junction of several cognitive domains – colour, light, movement, mental
states and so on – which English usually keeps distinct.71 Furthermore, colour was not a static,
objective thing: it was a fluid, subjective, interactive unit of value and meaning,72 which makes an
unequivocal translation into a language such as English difficult or even impossible. Regardless of
these challenges, written sources, literary as well as epigraphical, provide important knowledge
concerning the range of colours for ancient textiles.
One of the most significant sources dealing with ancient Greek dress are the so-called temple
inventories. The term generally refers to lists of votive offerings that were kept in the temple
treasuries. They have been found in several regions of the Greek world and are dated from the
fifth century BCE to the second century CE,73 but the great majority of inventories with references

64
Margarita Gleba, ‘“Auratae vestes”: Gold Textiles in the Ancient Mediterranean’, in Purpureae Vestes II, 65; M. Andronikos,
Vergina: The Royal Tombs (Athens, 1984), 164, fig. 140.
65
Gleba, ‘“Auratae vestes”’, 68.
66
Kristian Jeppesen, The Maussolleion at Halikarnassos. Vol. 4. The Quadrangle. The Foundations of the Maussolleion
and Its Sepulchral Compartments (Aarhus: Aarhus University Press, 2000), 124–40, nos. 40, 48, 61, 66, 88; Bundgaard
Rasmussen, ‘Gold Ornaments from the Mausoleum at Halikarnassos’, in The Art of the Greek Goldsmith, ed. D. Williams
(London: British Museum Press, 1998), 66–72.
67
Homer, Il. 2.530.
68
Homer, Od. 10.540-545.
69
Herodotus, Hist. 3.47.
70
John Lyons, ‘The Vocabulary of Color with Particular Reference to Ancient Greek and Classical Latin’, in The Language
of Color in the Mediterranean, ed. Alexander Borg (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1999), 39, 42, 44.
71
Mark Bradley, Colour and Meaning in Ancient Rome, Cambridge Classical Studies (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2009), 17.
72
Bradley, Colour and Meaning, xi.
73
M. Scott, ‘Displaying Lists of What Is (Not) on Display: The Uses of Inventories in Greek Sanctuaries’, in Approaches to
Greek Religion: Acta Instituii Atheniensis Regni Suediai 21, ed. My Haysom and J. Wallensten (Stockholm: Svenska insitutet
in Athen, 2011), 240.
THE COLOURS OF ANCIENT GREEK DRESS 85

to textiles belong to the Hellenistic period. Some of them record textiles, illustrating their use
as offerings in the sanctuaries: the most important lists of offerings are the so-called Brauron
catalogues from the Athenian Acropolis, which record garments dedicated to the goddess Artemis
in her sanctuary at Brauron. The lists belong to the second half of the fourth century BCE.74
Another important example is the inventory from the Heraion on Samos, dated to 346/345
BCE, recording textiles dedicated to the goddess Hera.75 Preserved from the third century BCE
are an inventory of a temple at Tanagra76 and an inventory of the possessions of an unknown
deity at Thebes.77 From the second century BCE we have an inventory of the temple of Artemis
Kithōnē at Miletos.78 In addition, the Delian records of the hieropoioi and of the Athenian temple
administrators record several textiles (covering the period c. 367 to the 130s BCE),79 while the
inventories of the Treasurers of Athena only record a few.80
These inventories describe the colour of dedicated garments in relatively few instances, and,
if they do so, it usually relates to purple, which appears to have been the most important colour
to emphasize. Different terms are used to denote the colour purple in the inventories: halourgos,
porphyros and phoinix/phoinikos, all considered designations of the so-called Tyrian purple.81
Halourgos and its compound terms parhalourgos (‘with purple borders’) and meshalorgos (‘purple
in the middle’) are the most commonly used terms for purple; second is porphyros and its compound
terms periporphyros (‘with purple edges’) and parporphyros (‘with purple borders’); and third is
phoinix, which is used only twice, once in Brauron and once as a purple garment (phoinikis) in an
inventory from Delos.82

74
IG II2 1514–30. For a thorough study and English translation of the Brauron Clothing Catalogues, see Liza Cleland, The
Brauron Clothing Catalogues: Text, Analysis, Glossary and Translation. BAR-IS 1428 (Oxford: John and Erica Hedges,
2005) as well as Tullia Linders, Studies in the Treasure Records of Artemis Brauronia Found in Athens (Stockholm: Svenska
Institutet I Athen, 1972). For Brauron, see also Gawlinski, this volume.
75
IG XII 6, 1, 261; D. Ohly ‘Die Göttin und ihre Basis’, Athenische Mitteilungen 68 (1953): 24–50; Brøns, Gods and
Garments, appendix 2.3.
76
SEG 43 212; T. Reinach, ‘Un temple élevé par les femmes de Tanagra’, REG 12 (1899): 53–112; Duane W. Roller,
Tanagran Studies I. Sources and Documents on Tanagra (Amsterdam: J.C. Gieben, 1989), 100–8; Brøns, Gods and Garments,
appendix 2.1
77
IG VII 2421; Roesch ‘Les femmes et la fortune en Béotie’, in La femme dans le monde Méditerranéen, ed. Anne-Marie
Vérilhac (Lyon: Maison de l’Orient et Presses Universitaires de Lyon, 1985), 71–84; Brøns, Gods and Garments, appendix
2.2.
78
Peter Herrmann, Wolfgang Günther and Norbert Ehrhardt, Inschriften von Milet 6.3, no. 1357 (Berlin: De Gruyter,
2006); Wolfgang Günther, ‘“Vieux et inutilisable” dans un inventaire inédit de Milet’, in Comptes et inventaires dans la Cité
grecque, ed. Denis Knoepfler (Génève: Université de Neuchâtel, Faculté des lettres, 1988), 221; Brøns, Gods and Garments,
appendix 2.4.
79
Brøns, Gods and Garments, 38.
80
The inventories of the Parthenon temple include items of clothing: a garment called a xystis, a coarse linen chitōn (chitōn
stuppinos) IG II2, 1414, 26; a purple-dyed chitōniskos IG II2, 1475, 5; something made of fine cloth (sindon) IG II2 1478,
17; corselets cuirasses (thorakes) IG II2, 1388, 19; belts/girdles (zonia) IG II2, 1424a, 55; two boxes with footwear are also
recorded IG II2 1424a, 336–7; IG II2 1425, 269–70; IG II2 1428, 222–3; a purple mitra IG II2 1448, 4; and an inventory
from 320 BCE lists himatia, chitōniskoi, chitōnes, kekryphaloi and grey-and-white wool in baskets IG II2 1469, 124–40. For
more on the temple inventories and the textiles recorded in them, see Brøns, Gods and Garments, 33–144.
81
These terms unfortunately do not provide information on the particular purple hue, and they can thus refer to a range
of colours, from red, through purple to violet or blue. See also Hartmut Blum, Purpur als Statussymbol in der griechischen
Welt, Antiquitas 47 (Bonn: R. Habelt, 1998), 20–41.
82
For purple garments in the inventories, see Cecilie Brøns, ‘Sacred Colours? Purple Textiles in Greek Sanctuaries in the
Second Half of the 1st Millennium BC’, in Treasures of the Sea, 109–16.
86 DRESS IN MEDITERRANEAN ANTIQUITY

Halourgos and its associated terms are recorded twenty-seven times in the Brauron catalogues
for different types of garments (chitōniskoi, xenikē, chitōnion, himatia and a chitōn) and eight times
in the Samos catalogues (chitōniskos, paralassis, proslemma, perizōma, kekryphalos, Lydian chitōnes
and chlandia). The term is used twice in the inventories of the Athena Temple on the Athenian
Acropolis (a mitra and a chitōniskos), twice in the inventories from Delos (two grey himatia with
purple borders and a chitōnion) and twice in the inventory from Miletos.83
Porphyros and its compound terms are not recorded at Brauron, but they occur five times in
the inventory from Tanagra (four chitōnes and a linen garment), seven times in the inventory
from Thebes, eight times in the inventories from Delos and twice in Miletos.84 These descriptions
include different garment types dyed completely purple and those with purple borders or edges.
For example, white himatia with purple borders are relatively common among the dedicated
garments. These colours seem to have been important features of this garment type, but they were
not necessarily defining characteristics. Therefore, they were probably important mainly in contrast
to more common features possessed by the himation in everyday use.85
Scarlet – kermes – denoted by the term kokkinos is recorded only once in these inventories, in
the inventory from Miletos, in a description of a ribbon. Neither is the term particularly common
in other written sources, where it is rarely used to describe the colours of garments.86
Blue is a rarely recorded colour in the inventories, and it occurs only three times in the inventory
from Samos, where it is used to describe the colour of the edges of Lydian chitōnes. Two different
terms are used: isatis and hyakinthos.87 Isatis denoted the colour blue, since the term derives from
the Greek name isatis for woad (isatis tinctoria).88 Hyakinthos is originally the name of a violet-
coloured flower or semi-precious stone and is commonly thought to describe the colour blue.89 It
is also used to describe the colours of textiles in a few written sources, for example, a Babylonian
curtain for the temple of Jerusalem,90 a chitōn,91 a woven band92 or dyed sheep skins.93
The term leukos is translated as white, bright or clear, and thus not simply signifying pure white
but possibly also other light colours94 or perhaps the sheen effect of polishing. Leukos is a relatively
common colour term in the inventories. At Tanagra, white is the colour of four garments; at Delos
white is specified in connection with a wool garment; and white is recorded twice at Samos for a
himation and the edges of a Lydian chitōn.95 At Brauron, c. 20, garments are described as white.

83
Brøns, Gods and Garments, table 20. For the term halourgos, see Cecilie Brøns and Kerstin Droß-Krüpe, ‘The Colour
Purple? Reconsidering the Greek Word halourgos and Its Relation to Ancient Textiles’, Textile History (2018): 1–22.
Online: Doi: 10.1080/00404969.20181438237.
84
Brøns, Gods and Garments, table 21.
85
Cleland, The Brauron Clothing Catalogues, 68.
86
For example, Herodotus, Hist. 6.19; Heb. 9.19 (scarlet wool); Plutarch. Fab. 15 (scarlet tunic); Arrian, Epict. diss.3.22.10;
4.11.34; P.Holm. 21.41/42; LXX Exod. 25.4.
87
Brøns, Gods and Garments, table 24.
88
Michel Pastoureau, Blue: The History of a Color (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2018), 16. Hippocrates, Ulc. 11;
Theophrastus, Sens. 77; Dsc. 2.184; Pliny, Nat. His. 20.59;
89
Blum, Purpur als Statussymbol, 37–8. The flower was not used for dyeing. The term, when used in relation to textiles,
refers only to the optical experience.
90
Josephus, B.J. 5.5.4.
91
Arrian, Tact. 34.6.
92
LXX Exod. 28.8.
93
Josephus, A.J. 3.6.1.
94
Cleland et al., Greek and Roman Dress, 211.
95
Brøns, Gods and Garments, table 22.
THE COLOURS OF ANCIENT GREEK DRESS 87

At Brauron, the chitōn is one of the few major garments for which white is not recorded. In fact,
of the garment types overall, the chitōn has the lowest proportion of described pattern decoration,
and it is never described in terms of base colour. Cleland therefore argues that this implies that the
chitōn typically had the neutral colour of its fibres, such as white, grey or beige.96 Yet, as shown, the
inventory from Samos records a Lydian chitōn with white edges, which might argue against such
an interpretation.
Yellow is another quite common colour in the inventories, and it is denoted by different terms.
One term for yellow is mēlinos, which can be translated as ‘apple-coloured’ or ‘quince-yellow’.97
At Brauron the term is used once for a chitōniskos, once at Thebes for a girl’s chitōn and at Tanagra
for two chitōnes, an open garment and ‘a yellow’. A second term is ‘broom-yellow’ (thapsinos),
which is recorded only once in the Brauron catalogues for a chitōnion. Thapsinos derives from
thapsos or fustic (Cotinus coggyria = Rhus cotinus), a bright yellow dye, imported from the island
of Thapsos.98A third term for yellow in the inventories is krokōtos, which derives from krokos, the
Greek word for the crocus flower, implying its derivation from saffron and thus indicative of saffron-
dyed garments. The term krokōtos is recorded fifteen times in the Brauron catalogues but only once
at Tanagra.99 The term is used to describe the colour of garments, in Brauron for two chitōniskoi
and a tryphēma. It is, however, not only an adjective but also a noun for garments – a krokōtos.100
Krokōtoi are known from ancient literary sources too. For example, Aristophanes records that
little girls at the age of ten wore/shed a saffron robe (krokōtos) when performing a specific rite for
Artemis Brauronia in her sanctuary on the eastern coast of Attica.101 Perhaps the saffron-coloured
garments recorded in the Brauron catalogues are these specific garments worn by the young female
initiates. A saffron-coloured garment is also recorded in the inventory from Tanagra, probably
for Demeter and Kore. This suggests that saffron-dyed garments (krokōtoi) are not exclusively
related to Artemis, Brauron and the arktoi. Nevertheless, the saffron colour might have had special
ritual connotations, underlined by the fact that there are examples of the use of saffron-coloured
garments for divinities in literary sources. For example, in Euripides’s tragedy Hecuba, the peplos
offered to Athena at Athens is described as saffron-coloured.102 The term krokopeplos is often
used in myth and epic to refer to nymphs and goddesses, for example in the Iliad, where Eos is
wearing a krokopeplos.103 Hesiod uses the epithet for Enyo, the goddess of war, and Telesto, one
of the Okeanides.104 Alcman provides another example when he describes the Muses as saffron-
robed.105 Also, exceptional men would don a saffron-dyed robe: Dionysos, for example, is said to
wear a krokōtos.106 Pindar depicts the newborn Herakles swaddled in saffron yellow cloth, and

96
Cleland, The Brauron Clothing Catalogues, 93.
97
LSJ s.v. mēlinos.
98
Cleland, The Brauron Clothing Catalogues, 127. See also Lydia Pelletier-Michaud, ‘Évolution du sens des termes de
couleur et de leur traitement poétique: l’élégie romaine et ses modèles grecs’. (Doctoral diss., Université Laval, Québec,
2016), 308–21.
99
Brøns, Gods and Garments, table 23.
100
Cleland, The Brauron Clothing Catalogues, 97. As a noun, it is recorded eleven times in the Brauron catalogues.
101
Aristophanes, Lys. 641-647.
102
Euripides. Hec. 466-474.
103
Homer, Il. 8.1, 19.1, 23.226, 24.677.
104
Hesiod, Theog. 273 (Enyo), 358 (Telesto).
105
Alcman. 85A.
106
Athenaeus, Deipn. 5.198c; Aristophanes, Ran. 45-46.
88 DRESS IN MEDITERRANEAN ANTIQUITY

Dioskurides calls saffron the ‘blood of Herakles’.107 Krokōtos is also used to describe the garments
of mortal elite women: Aeschylos writes that Iphigenia wore a saffron garment.108 Other examples
appear in Euripides, where Antigone’s robe is saffron-coloured109 and in Aristophanes’ Lysistrata,
where Athenian women wear saffron-coloured garments.110 The description of the garments as
saffron-coloured might be connected with the monetary value of the saffron-dye, which was an
expensive commodity and, like purple, a marker of social position.111
Other colours are quite rare in the inventories. For example, grey (phaios) only occurs in the
inventory of the Athenian Asklepieion (a chlamys) and in an inventory from Delos (two himatia).
Bluish-grey (glaukinos) is used at Brauron for two chitōniskoi and in the inventory from Miletos
for a kalasiris (mesoglaukinos). Green – or in this case ‘frog-coloured’ (batracheious/batrachis) –
is another rarely noted colour: it is only recorded at Brauron, where it is used five times, for
example in relation to three chitōniskoi and a kandys. Another term for green (prasinos) is used
once in the inventory from Miletos. Finally, the inventory of the temple of Demeter and Kore at
Tanagra records a child’s silver garment and six girl’s chitōnes and a girl’s chitōnion with dark/
black borders (parorphnidōtos).
In summary, many different colours are recorded: purple, sea-purple, scarlet, blue, red, grey,
blue-grey, white, black, frog-colour, green, saffron-colour, yellow, broom-yellow, apple/quince
colour. Only some of these colour terms refer to the dye substance used to achieve the colour:
purple, kokkinos, isatis and krokōtos. Others simply refer to the immediate visual experience. It
is also interesting to note that there is no apparent correlation between garment type and colour.
The inventories generally testify to a wealth of colourful garments, with a predominance of purple
items. This indicates that white was not predominant for Greek clothing. The latter point is worth
emphasizing given common conceptions of Greek dress. It is incorrect to assume that when the
colour of a garment is not described it was white. Although white is a commonly specified colour,
this very fact precludes it from being either the standard or a neutral colour of dress.112
There is a preponderance of white and purple garments in epigraphic evidence, such as the so-
called clothing regulations, which detail the colours of garments for visitors to some sanctuaries.113
Some of these are prescriptive, requiring people to wear white garments, while others are
proscriptive, banning purple garments in the sanctuaries.114 The same predominance of white and

107
Pindar, Nem. 1.38; Dioskurides, Mat. Med. 1.25. In the Roman period, Chloereus, originally a priest of Cybele and
therefore an eunuch, was described by Virgil as wearing a crocea chlamys, Vergil, Aen. 11.775. See also Isabella Benda-
Weber, ‘Krokotos and crocota vestis: saffron-coloured clothes and muliebrity’, Purpureae Vestes IV, 129–42.
108
Aeschylus, Ag. 239 (krokou baphas).
109
Euripides, Phoen. 1491 (Coleridge).
110
Aristophanes, Lys. 215.
111
Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones, Aphrodite’s Tortoise. The Veiled Woman of Ancient Greece (Swansea: Classical Press of Wales,
2003), 224; E. J. W. Barber, ‘Colour in Early Cloth and Clothing’, CAJ 9 (1999): 117–20. A further word of caution: the
actual evidence for the ritual connotations of saffron-coloured garments in this period is often rather circumstantial and
seems to be influenced by the situation in Minoan Crete, where there is more solid evidence for a connection between
saffron-coloured garments and ritual; see Jo Day, ‘Crocuses in Context: A Diachronic Survey of the Crocus Motif in the
Aegean Bronze Age’, Hesperia 80, no. 3 (2011): 337–70; Day, ‘Counting Threads’; Benda-Weber, ‘Krokotos and crocota
vestis’.
112
Cleland, The Brauron Clothing Catalogues, 96.
113
There are fourteen in total: LSCG 65; SEG 46:375; LSAM 35; LSCGS 59; LSCGS 91; LSA; 6; LSAM 14; LSCGS 32;
LSCG 68; LSCGS 33; LSCG 136; SEG 36:1221; LSCGS 56; LSCG 94.
114
Brøns, Gods and Garments, 330–5.
THE COLOURS OF ANCIENT GREEK DRESS 89

purple garments is evident from the epigraphic and literary sources concerning priestly garments.
There is considerable evidence for the use of purple garments in liturgical costumes throughout the
Hellenistic period, and it appears that in some cults, priests were specifically required to wear purple
garments.115 It thus seems that, generally, the most important aspect to emphasize in these sources
was the colour of garments, rather than their type, fibre or any other quality, again underlining the
considerable significance of colour, particularly in religious contexts.116
However, the fact that purple was the most commonly recorded colour in these sources is
perhaps not surprising, bearing in mind that it is considered the most important colour of classical
antiquity. Purple garments were worn historically by the rich and powerful and signalled, due to
their very high value, great wealth and high social status.117

COLOURS OF DRESS IN ANCIENT GREEK ART

Iconography is an obvious further source of our knowledge of the colours of dress. Yet, as with
written sources, there are methodological challenges regarding its interpretation. First, we cannot
be certain that the images represent dress as it looked in antiquity, since they are not simple replicas
of reality, but rather reflect the perceptions, ideologies and ideas of the society in which they were
produced. Thus, the interpretations of images vary from one context to another, with different
viewers and with different expectations.118 More importantly, the colours have usually disappeared
from sculptural representations, which were originally entirely polychrome. The term ‘polychrome’
means ‘multi-coloured’, referring to the circumstance that the impressive white marble statues,
for example, which we often associate with antiquity, were originally painted.119 But due to
disadvantageous climatic conditions of preservation, the fragility of the paint, the cleaning after
excavation and when entering museum collections, most of the original polychromy has disappeared.
However, sometimes we are fortunate enough to find sculptures with preserved polychromy.
A fantastic example is the famous korai from the Athenian Acropolis, which provide us with
important information on the polychromy of female garments on Archaic sculpture. The so-called
Chios kore, for example, dated to c. 520/500 BCE, has remarkably preserved polychromy (Figure
8.1).120 Unfortunately, the pigments have altered with time and since its excavation in 1886, the
appearance of the sculpture has changed. Thus, the red pigment, identified as cinnabar, has turned
black, while the blue pigment azurite has turned into a greenish-brown.121 Luckily, the Swiss artist

115
Brøns, Gods and Garments, 292.
116
Brøns, Gods and Garments, 331.
117
Brøns, ‘Sacred Colours’, 114.
118
Gunnel Ekroth, ‘Ull, Pengar och Sex. Tolkningar av et attiskt rödfigurigt vasmotiv’, Medusa. Svensk tiddsskrift fōr antiken
32 (2011): 1–12; Claude Bérard and Jean-Louis Durand, ‘Entering the Imagery’, in A City of Images. Iconography and
Society in Ancient Greece, ed. Claude Berard; trans. Deborah Lyons (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989), 23–38;
Brøns, Gods and Garments, 13–14; Cecilie Brøns, ‘Ancient Colours: Perspectives and Methodological Challenges’, in The
Value of Colour. Material and Economic Aspects in the Ancient World, ed. Shiyanthi Thavapalan and David A. Warburton;
Berlin Studies of the Ancient World 70 (Berlin: Edition Topoi, 2020), 318–19.
119
For example, Cecilie Brøns, ‘Ancient Colours’; Jan Stubbe Østergaard and Anne Marie Nielsen, eds., Transformations.
Classical Sculpture in Colour, trans. Neil Martin Stanford et al. (Copenhagen: Ny Carlsberg Glypotek, 2014); Hansgeorg
Bankel and Paolo Liverani, eds., I Colori del bianco. Policromia nella scultura antica (Rome: De Luca, 2004).
120
Acropolis Museum, inv. 675.
121
Ulrike Koch-Brinkmann, Heinrich Piening and Vinzenz Brinkmann, ‘Girls and Goddesses’, in Transformations. Classical
Sculpture in Colour, 139.
90 DRESS IN MEDITERRANEAN ANTIQUITY

FIGURE 8.1 The Chios Korē c 500/520 BCE. Acropolis Museum, inv. no. 675. Photo: Art
Resource (ART40504).

Emile Gilliéron (1885–1939) documented the traces of red and blue paint and the fine geometric
patterns in a watercolour shortly after the sculpture’s excavation, which, together with the scientific
analyses of the pigments, provides us with an idea of its original appearance. The interpretation
of ancient polychromy is thus not a straightforward affair but requires knowledge of the nature of
pigments and their deterioration.
Another well-known example from the Archaic period is the funerary monument of Phrasikleia
from Myrrhinous (Merenda), Attica, discovered in 1972 (Figure 8.2).122 The statue still has visible
traces of red paint. Scientific analyses have identified madder lakes and red and yellow ochres,
showing that she originally wore a red garment with yellow decoration. Furthermore, the use
of lead/tin and gold foil for the rosettes and shining yellow swastikas, painted with a mixture of
orpiment and yellow ochre, confirms the use of gold appliqués for the decoration of garments,
mentioned above.123 Colourful female garments of the Archaic period are attested in several more
instances, such as the famous Peplos Kore and the Pitsa panels.124

122
National Archaeological Museum of Athens, inv. 4889.
123
Koch-Brinkmann et al., ‘Girls and Goddesses’, 118–21, 138.
124
Acropolis Museum, inv. 679; National Archaeological Museum Athens, inv. A16464. For the polychromy of the peplos,
see Koch-Brinkmann et al., ‘Girls and Goddesses’, 126–9, 136–7.
THE COLOURS OF ANCIENT GREEK DRESS 91

FIGURE 8.2 Funerary statue of Phrasikleia 550–540 BCE. National Archaeological Museum,
Athens, inv. 4889. Photo: Art Resource (ART535186).

From the classical period, we are left with fewer examples of well-preserved polychrome
sculptural garments. This is partly due to the fact that only a few works of art from this period
have been examined for ancient polychromy. The non-invasive photographic technique termed
visible-induced luminescence (VIL) imaging can attest the presence of the ancient synthetic
pigment, Egyptian blue, in quantities which are no longer visible to the naked eye.125 Examinations
of Greek artefacts in the collections of the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek with this technique have
shown that many of them were originally painted, using this particular pigment. The technique
can, furthermore, illustrate any further decoration, such as patterns or borders, which are no
longer visible. This is, for example, the case with the later marble sculpture of the so-called Sciarra
Amazon, whose garment was originally decorated with a painted border (Figure 8.3).126 We have

125
See, for example, Giovanni Verri, ‘The Spatially Resolved Characterization of Egyptian Blue, Han Blue and Han Purple
by Photoinduced Luminescence Digital Imaging’, Analytical Bioanalytical Chemistry 394, no. 4 (2009): 1011–21; Amalie
Skovmøller, Cecilie Brøns and Marie Louise Sargent, ‘Egyptian Blue. Modern Myths, Ancient Realities’, Journal of Roman
Archaeology 29, no. 1 (2016): 371–87.
126
Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, inv. 1568.
92 DRESS IN MEDITERRANEAN ANTIQUITY

(a) (b)

FIGURE 8.3 (a) The Sciarra Amazon second century CE; (b) VIL image of the border of
her chitōniskos. Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, inv. IN 1568. VIL. Images by Maria Louise Sargent.

more iconographical evidence from the Hellenistic period, including terracotta figurines and wall
paintings, as well as several marble sculptures with obvious traces of polychromy. Among the most
spectacular examples is a sculpture from Delos, rendered in the Small Herculaneum Woman type
and dated to the second century BCE (Figure 8.4).127 The sculpture has visible traces of paint, used
to render the elaborate borders of her mantle and tunic. Another example is a statue of a goddess
from Pergamon, dated to the first part of the second century BCE.128 Along the lower part of her
peplos are visible traces of a painted, decorative border in green and red.129 Both examples illustrate
the rich decoration of garments, possibly also worn in real life. Moreover, on some sculptures we
can get a slight idea of some of the original decoration, even though no colour is preserved from
the incised lines used to indicate where the borders should be painted. From the Hellenistic period,

127
National Archaeological Museum, Athens, inv. 1827.
128
Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, inv. AvPVII23.
129
See Clarissa Blume, Polychromie Hellenistischer Skulptur, Ausführung, Instandhaltung und Botschaften (Petersberg:
Michael Imhof Verlag, 2015), cat. 57.
THE COLOURS OF ANCIENT GREEK DRESS 93

(a) (b)

(c)

FIGURE 8.4 (a) Statue of the so-called Small Herculaneum Woman, dated to the second century
BCE. Height: 175 cm. National Archaeological Museum of Athens, inv. no. 1827; (b) and (c) detail
showing the elaborate border of her garment. Photos: Clarissa Blume.

we also have examples of the rendering of golden garments. This is, for example, the case for
female terracotta figurines, such as a figurine of a standing woman from Tanagra, who is rendered
in a chitōn and a himation with a broad gold border (Figure 8.5).130 Many of these depictions,
particularly the marble sculptures, represent divinities, and the garments so rendered are, thus,
not examples of ‘ordinary’ dress worn by ancient Greeks but rather of the exquisite costumes of
gods, goddesses and other mythological beings, as well as priestly officials. They are thus rather
testimonies to the wealth, as reflected by colourful and decorated garments, appropriate for divine
beings and the elite.

130
Another example is a figurine in the Antikensammlung, Berlin, inv. no. TC 7674.
94 DRESS IN MEDITERRANEAN ANTIQUITY

(a)

(b)

(c)

FIGURE 8.5 (a) Terracotta figurine of a standing woman from Tanagra. Fourth century BCE.
Height: 40 cm. Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, inv. no. 895. Photo: Ole Haupt; (b) close-up of the figurine
showing the gilded border of the himation; (c) close-up showing the gilded border of her tunic.
Photos: Signe Buccarella Hedegaard.

CONCLUSIONS
This chapter has shown that there is in fact a wealth of information available on the colours of
ancient Greek dress, despite the elusive nature of the topic. By adopting a multi-methodological
approach, juxtaposing the diverse source material consisting of preserved textiles, practical
knowledge of ancient dyes, written sources and iconography, we can gain further insight into
the choices and preferences for specific colours for textiles. Much of the examined evidence
of the colours of dress has a religious context, which of course creates a bias. The epigraphical
sources include temple inventory lists and clothing regulations for sanctuaries, and several of the
sculptures represent gods and goddesses and other divine beings as well as priests and so on, thus
providing information on the colours of cult. It is evident that particularly purple and white/
bright colours played a significant role in the choice of dress in religious contexts at least. The
preserved textiles from burial contexts, although very few, appear to support the preference for
purple garments, which is not surprising due to the symbolic meaning and monetary value of
this particular dye in ancient Mediterranean societies. However, it is important to bear in mind
that an abundance of dyes in a large range of different colours was available, and it would be a
misunderstanding to imagine an ancient elite exclusively dressed in purple. In this respect, further
examination of the polychromy of ancient sculpture, in particular, can provide important insight
into the choice of colours for dress and preferred combinations of colours, as can dye analyses of
archaeological textiles.
 CHAPTER NINE

Ornamenta Muliebria: Jewellery

and Identity in the Roman Period
COURTNEY WARD

Ornamenta muliebria sunt, quibus mulier ornatur, veluti inaures armillae viriolae annuli praeter
signatorios et omnia, quae ad aliam rem nullam parantur, nisi corporis ornandi causa: quo ex numero
etiam haec sunt: aurum gemmae lapilli, quia aliam nullam in se utilitatem habent.1

As noted in the above quotation, Roman law (at least from the time of Ulpian in the early
third century CE) clearly identified jewellery with women and specifically excluded signet rings
(praeter signatorios), used by both men and women, from this category; however, it is clear from
literary and artistic depictions as well as archaeological finds that both men and women across the
Roman Empire wore jewellery in order to display various aspects of their identities. In Roman
literature, objects of personal adornment were known as ornamenta and mundus muliebris,
literally ‘the ornamentation and world of women’.2 The gold signet rings and military badges of
Roman men were not included in this juridical categorization, just as most modern men would
be affronted if told that their cufflinks and wedding rings constituted ‘jewellery’.3 Consequently,
while boys and men did wear jewellery, as the title suggests, this chapter will focus primarily on
jewellery associated with women and how this displayed various aspects of identity. While it has
been suggested that the main function of jewellery was to demonstrate the wealth and status of
women in the Roman world,4 aspects such as age, political, social and marital statuses (as well
as economic background) and ethnicity all interrelated to create diverse identities that could
have been displayed through personal adornment. The body is an individual’s most immediate
expression of identity and self, and any item placed on the body is a method of expressing that
self-identity to the outside world.

1
Ulpian, Dig. 34.2.25.10: ‘Women’s jewellery is of the kind with which a woman adorns herself, such as earrings, bracelets,
small bangles, rings, with the exception of signet rings, and everything acquired for no other purpose than adornment.
The following, too, belong to this category: gold, gems, and [precious] stones, because in themselves they have no
other use.’
2
Ria Berg, ‘Wearing Wealth. Mundus Muliebris and Ornatus as Status Markers for Women in Imperial Rome’, in Women,
Wealth and Power in the Roman Empire, ed. Pävi Setälä, Ria Berg, Riikka Hälikkä, Minerva Keltanen, Janne Pölönen and
Ville Vuolanto (Rome: Acta Instituto Romani Finlandiae 25, 2002), 20; Christiane Kunst, ‘Ornamenta Uxoria. Badges of
Rank or Jewellery of Roman Wives?’ The Medieval History Journal 8, no. 1 (2005): 128–9; Kelly Olson, Dress and the
Roman Woman: Self-presentation and Society (London: Routledge, 2008), 7–9.
3
For example, Pliny Nat. 33.4, where the finger-rings of men were seen as functional rather than decorative items, and Dig.
34.2.25.10 (above).
4
Berg, ‘Wearing Wealth’.
96 DRESS IN MEDITERRANEAN ANTIQUITY

INTRODUCTION
Unfortunately, literary sources do not give us a clear picture of how female identities were created
and displayed by wearing certain kinds of jewellery. The sources were politically and socially
motivated treatises written by an elite male population and should be treated as such. What is
most interesting is to see how these wealthy and influential men viewed the women in their lives
and their world. In other words, what did they think about female adornment and its purpose?
Lucius Valerius, a tribune of the people in the second century BCE, thanks to the writings of Livy,
gives us one view. He says, ‘Non magistratus nec sacerdotia nec triumphi nec insignia nec dona aut
spolia bellica iis contingere possunt; munditiae et ornatus et cultus haec feminarum insignia sunt
his gaudent et gloriantur hunc mundum muliebrem appellarunt maiores nostri’ (No offices, no
priesthoods, no triumphs, no decorations, no gifts, no spoils of war can come to them; elegance of
appearance, adornment, apparel – these are the woman’s badges of honour; in these they rejoice
and take delight; these our ancestors called the woman’s world).5 This proclamation equates
jewellery and objects of adornment with the highest military and political honours of prominent
men but still excludes the signet rings of adult men (and women) and the bullae of freeborn boys.
What then exactly did the female objects represent and how did they do it?
Before turning to these questions, it must be noted that most categories of Roman jewellery
are not easily separated into male and female objects: earrings (found on slaves from Syria,6
eunuchs serving the goddess Cybele7 or would-be kings, such as Caesar8), bracelets (such
as gold armbands on wealthy freedmen like Trimalchio9 or effeminate emperors, such as
Caligula and Nero,10 as well as the gold and silver armillae awards of the Roman military11),
decorative rings (peacocking Roman men with multiple rings,12 for example, or Celtic and
Gallic men with rings on their middle fingers13) and even necklaces (such as the torcs of Celtic

5
Livy, 34.8-9.
6
Juvenal, Sat. 1.104-105.
7
Jacob Latham, ‘“Fabulous Clap-Trap”: Roman Masculinity, the Cult of Magna Mater, and Literary Constructions of the
galli at Rome from the Late Republic to Late Antiquity’, The Journal of Religion 92, no. 1 (2012): 109.
8
Marianne Ostier, Jewels and the Woman: The Romance, Magic and Art of Feminine Adornment (New York: Horizon Press,
1958), 128. For earrings as markers of effeminacy in men based on their association with foreign (eastern) male identities,
see Lindsay Allason-Jones, Ear-rings in Roman Britain (Oxford: BAR 201,1989), 17; Juvenal, Sat. 1.104 (Babylonians);
Macrobrius, Sat. 7.3 (Libyans); Plautus. Poen. 5.2.21 (Carthaginians).
9
Petronius. Satyr. 32.
10
Suetonius. Cal. 52 and Nero 30, respectively.
11
Valerie Maxfield, The Military Decorations of the Roman Army (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1981),
89–91; Jerzy Linderski, ‘Silver and Gold of Valor: The Award of “Armillae” and “Torques”’, Latomus 60, no. 1 (2001):
3–15; Nina Crummy, ‘From Bracelets to Battle-honours: Military Armillae from the Roman Conquest of Britain’, in Image,
Craft and the Classical World. Essays in Honour of Donald Bailey and Catherine Johns, ed. Nina Crummy, Donald Bailey,
Catherine Johns and Lindsay Allason-Jones (Montagnac: M. Mergoil, 2005), 93–105; Nina Crummy, Martin Henig and
Courtney Ward, ‘A Hoard of Military Awards, Jewellery and Coins from Colchester’, Britannia 47 (2016): 1–28.
12
Pliny Nat. 33.22; Seneca, Nat. 7.31.2. For a discussion of the history of finger-rings and who had the right to wear them,
see Ann Stout, ‘Jewelry as a Symbol of Status in the Roman Empire’, in The World of Roman Costume, ed. Judith Sebesta
and Larissa Bonfante (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1994), 77–100; Richard Hawley, ‘Lords of the Rings: Ring-
wearing, Status, and Identity in the Age of Pliny the Elder’, in Vita Vigilia Est: Essays in Honour of Barbara Levick, ed. Ed
Bispahm, Greg Rowe and Elaine Matthews (London: Institute of Classical Studies, 2007), 103–11; Kelly Olson, Masculinity
and Dress in Roman Antiquity (London: Routledge, 2017), 65–7, 119–21.
13
Pliny Nat. 33.6.
JEWELLERY AND IDENTITY IN THE ROMAN PERIOD 97

warriors14 or the gold chain around the neck of an effete cinaedus15) were worn by men in the
Roman world. Moreover, brooches would have been used to fasten the cloaks of both men and
women.16 Not only were the signet rings distinguished from ornamenta by the Roman authors
worn by men and women but even the images depicted on these signets could also be worn by both.
Perhaps the most clear-cut and famous example (and one that is less socially or politically coloured
than the examples above) is reported in the literary sources describing Octavian’s rise to power.
Both Pliny and Suetonius declare that when looking for a seal, Octavian found two relatively
similar signet rings depicting sphinxes in the jewellery boxes of his mother, Atia, that he and his
closest advisors used for his own correspondence.17
For the focus of this chapter, I will return once again to Ulpian’s definition of ornamenta
muliebria: earrings, bracelets, decorative finger-rings and the necklaces that were used ‘purely for
adornment’. I have chosen, therefore, to exclude signet rings and brooches, which not only were
worn by both men and women but also (and perhaps more importantly for this investigation)
had an ultimately functional purpose – signet rings were designed so that letters could be sealed,
and brooches were bought for the express purpose of clasping material together. To this end, I
am also excluding hairpins, which, although they were undoubtedly associated with women and
were often made of expensive and high-status materials, were primarily functional in nature.18
This distinction allows a focus on how these ‘non-functional’ items of adornment functioned in
Roman society.

14
Barry Cunliffe, The Ancient Celts, 2nd edition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), 223. The association between
Celtic warriors and the torc can also be seen in Cassius Dio (62,1–1), who describes the Iceni queen, Boudicca, with a golden
torc around her neck in order to illustrate her political and martial prowess.
15
Juvenal, Sat. 2.85, for the necklace as a sign of a cinaedus. Cf. Artemidorus. Oneir. 2.5, for the inappropriateness of men
wearing necklaces. For a discussion of cinaedi and their depiction in art, see John Clarke, ‘Representations of the Cinaedus
in Roman Art’, Journal of Homosexuality 49, no. 3–4 (2005): 271–98.
16
Mart. 5.41 (for equites with a brooch. See Kelly Olson, ‘Masculinity, Appearance, and Sexuality: Dandies in Roman
Antiquity’, Journal of the History of Sexuality 23, no. 2 (2014): 200 for the subject’s identification as an equestrian). For
a discussion of brooches used by men and women, see Stout, ‘Jewelry as a Symbol’; Ellen Swift, ‘Personal Ornament’, in
Artefacts in Roman Britain: Their Purpose and Use, ed. Lindsay Allason-Jones (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2011), 212; Lindsay Allason-Jones, ‘Characterizing Roman Artifacts to Investigate Gendered Practices in Contexts without
Sexed Bodies’, American Journal of Archaeology 119, no. 1 (2015): 103–23. For studies on brooches as markers of identity,
see Dominic Janes, ‘Brooches as Insignia and Loyalty to the Late Roman State’, in Radovi XIII. Međunarodnog kongresa
za starokršćansku arheologiju, Split – Poreč 25.9.-1.10.1994, ed. Nenad Cambu and Emilio Marin (Città del Vaticano:
Arheološki muzej, Pontificio Istituto di Archeologia Cristiana, 1998), 387–94, Sophia Jundi and J. D. Hill, ‘Brooches and
Identities in First Century Britain: More Than Meets the Eye?’, Theoretical Roman Archaeology Journal (1997): 125–37,
and Stijn Heeren, ‘Brooches and Burials. Variability in Expressions of Identity in Cemeteries of the Batavian Civitas’,
Journal of Roman Archaeology 27 (2014): 443–55.
17
Pliny Nat. 37.10; Suetonius, Aug. 50. The symbolism of the sphinx with relation to Octavian and his war with Cleopatra
has been described by scholars as both an embarrassment (Robert Gurval, Actium and Augustus: The Politics and Emotions
of Civil War (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1995), 71) and an intentional association with Apollo (Paul Zanker,
The Power of Images in the Age of Augustus, trans. Alan Shapiro (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1988), 49–50).
For a more detailed discussion: Hans Instinsky, Die Siegel des Kaisers Augustus: ein Kapitel zur Geschichte und Symbolik des
antiken Herrschersiegels (Baden-Baden: B. Grimm, 1961), 23–30.
18
Elizabeth Bartman, ‘Hair and the Artifice of Roman Female Adornment’, American Journal of Archaeology 105, no. 1
(2001): 3. For the difficulties of reconstructing Roman hairstyles, see Janet Stephens, ‘Ancient Roman Hairdressing: On
(Hair)pins and Needles’, Journal of Roman Archaeology 21 (2008): 110–32, who notes that Roman hairstyles would have
required both pins and needles.
98 DRESS IN MEDITERRANEAN ANTIQUITY

AGE
One aspect of personal identity that could be displayed through female adornment is age.19 Suetonius,
for example, reported that Caesar restricted the use of pearls to women of a certain age and social
status, but whether this was enforced or how long this restriction lasted is unknown.20 Suetonius fails
to tell us what this specific age was; however, there are certain jewellery designs that are known from
literary sources to have been appropriate for different age groups, such as the bulla, for freeborn
boys, and the lunula, for young girls and maidens.21 The lunula was a crescent-shaped charm that
seems to have been associated with young girls and maidens, although this association is not as clear
cut as that of the bulla for the freeborn boy, which was dedicated by its wearer to the family Lares (the
household gods) upon his reaching adulthood; the bulla is one of the few articles of jewellery that
can be positively assigned to persons of a particular age. The association with lunulae and young girls
is suggested by Plautus, when his character Epidicus asks the young girl Telestis, ‘Non meministi me
auream ad te afferre natali die lunulam atque anellum aureolum in digitum?’ (‘Don’t you remember
me bringing you a gold lunula on your birthday and a little gold ring for your finger?’).22 The
relatively large number of lunulae found on Roman necklaces is striking in relation to the number
of identifiable bullae, however, and this may prove the association to be overly simplistic.23 Indeed
modern scholars seem torn between seeing the lunula as ‘worn mainly by young girls or unmarried
women as a protective amulet, corresponding to the male bulla’ and finding ‘that female children
wore any piece of apparel comparable to the boy’s golden locket cannot be demonstrated’.24
This uncertainty means that ascribing most jewellery to children, be they male or female, is
dependent mostly on size. ‘The small dimensions’ of a gold ring from Rome ‘along with its Greek
inscription, ΑΥΞΑΝΕ, meaning “Grow”, suggest that it was given to a young girl or boy’.25 In this
case, the ring, at 14.5 mm, seems obviously to be that of a child, but size is also problematic when
attempting to attribute age to the wearer of an item.26 A chubby child and a slender adult may have

19
In a study of provincial Roman jewellery, Ellen Swift (The End of the Western Roman Empire: An Archaeological
Investigation (Stroud: Tempus, 2003), 345–6) identified evidence for the deposition of particular objects (dolphin and
flat glass-disc pendants) and materials (amber and chalcedony) exclusively in children’s graves. For a discussion of infants
and young children of both sexes wearing apotropaic charms, see Maureen Carroll, Infancy and Earliest Childhood in the
Roman World; ‘A Fragment of Time’ (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), 99–109.
20
Suetonius. Iul. 43.
21
Cicero. 2 Verr. 1.152; Valerius Maximus. 5.6.8 and Tertullian. Cult. Fem. 10.4; Plautus. Epid. 639-40 respectively.
According to Robert Palmer (‘bullae insignia ingenuitatis’, American Journal of Ancient History 14, no. 1 (1998): 1), the
bulla was a ‘bubble-shaped locket made in gold and intended to hold contents that would preserve a freeborn boy from
dangers seen and unseen’. For the apotropaic importance of the bulla for young boys: Keith Bradley, ‘The Roman Child in
Sickness and in Health’, in The Roman Family in the Empire: Rome, Italy and Beyond, ed. Michele George (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2005), 90–1. In addition to age, the bulla therefore identified its young wearer as coming from a family of
a specific social status – freeborn – with a particular amount of wealth – to afford the gold amulet. For further discussion of
the role of bullae, see Olson Masculinity and Dress, 62–5.
22
Plautus Epid. 639-40.
23
For a catalogue of bullae in the artistic and archaeological records, see Hans Goette, ‘Römische Kinderbildnisse
mit Jugendlocken’, Mitteilungen des Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts 104 (1989): 203–18; Palmer ‘Bullae Insignia’;
P. Gregory Warden ‘Bullae, Roman Custom, and Italic Tradition’, OpRom 14 (1983): 69–75.
24
Berg ‘Wearing Wealth’, 34 and Palmer ‘Bullae Insignia’, 46, respectively.
25
Elizabeth La Rocco, ‘Catalogue Entry 81’, in I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome, ed. Diana Kleiner and Susan Matheson
(New Haven: Yale University Art Gallery, 1996), 146.
26
For a convincing correlation between ring diameter and age (and sex), see Ellen Swift, Roman Artefacts and Society:
Design, Behaviour, and Experience (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), Chap. 4.
JEWELLERY AND IDENTITY IN THE ROMAN PERIOD 99

worn rings of similar diameter. A tall girl and a short woman may have needed necklaces of similar
length. In addition, many mummy portraits and masks from Roman Egypt show women wearing
multiple necklaces, all of different length, and multiple rings, all of different size and both above
and below knuckles of various fingers (Figure 9.1).

FIGURE 9.1 Mummy mask depicting the deceased with rings on different fingers and necklaces of
various lengths (including one with a lunula), first century CE. Metropolitan Museum of Art, inv.
19.2.6. Photo: Art Resource (ART358158).
100 DRESS IN MEDITERRANEAN ANTIQUITY

While it is difficult to identify clear jewellery types that were associated with particular age
groups, there clearly were distinctions between the dress (and, by extension, the adornment) of
Roman female babies, young girls and adult women, because ‘all those of the female sex are classed
as women’.27 Such a hypothesis is supported by a letter written by an Egyptian woman, Eirene, to
her brother. In the early to mid-first-century CE papyrus, Eirene asked her brother to send her
several gold bracelets from Oxyrhynchos, where he was located. She distinguished between the
bracelet for herself and those for the ‘younger girls’ – hers was to be ‘for the hand of a mature
woman’, while the others were to be ‘as if to fit the arm of Matrous’.28 While the exact distinction
is unclear to us, it clearly would have been easily understood by Romans viewing Eirene and the
younger women. It seems that certain forms of jewellery were worn by women of all ages,29 but it
was their design or style that made them appropriate for women of different ages.

SOCIO-ECONOMIC STATUS
Wealth and economic background, on the other hand, are aspects of personal identity that
seem indisputably linked with both the form and material of jewellery. In dealing with items of
adornment, especially jewellery made of precious materials, it seems obvious that the larger the
piece the more expensive it would be. Consequently, it would follow that all jewellery is in fact an
indicator of wealth. Indeed Berg, in her 2002 study of adornment, clearly stated that ‘jewellery and
other adornments made of precious substances have their very raison d’être in indicating wealth’.30
The fugitives from the eruption of Vesuvius on the Bay of Naples in fact carried bags and boxes of
jewellery (along with coins) as portable wealth.31 As was mentioned earlier, however, there is more
to adornment than the mere relation of a person’s wealth. Cato seems to think that it is inevitable
that poor women will spend beyond their means on jewellery and sumptuous dress so as not to
be scorned for their poverty.32 Was this the reality or did poor women use alternative and more
affordable materials (or even costume jewellery) to adorn themselves?
While the majority of an object’s cost derived from the raw materials used to make it, there were
substances that could imitate more costly items. This could have been done either with or without
the customer’s knowledge. In his discussion on stones, Pliny often gives methods of testing or
verifying the authenticity of various gemstones, including sardonyx and emeralds.33 However, there
were ancient dealers who were very skilled in creating fake gems, as can be seen from the Stockholm
papyrus (late third century CE). Numerous recipes are given by the author for dyeing rock crystal

27
Dig. 34.2.25.9.
28
P.CtYBR inv. 115; P.Yale I, pp. 241–4; Roger Bagnall and Raffaella Cribiore, Women’s Letters from Ancient Egypt, 300
BC– AD 800 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2006), 339.
29
Cyprian, for example, noted that girls had earrings from shortly after birth (Hab. Virg. 14). While this may have been
specific to third-century CE North Africa, the evidence from first-century Campania seems to support the idea that different
styles of earring were appropriate for different age groups or female identities; Courtney Ward, ‘Luxury, Adornment, and
Identity: The Skeletons and Jewelry from Oplontis’, in Leisure and Luxury in the Age of Nero: The Villas of Oplontis near
Pompeii. Exhibition Catalogue, ed. Elaine Gazda and John Clarke (Ann Arbor: Kelsey Museum of Archaeology, 2016), 102;
Courtney Ward, Identifying Multiple Gender Identities in the First-century AD: A Study of Personal Adornment and Skeletal
Remains from the Bay of Naples (D.Phil thesis, University of Oxford, Oxford, 2014), chaps. 4 and 5.
30
Berg, ‘Wearing Wealth’, 15.
31
Ward, Identifying Multiple Gender Identities.
32
Livy 34.4.15
33
Pliny Nat. 37.
JEWELLERY AND IDENTITY IN THE ROMAN PERIOD 101

with pigeon’s blood to create fake sardonyxes and a green stain to imitate emeralds.34 Martial, in an
epigram on Mamurra, noted that his protagonist had to search through every jewellery counter in
Rome in order to find a genuine sardonyx.35 The Historia Augusta also provides a tale of counterfeit
gems. It relates that Salonina, the wife of the emperor Gallienus, purchased an expensive necklace
of emerald beads that she later discovered was actually composed of coloured glass.36 It seems,
therefore, that the sale of imitation gems in the place of authentic ones was a problem in the ancient
Roman Empire, as they could be extremely convincing and almost impossible to detect. This poses
a problem when trying to infer wealth or the socio-economic status of the wearer simply from the
materials used in its construction.
However, fake gemstones could also have been used to create a type of costume jewellery. Perhaps
the presence of almost 400 glass paste gems from the Pompeian workshop at I.11-9.15 represents
a shop specializing in costume pieces.37 Similarly, while it seems unlikely that the purchaser of a
pair of bronze and green glass bracelets did not realize their true composition, those viewing the
bracelets on the wrists of their owner might have mistaken them for a more costly adornment.38 In
fact it seems that many jewellers were skilled enough to fool even clients. A disparity in the legal
texts demonstrates that even a client could mistake bronze jewellery for gold and the legal texts
disagree as to whether the sale is still valid, since the composition of the piece had been agreed
upon or whether it was invalid because the material was falsified.39
One of the few materials used in female adornment that was a clear indicator of wealth was the
pearl. Pliny the Elder specifically states that the pearl was the most valuable product from the sea.40
In addition, the high value of pearls is supported by their inclusion in Roman sumptuary laws, such
as the Lex Iulia Sumptuaria, where their use was restricted to individuals of a certain age and status
on specific days.41 Moreover, there are literary references to women saving the livelihoods (and often
lives) of their husbands by selling a single pearl from their own ears.42 However, even pearls could

34
For example, P. Holm. 14 and 32. Also see P.Holm 74 for the fabrication of the colouring with which to create fake
emeralds.
35
Martial 9.59.
36
HA ‘Gall.’ 12.5. This anecdote has been mistakenly associated in modern scholarship with the mid-first-century BCE
senator Gallus and his wife, Antonina; Jack Ogden, Jewellery of the Ancient World (London: British Museum Press, 1982),
139; Koray Konuk, Melih Arslan, Baysan Bayar and Kemal Türeli, Ancient Gems and Finger Rings from Asia Minor: The
Yüksel Erïmtan Collection Koray Konuk and Melïh Arslan Collection (Ankara: publisher not identified, 2000), 6.
37
Ivana Cerato, ‘La Casa I-11-9,15 di Pompei’, Rivista di Studi Pompeiani 11 (2000): 124.
38
Now at the Naples Archaeological Museum (MANN 118270–118271). Seneca (Ep. 115.9) noted a similar phenomenon
in theatre decoration, where golden images were actually created by applying gold foil to wood; however, as no one saw
these images until the theatre was completed, they appeared to be solid gold. See Kelly Olson (‘Matrona and Whore:
The Clothing of Women in Roman Antiquity’, Fashion Theory 6, no. 4 (2002): 399), who suggests that such examples
represented lower-class women imitating elite status symbols.
39
Dig. 18.1, quoted in Jack Ogden, Gold Jewellery in Ptolemaic, Roman and Byzantine Egypt (Doctoral Thesis, Durham
University. Available at Durham E-Theses Online: http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/1457) 1990, 100. Cf. the Leyden Papyrus, which
gives several recipes for imitating precious metals; P. Leid. 10; Earle Caley, ‘The Leyden Papyrus X: An English Translation
with Brief Notes’, Journal of Chemical Education 3, no. 10 (1926): 1149–66.
40
Nat. 9.54, 37.16. In addition, Pliny (Nat. 11.50.136) lamented that women spent ‘more money on their ears in pearl
earrings, than on any other part of their person’.
41
Pearls are the only precious stone mentioned explicitly; Suet. Iul. 1.33.
42
Suetonius (Vit. 7), for example, stated that Vitellius was able to defray the cost of his travel to lower Germany by pawning
a single pearl from his mother’s ear. Perhaps the most famous description of a woman selling her jewellery and pearls for
the sake of her husband is the late-first-century BCE Laudatio Turiae (ILS 8393); however, there are many other similar
occurrences recorded in ancient literary sources (e.g. Petr. Satyr. 76; App. Bell. Civ. 4.39).
102 DRESS IN MEDITERRANEAN ANTIQUITY

be imitated with less precious materials, such as alabaster and glass.43 Clearly, there were several
options available to women from different socio-economic backgrounds when purchasing jewellery
to express their own identity, including the use of ‘costume’ pieces or lower quality pieces in precious
materials. All gold bracelets, for example, were not equal, as can be seen from the two pairs of gold
hemisphere bracelets in Figures 9.2 and 9.3.44 The first pair of bracelets consisted of a single row of
hemispheres created from gold foil, while the second consisted of two rows of more solid gold. In
addition to the extra row of hemispheres and higher quality of gold, this second bracelet required
more intricacy and craftsmanship to create its decoration. This comparison demonstrates that even
seemingly wealthy items of a type often classed together would have varied greatly.45 This suggests
that there was a market for comparable forms of jewellery for women from different socio-economic
backgrounds to display similar aspects of their identities but within their own budgets.
Another issue with inferring socio-economic status from jewellery can be seen in the adornment
of not only the poor and lower classes but also slaves. While slaves could not legally have any
property, including their own bodies, they may have in fact have been in possession of richer
material than many poor free and freed men and women. It would seem obvious that those in
possession of gold objects of adornment would also possess more wealth and social status than those
with similar items in silver or lead; however, social identities are never as straightforward as that.
Wealthy Romans were known to adorn even their pet eels (murenae) with earrings and necklaces,
undoubtedly to display the wealth of the owner rather than any personal identity of the eel.46 A
further example of this paradox may be seen in a find from the Vesuvian suburb, Moregine. There,
a gold armilla (armband) in the shape of a single-headed snake thrice coiled was found, on the
inside of which was incised DOM(I)NUS ANCILLAE SUAE, master to his slave girl (Figure 9.4).47
If we assume that this represented a real master and slave relationship rather than the poetic license
of two lovers of free status, what does this tell us about the relationship between this armilla and
its wearer’s identity?48 Was this an expression of the girl’s gender identity or that of her master?

43
Olson, ‘Matrona and Whore’, 416–17, fn. 72. For alabaster, see Diana Kleiner and Susan Matheson, eds., I Claudia:
Women in Ancient Rome (New Haven: Yale University Art Gallery, 1996), 175. For glass, see Mary Trowbridge, Philological
Studies in Ancient Glass (Illinois: University of Illinois, 1930), 147; Tert. Ad Mart. 4; Hier. Epist. 29.7.8, 130.6.6; Petr.
Satyr. 67. A pair of gold earrings from Oplontis B used shell or mother-of-pearl pendants to imitate more costly pearls
MANN 72997; Ward, ‘Luxury, Adornment, and Identity’.
44
MANN 114317/8 and E3647/8, respectively.
45
For a further discussion of the varying craftsmanship of hemisphere bracelets from the Bay of Naples and their meaning,
see Ward, Identifying Multiple Gender Identities, 82–8. Gesa Schenke (Schein und Sein: Schmuckgebrauch in der römischen
Kaiserzeit. Eine sozio-ecönomische Studie anhand von Bild und Dokument (Leuven: Peeters, 2003), 47–51) has used the
same characteristics of craftsmanship and weight to identify these as anklets rather than bracelets. Ria Berg (‘Dress, Identity,
Cultural Memory: Copa and Ancilla Cauponae in Context’, in Gender, Memory, and Identity in the Roman World, ed. Jussi
Rantala (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2019), 229–30) also recognizes these pieces as anklets and associates
them explicitly with the dress of courtesans and prostitutes.
46
James Higginbotham, Piscinae, Artificial Ponds in Roman Italy (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997),
45. For jewellery on eels, see Pliny Nat. 9.172. It is clear though that at least some Romans viewed these eels much as we
would our pets today, even crying at their passing (Pliny Nat. 9.172; Macrob. Sat. 3.15.4).
47
Soprintendenza Archeologica di Pompei 81580. Pier Giovanni Guzzo, Tales from an Eruption: Pompeii, Herculaneum,
Oplontis (Milan: Electa, 2003), 178.
48
For a discussion of this armilla, its varying interpretations and its (potential) relationship to Roman slavery, see Jennifer
Baird, ‘On Reading the Material Culture of Ancient Sexual Labor’, Helios 42, no. 1 (2015): 163–75. See also Frank Copley,
‘Servitium Amoris in the Roman Elegists’, Transactions of the American Philological Association 78: 285–300; Kathleen
McCarthy, ‘Servitium amoris: Amor servitii’, in Women and Slaves in Greco-Roman Culture: Differential Equations, ed.
Sandra Joshel and Shelia Murnaghan (London: Routledge, 1998), 174–92; William Fitzgerald, Slavery and the Roman Literary
Imagination (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 72–7; Sharon James, Learned Girls and Male Persuasion: Gender
and Reading in Roman Love Elegy (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003), 145–50, on servitium amoris.
JEWELLERY AND IDENTITY IN THE ROMAN PERIOD 103

FIGURE 9.2 Gold hemisphere bracelets from Moregine displaying gold foil construction and
simple design, first century CE. Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli, inv. MANN 114317/8.
Artist: Ethan Henkel.

FIGURE 9.3 Gold hemisphere bracelet from Herculaneum displaying intricacy of design and
craftsmanship, first century CE. Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli, inv. E3647/8. Photo:
Art Resource (ART180956).
104 DRESS IN MEDITERRANEAN ANTIQUITY

FIGURE 9.4 Gold armband of a snake from Moregine with the inscription DOM(I)NUS
ANCILLAE SUAE (from the master to his slave girl), mid-first century CE, inv. SAP 81580. Photo:
ScienceSource Images (SS22169532).

Due to the location of the inscription on the armband from Moregine, the message must have been
a private one, as no one else would have been able to view it. It is probable then that this armband
was a gift from a master to his lover. Would this inscription have been to remind the girl of her
social status within the household or would it have been to prove that the girl had indeed been
given the gold jewellery and had not stolen it?
In addition to the potential symbolism behind the single-headed snake decoration and its relation
to the slave girl (something that is beyond the scope of this current chapter), the girl’s adornment
would have been an expression of the wealth and status of her master. The fact that he could afford
to gild something as trivial as a slave girl would have been as great an expression of the wealth of his
household as marble flooring and intricate wall paintings. We hear of a woman (and the associated
lavish expenditure) from Terence’s second-century BCE play, Heauton Timorumenos, who had
no less than ten ancillae, all of whom were bedecked in fancy clothes and jewellery.49 The status
of the slave girl from Moregine and those in Terence’s play would have been visible from other
attributes, such as clothing and hairstyle, so such rich ornamentation would have been immediately
noticeable. Furthermore, while the recipient of the aforementioned bracelet from Moregine was
still of the lowest possible social status, her rank within the slave population as a favourite of the
master would have been visible to all, since it is unlikely that all slaves of this household were
adorned with similar gold decorations. This favouritism may have been due to her position as
either a lover to or child of the master. In either case, she, herself as well as her adornment, would

Ter. Haut. 449-454. For other examples of adorned ancillae with bronze and gold jewellery, see Berg ‘Dress, Identity,
49

Cultural Memory’, 223, fn 76.

JEWELLERY AND IDENTITY IN THE ROMAN PERIOD 105

have stressed the virility of her master. While the inscription would not have been visible to ancient
viewers, other factors would have demonstrated this girl’s gender identity and social status. This
single armband illuminates the complex network of identities which an individual might possess
and portray within Roman society and illustrates the danger of assuming that only elite and wealthy
individuals could possess expensive gold jewellery.

MARITAL STATUS AND MOTHERHOOD

Two of the arguably most important aspects of a woman’s identity, namely marital and parental
statuses, are not identifiable in the archaeological record but would have been immediately
identifiable to ancient viewers. In certain periods, women who had given birth to a certain number
of children were even granted the right to wear specific items of jewellery.50 Due to the culture
and societal values of the Roman world, it could be assumed that a woman with children was most
likely married; however, restrictions on the rights of men and women of servile status to marry
complicate this issue. Furthermore, it is only in those rare cases when a foetus is found inside the
mother that parental status can be positively identified from the archaeological record.
Some literary sources mention the gift of a finger-ring to mark an engagement (often referred to
as an annulus pronubus), but how common this gift was and how this ring differed from other finger-
rings is unclear.51 Finger-rings decorated with the dextrarum iunctio have been identified by some
scholars with wedding rings due to the common use of this symbol on freedmen reliefs; however, it
has also been suggested that this image could simply represent marital joy.52 Valerius Maximus offers
another tantalizing clue to the adornment of married women, when he states that earrings were ‘the
first badge of matrons’;53 however, as noted above, women of a variety of ages (and presumably
marital statuses) wore different forms of earrings. Kunst suggests a ‘connection between women
wearing pearls and being mothers’, but she also notes that pearl earrings were gifted to women
on their wedding day.54 This idea is echoed by Suetonius, who states that unmarried and childless
women were banned from wearing pearls.55 A mummy portrait from Hawara, however, depicts a
pair of simple gold hoop and pearl earrings on a young girl, who was presumably unmarried.56
There does seem to be a package of adornment associated with newly married women or at
least their dowry jewellery: a matching set of earrings, finger-rings and necklaces and/or bracelets.

50
The Lex Iulia et Papia Poppea, for example, granted legal privileges to women who bore children, with mothers of
three or more children being granted freedom from tutelage with the ius trium liberorum; Ulp. 13-16; Gaius Inst. 1.145,
1.195, 2.111, 2.86-86a. That this status and identity were important is suggested by the fact that Livia was granted the ius
trium liberorum by the Senate, despite only having had two children; Dio 55.2.5-7; Bronwyn Hopwood, ‘Livia and the
lex Voconia’, in Gender Identities in Italy in the First Millennium BC, ed. Edward Herring and Kathryn Lomas (Oxford:
Archaeopress, 2009), 143.
51
Pliny Nat. 33.12; Tert. Apol.6. For a discussion of practices surrounding Roman engagements, see Karen Hersch, The
Roman Wedding: Ritual and Meaning in Antiquity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 40–2; Mary Harlow,
‘Death and the Maiden: Reprising the Burials of Roman Girls and Young Women’, in Dressing the Dead in Classical
Antiquity, ed. Maureen Carroll and J. Wild (Stroud: Amberley Publishing, 2012).
52
Hersch The Roman Wedding, 41. For the association of this image with marriage, see, for example, Richard Brilliant,
Gesture and Rank in Roman Art: The Use of Gestures to Denote Status in Roman Sculpture and Coinage (Ann Arbor:
University of Michigan Press, 1963).
53
Val. Max. 5.2.1, as quoted in Kunst, ‘Ornamenta Uxoria’, 136.
54
Kunst, ‘Ornamenta Uxoria’, 137–8.
55
Suet. Aug. 43.
56
Altes Museum, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, inv. 31161.32.
106 DRESS IN MEDITERRANEAN ANTIQUITY

It has been argued that this dowry jewellery was buried with unmarried girls as a symbol of mors
immatura, or death before achieving their anticipated role in society.57 Pliny the Younger noted
that his friend, Fundanus, had to use the money that he had saved for the clothing, pearls and jewels
of his daughter’s approaching wedding for the ointments and spices of her funeral, suggesting that
not every unmarried maiden was buried with her intended dowry jewellery.58 For this study, it is
interesting to see that unmarried women (who were also presumably childless) were buried with
adornment that if worn in life would have identified them as married women and/or mothers.
The package of adornment noted in the graves of young women is similar to the jewellery worn
by two young women from Campania. Both women were between sixteen and twenty-five, and both
were pregnant, suggesting that they were also married at the time of the eruption. The jewellery
found with these two women included earrings, finger-rings, necklaces and bracelets. The amount,
quality and material used for this jewellery varied, but the similar forms and decoration suggest
that these pieces were directly related to the marital and parental status of these young women.59
Unfortunately, more work needs to be done to fully understand how adornment signalled aspects
of marriage and parenthood, alongside other characteristics, in particular, age.

PROVINCIAL AND ETHNIC IDENTITY

A final aspect of identity that was expressed through adornment in antiquity is ethnicity. There has
been much written on this topic, and it is beyond the scope of the present chapter to fully investigate
how jewellery helped to create and display different ethnic identities across the Empire;60 however,
it is an important subject for the study of how these ‘non-functional’ ornamenta could be incredibly
politically charged. The adoption and display of traditional Roman forms of jewellery in the
provinces would have been a clear sign of alliance with Rome and its government. In Colchester,
for example, a hoard of jewellery discovered buried beneath the destruction layer of a house
included female jewellery of high quality that is identical to those discovered from contemporary
contexts in Roman Italy.61 Based on the presence of this jewellery, along with Roman military
awards and a boy’s bulla, it has been suggested that this hoard represents the personal adornment
of a Roman family, possibly a distinguished veteran, that had been buried at the approach of British
insurgents.62 It is perhaps not surprising then that in a time of such political turmoil in Roman
Britain, individuals who displayed such strong affiliations with Rome through their adornment
would have been targets for the British warriors.

57
Stefanie Martin-Kilcher ‘Mors Immatura in the Roman world – a Mirror of Society and Tradition’, in Burial, Society
and Context in the Roman World, ed. John Pearce, Martin Millett and Manuela Struck (Oxford: Oxbow, 2000), 63–77;
Andrew Oliver, ‘Jewelry for the Unmarried’, in I Claudia II. Women in Roman Art and Society, ed. Diana Kleiner and Susan
Matheson (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2000), 115–24; Harlow, ‘Death and the Maiden’.
58
Epist. 5.16.1-6.
59
Ward ‘Luxury, Adornment, and Identity’, 101–2.
60
For example, see Hella Eckardt, Objects and Identities: Roman Britain and the North-western Provinces (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2015), chap. 2. On the different ways in which jewellery was used to display local and ethnic identities, see
the case studies of Arlon (Gallia Belgica) and Flavia Solva (Noricum) in Ursula Rothe, ‘Whose Fashion? Men, Women and
Roman Culture as Reflected in Dress in the Cities of the Roman North-West’, in Women and the Roman City in the Latin
West, ed. Emily Hemelrijk and Greg Woolf (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 243–70.
61
Crummy et al., ‘A Hoard of Military Awards’.
62
Ibid., 99–100.
JEWELLERY AND IDENTITY IN THE ROMAN PERIOD 107

Alternatively, display of traditional jewellery forms was a way to stress traditional provincial
identities. This can be seen in the well-known funerary portraits from Palmyra. In these portraits,
women are depicted wearing distinctive native headdresses and substantial amounts (much more
than the Roman authors would perhaps deem appropriate) of native jewellery.63 Even in provincial
reliefs that depict men in traditional Roman attire, women can be seen in traditional and distinctly
non-Roman jewellery (Figure 9.5). A mid-first-century CE monument from Nickenich on the
middle Rhine is dedicated to a Celtic woman, Contuinda, and her son. While the son is dressed in
Greco-Roman clothes and another man depicted on the monument is in a Roman toga, Contuinda
is portrayed with a Celtic tunic and a traditional Celtic torc around her neck.64 In some cases, the

FIGURE 9.5 Drawing of the mid-first-century CE funerary monument of Contuinda and her
family from Nickenich, Germany (now in Rheinisches Landesmuseum, Bonn). Contuinda is shown
with Celtic jewellery, while her son and other male family members wear Roman style dress. Artist:
Jerneja Willmott. Copyright Maureen Carroll.

63
For example, Signe Krag, ‘Changing Identities, Changing Positions: Jewellery in Palmyrene Female Portraits’, in Positions
and Professions in Palmyra, Palmyrene Studies 2, ed. Tracey Long and Annette Sørensen (Copenhagen: Der Kongelige
Danske Videnskabernes Selskab, 2017), 36–51; Rubina Raja, ‘Powerful Images of the Deceased: Palmyrene Funerary Culture
between Local, Greek, and Roman Representations’, in Bilder der Macht: das griechische Porträt und seine Verwendung in
der antiken Welt, ed. Dietrich Boschung and François Queyrel (Paderborn: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 2017), 319–48.
64
Maureen Carroll, ‘“The Insignia of Women”: Dress, Gender and Identity on the Roman Funerary Monument of Regina
from Arbeia’, The Archaeological Journal 169 (2013): 5. Cf. a second-century Roman citizen, who commissioned a
monument in Gorsium in Pannonia for his mother in which she (Flavia Usaiu) was depicted with traditional Pannonian
jewellery (a torc and bracelets) as well as a traditional headdress; Carroll ‘The Insignia of Women’, 8. For a discussion of
women as more conservative in dress, see Ellen Swift, Regionality in Dress Accessories in the Late Roman West (Montagnac:
M. Mergoil, 2000), 11.
108 DRESS IN MEDITERRANEAN ANTIQUITY

interaction of local and Roman traditions of dress and adornment even led to the creation of a new
style, as Rothe has identified in Gaul.65 It is interesting to see that it is women who are expressing
these ethnic identities through their choice of adornment. Once again we see how jewellery could
clearly make a political statement while displaying an individual’s identity to viewers.

CONCLUSION
This chapter has shown that there is more to jewellery and female adornment than its cost. The
close identification of adornment with an individual explains why objects of adornment were
regularly included in burials as grave goods, dedicated to deities and decorated statues of the
deceased.66 Telestis’s gold lunula, the gold snake bracelet from Moregine and Eirene’s bracelet
order are all items of gold jewellery, and they all demonstrate different aspects of their wearers’
identities. The close association between female adornment and personal identity is evidenced by
the fact that women from different economic and social backgrounds wore similar forms (and even
materials) of adornment to display other shared aspects of their identity. Even if it is unclear to us
today exactly how these aspects were displayed, it is important to appreciate that even if ornamenta
muliebria were not practically functional, they had important cultural functions in Roman society,
beyond the simple display of their owner’s wealth.

65
Ursula Rothe, ‘The “Third Way”: Treveran Women’s Dress and the “Gallic Ensemble”’, Archaeological Journal of America
116 (2012): 235–52.
66
For example, John Robb, Reno Bigazzi, Luca Lazzarini, Caterina Scarsini and Fiorenza Sonego, ‘Social “Status” and
Biological “Status”: A Comparison of Grave Goods and Skeletal Indicators from Pontecagnano’, American Journal of
Physical Anthropology 115 (2001): 213–22 (for grave goods); ILS 4422; Leonard Curchin, ‘Personal Wealth in Roman
Spain’, Historia: Zeitschrift für Alte Geschichte 32, no. 2 (1983): 235 (for a Baetican woman who dedicated her jewellery
to female deities); ILS 5496; Curchin, ‘Personal Wealth in Roman Spain’, 231 (for a Baetican woman who commissioned a
statue to be covered with her gems and pearls).
 CHAPTER TEN

Dress in the Desert:

Archaeological Textiles as a
Source for Work Clothes in
Roman Egypt
LISE BENDER JØRGENSEN

INTRODUCTION
Our knowledge for dress in Roman Egypt has largely been based on so-called Coptic textiles,
which were much sought after by private and public collections of the late nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries,1 papyri and other textual sources and mummy portraits. Although rich and
valuable sources, this evidence often suffers from uncertain provenance, dating and context. Recent
projects involving radiocarbon dating have helped; substantial groups of ‘Coptic textiles’, for
example, are now dated between the third and tenth centuries CE.2 All three types of sources are
found in towns and villages in the Nile Valley. The ‘Coptic textiles’ are funeral attire and are thus
likely to reflect the ‘Sunday best’ of town dwellers and villagers. The mummy portraits represent
members of the same groups: sufficiently wealthy to afford the making of portraits. The textual
sources shed light on the production of textiles in the form of letters, bills and receipts regarding
textiles or the raw materials for making them, contracts of apprenticeship and lists and inventories

Thanks are due to directors of the Mons Claudianus project Hélène Cuvigny and Adam Bülow-Jacobsen, team members
Martin Ciszuk, Lena Hammarlund and Ulla Mannering and to fellow scholars of Roman textiles in Egypt Dominique
Cardon, Hero Granger-Taylor, Fiona Handley and John Peter & Felicity Wild. All have liberally shared their knowledge
on this fascinating subject. Work on the Mons Claudianus textiles has been generously funded over the years by the British
Academy, the Carlsberg Foundation, G. E. C. Gad’s Fond, Agnes Geijer’s Foundation for Nordic Textile Research, the Joint
Committee of the Nordic Research Councils for the Humanities, Novo’s Fond and VKR’s Familiefond. A debt of gratitude
is owed to them all.
1
Monica Gulmini, A. Idone, P. Davit, M. Moi, M. Carrillo, C. Ricci, F. Dal Bello, M. Borla, C. Oliva, C. Greco and
M. Aceto, ‘The “Coptic” Textiles of the “Museo Egizio” in Torino (Italy): A Focus on Dyes through a Multi-technique
Approach’, Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences 9 (2017): 485–97. Online: doi: 10.1007/212520-016-0376-2;
Frances Pritchard, Clothing Culture: Dress in Egypt in the First Millennium AD (Manchester: Whitworth Art Gallery,
University of Manchester, 2006; Marie-Hélène Rutschowscaya, Tissus Coptes (Parise: Éditions Adam Biro, 1990).
2
Antoine De Moor and Cäcilia Fluck, eds., Methods of Dating Ancient Textiles of the 1st Millennium AD from Egypt and
Neighbouring Countries (Tielt: Lannoo Publishers, 2007); Antoine De Moor and Cäcilia Fluck, eds., Egypt as Textile Hub.
Textile Interrelationships in the 1st Millennium AD (Tielt: Lannoo Publishers, 2019); Pritchard, Clothing Culture, 13–26
and 114–15.
110 DRESS IN MEDITERRANEAN ANTIQUITY

of garments ordered or supplied.3 In recent years, a series of excavations in the Eastern Desert of
Egypt has recovered many thousands of textiles, providing further insight regarding the dress of
different social categories during the Roman occupation.4 These excavations also illuminate our
understanding of preferred materials for specific garments and how various items of clothing were
made. The recent finds are dated mostly to the first and second centuries CE but some are dated
from the fourth and fifth centuries CE (Figure 10.1). They also derive from a range of secure

FIGURE 10.1 Map of sites in the Eastern Desert of Egypt. Drawing: Aud Beverfjord.

3
For example, Stéphanie Guédon, ‘La lex uestis peregrinae dans le tariff de Zarai’, Antiquités Africaines 50 (2014): 105–17;
Jennifer A. Sheridan, Columbia Papyri IX. The Vestis Militaris Codex (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1998); Ewa Wipszycka,
L’industrie textile dans l’Egypte Romaine (Wroclaw, Warszawa, Kraków: Polskiej Akademii Nauk, 1965).
4
Lise Bender Jørgensen, ‘Textiles from Mons Claudianus, “Abu Sha”ar and Other Roman Sites in the Eastern Desert’, in
The Eastern Desert of Egypt during the Greco-Roman Period: Archaeological Reports, ed. Jean-Pierre Brun, Thomas Faucher,
Bérangère Redon and Steven E. Sidebotham (Paris: Collège de France, 2018), table 1. Online: http://books.openedition.org/
cdf/5234 (accessed 18 January 2019).
DRESS IN THE DESERT 111

contexts, including textual sources such as ostraca, papyri and epigraphy, which supply a wealth
of information about the sites and their populations. The sites include imperial quarries, Red Sea
ports and a series of forts or praesidia that guarded the roads between the Red Sea and the Nile.5

QUARRIES
Quarrying at Mons Claudianus6 started during the reign of Nero and had its heyday from 104 to
154 CE when it supplied columns, fountains and other materials for Trajan’s Forum and Basilica
Ulpia, Hadrian’s Villa, the Pantheon and the temple of Venus and Rome. It continued in use into
the third century CE. The Mons Claudianus stone is grey granodiorite that is especially well suited
for long columns. Mons Porphyrites7 was discovered in 18 CE and was used into the fifth century
CE. It supplied two kinds of porphyry: black and purple. The latter was in high demand for
imperial statues and sarcophagi, for basins and fountains and for wall veneer and columns. Black
porphyry appears mainly to have been used for columns.
The quarries were run as a network, headed by a prefect, the procurator metallorum, who was
an imperial freedman. The staff consisted of two main groups: pagani and familia. The pagani were
free Egyptian stone masons and blacksmiths, while the familia were imperial slaves and freedmen.
The sites were administered by soldiers.8 The rubbish heaps at both sites contained an abundance
of textiles; those at Mons Claudianus were well preserved and a representative sample has been
documented;9 at Porphyrites, conditions of preservation were less ideal and the number of extant
textiles smaller.10

PORTS
Berenike11 was a port on the Red Sea coast close to the current border with Sudan. Founded by
Ptolemy II c. 275 BCE, it remained in use until the first half of the sixth century CE. Berenike

5
Bender Jørgensen, ‘Textiles’, with further references; Dominique Cardon, ‘Chiffons dans le désert: Textiles des déportoirs
de Maximinanon et Krokodilô’, in La route de Myos Hormos – L’armée romaine dans le désert Oriental d’Égypte, ed. Hélène
Cuvigny (Le Caire: Institut Français d’Archéologie Orientale, 2003), 619–59, 667–9; Dominique Cardon, Hero Granger-
Taylor and Witold Nowik, ‘How Were They Dressed? Fragments of Clothing Found at Didymoi: Case Studies’, in Didymoi.
Une garnison romaine dans le desert Orientale d’Égypte, Vol. 1, ed. Hélène Cuvigny (Le Caire: Institut Français d’Archéologie
Orientale, 2011), 271–393; Fiona Handley, ‘Textiles’, in The Roman Imperial Quarries. Survey and Excavation at Mons
Porphyrites 1994–1998, Vol. 2, ed. David Peacock and Valerie Maxfield (London: Egypt Exploration Society, 2007; Fiona
Handley, ‘The Textiles: A Preliminary Report’, in Myos Hormos – Quseir al Qadim. Roman and Islamic Ports on the
Red Sea. Survey and Excavations 1999–2003, Volume 2: Finds from the Excavations 1999–2003, ed. David Peacock and
Lucy Blue (Oxford: Archaeopress, 2011), 321–34; for further references, see Felicity Wild and John Peter Wild, ‘Textile
Contrasts at Berenike’ in The Eastern Desert (accessed 18 January 2019).
6
David Peacock and Valerie Maxfield, Survey and Excavation Mons Claudianus I. Topography and Quarries (Le Caire:
Institut Français d’Archéologie Orientale, 1997); Valerie Maxfield and David Peacock, Survey and Excavation Mons
Claudianus II. Excavations Part I (Le Caire: Institut Français d’Archéologie Orientale, 2001).
7
Valerie Maxfield and David Peacock, The Roman Imperial Quarries. Survey and Excavations at Mons Porphyrites 1994–
1998. Volume 1: Topography and Quarries (London: Egypt Exploration Society, 2001).
8
Hélène Cuvigny, ‘A Survey of Place-Names in the Egyptian Eastern Desert during the Principate according to the Ostraca
and the Inscriptions’, in The Eastern Desert (accessed 29 January 2019).
9
Bender Jørgensen, ‘Textiles from Mons Claudianus’.
10
Handley ‘Textiles’.
11
Rodney Ast, ‘Berenike in Light of Inscriptions, Ostraca, and Papyri’, in The Eastern Desert (accessed 30 January 2019);
Steven E. Sidebotham, ‘Overview of Fieldwork at Berenike 1994–2015’, in The Eastern Desert (accessed 30 January 2019).
112 DRESS IN MEDITERRANEAN ANTIQUITY

was an important hub for long-distance trade with India, Arabia and East Africa. Texts in twelve
different languages reveal that the population was cosmopolitan and multi-ethnic, consisting
of groups such as traders, custom officials, soldiers, transport workers and sailors. Textile finds
from Berenike fall in two chronological groups: the first century CE and the late fourth to fifth
centuries CE.12
The port of Myos Hormos13 was situated 8 kilometres north of the modern town of Quseir on
the Red Sea coast. It, too, was founded in the Ptolemaic period; it flourished during the Roman
occupation of Egypt until the mid-third century CE. Like Berenike it served as a centre for commerce
with India, Arabia and East Africa. The population was a similar multi-ethnic mix of merchants,
administrators and mariners, military personnel and women and children. The site was re-occupied
in the late eleventh and twelfth centuries. An abundance of textile remains from both periods have
been recovered.14

PRAESIDIA
The fort of Didymoi15 was located on the caravan road between Berenike and the city of Coptos
(modern Qift). It was founded 76–77 CE and was intermittently in use until the middle of the third
century CE. Middens at the site proved to contain a large number of textiles.16
Krokodilô and Maximianon17 were situated on the road between Myos Hormos and Coptos.
Krokodilô was established c. 100 CE and appears only to have been used for about twenty years;
Maximianon is more broadly dated to the first and second centuries CE. The population at the
praesidia consisted of fifteen to twenty-two soldiers, their servants, the occasional prostitute and
some civilians providing supplies.18 Rubbish dumps again contained numerous textiles.19
A number of further praesidia have been excavated by a team directed by Hélène Cuvigny.20 At
two sites, both on the road between Berenike and Coptos, extensive textile finds were recovered.21
As little information is yet available, they are not discussed here. A fort at ‘Abu Sha’ar, north of
modern Hurghada and founded 310–311 CE, then abandoned before 400 CE, housed a garrison
of approximately 200 cavalry. The trash left by the soldiers also contained many textile scraps.22

12
Wild and Wild, ‘Textile Contrasts at Berenike’.
13
For further references, see Lucy Blue, ‘Port of Myos Hormos and Its Relations to Indo-Roman Trade’, in The Eastern
Desert (accessed 18 January 2019).
14
Handley, ‘The Textiles’; Gillian Vogelsang-Eastwood, Quseri al-Qadim Textile Report 1978–1982, CD Publication
(Leiden: Textile Research Centre, 2006).
15
Hélène Cuvigny, Didymoi. Uni garnison romaine dans le désert Oriental d’Égypte I – Les Fouilles et le Matériel (Le Caire:
Institut française d’archéologie orientale, 2011); Didymoi. Uni garnison romaine dans le désert Oriental d’Égypte II – Les
Textes (Le Caire: Institut française d’archéologie orientale, 2012).
16
Cardon, Granger-Taylor and Nowik, ‘How Were They Dressed?’
17
Hélène Cuvigny, La route de Myos Hormos. L’Armée romaine dans le désert Oriental d’Égypte, vol. 2 (Le Caire: Institut
française d’archéologie orientale, 2003).
18
Hélène Cuvigny, La route de Myos Hormos; Didymoi. Uni garnison romaine dans le désert Oriental d’Égypte I – Les
Fouilles et le Matériel; Didymoi. Uni garnison romaine dans le désert Oriental d’Égypte II – Les Textes.
19
Cardon, ‘Chiffons dans le désert’.
20
http://www.ifao.egnet.net/recherche/archeologie/praesidia/ (accessed 30 January 2019).
21
Dominique Cardon, Adam Bülow-Jacobsen and Hélène Cuvigny, ‘Recent Textile Finds from Dios and Xeron’,
Archaeological Textiles Newsletter 50 (2010): 2–13.
22
Bender Jørgensen, ‘Textiles from the Mons Claudianus’, with further references.
DRESS IN THE DESERT 113

TEXTILES FROM THE DESERT

The textile finds from the quarries, ports and praesidia of the Eastern Desert primarily derive from
rubbish dumps. Such a location means that they are rags, worn-out garments and torn or cut-off
scraps. The few recognizable items are worn almost to shreds. Work in the quarries was hard
labour. They, as well as the praesidia, were situated far into the desert where food and especially
water was in scarce supply and where everybody dreamt of getting back to the Nile Valley as
quickly as possible.23 Transporting goods across desert or sea was perilous. In such conditions,
few people would choose to wear their Sunday best; consequently, we do not find anything that
matches the beautiful garments from the burials along the Nile Valley. What the rags and heavily
repaired items from the quarries, ports and forts of the Eastern Desert lack in splendour they do,
however, make up for in numbers: currently more than 12,000 dated and provenanced fragments
have been processed and recorded.24

ROMAN GARMENTS
The Roman male citizen wore the tunic and toga for formal occasions; for less formal ones he
donned the Greek-style pallium instead of the toga.25 The sagum and paludamentum were
distinctive military cloaks.26 Roman soldiers and civilians occupied with outdoor activities preferred
the paenula and other hooded cloaks as daily outerwear.27 Women wore a longer tunic along with
a mantle.28 Scarves, loincloths, wrappings, socks and various types of headgear were also part of the
Roman wardrobe.29 To these can be added various dress items from the provinces specific to the
area or to certain ethnicities.30
While these items of dress are well known from Roman art and literature, the materiality of
these garments is more difficult to identify. We need archaeological remains in order to understand
what the textiles really looked like, their drape, handle, colours and materials, and how they were
constructed. Yigael Yadin made an important step towards this when he compared descriptions
in literature of the Roman tunic with clavi with a large group of rectangular sheets of cloth with
two parallel bands in contrasting colours recovered from the Cave of Letters in Israel.31 He also

23
Jean Bingen, ‘Life on the Fringe: Some Conclusions’, in Life on the Fringe. Living in the Southern Egyptian Deserts during
the Roman and Early Byzantine Periods, ed. Olaf E. Kaper (Leiden: Research School CNWS), 287–300.
24
Bender Jørgensen, ‘Textiles from Mons Claudianus’, with further references; Cardon, Granger-Taylor and Nowik, ‘How
Were They dressed’; Handley, ‘Textiles’; ‘The Textiles’; Vogelsang-Eastwood, Quseir al Qadim; Wild and Wild, ‘Textile
Contrasts’.
25
Liza Cleland, Glenys Davies and Lloyd Llewelyn-Jones, Greek and Roman Dress from A to Z (Oxford and New York:
Routledge), 137, 190–7, 200–2; Alexandra T. Croom, Roman Clothing and Fashion (Stroud, Gloucestershire: Tempus,
2000), 30–54; Hero Granger-Taylor, ‘The Emperor’s Clothes: The Fold Lines’, The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum
of Art 74/3 (1987): 114–23; Judith Lynn Sebesta and Larissa Bonfante, The World of Roman Costume (Madison, WI:
University of Wisconsin Press, 1994), 13–45; Lillian M. Wilson, The Clothing of the Ancient Romans (Baltimore: Johns
Hopkins Press, 1938).
26
Cleland, Davies and Llewelyn-Jones, Greek and Roman Dress, 137–8, 164; Croom, Roman Clothing, 51.
27
Cardon, Granger-Taylor and Nowik, ‘How Were They Dressed’, 319–23; Croom, Roman Clothing, 51–4; Cleland,
Davies and Llewelyn-Jones Greek and Roman Dress, 135–6.
28
Croom, Roman Clothing, 73–91; Sebesta and Bonfante The World, 46–64.
29
Croom, Roman Clothing, 56–60; Cardon, Granger-Taylor and Nowik, ‘How Were They Dressed’, 341–52.
30
See Croom, Roman Clothing, 123–43, for an overview.
31
Yigael Yadin, The Finds from the Bar-Kokhba Period in the Cave of Letters (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 1963).
Katie Turner’s chapter in this book analyses Yadin’s work.
114 DRESS IN MEDITERRANEAN ANTIQUITY

identified a group of rectangular mantles decorated with symmetrically placed motifs such as
gammas and notched bars from the same site as the Roman pallium.32 Hero Granger-Taylor has
added significantly to this discussion, examining how details in depictions of dress in Roman art
are mirrored in archaeological finds. Her work has demonstrated that most Roman dress items
were woven to shape.33 This applies to major garments such as tunics, mantles and cloaks as well
as smaller items like scarves and wrappings. Techniques such as sprang and ‘Coptic knitting’ were
used for socks and some types of caps.34 Tailored Roman garments, however, are few.

DRESS IN THE DESERT

Although most of the textiles from the rubbish deposits in the Eastern Desert are fragments, it has
been possible to ascertain a number of garments from Mons Claudianus and the praesidia. The
sleeveless Roman tunic is the most common, as it is easily identifiable by the purple bands or clavi;
in many cases just a fragment of a clavus is preserved but is sufficient to classify it as the remains of
a tunic. Most tunics were off-white/undyed, and a few were green or red. The clavi are normally
purple, but colours such as blue, green, red or even black appear as well.35 The sleeveless tunics
were square in outline and a belt adjusted their length. This type of tunic appears in many mummy
portraits. Men’s tunics are usually white, while women’s are of various bright colours.36
Sleeveless tunics from the Eastern Desert were made of wool and woven in tabby with a variety
of textures. In many cases the fabrics appear of good quality – or were when they were new. Most
were repeatedly patched and repaired. One almost complete tunic from Mons Claudianus was so
heavily mended that patches replaced most of the original material. The purple clavi, however,
appeared to have been meticulously preserved throughout the garment’s existence.37
Sleeveless tunics of this type were constructed horizontally.38 They were made as two sheets of
cloth sewn together at the top and down the sides, leaving openings for armholes and neck. The
top seam joins the selvedges of the two sheets, while side seams connect the fabric’s transverse

32
Yadin, The Finds, 204–40.
33
Cardon, Granger-Taylor and Nowik, ‘How Were They Dressed’; Hero Granger-Taylor, ‘Weaving Clothes to Shape in
the Ancient World: The Tunic and Toga of the Arringatore’, Textile History 13 (1982): 3–25; Hero Granger-Taylor, ‘The
Textiles from Kirbet Aazone (Jordan)’, in Archéologie des textiles des origins au Ve siècle. Actes du colloque de Lattes, Oct.
1999, ed. Dominique Cardon and Michel Feugére (Montagnac: Éditions Monique Mergoil, 2000), 149–62; Hero Granger-
Taylor, ‘“Weaving Clothes to Shape in the Ancient World” 25 Years On: Corrections and Further Details with Particular
Reference to the Cloaks from Lahun’, Archaeological Textiles Newsletter 45 (2007): 26–35; Hero Granger-Taylor, ‘A
Fragmentary Roman Cloak Probably of the 1st c. CE and Off Cuts from Other Semi-circular Cloaks’, Archaeological
Textiles Newsletter 46 (2008): 6–16.
34
Dorothy Burnham, ‘Coptic Knitting: An Ancient Technique’, Textile History 3 (1972): 116–24; Cardon, Granger-Taylor
and Nowik, ‘How Were They Dressed’, 349–52; Pritchard, Clothing Culture, 129–45.
35
Lise Bender Jørgensen, ‘Clavi and Non-clavi: Definitions of Various Bands on Roman Textiles’, in Purpureae Vestes
III: Textiles y tintes en la ciudad Antiqua, ed. C. Alfaro, J.-P. Brun, P. Borgard and R. Pierobon Benoit (València/Napes:
Universitet de València/Centre Jean Bérard [CNRS-EFR]: Naples, 2011), 75–82; Bender Jørgensen, ‘Textiles from Mons
Claudianus’; Cardon, ‘Chiffons’; Cardon, Granger-Taylor and Nowik, ‘How Were They Dressed?’, 282–3.
36
See Lorelei Corcoran’s chapter on mummy portraits, this volume.
37
Ulla Mannering, ‘Roman Garments from Mons Claudianus’, in Archéologie des textiles des origins au Ve siècle. Actes du
collque de Lattes, Oct. 1999, ed. Dominique Cardon and Michel Feugére (Montagnac: Éditions Monique Mergoil, 2000),
283–90; Ulla Mannering, ‘Questions and Answers on Textiles and Their Find Spots: The Mons Claudianus Textile Project’,
Riggisberger Berichte 13 (2006): 149–60.
38
Cardon, Granger-Taylor and Nowik, ‘How Were They Dressed’, fig. 306; Granger-Taylor, ‘Weaving Clothes’.
DRESS IN THE DESERT 115

borders (Figure 10.2). The characteristic reinforced selvedges and cord-like closing borders are
easily recognizable in preserved textiles and garments as well as in art. The clavi are created while
weaving the tunic sheets. This involved rearranging the warp to accommodate the bands that are
much more densely woven than the ground weave. Two different ways of doing this have been
noted: one is termed croisage, as warp threads were rearranged by crossing; in the other, part of the
threads were dropped, that is left unused during the weaving of the band.39 This opens up a
possibility of identifying the loom type, as the crossing of warp threads cannot be done on a warp-
weighted loom. Tunics with this kind of clavi are therefore likely to have been made on a two-beam
loom, while the method of dropped threads probably was used for the warp-weighted loom (see
below).40 Both types of bands appear at the sites in the Eastern Desert but clavi made with croisage
are much more frequent than those where threads have been dropped.41
Sleeved tunics were rare in the first and second centuries CE but became common from the third
century CE.42 They appear on some mummy portraits contemporary to Mons Claudianus and the
praesidia and are well known from later sites, for example in Syria there are indications of them
at desert sites. Decorative motifs associated with this type of tunic appear only in a few cases, such

(a) (b)

FIGURE 10.2 (a) Roman tunic: construction. Courtesy of the Israel Exploration Society. (b)
Heavily patched clavied tunic MC 1100 from Mons Claudianus. Photo: Author.

39
Cardon, Granger-Taylor and Nowik ‘How Were They Dressed’, figs. 308–9; Martin Ciszuk and Lena Hammarlund,
‘Roman Looms – A Study of Craftsmanship and Technology in the Mons Claudianus Textile Project’, in Purpureae Vestes
II. Vestidos, textiles y tintes. Estudios sobre la producción de bienes de consume en la Antigüudad, ed. Carmen Alfaro and
Lilian Karali (València: Universitat de València, 2008), 127–31; Hero Granger-Taylor, ‘The Grouping of Warp Threads for
Areas of Weft-face Decoration in Textiles of the Roman Period: A Means to Distinguishing Looms?’, Vlaamse Vereniging
voor oud en hedendaags textile, Bulletin 1992 aan Daniël de Jonghe (1992): 18–28.
40
Ciszuk and Hammarlund, ‘Roman Looms’, 127–31.
41
Ciszuk and Hammaerlund ‘Roman Looms’, 128.
42
Cardon, Granger-Taylor and Nowik, ‘How Were They Dressed’, 283; Pritchard, Clothing Culture, 45–115.
116 DRESS IN MEDITERRANEAN ANTIQUITY

as a pyramid-shaped form (or ‘Delta’) connected to double bands dated to the second half of the
second century CE found at Mons Claudianus.
The sleeved tunics were usually made in one piece, starting at one sleeve.43 When sufficiently
long, warp threads were added on both sides to create the body part of the tunic. A split was made
for a neck opening. When the desired width of the garment had been reached, the main parts
were finished by a closing border, leaving a reduced number of warp threads for the second sleeve.
Decorations in the form of clavi, bands on sleeves and decorative motifs were made along with the
ground weave like the clavi of sleeveless tunics.

MANTLES AND CLOAKS

In modern English, ‘mantle’ and ‘cloak’ are synonymous, but here, following terminology introduced
by Alexandra Croom, ‘mantle’ is used of draped garments worn over a tunic, while ‘cloak’ refers
to male outer garments that are fastened by a brooch rather than draped.44 Mantles and cloaks
are frequently depicted in Roman art. Roman literature mentions many specific types such as the
abolla,45 the cucullus,46 the lacerna,47 the laena,48 the paenula,49 the paludamentum,50 the pallium,51
the sagum52 and of course the toga.53 But except for a few instances it has proved difficult to
describe each garment and explain how the items of dress were distinctive from one another. In
some cases, however, it has been possible to compare images and texts with archaeological finds.
Rectangular mantles decorated with symmetrically placed motifs such as gammas and notched
bars are now identified as pallia (Greek: himation), and semicircular hooded cloaks with similarly
specific decoration are recognized as paenulae with the shorter version classified as the cucullus.54
Both of the latter appear regularly in the Eastern Desert as do remains of the sagum.55 The sagum
was a Celtic garment adopted by the Roman army; it is rectangular, but specifics of the Roman
version of this cloak have as yet received little analysis. Identifications are based on the weave that
corresponds to a group of well-preserved cloaks found in Northern Europe and identified as saga.56
The characteristic feature of the pallium/palla/himation in Roman Egypt is the four motifs,
gammas or notched bars in tapestry weave in a contrasting colour, placed symmetrically near the
corners of the fabric (Figure 10.3). More than forty gammas and five notched bars were recorded at

43
Cardon, Granger-Taylor and Nowik, ‘How Were They Dressed’, fig. 307; for decorative motifs, see figs. 310, 312, 316.
44
Cardon, Granger-Taylor and Nowik, ‘How Were They Dressed’, 308–10, 319–23; Croom, Roman Clothing, 50–1.
45
Cleland, Davies and Llewellyn-Jones, Greek and Roman Dress, 1; Suetonius, Caligula, 35.1.
46
Cleland, Davies and Llewellyn-Jones, Greek and Roman Dress, 44; Wilson, The Clothing of Ancient Romans, 92–5;
Martial 5.14.6.
47
Cleland, Davies and Llewellyn-Jones, Greek and Roman Dress, 108; Croom, Roman Clothing, 51; Wilson, The Clothing
of Ancient Romans, 117–24; Pliny, NH 18.60.225.
48
Cleland, Davies and Llewellyn-Jones, Greek and Roman Dress, 108–9; Croom, Roman Clothing, 51; Cicero, Brutus 15.56.
49
Cleland, Davies and Llewellyn-Jones, Greek and Roman Dress, 135–6; Pliny NH 8.73.190.
50
Cleland, Davies and Llewellyn-Jones, Greek and Roman Dress, 137–8; Pliny NH 22.3.3; Livy 41.10.5, 45.39.11.
51
Cleland, Davies and Llewellyn-Jones, Greek and Roman Dress, 137; Suetonius, Augustus 98.3, Tiberius 13.1.
52
Cleland, Davies and Llewellyn-Jones, Greek and Roman Dress, 164; Diodorus, 5.30.1; Tacitus, Histories 2.20.
53
Cleland, Davies and Llewellyn-Jones, Greek and Roman Dress, 190–4; Pliny NH 34.11.23
54
Cardon, Granger-Taylor and Nowik, ‘How Were They Dressed’, 309; Granger-Taylor, ‘The Textiles’, fig. 12; Mannering,
‘Roman Garments’; ‘Questions and Answers’; Yadin, The Finds, 219–32.
55
Didymoi D98.14431.6, cf. Cardon, Granger-Taylor and Nowik, ‘How Were They Dressed?’ 322–3; Lise Bender Jørgensen,
‘A Matter of Material: Changes in Textiles from Roman Sites in Egypt’s Eastern Desert’, Antiquité Tardive 12 (2004): 97.
56
Cardon, Granger-Taylor and Nowik, ‘How Were They Dressed’, 322–3.
DRESS IN THE DESERT 117

Mons Claudianus; ten were found at Maximianon, one at Krokodilô.57 Numbers are not supplied
for Didymoi, but several examples are described in detail.58 The fabrics are usually undyed, woven
in tabby and of the same medium quality as the tunics. The gammas and notched bars are mostly
purple. Mummy portraits show that both motifs also appear on tunics and headscarves, so they
cannot be used unequivocally as evidence for mantles. Three of the Mons Claudianus gammas were
in fact found on a partly preserved tailored tunic; it had obviously been manufactured by cutting up
a mantle and re-fashioning it. This feature demonstrates that the number of textile fragments with
a gamma decoration cannot be used as evidence for a specific number of pallia, but we may infer
that some of the people living at the site owned such a mantle.

FIGURE 10.3 Rectangular Roman mantle (pallium) with gamma decoration at each corner.
Photo: Courtesy of the Israel Exploration Society.

57
Cardon, ‘Chiffons’, 621; Mannering, ‘Roman Garments’, 286–7.
58
Cardon, Granger-Taylor and Nowik, ‘How Were They Dressed’, 310–14.
118 DRESS IN MEDITERRANEAN ANTIQUITY

Semicircular cloaks comprise a variety of items including everyday wear such as the paenula
or cucullus that were well suited to outdoor physical activities. Two well-preserved specimens
of semicircular cloaks found at Lahun and a fragmented specimen from Ballana in Nubia offer
valuable information regarding how these cloaks were constructed.59 This has made it possible
to establish diagnostic features that allow us to identify remains of semicircular cloaks among
fragmented items from the Eastern Desert.60
One of these features is the form of the cloaks (Figure 10.4). They were woven to shape.61
The hood was made first and then, as in the case of sleeved tunics, warp threads were added. In
order to strengthen the corners between hood and main cloak, one or two rows of twining were
made. Along the hood and the upper part of the cloak a band in a contrasting colour ran from
edge to edge, turning upwards at right angles to include the hood.62 The semicircular shape was
then created by gradually reducing the warp threads. At the end of the curve, another decorative
band was inserted, usually in the form of a notched band. Cast-off threads were worked back into
the web as weft to some degree and then joined to further threads directly from the curved edge
to form a closing cord; or, they could be worked into a fringe.63 These cloaks were often in very

FIGURE 10.4 Semicircular hooded cloak: construction. Reconstruction based on the Ballana cloak.
Drawing by Jim Farrant after Hero Granger-Taylor. Photo: Courtesy of Hero Granger-Taylor.

59
Granger-Taylor, ‘Weaving Clothes’; ‘Weaving Clothes to Shape in the Ancient World 25 Years On’; ‘A Fragmentary
Roman Cloak’.
60
Bender Jørgensen, ‘Textiles from Mons Claudianus’, ch. 22–23; Cardon, Granger-Taylor and Nowik, ‘How Were They
Dressed’, 308–41.
61
Cardon, Granger-Taylor and Nowik, ‘How Were They Dressed’, 319–23; Granger-Taylor, ‘A Fragmentary Roman Cloak’.
62
Granger-Taylor, ‘A Fragmentary Roman Cloak’, figs. 1, 2 and 6.
63
Granger-Taylor, ‘Weaving Clothes to Shape in the Ancient World 25 Years On’, 30–1.
DRESS IN THE DESERT 119

densely woven 2/1 or 2/2 twill (see below), but other weaves appear too. Colours range from off-
white, brown, red and blue; bands are purple, blue, green or red. The rows of twining combined
with a band close to the starting border, turning 90°, are among the diagnostic features that makes
it possible to identify textile fragments as remains of cloaks. Another diagnostic is secondary:
namely, curved cutaway pieces from cloaks. When worn, the cloak’s edges were cut away and
replaced by a sewn edge or hem.64
The presence of these cutaway pieces indicates that semicircular cloaks were prized possessions
in the Eastern Desert and kept in good repair. In several ostraca found at Mons Claudianus the
writer asks about items of clothing; one is to be fulled and sent, another to be sold and one is to be
hemmed.65 The climate is harsh in the desert, with temperatures in the winter varying between 0
and 30°C. A weatherproof cloak of densely packed twill must have provided excellent protection
against the cold of the winter nights, the wind and the ever-moving fine sand.

HEADWEAR
Headwear is one of the best-preserved types of clothing in the Eastern Desert. A pillbox hat in green
felt dated 100–120 CE was found at Mons Claudianus (Figure 10.5a),66 while a cap shaped like a
helmet and interpreted as an under-helmet ended up in the rubbish dump at Didymoi c. 96 CE.67
At both of these sites, and at Krokodilô, caps made of triangular segments of cloth (centi) have
been found (Figure 10.5b). The centi are tailored garments, but irregular features such as a clavus

(a)

(b)

FIGURE 10.5 Headwear: (a) pillbox hat in green felt MC 922 from Mons Claudianus; (b) part of
cento, cap made of triangular cut-offs MC 548 from Mons Claudianus. Photos: Author.

64
Granger-Taylor, ‘A Fragmentary Roman Cloak’.
65
Adam Bülow-Jacobsen, ‘Texts and Textiles from Mons Claudianus’ in Le Myrte et la Rose. Mélanges offerts à Françoise
Dunand par ses élèves, collègues et amis, ed. G. Tallet and C. Zivie Coche (Montpellier: Équipe d’Égypte Nilotique et
Méditerranéene, 2014), 3–7.
66
Mannering, ‘Roman Garments from Mons Claudianus’; ‘Questions and Answers’; Bender Jørgensen, ‘Textiles from Mons
Claudianus’, ch. 21.
67
Cardon, Granger-Taylor and Nowik, ‘How Were They Dressed’, 345–7, Pl. 29a-b and 30a.
120 DRESS IN MEDITERRANEAN ANTIQUITY

across one of the triangles indicate that they were made from scraps. One of the Mons Claudianus
centi was composed of block damask in three different colours (red, yellow and green) and had red
cheek pieces and a green neck guard. It was dumped between 100 and 140 CE.68 This item has also
been interpreted as an under-helmet.69 A second cento, dated 100–120, was apparently made from
undyed fabric but had a red button at the top. A cento from Didymoi deposited c. 96 CE also had
several colours and a red top button.70 The cento from Krokodilô was brown with a red top button
surrounded by embroidery.71

SCARVES, SASHES AND WRAPPINGS

Scarves were square or rectangular pieces without diagnostic features and are difficult to identify;
there is no reason to doubt that they too were woven to shape, probably with simple selvedges and
finished with fringes. Scarves were worn in many contexts, for example with paenulae, wrapped
around the neck.72 No scarves have yet been identified among well-preserved textiles from the
Roman East; consequently, they are difficult to identify among the fragmented textiles from the
Eastern Desert. Nonetheless, a number of brightly coloured checked fabrics found at Didymoi are
interpreted as scarves;73 similar pieces appear at Mons Claudianus and at Berenike.74
Sashes (belts75) are identifiable too among the textiles from the Eastern Desert.76 Sashes were
worn with tunics, tied around the waist. They were long narrow woven bands. They may, however,
be difficult to distinguish from wrappings for legs, arms or parts of the torso, or from loincloths.
These also consisted of long narrow bands. According to Hero Granger-Taylor, loincloths have
been recorded at Didymoi.77

SOCKS
Socks are well known from ‘Coptic textiles’. They are usually made by cross-knit looping, also
called ‘Coptic knitting’.78 Several such items have been found in the Eastern Desert. Parts of five
were recovered from Mons Claudianus, dating between 135 and 160 CE. One sock is virtually
complete. At least three were found at Didymoi; one is dated to between 88 and 96 CE, the others
to the late second and third centuries CE.79 All are made of undyed wool.

68
Bender Jørgensen, ‘Textiles from Mons Claudianus’, fig. 8.
69
Mannering, ‘Questions and Answers’, 159.
70
Bender Jørgensen, ‘Textiles from Mons Claudianus’, ch. 21, fig. 8; Cardon, Granger-Taylor and Nowik, ‘How Were They
Dressed’, 344–9, Pl. 30c–d; Mannering, ‘Roman Garments from Mons Claudianus’; ‘Questions and Answers’.
71
Cardon, ‘Chiffons dans le désert’, 647, 668 Pl. Vc.
72
Cardon, Granger-Taylor and Nowik, ‘How Were They Dressed’, 341.
73
Cardon, Granger-Taylor and Nowik, ‘How Were They Dressed’, 341–4.
74
Wild and Wild, ‘Textile Contrasts at Berenike’, fig. 7.
75
The term ‘belt’ is here used of items of leather, ‘sash’ of woven ones.
76
Cardon, Granger-Taylor and Nowik, ‘How Were They Dressed’, 306–8.
77
Granger-Taylor, ‘Weaving Clothes to Shape in the Ancient World 25 Years On’, 26.
78
Burnham, ‘Coptic Knitting’.
79
Cardon, Granger-Taylor and Nowik, ‘How Were They Dressed’, 349–52.
DRESS IN THE DESERT 121

MATERIALS, YARNS AND WEAVES

Wool is the most common material among the textiles from the Eastern Desert. This is especially
true for the inland sites, where up to 90 per cent of the finds are wool. Bast fibres are rare in the
desert but more common at the coastal sites; the proportion of goat hair varies between 4 and
16 per cent.80 At the Red Sea ports, cotton is common, especially at Berenike where between 18
and 28 per cent of the early and about 50 per cent of the late textiles are cotton.81
Yarns can be twisted two ways, usually described as ‘s’ and ‘z’ (Figure 10.6). Yarns from Roman
Egypt are primarily s-twisted, in warp as well as weft; z-twisted yarns do, however, appear in a
number of textiles, and in some cases both yarn types appear in the same textile. In Egypt, the
tradition of s-twisted yarns goes back to Pharaonic times and appears in flax as well as wool.82
When cotton was introduced to Egypt at the beginning of the first millennium CE, the habit of
making s-twisted yarn was transferred to this fibre too.83 The preference for s-twisted yarn is also
discernible in Syria and Palestine, while in other areas such as India and Iran, parts of North Africa
and the European parts of the Roman world, z-twist was the rule.84 Yarn twist is thus a pointer
as to whether a textile is locally produced or not. Tabby is the most common weave regardless of
the fibre.85 It appears in a range of different qualities depending on the type of yarns and whether
it is balanced or weft-faced, densely or open woven.86 Half-basket and basket weave where the
threads of one or both systems are paired are also variations of tabby.87 Twill is less common; at
Mons Claudianus 6 per cent of the textiles are twills; at military installations such as Krokodilô and
Maximianon, however, 19 per cent of the textiles are twills (Figure 10.7). Varieties of twill occur
too.88 Other techniques such as taqueté, ‘Coptic knitting’ and felt also appear.89 Hand weaver Lena
Hammarlund has examined the wool tabbies and twills from Mons Claudianus and defined seven
different varieties of tabby and five of twill.90 Each of these may be perceived as a specific type of
fabric. Hammarlund’s categories are recognizable in other assemblages of archaeological textiles,
including some made of cotton or flax.91

80
Bender Jørgensen, ‘Textiles from Mons Claudianus’, fig. 43.
81
Wild and Wild, ‘Textile Contrasts at Berenike’, ch. 12 and chs. 27–30.
82
Rosalind Hall, Egyptian Textiles (Aylesbury: Shire Publications, 1986), 12; Barry J. Kemp and Gillian Vogelsang-Eastwood,
The Ancient Textile Industry at Amarna (London: Egypt Exploration Society, 2001), 57–82.
83
John Peter Wild, Felicity C. Wild and A. J. Clapham, ‘Roman Cotton Revisited’, in Purpureae Vestes II. Vestidos, textiles y
tintes. Estudios sobre la producción de bienes de consume en la Antigüedad, ed. Carmen Alfara and Lilian Karali (València:
Universitat de València, 2008), 143–7.
84
Lise Bender Jørgensen, ‘Textiles and Textile Trade in the First Millennium AD: Evidence from Egypt’, in Trade in the
Ancient Sahara and Beyond, ed. David J. Mattingly et al. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), 238.
85
Bender Jørgensen, ‘Textiles from Mons Claudianus’, fig. 44.
86
Lena Hammarlund, ‘Handicraft Knowledge Applied to Archaeological Textiles’, The Nordic Textile Journal (2005): 86–
119. Online: http://hb.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:870149/FULLTEXT01.pdf (accessed 1 January 2019).
87
Bender Jørgensen, ‘Textiles from Mons Claudianus’, table 5.
88
Bender Jørgensen, ‘Textiles from Mons Claudianus’, fig. 2 and table 6.
89
Bender Jørgensen, ‘Textiles from Mons Claudianus’, ch. 10.
90
Hammarlund, ‘Handicraft Knowledge’.
91
Lise Bender Jørgensen, ‘North African Relationships: Textiles from the Nile Valley and the Sahara’, in Egypt as a Textile
Hub. Textile Interrelationships in the 1st Millennium AD, ed. Antoine de Moor, Cäcilia Fluck and Petra Linscheid (Tielt:
Lannoo Publishers, 2019), 12–23.
122 DRESS IN MEDITERRANEAN ANTIQUITY

FIGURE 10.6 Yarn types. Drawing: C. Oksen.

FIGURE 10.7 Weaves. Drawing: C. Oksen.

TEXTILE TOOLS
Textile tools are rarely found in the Eastern Desert. At most of the sites, just a few spindle whorls
have been recorded.92 It has been suggested that a group of pierced sherds labelled ‘labels’ from
Mons Claudianus are loomweights,93 but as they do not resemble this type of object at all, it is

92
Maxfield and Peacock, Survey and Excavation Mons Claudianus II, 376–7, ‘wooden roundels’; Valerie Maxfield and
David Peacock, Survey and Excavation Mons Claudianus III. Ceramic Vessels & Related Objects (Le Caire: Institut Français
d’Archéologie Orientale, 2006), 297, two sherds reworked into ‘spindle whorls’; David Peacock and Valerie Maxfield, The
Roman Imperial Quarries. Survey and Excavation at Mons Porphyrites 1994–1998. Volume 2. The Excavations (London:
Egypt Exploration Society, 2007), 313–14, ‘spindle whorls’, and 315, ‘labels’.
93
Bülow-Jacobsen, ‘Texts and Textiles from Mons Claudianus’; Maxfield and Peacock, Survey and Excavation Mons
Claudianus III, 294.
(A) 123

(a) (b) (c) (d)

FIGURE 10.8 Loom types of Antiquity: (a) ground loom; (b) warp-weighted loom; (c) two-beam
loom with revolving beams; (d) two-beam loom with tubular warp. Drawings: Poul Wöhlicke.

unlikely. Still, the warp-weighted loom was far from the only loom known in antiquity,94 and as
loomweights are scarce in Roman Egypt, other looms such as the two-beam loom or the ground
loom are alternatives that easily could have been brought to the desert (Figure 10.8). An ostracon
from Barud, a smaller quarry site near Mons Claudianus, asks Kalokairos to send his wife so that
she can help with the weaving, and papyrologist Adam Bülow-Jacobsen suggests that the eight
pieces of wood one Heracleides is sending to his sister was a loom.95

SECOND-HAND DEALERS
As we have seen, a partly preserved tunic from Mons Claudianus was found to have been pieced
together by pieces of an old mantle, and the two centi found at the same site and at Didymoi
had obviously been made from scraps of cloaks. Many other textiles from the sites in the Eastern
Desert were obviously also put together from recycled items of dress.96 At Didymoi, a complete
pillow was recovered that proved to be filled with rags.97 These items are likely to be the work of
the centonarii, dealers in rags and second-hand clothing.98 Guilds of centonarii are known to have
existed in Italy and Roman Gaul; the multitude of recycled objects among the textiles from the
Eastern Desert makes it likely that a similar guild existed in Roman Egypt.

WHERE WERE THE TEXTILES MADE?

As mentioned above, yarn twist may serve as a pointer to where textiles were made as most of the
Roman East preferred s-twisted yarns, while z-twisted yarns were the norm in southern Europe,
India and Iran.99 Garments made of z-twisted yarns are therefore likely to be intrusive. At Berenike
and Myos Hormos, cotton textiles are often made of z-twisted yarns and are likely to derive from

94
Ciszuk and Hammarlund, ‘Roman Looms’.
95
Bülow-Jacobsen, ‘Texts and Textiles from Mons Claudianus’, 5–6.
96
For example, Bender Jørgensen, ‘Textiles from Mons Claudianus’, fig. 13 and Wild and Wild, ‘Textile Contrasts at
Berenike’, fig. 9.
97
Cardon, Granger-Taylor and Nowik, ‘How Were They Dressed’, 276–81.
98
Cardon, Granger-Taylor and Nowik, ‘How Were They Dressed’, 276; Lena Larsson Lovén, The Imagery of Textile Making.
Gender and Status in the Funerary Iconography of Textile Manufacture in Roman Italy and Gaul (Göteberg: Göteberg
University, 1998), 17; Mannering, ‘Questions and Answers’, 153.
99
Bender Jørgensen, ‘Textiles from Mons Claudianus’, chs. 8–9 with further references.
124 DRESS IN MEDITERRANEAN ANTIQUITY

India.100 At Mons Claudianus, 22 per cent of the diagonal wool 2/2 twills are also made of z-twisted
yarns; among the balanced diamond twills, 12 per cent have z-twisted warp and s-twisted weft.
These fabrics may well derive from the European part of the Roman Empire. Similar textiles are
frequently found at sites along the northern border of the Roman Empire and in bogs in Denmark
and northern Germany.101
Another clue could be the yarns for clavi. Yarn twist for ground weave and clavus has been
recorded for 149 bands from Mons Claudianus. The great majority were made entirely of s-twisted
yarns and only two entirely of z-twisted yarns. In nine pieces the ground weave had s-twisted yarns
in both systems but z-twisted yarn in the clavus. This may suggest that most tunics were produced
in Egypt or other parts of the Roman East, and the few made entirely of z-twisted yarns might
derive from Europe where such a twist was common. Technology is a further pointer. Several
different loom types are known from antiquity102 (see Figure 10.8a–d). The ground loom was used
in Egypt since early Pharaonic times and is still used. A two-beam loom was introduced during
the New Kingdom,103 and similar looms are also still in use. The warp-weighted loom was used in
Italy, Greece, Anatolia and the Southern Levant since the Neolithic period104 but its characteristic
loomweights are missing from Pharaonic Egypt. Although some weights are now turning up from
the Roman period, the presence of such weights appears to be connected to the introduction of
cotton from Nubia. As we have seen, the method of rearranging the warp threads in order to make
the clavi can serve to argue whether a tunic was made on a two-beam loom or a warp-weighted
loom.

CONCLUSION
Work clothes in Roman Egypt were basically ordinary Roman tunics and other items of clothing
that may be recognized in mummy portraits and other sources. Mantles and cloaks, headwear,
scarves, sashes, wrappings and footwear such as socks are all in evidence in the Egyptian desert.
Most were heavily worn and repeatedly mended, and are likely the products of second-hand
dealers, the centonarii, supplying clothing to the poorer levels of Roman society.

100
Handley, ‘The Textiles’; Wild and Wild, ‘Textile Contrasts at Berenike’, with further references.
101
Bender Jørgensen, ‘A Matter of Material’.
102
Ciszuk and Hammarlund, ‘Roman Looms’.
103
Kemp and Vogelsang-Eastwood, The Ancient Textile Industry at Amarna, 335–8.
104
Elisabeth J. W. Barber, Prehistoric Textiles. The Development of Cloth in the Neolithic and Bronze Ages (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1991), 127–32, 300–1, but see Antoinette Rast-Eicher and Lise Bender Jørgensen, ’News from
Catalhöyük’, Archaeological Textiles Review 60 (2018): 102–3; Ulf-Dietrich Schoop, ’Weaving Society in Late Chalcolithic
Anatolia: Textile Production and Social Strategies in the 4th Millennium BC’, in Western Anatolia before Troy. Proto-
Urbanisation in the 4th Millennium BC, ed. Barbara Horejs and Matthias Mehofer (Vienna: Austrian Academy of Sciences
Press, 2014), 429–34; Orit Shamir, ‘Textiles from the Chalcolithic Period, Early and Middle Bronze Age in the Southern
Levant’, Archaeological Textiles Review 57 (2015): 19.
 CHAPTER ELEVEN

Roman Women Dressing the

Part: The Visual Vocabulary from
Paintings and Mosaics
LISA A. HUGHES

Ornamentation provided a woman with a distinct persona, made her the focus of attention, and gave
her the means to create a social spectacle of herself.’1

Kelly Olson has drawn essential conclusions about the use of visual evidence as a means to
demonstrate the prescriptive treatment of Roman women’s appearances by Latin authors. This
chapter expands upon the visual evidence to offer further insights into representations of women’s
dress. The evidence draws upon select wall frescos and mosaics from Roman Pompeii and
Herculaneum (late first century BCE and early first century CE). Overall, the aim is to provide
additional insights into the styles, textile colours and textures of dress for female ritual participants,
diners, entertainers and workers through the media of wall paintings and mosaics.2 Moreover, this
chapter briefly highlights methodological considerations concerning conservation, preservation and
archaeological context. What becomes evident is that particular examples go beyond prescriptive
or pejorative treatments of clothing to shed further light on Roman women’s societal roles.
References to visual representations of Roman women’s clothing demonstrate lacunae when it
comes to detailed descriptions of garment style and colour. For example, while general mention of
dress type appears, a holistic treatment of details such as length of the garment, sleeve length, belting
and even colour is lacking. Since representations of women’s dress on wall paintings and mosaics
formulate their visual vocabulary per se, more care should be taken to nuance the differences of
communicated dress language.3
Further issues hindering descriptive analyses pertain to the preservation, restoration and
context. Many wall paintings and mosaics, for example, present signs of damage and significant
deterioration. Exposure to the elements and human contact fade or alter the artifacts,4 which in

1
Kelly Olson, Dress and the Roman Woman: Self-presentation and Society (London and New York: Routledge, 2008), 116.
2
Jonathon Edmondson and Alison Keith briefly mention the need for such a study. See Jonathon Edmondson and Alison
Keith ‘Introduction’, in Roman Dress and the Fabrics of Roman Culture, ed. Jonathon Edmondson and Alison Keith
(Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008), 11.
3
Roman dress historians have advocated this method. See Olson, Dress and the Roman Woman, 3–4; Mary Harlow, ‘Dress
in the Historia Augusta: The Role of Dress in the Historical Narrative’, in The Clothed Body in the Ancient World, ed. Liza
Cleland, Mary Harlow and Lloyd Llewellyn Jones (Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2005), 143–4.
4
Allia Wallace, ‘Presenting Pompeii: Steps towards Reconciling Conservation and Tourism at an Ancient Site’, Papers from
the Institute of Archaeology 22 (2013): 115–36.
126 DRESS IN MEDITERRANEAN ANTIQUITY

turn has some impact in terms of securely identifying the potential pigments used to represent
textile colours. In other instances, dubious conservation practices of the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries have altered wall painting compositions.5 Alternatively, problems arise with the concise
identification of colour on wall paintings because scientific analyses of pigment in Roman wall
paintings are relatively new.6 Finally, descriptive analyses of wall paintings and mosaics often fail to
acknowledge the archaeological context. Other artifactual evidence found in the original findspots
can serve to broaden our understanding of the possible relationships between women’s visual
representations and the functional use of space.7
This overview has briefly outlined some of the caveats that present themselves to scholars who
work on visual representations of dress, particularly in the Bay of Naples area. Nonetheless, it is
vital to offer a starting point that will further contribute to our understanding of Roman women’s
dress in visual representations. The examples presented in this chapter are by no means exhaustive.8
Nevertheless, what they do show is that women’s dress has the potential to create an increased
awareness of and interest in Roman women’s participation in ritual, entertainment, as well as craft
and trade.

RITUAL PARTICIPANTS
Two examples from Pompeii illustrate females engaged in a ritual or cultic practice. The first is
an in situ from the upper register of the east wall of the kitchen (House of Sutoria Primigenia,
I, 13.2, first century CE). A large group of participants watch the performance of a sacrifice to
the Lares (household gods).9 Two figures, who stand near the altar, are of interest in terms of
dress. On the viewer’s left, standing close to the altar, appears a female figure with palla (mantle)
veiling her head and tunic. John Clarke identifies the figure as Sutoria herself, taking on the role
of the juno10 on the basis that she is wearing the stola.11 Unfortunately, two factors mitigate the

5
Extractions of portions of wall paintings or mosaics because of interest in figural representations resulted in losses of
valuable contexts. Eric M. Moorman, ‘Destruction and Restoration of Campanian Mural Paintings in the Eighteenth and
Nineteenth Centuries’, in The Conservation of Wall Paintings: Proceedings of a Symposium Organized by the Courtauld
Institute of Art and the Getty Conservation Institute, London, July 13–16, 1987, ed. Sharon Cather (Los Angeles: The Getty
Conservation Institute, 1996), 87–102. For the problems associated with mosaic restoration and conservation, see Gaël de
Guichen and Roberto Nardi, ‘Mosaic Conservation: Fifty Years of Modern Practice’, CGI Newsletter 21.1 (2006). Online:
https://www.getty.edu/conservation/publications_resources/newsletters/21_1/feature.html (accessed 16 March 2020).
6
Traditionally, studies on colour owe themselves to analyses based on colour found in Vitruvius and Pliny the Elder. For a
general overview of the scholarship, see Ruth Siddall, ‘Not a Day without a Line Drawn: Pigments and Painting Techniques
of Roman Artists’, Proc R Microsc Soc 2 (2006): 18–31.
7
For further discussion of the artifactual evidence space, see Penelope Allison, Pompeian Households: An Analysis of the
Material Culture (Los Angeles: The Cotsen Institute of Archaeology Press, 2004), 11–14.
8
As well, wall paintings in this chapter receive more emphasis than mosaics. Most wall mosaics from this area during this
period are emblemata (central panels with figural decoration) that depict mythological scenes.
9
For illustrations, see John R. Clarke, Art in the Life of Ordinary Romans: Visual Representations and Non-Elite Viewers in
Italy, 100 B.C.–A.D. 315 (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 2003), figs. 39, 40; Onelia Bardelli
Mondini, ‘I, 13.2: Casa di Sutoria Primigenia’, in Pompei: Pitture e mosaici, vol. 2, ed. Giovani Carratelli and Ida Baldassare
(Rome: Istituto della enciclopedia italiana, 1990), 876–80.
10
In the worship of the household gods (Lares), the juno is the guardian spirit of the woman, while the genius is that of
the man. Wolfram-Aslam Maharam, ‘Genius’, in Brill’s New Pauly: Encyclopaedia of the Ancient World, ed. Manfred
Landfester, Hubert Cancik and Helmuth Schneider (Leiden, Boston: Brill, 2006). Online: http://dx.doi.org.ezproxy.lib.
ucalgary.ca/10.1163/1574-9347_bnp_e421560 (accessed 9 July 2019).
11
Olson, Dress and the Roman Woman, 27–32.
ROMAN WOMEN DRESSING THE PART 127

identification of the stola. First, the distinctive horizontal straps that would have been placed just
below the shoulder of the sleeveless tunic are not visible in the painting.12 Second, the distinctive
band of coloured fabric sewn to the hem of the garment is also missing. It is highly probable that
Clarke has tapped into a conventional reading of the figure based on the fact that the palla veils her
head. Given that the identification of Sutoria has head veiled and stands directly beside the male
sacrificant, who also has head veiled (none of the other thirteen members of the household have
heads covered), it is likely that she too is assuming the role of sacrificant.13 Notably, the cloak also
has a red edging, similar to the male togate figure to the right.
The second example exhibits females who wear distinctive forms of dress that indicate their
involvement in Isiac worship.14 The Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli (MANN) currently
houses this fresco (inv. 8919) taken from an unknown provenance in Herculaneum (Figure
11.1).15 The scene may represent the festivities associated with the opening and closing of Isis’
shrine.16
The composition of the fresco breaks down into two main parts. The upper portion reveals
four figures standing in the cella of the podium-styled temple. In the background, one female
figure in a white linen tunic beats a tympanum. Because the figures of this scene blur into the
background of the composition, it is challenging to ascertain more specific details of the dress.
One of the female participants (viewer’s left) is a crouched female, shaking a sistrum in the left
hand, holding a votive offering plate in the right. She wears a white semi-transparent linen tunic
and fringed mantle that may be a similar garment to the performer in the upper portion of the
composition. The white tunic and mantle also correspond to garments worn by the goddess Isis
herself.17

12
Sandra R. Joshel and Lauren Hackworth Petersen, The Material Life of Roman Slaves (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2014), 41–2; Federica Giacobello, Larari Pompeiani: Iconografia e culto dei Lari in ambito domestico (Milan: LED
Edizioni, 2008), 156; John R. Clarke, Roman Life, 100 BC to AD 200 (New York: Abrams, 2007), 29, figs. 14, 15; John
Dobbins and Pedar Foss, The World of Pompeii (London and New York: Routledge, 2007), 534; John R. Clarke, Art in the
Life of Ordinary Romans: Visual Representations and Non-Elite Viewers in Italy, 100 B.C.–A.D. 315 (Berkeley, Los Angeles,
London: University of California Press, 2003), 76–8, figs. 39–40; Thomas von Fröhlich, Lararien und Fassadenbilder in
den Vesuvstädten: Untersuchungen zur‚ volkstümlichen‚ pompejanischen Malerei. Römische Mitteilungen Supplement 32
(Mainz: von Zabern, 1991), L29, T28,1 and T28,2.
13
Lisa A. Hughes, ‘Unveiling the Veil: Social, Cultic, and Ethnic Representations of Early Imperial Freedwomen’, Material
Religion: The Journal of Objects, Art and Belief 3, no. 2 (2007): 218–41.
14
Molly Swetnam-Burland notes that while women abound in the representations, there is no definitive evidence to show
that all are priestesses. Instead, their presence denotes ‘cultic association’. Molly Swetnam-Burland, ‘Egyptian Priests in
Roman Italy’, in Cultural Identity in the Ancient Mediterranean, ed. Eric Gruen (Los Angeles: Getty Publications, 2011),
349, note 3. For a detailed discussion, see Sharon K. Heyob, The Cult of Isis amongst Women in the Greco-Roman World
(Leiden: Brill 1991).
15
Eric Moorman indicates that the source may have been a house near the theatre. See Eric M. Moorman, ‘Ministers of Isiac
Cults in Roman Wall Painting’, in Individuals and Materials in the Greco Roman Cults of Isis: Agents, Images and Practices,
ed. Valentino Gasparini and Richard Veymiers (Leiden: Brill, 2019), 367–8; Sharon K. Heyob, The Cult of Isis amongst
Women in the Greco-Roman World (Leiden: Brill, 1991), 105; Victor Tram Tam Tinh, Le Culte des divinités orientales à
Herculaneum EPRO 17 (Leiden: Brill, 1971), 85–6, no. 59, pl. 41, fig. 1; Victor Tram Tam Tinh, Essai sur le culte d’Isis à
Pompeii (Paris: E. De Boccard, 1964), 97, 102–3.
16
For further bibliography, see Moorman, ‘Ministers of Isiac Cults’, 370.
17
See MANN, inv. 9558, temple of Isis, Pompeii, VIII.7.28; MANN, inv. 9555, House of the Duke d’Aumale, Pompeii,
VI. 7, 15. Molly Swetnam-Burland, Egypt in Italy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 125–37.
128 DRESS IN MEDITERRANEAN ANTIQUITY

FIGURE 11.1 Ceremony of cult of Isis. Herculaneum. Fresco, first century CE. MANN, inv. 8919.
Photo: Art Resource (ART62958).

ENTERTAINERS AND THE ENTERTAINED

This section focuses on representations of both female entertainers and entertained females/diners.
The entertainers highlighted here focus on female actors and musicians. In the previous section, a
female was identified in her role as an Isiac performer. It was her dress that clearly defined her for
this role. In this section, the musicians who entertain are those who appear to have a connection
with theatrical performances. The first example is a first-century BCE emblemata mosaic signed
by Dioskurides of Samos from the so-called Villa of Cicero in Pompeii. It is now housed in the
MANN (inv. 9985).18 The mosaic presents four figures performing on the street. Moving from the
viewer’s left to right, one sees a male child, a masked female flute (aulos) player and two other
male musicians, a cymbalist and a tympanist, respectively.19 Whether the figure playing the flute
is an actual woman or a man playing the role of a female is not entirely clear. The figure dons a
white mask, yet the long hair, partly covered by a cloth, is pulled up and tied into a chignon at the
top of the head. The figure wears a white long-sleeved leotard.20 Over the top of the tunic, another

18
For the illustration, see Katherine M. D. Dunbabin, Mosaics of the Greek and Roman World (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2012), 45, fig. 44. A similar composition appears this time in a fresco painting from Stabiae. MANN, inv.
9034.
19
Dunbabin, Mosaics of the Greek and Roman World, 46–7.
20
Margarite Bieber refers to the leotard costume as ‘tights’ but does not refer to colour. The treatment of the sleeves may be
to emphasize the pale skin colour of the flautist. The tympanist to the right has a similar long-sleeved garment but in brown.
See Margarite Bieber, The History of the Greek and Roman Theater (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1971), 95–6.
ROMAN WOMEN DRESSING THE PART 129

brown-coloured, short sleeve tunic with hem extends to the ankles of the figure. A turquoise mantle
infused with browns, turquoise and yellow covers the tunic.
A second example is a fresco from an unknown provenance in Herculaneum (Figure.11. 2), first
century CE (MANN, inv. 9023), which shows a woman seated on a bed (klinê) among three other
women in the garden area of a peristyle.21 She holds a harp in her left hand and plucks a cithara
resting on the bed with the other.22 She is dressed in a white linen tunic, imbued with turquoise
and green. The white tunic completely covers her arms. Her dress is distinctive from the two other
women depicted in the scene who eagerly listen to the musician. The woman standing on the
viewer’s right wears a turquoise mantle of turquoise and brown. The third figure standing on the
viewer’s left wears a white tunic that is covered by a yellow mantle with turquoise trim. Wilhelmina
Jashemski, when referring to this example as one of several paintings that depicted musicians,
has written that it is unclear ‘whether the musicians in the paintings we have just described were
performing at public entertainments or private dinner parties’.23 Regardless, this offers a segue for
the discussion of women who were entertained at dinner parties.
While representations of female musicians in dining contexts are seen as reputable, the opposite
holds true for depictions of female diners. A series of moderately well-preserved frescoes of a
dining room (triclinium) (room g) in Pompeii’s House of the Chaste Lovers (IX. 12, 6-7) from the
first century CE depicts various scenes.24 The focus of attention is the fresco from the north wall
that comprises a total of eight figures who appear beneath an embroidered canopy in an outdoor
setting. In the centre, two couples recline. On the viewer’s left, one woman sits raising a drink to
her lips in one hand and holds the double oboe (tibia) in the opposite. A second woman stands
behind her. On the far right, a servant pours wine from an amphora into a silver bowl. When
describing the dress of these women, Clarke solely focuses on the reclining woman who kisses
her male partner. He identifies her as a hetaira, who wears a yellow robe.25 A better-preserved
example of the same composition exists (except for a servant pouring wine on the far right) that
may be from Pompeii, Herculaneum or Stabiae (MANN, inv. 9015, Figure 11.3).26 In this instance,
the same figure with a yellow garment appears.27 Subsequently, Clarke believes that this cycle
of frescoes portray Greek symposia, whereby the female attendants are prostitutes (hetaira).28 In
another composition in the same room, there are women portrayed either as unclothed from the
waist up (yet, the arm of the male participant covers the breasts of the figure, and the genitalia are
hidden beneath the bed covering)29 or in semi-transparent dress, which, too, could point to their

21
See Wilhelmina F. Jashemski, The Gardens of Pompeii, Herculaneum and the Villas Destroyed by Vesuvius (New Rochelle:
Caratzas Brothers, Publishers, 1979), 97–102.
22
Stephano De Caro and Rosanna Cappelli, The National Archaeological Museum of Naples (Milan: Electa, 1999), 128;
Jashemski, The Gardens of Pompeii, 99–101.
23
Jashemski, The Gardens of Pompeii, 101.
24
Clarke, Art in the Lives of Ordinary Romans, 230–1.
25
Olson notes that in ancient Greece, prostitutes and brides reportedly wore yellow. Olson, Dress and Roman Women, 120,
note 9.
26
Clarke posits that the two versions of this painting likely originated from a pattern book that patrons could commission
works. Clarke, Art in the Lives of Ordinary Romans, 231, 325, note 21, pl. 19.
27
A similar scenario likely applies to the Villa of Cicero mosaic and its complimentary fresco from Stabiae.
28
Clarke, Art in the Life of Ordinary Romans, 228–30. Also, see Katherine Dunbabin, The Roman Banquet: Images of
Conviviality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 52–63.
29
See Clarke, Art in the Life of Ordinary Romans, pl. 17.
130 DRESS IN MEDITERRANEAN ANTIQUITY

FIGURE 11.2 Female musician seated on a bed (klinē). Herculaneum. Fresco, first century CE.
MANN, inv. 9023. Photo: Alamy MNTF2B.

roles as prostitutes. Perhaps an alternative reading that brings the actual Roman diners into the
frame may shed more light, especially given that the tunics of all our figures are respectably dyed in
colours of yellow, turquoise and purple.30 A vital clue is the figure of Dionysus, who appears in the
background of select images (Room g, north wall, MANN, inv. 9015). As Hales has persuasively
questioned, why would Pompeiians have wanted to decorate spaces such as dining areas with

Olson, Dress and the Roman Woman, 11–14. Judith Lynn Sebesta also remarks on the luxurious nature of such colours
30

and how they pertain to women. See Judith Lynn Sebesta, ‘Tunica Ralla, Tunica Spissa: The Colors and Textiles of Roman
Costumes’, in The World of Roman Costume, ed. Judith Lynn Sebesta and Larissa Bonfante (Madison: The University of
Wisconsin Press, 2001), 70–3.
ROMAN WOMEN DRESSING THE PART 131

FIGURE 11.3 Two couples in a summer triclinium. Pompeii or Herculaneum. Fresco, first century
CE. MANN, inv. 9015. Photo: Art Resource (ART77457).

imagery that had negative connotations?31 It is highly suggestive that the female figures are dressed
in garments appropriate for a Dionysian banquet (convivium), and they should also be treated as
respectable women.

TRADES- AND CRAFTSWOMEN

The last section for discussion focuses on examples of trades- and craftswomen from Pompeii.
In a similar fashion to our entertained women, certain negative stereotypes of women arise that
require re-evaluation. A descriptive analysis of dress, as will become evident, may sway specific
traditional ideas that have been part and parcel of scholarly analyses. Several visual examples
from Pompeii identify trades- and craftswomen. The clothing worn by these women aligns with
Olson’s identification of the preferred sartorial choices such as tunics (tunicae) and mantles.32 The
representations reveal a rich source of variations in garment construction and colour.
The first example comes from the Caupona of Salvius, VI, 14, 36. A first-century frescoed frieze
that initially appeared from the north wall of room 1 now appears in the MANN (inv. 111482)

31
Shelley Hales, ‘Dionysos at Pompeii’, British School at Athens Studies 15 (2007): 341.
32
Olson, Dress and the Roman Woman, 25–6.
132 DRESS IN MEDITERRANEAN ANTIQUITY

(Figure 11.4).33 The female tavern worker34 stands among customers. In her left hand, she holds a
pitcher, in her right, a glass. She wears an off-white tunic that falls at the ankles. The sleeves are
three-quarter length. Moreover, thin red stripes are woven down the length of her garment. The
bulk of drapery folds down the length of the garment indicate that the female also wears a mantle.
Her clothing bears a resemblance to the garment of a seated male doling out bread found in a fresco
from VII, 3, 30.35 While Clarke acknowledges the uncertainty behind the identification of the man’s
dress as a toga, it seems that the garment construction and colour of the two examples are similar. If
the individual doling the bread is wearing a toga, this has important implications for our barmaid.
Select female tavern workers, for example, had connections with the sex trade. In the case of the
barmaid, the possible donning of the toga may imply that she is a sex worker.36 If this is the case,
this may be the only known visual representation we have of togate sex worker. While links to

FIGURE 11.4 Tavern scene, Caupona of Salvius, VI, 14, 36. Pompeii. Fresco, first century CE.
MANN, inv. 111482. Photo: Art Resource (ART468737).

33
Clarke, Art in the Lives of Ordinary Romans, 161–2.
34
Joanne Berry, The Complete Pompeii (London: Thames & Hudson), 231–2. According to Berry, a man calls to a barmaid
‘Over here’, and another man on the right says, ‘No it’s mine’, and the barmaid says, ‘Whoever wants it, should take it.
Oceanus, come here and drink’. Clarke provides extensive descriptions of the characters in this scene that include detailed
observations of clothing. Curiously, he discusses the stature and gesture of the barmaid but makes no mention of her
clothing. Clarke, Art in the Lives of Ordinary Romans, 165.
35
The exact original location of this fresco is unknown, but Clarke surmises that it would have been situated on the left wall
of the home’s tablinum. The piece is now located in the MANN (inv. 9071). Clarke, Art in the Lives of Ordinary Romans,
259–60.
36
See Dig. 23.2.43 pr. For the identification of such relationships, see Kelly Olson, ‘Matrona and Whore the Clothing of
Women in Roman Antiquity’, Fashion Theory 6 (2006): 395, 410, note 45.
ROMAN WOMEN DRESSING THE PART 133

prostitution, bakeries, mills and taverns may have existed, this appears to be more of a perceived
notion, as Bond has observed.37 The other more plausible possibility is that the two figures simply
wear garments (e.g. tunics and mantles) reflective of their occupation, which may not be as negative
as typically discerned.38 The red stripes, moreover, appear on the tunics of individuals from many
social standings.39
The second set of examples also poses a conundrum concerning clothing and the women’s
occupational roles in the scenes. A pier from the peristyle of a Pompeiian fullery (fullonica), VI, 8,
20 (Figure 11.5), is the source for a series of first-century frescoes. On the lower north side of the
pier, there is a woman sitting and cleaning the instrument for carding wool (MANN, inv. 9774).
Two other figures are standing to the viewer’s left. One is a male who shows a cloth sample to
another female. Suspended from the roof are pieces of cloth draped over sticks. The seated female
figure wears a short sleeve, off-white tunic that has a thin, red, vertical rick-rack pattern running
down the length of the garment. A green mantle drapes over the shoulders and lower torso of the
figure. What has not been observed is that the female figure who stands to the right wears a similar

FIGURE 11.5 Women in the fullery, VI, 8, 20. Pompeii. Fresco, first century CE. MANN, inv.
9774. Photo: Art Resource (ART421590).

37
Sarah Bond, Trade and Taboo: Disreputable Professions in the Roman Mediterranean (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan
Press, 2016), 145.
38
For a less prescriptive reading, see Steven J. R. Ellis, The Roman Retail Revolution: The Socio-Economic World of the
Taberna (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), 12–13.
39
Lauren Hackworth Petersen, ‘“Clothes Make the Man”: Dressing the Roman Freedman Body’, in Bodies and Boundaries in
Graeco-Roman Antiquity, ed. Thorsten Fögen and Mireille M. Lee (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2010), 200; Irene Bragantini,
‘VI, 14, 35, 36: Caupona di Salvius’, in Pompei: Pitture e mosaici, vol. 5, ed. Giovani Carratelli and Ida Baldassare (Rome:
Istituto della enciclopedia italiana, 1994), 366–71.
134 DRESS IN MEDITERRANEAN ANTIQUITY

set of clothes: an off-white tunic with red rick-rack pattern falling down the front of the garment as
well. A green mantle is draped over her shoulder and lower torso. Clarke has indicated two possible
interpretations. First, this is a woman who brings the cloth in for cleaning; or second, she is there
to pick up the cleaned product.40 No connection is made, however, of the clothing similarities
of both the seated and standing figures. Two more plausible scenarios apply. The first is that the
scenes might illustrate a continuous narrative where the female figure is engaged in tool cleaning
in one vignette. The woman then appears, again, holding the short end of the cloth with her male
counterpart in the other scene. The second scenario could be that there are two female workers
presented in the scene wearing ‘uniforms’ that are suitable for their trade.
The third example derives from the left pier of a doorway in the Workshop of Verecundus, IX.
7.5. It originally was located to the left side of doorway 7 off the Via dell’ Abbondanza but is now
in storage.41 The female cloth seller stands behind the counter. The identity of this figure is likely
the wife of the shop owner, Verecundus. Although the counter obscures the lower half of her body,
she wears an indigo blue mantle draping her shoulders. The mantle is the same indigo colour of the
tunic donned by Venus Pompeiana (Pompeii’s patron deity), who features in the frescoes located
on the shop front.42 This colour association is relevant in terms of providing a visual link between
the cloth seller and the goddess. This link further intensifies the seller’s potential to attract attention
because she, like the goddess, wears a garment dyed from imported materials.43 Beneath the mantle
is an off-white tunic with the customary tradesperson’s red stripe, visibly falling down the length
of the garment’s left side.
The final category of Roman women dressed for the part is that of craftswomen, more
specifically, painters. These frescoes have been studied mainly for the fundamental reason that they
portray female artisans. However, what they wear seems to be largely overlooked. The first fresco
originally from the House of the Empress of Russia (VI. 14, 42) is now housed in the MANN (inv.
9017). Two females are seated, one of whom paints a togate male. The painter wears an off-white
tunic and has a white mantle draped around her shoulders.
A second fresco, dating to the first century CE, from a room located off the peristyle in Pompeii’s
House of the Surgeon (VI. 1, 9-10.23), features a seated female who gazes at her subject, a statue of
Dionysus (Figure 11.6). Two other women stand to observe behind a pier. The woman on the left
wears a green and yellow short-sleeved tunic with a rose colour mantle wrapped around the right
shoulder and lower torso. The second figure wears a yellow tunic with turquoise and rose-trimmed
mantle that completely covers the body and veils the head. The seated painter dabbles a brush into
a pigment box and holds a palette in the other. At her feet rests a framed painting of the deity that
is held by a crouching child. This example is especially important in that the female painter wears

40
For the location of the piers, see Clarke, Art in the Lives of Everyday Romans, 113, fig. 64. Furthermore, Clarke has
identified this as a ‘drop-off scene’ on the basis that the cloth is not carefully folded. Clarke, Art in the Lives of Everyday
Romans, 116.
41
Hilary Becker, ‘Roman Women in the Urban Economy: Occupations, Social Connections, and Gendered Exclusions’, in
Women in Antiquity: Real Women across the Ancient World, ed. Jean Macintosh Turfa and Stephanie Lyn Budin (London:
Routledge, 2016), 917; Clarke, Art in the Life of Ordinary Romans, 110–11, fig. 63; Walter O. Moeller, The Wool Trade of
Ancient Pompeii (Leiden: Brill, 1976), 54.
42
Clarke, Art in the Life of Ordinary Romans, 105–7, fig. 60.
43
For indigo, see Sebesta, ‘Tunica Ralla’, 68–9.
ROMAN WOMEN DRESSING THE PART 135

FIGURE 11.6 Female painter before the statue of Dionysus. House of the Surgeon, VI. 1, 9-10.23,
Pompeii. Fresco, first century CE. Photo: Art Resource (ART77460).
136 DRESS IN MEDITERRANEAN ANTIQUITY

a yellow sleeveless tunic with a beige-green mantle draped over her shoulder and waist. The status
hue of the yellow garment, in this instance, conveys a respectable image.44
That last fresco presents a woman painting a theatrical scene initially from Herculaneum and
now housed in the MANN (inv. 9019).45 To the left is a seated male actor. The painter crouches
down on the floor with either a stylus or paintbrush in her hand. It appears that she either writes
a dedication or paints a further tableau below the representation of the tragic mask. Behind the
tableau stands another male figure. It is safe to say that the female dresses similarly to the other
painters mentioned above. She wears a lightweight, off-white, sleeveless, belted tunic, the hem of
which falls at the ankles. The strap of the tunic hangs off her shoulder in a similar manner to the
female diners presented at the House of the Chaste Lovers. A darker shaded mantle drapes around
the lower half of her body. Similar to the other representations of the craftswomen, the dress relays
a means to attract attention positively.

CONCLUSIONS
What is evident from this survey is that the descriptive overviews of women’s dress in the frescos
and mosaics of women’s dress are wanting. Details of dress types and status colours are too often
ignored. This foray into select Pompeiian examples from the late Republican and early Imperial
periods reveals a rich source of evidence in terms of the diverse nature of clothing. As mentioned
earlier, by no means is this an exhaustive sample of women’s dress from this region in general or the
Roman world as a whole. It is with hope that this chapter will spark the catalyst for future studies in
areas of the Roman world that have received little attention in terms of dress studies. More detailed
treatments of women can help break stereotypes or ideas that have run their course in secondary
scholarship. In doing so, we revivify more voices of ancient Roman women that have been lost and
forgotten over time.

44
Silberberg-Peirce believes that the presence of the two other women looking at the painter and her work garner
respectability. Susan Silberberg-Peirce, ‘The Muse Restored: Images of Women in Roman Painting’, Woman’s Art Journal
14, no. 2 (1993): 35.
45
Silberberg-Pierce, ‘The Muse Restored’, 34. For the Herculaneum example, see Oreste Ferrari and Enrica Pozzi, Le
Collezione del Museo Nazionale di Napoli (Rome: De Luca, 1986), fig. 103; Karl Schefold, Die Wäende Pompejis,
Topographisches Verzeichnis der Bildmotive (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1957), 334.
 CHAPTER TWELVE

‘They Leave behind Them

Portraits of Their Wealth,
Not Themselves’1: Aspects of
Self-Presentation in the Dress
of the Deceased in Mummy
Portraits and Portrait Mummies
from Roman Egypt
LORELEI H. CORCORAN

INTRODUCTION AND BACKGROUND

Up until the late twentieth century, the scholarly climate concerning our understanding of the
cultures of Ptolemaic and Roman Egypt was biased in favour of the classicists’ view of Egypt as
a backwater province whose glory days were in the past and whose population consisted of the
indigenous poor and an ill-defined Hellenic or Hellenized elite class, a core of first-class citizens
that inhabited a second-class world of hybridized religious beliefs and artistic aesthetics. A corpus
of funerary objects from Roman Egypt, the so-called Fayum portraits or mummy portraits,2 has
long been considered the quintessential example of a Hellenistic art form adapted to local customs
by members of this Hellenized elite. In 1995, a monograph3 based on a 1988 dissertation, the study
of the iconography of the body decorations of these ‘portrait mummies’, was predicted to ‘rock
the hellenocentric art world’4 because it exactingly documented that their decoration alluded to a
grounded knowledge in ancient Egyptian afterlife beliefs that complemented the ultimate use of the
portraits within the iconic product of ancient Egypt, a mummy.
1
Itague nullius effigie vivente imagines pecuniae, non suas, relinquunt; Pliny Nat. 35.5.
2
It is to the dedicated research of Klaus Parlasca that we owe the collection and publication of the more than 1,000 extant
mummy portraits worldwide. Klaus Parlasca, Ritratti Di Mummie. Repertorio d’arte dell’ Egitto greco-romano, Series B: I,
ed. Achille Adriani (Palermo: Banco di Sicilia, Fondazione Mormino, 1969), Series B: II, III (Rome: L’Erma di Bretschneider,
1977, 1980) and Klaus Parlasca and Hans G. Frenz, Ritratti di Mummie, Repertorio d’arte dell’Egitto greco-romano. Series
B: IV, ed. Nicola Baracosa (Rome: L’Erma di Bretschneider, 2003).
3
Lorelei H. Corcoran, Portrait Mummies from Roman Egypt (I–IVth Centuries A.D.), with a Catalog of Portrait Mummies in
Egyptian Museums SAOC 56 (Chicago: Oriental Institute, 1995).
4
Robert S. Bianchi, ‘The Mummy as Medium’, Archaeology (November/December 1995): 61.
138 DRESS IN MEDITERRANEAN ANTIQUITY

In the decades following that challenge to the then accepted practice of separating the mummy
portraits from a context deeply rooted in ancient Egyptian theology, important studies have
emerged based on archaeological and textual evidence that have helped to define and elucidate
issues of significance to achieve a more balanced view of the lives of the people who appear in
the paintings.5 Nevertheless, the classical bias persists that privileges a perceived Greek versus
Egyptian ethnicity. Writing in 2010, Hellinckx stated, ‘Even in more recent publications such as
the volume on mummy portraits edited by S. Walker and M. Bierbrier for the series “Catalogue
of Roman Portraits in the British Museum” [Ancient Faces: Mummy Portraits from Roman Egypt,
London, 1997] the classical perspective is still dominant.’6 ‘During her keynote address at the
APPEAR conference at the Getty Villa (17–18 May 2018), Susan Walker pointed out that the
linden wood on which many Fayum portraits were painted generally derives from southeastern
Europe, thus including the heartland of the Macedonian veterans who settled in Egypt in the
Hellenistic period’7 which one conference participant extrapolated to mean that ‘the addition
of panel portraits to mummies in the early Roman imperial period could be understood as an
expression of ethnic or cultural identity – a proud exclamation of the Graeco-Macedonian
background of the wealthy upper-class inhabitants of the Fayum’.8 Rowlandson has pointed
out, however, that even by the late first century BCE, ‘there were few who could call themselves
of genuine Greek descent’9 being ‘largely Egyptian in origin’10 due to intermarriage with native
Egyptians and the absorption of native Egyptians into the class of ‘Macedonian katoikoi’ (the
original group of Ptolemaic soldier settlers). Her statement, moreover, that ‘the “Greek” identity
of the 6475 [of the Arsinoite nome] was stressed in their title because it was not otherwise
immediately obvious’11 refutes Walker’s argument why ‘some references stress the Hellenic origin
of the 6475’12 and that ‘the 6475 may well be represented in the most Romanized portraits from
Hawara’.13
In his study of identity and burial practices in Ptolemaic Egypt, Landvatter cautioned that an
insistence, such as Walker’s and Borg’s – on the perceived emphasis that the patrons of the mummy
portraits placed on their ‘Greekness’ – borders on a ‘projection of the concerns of a very specific,

5
Caitlín E. Barrett, ‘Hellenistic and Roman Egypt’, in Oxford Bibliographies in Classics, ed. Ruth Scodel (New York:
Oxford University Press, 2015), doi: 10.1093/OBO/9780195389661-0189. Note additional bibliography in Bart
Hellinckx’s insightful article, ‘Studying the Funerary Art of Roman Egypt’, which is a review of The Beautiful Burial
in Roman Egypt, Art, Identity and Funerary Religion, by Christina Riggs (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), in
Chronique d’ Égypte 85 (2010): 126–56, and Christina Riggs, ed., The Oxford Handbook of Roman Egypt (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2012).
6
Hellinckx, ‘Studying the Funerary Art’, 129, fn. 26.
7
Judith Barr et al., ‘The Girl with the Golden Wreath: Four Perspectives on a Mummy Portrait’, arts 8, no. 92 (2019): 19.
doi:10.3390/arts8030092 (accessed 20 July 2019).
8
Ibid.
9
Jane Rowlandson, ‘Dissing the Egyptians: Legal, Ethnic, and Cultural Identities in Roman Egypt’, in Creating Ethnicities &
Identities in The Roman World, ed. Andrew Gardner, Edward Herring and Kathryn Lomas (London: University of London,
2013), 219.
10
Ibid., 225.
11
Ibid.
12
Susan E. C. Walker, ‘Mummy Portraits in Their Roman Context’, in Portraits and Masks, Burial Customs in Roman Egypt,
ed. Morris L. Bierbrier (London: British Museum Press, 1997), 4.
13
Ibid. See also Barbara Borg, ‘Das Gesicht der Elite: Multikulturele Identitäten im römischen Ägypten’, in Ägypter, Griechen,
Römer, Begegnung der Kulturen. Kanobas 1, ed. Heinz Felber and Susanne Pfisterer-Haas (1999), 83–93.
ASPECTS OF SELF-PRESENTATION 139

colonial present onto a very different past’.14 He argues further that this concern with ‘ethnic
identity’ (in the Ptolemaic period) has been to the detriment of our identification of ‘other identities
such as socioeconomic level, regional origin and gender’.15 Landvatter’s viewpoint is relevant to
our study notwithstanding that one of the most important distinctions to keep in mind when
investigating material evidence from the ‘Greco-Roman’ period is that Ptolemaic Egypt is not
Roman Egypt.
Although their impressionistic style of painting is related to the Hellenistic artistic tradition of
fresco painting, the mummy portraits that first appear in the archaeological record in the early first
century CE are securely a product of the culture of Roman Egypt. The men, women and children
depicted in the paintings should, therefore, be identified according to criteria related to data now
available from the centuries specific to their lifespans concerning such diverse perspectives as life
expectancy, prevalent occupations and their status and role in the economy, facets of village and
urban life including the architecture of domestic and cemetery sites, the eligibility of individuals
for citizenship and its obligations, language fluency and literacy, ancient ideas of ‘ethnicity’, gender
roles and their responsibilities, and religious and funerary beliefs. Hard data gleaned from the study
of texts, such as receipts for the price of luxury goods or the exchange of letters,16 archaeological
evidence from preserved textiles17 and domestic and funerary architecture,18 and computer-
aided investigations of physical remains,19 are contributing to an objective description of what
constituted the lifestyle (civic and religious) of the relatively small population of Roman Egypt
that commissioned portraits and portrait mummies.20 Conventionally, due to the presumed cost of

14
Thomas Peter Landvatter, ‘Identity, Burial Practice and Social Change in Ptolemaic Egypt’ (PhD diss., University of
Michigan, Ann Arbor, 2013), 2. ‘This applies both to the idea of Hellenization as a nearly missionary enterprise which
bestowed the benefits of civilization onto a grateful native population … and the application of the critiques of 19th and
20th century colonialism to the Hellenistic period’, ibid., 2, fn. 7.
15
Ibid., 3.
16
Barrett, ‘Taxation, Courvée and Liturgies’, 23–4, ‘Manufacture and Trade: From Production to Consumption’, 4–26,
‘Households and Families’, 36–7, ‘Women and Gender’, 37–9, and ‘Languages, Texts, Textual Evidence and Literary
Culture’, 51–3; all in ‘Hellenistic and Roman Egypt’. Online.
17
Among other monographs on the publication of the textile finds from the rubbish dumps of the garrisons along the route
to the Red Sea, see especially, Hélène Cuvigny, ed., Didymoi: une garnison romaine dans le désert Oriental d’Égypte. Vol.
1: les fouilles et la materiél, FIFAO 64 (Le Caire: Institut française d’archéologie oriental, 2011). I am grateful to Tasha
Vorderstrasse for this invaluable reference.
18
Barrett, ‘Architecture: Domestic and Civic’, in ‘Hellenistic and Roman Egypt’, 66–8. Funerary architecture related
specifically to portrait mummies is discussed by Klaus Parlasca, Mumienporträts und verwandte Denkmäler (Wiesbaden:
Franz Steiner Verlag, 1966), 50–8; W. A. Daszewski, ‘Mummy Portraits from Northern Egypt: The Necropolis in Marina
el-Alemain’, in Portraits and Masks, 59–65; and Jana Helmbold-Doyé, ed., Aline und ihre Kinder, Mumien aus dem
römerzeitlichen Ägypten (Wiesbaden: Reichert Verlag, 2017), 17.
19
CT scans and the subsequent 3-D printing of objects detected in scans have now allowed for the identification of inclusions
within the mummy wrappings that contradicts Petrie’s original assertion that portrait mummies did not contain amulets
or items of any kind within their wrappings (W. M. Flinders Petrie, Hawara, Biahmu and Arsinoe (London: Field & Tuer,
1889), 20). See Lorelei H. Corcoran and Marie Svoboda, Herakleides, A Portrait Mummy from Roman Egypt (Los Angeles:
Getty Publications, 2010), 66–8, and Stuart R. Stock et al., ‘Sex, Age and Mummification Practices: Evidence from 3-D
X-Ray Imaging and X-Ray Diffraction’, in Portrait of a Child: Historical and Scientific Studies of a Roman Egyptian Mummy,
ed. Essi Rönkkö, Taco Terpstra and Marc Walton (Evanston, IL: Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art, 2019), 76–9.
20
Although, due to their rotted condition, an unknown number of portraits were abandoned in situ by Petrie (W. M.
Flinders Petrie, Roman Portraits and Memphis (IV) (London: School of Archaeology in Egypt, 1911), 2), and presumably
also by those working at other sites, the total number of portrait mummies ever produced is still only a small percentage
of mummies that were manufactured overall and therefore represents only a minority of the inhabitants of Roman Egypt.
Of his finds from Hawara, Petrie (Roman Portraits, 1) stated that ‘out of about a hundred mummies of the same age, found
buried in the same way, there is only one portrait preserved, and perhaps one more decayed or destroyed portrait’.
140 DRESS IN MEDITERRANEAN ANTIQUITY

mummification and the decoration of the portrait mummies, the patrons of this genre of funerary
outfit have been characterized as members of the ‘elite’, a sweeping statement too vague to be
helpful.21 Scholars are now aiming at a more precise definition of the lifestyles of these individuals
who can be more specifically identified by their education and literacy (Greek and demotic), their
ownership of property (land and goods), their access to restricted items and their chosen expression
of self-presentation allowing for regional variations.
Mummy portraits, defined as naturalistic paintings of the face and upper torso executed in tempera
or encaustic (pigments mixed in hot beeswax) or a combination of techniques (‘wax-tempera’) on
wooden panels or on linen, became of major interest to the art world in the late nineteenth century
as a result of portraits that were sold at auction by the Viennese art dealer, Theodor Graf. At that
time, an accurate period for the flourit of these paintings was as yet unknown and a Ptolemaic
date was suggested. Sir Flinders Petrie’s excavations at Hawara confirmed that the portraits (and
associated mummies) from that site belonged at the earliest to the reign of the emperor Tiberius.
Present-day scholarly consensus is that the genre ranges at the earliest from the first century CE and
that the latest portraits on wood panels date to the mid-third century CE whereas the tradition of
portrait paintings on funerary shrouds and the use of cartonnage masks continued up to the fourth
century CE.22 Nevertheless, the dating of individual portraits has continued to be based on the same
criteria that originally resulted in a Ptolemaic date: a subjective assessment of artistic technique,
quality, hairstyles, jewellery and dress.23

21
Throughout pharaonic history, saving for the cost of mummification and tomb production was incentivized by afterlife
aspirations and individuals who might not be considered to have been among ‘the elite’ (if that included those from the
highest level of government administration) would have sacrificed dearly for these amenities. With respect to quantifying
those costs in the Roman era, although Maria Cannata (‘Funerary Artists, the Textual Evidence’, The Oxford Handbook of
Roman Egypt, 597) states that ‘textual evidence for the production of mummies, burial assemblages, or tombs in Roman
Egypt is almost non-existent’, Dominic Montserrat (‘Death and Funerals in the Roman Fayoum’, in Portraits and Masks, 36)
produced values for the cost and economic impact of a funeral from commodities lists ‘since the commodities consumed at
funerals – garlands, perfume, linen, foodstuffs – are all common items of daily use’ as well. Montserrat (ibid.) was thereby able
to estimate the cost of a funeral relative to the average worker’s salary, an equation that helps to make these values relevant
to a discussion of social status. A rare receipt for funeral expenses (ibid., 40) shows a price of 440 drachmas that Monserrat
(ibid., 36) estimated at being approximately equivalent to a year’s wage for a labourer. In Ulricke Horak’s retranslation of
the same document (Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Papyrsusammlung, Inv. P. Vindob, G 24.913), dated to
the second or third centuries CE, ‘Papyrus Written in Black Ink, Listing the Expenses of a Burial’, in Ancient Faces, Mummy
Portraits from Roman Egypt, ed. Susan Walker (New York: Routledge, 2000), 160), she states, ‘It becomes apparent how high
the costs of a burial might be if one considers that in the second century an annual income probably amounted to between
200 and 300 drachmas. The expenses listed thus amounted to nearly two years’ income, a sum surely only affordable by the
upper middle class.’ Nevertheless, this does not take into consideration that (1) an individual might save a lifetime for funeral
expenses; (2) families could pool resources (Montserrat, ‘Death and Funerals’, 36) or (3) commodities of high value could
be sold to raise the funds for expenses (ibid., 37). This last scenario might have helped to account for the fluid turnover in
individuals and families of ‘high status’ within communities as family fortunes were gained or lost.
22
For an overview of the history of the early acquisition of and dating dilemmas associated with mummy portraits, see
Morris Bierbrier, ‘The Discovery of the Mummy Portraits’, and Susan Walker, ‘A Note on the Dating of Mummy Portraits’,
in Ancient Faces, Mummy Portraits from Roman Egypt, ed. Susan Walker and M. Bierbrier (London: British Museum Press,
1997), 32–3 and 34–6.
23
Among others who now urge that a combination of criteria should be used to date the portraits, see Céline Trouchaud,
‘Bijoux à types isiaques sur les portraits d’enfants du Fayoum’, Studi e Materiali di Storia Religion 79, no. 2 (2013): 397,
who cautions against dating portraits using hairstyles alone because ‘le manque de detail sur certaines portraits ainsi que
le fait que l’arriêre de la tête ne soit pas visible rende cette technique de datation parfois difficile à appliquer, notammente
pour les femmes’. For re-dating portraits using contradicting dating criteria (Parlasca [style] vs. Borg [hairstyle]), see Joylene
Kremler, ‘Imperial Fashion Victims in Provincial Egypt: Re-dating Egyptian Mummy Portraits’, Art Journal 43 (2003).
Posted 2 June 2014. https://www.ngv.vic.gov.au/essay/imperial-fashion-victims-in-provincial-egypt-re-dating-egyptian-
mummy-potraits/ (accessed 10 January 2020).
ASPECTS OF SELF-PRESENTATION 141

EVIDENCE FOR DAILY DRESS

Of the three categories of portrait mummy body decoration (rhombic-wrapped, red-shroud and
stucco),24 it is only on the bodyfields of mummies of the latter two categories that the deceased
(male25 and female) was depicted in a form of everyday dress.26 For all three types, the feet, shod
in sandals and occasionally also wearing socks,27 could be represented on a separate cartonnage
footcase, painted on a linen shroud or modelled in stucco (Figure 12.1).
Throughout the Roman Empire, the basic unisex garment, with few variations, consisted of a
sleeved or sleeveless tunic (Latin: tunica), the majority of which were made of wool. The male
version was knee-length or longer whereas the female version was modestly ankle-length. A
rectangular mantle (unfastened) or a curved-hem cloak (fastened) might be draped (usually) over
the proper left shoulder (Figure 12.2). A child’s garment common to both sexes was the white/
undyed tunic, differentiated only by its longer length for girls. As these garments were woven
to shape and only minimally tailored, thin strips of textile ‘belts’ were used to adjust them in
position. Cloaks were secured with buttons, pins or brooches (fibulae). These were often of gold,
embellished with precious stones and they stood out against the plain backdrop of fabric as did the
ever more elaborate jewellery and hairstyles of women.
The men, women and children depicted in mummy portraits28 are shown in what might appear
to us to be very plainly made clothing but which was undoubtedly their most formal attire – what
Lise Bender Jørgensen refers to in her chapter in this volume as ‘the Sunday best’ – as is established
in images from throughout the Roman Empire. Nevertheless, their clothing is very standardized
in that what is represented (clothing types, colours and motifs) is not as varied as what is known
from the archaeological record.29 Adult males are almost without exception depicted wearing a
white or undyed (natural brown) wool tunic30 or tunic suite consisting of a matching undertunic

24
Corcoran and Svoboda, Herakleides, 11–13 and p. 12, fig. 1.
25
Barbara Borg, Mumienporträts: Chronologie und Kultureller Kontext (Mainz: Philipp von Zabern, 1996), 129, suggested
that only women were represented this way but allowed for future discoveries that might prove this observation incorrect.
Indeed, men were also represented in this way. See Corcoran and Svoboda, Herakleides, 77–9.
26
The full-length depiction of an individual in daily life dress is uncommon on coffins of pharaonic Egypt but did occur
on the mummy boards of a group of New Kingdom mummies (1200 years earlier than the portrait mummies). Kathlyn
M. Cooney, ‘Gender Transformation in Death: A Case Study of Coffins from Ramesside Period Egypt’, Near Eastern
Archaeology 73, no. 4 (2010): 229–30, offers that such depictions of the deceased (male and female) in their white, linen
garments were representations of them as purified akhs (souls) in a stage of their journey to the afterlife. Christina Riggs
(The Beautiful Burial, 247) noted that in Roman era tomb depictions, ‘the deceased tended to be portrayed in a naturalistic
form [and in contemporary dress] at the liminal stage of his or her passage from life to death’ as opposed to the archaic
costume the deceased wears as a symbol of his or her transition to the afterlife. Could the naturalistic image of the deceased
in a mummy portrait, wrapped within the confines of the mummy, always viewed as an incongruous artistic amalgam, also
somehow illustrate this idea of the multi-stage transition of the deceased from life to death and rebirth?
27
For socks and their depiction on a funerary shroud, Metropolitan Museum of Art, inv. 09.181.8, see D. Cardon, H.
Granger-Taylor and W. Nowik, ‘What Did They Look Like? Fragments of Clothing Found at Didymoi: Case Studies’, in
Didymoi. Vol. 1, 349–52. A knitted wool sock of the two-toe variety was also found at hawara (Petrie: Hawara, pl. XVIII).
See also Lise Bender Jørgensen’s chapter in this volume for a further discussion of socks in ancient Egypt.
28
See Cardon et al., ‘What Did They Look Like’, 282–352, where the authors provide comparisons between excavated
textiles and their representation in the mummy portraits.
29
Cardon et al., ‘What Did They Look Like’, 303.
30
The broad, binary gender distinction rule of white tunics for males and coloured tunics for females is corroborated by a
case study of a portrait mummy from Hawara (Brooklyn Museum 11.600) that Petrie initially catalogued as that of a woman
(Petrie, Roman Portraits, pl. XXVI). Subsequent CT scans revealed the mummy to be that of a man (Edward Bleiberg, ‘Male
and Female Mummies: Bad Grammar, Bad X-Rays, and Bad Judgement’, https://www.brooklynmuseum.org/community/
blogosphere/2009/07/17/male-and-female-mummies-bad-grammar-bad-x-rays-bad-judgment/) (accessed 12 January 2020).
The subject depicted in the portrait, therefore, had been fittingly depicted in a white tunic.
142 DRESS IN MEDITERRANEAN ANTIQUITY

FIGURE 12.1 Portrait mummy of a woman shown in full-length dress wearing a red tunic with
broad, dark clavi edged in gold and black sandals. Roemer-Pelizaeus Museum, Hildesheim, L/SN
1. Photo: Courtesy of the Roemer-Pelizaeus Museum.
ASPECTS OF SELF-PRESENTATION 143

FIGURE 12.2 Mummy portrait of a man wearing a white tunic with thin violet clavus and a white
mantle. Benaki Museum, inv. 6878. Photo: Alamy FWHM3R.
144 DRESS IN MEDITERRANEAN ANTIQUITY

and overtunic31 with an aubergine (a bluish-purple so dark it borders on black) 32 vertical stripe that
descends from each shoulder. Male children are also so dressed. The clothing of women was more
varied in colour but they are almost ubiquitously depicted in light to dark violet-coloured tunics33
with the same dark-coloured stripes as on the men’s tunics, as are also some young girls.34
‘The frequent light-pinkish and mauve to dark violet or burgundy colours represented in the
clothing of the contemporary mummy portraits from Egypt were meant to represent the true
mollusc purple dye.’35 In the Republican period, ‘Tyrian purple’ was ideally reserved for the highest-
ranking members of society, a restriction that was disregarded in Roman Egypt. Although only a
small number of textiles in archaeological collections have been identified with the dye mollusc
purple, ‘from a social point of view, wearing clothes adorned with true purple dye was probably
more accessible to middle and lower classes than ha[s] been thought so far’36 due to the frugal
depletion of dye from dye vats, the dilution of true purple dye with other dyes and the recycling
of garments, especially decorative elements.37 Madder lake, a vegetable dye, has been identified in
the pigments used to paint the clothing in the mummy portraits and was also used, as a cheaper

31
Walker (‘Mummy Portraits in Their Roman Context’, 3) suggests that the decoration of the neckline of undertunics might
have had regional significance within Egypt. Her statement (ibid.) that ‘the undertunic was a fashion specific to Roman
Egypt’ is, however, not supported by a description of Augustus wearing more than one undertunic (Suet., Aug. 82, 20) and
another of Horace (Hor., Ep. I.I. 95-6) being seen in an undertunic and tunic of unequal wear (Cardon et al., ‘What Did
They Look Like’, 290).
32
‘The most sought after shade of purple was a reddish purple close to the prestigious colour of “Tyrian purple.”’ Online
abstract of Dominique Cardon et al., ‘Who Would Wear True Purple in Roman Egypt? Technical and Social Considerations
on Some New Identifications of Purple from Marine Molluscs in Archaeological Textiles’, in C. Alfaro et al., Purpureae
Vestes III, Textiles y Tintes en la Ciudad Antigua (València, Spain: Universitat de València – Centre Jean Bérard [CNRS-
EFR], 2011), 1, https://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/halshs-00675033 (accessed 18 June 2019).
33
Exceptions occur. For example, for a woman wearing a white tunic, see Bonn AKM D804; for lilac/pink, see British Museum
EA 74705; for blue, see Petrie Museum, 14692; for green, see Württembergisches Landesmusem, Antikensammlung 131;
and for yellow, see Louvre MNC 1694.
34
Studies of the physical remains of the portrait mummies of two young girls (ÄM Berlin 11412 and Garrett-Evangelical
Theological Seminary no inv.#) revealed that although their portraits depict them as adolescents wearing reddish-coloured
tunics with black stripes and golden jewellery, their physical remains are those of children no more than four or five years of
age. See, respectively, Jana Helmbold-Doyé, ed., Aline und Ihre Kinder, 33, and Stock et al., ‘Sex, Age, and Mummification
Practices’, 75. The children’s proleptic dress can possibly be attributed to a wish for their fecundity and rebirth in the
afterlife according to Egyptian funerary beliefs that were modelled on the human reproductive cycle. The artistic convention
of depicting children as miniature adults was also followed in Roman art (see Annika Backe-Dahmen, ‘Roman Children
and the “Horus-lock” between Cult and Image’, in Individuals and Materials in the Greco-Roman Cults of Isis. Agents,
Images, and Practices, Proceedings of the VIth International Conference of Isis Studies I, ed. Valentino Gasparini and
Richard Veymeiers (Leiden: Brill, 2018), 531–2. The disparity between the physical remains of these children and the
more mature presentation in their portraits (the Northwestern mummy was assumed to have been 12–14 years of age from
her portrait and based on a 1960s era x-ray, see Lorelei Corcoran Schwabe, ‘Hawara Portrait Mummy no. 4’, Journal of
Egyptian Archaeology 71 (1985): 191) contradicts assertions that ‘CAT scans of preserved portrait mummies [do] not
reveal any obvious discrepancy in age between the individual depicted in the portrait and the mummified body within
the mummy wrappings’ as stated by Barbara E. Borg (‘Painted Funerary Portraits’, in UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology,
ed. Willeke Wendrich [Los Angeles], 7). http://digital2.library.ucla.edu/viewItem.do?ark=21198/zz0021bx22 (accessed 9
January 2020). Other such discrepancies in age (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, inv. 1912.11.139, Ny Carlsberg
Glyptothek, inv. 1425, and Brooklyn Museum, inv. 11.600) highlight the importance for future research on the physical
remains of portrait mummies.
35
Cardon et al., ‘Who Would Wear True Purple in Roman Egypt’, 1.
36
Ibid.
37
Ibid.
ASPECTS OF SELF-PRESENTATION 145

alternative to true purple, to dye clothing a pinkish-reddish colour.38 Madder, and kermes39 a dye
produced from insects, could also be used alone or combined with mollusc purple to produce the
desired colour.
Jørgensen has studied the technical aspects of the manufacture of Roman textiles and advocates
for more precise terminology for the decorative elements that embellish them.40 She distinguishes
between vertical bands, woven in the weft, and horizontal stripes, which are woven in the warp.
The vertical stripe that descends from each shoulder on a Roman tunic, initially a signifier of rank,
is called a clavus. The similarity between the stripes on Roman garments to the decorative stripes
along the sides of tunics found in Roman Egypt was first noted by A. F. Kendrich in 1920 and,
although it is misleading, the term clavi subsequently became the standard terminology in reference
to both.41 The stripes on Roman era Egyptian tunics, however, did not have the same denotation
of rank. They might even best be thought of as ‘imitations of Roman clavi’.42 There is not even any
consistency in the width of the stripes that appear on the tunics depicted in the mummy portraits or
in the archaeological record.43 Jørgensen states that ‘the signaling of rank must, however, have been
lodged in something else than width’ but what that might be was outside the scope of her chapter.44
Perhaps initially the mere presence of ‘clavi’ on tunics like those depicted in the mummy portraits
was sufficient to denote status or rank and served as a material signifier to others that the wearer
belonged to a certain sector of society.45 The precise width or colour of the stripes was ‘immaterial’
to the message.
The restriction of certain goods deemed luxury items (pigments like Tyrian purple, certain
types of clothing or jewellery such as signet rings) was a means by which the upper members of
society maintained control. Such restrictions placed on items to which value has been attached
as a means of institutional ideologies of social constraint can be documented in Egypt as early as
the predynastic period. Decorative objects in the shape of cosmetic palettes made of greywacke
were initially considered the prerogative of the few, items of social prestige associated with

38
For madder as the pigment for painting tunics, ‘clavi’ and garlands on mummy portraits, see J. Salvant et al., ‘A Roman
Egyptian Painting Workshop: Technical Investigations of the Portraits from Tebtunis, Egypt’, Archaeometry 60, no. 4
(2018): 825–6; and for ‘indigo and madder-lake pigments … [as] a cheaper substitute for “Tyrian-purple” pigment’, see
ibid., 824. For madder as a pigment for dying garments, see Cardon et al., ‘What Did They Look Like’, 289 and 332–3.
39
Cardon et al., What Did They Look Like’, 333.
40
Lise Bender Jørgensen, ‘Clavi and Non-Clavi: Definitions of Various Bands on Roman Textiles’, in Purpureae Vestes III.
Textiles y Tintes en la Ciudad Antigua, ed. C. Alfaro et al., 75–81.
41
Ibid., 76.
42
Ibid.
43
Ibid. This is confirmed in the archaeological record from Didymoi (Cardon et al., ‘What Did They Look Like’, 284) where
the width of clavi varied from ‘a little less than one centimetre to around two and a half centimetres’.
44
Jørgensen, ‘Clavi and Non-Clavi’, 76. That the clavi on the garments of those in the mummy portraits ‘had no ulterior
meaning’ was first proffered by Cecil Smith, ‘The Paintings’, in Petrie, Hawara, 42. Jørgensen, however, ‘Clavi and Non-
Clavi’, 76 and 81, references a forthcoming article by L[auren] McGhee, ‘The Significance of Clavi in Mummy Portraits’,
to be published in Mons Claudianus, Survey and Excavations IV: Textiles, which promises to shed more light on the topic.
45
In her study of gold Aegean signet rings, Nadine Becker refers to this phenomenon as the ‘Knossos Effect’ (after Malcolm
Wiener’s coining of the term ‘Versailles Effect’), the voluntary adaption of goods associated with a culture of higher prestige
by members of an interconnecting society. The mere wearing of such an item like a gold signet ring (or in our case, purple
clavi) was a means by which the local elite might outwardly align themselves with the dominant social and administrative
class. See Nadine Becker, ‘The “Knossos Effect”: Golden Signets as Visual Markers of Social Dependencies in the Aegean
Bronze Age’, Proceedings of the 12th International Congress of Cretan Studies, Heraklion, 21-25.9.2016 (Heraklion: 2017),
1–11.
146 DRESS IN MEDITERRANEAN ANTIQUITY

governmental power and authority.46 Once these objects became commonplace, however, they
lost their value as social markers, perhaps in the same way clavi and the colour associated with
‘Imperial purple’ lost its original meaning. These features were then emulated and co-opted by a
new group of ambitious and aspiring individuals in Roman Egypt, some of whom were patrons of
the mummy portraits. The purely decorative nature of these ‘pseudo-clavi’ the derivative nature
of these garments and suggests that they should be considered an adaptation in Egypt of a Roman
model.
The dead who were mummified in Roman Egypt according to traditional Egyptian practice were
not buried in their clothing. Their bodies were wrapped in layers of linen bandages. Evidence for
what their actual clothing would have looked like (discounting representations in sculpture and
painting which do not convey texture or often even colour) comes instead from the excavation
and analyses of literally thousands of fragments of textiles from the rubbish heaps of the Roman
ports and quarries leading to and along the Red Sea: Mons Claudianus, ‘Abu Sha’ar, Didymoi47
and Myos Hormos among other sites that date from the late first to the mid-third century CE,
the general date range of the mummy portraits.48 Analyses of the garments from these sites show
that they had been reworn for as long as several decades. The garments included tunics, mantles,
military cloaks, hats, belts, scarves and socks. The recycled and repaired condition of this clothing
from such working sites populated by stone masons, sailors and soldiers and a limited number of
women definitely paints a very different picture of life with respect to the value of clothing than we
see in the mummy portraits which present the patrons in comparatively sumptuous vestments. For
example, one tunic with ‘clavi’ from Mons Claudianus, dating to the early second century CE, had
been ‘heavily repaired and most of the original material replaced by patches’.49
Regardless of their preserved state, the value of the study of these garment fragments lies in their
reconstructed lives before they were reduced to being used as scraps to create patchwork quilts
(Greek: kentrônes) or passed down from generation to generation. Research on the fragments
from Didymoi presents an excellent model for how physical evidence can serve as a primary source
about the lifestyles of the patrons of the mummy portraits by providing a one-to-one comparison
between textile fragments and the complete garments depicted in the portraits.50 Additionally, the
value of research on local Egyptian material, rather than using Italic garments as models, is in the
identification of regional preferences such as that in Egypt and the eastern provinces infantrymen
and civilians wore the paenula (semicircular cloak) asymmetrically and fastened at the right shoulder
with a brooch.51

46
Alice Stevenson, ‘The Material Significance of Predynastic and Early Dynastic Palettes’, in Current Research in Egyptology
2005, Proceedings of the Sixth Annual Symposium, ed. Rachel Mairs and Alice Stevenson (Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2007),
148–62.
47
Cardon et al., ‘What Did They Look Like’, 272–395. See Bender Jørgensen, this volume.
48
Among other publications, see Lise Bender Jørgensen, ‘Textiles from Mons Claudianus, ‘Abu Sha’ar and Other Roman
Sites in the Eastern Desert’, in The Eastern Desert of Egypt during the Greco-Roman Period: Archaeological Reports, ed. Jean-
Pierre Brun et al. (Paris: Collège de France, 2018). https://books.openedition.org/cdf/5234 (accessed 12 January 2020) and
Hélène Cuvigny, ed., Didymoi., Vol. 1: les fouilles et le matériel.
49
Jørgensen, ‘Textiles from Mons Claudianus’, 17. The fact that the ‘clavi’ had been ‘meticulously preserved throughout all
repairs’ indicated to Jørgensen (ibid.) ‘that they conveyed important information about the owner’s social position’. The
author did not speculate further except to say (ibid.) that ‘clavied tunics were worn at the site, but hardly by everybody’. See
also discussion above (fn. 44). Again, see Bender Jørgensen, this volume.
50
Cardon et al., ‘What Did They Look Like’, 373–85.
51
Ibid., 320.
ASPECTS OF SELF-PRESENTATION 147

Another important contribution is that the clothing fragments from Didymoi can be dated
because they have been found in association with dated ostraca. For example, it was determined
that knitted socks, previously dated from the fourth to sixth centuries CE, were already in use in
the first century CE.52

GENDERED CLOTHING?
An unusual tondo painting on wood53 depicts two adult males side by side (Figure 12.3). The
large tondo (60 cm diameter) was never incorporated into a mummy but was perhaps displayed
as a commemorative portrait.54 Due to its findsite – Antinoopolis, a city founded by the emperor
Hadrian in 130 CE – the tondo has been dated to the mid-second century CE. The men have been
identified as siblings and the painting is known as the Tondo of the Two Brothers.55
Differences between the men in skin tone, the presence or absence of facial hair and wrinkles
and the details of their costumes, however, have led Haeckl to challenge the idea that the men
were related. She has proposed alternatively that they were lovers.56 For evidence for the idea
that these two were ‘local counterparts of Hadrian and Antinoos’,57 she notes that the paler skin
tone of the younger man on the viewer’s left who sports a downy moustache contrasts with the
darker complexioned, bearded older man on the right, an artistic convention usually employed to
distinguish the flesh of women from that of men in Hellenistic and Egyptian art.58 She also points
to the compositional placement of the two men: the younger on the viewer’s left slightly overlaps
the other occupying the position usually held by the woman in images of opposite-sex couples in
Pompeian wall paintings.59
Haeckl’s provocative reinterpretation rests further on her observation of the distinction in the
men’s clothing. The older man wears a ‘white toga-like mantle of manhood’60 whereas the younger
wears a crimson cloak that mimics the red colour much favoured for the tunics of women, and his
glittering brooch is reminiscent of the elaborate jewellery of the females depicted in the mummy
portraits.61 She interprets the ‘eye-catching scarlet swastika’ on the (proper right) shoulder of the
tunic of the younger man as ‘a time-honored fertility symbol’.62
A swastika was identified on a fragment (D99.13103.1 C) of a tunic excavated at Didymoi and
discarded between 220 and 250 CE63 (100 years later than the tondo has been dated). Cardon et

52
Ibid., 349.
53
Egyptian Museum, Cairo, inv. CG 33267.
54
Anne E. Haeckl, ‘Brothers or Lovers? A New Reading of the “Tondo of the Two Brothers”’, Bulletin of the American
Society of Papyrologists 38, no. 1–4 (2001): 65.
55
Euphrosyne Doxiades, ed., The Mysterious Fayum Portraits, Faces from Ancient Egypt (New York: Abrams, 1995), 211–12.
56
Haeckl, ‘Brothers or Lovers’, 63–78.
57
Ibid., 77.
58
Haeckl, ‘Brothers or Lovers?’, 72–4. For an overview of the artistic convention of gender-based flesh colour in Egyptian
art, see Lorelei H. Corcoran, ‘Yellow Is Not a Metaphor for “All [That]’s ‘Fair’ in Love and War”’, in Essays for the Library
of Seshat: Studies Presented to Janet H. Johnson on the Occasion of Her 70th Birthday, ed. Robert K. Ritner. Studies in
Ancient Oriental Civilization 70 (Chicago: Oriental Institute Press, 2018), 33–6.
59
Haeckl, ‘Brothers or Lovers’, 76.
60
Ibid., 66.
61
Ibid., 76.
62
Ibid, 76–7.
63
Cardon et al., ‘What Did They Look Like’, 299–300.
148 DRESS IN MEDITERRANEAN ANTIQUITY

FIGURE 12.3 Double portrait known as the Tondo of the Two Brothers. Egyptian Museum,
Cairo, CG 33267. Photo: Alamy MX8JTD.

al. drew an immediate comparison with the tondo portrait, although the location of the swastika
differed on the tunic, as they reconstructed it, from that depicted in the painting.64 The authors
assigned no particular symbolism to the swastika but noted that remnants of long-sleeved tunics
also included other woven motifs such as ‘rows of purple triangles, stepped pyramids, and notched
or paired short clavi terminating in arrowheads and a swastika’ 65 and that the arrowhead motif
in particular might be associated with the military.66 Moreover, they noted that ‘the fashion of
wearing tunics decorated with borders of purple triangles and short notched clavi with arrowheads
or swastikas, under a cloak fastened by a brooch on the right shoulder, was also characteristic of
soldiers in the Roman army, both in Egypt and outside’.67 The younger man so clothed in the tondo

64
Ibid., 300.
65
Ibid., 293.
66
Ibid., 294. The authors suggest a specific association of the arrowhead motif with Palmyrene archers.
67
Ibid., 293–4. The authors point for comparison (ibid., 294) to a shroud in the Luxor Museum of Art (J.194; Q.1512)
dated by Parlasca to the second to third century CE, closer in date to the tondo.
ASPECTS OF SELF-PRESENTATION 149

lacks a balteus,68 however, which is usually a signifier for soldiers. Cardon et al. therefore suggest
that the cloak the younger man wears might identify him as a ‘traveller … dressed for his voyage to
the afterlife’.69 The analyses of the clothing of these two men has raised some intriguing questions.

JEWELLERY
The jewellery worn by women and girls complements their formal dress and, as Petrie noted, the
portraits at Hawara reflect an increasing elaboration in the designs of earrings and necklaces that
has been employed as a dating criterion. Earring styles changed from simple ball earrings in the
first century CE to chandelier-type earrings with pendant pearls and hoop earrings with pearls or
precious stones from the second century onwards.70 Hairpins are associated with the complicated,
Flavian period topknot.
The repetition of the limited examples of parure on Roman era mummy masks from Deir el-
Bahri led Riggs to question the verity of the jewellery so depicted.71 She likewise expressed doubt
that the jewellery represented in the mummy portraits was what the individuals actually possessed.
She proposed that it ‘instead conveyed the status to which the deceased laid claim in death’.72
In addition to the publication of the textile finds of contemporary date to the mummy portraits
from the excavations in the Eastern Desert, a second important contribution, in terms of its
methodology, to the explication of the lives of the patrons of the mummy portraits is that of
recent studies of the jewellery depicted in the portraits. Unlike previous publications that consisted
primarily of descriptions, in a persuasive and text-grounded article based on her 1998 dissertation,
Schenke addressed the doubts expressed by Riggs and Borg with respect to the authenticity of the
jewellery in the mummy portraits.73 She drew comparisons between the clothing and jewellery
depicted in the mummy portraits of women (which constitute approximately half of all the known
mummy portraits of adults) with the material assets detailed in the dowry receipts that were a part
of the marriage contracts of Roman Egypt (as in Egypt today, where a married woman’s gold and
silver jewellery constitutes her personal bank account).74 Schenke concluded that the representation
of jewellery in the portraits is an encoded reference to the married status of the women depicted.75

68
The balteus or sword belt is shown in the mummy portraits of soldiers crossing either from the left shoulder to the right
hip or vice versa (Cardon et al., ‘What Did They Look Like’, 284). It has been suggested that the direction was a signifier of
rank (a right to left cross would indicate a centurion whereas a common soldier would wear the balteus from left to right),
ibid., 324. This explanation has also been put forth to account for the alternate locations of the brooch on a military cloak:
‘a fibula on the right side may possibly have indicated a higher status’ (Barbara Borg, ‘Costume, Hairstyles and Jewellery’,
in Doxiades, Mysterious Fayum Portraits, 234). The type of sword used might also have influenced the direction of the
balteus (Cardon et al., ‘What Did They Look Like’, 324) but the most practical explanation might be that in all cases the
position depended on whether the individual was left or right-handed. Cf., above, for a possible regional preference, fn. 51.
69
Cardon et al., ‘What Did They Look Like’, 323.
70
Petrie (Hawara, 19 and pl. xi).
71
Riggs, Beautiful Burial, 241.
72
Ibid.
73
Gesa Schenke, ‘Der Schmuck der Frauen: Mumienporträts im Kontext papyrologischer Zeugnisse’, in Atti del XXII
Congresso Internazionale di Papirologia, Firenze, 23–29 agosto 1998, vol. II, ed. Isabella Andorlini et al. (Florence: Istituto
Papyrologico G. Vitelli, 2001), 1187. I thank the author for kindly sending me a PDF of her article.
74
While in a gold shop in modern Luxor, I was witness to an altercation between the owner and a woman who had come to
exchange, for currency, a gold bracelet that her husband had gifted her. The bracelet, it turned out, was not solid gold but
plated, and the woman vented her emotional distress on the unfortunate merchant.
75
Schenke, ‘ Der Schmuck der Frauen’, 1198.
150 DRESS IN MEDITERRANEAN ANTIQUITY

That this jewellery was also very real, however, was documented by comparison of the items in the
portraits with descriptions of the gold and ‘real’76 pearl items in the dowry receipts and finds of
jewellery in the archaeological record.77
Although the gold, emerald and amethyst jewellery and small pearl earrings depicted in the
portraits are thereby corroborated, there is one item that seems to call into question its own
authenticity: the large, perfectly matched pearl necklace (single- or double strand) the likes of which
have not survived (Figure 12.4). An outstanding example, a double-strand necklace consisting
of matching pearls approximately 20 mm in diameter is depicted on the neck of a woman in a
mummy portrait in Bonn.78 In ancient as well as in modern times, pearls have been considered one
of the most precious of gemstones. In antiquity, however, all pearls were natural pearls. As only
approximately one pearl forms naturally out of 25,000 oysters, they must have been exceedingly
rare.
Pearls of such large size recall the story related by Pliny79 that characterized the wanton
excess (Greek: tryphe) of Cleopatra and Marc Antony who allegedly staged a competition to
see if the queen might expend a fortune of 10,000,000 sesterces on a single banquet. When
Cleopatra served an ordinary affair, Antony thought himself the winner. But following the meal,
the clever queen removed one of her treasured pearl earrings, dropped it into her drinking vessel
whereupon, it is claimed, the pearl dissolved. While reaching for the matching gem to repeat the
act, she was halted by the umpire of the wager who declared Antony the loser, the moral being
(if there was one) that not even these Roman paradigms of profligacy should bear the loss of two
such precious pearls.
The increased number of natural pearls in Roman jewellery was seen as a reflection of excess
as witnessed also by Pliny’s complaint against Caligula’s third wife: ‘I have seen Lollia Paulina,
who became the consort of Gaius not at some considerable or solemn ceremonial celebration, but
actually at an ordinary betrothal banquet, covered with emeralds and pearls interlaced alternately
and shining all over her head, hair, ears, neck and fingers.’80 In retrospect, that an empress,
however ephemeral, might afford such extravagance is plausible81 but was a large, double-strand
pearl necklace within the reach of a middle-class matron of Roman Egypt? Instead of considering
such a necklace an example of ‘aspirational jewellery’, however, perhaps we should consider that
these pearls, like some of the gemstone jewellery depicted, were owned by the women but were
made of less expensive materials like glass.

76
Ibid., 1196–7. The adjective ‘real’ was added to items in the dowry receipts presumably because substitute gems of glass
are also known from the archaeological record. See Riggs, Beautiful Burial, 241, who lists some materials of jewellery of
lesser value as ‘iron, lead, bone and glass’.
77
Although jewellery has not been found within the wrappings of portrait mummies, the outer decoration of Egyptian
Museum Cairo CG 33216 includes engraved gems that might have been a part of the deceased’s collection in life (Corcoran,
Portrait Mummies, 73 and 179–80). For examples of jewellery contemporary with that depicted on the portraits, see
Ancient Faces, ed. Walker, 149–56.
78
For a stunning photograph of the ‘pearl’ necklace depicted on Akademischen Kunstmuseum Bonn D 804, see Elisabeth
Fugmann and Yvonne Schmuhl, ‘Das Mumienporträt eines Mädchens im Bonner Akademischen Kunstmuseum’, Kölner und
Bonner Archaeologica 7, no. 2017 (2019): pl. 1 and detail on 203, pl. 6.
79
Pliny, Nat. 9.119-21.
80
Ibid., 117–18.
81
Two natural pearls belonging to Napoleon III’s wife, Empress Eugenie, sold in 2014 for $3.3 million. Nan Summerfield,
‘Mrs. Plant’s Pearls’, Doyle Auctions Notebook, https://doyle.com/specialists/nan-summerfield/stories/mrs-plants-pearls
(accessed 3 January 2020).
ASPECTS OF SELF-PRESENTATION 151

FIGURE 12.4 Mummy portrait of a woman wearing pearl hoop earrings, a gold and ‘emerald’
necklace and a strand of large ‘pearls’. Altes Museum, Antikensammlung Berlin, inv. 31161/12.
Photo: Art Resource (ART300789).

In addition to jewellery that is colourful and showy, the mummy portraits document that some
jewellery was worn to signify the owner’s religious and afterlife convictions. Gold pendants in a crescent
shape (lunulae) on chains with wheel-shaped clasps are thought to have had solar/lunar symbolism
associated with rebirth.82 These same pendants are also often associated with fertility.83 Gold Asclepian
snake rings and bracelets, worn by women in the first- and second-century mummy portraits, were

82
Catherine Johns, ‘Gold Necklace with Crescent Pendant’, in Ancient Faces, ed. Walker, 150.
83
Doxiades, Mysterious Fayum Portraits, 56.
152 DRESS IN MEDITERRANEAN ANTIQUITY

associated with the Greek healer deity84 but were easily adapted in an Egyptian context since the
snake was a generic determinative for any goddess. Other necklaces, particularly those associated
with children, consist of images of Isis Sarapis and/or Horus attesting to the popularity of the cult of
Isis85 contemporary with the time of production of the mummy portraits. Trouchaud’s convincing
argument that these amulets were real possessions of the children depicted wearing them (and not
stereotypic motifs) is corroborated by the preservation of gold pendants of these same deities.86 The
children, aligning themselves with the child god Horus/Harpocrates, were thus virtual members of the
divine family, placed under the protection of the maternal goddess Isis in life as in death.

HEADDRESSES AND WREATHS

It is noteworthy that in the mummy portraits, we do not see any headgear or head coverings
associated with daily life. Men do not wear helmets or caps,87 nor do the women demurely draw
mantles over their heads as a veil (although the voluptuous curves of painted or gilded stuccoed
linen around the faces of some stucco mummies mimic the appearance of a mantle head covering,
e.g. Brooklyn Museum, inv. 69.35). Headdresses consist only of those rare examples that depict
or resemble the sun disc, feathered and horned crown of Isis (CG 33216 and CG 33281)88 and the
seven-pointed star diadem of a priest of Sarapis (National Gallery, London, inv. 2912).89
The only accoutrement that is otherwise seen on the head in the mummy portraits is a gilded
wreath that is worn by less than 10 per cent of subjects.90 The wreath had social and funerary
meaning in ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome. Its ambiguous intention on the mummy portraits could
draw upon various traditions: from its pharaonic association with Book of the Dead Spells 19 and 20
that were meant to be recited as a wreath was placed on the brow of the deceased91 to the myrtle92
and laurel wreaths, standing respectively for consecration and victory in a Greek or Roman context.
Only recently have these wreaths become the object of formal interest. That is because their shape
and material may help us to date the portraits or tell us more about the symbolism of the botanical
selections. The wreaths vary in their appearance from the stylized look of rhombic-shaped cut-outs of
gold leaf applied in a double row to resemble a crown of leaves attached to a golden vine, to a painted
wreath that evokes a tiara of 3-D modelled flowers,93 to a gilt wreath composed of tendrils of leaves
and flowers rendered so naturalistically that one feels it should be possible to identify the species of
plant of which it was fashioned (e.g. Art Institute of Chicago, inv. 1922.4798 [Figure 12.5], and Bonn

84
Catherine Johns, ‘Five Gold Snake-rings and Three Snake-bracelets’, in Ancient Faces, ed. Walker, 141–52.
85
Céline Trouchaud, ‘Bijoux à types isiaques sur les portraits d’enfants du Fayoum’, Studi e Materiali di Storia Religion 79,
no. 2 (2013): 396–418.
86
Ibid., 414, and figs. 7 and 8.
87
For descriptions of preserved caps, see Cardon et al., “What Did They Look Like’, 344–9.
88
Corcoran, Portrait Mummies, 179 and 192.
89
Ibid., 71–2.
90
Barr et al., ‘The Girl with the Golden Wreath’, 12.
91
For the ambiguous nature of wreaths in the context of the mummy portraits and their possible association with the Isis
cult, see Corcoran and Svoboda, Herakleides, 32–4.
92
Annika Backe-Dahmen, ‘Roman Children and the “Horus-lock” between Cult and Image’, in Religions in the Graeco-
Roman World, ed. Valentino Gasparini and Richard Veymeir (Leiden: Brill, 2018), 509–38. The myrtle wreath could be
associated with Demeter, ibid., 535.
93
As depicted on Brooklyn Museum inv. 41.848. The flowers may be the closed blossoms of the convolvulus.
ASPECTS OF SELF-PRESENTATION 153

FIGURE 12.5 Mummy portrait of a man wearing a botanically naturalistic-looking gold wreath.
Art Institute Chicago, inv. 1922.4798. Photo: Art Resource (ART528146).

AKM D80494). During an excavation of the burial of a young girl in Cádiz, Spain, a golden crown
of similar appearance to the naturalistic ones in the paintings mentioned above was discovered. The
wreath, found in tiny fragile fragments, was partially reconstructed to its original appearance95 and
tentatively identified as an ivy or grape vine.96 The gold wreath preserved on the Art Institute portrait
has leaves, however, that I believe more closely resemble the convulvulus plant, which was associated
in ancient Egypt, due to its marked heliotropism, with birth, and hence rebirth, and the solar cult.

94
Fugmann and Schmuhl, ‘Das Mumienporträt’, 198 and fn. 22. A number of dating criteria are considered for the Bonn
portrait, including the similarity of the wreath on it to that on the Chicago portrait.
95
‘Diadema Funeraria’, Museo de Cádiz, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ywSn0cfl2c (accessed 7 July 2019).
96
Fugmann and Schmuhl, ‘Das Mumienporträt’, 198. ‘Der Kranz besteht aus einem zarten Zweig mit Blättern. Parlasca
erkennt eine Efeu- und Borg –mit Verweis auf die “annähernd runde” Form der Blattelemente – eine Weinranke. Da
jedoch die Einzelteile aus etwa quadratischen Blattgoldauflagen bestehen und beides traditionell möglich ist, kann keine
Entscheidung getroffen werden.’ The authors conclude that due to the inability to find an exact parallel for the shape of the
leaves that perhaps no specific plant was intended.
154 DRESS IN MEDITERRANEAN ANTIQUITY

Because the grave in which the Cádiz wreath was found can be dated to the early first century
CE, it impacts the third century CE date that had been assigned to the portrait in the Bonn Museum
(AKM D804) on stylistic grounds.97 A study of a portrait of a woman with a golden wreath in the
Allard Pierson Museum (APM 724) has also suggested a re-dating to the researchers98 who advocate
for a catalogue of wreaths by form and degree of naturalism that might provide evidence for
regional preferences and specific workshops. The presence of the wreaths themselves is significant
because they are the one consistent element of dress in the portraits that testifies to the otherworldly
function99 of the paintings because it can be demonstrated, by features such as the overlap of the
gilded elements onto the linen bandages, that many of these wreaths were applied after the portrait
was secured to the mummy.100

CONCLUSION
The men and women who chose the mummy portraits as a means of self-presentation for themselves
and their children wished to be commemorated for eternity in images that recorded them in an
ideal state. In ancient Egyptian, this is the meaning of the phrase m At.f (‘in its moment’) that
describes a subject in its most characteristic and essential state of being (as, for example, a cobra
when it strikes). Scholars have long debated whether or not these images truly capture the physical
characteristics of the subjects as individuals (as confirmed by CT scan comparisons). Regardless as to
their possible verisimilitude, however, research now suggests that artists produced these ‘portraits’
employing a universal guideline that specified the placement of facial features in order to create a
uniform appearance101 that places them in direct line with the generic faces of pharaonic funerary
masks. Rather than a recognizable physical likeness of their unique facial features, therefore, what
was most significant for them is what is presented to us for recognition: their social standing and
religious convictions.102
New methodologies, new avenues of pursuits and new archaeological discoveries are beginning
to better inform our understanding of the specifics of these aspects of the lived identities of the

97
Fugman and Schmuhl, ‘Das Mumienporträt’, 198. The hairstyle of the young girl in the Bonn portrait is unhelpful in
dating because it is one that spans many generations.
98
Barr et al., ‘The Girl with the Golden Wreath’, 12.
99
Gilding was sometimes applied to the lips (Cleveland Museum of Art, inv. 71.137), throat (Louvre, P 217) or background
of a portrait but the time of these additions, whether while in quotidian use or just before insertion into the mummy
wrappings, cannot be as definitively proven.
100
Corcoran and Svoboda, Herakleides, fig. 13, show that two leaves of gold on the portrait’s proper left side were placed
out of sequence so that they fit beneath the ones above them but within the border of the red shroud framing the face.
101
Jevon Thistlewood et al., ‘A Study of the Relative Locations of Facial Features within Mummy Portraits’, APPEAR
Conference 17–18 May 2018, Abstracts, 4, http://getty.edu/museum/research/appear_project/downloads/appear_abstracts.
pdf (accessed 9 January 2020), suggest that although the mummy portraits appear to have ‘recorded the personal features of
their subject … they still have group identity which connects them to even the most stylized examples’. The authors explore
‘the similarities in the location and size of facial features in a range of Mummy Portraits’ and concur that ‘the most obvious
similarity is the general presentation of the face. They generally adopt a similar pose and calm reserve which suggests an
almost clinical process in parts’. Further (quoting J. Berger), ‘the Fayum painter was summoned not to make a portrait,
as we have come to understand the term, but to register his client, a man or woman, looking at him … like a modern day
passport photograph’.
102
For a discussion of the concept of self-presentation in ancient Egyptian art, see Jan Assmann, ‘Preservation and Presentation
of Self in Ancient Egyptian Portraiture’, in Studies in Honor of William Kelly Simpson, ed. Peter der Manuelian (Boston:
Museum of Fine Arts, 1996), 55–81.
ASPECTS OF SELF-PRESENTATION 155

patrons of the mummy portraits. According to the standards of the Roman definition of status,
these individuals (and specifically with regard to data available for the women) (1) were educated,
evidenced by recent studies of written sources in Greek and demotic103 and the inscriptions on two
portraits;104 (2) were landed (as specified in dowry contracts); (3) owned expensive clothing, the
value of which is known not only by its worth detailed in dowry contracts but by the archaeological
evidence of the use of expensive dyes and dying processes; and (4) they owned elaborate jewellery,
also detailed in the dowry contracts. For the patrons of the mummy portraits, these images were
their final opportunity for the display of their constructed, fluid, multi-layered, uniquely and
distinctly Roman-Egyptian105 identities and social status – the ostentatious show they put on for
eternity – the realities of which are just beginning to be substantiated.

103
See Barrett’s entries on ‘Education and Literacy’, 59–60, and ‘Women and Gender’, 37–9, in ‘Hellenistic and Roman
Egypt’.
104
Dominic Montserrat, ‘Heron “Bearer of Philosophia” and Hermione “Grammatike”’, Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 83
(1997): 223–6. Note that the plate number given (p. 224) for Heron’s bandages in Petrie’s Roman Portraits and Memphis
(IV) should be pl. X, 3, not pl. XXIV, 2.
105
For other ‘Roman’ identities, see Lisa Brody and Gail Hoffmann, eds., Roman in the Provinces: Art on the Periphery of
Empire (Boston: McMullen Museum of Art, 2014) and Louise Revell, Ways of Being Roman: Discourses of Identity in the
Roman West (Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2016).
156
 SECTION C

Meanings
158
 CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Dress and Ceremony

in Achaemenid Persia:
The ‘*Gaunaka’
LLOYD LLEWELLYN-JONES

Clothing was central to ancient Persian culture and especially so for the Achaemenid elite. For
them the significance of dress could be physical, economic, social or symbolic, and the function of
clothing was multiple: dress could protect, conceal, display or represent a person’s office or even a
state of being. Persian courtly identity was defined through its clothing, but so too was the nomadic
horseman ancestry of the Iranians, although this important element is less studied.
Elite men at the Achaemenid court could be identified wearing two distinctive types of dress.
The first sort, what I label the ‘court robe’, was a highly significant garment and may have been of
pure Persian invention, although it does bear resemblance to Egyptian-style royal tunics of the New
Kingdom and Late Period.1 Margaret Root argues that the garment originated in Elam but there
is nothing to support this. Although it is possible that from the reign of Darius I a Perso-Elamite
identity was somehow expressed through the garment, I would not like to push that point too
far.2 Constructed from a huge double-square of linen or wool (or perhaps cotton or even silk) and
worn over baggy trousers (largely hidden), the voluminous tunic was tightly belted at the waist to
form a robe with deep folds which created an overhang resembling sleeves.3 The court robe was
richly embellished with woven designs and ornamented appliqué decorations made from gold and
semi-precious stones; it was as costly as it was beautiful.4 This was the costume of the Great King
par excellence and in Achaemenid art he is represented wearing it repeatedly, whether sitting on
his throne or actively fighting in battle or killing an animal (mythical or otherwise).5 In reality,
the court robe was a highly impractical garment for any form of active combat, so the choice to

1
See Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones, King and Court in Ancient Persia, 559–331 BCE (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press,
2013), 3, 217, fig. F10, 221, fig. F14.
2
On the Egyptian mss-tunic, see G. Vogelsang-Eastwood, Pharaonic Egyptian Clothing (Leiden: Brill, 1993). For arguments
for the Elamite origins of the Achaemenid court robe, see M.C. Root, ‘Elam in the Imperial Imagination: From Ninevah to
Persepolis’, in Elam and Persia, ed. J. Álvarez-Mon and M. B. Garrison (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2011).
3
See P. Beck, ‘A Note on the Reconstruction of the Achaemenid Robe’, Iranica Antiqua 9 (1972): 116–22; B. Goldman,
‘Origin of the Persian Robe’, Iranica Antiqua no. 4 (1964): 133–52, and ‘Women’s Robes: The Achaemenid Era’, Bulletin
of the Asia Institute, no. 5 (1991): 83–103; A. Kuhrt, The Persian Empire. A Corpus of Sources from the Achaemenid Period
(London: Routledge, 2007), 532; Llewellyn-Jones, King and Court, 208, 210, 214, 217, 221.
4
Athenaeus 12.525d-e.
5
W. Xin, ‘Violence and Power Visualized: Representations of Military Encounters between Central Asia and the Achaemenid
Persian Empire’, in The Archaeology of Power and Politics in Eurasia: Regimes and Revolutions (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2012), 78–90, figs. 4.4, 4.6.
160 DRESS IN MEDITERRANEAN ANTIQUITY

depict the monarch wearing it with such regularity can only be explained by the fact that it was
symbolically important. In my estimation, the court robe represented Empire-wide Achaemenid
royal authority; it was the symbol of the sedentary aspect of Persian court society, which had
emerged during the formative generations of Empire-building under Cyrus, Cambyses and Darius.
The other form of dress found at the Achaemenid court was of a very different, far older and
traditional sort. It was actually made up of five items of clothing:

1. a long-sleeved coat (OP. *gaunaka; Elam. kam-na-ak-ka; Avest. gaona; Gk. kandys (?))
2. a long-sleeved fitted knee-length tunic (OP. *kantu, *kam; Gk. ependytēs (?)) which was
often belted
3. trousers, leggings or chaps (Gk. anaxyrides)
4. footgear (which might sometimes be built into the trousers to form a kind of slipper-
legging)
5. a felt, cloth, leather or suede cap.6

Taken in combination, this ensemble was ideal for a people dependent upon horse riding for
transportation, warfare, status display and many other forms of cultural identity.7 The Greeks
erroneously, but consistently, called this mode the ‘Median dress’ and, unfortunately and
frustratingly, the tag has stuck in much contemporary scholarship, but there is no evidence
for these garments being limited to the Medes.8 The complete outfit is worn by several groups
of tribute bearers on the Persepolis Apadana staircases (Figures 13.1 and 13.2): Delegations
I (Media); IX (Cappadocia); XI (Skythia); XVI (Sagartia or Armenia) and Willem Vogelsang
note that ‘geographically, all of these trouser-wearing delegations derive from northwest,
north, and northeast of the Achaemenid empire. They originate from the long belt of lands that

6
See Llewellyn-Jones, King and Court, 220, fig. F13. There is little agreement over Greek and Old Persian clothing
terminology. S. Hawkins (‘Greek and the Languages of Asia Minor to the Classical Period’, in A Companion to the Ancient
Greek Language, ed. E. J. Bakker (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 226) reads OP *gaunaka as a ‘thick cloak’,
although a cloak per se (i.e. an unstitched mantle) was not worn by Iranians in the Achaemenid period. For him, the
Greek kandys is the Persian sleeved tunic. M. C. Miller (Athens and Persia in the Fifth Century BC. A Study in Cultural
Receptivity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 166) regards the kandys as a garment, ‘worn from the shoulder
by men as a kind of cloak in conjunction with a sleeved chitōn … ; its most striking feature is the unused sleeves’. Miller
uses the Greek ependytes, which is ‘linguistically Greek rather than foreign’ for the sleeved tunic (or chitōn). R. Schmitt
(Encyclopedia Iranica, vol. XI, Fasc. 4, 360) defines the dress terms thus: ‘gaunákē(s), also kau- “Iranian cloak or blanket”
(from OIr. *gaunaka- “hairy, shaggy”); kándys, “Median upper garment with sleeves” (with kandytânes “clothes-bag”,
containing OIr. -dāna- “holder”)’, although the imprecise English dress terminology does nothing to help clarify matters.
An additional Greek term sarapis might also refer to a long-sleeved coat. See further discussion by G. Thompson, ‘Iranian
Dress in the Achaemenian Period. Problems concerning the Kandys and Other Garments’, Iran no. 3 (1965): 121–6 and G.
Widengren, ‘Some Remarks on Riding Costume and Articles of Dress among Iranian Peoples in Antiquity’, Arctica: Studia
Ethnographica Upsaliensia, no. 11 (1956): 228–76.
7
See further Llewellyn-Jones, King and Court, 83–5.
8
See, for instance, N. V. Sekunda, ‘Changes in Achaemenid Royal Dress’, in The World of Achaemenid Persia, ed. J. Curtis
and S. Simpson (London: British Museum Press, 2010), 256–72. See also R. Schmitt, ‘Candys’, Encyclopedia Iranica, vol.
IV, Fasc. 7: 758: ‘The currently prevailing opinion is that the candys … was part of the Median riding costume … that is
represented often in the Persepolis reliefs.’
DRESS AND CEREMONY IN ACHAEMENID PERSIA 161

FIGURE 13.1 Tribute bearers carrying a set of clothes (left to right): trousers with built-in feet,
sleeved tunic, *gaunaka. East staircase. Audience Hall of Darius I (Apadana). Photo: Art Resource
(ART72356).

FIGURE 13.2 Relief showing Persian noblemen wearing riding dress. The figure at the far right
wears a *gaunaka draped over his shoulders. Persepolis, South Iran, sixth to fifth century BCE.
Relief sculpture on the stairway to the Audience Hall of Darius I (548–486 BCE). Photo: Art
Resource (ART922191).
162 DRESS IN MEDITERRANEAN ANTIQUITY

stretches to the delta of the Danube in the west to the boarders of China in the east’.9 One fact
cannot be stressed enough: these are the clothes worn by the traditional horse-riding peoples of
the Empire.
The Persians themselves strongly retrained the nomadic traces of Eurasian horse-societies. For
the Achaemenids, the horse had a significant practical and symbolic purpose and the importance
of horses among the nobility is evidenced by the fact that many of them bore names compounded
with the Old Persian word aspa – ‘horse’. Several of Darius I’s inscriptions note that Persia was a
land containing both good men and good horses (DZe §1; DPd §2) and Herodotus famously states
that Persian fathers were intent on teaching their sons ‘to ride, to draw the bow, and to speak the
truth’.10 The premium Persian horses were bred in the alfalfa-rich plains of Media, and it was here
that the main royal stud farms were located (Polybius 10.70). Most prized of all were those steeds
bred on the plains of Nisaea near Ecbatana and Bisitun, and Nisaean horses became celebrated
for their magnificence, fine proportions and swiftness.11 Nisaea is said to have sustained 160,000
horses, although stiff competition came from Media and Armenia which were also used for breeding
good steeds, as were the provinces of Babylonia (where one satrap possessed 800 stallions and
16,000 mares), Cilicia (which provided an annual tribute of 360 white horses), Chorasmia, Bactria,
Sogdiana and lands of the Saka which provided the Empire with its cavalry.12 The Persepolis texts
often speak of horses, usually in the context of their food provisions and maintenance but also as
property of the king or members of his family.13 The texts also name individuals who safeguarded
the welfare of the royal horses as well as groups of court officials serving as Masters of the Horse,
as it were, and show that these men operated within a hierarchical system and could be paid well
beyond the average ration-rate and could enjoy a diet of regular meat.14 This suggests a high rank
at court for Masters of the Horse.
A companion in life, the horse also played its role in the ceremonies of death and with the
passing of a king or noble, his horse was included in the mourning procession with its mane
cropped short.15 The horse played a noteworthy role in Achaemenid rituals and beliefs and
just as kings were mounted high on horse-drawn chariots, so Ahuramazda and other deities
had similar modes of transportation.16 Moreover, just as the finest present to give a Persian
was a horse, so were the gods honoured with equine gifts such as the white horses which were
sacrificed to the sun and to the waters, both rituals being widely practised among Indo-European
peoples.17 As founder of the Empire, Cyrus II was honoured with a horse sacrificed to his soul
every month. Moreover, the infamous tale recounted by Herodotus of how Darius I acquired

9
W. Vogelsang, ‘Trouser Wearing by Horse-Riding Nomads in Central Asia’, in Berg Encyclopedia of World Dress and
Fashion, Volume 5: Central and Southwest Asia, ed. G. Vogelsang-Eastwood (Oxford: Berg, 2010), 349–54, and The Rise
and Organisation of the Achaemenid Empire: The Eastern Evidence (Leiden: Brill, 1992).
10
Herodotus 1. 136; see also Strabo 15. 3.18.
11
Herodotus 3. 106, 7. 40.
12
Diodorus Siculus 17.110; Strabo, Geogr. 11. 13.7; 11. 13.8, 14.9; Herodotus 1. 192 and 3.90.
13
PF 1668-69, 1675, 1793; PFa 24, 29.
14
PF1942, PF1943, PF1947, PF1948.
15
Herodotus 9. 24; Curtius Rufus 10. 5.17.
16
Herodotus 7. 40; Arrian, Anab. 2. 11, 3.15; Xenophon, Cyropaedia 8. 3.12.
17
Xenophon, Anab. 1.2.27; Herodotus 1. 216, 7. 113; 1. 189; Xenophon, Cyr. 8. 3.11-12; Anab. 4. 5.35; Pausanias 3. 20.
4; Strabo, Geogr. 11. 13.7; 11. 13.8, 14.9.
DRESS AND CEREMONY IN ACHAEMENID PERSIA 163

his kingdom through a trick involving the neighing of his horse is, in all probability, a Greek
misunderstanding of the Iranian practice of hippomancy, or divination through the behaviour
of horses, demonstrating the deep-set importance of the horse as the key species in the Iranian
consciousness.18
The coat-tunic-trouser outfit evolved in response to the horseback lifestyle of the Iranians, which
had developed in northern and eastern Iran and the wider steppes of Eurasia in the millennium or
so before the apex of Achaemenid territorial power. Therefore, the labelling of this type of outfit
as ‘Median’ is not only unhelpful, it is manifestly wrong. An alternative terminology needs to be
employed: ‘riding dress’, ‘cavalry costume’ or some other suitable equine-related idiom would, I
propose, serve the purpose, for there can be no doubt that this fashion is indeed a projection of
an Iranian branch of the horse culture of Eurasia.19 Oddly, however, Achaemenid monumental art
never depicts the king wearing trousers or the *gaunaka; he is always shown in the court robe, a
symbol, I think, of his sedentary courtly Elamite-Achaemenid identity. In reality, there can be no
doubt that he did wear trousers and the sleeved coat too, if only as a practical way of hunting or
travelling on horseback.20 But there is something else going on to judge from the fact that the four
groups of Greater Iranian Persepolitan delegates who bring coats, tunics and trousers as tribute gifts
to their ruler is a court motif so well established as to be repeated on the Nereid Monument from
far-off Xanthos in Asia Minor.21 Why is this so? Because the message which was conveyed through
these garments was singularly important in the articulation of the two core aspects of royal identity,
for as well as being the foremost Persian courtier in his splendid court robe, the Great King was the
premiere Iranian horseman-nomad-chief too and was expected to dress appropriately.22 The riding
habit spoke of Persia’s deep Eurasian nomadic ancestry.

18
Herodotus 3.85; see also Ctesias F13 §17.
19
Note important comments by M.C. Root, King and Kingship in Achaemenid Art (Leiden: Brill, 1979), 280, n. 147.
20
Discussions in L. Summerer and A. von Kienlin, eds., Tatarlı: renklerin dönüşü/The return of colours/Rückkehr der Farben
(Istanbul: Istanbul Archaeological Museum, 2010).
21
Root, King and Kingship, 281 and fig. 69.
22
For Root, King and Kingship, 281, ‘it was a symbol for the king-as-warrior’. This has some cogency, but the fact remains
that many seal images of battle show the king wearing the court robe, as unlikely as this may have been in reality since the
bag tunic is unsuitable for combat. It must be stressed that the combination of cut, shaped and stitched garments that made
up the Iranian coat, tunic and trousers makes its first appearance in Western Asia during the early Achaemenid period in
this particular form of equestrian costume. For the inhabitants of the old civilizations of Mesopotamia, Asia Minor and
Egypt, as well as for the Greeks – all of whom employed unshaped drapery as the fundamentals of their clothing – Persian
riding dress was nothing short of revolutionary. The conspicuous covering of the body, a hallmark of Iranian self-identity
across the millennia, was in marked contrast to draped and more routinely displayed bodies of the peoples of the western
Achaemenid Empire, and it is not surprising that the Greeks of the late Archaic and classical periods in particular defined
themselves in opposition to the Persian nemesis in terms of dress, a theme routinely found in Attic art, but one which also
is articulated in literature. Herodotus (6.12) insists, for instance, that ‘[The Athenians] were the first Greeks, that we know
of …, to endure seeing Persian dress and the men who wore it’, the suggestion being that, at best, this cut, shaped and
fitted Persian body-concealing form of dress was an eyesore to the aesthetic sensibilities of the Greeks and, even worse, it
solicited in them an inter-polis trauma. For the Greeks, Persian dress was barbarian costume par excellence. See further,
Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones, ‘“That My Body Is Strong”: The Physique and Appearance of the Achaemenid Monarch’, in Fluide
Körper-Bodies in Transition, ed. F. Wascheck and A. Shapiro (Cologne: Wilhelm Fink, 2015), 211–48. In spite of hostilities,
the Greeks nevertheless fixated on the exotic otherness of Persian dress and also willingly expressed their admiration for its
unique beauty, and, as M. C. Miller (Athens and Persia) has demonstrated, the long-sleeved *gaunaka was enthusiastically
imported into Greece where it became the fashionable must-have for the wives of the Athenian aristocracy (a clear play on
the gender inversion the Athenians regularly spun around the figure of the Persian).
164 DRESS IN MEDITERRANEAN ANTIQUITY

THE STYLE AND SYMBOL OF THE *GAUNAKA

Irene Good sensibly suggests that the *gaunaka was a kind of overcoat with wide, often overlong,
sleeves and that it was usually worn hanging from the shoulders.23 One of the earliest attestations
of the garment being worn this way dates to the ninth century in the form of a bronze stand found
at Hasanlu in Iran, although the coat itself was ultimately derived from a very ancient rectangular-
shaped garment shaped on the loom and known as the chapan; it is distinctly Central Asian in
style (the same coat style is found in early China and has a common origin).24 Garments found
in Achaemenid-era Scythian burials demonstrate how completely perfunctory the hanging sleeves
might be, as they were cut and sewn so thin and long that no arm could be placed within them.25
The fabric of the coat might have ranged from a tightly woven three-quarter twill to piled and
quilted fabrics used for warmth. The Old Persian *gaunaka has the meaning ‘hairy’ or ‘shaggy’
(Avest. gaona – ‘hair’), suggesting that the coat must have been made from wool, felt or fur (or
was at least lined or trimmed with fur).26 A painted tomb from Karaburun in northern Lycia shows
a Great King, or more probably a satrap, wearing a white *gaunaka lined with a thick white lynx
fur.27 All in all this denotes the *gaunaka as a garment of considerable cost and a clear indicator
of wealth and status, and it was worn, therefore, exclusively by the elite. In fact, the Persepolis
reliefs show it was worn only by the nobility; food-bearing servants wear just the long-sleeved tunic
with trousers.
It becomes clear from the Greek literary sources that the *gaunaka/kandys played an important
role in court etiquette and that the garment, which in Achaemenid art is usually shown draped over
the wearer’s shoulders with the sleeves hanging loosely at the sides, was loaded with ceremonial
symbolism. The ultra-long sleeves (Greek: korē) were supposed to be used in the presence of the
Great King and any suppliant before the throne was expected to place his arms into them and allow
the excess fabric to fall over his hands, thereby rendering them harmless (since they could not grip
weapons).28 Failure to do this was read as an insult to the monarch or his representative, and Cyrus
the Younger, we are told, used such an affront as an excuse to execute two of his powerful – and
potentially troublesome – kinsmen:

23
See I. Good, ‘Early Islamic Textiles and Their Influence on Pre-Islamic Dress’ in Berg Encyclopedia of World Dress and
Fashion, Volume 5, 282–7. Schmitt (‘Candys’, 758) may be correct in criticizing Widengren’s identification of the kandys
with Polish kontusz as ‘linguistically anachronistic’, but Widengren’s term, ‘a great coat’, may be the best suited to the
*gaunaka.
24
E. R. Knauer, ‘Towards a History of the Sleeved Coat: A Study of the Impact of an Ancient Eastern Garment on the West’,
Expedition 21, no. 1 (1985): 18–36 and ‘Ex Oriente Vestimente’, ANRW II Principät 12.3 Künste (1985): 578–741, and
‘A Quest for the Origins of the Persian Riding Coats: Sleeved Garments with Underarm Openings’, in Riding Costume in
Egypt. Origin and Appearance, ed. C. Fluck and G. Vogelsang-Eastwood (Leiden: Brill, 2003), 7–28.
25
See V. Gervers, The Hungarian Szür: An Archaic Mantle of Eurasian Origin (Toronto: Royal Ontario Museum, 1973),
578–741. See also S. I. Rudenko, Frozen Tombs of Siberia. The Pazyryk Burials of Iron Age Horsemen (Berkeley: University
of California Press, 1970), 91.
26
See J. Tavernier, Iranica in the Achaemenid Period (CA. 550–330 B.C.): Lexicon of Old Iranian Proper Names and
Loanwords Attested in Non-Iranian Texts (Leuven: Peeters, 2007), 188.
27
Even if the figure is a satrap, we nevertheless get a good indication of the look of the royal coat, since satraps were
expected to represent the king as closely as possible and therefore imitated his dress as closely as possible, given the limits of
what was considered appropriate – see below. It is possible, of course, that the figure is of a local dynast who is deliberately
Persianising.
28
Xenophon, Cyr. 8.3.12.
DRESS AND CEREMONY IN ACHAEMENID PERSIA 165

In this year, Cyrus executed Autoboisakes and Mitraios, the sons of (Darius II’s) sister because, when
they met with him, they did not put their hands into their long sleeves. Now, the Persians do this only
as a mark of respect for the king; this type of sleeve is longer than a normal sleeve so when one puts
a hand into it, the hand is rendered harmless.29

While this type of story might be hyperbole on the part of Xenophon, showing as it does the
capriciousness of Persian royalty, it does alert us to the possibility that, as in all sophisticated court
societies – and Achaemenid Iran is undoubtedly a fine example of a highly civilized and visible royal
culture – dress-etiquette really mattered.30
Other court ceremonies focused on the *gaunaka too, in which this costly iconic court garment
became an item of significant exchange in which notions of loyalty and patronage were codified
and through which gestures of humility, obedience, privilege and status could be negotiated and
played out. I refer here, of course, to the notion of investiture and the political importance attached
to the custom of royalty bestowing the *gaunaka as a robe of honour onto a worthy recipient.

THE *GAUNAKA AS KHA’LAT

Luxury textiles have always contributed to the wealth and power of ruling dynasties, and they
have always performed important roles in the ceremonials of state.31 Pageantry introduced in
the Achaemenid era was reimagined in Sassanian ceremonials, which, in turn, were influenced
by Byzantine ceremonials and went on to inform Umayyad and later Islamic royal rituals. There
is, I would argue, a direct line of influence from the Achaemenids to the Ottomans, Safavids and
Moghuls in which textiles – clothing, carpets, hangings and tents – were visible everywhere as
extravagant but vital displays of court wealth and monarchic power.
We know that in the Islamic period, clothing, furnishing fabrics and tents were stored in
imperial treasuries as major financial assets of dynastic rule.32 There is every reason to believe

29
Xenophon, Hell. 2.1.8.
30
Decked out in their finery, Achaemenid courtiers clearly cut fine figures; all the more humorous therefore is Xenophon’s
vivid account of them, all bedraggled and mud-splattered, attempting to free baggage wagons from the quagmire of an
impassable road. Xenophon, Anab.1. 5. 8: ‘At one time they can across a very narrow muddy place where the going was
tough for the carts. Cyrus [the Younger] halted with his entourage of courtiers and commanded Glous and Pigres to take
some men from the barbarian troops and get the carts free from the mud. But he thought they were taking too long over
the job and so, pretending to be angry, he told the Persian nobles in his entourage to help the carts get a move on. It then
became possible to see a wondrous thing: they allowed their long purple coats to drop to the ground without caring where
they stood and sprinted, as if they were running a race down a very steep hillside, while wearing their expensive tunics and
trousers, with some of them even wearing necklaces and bracelets on their arms. As soon as they got there, they jumped
into the muck in all their finery and heaved the carts free from the mud more quickly than would ever be thought possible.’
31
There is yet to be a systematic cross-cultural study of dress and textiles in court societies, but individual studies must
include N. Arch and J. Marschener, Splendour at Court: Dressing for Royal Occasions since 1700 (London: Batsford, 1987);
K. Chrisman-Campbell, Fashion Victims: Dress at the Court of Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette (New Haven: Yale, 2015);
T. Dawson and G. Sumner, By the Emperor’s Hand: Military Dress and Court Regalia in the Later Romano-Byzantine
Empire (Oxford: Oxbow, 2015); G. Dickinson and L. Wrigglesworth, Imperial Wardrobe (London: Ten Speed Press, 2000);
A. Ertug and P. Baker, Silks for the Sultans: Ottoman Imperial Garments from the Topkapi Palace (Istanbul: Ertug &
Kocabiyik, 2000).
32
Harun Al-Rashid (786–809 CE), for instance, had a textile treasury which included 40,000 items of dress, 8,200 furnishing
fabrics, 3,900 carpets, 1,300 hangings, 3,000 cushions and 4,000 ceremonial tents. See L. W. MacKie, Symbols of Power:
Luxury Textiles from Islamic Lands (New Haven: Yale, 2015), 45.
166 DRESS IN MEDITERRANEAN ANTIQUITY

that pre-Islamic Iranian courts kept large stocks of textiles too, as suggested by texts from
early sixth-century BCE Susa which record, for instance, supplies of kuktum garments – a
type of finished shirt or coat (ku-uktum/tu) made of linen or cotton33 – coming into the royal
palace from a diverse array of places scattered throughout Neo-Elamite territory.34 In both
the pre-Islamic and Islamic courts, textiles and completed articles of clothing were bestowed
by rulers on their courtiers, visiting dignitaries or other deserving people as marks of high
honour, as a way of securing loyalty and of securing legitimacy. As Stewart Gordon explains, ‘At
its simplest, a king or his representative bestowed on another person … an outer [garment] …
In a robing room adjacent to the court, the recipient donned the … outfit, re-emerged to the
acclaim of the assembled nobles and – if not so before – was deemed “suitable” to take his place
in court.’35
This type of ceremonial gifting of robes was practised in Iran from Achaemenid period into
the Sassanian era, while in the Islamic period, the practice spread far and wide throughout the
Middle East and Asia. At this time both the ceremony and the garment gifted during the ritual
were known by the Arabic term khil’at (sing. khil’a – ‘to take off’) or, in a standard Persian
pronunciation more fitting to this study, khal’at.36 We have, sadly, no means of knowing the
original Old Persian term for this honours ceremony (although I am in no doubt that there was
one). While robing ceremonies themselves no doubt evolved and changed over the centuries, the
fundamental importance of khal’at never changed – the gifted robe served as a bond between
superiors and subordinates.37
Underpinning the notion of khal’at was, of course, the concept of reward, a theme clearly
propounded in Darius I’s Bisitun Inscription: ‘The man who cooperated with my house (viθ),
him I rewarded well; he who did injury, I punished thoroughly’ (DB §63), and again on his
tomb at Naqš-i Rustam: ‘What a man does or performs … with that I am satisfied’ (DNb §8e),
which finds parallel with Xerxes’, ‘I generously repay men of good will’ (XPl §26). The reward
is physically expressed through the gift, and in Achaemenid ideology the interplay between

33
W. Hinz and H. Koch, Elamisches Wörterbuck, vols. I and II, Archäologische Mitteilungen aur Iran Ergänzungsband 17
(Berlin: Reimer, 1987), 559.
34
W. Henkelman, ‘Persians, Medes and Elamites: Acculturation in the Neo-Elamite Period’, in Continuity of Empire (?)
Assyria, Media, Persia, ed. G. Lanfranchi, M. Roaf and R. Rollinger (Padova: SARGON, 2003), 180–231; D. T. Potts, The
Archaeology of Elam (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 299.
35
S. Gordon, ‘Khil’a: Clothing to Honor a Person or Situation’ in Berg Encyclopedia of World Dress and Fashion, Volume
5, 462–7.
36
More obscure Persian terms such as pay-zeh and sarupa (‘from head to foot’) might also be used. For discussions of khal’at,
see especially S. Gordon, ed., Robes and Honor. The Medieval World of Investiture (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2001):
‘A World of Investiture’ in Robes and Honor, 1–22; Robes of Honour. Khil’at in Pre-Colonial India New Delhi: OUP, 2003).
See also Gordon ‘Khil’a’, 462–7.
37
For the longue durée of gift-giving in the Middle East, Eurasia and China, see L. Komaroff, ed., Gifts of the Sultan: The
Arts of Giving at the Islamic Courts (New Haven: Yale, 2011), 13, where she notes that ‘in Arabic and Persian, there are all
kinds of nuanced words that we don’t have in English that describe if it’s a forced gift, or from a lower ranking official to
a higher ranking, or one given to curry favour. It kept the wheels greased. People preferred to give gifts than fight battles’.
For the classic account of gift-giving, see M. Mauss, The Gift. The Form and Reason for Exchange in Archaic Societies, trans.
M. Douglas (London and New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1950). See further, M. Satlow, ed., The Gift in Antiquity
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013).
DRESS AND CEREMONY IN ACHAEMENID PERSIA 167

service and the gift was profound since the monarch was perceived as receiving the gifts of his
people in the form of loyalty, service and produce.38 Khal’at was a logical expression of the
loyalty gift.
The features of khal’at identified in Arabic and Mughal sources are clearly apparent in
the earlier Greek and Hebrew texts which focus on Achaemenid court practices; the Great
Kings of Persia employed the same techniques of largess for the same political purposes as
their Islamic-era successors, although remarkably, this has by and large been overlooked by
Gordon Stewart in his important studies of the worldwide history of investiture. He argues
that the formation of this courtly tradition belongs to the Han Chinese and, subsequently, to
the Iranian Sassanians, but surprisingly he overlooks the corpus of evidence relating to the
Achaemenid khal’at.39
But the evidence is rich: Xenophon, for instance, records clearly the way in which a Great King
expressed his favour to a courtier through the use of gifts: ‘Cyrus presented him with the customary
royal gifts – that is to say, a horse with a gold bit, a necklace of gold, a gold bracelet, and a gold
scimitar, (and) a Persian robe [i.e. a *gaunaka].’40 This formalized gift-giving of ‘unequal exchange’,
as Pierre Briant terms it, bears a striking resemblance to an Honours List for courtiers articulated
in the Hebrew Bible’s book of Esther 6. 8-9:
Let royal robes brought which the king has worn, and a horse that the king has ridden, with a royal
crown on its head. Let the robes and the horse be handed over to one of the king’s most noble
officials; let him robe the man whom the king wishes to honour, and let him conduct the man on
horseback through the open square of the city, proclaiming before him: ‘Thus shall it be done for the
man whom the king wishes to honour.’41

The act of gift-giving was an important tool for the Achaemenid monarchy, as it established as
system of debt and dependency on the part of nobles and other courtiers. Moreover, courtiers
designated as ‘friends of the king’ had the right to eat from the royal table or assist the king as a
body servant and these were highly prized and ferociously policed privileges.42
However, not all who aspired to the honour were worthy of khal’at, as a story recounted by
Plutarch (possibly taken from Ctesias) makes clear. It concerns a Spartan named Demaratus, who
had defected to Persia and had become one of the Great King’s benefactors:

38
Of course the king was master of the Empire and thus the conquered lands of his realm ipso facto came under his authority
(the Old Persian word for ‘land’, būmi, has the implication of ‘land under royal right’) and as such, the king expected
payment of tribute and taxes from his subject peoples. These fiscal obligations to the throne, ‘the king’s share’, were called
bāji (Old Persian) and baziš (Elamite; see P. Briant, From Cyrus to Alexander. A History of the Persian Empire (Winona
Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2002), 398, 439) and were made up from a portion of produce from lands under the king’s jurisdiction.
It is worth citing L. Allen, The Persian Empire (London: British Museum Press, 2005), 120, who sensibly notes that ‘the
terminology distinguishing gifts from tribute … may have been the result of diplomatic rhetoric … The boundaries between
the concepts of land-obligations, tithes, tribute, and gifts were likely to be very fluid’.
39
Gordon, ‘Khil’a’, 62. Although he acknowledges the episode in Esther 6, Gordon’s focus remains on the early Chinese
and Sassanian sources.
40
Xenophon, Anab. 1.2.27.
41
Biblical translations are from the NRSV.
42
The title ‘friend of the king’ had a long pedigree in the Near East, and it is particularly well attested in the Hebrew Bible
(2 Sam. 15.37; 1 Kgs 4.5, 16.11) and in Akkadian texts as rukhi šarri. The title does not seem to have implied any specific
function, but being a ‘friend of the king’ was clearly a closely guarded privilege and a source of pride for those who bore it;
thus Tiribazus, the powerful satrap of Armenia, was a particularly favoured ‘friend of the king’ (Artaxerxes II), and, when
resident at court away from his satrapy, ‘he alone had the privilege of mounting the king upon his horse’ (Xenophon, Anab.
4.4.4; see further Curtius Rufus, 3.3.14.21, and Briant, Cyrus to Alexander, 321).
168 DRESS IN MEDITERRANEAN ANTIQUITY

And when Demaratus the Spartan, being encouraged to ask for a gift, asked that he might ride in state
through Sardis, wearing his tiara upright after the manner of the Persian kings, Mithropaustes the
King’s cousin said, touching the headdress of Demaratus, ‘This tiara of yours has no brains to cover;
you’ll not be Zeus just because you hold a thunderbolt.’43

The story of royal benefaction found in Esther finds, in fact, many parallels in the Greek corpus.
Xenophon believed that it was Cyrus who had begun this practice of lavish gift-giving (polydoria),
but ever since Cyrus’s time, generosity became one of the hallmarks of the qualities of Achaemenid
kingship.44 Although this Cyrus-centred aetiology might be doubted, nevertheless stories of Cyrus’s
largess create a picture of robe gifting on an imperial scale:
Cyrus began the practice of lavish gift-giving … Who is known to adorn his friends with more
beautiful robes than the king? Whose gifts are so clearly recognized such as the bracelets, necklaces,
and horses with gold-studded bridles as those which the king bestows?45

Xenophon’s Cyrus frequently resorts to the gifting of robes, gold, weapons (such as daggers, bows,
arrows and quivers) and, of course, fine horses; these items form the archetypal imperial honour-
gift.
The sheer number of gifts suggests that the imperial workshops and stables were kept occupied.
Before a major parade, for instance, Cyrus is supposed to have ‘distributed amongst the nobles the
most beautiful robes, Median coats [i.e., *gaunaka], for he had a great many made, with no lack of
purple dye, red, and scarlet, or sable’ and Herodotus notes that ‘every year a suit of Median clothes
[i.e., the riding habit] and other gifts held to be of great value’ was distributed by the king to his
loyal courtiers.46
No doubt jobs at court endowed a courtier the right, probably the obligation, to wear special
*gaunaka as a kind of royal livery and courtiers took their right to wear khal’at garments seriously:
the eunuch Mithradates, rewarded by Artaxerxes II for his services during the Battle of Cunaxa,
never failed to appear in public without his royal coat and his gifted jewellery, prompting an
envious eunuch to declare: ‘A magnificent outfit indeed, Mithradates, is that which the king has
gifted you! The necklaces and bracelets are glorious, and your dagger (akinakēs) of immeasurable
cost! He’s made you happy, the object of every eye!’47 And in a similar manner, Artapates, Cyrus
the Great’s loyal sceptre-bearer, ‘had a gold dagger, and wore a necklace and bracelets and all
manner of ornaments which noble Persians put on; for he was honoured by Cyrus because of his
affection and steadfastness’.48
Briant notes that ‘these robes and jewels were not baubles; they were resplendent marks of the
king’s favour … [T]he royal gift was symbolically charged … With all of the Persian nobles wearing
sumptuous robes and prize jewellery, we should not be surprised that the ceremony of awarding
gifts was held in public’.49 Indeed, the honour bestowed upon Mordecai is amplified through the

43
Plutarch, Them. 29.5; discussion by M. Heltzer, ‘Mordekhai and Demaratos and the Question of Historicity’, AMI 27
(1994): 119–21.
44
See discussion by Briant, Cyrus to Alexander, 305, 308.
45
Xenophon, Cyr. 8.2.7-8.
46
Xenophon, Cyr. 8.3.3; Herodotus 3.84.
47
Plutarch, Art. 15.2.
48
Xenophon, Anab. 1.8.29.
49
Briant, Cyrus to Alexander, 307.
DRESS AND CEREMONY IN ACHAEMENID PERSIA 169

centrality of the public aspect of the ceremony – in particular the horseback ride through the royal
city. This accords closely with the Central Asian khal’at practices studied by Stewart Gordon. There
is little to challenge his notion that Eurasian robing customs entered into Persia via the nomadic
peoples of the Steppes and beyond; indeed the more we push the Iranian-Eurasian nomadic
connection, the more we are able to understand the minutiae of Achaemenid culture.50 According
to Gordon, the khal’at traditions of Central Asia followed six distinct norms:51

1. Presentation of khal’at was highly personalized and the gift of luxurious robes reinforced
the relationships between a leader and his men.
2. The robe was granted from the hand of the leader before the whole band of nobles,
representing solidarity with that band, cross-cutting family and dynastic ties; in other
words, those distinguished through the wearing of gifted robes formed an elite club.
3. The robe was given in conjunction with traditional items of war: daggers, swords, bows,
arrows.
4. A central and enduring connection existed between robing and horses as well as highly
decorated horse-trappings.
5. As an indicator of wealth and status in itself, the robe was nevertheless always accompanied
by something gold (weaponry, jewellery, horse trappings).
6. The khal’at robe was always a shaped and sewn garment rather than a wrapped or
draped one, and it was always compatible with horse riding; in fact, in many of its later
manifestations the robe of honour often had side- or back-slits for ease of riding. It was
always the outermost and most visible garment of court dress.

Each of these indicators, qualified by Gordon as the non-negotiable, absolute features of Central
Asian khal’at-style investiture, is comfortably located in the Achaemenid-era evidence. So much
so, in fact, that it becomes clear that the Achaemenids should take their rightful place in the early,
indeed formative, period of khal’at history. But the Achaemenid evidence provides even more
thought-provoking materials, and a further examination of a specific detail of the Achaemenid
khal’at will go some way towards helping us understand the sense of reverential awe which was
activated when in the presence of these special garments.

THE ROYAL *GAUNAKA AS TALISMAN

Further understanding of the nature of khal’at emerges when we focus again on the wording of a
specific sentence in the Esther passage: Haman pronounces that royal robes ‘which the king has
worn’ should be brought and gifted to the worthy recipient. This is an important detail. The highest
level of khal’at, it appears, was to receive a robe from the royal wardrobe which had been worn
by the king himself. Not all courtiers were guaranteed this privilege but the chosen were quite
literally touched by, and with, majesty – that special, sacred charisma known as farr or khavaneh
which oozes into and out of the body of the king. The ancient Iranian concept of a demi-mythical

50
An idea inherent in D. T. Potts, Nomadism in Iran (Oxford: OUP, 2014).
51
Gordon, ‘World of Investiture’, 1–22.
170 DRESS IN MEDITERRANEAN ANTIQUITY

force wherein God bestowed upon the kings of Iran a mystical light (farr-ī īzadī) that legitimized
their rule was so strong that it can be thought of as emanating from the royal body, permeating
his garments and making them hallowed.52 This is best seen in the accession ceremonies of the
Achaemenid monarchs.
When a Great King of Persia died, his body was mourned, prepared for burial and finally interred
in a rock-cut tomb. Then the ceremonies of a royal investiture could begin and a new monarch
could take his place upon the throne and begin the process of governing his Empire. Greek authors
knew something of the cultic rituals that surrounded this important ceremony, but much of its
details were lost to them although it is clear from the writings of Plutarch (following Ctesias’s first-
hand observations) that some kind of accession ceremony was enacted at Parsagade, the traditional
tribal homeland of the Persian monarchy.53 It was here that Cyrus himself was buried and it was
here within the tomb that the accoutrements of Cyrus’s kingship, including his clothing, were
stored.54
At the shrine of Anahita, and in the presence of a few select courtiers and Magi, certain rituals
were enacted which conferred the legitimacy and sanctity of kingship upon the monarch. At the
royal investiture, the new Persian king adopted an official throne name and symbolically took on a
new ‘body’ and it was the investiture ceremony rather than the physical birth – or even the death
of the previous king – that marked the moment when the king became a different, more august,
person. Accordingly, during the ritual he was ‘given’ a different anatomy and underwent a classic
rite of passage of ‘exclusion-inclusion’ which was expressed through his undressing, his donning
of symbolic garments, his eating of specific foods and the imbibing of ritual liquor (terebinth, milk,
homa), another undressing, followed by his dressing in new garments to symbolize an altered state
of being. The Achaemenid monarch actually underwent two symbolic khal’at rituals himself, while
the drinking of the sour milk and the acts of ingesting humble foods and hallucinogenics confirmed
the initiate’s liminal status, as did the new king’s dressing in the pre-monarchic, tribal clothing of
Cyrus.55 Humility and humbleness were stressed in the ritual as the monarch was reminded of his
tribal nomadic ancestry and only afterwards, when the king donned a robe of state, was his new
monarchic brilliance, strength and vitality confirmed.
We are meant to think of Cyrus’s garment as a *gaunaka. By donning Cyrus’s coat every
subsequent Great King became an extension of Cyrus and after he had removed the precious relic,
the new king was then re-clothed in a newly made riding coat – richly dyed and beautifully worked
with exquisite designs – which signified his nomadic horseman ancestry, his new status as warrior
king, and confirmed his right to rule. As the king put on his new *gaunaka, he donned the power
of rulership.56
Thereafter any *gaunaka worn by the king became imbued with the profound religious aura of
the royal farr.57 Curtius Rufus notes that the most costly version of the garment was purple, white
and gold and was decorated with the ‘motif of gilded hawks attacking each other with their beaks’

52
This phenomena might be compared to that of the law contagion discussed by Batten, this volume.
53
Ctesias F17 = Plutarch, Art. 3.1-4.
54
Arrian 29.1-11.
55
H. Sancisi-Weerdenburg, ‘Persian Food: Stereotypes and Political Identity’, in Food in Antiquity, ed. J. Wilkins (Exeter:
Exeter University Press, 1995), 286–302.
56
Xenophon, Cyropaedeia 8. 3.13-14; Curtius Rufus 3. 3.17-19.
57
Comparisons might be made to some early Christian texts; see Peters, this volume.
DRESS AND CEREMONY IN ACHAEMENID PERSIA 171

– no doubt his mangled interpretation of the winged Ahuramazda-symbol. It was this ensemble
which, Ctesias notes, struck the Persians with an almost religious awe (thaumaston), for the Great
King’s *gaunaka was a talisman.58 When Cyrus the Younger plotted to kill his brother Artaxerxes
II, he was unable to strike the death blow while the king was wearing this garment since it acted as
a kind of protective force field around the royal body.59
The true significance of the robe as a manifestation of the kingship itself is the key to understanding
the bloody story Herodotus tells about Xerxes’s robe. Amestris, Xerxes’s wife, made him a royal
robe; he in turn gave it to his mistress (his brother’s daughter) who wore it in public. The result was a
bloodbath at court. Behind the story, no doubt, lies a Persian account of Masistes’s attempt to usurp
the throne (Herodotus’s audience would probably have known that Xerxes himself was assassinated
in a court coup, thereby adding significance and irony to the story).60 The very real paranoia lying
behind the idea of usurpation and its relationship to the royal robe is likewise encountered in a
Persian story told by Deinon, which has the ambitious and treacherous Assyrian queen Semiramis
trick her weakling husband into lending her his royal garment which she subsequently refuses
to return.61 Even when ripped or tattered the king’s robe possessed extraordinary powers: one
courtier, Teribazos, managed to get hold of one of Artaxerxes II’s cast-offs and wore it openly in
front of the court. But he escaped the death sentence which naturally accompanied such a rash act
because of the king’s benevolence and because Teribazos was prepared to debase himself by playing
the fool in front of the king and was thus exonerated of treason.62
The king’s *gaunaka was uniquely his. An aetiological legend recounted by Xenophon tells how
Cyrus the Great received the prototype royal robe from the daughter of the Median king, whom
he then took as a wife, and the robe, it is suggested, bestowed the kingship of Media on Cyrus.63
Thus there is little doubt that the Persians believed the Great King’s robe to have possessed the
supernatural powers of monarchy. Xerxes, troubled by dreams, instructed his uncle Artabanos to
put on royal clothes and to sleep in the king’s bed, and, as Artabanos slept, the same apparition that
had visited Xerxes came to Artabanos too, decked out in the paraphernalia of royalty and imbued
with the requisite aura of majesty.64 Alexander of Macedon’s careful employment of articles of
Persian royal dress following his defeat of Darius III is best understood in this light and suggests
that he wanted to be acknowledged as a legitimate Great King.65
The idea that a magical sympathy exists between an individual and his clothing was acknowledged
by James Frazer who noted a primitive belief that ‘whatever is done to clothes will be felt by [a] man
himself’.66 To honour a favoured courtier what better gesture of respect might a king proffer than
to offer him a robe, which had touched his own royal person? If Frazer is correct, then the recipient
experiences, however tentatively, a moment of that sacred mystery of monarchy. Clothing touched

58
Curtius Rufus 3. 3.17-19; Ctesias F45pγ.
59
Ctesias F17 = Plutarch Art. 3.5.
60
Ctesias F17 = Plutarch, Art. 3.1-4; Herodotus 9. 109-111. See comments by H. Sancisi-Weerdenburg, ‘Exit Atossa:
Images of Women in Greek Historiography on Persia’, in Images of Women in Antiquity, ed. A. Cameron and A. Kuhrt
(London: Routledge, 1983), 28–9.
61
Deinon F7 = Aelian, Var. hist. 7. 1.
62
Plutarch, Art. 5.2.
63
Xenophon, Cyr. 8. 5.17-19.
64
Herodotus 7.17.
65
Plutarch, Alex. 45.2; Diodorus Siculus 17. 77.4-5.
66
J. Frazer, The Magic Art (London: Grove, 1911), 207.
172 DRESS IN MEDITERRANEAN ANTIQUITY

by a king who had himself touched the *gaunaka of the great Cyrus was transferred to a worthy
recipient in a public ceremony of high prestige. For that moment, the courtier shared a union with
Cyrus and with the line of kings who followed him; he became part of an elite clan. The gifting
of clothing is a bonding moment and works in two directions: the king accepts robes of delegates,
thereby acknowledging his place in the horseman tribal societies of Greater Iran, and in turn, he
hands out robes, thereby bringing outsiders into the inner orbit of the Achaemenid clan.

CONCLUSION
The ceremonies of robe-gifting allowed the noble recipients of khal’at to share in the special aura
that the royal garment expressed. As I have argued, khal’at gifts were not given to the recipient by
the king as arbitrary tokens of royal favour; they carried within them the image of Achaemenid
kingship itself. The recipient who wore the royal robes was ‘touched’ by the monarch’s ‘spirit’ – his
charisma, farr or khvarenah – which was retained and carried within the royal gift.67 The magical and
spiritual bond which royal gifts created enabled the Great King to establish a ring of dependence,
loyalty and control of the nobles and his subject-peoples as well. This is why Achaemenid monarchs,
following long-established Central Asian traditions, often transferred, in public ceremonies, the
horse-riding clothes that they themselves had worn to individuals whose competence, honesty or
bravery pleased them. The nomadic essence of the horse-peoples of Eurasia was codified in the
garments of the Achaemenid Persians who, drawing upon tribal identity, thereby utilized those
clothes as sophisticated tools in court ceremonial.

Mauss, Gift, 9. As Mauss informs us, in Polynesia the hau, namely the spiritual power that each gift retained, emerged as
67

one of the leitmotifs of Maori gift-giving customs. For Iranian concepts, see A. Lubotsky, ‘Avestan xᵛarənah: The Etymology
and Concept’, in Sprache und Kultur, ed. W. Meid (Innsbruck: SCS, 1998), 479–88.
 CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Hair and Social Status in the

Near East and Early Greece,
c. 900–300 BCE
LLOYD LLEWELLYN-JONES

IN THE BEGINNING …
… there was hair. In ancient Mesopotamian thought, a primeval monster known as a Lahmu or
wild man was a hairy individual. He had long, wavy hair worn in six elaborate twisted braids
and a full beard composed of dozens of twisted corkscrew ringlets.1 The Lahmu was usually
depicted wielding his spear in combat with animals2 and while some scholars like to see him in
the guise of a Master of Animals, his Akkadian name, ‘the hairy one’ or the ‘hairy hero-man’,
indicates that the Lahmu was more homo ferox than homo sapiens. The hairiness of the Lahmu
was key to his identity, though, since the creature inhabited the sphere of the steppe and the
wilderness, his power was harnessed for humanity’s good and he became a protective totem of
doorways and liminal spaces. This liminal aspect of the creature is best understood by examining
the Lahmu’s hairstyle, for the distinctive and carefully parted, plaited and bound locks, and the
delicately curled beard imply a surprising level of cultural construction and humanization for this
benevolent wild man.
Unsurprisingly, the biblical hero Samson, with his long hair divided into seven locks and with
his lion-slaying feats, is often likened to the Mesopotamian ‘hairy hero-man’ but Samson was an
urban strong man, a man of the Israelite and Philistine cities, and so perhaps more appropriate for
this comparison is the Mesopotamian hero Enkidu.3 According to the Epic of Gilgamesh, Enkidu
was a foundling child who rose to adulthood in the wilderness. He was raised by a gazelle who
acted as his mother and by a wild ass that performed the role of surrogate father so that Enkidu,
naked and hairy, was raised with the four-legged animals of the wilderness and, as he grew to
maturity, acted as their guardian and protector. In appearance, habit and sentiment, Enkidu was
clearly more animal than human, a fact reflected in several of his epithets – ‘wild ass’, ‘mule’ and
‘panther’:

1
The question of the representation of hair in ancient Near Eastern art is addressed by Susan Niditch, ‘My Brother Esau Is a
Hairy Man’: Hair and Identity in Ancient Israel (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 25–62.
2
See the Middle Assyrian cylinder seal in the British Museum, BM 89862.
3
Judg. 14.5-6, 16.19; Gregory Mobley, Samson and the Liminal Hero in the Ancient Near East (New York and London:
Bloomsbury, 2006).
174 DRESS IN MEDITERRANEAN ANTIQUITY

All his body is matted with hair,

He bears long tresses like those of a woman:
the hair of his head grows as thickly as barley,
he knows not a people, nor even a country.
Coated in hair like the god of the animals,
With the gazelles he grazes on the grasses,
Joining the throng with the game at the water-hole,
His heart delighting with the beasts in the water.
(Gilgamesh Tablet I: 101-118)

But Enkidu’s life changed forever following his sexual intercourse with a city prostitute named
Shamhat. Thereafter Enkidu begins a process whereby he loses his animal identity and becomes
increasingly more human; as he does so, he shifts his locale from the wild steppe to a shepherd’s
hut and finally to the city of Ur, and as he progresses on this journey he learns the basics of what
it is to behave like a man – he eats bread, drinks beer and sleeps indoors. His final gesture of
acculturation, however, is to shave the hair from his body, to anoint his body with perfumed oil
and put on clothing:

The barber groomed his body so hairy,

Anointed with oil he turned into a man.
He put on a garment, became like a warrior,
He took up his weapon to do battle with lions.
(Gilgamesh Tablet II: P92-111, 59-62)

From that moment, animals become his prey, the source of sport and prowess.4 Enkidu is acculturated
through the cutting and taming of his hair. This act marks him out as a human and gives him
authority over nature. The Epic of Gilgamesh stresses the idea that rulership and civilization are
encoded through the taming of one’s hair.
In this chapter, I will explore how notions of power and status were articulated through
the cultural traditions of growing, dressing and displaying hair in the ancient Near East and in
Homeric Greece, since both civilizations shared similar preoccupations with hair as status display.
In the ancient world (as in successive eras) hairstyles were created by and for the elite. Kings and
royal women took the lead in setting styles which were both fashionable and, therefore, socially
aspirational. The elaborate styles of hairdressing (including beards and wigs) which developed
throughout antiquity required maintenance and care; professional hairstylists were unavailable to
common people and the elaborate, often architectural, shapes of court hairstyles demonstrated
that the wearers were not engaged in manual labour. The economics of hair was clear to see in the
ancient world as the wealth of the elite was emphasized through a conspicuous display of hair-care
products (oils, perfumes, hairpieces and wigs), services, styling tools and adornments.5 Underlying

4
See comments by A. R. George, The Babylonian Gilgamesh Epic: Introduction, Critical Edition and Cuneiform Texts
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003).
5
For a theoretical exploration of the culture of hair, see Geraldine Biddle-Perry and Sarah Cheang, eds., Hair. Styling,
Culture and Fashion (Oxford: Berg, 2008); Kurt Stenn, Hair. A Human History (New York: Pegasus Books, 2016) and
Diane Simon, Hair. Public, Political, Extremely Personal (New York: St Martin’s Press, 1992).
HAIR AND SOCIAL STATUS 175

the desire for displaying status through hair was the belief that hair had an inherent power. The
Hebrew Bible’s story of Samson and Delilah is not simply a story of a strong man betrayed by a
femme fatale but a vivid demonstration of the power thought to be located in hair. Samson’s locks
give him both physical strength and the charismatic power of leadership.6

HAIR AND THE CULTURE OF OPPOSITES:

RULERSHIP AND OPPRESSION
Reading hair as an expression of an ancient ‘culture of opposites’ is useful. It codified notions of the
wild and the tame, as we have seen, and promoted economic and social differences. Slaves, manual
workers and prisoners often had their hair cropped short or shaved off altogether, while the courtly
elites fostered elegant styles made from surplus amounts of hair. Consider the biblical description
of Prince Absalom, the son of King David of Israel:
Now in all Israel there was no one to be praised so much for his beauty as Absalom; from the sole of
his foot to the crown of his head there was no blemish in him. When he cut the hair of his head (for
at the end of every year he used to cut it; when it was heavy on him, he cut it) he weighed the hair of
his head, two hundred shekels by the king’s weight. (2 Sam. 14.25-26)7

The Hebrew Bible rarely describes the physical attributes (good or bad) of its protagonists and so
we are forced to stop and consider what the author is doing in this unusually detailed, somewhat
quirky, description of the Israelite prince.8 Absalom is undoubtedly a handsome man (the father,
moreover, of a girl named Tamar, who ‘became a beautiful woman’, the chronicler adds; 2 Sam.
14:27) and his hair is associated with his perfect beauty (‘From the top of his head to the sole of
his foot there was no blemish in him’).9 So thick and rich is his hair that it is cut once a year in an
eye-catching act that determines how much the beautiful locks weigh.
A cursory reading of this text may well suggest that Absalom is nothing more than a narcissistic
dandy, but I think something more significant underlies the focus drawn to Absalom’s wealth of
hair, given the prince’s backstory. For Absalom is set for greatness. He is the favoured son of the
king and in David’s eyes he can do no wrong. Yet Absalom is not content with his lot and he aims
at taking the throne away from his father and establishing himself as king. To do this he turns on
the charm which, combined with his good looks, easily wins over military and political allies: he
kisses all who ‘do obeisance to him’ and steals their hearts.10 Absalom is skilled at projecting an
image of power, and his hair contributes in no small way to this kingly vision. The biblical author
sets up Absalom as a genuine threat to David’s throne through his physical appearance; the prince’s
luxurious locks stress his appropriateness to rule.
However, Absalom’s claim on the throne is as presumptuous as it is hubristic and ungodly and the
narrator only establishes the picture of the perfect prince in order to shatter the illusion. Absalom’s

6
For a discussion, see Niditch, My Brother Esau, 63–73.
7
Biblical translations are from the NRSV.
8
As Jeremy Schipper, ‘Plotting Bodies in Biblical Narrative’, in The Oxford Handbook of Biblical Narrative, ed. Danna N.
Fewell (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), 392, notes: ‘Physical description was usually included in biblical narrative
only when required by the plot.’
9
See further Keith Bodner, The Rebellion of Absalom (London: Routledge, 2014), 50–3.
10
2 Sam. 15.5, 6.
176 DRESS IN MEDITERRANEAN ANTIQUITY

attempt to usurp his father’s throne ultimately fails and in a dramatic chase-scene Absalom is
pursued by David’s military commander, Joab, and his soldiers through the Judean countryside; he
meets his end when his hair becomes entangled in the branches of an oak tree as he rides beneath
it on his royal mule:
And the mule went under the thick branches of a great oak. His head caught fast in the oak, and he
was left hanging between heaven and earth, while the mule that was under him went on. … Joab …
took three spears in his hand and thrust them into the heart of Absalom, while he was still alive in
the oak. And ten young men, Joab’s armour-bearers, surrounded Absalom and struck him, and killed
him. (2 Sam. 18.9, 14)

Thus the rebellious prince, as Susan Niditch comments, ‘is hoisted by his own petard’.11 Absalom’s
penchant for wearing his hair thick and free-flowing is in itself a hubristic act of self-belief – even
Samson plaits his hair, while iconography from across the Near East demonstrates that elite men
‘tamed’ their hair by braiding, curling and binding it (see below). Moreover, as we noted with
Enkidu, excessive hair-growth had overtones of the animalistic, so that when the Babylonian king
Nebuchadnezzar’s state of mind finally collapsed, his courtiers read the external sign when they
observed that ‘his hair grew as long as eagles’ feathers, and his nails became like birds’ claws’.12
In the story of Absalom’s pretensions to hold power, his hair makes him appear greater than he
is. The focus given to his hair ‘is beautifully manipulated in this tale to suggest an antihero, not one
who is chosen to lead, not one who is divinely chosen, a fake – all hat and no cattle’.13
The Absalom story has at its core the notion that hair is an expression of the ‘body-self’, an idea
championed by Mary Douglas who explored the way in which the body serves as a natural symbol
of ‘self’.14 Similarly, Raymond Firth argues that hair permits humans to use ‘their own physical
raw material in terms of the social norms to provide indices to their personality and to make
statements about their conceptions of their role, their social positions, and changes in these’.15
An interwoven extension of this concept is the idea of the ‘body politic’, grounded in the work of
Michel Foucault who famously explored the ‘regulation, surveillance, and control of bodies’.16 As
an expression of the ‘culture of opposites’, therefore, hair expresses and shapes specific messages
about power and status as well as subordination and the loss of status. The enforced wearing of
certain hairstyles is therefore a form of social control, a theme vividly explored by Weikun Cheng
whose investigation into the enforced wearing of the queue (pigtail) in Qing China ‘reflected the
Manchus’ drive to submit Han [Chinese] to the minority’s political and cultural hegemonies and
its symbolic standardization of the people’s political ideology’.17 Similarly, the enforced cutting or
removal of hair is a powerful indicator of social control.
Ways of controlling the appearance of the hair of others is frequently found in ancient sources
where there was a long-standing tradition for shaving the heads of slaves and war captives, both
male and female. The image of a victorious leader gripping a defeated foe by the hair was also a

11
Niditch, My Brother Esau, 80.
12
Dan. 4.33.
13
Niditch, My Brother Esau, 80.
14
Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger: An Analysis of the Concepts of Pollution and Taboo (New York: Praeger, 1966).
15
Raymond Firth, Symbols: Public and Private (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1973), 298.
16
Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality. Volume 1: An Introduction (New York: Vintage Press, 1980), 7.
17
Weikun Cheng, ‘Politics of the Queue: Agitation and Resistance in the Beginning and End of Qing China’, in Hair: Its
Power and Meaning in Asian Cultures, ed. Alf Hiltebeitel and Barbara D. Miller (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1998), 128.
HAIR AND SOCIAL STATUS 177

potent sign of power. In Egyptian art, for instance, prisoners are gripped by the hair by a victorious
pharaoh and in an iconic image of Egyptian kingship, the pharaoh Narmer grasps an inert foe by
the hair and prepares to crush his skull (the same motif that still had resonance in Egypt’s Greco-
Roman period). The shearing of Samson’s locks by Delilah can be read as the Philistines’ desire to
stamp their authority over the Israelite leader just as the Assyrians took prisoners of war and shaved
off half of their beards in order to humiliate them. Accordingly, Israelite prophets threatened the
populace with the promise that the king of Assyria would ‘shave with a razor … the head and the
hair of the feet, and … will take off the beard as well’ and, somewhat surrealistically, they predicted
that men would go into exile, ‘bald as the eagle’.18 Jeremiah’s vision of a desolate Jerusalem is one
where

every head is shaved

and every beard cut off. (Jer. 48.37)

Ancient Hebrew law also carefully specified what should happen to a female war captive:
When you go out to war against your enemies, and the Lord your God hands them over to you
and you take them captive, suppose you see among the captives a beautiful woman whom you
desire and want to marry, and so you bring her home to your house: she shall … shave her head.
(Deut. 21.10-12)

The treatment of the captive woman is harsh since, as Niditch notes, ‘she has been made to
represent the control of her enemies, her transformation by her captors, and her removal from her
own society and cultural environment’.19 A truly remarkable passage in the eighth-century BCE
prophecies of Isaiah anticipates a similar treatment for the ‘daughters of Zion’, the aristocratic
women of Jerusalem, who will, he foretells, become the victims of Assyrian invaders:

Because the daughters of Zion are haughty,

and walk with outstretched necks,
glancing wantonly with their eyes,
mincing along as they go,
tinkling with their feet;
the Lord will afflict with scabs

18
Isa. 7.20; Mic. 1.16 (the image employed by Micah evokes the image of the eagle or vulture, whose pale down-covered
head contrasts with the feathered heads of other birds); see also 2 Sam.10.4-5. When Julius Caesar (Gal. War. 5.12)
conquered Gaul he ordered that the heads of the long-haired Gauls be shaved as a symbol of their submission. Romans
also shaved the heads of early Christians as a form of humiliation. See Victoria Sherrow, Encyclopaedia of Hair. A Cultural
History (Westport: Greenwood Press, 2006), 317. See further examples from Assyria in Cynthia Chapman, The Gendered
Language of Warfare in the Israelite-Assyrian Encounter (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2004), 39. A more recent example
of forced shaving, of course, is the Nazi preoccupation (on an industrial scale) with cutting the hair of Jews and other
concentration-camp inmates; see Richard J. Evans, The Third Reich in Power (London: Penguin Books, 2006), 540. See
further Rebecca M. Herzig, Plucked. A History of Hair Removal (New York: New York University Press, 2015).
19
Niditch, My Brother Esau, 8. We might consider here the situation during and after the end of the Second World War, when
thousands of French women (and British women on the Island of Jersey) had their heads shaved in front of cheering crowds
as punishment for collaborating with the Nazis. See Kristine Stiles, Shaved Heads and Marked Bodies: Representations from
Cultures of Trauma (Durham: Duke University Press, 1993) and Fabrice Virgili, Shorn Women: Gender and Punishment in
Liberation France (Oxford: Berg, 2002).
178 DRESS IN MEDITERRANEAN ANTIQUITY

the heads of the daughters of Zion,

and the Lord will lay bare their secret parts.
Instead of perfume there will be a stench;
instead of a sash, a rope;
and instead of well-set hair, baldness;  
and instead of a rich robe, a binding of sackcloth;
instead of beauty, shame. (Isa. 3.16-17, 24)

HEROIC HAIR IN HOMER

Long hair was the hallmark of aristocratic breeding in the ancient Greek world, and male warrior
elites spent time in grooming each other’s hair.20 The heroes of Homeric Greece represented virile
and generative manhood through the appearance of long, well-groomed hair. Well-tended hair
was an important outward sign of aristocratic rank and a distinctive mark of rulership. Thus, as
the Odyssey moves towards its climax, when Odysseus is changed into a beggar, Athene makes him
look older and uglier by deliberately ‘destroying his blonde hair’ (Od. 13.399, 431); later, to show
that he is fit to take up power again, she reverses the process and restores his luxuriant hair and
darkens his beard:
Athene touched him with her golden wand. She clothed him in a clean tunic and cloak, increased
his stature, and restored his youthful complexion. His colour returned, his cheeks filled out, and his
beard darkened. (Od. 16.174-6)

Homer frequently characterizes his heroes through their hair and throughout Iliad and Odyssey,
beauty, dignity and authority – and conversely, ugliness, ignobility and servitude – are encoded
in hair. Hair colour is alluded to with surprising regularity and Achilles, Menelaos, Odysseus
and Meleager are all noted as blondes (xanthos).21 This might presuppose that Homer regarded
blondeness as a heroic trait and that rulership is fittingly only attributable to fair-headed men,
but this is not so: while some heroes are indeed xanthoi, others, and most significantly, gods,
are kuaneoi (‘dark’ or ‘blue-haired’ – kuanochaita). Hector, Odysseus (as we have seen, when

20
A story related by Herodotus notes the particular Spartan preoccupation with hair-care: ‘Xerxes sent a mounted scout
to see how many [Greeks] there were and what they were doing. While he was still in Thessaly, he had heard that a small
army was gathered there and that its leaders were Lacedaemonians, including Leonidas, who was of the Heracleid clan.
Riding up to the camp, the horseman watched and spied out the place … He saw some of the men exercising naked and
others combing their hair. He marvelled at the sight and took note of their numbers’ (Hdt. 7.208). Plutarch thought that the
Spartans grew their hair long because it ‘makes a handsome Spartan more handsome, and an ugly Spartan more ferocious’
(a quotation he attributes to Leonidas), but the reality is that long and well-groomed hair identified Spartan men as the
warrior elite, in direct contrast to the enslaved Helots who undertook all hard labour in Sparta thereby allowing Spartan
men to focus on warfare and the attainment of physical perfection. In a way the long hair so carefully maintained by the
Spartans prevented them from doing manual labour and therefore became a potent symbol of an aristocratic fighting class.
Indeed, the Spartan fetishization of hair as status can be traced back to the Heroic age of Greece, at least as codified in the
epic poems of Homer. See further: Plutarch, Ap. Lak. 230b (= Nikandros 2), 232d (= Charillos 6), 228f (= Lykourgos
29) cf. Plutarch, Lyk. 22.1; Plutarch, Ap. Bas. kai Str. 189f (Charillos 3); Aristotle, Rh. 1367a; Xenophon, Rep. Lac. 11.3;
Herodotus, 1.82. See discussion by E. David, ‘Sparta’s Social Hair’, Eranos 90 (1992): 11–21. See also M. Harlow, ed., A
Cultural History of Hair in Antiquity. vol 1: Antiquity (Oxford: Berg, 2018).
21
Blonde heroes: Achilles: Il. 1.197 al.; Menelaos: 3.284 al.; Odysseus: Od. 13.399, 431; Meleager: Il. 2.642. Interestingly,
the epithet xanthê is used only once for a woman, Agamede, at Il. 11.740.
HAIR AND SOCIAL STATUS 179

transformed by Athene before his meeting with Telemachos), Zeus, Dionysos and most notably
Poseidon, whose blue-black hair is noted more than any other deity’s, are all dark-haired.22
It is possible that in the description of hair (including eyebrows and eyelashes) as kuaneos
Homer is indebted to an ancient Egyptian tradition of imagining the hair of gods as pure lapis lazuli
(khesbedj).23 In ancient Egypt, blue (irtyu) was the colour of the heavens and hence represented the
universal rulership of the gods; blue was also the colour of the Nile’s waters and symbolized the
primeval state of creation and the creator god Amun was often depicted with a blue face and body.
According to belief, the hair of the gods was made of precious lapis lazuli and a number of pharaohs
imitated the gods and were depicted in art with blue faces or hair. Indeed, elevated, god-like, status
may well be implied by Homer when he describes heroes as kuaneos given that the word is mainly
used in situations when anger or authority is being stressed.24 Poseidon’s many descriptions as
kuaneos can best be understood as referring to his terrible aspect as the supreme ruler of the seas
and of earthquakes.
More difficult to explain, however, is the one reference to Odysseus’s ‘hyacinthine’ hair at
Odyssey 6.231:
But when he had washed his whole body and anointed himself with oil, and had put on him the
raiment which the unwedded maid had given him, then Athena, the daughter of Zeus, made him
taller to look upon and mightier, and from his head she made his locks like the hyacinth.

This description might be linked to the shape of the petals of the hyacinth, suggesting Odysseus’s
hair is curly (as is mentioned at Od. 16.175)25 or, possibly, to the colour of the flower – violet – as
a (diluted) way of linking Odysseus to the kuaneos-haired gods and heroes (even though elsewhere
Odysseus is blonde).
More important than hair colour for Homer, though, is the length and thickness of a hero’s hair:
karêkomoôntes (‘long-haired’) is a very common epithet of Homer’s Achaean elite.26 Achilles’s hair
is so long that Athene can grip him by it in order to restrain him from attacking Agamemnon:
Athene came from heaven … and seized the son of Peleus by his fair hair, appearing to him alone.
No one of the others saw her. Achilles was seized with wonder, and turned around, and immediately
recognized Pallas Athene. Terribly her eyes shone. (Il.1.197)

The Trojan leaders wear their hair long and thick too: Hector’s hair actually drags along in the
dust as his corpse is pulled behind Achilles’s chariot,27 while Paris’s hair is likened to a horse’s
mane:

22
Hector: Il. 22.401-2; Odysseus: Od. 16.176); Zeus: Il. 1.528, 17.209; Dionysus: Hymn. 7.5; Poseidon: Il.13.563, 14.390,
15.174 and 201, 20.144; Od. 3.6, 9.528 and 536.
23
G. Hart, The Routledge Dictionary of Egyptian Gods and Goddesses (London: Routledge, 2005).
24
Il. 1.528; 17.209; 15.102; 22.402; Od. 17.176.
25
The hair of Eurybates, Odysseus’s herald, also curls: Od. 19.246. See E. Irwin, “Odysseus’ ‘Hyacinthine Hair’ in Odyssey
6.231’, Phoenix 44 (1990): 205–18.
26
Il. 2.323 al., but see Abantes at Il. 2.542. Women’s hair is also prized in Homeric society, and goddesses and noblewomen
are often called êükomos, ‘rich-’ or ‘fair-haired’ (Il. 1.36 al.), or euplokamoi, ‘with beautiful braids (ringlets)’ (6.380 al.);
their long locks are sometimes anointed with perfumed oils (14.175-7; Hymn. 24.3), a symbol of wealth and fertility. For
Hera’s hair, see Il. Hera: 15.102-3.
27
Il. 22.401-2.
180 DRESS IN MEDITERRANEAN ANTIQUITY

Even as when a stalled horse that has fed his fill at the manger breaks his halter and runs stamping
over the plain, keen to bathe himself in the fair-flowing river, holds high his head in pride whilst
about his shoulders his streaming mane floats, and as he glories in his splendour … even so Paris, son
of Priam, strode down …, all gleaming in his armour like the shining sun, laughing for glee, and his
swift feet carried him forward. (Il. 6.509-10)

Poseidon, the great ‘tamer of horses’, is appropriately enough called ‘dark-maned’ (kuanochaita)28
and other gods such as Apollo and Dionysus have long locks too.29 In a powerfully vivid image,
when Zeus nods his head to grant the suppliant goddess Thetis her request, thickly perfumed curls
fall over his brow:
The son of Kronos spoke, and bowed his dark brow in assent, and the ambrosial locks waved from
the king’s immortal head and he made great Olympus quake. (Il. 1.529-30)

Unusually for Homer, however, the wealthy Greek warrior Euphorbos is depicted with an elaborate
hairstyle of tight braids decorated with gold and silver ornaments. Homer does not criticize these
extravagant locks nor does he consider them unmanly; he notes in fact that Euphorbos’s hair, blood
stained from battle, is as beautiful as that of the Graces.30 In contrast to Euphorbos’s glittering
tresses and the thick, long, healthy hair of the warrior elites is the mangy scalp of the ugly Thersites,
the lowest-ranking character among Homer’s soldiery and an embodiment of obnoxiousness:
Evil-favoured was he beyond all the men that came to Ilium: he was bandy-legged and lame in one
foot, and his two shoulders were rounded, stooping together over his chest, and above them his head
was warped, sprouting scraggly, woolly hair. (2.217-19)

Homer’s vitriolic description of Thersites’s appearance acts as a kind of cultural barometer since, for
him, a man’s outward physique was indissolubly linked to his moral worth. The Iliad’s fixation on
combat and physical prowess to achieve glory is used as a proxy for a man’s honour and heroes are
therefore described as hulking specimens of manhood, revered as much for their bodies as for their
acts of bravado and leadership. As we have seen, hair is a vital part of that outward code of inner
worth, which enables heroic governance. Conversely, mangy-scalped, straggly haired Thersites is
not only a consummate physical weakling, disdained by all who know him, but a commoner unfit
for leadership. His natural subservience is as plain to see as the lack of hairs on his balding head.31

28
Il. 13.563 al.
29
Apollo: Il. 20.39; Dionysus: H. Dion. 7.4-5.
30
Il. 17.51-2. See D. Letaio, ‘Adolescent Hair-Growing and Hair-Cutting Rituals in Ancient Greece: A Sociological
Approach’, in Initiation in Ancient Greek Rituals and Narratives: New Critical Perspectives, ed. D. Dodd and C. Faraone
(London and New York: Routledge, 2003), 109–29.
31
The association between luxurious hair and an innate ability to rule was fostered by Alexander the Great who saw himself
as a second Achilles. His distinct portrait sculpture always highlighted his thick head of hair, leonine-like in its fullness
(although, notoriously, Alexander eschewed the Greek vogue for beards); the heavy-layered hair was carefully delineated
by Alexander’s sculptors who also carefully rendered his idiosyncratic ‘cow’s lick’ or flick of fringe above his forehead (the
anastole). So deep was this particular image of charismatic rulership embedded in the subsequent Hellenistic concept of
kingship that successive Greek-speaking kings adopted the same hairstyle: a fascinating sculpture of Attalos I of Pergamon,
for instance, was reworked sometime in the 230s BCE to include a stone ‘wig’ in imitation of Alexander’s hairstyle, complete
with a diadem, the Hellenistic symbol of rulership par excellence. This ‘Before and After’ representation encodes a clear
message: ‘Hellenistic kingship is good for your hair’ – see John Ma, ‘Kings’, in A Companion to the Hellenistic World, ed.
Andrew Erskine (Oxford: Blackwells, 2003), 178.
HAIR AND SOCIAL STATUS 181

COIFFURED KINGS OF MESOPOTAMIA AND PERSIA

The head held the highest place in the ancient Near Eastern body’s hierarchy and was the most
honourable part of the human figure. To be anointed and crowned in the case of the king, it was the
seat of life and reason; consequently, Near Eastern texts often refer to the head as the ‘life force’ of
the monarch.32 Since the head represented the whole person, beheading an enemy gave a dramatic
emphasis to the destruction of the opponent’s whole being.33 Neo-Assyrian palace reliefs frequently
show mounds of severed heads of enemies near battlefields, and the head as a war trophy has a
long history in the Middle East.34 Perhaps stimulated by reflecting on the function of the physical
head in relationship to the body, ancient Near Eastern peoples used the term ‘head’ as a symbol of
leadership and authority. The king is thus the head of the body of the state.
The hair that ornaments the head and face, as we have seen, was a symbol of power and of
status, and rulers carefully controlled the artistic depiction of their hair-covered features. Monarchs
were active in promoting and commissioning royal art and a letter sent by a craftsman asks King
Sargon II of Assyria to review some preparatory sketches for a new statue which had been ordered:
We have caused to bring an image of the king; in outline I have drawn [it]. An image of the king of
another sort they have prepared. May the king see (them) and whatever is pleasing before the king,
we shall make instead. May the king give attention to the hands, the elbows, the hair, and the dress.35

Of course we should not regard the images of ancient Near Eastern rulers as ‘portraits’ per se
and, in fact, the Akkadian term used to refer to a royal ‘portrait’ is ṣalam-šarrūtia – ‘the image
of my office of kingship’, a clear demonstration that ancient Near Eastern kings promoted more
the official image of the institution of rulership than any individual likenesses. Near Eastern art
provides an image ‘of the ideal and able king, in royal garments and with royal insignia, fashioned
by the gods and in the likeness of the gods’.36
From the earliest times, the physical trait most conspicuously stressed in Near Eastern images of
kingship is the hair. A gold helmet of a ruler named Meskalamdug (c. 2600 BCE) from his tomb at
Ur, for instance, was actually made to look like its wearer’s own hair, with a knotted chignon at the
back of the head, a woven plait that encircles the head (worn with a fillet which keeps the chignon
in place) and a myriad of corkscrew curls which extend past the ears.37 The same type of helmet
was worn by King Sargon of Akkad in a magnificent bronze bust (c. 2340 BCE); the hairstyle
replicates that of Meskalamdug. It is feasible that this arrangement of the chignon and plait was
only employed by the kings of Kish – the rulers of Sumer and Akkad.38

32
1 Sam. 10.1. For a discussion, see Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones, King and Court in Ancient Persia 559–331 BCE (Edinburgh:
Edinburgh University Press, 2013), 56–66.
33
Gen. 3.15; 1 Sam. 17.46.
34
Julian Reade, Assyrian Sculpture (London: British Museum Press, 2004), 80–91.
35
J. Waterman, Royal Correspondence of the Assyrian Empire, vol. 2, 4 vols. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1930–36),
233.
36
I. Ziffer, ‘Portraits of Ancient Israelite Kings?’ Biblical Archaeology Review 39, no. 5 (2013): 51. See also Irene Winter,
‘Art in Empire: The Royal Image and the Visual Dimensions of Assyrian Ideology’, in Assyria 1995, ed. S. Parpola and R.
M. Whiting (Helsinki: State Archives of Assyria Project, 2009), 266.
37
Richard Zettler, ed., Treasures from the Royal Tombs of Ur (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1998).
38
Sargon wears the same hairstyle on his victory stele; see Benjamin R. Foster, The Age of Agade. Inventing Empire in Ancient
Mesopotamia (London: Routledge, 2016), 3, fig. 1.2.
182 DRESS IN MEDITERRANEAN ANTIQUITY

Why, even at so early a time, did rulers pay so much attention to the representation of hair?
At the most mundane level, hair signalled a person’s state of health or lack of it (poor-quality
hair could signal disease or uncleanliness; the tearing out of the hair was a symbol of emotional
distress). Therefore, men of the warrior elite carefully grew and cared for their hair to represent
their strength and virility and their right to rule, but they were careful to dress it and arrange it
too (as we see in the fillets being used to control the plaits and chignons on the Sumerian helmets)
thereby symbolically ‘taming’ and ‘civilizing’ it. It is clear that Sumerian, Assyrian, Babylonian and
Persian monarchs took extreme care with the representation of their hair, carefully delineating the
plaiting, braiding and twisting of their locks and beards, and resulting elaborate coiffures of ringlets
and curls.39
In reality, the hair and the beard were carefully dressed into these styles by skilled hairdressers
who twisted the curls into shape and fixed them in position by the careful use of perfumed oil, which
helped control the hair, in addition to keeping it shiny and fragrant. Egyptian pharaohs had an age-
old tradition of wearing carefully dressed wigs and there can be little doubt that Mesopotamian
and Persian kings and courtiers likewise wore wigs and false hairpieces; their images certainly
suggest that false tresses could be plaited into natural hair and beards. This fashionable caprice
must have made hair expensive, and, if we follow what classical authors have to say, the Great
King of Persia actually demanded a ‘tribute’ of hair from provinces of the Empire specifically for
the creation of wigs.40
Anointing the hair and beard with oil was a ritual practice for ancient monarchs, but it was also
a beauty rite for its own sake and one associated with festivity and hospitality too. Kings lavished
their wealth on costly perfumed hair-oil, and one particular sort, labyzos, was even more expensive
than myrrh and much loved by Achaemenid rulers.41 One Mesopotamian song entitled Lettuce Is
My Hair lauds the beauty of well-dressed and perfumed tresses, carefully tended by a beautician:

Piled up [are] its small locks,

My attendant arranges (my hair),
The attendant (arranges) my hair which is lettuce, the
most favoured of plants.42

In fact this association between hair and vegetation – that is to say, between the real and the
representational – is a motif commonly found in Mesopotamian literature. A Neo-Assyrian ‘God-
Description Text’, for instance, describes the body of a male deity and equates each part of his body
to an object, a metal or a substance (knees are likened to cedars, a mole is like a raven, earwax is
lead, etc.). Particular attention is given to hair, which is equated with plants:

His topknot is tamarisk.

His whiskers are a frond …

39
See images in Zainab Bahrani, The Graven Image. Representation in Babylonia and Assyria (Philadelphia: University of
Pennsylvania Press, 2003) and Michal Dayagi-Mendels, Perfumes and Cosmetics in the Ancient World (Jerusalem: Israel
Museum, 1989), 66–7.
40
Pseudo-Aristotle 2.14d; Strabo 15.3.21 notes that hair was therefore a taxable item.
41
Dinon F25a = Athenaeus 12. 514a.
42
Cited in James B. Pritchard, Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament. Third Edition with Supplement
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969), 644.
HAIR AND SOCIAL STATUS 183

His armpit hair is a leek …

His chest hair is a thorn bush.
The hair of his groin is a boxthorn.43

Images of Near Eastern kings invariably depict them with thick and luxuriant hair. Abundant
curls cover his head and a full, bushy beard falls to his chest; the monarch is always represented
with fullest head of hair and the longest and thickest beard – the length of the monarch’s hair must
have signalled larger issues such as strength, wisdom, vitality and potency (perhaps the beard even
encoded a certain sacrosanct quality). Commenting on the appearance of Assyrian kings, Julia
Assante notes:
The royal beard was luxurious and elaborate, spouting so profusely that it nearly envelops the cheeks,
and falling to the level of mid-chest where it is dramatically squared off. The effect is one of … rigid
control. Individual styles of royal beard were crucial … In royal imagery beards conveyed power,
maturity and … aggressive sexuality …, while fastidious grooming of the beard and the exacting
way in which it was curled might have conveyed discipline in addition to identity, high-status, and
luxury.44

In contrast to the Sumerian royal beard, which split into two curly, elongated masses, the shape of
Assyrian and Persian royal beards was always rectangular. A pointed type was worn by subjects in a
kind of ranking system that demarcated courtiers who wore beards of medium length and soldiers
who sported close-cropped beards. The Bisitun relief of the Persian monarch Darius I therefore
depicts him with a bigger and better beard than anyone else’s (Figure 14.1) and the audience relief
at Persepolis also shows the king sporting a beard far superior to any courtier’s (although his son
and heir standing next to him is granted the privilege of long beard too; Figure 14.2).
In the ancient Near East beards were clearly significant.45 The ornament of machismo, the beard
was symbolically loaded: it was the object of salutation and the focus of oaths and blessings, although,
conversely, the beard could also be a locus of shame, since an attack on the beard was an attack
on the individual who sported it. Because the beard was the superlative symbol of manhood and
social status, it was a great insult to degrade it. When, for instance, the Ammonites, the disreputable
enemies of King David, wanted to show their contempt for him, they shaved off the beards of his
captured servants and courtiers and sent them back to him in this dishevelled state. This act was
thought to be so shameful an insult that David instructed his men to stay within the walls of Jericho

43
Zainab Bahrani, The Infinite Image. Art, Time and the Aesthetic Dimension in Antiquity (London: Reaction Books, 2014),
65–6. For an analysis of the classifications, see Alasdair Livingstone, Mystical and Mythological Explanatory Works of
Assyrian and Babylonian Scholars (Winona Lake: Esienbrauns, 2007), 92–112.
44
Julia Assante, ‘Men Looking at Men. The Homoerotics of Power in the State Art of Assyria’, in Being a Man. Negotiating
Ancient Constructs of Masculinity, ed. Ilona Zsolnay (London: Routledge, 2016), 66. See also T.A. Madhloom, The
Chronology of Neo-Assyrian Art (London: Athlone Press, 1970), 83–9.
45
Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones, ‘“That My Body Is Strong”: The Physique and Appearance of the Achaemenid Monarch’, in
Fluide Körper-Bodies in Transition, ed. F. Wascheck and A. Shapiro (Cologne: Centre for Advanced Studies ‘Morphomata’,
2015), 211–48; Niditch, My Brother Esau. See further illuminating discussions on the culture and history of beards in Allan
Peterkin, One Thousand Beards. A Cultural History of Facial Hair (Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp Press, 2001); Allan Peterkin,
One Thousand Moustaches. A Cultural History of the Mo (Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp Press, 2012); Kevin Clarke, Beards.
An Unshaved History (Berlin: Bruno Gmuender, 2013). For a quirkier account, see Reginald Reynolds, Beards (London:
George Allen and Unwin, 1950).
184 DRESS IN MEDITERRANEAN ANTIQUITY

FIGURE 14.1 Bas-relief of King Darius I (detail). Mount Bisitun, Iran. Photo: Art Resource
(AR9444230).

FIGURE 14.2 King Ashurnasirpal seated between two attendants, Assyrian relief, c. 880 BCE.
Relief from the north-west palace of Nimrud, Iraq. From the British Museum, London. Photo: Art
Resource (AR9153626).
HAIR AND SOCIAL STATUS 185

until their beards had grown back and their self-worth had been restored.46 Similarly, a royal report
of Sennacherib’s campaign against the Elamites in 691 BCE has the king boasting of his victory
over the enemy: ‘I cut off their beards and robbed them of their dignity.’47 It seems to have been a
practice at the early Achaemenid court of Iran to have plucked the beards off the chins of courtiers,
aristocrats and grandees who had offended the Great King as an obvious mark of humiliation.48
Even if an enemy or subservient managed to keep his beard in place, it still had the potential to
be the object of shame. Obeisance in the form of kissing the feet of a ruler was an expected ritual
of etiquette in many Near Eastern courts, but the Assyrians expected more outward displays of
humility from vassals and suppliants. Assurbanipal II, for instance, records how Tammaritu, the
ruler of Elam, ‘kissed my royal feet repeatedly, and he swept the ground with his beard’, and this
image of subservience is vividly captured on the Black Obelisk of Shalmaneser III where Jehu, king
of Israel, rubs his beard in the earth as he prostrates himself in front of the king.49
The real champion of inferiority, however, was the beardless unarmed court eunuch who
habitually accompanied the kings of Assyria and Persia. As Assante notes:
His soft face, unsullied by hair, and often fleshy body exaggerate the mature, hardened virility of
the monarchs he serves … [a] man participating in the real-life state functions that the artworks
depicts would actually see the king surrounded by anxiously attentive beardless males … [To] the
masses the eunuch was a display object in public processions and palace ceremonies, a strange and
uncommon spectacle … He was no doubt accustomed to a good deal of gawking … he symbolized the
king’s power to command devotion so extreme that it required the sacrifice of his rightful social and
physical identity as a man … The eunuch … stood as an emblem of the king’s hegemonic dominion
over men.50

Interestingly, the Greek historian Ctesias tells a story (which probably has at its core a genuine
Iranian version) of the time a powerful court eunuch, Artoxares, attempted to overthrow the throne
of Darius II and establish himself as Great King of Persia; to do this, Ctesias says, he asked a woman
(who goes unnamed in the text) to procure for him a beard and moustache of false hair:
Artoxares the eunuch, who was very influential with the King, plotted against the king because he
wished to rule himself. As he was a eunuch he ordered a woman to procure a moustache and beard
for him so he could look like a man. She informed against him and he was arrested and handed over
to Parysatis [the king’s mother]. And he was killed. (Ctesias F15. Photius, 41b38-43b2 [§54])51

Ctesias’s point is to confirm that to rule as a king, one must look the part; the vital accoutrement
for the job was the luxuriant royal beard. Since Artoxares was incapable of growing his own, he

46
2 Sam. 10.4; see discussion by Hilary Lipka, ‘Shaved Beards and Bared Buttocks. Shame and the Undermining of Masculine
Performance in Biblical Texts’, in Being a Man, 176–97. Christopher Oldstone-Moore, The Revealing History of Facial Hair
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2016), 42, notes that a similar ideology was engrained in classical Greece and that
without his beard, a man was stripped of his ‘armour’ – unmanned and humiliated.
47
Oriental Institute Prism V; see A. R. George, ‘The Poem of Erra and Ishum: A Babylonian Poet’s View of War’, in Warfare
and Poetry in the Middle East, ed. Huge Kennedy (London: I.B. Tauris, 2013), 39–71.
48
Plutarch, Mor. 173D; 565A.
49
Mayer I. Gruber, Aspects of Non-Verbal Communication in the Ancient Near East (Rome: Biblical Institute Press, 1980),
258–9.
50
Assante, ‘Men Looking at Men’, 64, 69–70. On court eunuchs in Persia, see Llewellyn-Jones, King and Court, 38–40.
51
Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones and James Robson, Ctesias’ History of Persia. Tales of the Orient (London: Routledge, 2010).
186 DRESS IN MEDITERRANEAN ANTIQUITY

would seize on the fashion for false hair and wear a counterfeit one.52 Preserved here, I think, is a
genuine Persian belief that the monarch was the first among men and that his ability to rule and to
preserve cosmic order was signified through his appearance. Not surprisingly, then, given the close
association between the beard and physical power and martial ability, the Great King’s impressive
beard clearly demarcated him as the Empire’s alpha male.

WOMEN, VEILED HAIR AND SOCIAL DISTINCTION

Women’s hair was also prized in Near Eastern and Homeric society, and like aristocratic men,
women’s hair was elaborately dressed and held in place with fillets, nets and pins. A fragmentary
Neo-Elamite relief from Susa, known as ‘The Spinner’, shows a high-status woman whose hair is
piled up high and decorated with wide fillets and looping braids – a masterpiece of the hairdresser’s
craft.53 In Homer, goddesses and noblewomen are often called êükomos, ‘rich-’ or ‘fair-haired’
(Il. 1.36 al.), or euplokamoi, ‘with beautiful braids (ringlets)’ and their long locks are sometimes
anointed with perfumed oils, a symbol of wealth and fertility. Homeric women also decorated their
hair with fillets, headbands, snoods and tiaras.54 When displayed by certain types of women, hair
was a positive force intertwined as it is with notions of desirable feminine fertility, status or even
wealth, but the same quality of luxuriant hair can also assume a negative trait in contexts where
the same female sexuality or fertility are viewed with suspicion and disparagement. Many ancient
societies therefore required elite women to carefully cover their hair when out of doors or in the
presence of non-blood kin males.55
In Assyria veiling the hair was used as an indicator of a female’s superior social status since,
remarkably, veils are at the centre of a civic law code used by the Assyrians from at least 1250 BCE.
In his study of the legal rights and marriage customs of Assyrian women, Claudio Saporetti has
demonstrated that during the Middle Assyrian period (c. 1400–1050 BCE), the sexual regulation
of women of the propertied class became increasingly entrenched, and the virginity of respectable
daughters became a financial asset for the family.56 What evidently became problematic for the
Assyrians, however, was how to distinguish clearly and permanently between respectable and non-
respectable women; this was accomplished not merely by a social policy of conformity but by the
enactment of Middle Assyrian Law 40, a law code that seems to have been applied and accepted
throughout the several centuries of Assyrian rule. The law itself begins thus:
Neither wives of Lords nor widows nor Assyrian women who go out onto the streets may have their
heads uncovered … The daughters of a lord … whether it is [with] a shawl, robe or mantle, must
veil themselves … When they go out onto the streets alone, they must veil themselves. A concubine

52
See Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones, ‘Eunuchs and the Harem in Achaemenid Persia’, in Eunuchs in Antiquity and Beyond, ed.
Shaun Tougher (London and Swansea: Classical Press of Wales, 2002), 39.
53
J. Connan and O. Deschesne, Le bitume à Suse: collection du Musée du Louvre (Paris: Éditions de la Réunion des Musées
nationaux, 1996), 227, 339–40. On female hair and beauty in the Near East, see Martin Stol, Women in the Near East
(Berlin: De Gruyter, 2016), 17–55, and Amy Rebecca Gansell, ‘Images and Conceptions of Ideal Feminine Beauty in Neo-
Assyrian Royal Contexts, c. 883–627 BCE’, in Critical Approaches to Ancient Near Eastern Art, ed. Brian A. Brown and
Marian H. Feldman (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2016), 391–420.
54
Il. 1.36, 6.380, 14.175-7; Hymn. 24.3. For hair ornaments, see Il. 22.468-72; Hymn. Cer. 295, Hymn. 6.1; Lloyd
Llewellyn-Jones, Aphrodite’s Tortoise. The Veiled Woman of Ancient Greece (Swansea: Classical Press of Wales, 2003), 30–3.
55
See especially Llewellyn-Jones, Aphrodite’s Tortoise.
56
Claudio Saporetti, The Status of Women in the Middle Assyrian Period (Malibu: Undena Publications, 1979).
HAIR AND SOCIAL STATUS 187

who goes out on the street with her mistress must veil herself … A prostitute … must have her head
uncovered on the street; she must not veil herself. Her head must be uncovered … He who has seen
a harlot veiled must arrest her, produce witnesses and bring her to the palace tribunal; they shall not
take her jewellery away but the one who arrested her may take her clothing; they shall flog her fifty
times and pour pitch on her head.57

This harsh law is highly symbolic, since the covering of the hair with pitch gives the harlot the
only kind of veil she is entitled to wear. Practically speaking, it must have rendered her unfit for
earning a living, since the removal of the pitch would necessitate the shaving off of the hair, leaving
her disfigured – and undesired – for a long time.58 The law goes on to state that the slave woman
who is caught wearing a veil would have her clothes taken away and her ears cut off, although,
interestingly, the law also stipulates that if a man fails to report a violation of the veiling law then
he will be beaten, his ears will be pierced, threaded with rope and attached to his hands, which
will be tied behind his back with the same rope and, trussed up like an animal, he will be forced to
perform hard labour for a month.
In Assyria it was the notion of concealed hair that was adopted as a symbol of a woman’s high
social status; the veiled wife, concubine or virgin daughter, with their hair conspicuously covered,
was visually identified as a woman of rank who was under the protection of one man and, as such,
she was marked off as inviolate. Conversely, the unveiled woman with her hair on display was
clearly labelled as unprotected and therefore, in theory, could be fair game for sexual violation by
any man.
Interestingly, there appears to be a connection between high female social status and veiling in
Homer’s epics too, and from the poems it seems that (certain) women were routinely expected
to cover their hair, at least when out of doors. In Homeric epic, we find the hair-covering veil
worn by Helen, Hecuba, Andromache, Penelope, Nausicaa, Thetis, Hera, Ino, Circe and Calypso –
daughters, wives and mothers of kings and princes, or else divine women.59
Perhaps the clearest indication we get from Homer for the concealment of hair being used to
signify a woman’s rank through her familial association with a nobleman comes in Iliad 22 (442–
72) with the death of Hector. When news reaches his wife Andromache of his tragic and bloody
end, she is discovered at home weaving a robe for her husband. She runs to the city wall like a
frenzied maenad to witness Achilles dragging Hector’s corpse behind his chariot. Andromache tears
from her head the various coverings that conceal her hair, including the veil (krēdemnon) that had
been given to her by Aphrodite on her wedding day. It is a vivid symbol of the intense grief she

57
Middle Assyrian Law 40; G. R. Driver and J. C. Miles, The Assyrian Laws (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1935).
58
It is noteworthy that the veiling law provides punishment only for de-classed women and non-conforming men and that
there seems to be no punishment for women who failed to denounce violators of the law – a strange phenomenon given
that ancient Near Eastern law held women fully accountable for their deeds in other cases. Gerda Lerner, The Creation of
Patriarchy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), 138–9, has found an explanation for this anomaly in the supposition
that respectable upper-class women would need no incentive for co-operating with a law that was written, after all, for their
own benefit and that, therefore, they may have been keen adherents of the legislation. The shame of being unveiled to the
public gaze is similarly aimed at the highborn women of Babylon by the Hebrew prophets of the first millennium BCE (from
the rare appearances of women in Babylonian art, it would seem that the women of Babylon inherited the styles of dress
of Assyria). The vengeance of Yahweh, they state, will fall upon Babylon and its haughty daughters who will be forced to
perform menial tasks or hard labour and they will be stripped of their rich apparel and their veils; see Isa. 47.1-3.
59
See Llewellyn-Jones, Aphrodite’s Tortoise.
188 DRESS IN MEDITERRANEAN ANTIQUITY

feels at her sudden loss. But it is more than just a routine gesture of mourning; with the death of
her husband Andromache is suddenly unprotected and acts out her downfall symbolically with the
removal of her veil and the loosening and display of her hair. She knows that what lies ahead for
her is the threat of sexual violation and slavery and the fearful prospect of becoming a concubine
to one of her conquerors. The removal of the veil takes with it Andromache’s rank of princess and
wife as well as the safety she had enjoyed under the sexual protection of one man. The revelation
of her hair makes her vulnerable and lacking in status and, like the Assyrian slaves and harlots, the
widowed Andromache has become fair game for violation, slavery and shame.

CONCLUSION
Maria Warner has noted that ‘the language of the self would be stripped of one of its richest sources
without hair’.60 Hair is loaded with meaning because it signifies the human need for expression.
It can be manipulated, managed, displayed, removed or concealed. Throughout history shifting
attitudes to an endless repertoire of cutting and growth, concealment and exhibition, have played
key signifiers of social status. Thinking about the use of hair in antiquity involves engaging with its
stories, histories, depictions and rituals and has the potential to offer a kaleidoscopic vision of the
complexities of ancient cultures. As an indicator of status or monetary worth, ancient peoples were
constantly grappling with ways of demonstrating their constructed sense of ‘self’; in our own daily
hair practices we are not necessarily so very different.

M. Warner, From the Beast to the Blonde: On Fairy-Tales and Their Tellers (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1995),
60

371.
 CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Stepping over the Line:

Shoes and Boundary-Crossing
in Ancient Greece
SUE BLUNDELL

‘Quick, put those walking shoes on, just as you’ve seen your husbands do when they go off to the
Assembly, or any of their other haunts.’
(Aristophanes, The Assemblywomen 269–71)

In Aristophanes’s comedy The Assemblywomen, the women’s leader Praxagora and her co-
revolutionaries are disguising themselves as men so that they can infiltrate the Athenian Assembly.
They put on false beards and filch their husbands’ cloaks and their lakonikai, their sturdy outdoor
shoes. To the ancient Greeks shoes meant mobility and quite often transitions or boundary-
crossings; and in this play the women will be stepping over the line in a variety of ways. They will
be leaving their homes, which means crossing the dividing line between the domestic and public
spheres. This was an everyday occurrence for Athenian men but was less common among their
wives; Athenian women may not have been confined to the house, but there was nevertheless
an assumption that the house was the best place for them.1 Aristophanes’s women are breaking
a few other rules as well. They are headed for a spot which they never normally set foot in – the
meeting place of the Assembly, exclusive to adult males. On their walk there they will be wearing
the wrong shoes. And in one final surreal twist, once inside the Assembly they will take over the
reins of democratic government from their dumbfounded menfolk. In fifth-century Athens, shoes
could apparently carry one across a number of social and political boundaries, at least in the flights
of fancy conjured up by a comic playwright.
In classical Greece both men and women sometimes went barefoot, especially when they were
indoors. Some people even walked through the city without shoes. Socrates was well known for it
(Plato, Symposium 174A), and philosophers in general are lampooned for it: they are ‘white-faced,
barefoot windbags’, according to one of Aristophanes’s characters (Clouds 102-3)2. In Athens
some people were ‘shoeless and homeless’ on account of poverty (Plato, Symposium 203D)3;

1
See Sue Blundell, Women in Ancient Greece (London: British Museum Press, 1995), 135–8.
2
Crazy geniuses like Socrates may be prone to shoelessness. In the film The Big Short (Adam McKay, 2015), and apparently
also in real life, Michael Burry, the man no one believed who made a fortune by ‘shorting’ subprime mortgages, always
walked around the office in shorts and refused to wear shoes. All translations of primary sources are my own.
3
For poverty and bare feet, see Susanna Phillippo, ‘Stepping onto the Stage. Aeschylus’ Oresteia and Tragic Footwear’, in
Shoes, Slippers and Sandals. Feet and Footwear in Classical Antiquity, ed. Sadie Pickup and Sally Waite (London: Routledge,
2019), 157–8.
190 DRESS IN MEDITERRANEAN ANTIQUITY

and in Sparta the constitution stipulated that youths should go barefoot as a way of toughening
them up and making them more agile (Xenophon, Constitution of the Lacedaemonians 2.3). But
for most people, even in Sparta, footwear was the norm, especially when leaving the house. In
Greek art men are seen sporting shoes more often than women, but this is probably a convention
arising from an ideology which situates male citizens in the great outdoors.4 There is plenty of
evidence to indicate that women wore shoes as well, for example when going to a religious festival
(Aristophanes, Thesmophoriazusae 262-3) or even around the house. Pretty indoor slippers could
be quite seductive (Aristophanes, Lysistrata 42-8); and one abject young wife is ticked off by her
insufferable husband for flaunting herself in make-up and shoes with platform soles in her own
home (Xenophon, Treatise on Household Management 10.2).5 Slaves seem to have worn shoes too
(Aristophanes, Knights 319-21); and at the other end of the spectrum gods and goddesses are often
equipped with footwear when they make their appearances down among the humans.6
Clothing was not an obvious indicator of wealth or status in ancient Greece. Rough or shabby
shoes would doubtless have been recognized as a mark of poverty, but in both democratic Athens
and militaristic Sparta people were discouraged from using their apparel as a way of showing off.7
So upwards or downwards mobility was not generally advertised through a change in footwear.
But in Athens shoes could, it seems, serve as a badge of citizenship. On a wine cup painted by
Peithinos in about 500 BCE (Figure 15.1; Berlin, Antikensammlung 2279), we see young men
wearing sandals who are courting boys on one side and women on the other. Both the boys and the
women are barefoot, and this marks them out as people of inferior status, who do not enjoy the
same privileges as the young men. Shoes – along with the walking sticks which they are carrying
– are indicators of the freedom of movement enjoyed by the men.8 Shoes also come into play
when movement between different areas of experience is being contemplated. Performances of all
kinds were a vital part of social, political and religious interactions in ancient Greece, so it is not
surprising that rituals involving shoes should have figured as demonstrations of a transition to a
new area of activity. Both in real life and in representations putting shoes on or taking them off
could function as a sign that boundaries were being crossed. In what follows I shall be exploring
the deployment of shoes in journeys from the private to the public, the secular to the sacred and
finally from life into the realm of death.

4
See Sadie Pickup and Sally Waite, ‘Introduction. Surveying Shoes, Slippers and Sandals’, in Shoes, Slippers and Sandals, 5.
5
Mobility is such an important aspect of footwear in ancient Greek culture that ‘shoes which incapacitate’ do not really
feature, even for women; the platform sole is perhaps the nearest we get to the concept. The theory is that women are
incapacitated by their clothing, including their high heels, and this serves to advertise the fact that their husbands are so
well off that their wives do not need to work around the house: see Thorstein Veblen, The Theory of the Leisure Class:
An Economic Study of Institutions (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1899), 171–2, who is also discussed by Beth E.
Graybill, in this volume. See also Russell W. Belk, ‘Shoes and Self’, NA – Advances in Consumer Research 30 (2003): 27–33.
The husband in Xenophon’s Treatise, by contrast, is very insistent that his wife should do plenty of work in the home, and
this is one reason why he objects to her platform soles.
6
Pickup and Waite, ‘Introduction’, 5, and notes 17 and 18.
7
See Sue Blundell, ‘Beneath Their Shining Feet: Shoes and Sandals in Classical Greece’, in Shoes: A History from Sandals to
Sneakers, ed. Giorgio Riello and Peter McNeil (Oxford: Berg, 2006), 33.
8
For more on the contrast between bare and sandaled feet, see Daniel B. Levine, ‘EPATON BAMA: (“Her Lovely Footstep”):
The Erotics of Feet in Ancient Greece’, in Body Language in the Greek and Roman Worlds, ed. Douglas L. Cairns (Swansea:
The Classical Press of Wales, 2005), 67–8. For more on shoes, walking sticks and citizenship, see Valérie Toillon, ‘At the
Symposium: Why Take Off Our Boots? The Significance of Boots Placed Underneath the Kline on Attic Red-figure Vase
Painting (c500–440 BC)’, in Shoes, Slippers and Sandals. Feet and Footwear in Classical Antiquity, ed. Sadie Pickup and Sally
Waite (London: Routledge, 2019), 90–104.
STEPPING OVER THE LINE 191

FIGURE 15.1 Young men courting women. Wine cup painted by Peithinos, 500 BCE, Berlin,
Antikensammlung 2279. Photo: Art Resource (ART581061).

PRIVATE AND PUBLIC

Most ancient Greeks had a strong commitment to political and social engagement, so for them the
dividing line between the community and their own homes was particularly potent. For Athenian
men the passage from indoors to outdoors involved a shouldering of civic responsibilities; and as
we have seen in the quote from Aristophanes’s Assemblywomen, this transition was marked by
the donning of sturdy shoes. For women, movement away from the home would have been more
problematic and may have seemed – at least to their menfolk – to entail an element of transgression.
According to the husband of the woman in the platform soles, for example, ‘it is seemly for a woman
to remain inside and not venture out of doors’ (Xenophon, Treatise on Household Management
7.30). The performance of sacred duties was an exception, however: religion was one area of
activity where Greek women had an acknowledged and significant public role. The Parthenon
frieze, created in about 440 BCE, depicts a religious procession staged by the Athenians every four
years to honour their patron goddess, Athena; and here both females and males are suitably shod
for a journey. At the eastern end of the building young women wearing sandals are seen walking
in front of the cavalcade, carrying implements which will be used in sacrifice (British Museum,
Parthenon frieze, E2–17, E50–51, E53–63). Roughly one-half of the procession is made up of
young men on horseback who would have fought for their city as soldiers when the need arose. In
the western section of the frieze – the starting point for visitors making their way around the temple
– several of them are preparing to join their comrades, getting themselves ready for public display.
Heads turn, belts are adjusted and two of the youths are bending to lace a sandal (Parthenon frieze,
192 DRESS IN MEDITERRANEAN ANTIQUITY

W12 and 29). The gesture signals to the viewer that the procession is moving off. The young men
are poised on the boundary which divides the private individual from the active citizen, one who
represents his community both in a religious capacity and on the battlefield.
Departure for the battlefield is similarly sign-posted by sandal-lacing in Homer’s Iliad. When the
Greek leader Agamemnon sets out for another day of fighting outside the walls of Troy, he throws
a cloak over his shoulder, grasps a sword and ‘binds beautiful sandals beneath his shining feet’ (Iliad
2.42-6, 10.21-4). The same binding action is performed by Nestor (Iliad 10.132), Telemachus
(Odyssey 2.4) and Menelaus (Odyssey 4.309). This verbal formula, announcing the start of military
engagement or of decisive action, has a visual equivalent in Athenian vase paintings, where the
image of putting one’s shoes on begins to appear around 520 BCE.9 When a young man dresses for
battle he raises one of his legs to strap on a greave, in a pose which mirrors the sandal-lacing action
of the youths in the Parthenon frieze, while his helmet and shield stand ready for use (interior of
an Athenian cup, Berlin, Antikensammlung F2263, c. 520 BCE). On another wine cup (London,
British Museum E124, c. 480 BCE) a youth seated on a chair bends to tie on his sandal and a
woman hands him his helmet; his corselet rests on a nearby stool. Here the domestic character of
the environment which the young man is about to leave is underlined. In arming scenes like these
men are setting out on a path that leads to military service and in some cases to death. A change in
footwear is an important element in this transition.
Among women the equivalent of arming is dressing for love or for marriage. The latter was the
most important social transition which females in Greece ever underwent – at least in the eyes of
Greek men – and it is little wonder that images of the adornment of brides should have included
references to shoes. Preparations for a wedding were a particularly popular subject in vase paintings
of the second half of the fifth century BCE; and in some we see a woman being fitted with special
shoes called nymphides – bride’s shoes – before she is led in procession from her father’s home to
that of her new husband. At the climax of her journey she will be transformed from an unmarried
virgin into a sexually active wife – a change which is foreshadowed in the figure of Eros, the young
god of sex and love. In Figure 15.2 (Eros and bride, Boston Museum of Fine Arts 95.1402) we
see him acting as the bride’s attendant, kneeling to tie the laces of her new sandals. The idea that
a woman’s place was in the home admitted another exception: on marriage, it was the female
who changed her location, not the male. This element of mobility was fundamental to Greek
society. The reproduction of the family unit and the transmission of wealth to the next generation
depended on the transfer of women from one household to another. The public display of the bride
was a sign that this transfer was taking place; new shoes tell us how important the journey was.
Footwear was so closely bound up with female identity that in some contexts it may by itself have
served as a sign of marriage: terracotta models of sandaled feet from the sanctuary of Demeter and
Kore on Acrocorinth, dated to c. 500 BCE, have been interpreted as offerings to the goddesses ‘in
return for their help in the journey toward a fruitful marriage’.10
The lacing of a bride’s sandals receives some spectacular attention in the sculptures which once
adorned the east pediment of the temple of Zeus at Olympia. (In general, the significance of marriage

9
For a detailed discussion of these scenes, see Yael Young, ‘Donning Footwear. The Invention and Diffusion of an
Iconographic Motif in Archaic Athens’, in Shoes, Slippers and Sandals, 105–17.
10
Sonia Klinger, ‘Terracotta Models of Sandaled Feet: Votives from the Sanctuary of Demeter and Kore on Acrocorinth’,
Hesperia 87 (2018): 443. Klinger proposes that the models represent bridal sandals, or nymphides.
STEPPING OVER THE LINE 193

FIGURE 15.2 Eros tying a bride’s sandals. Boston, Museum of Fine Arts 95.1402. Photo: Courtesy
of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.

in Greek society is demonstrated by its presence as a theme on some very high-profile buildings,
including the Parthenon in Athens.) In the sculptural group from Olympia, created in the 460s BCE,
we are witnessing the prelude to a mythical chariot race which will decide whether the hero Pelops
will be allowed to marry Hippodamia, daughter of the local king Oenomaus. If he loses, he will die.
The pediment shows the tense line-up before the race begins. Here, the figure of Hippodamia offers
two clues as to the eventual outcome of the story. She holds back a corner of her veil, in a gesture
which anticipates the one she will make as a bride; and a servant kneels at her feet, almost certainly
in the act of tying her mistress’ sandals – although the relevant limbs are unfortunately missing
(Figure 15.3, first and second figures from the right). Every Greek viewer would have known how
the race ended. Oenomaus was killed, and Pelops won his bride, but in the process he incurred a
terrible curse. It fell eventually onto some notable descendants – Atreus the king of Mycenae, who
tricked his brother Thyestes into eating his own children in a stew; Atreus’s son Agamemnon,
who was assassinated by his wife when he came home from Troy; and Agamemnon’s son Orestes,
who murdered his mother to avenge the death of his father. Sandal-lacing can clearly lead to some
momentous events, so it is hardly surprising that superstitions collected around it. According to
Pythagorean philosophers, when you put your shoes on you should always begin with the right foot
(Iamblichus, Proptrepticus Symbol 12). In later years this practice was followed religiously by the
Roman emperor Augustus (Suetonius, Life of Augustus 92.1).
194 DRESS IN MEDITERRANEAN ANTIQUITY

FIGURE 15.3 A servant ties Hippodamia’s sandals. Sculptures from the east pediment of the
temple of Zeus, Olympia, Archaeological Museum. Photo: Alamy CXRWNW.

Conversely, shoe-handling can indicate a passage from outdoors to indoors. In many countries
today, including Greece, it is customary to remove your outdoor shoes before entering a house.
There is no surviving evidence to suggest that in ancient Greece shoes were regularly left outside
front doors; on the other hand, the fact that the men in Assemblywomen put their shoes on before
leaving the house suggests that at some point on their return they took them off again. When he
comes back from Troy the Greek commander Agamemnon notoriously asks a servant to remove
his shoes before he steps onto the brilliant textile which his wife Clytemnestra has strewn across
the threshold of the palace (Aeschylus, Agamemnon 944-5). For him the step is a fatal one: when
he enters his home and crosses the boundary separating his public exploits from his private role
as husband and father, he is slaughtered by his furious wife.11 Most homecomings would have
been less dramatic than this one, but they too may have entailed the removal of shoes. Special
indoor slippers certainly existed. In the furtherance of their sex strike, for example, Lysistrata
and her women flaunt themselves in negligees and dainty shoes called peribarides to inflame their
husbands’ passions (Aristophanes, Lysistrata 42-8). Shoes hanging on walls appear quite frequently
in Athenian vase paintings and are generally indicative of indoor space.12 Boots as well as shoes
are also part of the iconography of the symposium, or male drinking-party, and on vases they are
often to be seen under the couches where drinkers recline.13 When Alcibiades makes a drunken

11
Agamemnon may have religious reasons for removing his shoes, since as far as he is concerned these splendid textiles
belong to the gods. For footwear in Aeschylus’s Oresteia trilogy (of which Agamemnon is the first play), see Phillippo,
‘Stepping onto the Stage’, 143–73.
12
For a detailed analysis of scenes with hanging shoes, see Sally Waite and Emma Gooch, ‘Sandals on the Wall. The
Symbolism of Footwear on Athenian Painted Pottery’, Shoes, Slippers and Sandals, 17–89.
13
See Toillon, ‘At the Symposium’, 90–104, for a detailed discussion.
STEPPING OVER THE LINE 195

entry into the party which supplies the setting for Plato’s Symposium, orders are given for his
shoes to be removed, not at the front door but when he is ready to join two other guests on
a couch (Symposium 213B). There were some parties where this was not necessarily a sensible
move: a character in Aristophanes’s Knights mentions the kind of guest who borrows another man’s
shoes when he needs to dash out of the room to relieve himself (Knights 888-9). In vase paintings
discarded boots or shoes are also to be found standing next to washbasins in scenes where naked
women are bathing (see, for example, Munich 2411, Syracuse 20065).
Whether located on walls, beside basins or under couches, these shoes have obviously been
removed by their owners – either because they have entered a house, gymnasium or brothel, or
because they have withdrawn into a more private area within the building, such as the andron or
men’s quarters, where symposia were held. The shoes serve as markers of intimate space, and they
often signify an uncovering, a loosening, a throwing aside of restraint. Shoes-under-the-couch can
be a sign of drunkenness14 or occasionally of full-scale sexual activity, taking place on top of the
couch (see, for example, a cup in Florence, Museo Archeologico 73749). But at the same time these
discarded items remind the viewer that the men will be stepping back into the public arena once
the party is over. They help to define the nature of the male community assembled here – it is one
that has freedom of movement at its heart.

SHOES AND SEX

Shoes are closely associated with eroticism. Lysistrata and her friends use them as part of their sexual
equipment. They even wear them while they are having sex or so it appears: when the women
strikers swear an oath to refrain from relations with their menfolk until they agree to make peace,
they declare, ‘I won’t allow either lover or husband to approach me in an erect condition … I shall
stay at home and go without sex … And I won’t raise my slippers to the ceiling’ (Aristophanes,
Lysistrata 212-29). The lacing of footwear often features in scenes of dressing or undressing –
performances which generally have erotic overtones. For a woman in particular this is an occasion
when she is arming herself for action. In the build-up to her wedding a bride attended by Eros ties on
her nuptial sandals. And it is the re-staging of her wedding-day which the goddess Hera has in mind
when she adorns herself with great magnificence before waylaying her husband Zeus. She bathes and
perfumes her body, arranges her hair and slips into a glorious gown, which she pins with a golden
brooch. Cluster earrings and a glistening veil complete the ensemble, and ‘beneath her shining feet
she bound fair sandals’ before tripping off to borrow a magic belt from Aphrodite and seducing her
spouse (Homer, Iliad 14.166–190). Here, sandal-lacing is a prelude to sex: when clothes are put
on in an erotic context half the pleasure lies in anticipating that they will soon be taken off again.
In Lysistrata, when a teasing wife is pretending to get ready for bed, the last thing she shouts to her
excited husband before she runs off is, ‘I’m just untying my sandals!’ (Lysistrata 950).15
Dressing and undressing are activities which take place at the interface between the private and
the social realms. We put clothes on when we’re preparing ourselves for the outside world; when
we remove them we’re generally withdrawing into a more intimate area of our lives. Just how
transgressive the act of undressing is seen to be depends very much on the context. In ancient Greece

14
See Toillon, ‘At the Symposium’, 96–7.
15
For the erotics of feet in ancient Greece, see Levine, ‘EPATON BAMA’, 55–72.
196 DRESS IN MEDITERRANEAN ANTIQUITY

female mobility in marriage was paralleled by the real-life mobility of prostitutes, who worked in
large numbers in many cities, especially the ports. When we, as modern-day viewers, look at erotic
scenes in vase paintings we find that the identity of the female participants is often ambiguous. For
example, we suspect that the women in the courtship scene by Peithinos (Figure 15.1) are meant to
be seen as prostitutes, but it is the nature of their interactions rather than anything specific in their
attire which conveys this notion. The problem is even more acute when the woman concerned is
naked. The female who is handling her sandal on the neck of the wine jar in Figure 15.4 (Paris,
Musée du Louvre G2), for example, could be a wife, a mistress or a prostitute. And the nature of
her action is as ambiguous as her status. We do not know who this woman is, and we cannot tell
whether she is putting her sandal on or taking it off. Is she getting dressed to go out on the town?
Or is she preparing to leap into bed with an unseen lover? Scenes like this may have been left
deliberately open-ended: ancient viewers possibly had no more idea than we do what was going
on here – they were being given the freedom to construct the scene’s meaning in their own way. A
woman who could be either a wife or a prostitute, and who may be either dressing or undressing, is
truly on a boundary. Poised between the social and the private spheres, she belongs at this moment
in time to neither of them. She is an emblem of her own liminality – her existence on the margins.
Aphrodite, on the other hand, is well known to us as a signifier of sexuality: she provides us
with one of the most entertaining of the visual images of shoe-handling when in a famous statue

FIGURE 15.4 Woman tying or untying her sandal. Paris, Musée du Louvre G2. Photo: Art
Resource (ART150383).
STEPPING OVER THE LINE 197

she laughingly raises one of her sandals in the air to fend off an assault from Pan.16 Viewers can
anticipate that if Pan doesn’t release his grip on her soon, he is going to be on the receiving end of
a shoe-battering. This is a reversal of the standard gender relationships in scenes where shoes are
wielded with erotic intent – predictably the sadistic practice of beating one’s sexual partner with a
slipper or shoe is a male prerogative when it is depicted in Athenian vase paintings of the sixth and
fifth centuries BCE (see, for example, Paris, Louvre G13, Orvieto 585, Florence 3921, and Milan
A8037).17 The fact that the Greeks had a word for it – blautoō, meaning ‘to beat with a slipper’ –
suggests that it may have been a relatively common activity in brothels or at symposia. The vase
paintings were presumably meant to amuse, but to most people today the spectacle of a reluctant
prostitute being compelled to engage in fellatio by a customer brandishing a slipper must surely
appear deeply unpleasant.

SECULAR AND SACRED

Shoe-handling can also signify a movement between the secular and sacred spheres. Regulations
about dress varied from sanctuary to sanctuary. On a site devoted to the worship of Despoina at
Lykosoura, for example, people were required to go barefoot.18 In Athens, a sculpted figure of Nike
on the Acropolis – from a parapet which once surrounded the Athena Nike temple – is bending
forwards to unfasten her sandal (Figure 15.5; Athens, Acropolis Museum 973, c. 410 BCE). Her
beautiful pose is probably explained by the proximity of an altar: Nike may be required to remove
her footwear before performing a sacrifice. But there seems to have been no general rule about
going barefoot in the sanctuaries on the Athenian Acropolis. The korai, young women worshippers
whose statues have been found there in great numbers, have various types of footwear; one of them
even sports a pair of soft red shoes, as well as a semi-transparent dress (Athens, Acropolis Museum,
Kore 683).19 Initiates into mystery cults seem always to have walked barefoot, but at Andania in
Messenia people not engaged in the celebration of the mysteries were permitted to wear shoes of
two particular types, made either of felt or of ‘sacrificial leather’ – which almost certainly means
made from the skins of sacrificial animals.20
There may have been various reasons why shoes were removed in these circumstances. In certain
religious contexts they may have been seen as polluting – they may have been thought to violate the
boundary between the secular and the sacred by transporting matter from one realm to the other.
Binding or unbinding (sandals, ribbons, etc.) also had magical connotations, and the action may
in itself have helped to reinforce the power of a ritual.21 And when worshipping chthonic deities
in particular it may have been considered important to keep one’s feet directly in contact with
the earth. Boundaries of a palpable kind were being crossed in rites of initiation, and a change in

16
Athens, National Museum NM3335, c.100 BCE. For a detailed discussion of Aphrodite and her sandals, see Sadie Pickup,
‘A Slip and a Slap. Aphrodite and Her Footwear’, in Shoes, Slippers and Sandals, 229–46.
17
See Waite and Gooch, ‘Sandals on the Wall’, 36, for further examples and discussion.
18
See Klinger, ‘Terracotta Models’, 440, n. 47.
19
Pickup and Waite, ‘Introduction’, 3–4.
20
For barefoot initiates into the cult of Demeter, see Callimachus Hymns 6.120-22. See also Laura Gawlinski, ed., The
Sacred Law of Andania: A New Text with Commentary Sozomena, 11 (Berlin and Boston: De Gruyter, 2012), 115, n. 57
(for various regulations regarding shoes); 129 (for the mysteries). See also the chapter on inscriptions by Laura Gawlinski
in this volume.
21
Gawlinski, Andania, 116.
198 DRESS IN MEDITERRANEAN ANTIQUITY

FIGURE 15.5 Nike unfastening her sandal, from the parapet of the temple of Athena Nike. Fifth
century BCE. Athens, Acropolis Museum 973. Photo: Art Resource (AR9154056).
STEPPING OVER THE LINE 199

clothing could signify that a new phase of life was being entered. The motif of monosandalism –
where the protagonist sporting a single shoe is seen to be simultaneously both shod and unshod  –
may have originated in a young man’s coming-of-age ritual, when he was in a ‘betwixt and between’
condition.22 And in Nike’s case, there was almost certainly an additional thematic reason for the
introduction of the unlacing pose. Nike appears at the end of a journey. At the time she was created
the Athenians were involved in a bitter war against Sparta, and the figure may be expressing the
fervent wish that Victory would relinquish her shoes forever and never leave their city again.

LIFE AND DEATH

For the Greeks death involved a journey to the Underworld. On grave stelai people are often
shown wearing shoes, and in one case we see a woman being fitted with a sandal by her maidservant
(Athens, National Museum 718). There may be a reference to her imminent departure in her pose,
although it may in addition preserve a memory of her wedding – a sign that the woman buried
here was married. Ceramic boots, perfume jars in the shape of sandaled feet and in some cases the
remnants of shoes themselves have been found in graves dating to the Mycenean, Geometric and
Archaic periods.23 Some of these articles may be multi-layered in their meanings – the perfume jar,
for example, could have been used in a funerary ritual. But overall there is little doubt that these
items of footwear relate to the crossing of the ultimate boundary and were designed to help the
deceased on his or her journey from the shores of light into the realm of the dead.

CONCLUSION
In ancient Greece shoes had many meanings, but in almost every case we find the concept of
movement at their core. In a culture where ritual had a central role in all aspects of life, and
fashion had little hold, it is not at all surprising that actions involving shoes, more than the shoes
themselves, should have been imbued with great significance. Covering or exposing the feet was
often associated with a journey from one spatial or temporal sector to another – with a crossing
of boundaries that in some instances was life-changing. Sadly, it was only in the imagination of a
comic playwright that putting on a new pair of shoes could be pictured as the prelude to a female
takeover of government. But the fact that a well-known writer like Aristophanes selected an item
of footwear to dramatize this revolutionary move shows us just how potent the idea of the shoe
could be for an ancient Greek.

22
See Toillon, ‘At the Symposium’, 95; and Sue Blundell, ‘One Shoe On and One Shoe Off. The Motif of Monosandalism
in Classical Greece’, Shoes, Slippers and Sandals, 216–28.
23
See Waite and Gooch, ‘Sandals on the Wall’, Shoes, Slippers and Sandals, 46–7; Klinger, ‘Terracotta Models’, 442; and
Amy C. Smith, ‘The Left Foot Aryballos Wearing a Network Sandal’, Shoes, Slippers, and Sandals, 195–215.
200
 CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Dress and Religious Ritual in

Roman Antiquity
KELLY OLSON

In this chapter, I try to elucidate the important connection between ritual and clothing,1 a
connection that further underlines the visual importance of dress in Roman antiquity. I define ritual
very generally as a set of actions, performed mainly for their symbolic value, prescribed by the
traditions of a community. Here, I seek to discard the conventional discrete categories of Roman
male or female religious often used by modern authors to organize the description and elucidation
of clothing items (flamen, Vestal, etc.), proceeding instead by describing special features of ritual
dress or its ornamentation, perhaps ones that have not been covered in much detail before. Like
Greece (and unlike the Christian tradition), defined items of religious dress were not common in
Roman religion; as in ancient Greece, religious duties did not generally involve the wearing of a
special costume or liturgical dress.2 Nor did participants in Roman state religion have a distinct
costume. Instead, there was a wide variety of practices and garments, which were ‘appropriate in
different ritual situations’.3

AN EMBEDDED RELIGION
Laura Gawlinski’s important 2017 essay (‘Theorizing Religious Dress’) examines how dress may
visualize the ‘otherness’ of the religious.4 Ancient religion was an ‘embedded’ religion, inasmuch as
there was no definitive separation between civic and religious life. None of the men or women who
functioned as priests or priestesses ‘had been consecrated or called. They were simply invested with
these priestly functions by virtue of their social role or because they had been elected’.5 Nor did

1
On this subject, see most recently Carly Daniel-Hughes, ‘Belief’, in A Cultural History of Dress and Fashion, vol. I: Antiquity,
ed. Mary Harlow (London: Bloomsbury, 2017), 71–85; Lena Larsson Lovén, ‘On Priests, Priestesses, and Clothing in
Roman Cult Practices’, in Textiles and Cult in the Ancient Mediterranean, ed. Cecilie Brøns and Marie-Louise Nosch
(Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2017), 135–41; and the essays collected in Kleidung und Identitat in religiösen Kontexten der
römischen Kaiserzeits, ed. Sabine Schrenk, Konrad Vössing and Michael Tellenbach (Regensberg: Schnell & Steiner, 2012).
2
Liza Cleland, Glenys Davies and Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones, Greek and Roman Dress From A-Z (London and New York:
Routledge, 2007), 153.
3
Cleland et al., Greek and Roman Dress, 162.
4
Laura Gawlinski, ‘Theorizing Religious Dress’, in What Shall I Say of Clothes: Theoretical and Methodological Approaches
to the Study of Dress in Antiquity, ed. Megan Cifarelli and Laura Gawlinski (Boston: Archaeological Institute of America,
2017), 161; see also Daniel-Hughes, ‘Belief’, 75–6.
5
John Scheid, An Introduction to Roman Religion (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2003), 129–30.
202 DRESS IN MEDITERRANEAN ANTIQUITY

priests receive religious instruction or training.6 The question is therefore what we should expect
to constitute ‘religious’ dress in such a context, as clothing did not visualize the ancient priestly
hierarchy7 nor were priests and priestesses appointed permanently. ‘There is little that comes close
to being identified as sacerdotal dress’,8 and one would not usually be able to tell merely by looking
who held a priesthood and who did not in antiquity (although there were some exceptions to
this in ancient Rome). Gawlinski does note examples of ancient Greek reliefs in which items (a
knife or keys) indicate a male or female religious, but intriguingly, she says, such dress elements
are related to actions: religion is what someone does (sacrificing, opening the temple), rather than
what someone is.9 And ‘the fluidity of authoritative dress is an embodiment of the fluidity of the
hierarchy of Greek religion’; there is no emphasis on control or on orthodoxy as there is in other
forms of religious dress.10 All these statements hold as well for (most) holders of Roman religious
offices.

THE WARRIOR PRIEST

As Larissa Bonfante notes, ‘The religious and ritual costume of Rome preserved much of what had
been everyday Etruscan dress in the late sixth and early fifth centuries BC.’11 Warriors may often
have been priests in Etruscan times,12 and a number of features of Roman priestly dress interestingly
‘hark back to military costumes and symbols of the aristocratic warrior class of the early days’.13
For instance, the curved ceremonial wand, the lituus, probably evolved from the shape of the
war-trumpet;14 the pointed headdress of certain Roman and Etruscan priests may harken back to
ancient war-helmets.15 The Roman salii sported an ‘archaic warrior’s uniform and carried shields
and spears. Thus equipped, they paraded through the town at the opening (19 March) and the
close (19 October) of the war season’.16 The drape they wore, the cinctus Gabinus,17 was a method

6
Scheid, Introduction to Roman Religion, 131.
7
Gawlinski, ‘Theorizing Religious Dress’, 166.
8
Gawlinski, ‘Theorizing Religious Dress’, 167.
9
Gawlinski, ‘Theorizing Religious Dress’, 167–9. Some ancient historians would argue that there was no concept of ‘religion’
in the modern sense of the word in antiquity: see Carlin A. Barton and Daniel Boyarin’s Imagine No Religion: How Modern
Abstractions Hide Ancient Realities (New York: Fordham University Press, 2016).
10
Gawlinski, ‘Theorizing Religious Dress’, 170; although one notable exception is the dress of the priests of the Eleusinian
Mysteries.
11
Larissa Bonfante, Etruscan Dress, 2nd edition (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003), 93.
12
Larissa Bonfante, ‘Ritual Dress’, in Votives, Places and Rituals in Etruscan Religion, ed. Margarita Gleba and Hilary Becker
(Leiden: Brill, 2009), 185; Patrizia von Eles, Guerriero e sacerdote. Autorità e comunità nell’età del ferro a Verucchio. La
Tomba del Trono. Quaderni di Archeologia dell’Emilia Romagna 6 (2002).
13
Bonfante, ‘Ritual Dress’, 185.
14
On the lituus, see now Roberta L. Stewart, ‘The Jug and Lituus on Roman Republican Coin Types: Ritual Symbols and
Political Power’, Phoenix 51, no. 2 (1997): 170–89; Victoria Györi, ‘The Lituus and Augustan Provincial Coinage’, Acta
Antiqua Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 55, no. 1 (2015): 45–60; Daniele F. Maras, ‘Lituus Etruscus: osservazioni su
forma e funzione del bastone ricurvo nell’Italia centrale’, Studi Etruschi 79 (2016): 37–62.
15
On this, see Bonfante, ‘Ritual Dress’, 186, with references; Larissa Bonfante-Warren, ‘Roman Costumes: A Glossary and
Some Etruscan Derivations’, ANRW 1, no. 4 (1973): 594 and 611 (the pilleus); John Warry, Warfare in the Classical World
(Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1995), 109.
16
Scheid, Introduction to Roman Religion, 139. The salii were a sodality of priests associated with Mars.
17
On the cinctus Gabinus, see Liliane Wilson, The Roman Toga (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1924), 86–8;
see Bonfante-Warren, ‘Roman Costumes’, 596–7, 606–7; Annie Dubourdieu, ‘Cinctus Gabinus’, Latomus 45 (1986): 3–20;
Hans R. Goette, Studien zu römischen Togadarstellungen (Mainz am Rhein: P. von Zabern, 1990), 7; Shelley Stone, ‘The
Toga: From National to Ceremonial Costume’, in Sebesta and Bonfante, World of Roman Costume, 39 n. 6; Jerzy Linderski,
‘The Pontiff and the Tribune: The Death of Tiberius Gracchus’, Athenaeum 90, no. 2 (2002): 343, n. 16.
DRESS AND RELIGIOUS RITUAL IN ROMAN ANTIQUITY 203

FIGURE 16.1 Roman architectural relief showing a suovetaurilia, first century CE. Marble,
Louvre. Photo: Art Resource (ART191061).

of tying the toga which produced a stable garment, leaving the left arm almost entirely free.18
Dubourdieu believes it was also a drape for religious rituals involving crossings,19 but the drape was
most often associated with battle:20 thus the consul wore it when he unbarred the gates of war.21 In
artistic evidence, the cinctus Gabinus drape may possibly be seen on the suovetaurilia relief from
Rome: the figure standing next to the ox has a prominent knot at the front of his toga (first century
CE; Figure 16.1).

WHITE22
White seems to have been a standard colour for religious dress, symbolizing and demonstrating a
state of ritual purity: white was ‘symbolic of the virtues required of priests … [and] candidates for
office’.23 White clothes were worn at most rituals;24 the galerus of the flamen Dialis and the Vestals’

18
Servius writes: et incincti ritu Gabino, id est togae parte caput velati, parte succincti (ad Aen. 5.755); and see 7.612. Isidore
(Orig. 19.24.7) provides a somewhat confused description. Wilson believes that the sinus was brought up over the head; the
folds which normally lay on the left shoulder were drawn under the left arm, around the waist, and then tucked in (Wilson,
Roman Toga, 86–7; see figs. 47A and 88, n. 38).
19
‘au tracé ou au franchissement des frontiers’; Dubourdieu, ‘Cinctus Gabinus’, 16. See Livy, 5.46.2, 10.7.3; Valerius
Maximus, 1.1.11; Lucan, 1.596; CIL 11.1420.25. On the toga wound around one’s head as a ‘helmet’ (a sign of battle), see
Linderski, The Pontiff and the Tribune’, 343, n. 17; Ammianus, 18.6.13, 25.6.14.
20
Festus, 251L; Livy, 8.9.5-9.
21
Vergil, Aen. 7.610-15. Dubourdieu (‘Cinctus Gabinus’, 18) concludes that Quirinale trabea cinctuque Gabino (A. 7.612)
is a hendiadys and that the trabea and the Gabian cincture would not be found together. On the trabea, see Kelly Olson,
Masculinity and Dress in Roman Antiquity (London and New York: Routledge, 2017), 115–16, with references.
22
On whiteness in clothing, see now Mark Bradley, ‘It All Comes Out in the Wash: Looking Harder at the Roman
Fullonica’, in Journal of Roman Archaeology 15 (2002): 21–44; Alexandra Croom, Roman Clothing and Fashion (Stroud,
Gloucestershire and Charleston, SC: Tempus, 2002), 28; Cleland et al., Greek and Roman Dress, 211; Miko Flohr, The
World of the Fullo: Work, Economy, and Society in Roman Italy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 60–2; Olson,
Masculinity and Dress, 113–14, with references; Daniel-Hughes, ‘Belief’, 72.
23
Cleland et al., Greek and Roman Dress, 211. See also Batten, ‘Dirty Laundry in the Christ Cult’, this volume.
24
Tibullus, 2.1.16; Ovid, Fast. 2. 654; Robert Parker, Miasma: Pollution and Purification in Early Greek Religion (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1983), 68.
204 DRESS IN MEDITERRANEAN ANTIQUITY

suffibulum were also white;25 infulae were in part white as well (see below). Perhaps white evolved
into a ritual colour because of the difficulty and expense of rendering cloth white: white could be
achieved by bleaching,26 applying white to the fabric27 or paying more for wool which was fine
and very white naturally. Sometimes, however, black clothes were required: the wife of the flamen
Dialis was required to attend the rites of the Argei, in mourning and with uncombed hair.28

BLOOD
Purple was considered an apotropaic colour in Roman society, and the purple stripe on the toga
praetexta or bordered toga was thought to give protection to the wearer.29 Ps-Quintilian writes
of ‘the very sacredness of togas bordered with purple, which envelops priests, magistrates, and
by which we render the tenderness of childhood sacred and inviolate’;30 Judith Sebesta notes that
praetexere by extension also meant ‘to protect or defend’.31 Many men in Roman society wore the
toga praetexta, but as Jerzy Linderski correctly notes, ‘it is important to ask when they wore it’.32
Magistrates of coloniae33 wore the garment and decemviri of the early Republic.34 Roman kings were
said to have worn it,35 emperors as well,36 and generals celebrating the ovatio37 and the general male
populace when celebrating the Ludi.38 Politicians assumed it,39 but also male religious: vicomagistri
while in office40 and magistri of collegia. Other wearers of the garment were augurs,41 the Pontifex

25
albogalerus; Fest. 9L. On the suffibulum, see below.
26
In which the cloth was laid out in the sun: see Alexandra Croom, Running the Roman Home (Stroud, Gloucestershire:
The History Press, 2011), 107.
27
Chalk, kaolin, lime and sulphur were all used: see Croom, Running the Roman Home 107–08, with references; and
Bradley, ‘It All Comes Out in the Wash’, 29; Theophrastus, Lapid. 62, 64, 67.
28
Gellius, 10.15.30. Cleland et al., Greek and Roman Dress, 162. On mourning dress, see Kelly Olson, ‘Insignia lugentium:
Female Mourning Garments in Roman Antiquity’, American Journal of Ancient History 3–4 (2004–05); Olson, Masculinity
and Dress, 94–6.
29
Judith Sebesta, ‘Tunica Ralla, Tunica Spissa: The Colors and Textiles of Roman Costume’, in Sebesta and Bonfante, Word
of Roman Costume, 47. See also Brøns, this volume.
30
ipsum illud sacrum praetextarum quo sacerdotes velantur, quo magistratus, quo infirmitatem pueritiae sacram facimus ac
venerabilem; Decl. Min. 340.13; and see Pliny, Nat. 9.127.
31
Judith Sebesta, ‘The Toga Praetexta of Roman Children and Praetextate Garments’, in The Clothed Body in the Ancient
World, ed. Liza Cleland, Mary Harlow and Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones (Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2005), 116.
32
Linderski, ‘The Pontiff and the Tribune’, 351. On the toga praetexta, see now Ursula Rothe, The Toga and Roman Identity
(London: Bloomsbury, 2020), 59–63, with references.
33
Livy, 34.7.2.
34
Sebesta, ‘Toga Praetexta’, 119, n. 15.
35
Pliny, Nat. 9.136; Livy, 1.8.3.
36
See Andreas Alföldi, Die monarchische Repräsentation im römischen Kaiserreiche. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche
Buchgesellschaft (reprinted 1970, 1977, from Mitteilungen des Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts, Römische Abteilung 49
[1934], 3–118, 50 [1935], 1–158), 127–43, for the dress of the Roman emperor: tunic and toga praetexta, corona civica,
laurel wreath and other insignia imperii.
37
Vellius Paterculus, 2.40.4.
38
Cicero, Phil. 2.110.
39
Tribunes and aediles: Pliny, Nat. 9.37; praetors: Horace, S. 1.5.34-36; Valerius Maximus, 9.12.7; consuls: Livy 8.9.5;
HA Alexander Severus 40.8; consul designates: CIL I [2]. 582; censors, triumviri: see Sebesta, ‘Toga Praetexta of Roman
Children and Praetextate Garments’, 119, n. 15.
40
See Katja Moede, ‘Reliefs, Public and Private’, in A Companion to Roman Religion, ed. Jörg Rüpke (West Sussex, UK:
Wiley-Blackwell, 2011), 165; Cicero, Pis. 8; Livy, 34.7.2.
41
Cicero, Sest. 144.
DRESS AND RELIGIOUS RITUAL IN ROMAN ANTIQUITY 205

Maximus42 and flamines.43 The Fratres Arvales wore togae praetextae at their sacrifices,44 as did the
epulones and the quindecemviri. A man who performed a funeral service was in a toga praetexta,45
as were representations of the numinous world46 and those committing devotio.47
In addition, popae (who dispatched the animals) and servi publici assisting at public sacrifices
wore around their waists the limus, a long rectangular apron-like with a praetextate lower border,48
found in Etruscan art, often on figures from mythology.49 This tied garment was described by
Isidore as ‘a garment that reaches from the navel to the feet’ (the ones in art are often much shorter;
but see Figure 16.2)50 and that the garment ‘has a purple band at its lower edge that is ‘aslant,’ that
is, ‘undulating’.51
Why exactly purple was considered to be apotropaic is unknown: it was an expensive colour
and had connotations of royalty and nobility, but we should note as well that scarlets and purples
were not strongly differentiated in antiquity: purple was likely closer to red than to blue. Pliny in
fact states the most highly prized sea purple had a colour like that of congealed blood.52 Perhaps

FIGURE 16.2 Sacrificial scene. Roman relief. Photo: Art Resource (ART21103).

42
Linderski, ‘The Pontiff and the Tribune’, 351 n.50, with references.
43
See Jens Vanggaard, The Flamen: A Study in the History and Sociology of Roman Religion (Copenhagen: Museum
Tusculanum Press, 1988), 92.
44
CIL 6.2067a, 6.2068, 6.2075, 6.2078, 6.2080, 6.2086, 6.2099, 6.2104.
45
Festus, 430L.
46
Sebesta, ‘Toga Praetexta’, 117.
47
Livy, 8.9.5, 10.7.5.
48
See Sebesta, ‘Toga Praetexta’, 117; Cleland et al., Greek and Roman Dress, 113; Servius, ad Aen. 12.120, Virgil, Aen.
12.120.
49
See Bonfante-Warren, ‘Roman Costumes’, 597–8; Bonfante, ‘Ritual Dress’, 188.
50
Isidore, 19.22.26.
51
Limus est cinctus quem publici habebant servi: et dictus limus quia transversas habebat purpuras, id est limas; Isidore,
19.22.26. See also 19.33.4.
52
sanguinis concreti; Nat. 9.133-4.
206 DRESS IN MEDITERRANEAN ANTIQUITY

it was the colour’s similarity to blood that gave it this special impact.53 Other than when he was
engaged in his religious duties, a priest54 wore a toga pura, the unbordered or plain toga, as ideally
did every male citizen in the city of Rome (unless the citizen was also holding some magistracy
simultaneously which required the wearing of the toga praetexta).
Intriguingly, however, actual bloodstained clothes were not part of a priest’s or priestess’ normal
wear and in fact could be inauspicious. Generally, there was a ‘reluctance to wear bloodstained
clothing’.55 Even in the case of popae and victimarii (above), protective clothing was worn ‘to
reduce the appearance of excessively stained clothing’, and the priest himself ‘stood at a distance
for the sake of safety, cleanliness and to reduce the possibility of an ill omen’.56 Being spattered
with blood during a ritual was held to be ominous: when Germanicus was spotted with blood at
a sacrifice, his grandmother Livia handed him another, finer robe;57 Caligula’s clothing was once
spattered with the blood of a sacrificed flamingo.58 Both men of course came to tragic ends.

NASICA’S TOGA
The story of Nasica provides an interesting perspective on the dress of Roman priests. Immediately
preceding the death of Tiberius Gracchus in 133 BCE, the Pontifex Maximus P. Cornelius Scipio
Nasica Serapio59 met with senators in the temple of Fides haranguing them to join him in moving
against Gracchus and his supporters. Appian tells us that he ended by throwing the hem/edge of this
toga over his head and persuaded the senators to follow him ‘by the badge of his rank’.60 Plutarch
reports similarly that Nasica ‘drew the edge of the toga over his head and strode out towards the
Capitol’.61
Scholars have wondered what Appian’s phrase ‘the badge of his rank’ refers to and why Plutarch
stresses the ‘edge’ of the toga. These phrases have been understood by Linderski as a reference to the
toga praetexta, or bordered toga, which Nasica certainly wore when engaged in his religious duties.
Nasica did not simultaneously hold a magistracy with his role as Pontifex Maximus (which makes

53
On blood as purpureus in Latin literature, see Mark Bradley, Colour and Meaning in Ancient Rome (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2009), 190–1. On blood in Roman ritual, see Jack Lennon, Pollution and Religion in Ancient
Rome (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 90–135; on red clothes of executioners/torturers in Puteoli in the
Augustan era, see Lennon, Pollution and Religion, 151, with references.
54
William Warde-Fowler thought that the reason for the purple or red border was linked to the fact that a priest or
magistrate would perform the animal sacrifice himself: see The Religious Experience of the Roman People from the Earliest
Times to the Age of Augustus (London: Macmillan & Co., 1911), 176–7. Against this interpretation, see Lennon, Pollution
and Religion, 105.
55
Lennon, Pollution and Religion, 106.
56
Ibid., 133.
57
Josephus, Ant. 19.87.
58
Suetonius, Calig. 57.4. See also Dio 46.33.2.
59
p. cos. 138 BCE: BNP Cornelius I 84.
60
εἴτε τῷ παρασήμῳ τοῦ σχήματος; Appian, Bell. civ. 1.16.68.
61
καὶ ταῦτα λέγων ἅμα καὶ τὸ κράσπεδον τοῦ ἱματίου θέμενος ἐπὶ τῆς κεφαλῆς; Plutarch, Tib. Gracc. 19.4. See also Ps.-Cicero’s
account of the incident, in which Nasica rushed from the temple ‘sweating, his eyes blazing, hair bristling, toga awry:
sudans, oculis ardentibus, erecto capillo, contorta toga; Ad Herr. 4.68 (for conjectures on the meaning of toga contorta, see
Linderski, ‘The Pontiff and the Tribune’, 363). Valerius Maximus states Nasica wound his toga about his left arm before
rushing from the temple (3.2.17).
DRESS AND RELIGIOUS RITUAL IN ROMAN ANTIQUITY 207

him unusual);62 thus his normal wear around the city of Rome was the toga pura, the unbordered
toga. Therefore, Linderski63 claims that before Nasica ‘rushed out’ of the temple of Fides he had to
first don the toga praetexta, a garment which would have to be put on before he could perform a
consecratio (the slaying of Tiberius Gracchus): by donning the bordered toga and veiling his head,
Nasica made it clear to all he was about to perform his priestly functions. This is an ingenious
solution to Appian’s description, but unfortunately it cannot be correct.
First, for Nasica to have provided himself ahead of time with a toga praetexta, which would
have to be draped around him likely with the help of slaves, his toga pura having been removed
first, is rather unlikely. A second problem arises if we follow Linderski’s supposition that Nasica
came wearing the bordered toga and draped his head with the lower hem of his garment – in
other words, so that the purple border was around his head. The problem here is that location of
the border on the toga praetexta has been the subject of some scholarly difference,64 but it seems
clear from artistic evidence that the border was usually around the sinus, that is, at the top of the
garment.65
Linderski does ingeniously claim Nasica veiled his head because he was about to participate in
consecratio, a ritual performed capite velato.66 Thus the miscreant ‘was abandoned to the gods to
be destroyed by their wrath – which guided a human hand’.67 When Appian states Nasica persuaded
the senators to follow him ‘by the badge of his rank’ he likely means not the toga praetexta but his
veiled head, the capite velato, for the purposes of religious sacrifice.

VEILING68
There were particular ritual occasions for veiling at Rome: at the rite for the consecration of
property;69 a declaration of war by the fetial priests;70 a devotio;71 a wedding (in which usually
the bride alone was veiled);72 and sacrifices (but as Glinister notes, only the sacrificant veiled;

62
See George J. Szemler, ‘Priesthoods and Priestly Careers in Ancient Rome’, ANRW, 16.3 (1986): 2326, in which he states
that members of the priestly colleges ‘constituted a special, select group of functionaries whose life-long terms, and specific
cult-connected duties, permitted them to maintain a coveted, authoritative position in society …. of the 72 known pontifices
between 210 and 44 BC, only 6 did not hold the praetorship and the consulship’. 2327: out of 179 priests (in this period),
144 held higher magistracies. See also George J. Szemler, The Priests of the Roman Republic: A Study of the Interaction
between Priesthoods and Magistracies. Collections Latomus 127 (1972). Brussels.
63
Linderski, ‘The Pontiff and the Tribune’, 351.
64
For hypotheses, see now Rothe, Roman Toga, 60.
65
See Olson, Masculinity and Dress, 45–6.
66
Cicero, Dom. 124.
67
Linderski, ‘The Pontiff and the Tribune’, 355.
68
Much has been written on the subject of veiling at Rome. See Heinrich Freier, Caput Velare, Diss. (Tübingen: Universität
Tübingen, 1963); Elaine Fantham, ‘Covering the Head at Rome: Ritual and Gender’, in Roman Dress and the Fabrics of
Roman Culture, ed. Jonathan Edmondson and Alison Keith (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008), 158–71; Fay
Glinister, ‘Veiled and Unveiled: Uncovering Roman Influence in Hellenistic Italy’, in Gleba and Becker, Votives, Places and
Rituals, 193–215; Valérie Huet, ‘Le voile du sacrifiant à Rome sur les reliefs romains: une norme?’ in Vêtements antiques:
s’habiller, se déshabiller dans mondes anciens, ed. Florence Gherchanoc and Valérie Huet (Paris: Editions Errance, 2012),
47–62.
69
Cicero, Dom. 124.
70
Livy, 1.32.6.
71
Macrobius, Sat. 3.9.9; Liv. 8.9.5.
72
Paul ex. Festus, 56L.
208 DRESS IN MEDITERRANEAN ANTIQUITY

others would be bareheaded or wreathed).73 The capite velato gesture was ascribed by Roman
antiquarians to Aeneas74 or Numa. Usually a sign of religious piety,75 ‘in practical terms, the veiled
head communicated that a sacrifice was underway. It also suppressed unfavorable sights and sounds
and allowed to the officiant to focus on the ritual’.76 There were some gods, however, whose rituals
demanded an uncovered head: aperto capite (according to the sacred rites of Greece: Saturnus,
Hercules, Apollo, Ceres).77

‘DOUBLE’
‘Double’ garments also seem to have had a special ritual significance for the Romans. The laena
was a kind of cloak and was described by Varro as the most ancient male garment.78 It was large or
heavy (or both), fastened by a fibula (‘repeatedly mentioned in the sources’79 but not usually visible
in art), hung from the shoulders and was circular in shape.80 It was thick and warm, could be worn

FIGURE 16.3 Flamines on the Ara Pacis, Rome. Photo: Art Resource (alb1466730).

73
Plutarch, QR 10; Glinister, ‘Veiled and Unveiled’,195.
74
Dionysius Halicarnassus,12.16.22–3; Plutarch, QR 10; Virg. Aen. 3.405–7; Macrobrius, Sat. 3.6.17.
75
Suetonius, Vit. 2.5.
76
Meghan DiLuzio, A Place at the Altar: Priestesses in Republican Rome (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016), 171;
see Plutarch, QR 10; Lucretius, DRN 5.1198–1200; Virgil, Aen. 3.403–7.
77
See John Scheid, ‘Graeco Ritu: A Typically Roman Way of Honoring the Gods’, Harvard Studies in Classical Philology
97 (1995): 15–31.
78
L. 5.133; Bonfante-Warren, ‘Roman Costumes’, 594–5, 608–9.
79
Bonfante-Warren, ‘Roman Costumes’, 594. On fibulae on the clothing of Etruscan priests, see Bonfante, Etruscan Dress,
53–4, 111 n. 19, 129 n. 52; Bonfante, ‘Ritual Dress’, 186–7.
80
Liliane Wilson, The Clothing of the Ancient Romans (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1938), 113. See also
Bonfante-Warren, ‘Roman Costumes’, 608–9. According to Festus, the laena was the Greek chlaina, a small rectangular
scarf worn so that the ends were placed over the shoulders and the rounded section hung over the front in a horseshoe-shape
(Festus 104L); Inez Scott Ryberg, Rites of the State Religion in Roman Art (Rome: American Academy in Rome, 1955), 44.
DRESS AND RELIGIOUS RITUAL IN ROMAN ANTIQUITY 209

on top of the toga or pallium and was sometimes brightly coloured.81 Festus describes it as ‘a sort
of garment, double in appearance’.82 On the Ara Pacis, at least two of the flamines are wearing a
cloak which is thrown over both shoulders (see Figure 16.3). The laena was also a secular (i.e. a
non-ritual) garment.83
Confusingly, the laena seems also to have been known as the ‘double toga’, due to a line in
Servius. Varro tells us that ‘the laena … contains much wool, even like two togas’.84 Possibly based
on Varro,85 Servius at first states the laena is a sort of cloak, worn by flamines and augurs, then
that ‘it is really a double toga, the garment of augurs’; finally that it is a double toga which should
be purple.86 He also states that ‘some say it is a circular garment, others a double toga in which
the flamines, brooch-fastened, sacrificed’87 so there is some confusion about the laena. Scholars
have furnished various explanations of what the descriptor ‘double’ may mean. The toga duplex/
laena may have had a double layer of cloth or may have been draped in such a way that it covered
both shoulders.88 Perhaps toga duplex meant a cloak with a lining or a cloth woven so that the two
surfaces were different.89 Perhaps a garment which was duplex was ‘merely much more ample than
the regular size, the “single,” that it could be worn folded in two’;90 or that it was made of cloth
twice as thick as the single.91 The ricinium, a cloak which women and the Fratres Arvales and their
ministri wore in ritual contexts, is also described by some ancient sources as ‘double’.92 ‘Double’
garments may have been important in a Roman ritual context because they provided a double
layer of apotropaic wool for the wearer: perhaps wool (like hair and fur) was believed to embody
strength because of its ability to grow without the assistance of any external force. It retained this
strength even after it had been turned into yarn.93

HEADGEAR
Rome was not a hat-wearing society, generally. There were exceptions such as travel hats and
sunhats, but most of the time, Rome’s population went about bareheaded.94 Male and female

81
For example, Juvenal, 3.282-5; Wilson, Clothing of the Ancient Romans, 112–17.
82
vestimenti genus habitu duplicis; Festus 104L.
83
See Bonfante, Etruscan Dress, 50, 102; and Olson, Masculinity and Dress, 72–3, with references.
84
l(a)ena, quod de lana multa, duarum etiam togarum instar; L. 5.133.
85
See Robert B. Lloyd, ‘Republican Authors in Servius and the Scholia Danielis’, Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 65
(1961): 291–341.
86
Servius, ad Aen. 4.262.
87
proprie toga duplex, amictus auguralis. Alii amictum rotundum, alii togam duplicem, in qua flamines sacrificant infibulati;
Servius, ad Aen. 4.262.
88
Wilson, Clothing of the Ancient Romans, 113.
89
Wilson, Clothing of the Ancient Romans, 113.
90
Lionel Casson, ‘Greek and Roman Clothing: Some Technical Terms’, Glotta 61, no. 4 (1983): 195. See, for instance,
Tertullian, Pall. 5.3; evidence from Diocletian’s Edict: Casson, ‘Greek and Roman Clothing’, 195–6.
91
Casson, ‘Greek and Roman Clothing’, 195.
92
On the ricinium, see Olson ‘Insignia lugentium’, 117–20; and Olson, forthcoming.
93
Renate Oswald and Mareile Haase, ‘Wedding Customs and Rituals’, Brill’s New Pauly 15 (2010); no ancient references
given. Wool’s importance was reflected in the costume of the flamen Dialis: his garments must be made of wool (Servius,
ad Aen. 4.263). Burriss, Taboo, Magic, Spirits, states that linen was foreign to Roman ritual (53) and that wool had an
important significance in many Roman ritual activities (54–5) but offers no reasons as to why this might have been so.
Cleland et al. (Greek and Roman Dress, 212) merely state that wool seems to have had a ‘particular conceptual importance’
in Roman religion. See also Anne-Marie Tupet, La magie dans la poésie latine, vol. I (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1976), 302–5.
94
On hats, see Croom, Roman Clothing and Fashion, 68–70; Olson, Masculinity and Dress, 80.
210 DRESS IN MEDITERRANEAN ANTIQUITY

religious were the exception. Priests wore a galerus or galerum, a close-fitting helmet-like leather
cap, which fastened under the chin, leaving the ears uncovered. The galerus was also a secular item
of clothing, worn by athletes;95 what transformed the galerus from a secular article of clothing
into sacred was the apex, a spike of olive wood on top of the cap, wound with a woollen band or
fillet (filum or apiculum, from the wool of a sacrificial victim. See Figure 16.3).96 Although apex
strictly speaking only refers to the olive branch, the word is often used to refer to the entire priestly
headgear, in texts spanning the entire time period of Latin literature.97
There were rules surrounding the use of priestly headgear. Gellius tells us that the flamen Dialis
may not be in the open air without his apex, and ‘it has only recently been decided’ by the pontiffs
he could leave it off in the house.98 Priests other than the flamen Dialis (e.g. the flamines Martialis
and Quirinalis, the salii) appear only to have worn the apex while actually engaged in religious
rites.99 In times of great heat, the flamines could leave off the cap and bind their heads with a
fillet only, although fiestis diebus the cap was mandatory.100 According to Appian, the flamen L.
Cornelius Merula removed his galerum with its apex before committing suicide ‘in order not to
break an important taboo’ in the early first century BCE.101 Q. Sulpicius had his flaminate taken
away because his headgear fell off during an important sacrifice.102
When they were involved in a public sacrifice either as presider or participant, the Vestals wore
a shoulder-veil, the suffibulum.103 This was a short white veil that had a purple border and was
fastened under the chin with a clasp (fibula; see Figure 16.4).

BINDING104
Knots in clothing or in décor signified that spirits could not pass and thus ‘knots and knot patterns
had powerful … connotations, and were believed to provide protection from harm’.105 (The ancient
Greek katadeo means ‘to bind’, not only physically, as with knots, but also with spells.) Knots often
appeared in the décor of entrances to houses (as evil spirits had to enter by a door or window): thus
the entrance to a house in Ostia has a Solomon’s knot (two closed loops) in the entrance mosaic.106
In early Christianity, ‘simple knots, such as the knot of Hercules and the knot of Solomon were

95
Juvenal, 8.208; Martial, 14.50.
96
On this, see Katharine Esdaile, ‘The Apex or Tutulus in Roman Art’, Journal of Roman Studies 1 (1911): 212–26;
Vanggaard, The Flamen, 40–5; Cleland et al., Greek and Roman Dress, 7.
97
Vanggaard, The Flamen, 41; thus Ovid, Fast. 3.397; Lucian, 1.604; Valerius Maximus, 1.1.5; Isidore 19.30.5. Virgil
implies the apex was the headdress of the early kings (Aen. 2.682-83; see also Horace, Carm. 1.34.41; Cicero, Leg. 1.1.4;
Pliny, Nat. 22.96).
98
Gellius, 10.15.17-18; see also Appian, Bell. civ. 1.65, Plutarch, QR 40; Paul ex. Festus, 77L.
99
Appian, Bell. civ. 1.65; Servius, 8.552.
100
Servius 8.664, Isidore 7.12.18-19; see also Paul ex Festus, 77L.
101
Bell. civ. 1.74. Merula was cos. suff. in 87 BCE; BNP Cornelius I 61.
102
Valerius Maximus, 1.1.5, 223 BCE. See Robert E. A. Palmer, ‘The Deconstruction of Mommsen on Festus 462/464L, or
the Hazards of Restoration’, in Imperium Sine Fine: T. Robert S. Broughton and the Roman Republic, ed. Jerzy Linderski
(Stuttgart: Steiner, 1996), 85–6.
103
On the suffibulum, see Festus, 474L; DiLuzio, A Place at the Altar, 171–2.
104
On binding, see Eli Burriss, Taboo, Magic, Spirits: A Study of Primitive Elements in Roman Religion (New York:
Macmillan, 1931), 55–6.
105
Faith Pennick Morgan, Dress and Personal Appearance in Late Antiquity: The Clothing of the Middle and Lower Classes
(Leiden: Brill, 2018), 39.
106
Insula del Soffitto Dipinto: see Ellen Swift, Style and Function in Roman Decoration: Living with Objects and Interiors
(Farnham: Ashgate, 2009), 41n. 69.
DRESS AND RELIGIOUS RITUAL IN ROMAN ANTIQUITY 211

FIGURE 16.4 Bust of a Vestal virgin, Museo Nazionale, Rome. Photo: Art Resource
(AR9160660).

both believed to have apotropaic powers, and can be found on everyday items as well as amulets’;107
even something as simple as a twisted piece of cloth or cord was often tied onto a person or their
clothing for its apotropaic quality.108 Knot and interlace patterns played the same role on late
antique garments.
Similarly, ancient Roman religious clothing also showed a concern with girding or binding.
Fibulae were worn on the laena and suffibulum by flamines and Vestals (above), and infulae were
worn by priests109 and suppliants.110 Isidore tells us that ‘an infula is a small white band for a priest’s

107
Faith Pennick Morgan, Dress and Personal Appearance, 39; and see Eunice Dauterman Maguire, Henry P. Maguire and
Maggie J. Duncan-Flowers, Art and Holy Powers in the Early Christian House (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign:
University of Illinois Press, 1989), 5.
108
Faith Pennick Morgan, Dress and Personal Appearance, 35; see also Gideon Bohak, Ancient Jewish Magic (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2008).
109
Livy, 2.39.12 ; Fest.100L; Virgil, Aen. 2.430, 10.538.
110
See Fantham, ‘Covering the Head’, 164; Livy, 25.25.6, 37.28.1.
212 DRESS IN MEDITERRANEAN ANTIQUITY

head, shaped like a diadem. Fillets hang down on either side of it and fasten the infula, whence also
fillets (vittae) are named, because they fasten (vincere)’.111 Most infulae seem to have been wide
and twisted, made out of white and scarlet unspun wool (rovings), held together at intervals with
knots or beads.112
The hairstyle of Vestal virgins, which also included binding, has given rise to some scholarly
controversy.113 Usually taken by scholars to mean ‘the six-tressed hairstyle’ (seni crines or sex
crines),114 neither the fragmentary literary sources115 nor ancient visual evidence,116 which tends
to depict Vestals as veiled and their heads covered by infulae, has provided enough detail as to
what exactly the hairstyle looked like.117 Surviving Vestal portraits show surprising variation of
hairstyle, but most seem to have involved braids.118 Janet Stephens has brilliantly recreated the
Vestal hairstyle as having six braids (with a seventh smaller one), the front hair twisted around a
vitta to create the prominent roll around the Vestal’s forehead (see Figure 16.4).119 On top of her
hairstyle the Vestal wore an infula (which conveyed her priestly status) and vittae, which hung
down from the infula on either side of the head.120
Elsewhere, a ritual concern with binding could take the form of a prohibition on knots in priestly
dress, as knots prevented the passage of spirits from one place to another.121 Gellius thus tells us
that the flamen Dialis must have no knot in his headgear or his girdle or any other part of his
clothing. See also Ovid’s description of a paterfamilias completing the rites of the Lemuria, in
which ‘no knots constrict his feet’.

CONCLUSIONS
As Rome had an ‘embedded’ religion, in general there was no special religious dress for (most)
priests and priestesses. There were, however, a few special features of ritual dress: warrior

111
Isidore, 19.30.4. On infulae, see Fantham, ‘Covering the Head’, 163; Maureen Flory, ‘The Symbolism of Laurel in
Cameo Portraits of Livia’, Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome 40 (1995): 49–52.
112
Cleland et al., Greek and Roman Dress, 96, Greek: agrênon; Paul ex. Festus, 100L. Isidore, 19.30.4.
113
A significant amount has been written on Vestal costume. See, e.g., Mary Beard, ‘The Sexual Status of Vestal Virgins’,
Journal of Roman Studies 70 (1980): 12–27; Mary Beard, ‘Re-Reading (Vestal) Virginity’, in Women in Antiquity: New
Assessments, ed. Richard Hawley and Barbara Levick (London and New York: Routledge, 1995), 166–77; Andrew Gallia,
‘The Vestal Habit’, Classical Philology 109 (2014): 222–40; DiLuzio, A Place at the Altar, 154–84. The hairstyle of the
flaminicae (the tutulus) also included binding: see Fest. 484-6L.
114
On the seni crines hairstyle, see Bonfante, ‘Ritual Dress’, 189; Karen Hersch, The Roman Wedding: Ritual and Meaning
in Antiquity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 73–80; Diluzio, A Place at the Altar, 155–65, with references.
115
Festus, 454L.
116
For visual evidence of Vestal costume, see DiLuzio, A Place at the Altar, 157–81.
117
For the interesting but mistaken notion that Vestals may have cropped their hair, see DiLuzio, A Place at the Altar,
159–60, with notes.
118
See DiLuzio, A Place at the Altar, 162–5.
119
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eA9JYWh1r7U&t=5s (accessed 24 October 2020).
120
DiLuzio, A Place at the Altar, 165. See also Virgil, Aen. 7.418-19.
121
Lennon, Pollution and Religion, 164–5 (this in a discussion of the rites of the Argei). Gellius, 10.15.9-10; Ovid, Fast.
5.431-44.
DRESS AND RELIGIOUS RITUAL IN ROMAN ANTIQUITY 213

characteristics (such as the cinctus Gabinus drape and the lituus), the wearing of white, the practice
of veiling (as with Nasica’s toga), a concern with girding and knots, the apotropaism of wool and
purple (perhaps as a stand-in for blood) and the quality of ‘double’ (in the laena and the ricinium).
Some of the older priesthoods were subject to prescriptions involving dress, and their members did
dress in distinctive clothing (the luperci, the flamines, the flamen and flaminica Dialis, the Vestals).
But most male and female religious were marked out with special garb only when involved in their
religious duties.
214
 CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Andromeda Unbound:
Possession, Perception and
Adornment in the House of
the Dioscuri
NEVILLE MCFERRIN

INTRODUCTION
Dress constitutes.1 Serving both to underscore social identities and to generate them, dress is a
means of self-generation as much as it is a tool of self-presentation. In such a formulation, hair
coverings and tunics, perfumes and bracelets coalesce into a mutually reinforcing system, one that
is experienced simultaneously by the wearer and those people with whom that wearer interacts.
The audience for adornment is as variable as the medium itself, engaging the eyes of viewers and
the wearer’s skin at the same moment. Even as the sheen of metal and of stone draws the eye
of the viewer, their weight and rigidity serve as a haptic interface for the wearer.2 Such zones
of multi-sensory interaction accentuate the tensions between the public and private valences of
dress, highlighting its ability to signal an individual’s presence to others even as it underscores
agency for the individual, simultaneously demarcating the boundaries of the body and offering the
opportunity to engage with the environment beyond it.
By focusing upon the embodied potentials of dress, it is possible to consider an individual’s
relationship to the suite of social constructions that jewellery, hairstyles, cosmetics, comportment
and clothing help them to negotiate. For social actors who move through their worlds without full
recourse to its resources, who are prevented by law and by custom from engaging with other actors
as equals, dress offers the opportunity to aspire towards inclusion. Its visibility and manipulability
insert its wearers into spaces that might otherwise exclude them. This connective potential
resonates from experienced reality into depiction. In the complex communicative environment of

1
While earlier volumes preferred the term ‘costume’, this contribution takes the definition of dress proposed by M. E.
Roach-Higgins and J. Eicher, ‘Dress and Identity’, Clothing and Textile Research Journal 10 (1992): 1–8, as a starting
point. See also Mirelle Lee, Body, Dress, and Identity in Ancient Greece (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015),
20–1; Megan Cifarelli and Laura Gawlinski, ‘Introduction’, in What Shall I Say of Clothes? Theoretical and Methodological
Approaches to the Study of Dress, ed. M. Cifarelli and L. Gawlinski (Boston: Archaeological Institute of America, 2017),
x; Megan Cifarelli, ‘Introduction’, in Fashioned Selves: Dress and Identity in Antiquity, ed. M. Cifarelli (London: Oxbow,
2019), 3.
2
Neville McFerrin, ‘The Tangible Self: Embodiment, Agency, and the Functions of Adornment in Achaemenid Persia’, in
Fashioned Selves, 240.
216 DRESS IN MEDITERRANEAN ANTIQUITY

the Pompeian house, visitors are immersed into a multi-valenced interactive space, one in which
depicted and living bodies are juxtaposed with dress, both depicted and worn, eliding the boundaries
between them. This is especially evident when considering jewellery depicted in figural Pompeian
paintings. While wearers might be constrained by finances or social norms that restrict the types
of adornment they might adopt, painters do not have to operate under such constraints. Pompeian
painters could have elected to depict jewels and styles more colourful and more elaborate than
those they encountered; depictions of sea monsters and putti, of women transforming into trees
and of men standing aside beheaded minotaurs attest to the fact that these artists need not paint
from experience. Yet, the majority of depicted adornments in the paintings of Pompeii correspond
to extant examples excavated in the region of the Bay of Naples.3 As dressed figures, particularly
dressed women, moved through atria and exedrae, they gazed upon figures whose dress may have
looked very much like their own, perhaps inviting them to consider connections between their own
realities and those depicted around them. Adornment enabled painted walls and adorned bodies
to act as a reciprocal system, one that permitted visitors to these spaces to envision themselves
in alternate guises, underscoring the ability of adornments to emphasize agency. If agency is the
ability to highlight one of a number of intersectional identities, then adornments communicate such
activations.4
In the House of the Dioscuri (VI.9.6-7), depictions of Medea and Andromeda highlight the
constitutive potentials of adornments, underscoring the utility of dress as a tool for asserting both
personal agency and desired perception. By juxtaposing multiple sense modalities with questions
of social presentation and embodied experience, this contribution argues that much as the senses
function as mutually informing systems, so too do the materials of adornment enable a complex
negotiation of surface and boundary that enables the construction and maintenance of individual
identity. By placing Andromeda and Medea into spatial interplay, the House of the Dioscuri
prompts us to consider the seemingly contradictory modes of dress that these depicted individuals
employ, thus mediating a discussion of dress that understands jewellery as a tool for interaction,
rather than as only an object of display.

RECONSIDERING ADORNMENTS: AGENCY AND ALTERNATIVE

VALUATIONS
To embark upon such an investigative endeavour necessitates a re-evaluation not only of subject
materials but of the questions posed to them. On the topic of dress, much attention has been
given to questions of what – of the association of image to term, on the articulation of folds
and on the sourcing of materials. This contribution asks not what but how. By focusing on the
function of adornments, and through asserting that such functions transcend ornamentation,
the alternative potentials of adornment become clear. Rather than conceptualizing the body of
the wearer as a site of interpretation, wearing becomes a form of interpretation, with adornments
becoming an expression of agency, as much as they are a marker of relative position, possession
and objectification.

3
Neville McFerrin, ‘The Art of Power: Ambiguity, Adornment, and the Performance of Social Position in the Pompeian
House’ (Ph.D. Diss., Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 2015), 88–9.
4
On dress and agency, see also Graybill, this volume.
ANDROMEDA UNBOUND 217

The question is one of value. While the materials of adornment might serve as a source of
capital, prized for healing potential, scarcity or manipulability, for wearers, such considerations
might be coupled with a wider suite of potential positive valuations. Much as the capacity of
images to convey multiple, sometimes dichotomous, ideas simultaneously is key to their efficacy
as a communicative device, constructions of value derive their utility from the multiplicity of
connotations contained within the thing that is valued. So while we may talk of intrinsic value, this
notion itself undermines the processes that value conceptually seeks to underscore. For, at its core,
the concept of value is tied to that of identity formation.
Shared values promote group cohesion and personal inclusions, while the ownership or
performance of something that a group deems valuable promotes personal prestige. In order for
such processes to work, an entity’s value is necessarily mutable, capable of being accepted by one
group even as it is rejected by another. As Nancy Munn argues, value is ‘an ongoing dialectic of
possibilities and counter possibilities – explicit assertions of positive and negative potentials’.5 It
is through these positive and negative potentials, extant in both objects and conceptualizations
deemed valuable, that communities and individuals constitute themselves. Thus, the concept of
value is place-specific, dependent upon the group that seeks to be delineated; it is temporally,
spatially and socially dependent. How and why something is considered valuable is variable.
While the properties of metals and stones are intrinsic, their values are not. Beyond questions of
material, the social valuation of adornments, particularly of jewellery, is tied to functionality or a
lack of it. For while other forms of dress may have clear practical utilities, the function of jewellery
is to articulate.
Thus, while a palla serves to both conceal and protect the body, masking, and at times revealing,
the form beneath, shielding the body from the natural elements, it also marks the wearer as a
particular sort of woman. The presence of a palla suggests appropriate matronly modesty, even as its
colour and type of fabric might indicate a normatively problematic interest in luxuria. Indeed, even
the act of wearing might serve as a form of communication, for the folds of the fabric, encircling
the figure without pin or attachment, indicate the wearer’s lack of concern with physical labour.6
Yet, even as pallae communicate multiple messages, their meanings transcending functionality, an
outer wrap does serve a firm practical function. While a palla might be termed an adornment, its
materials and its utility separate it from jewellery.
Such associations between utility and terminology underscore a lexical bias, one that is rooted
in questions of gendered distinction. Ceremonial swords might well be termed jewellery. Crafted
from costly metals, embellished with engravings and attachments, positioned carefully on the body
and highlighting its form, swords function in a manner not unlike a bracelet, intersecting with
and encircling the wearer, their movement reinforcing their presence as they tap against leg or
arm, while demarcating the boundary between the wearer and his or her environment. Yet it is
the additional functionality of a sword, its ability to serve as a weapon, that is the general focus,
even for ceremonial swords, which may have blunted edges, or for swords worn in situations in
which physical conflict is unlikely. If a swords and is not jewellery, it is because their affiliation
with action, and with male subject actors, overwhelms their other communicative potentials in the

5
Nancy Munn, The Fame of Gawa: A Symbolic Study of Value Transformation in a Massim (Papua New Guinea) Society
(Durham: Duke University Press, 1986), 3.
6
Olson, Dress and the Roman Woman (London: Routledge, 2012), 33–5.
218 DRESS IN MEDITERRANEAN ANTIQUITY

minds of those who categorize them. It is as if, because they have a clear function beyond that of
communication, their multi-valenced potentials are truncated.
While much might be gained by considering the implications of terming swords as jewellery,
and in acknowledging the capacity of jewellery to function as a weapon, the terminological
separation between mediators such as bracelets and pallae or swords underscores ongoing tensions
within the concept of categorization itself. Adornments convey simultaneous, even dichotomous,
messages to a viewer, messages that complicate straightforward binary conceptualizations. Even as
adornments can serve to generate and underscore social cohesion, as tools of personal distinction,
they simultaneously serve to emphasize individual differentiation.7 Such tensions are especially
evident when considering the intersections between adornments and gendered identities.

VIEWING ADORNMENTS: FRISSON, FRICTION AND THE MALE

GAZE
In the Roman textual sphere, frictions between viewers and wearers of adornment are an implicit
component of discussions of dress accessories. For Livy, adornments are part of a suite of dress-
related concepts associated with a term as likely to be used to describe soldiers as matrons. In
his description of the proposed repeal of the Lex Oppia, sumptuary legislation passed at the
height of the Punic Wars in 215 BCE, Livy describes elegance, adornment and refined personal
appearance as insignia of women.8 Such a term suggests that self-presentation is a woman’s badge
of rank, entangling the visualization of her social identity with potentially vexed concepts of over-
articulated display and negative valences of adornment. For, while a man’s insignia are associated
with merit and success, predicated upon civic action, a woman’s may shade into notions of luxuria,
engendering softness that is antithetical to Roman conceptualizations of effective male citizenship.9
As Christiane Kunst argues, ‘Jewellery reflected the wealth and importance of her husband and
family on the one hand, and kept women in a physically inferior sphere at the same time.’10 In
the mind of the Roman writer, women consume the resources produced by men, and in so doing,
become resources themselves.
Such a perception of a woman’s body as a site of display for men’s wealth is predicated upon
the privileging of sight. Adornment draws the eye and the attention of those who view it, leading
some to understand it as a primarily externally focused medium. As Alba Cappellieri and Marco
Romanelli have argued: ‘Jewellery is not something to be worn in the home, it does not have to
do with the private world, it is exquisitely public, bound up with the outward representation of
the self, with its social masks.’11 Such approaches understand adornment from the perspective of

7
For a discussion of jewellery and identity, see Ward, this volume.
8
Livy 34.7.8. For a general discussion of the legislation, see Phyllis Culham, ‘The Lex Oppia’, Latomus, T. 41 (1982):
786–93; for a discussion of the connections between the lex Oppia and connections between wealth, power and women’s
dress, see Olson, Dress and the Roman Woman, 101–4. For a discussion of the political implications of the lex Oppia and its
connection to women’s political power, see A. McClintock, ‘The lex Voconia and Cornelia’s Jewels’, Revue Internationale
des Droits de l’Antiquité 60 (2013): 185–6.
9
Maria Wyke, ‘Woman in the Mirror: The Rhetoric of Adornment in the Roman World’, in Women in Ancient Societies: An
Illusion of the Night, ed. Léonie Archer, Susan Fishler and Maria Wyke (New York: Routledge, 1994), 144–5.
10
Christiane Kunst, ‘Ornamenta Uxoria: Badges of Rank or Jewellery of Roman Wives?’, The Medieval History Journal 8
(2005): 139–40.
11
Alba Cappellieri and Marco Romanelli, Il design della gioia: il gioiello fra progetto e ornamento (Milan: Charta, 2004), 12.
ANDROMEDA UNBOUND 219

the viewer, overlooking the range of sense modalities engaged for the wearer. While jewellery
may be ‘exquisitely public’, it is, by virtue of its close physical association with bodies, inextricably
personal.

DEPICTED WOMEN IN THE HOUSE OF THE DIOSCURI:

CONSTITUTIVE ADORNMENTS AND CONSTRUCTED BOUNDARIES
To consider the personal resonances of adornment, and in doing so, to move beyond the
dichotomous interpretations that have dominated the discourse on the topic, we turn now to the
House of the Dioscuri and to a set of women who traverse the boundaries imposed upon them.
Excavated between January 1828 and May 1829, the House of the Dioscuri (VI.9.6-7), situated
on the Via di Mercurio, evolved from its inception as an axial structure, focused upon an atrium,
tablinum and peristyle, into a larger residence, of a similar scale to the nearby House of the Vettii,
when, in the mid-first century CE, the owners incorporated this earlier structure with a house to
the south. It was with this annexation that a large peristyle, focused upon a deep pool with a central
fountain, was joined to the structure12 (Figure 17.1). It is to two rectilinear piers, situated on the
eastern side of this peristyle, and to the paintings that they once featured, that we now turn our
attention (Figure 17.2).
The first, originally situated on the southeast pier, now housed at the Museo Archeologico Nazionale
di Napoli, depicts Andromeda, at the moment of her release from her bonds13 (Figure 17.3). The

FIGURE 17.1 Plan of the House of the Dioscuri, after Guglilmo Bechi. © Neville McFerrin.

12
Bettina Bergmann, ‘A Tale of Two Sites: Ludwig I’s Pompejanum and the House of the Dioscuri in Pompeii’, in Returns
to Pompeii: Interior Space and Decoration Documented and Revived, 18th–20th Century, ed. Shelley Hales and Anne-Marie
Leander Touati (Stockholm: Svenska Instituet, 2016), 183–4, 191–3; William Gell, Pompeiana: The Topography, Edifices
and Ornaments of Pompeii, The Result of Excavations since 1819, Volume II (London: Jennings and Chaplin, 1832), 20–1.
13
Guglielmo Bechi, ‘Relazione degli Scavi di Pompei da Aprile 1828 fino a Maggio 1829’, Real Museo Borbonico di Napoli
5 (1835): 20.
220 DRESS IN MEDITERRANEAN ANTIQUITY

FIGURE 17.2 View of the peristyle of the House of the Dioscuri from the north oecus, William
Gell, Pompeiana 2, 1832, pl. LXV. Photo: Universitätasbibliothek Heidelberg.

FIGURE 17.3 Perseus and Andromeda, House of the Dioscuri (V1.9.6-7), Pompeii, c. 62–79 CE,
Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli, 8998. Photo: Art Resource (ART63488).
ANDROMEDA UNBOUND 221

composition highlights Andromeda’s liminality through both her depicted dress and the interactions
between sense modalities. Andromeda stands on a stone, one foot extended over its edge, her right
hand lifting her delicately rendered saffron tunic with its pale border, while her left arm remains
chained to the rock at her back. Perseus presses his hand to her immobile arm, his ruddy skin a
sharp contrast to her pale form. The hero’s musculature is highlighted by his nude form and his
stance, as he rests one foot atop a rock. While his right hand presses against Andromeda’s arm, his
left grasps his sword, with Medusa’s head hanging alongside it. Perseus gazes beyond Andromeda,
to the sea monster leaping, jaws open, from the sea at the far left of the composition. His hand is his
only clear sensorial contact with the woman who gazes beyond him, at a point beyond the frame.
It is this press of skin against skin that is the focal point of the composition. With her shackled arm
and outstretched foot, Andromeda stands, suspended between captivity and freedom, with Perseus’s
hand reinforcing her inability to move, serving as an additional boundary for her to overcome.
The story was well known in the first century CE, with general features clear to an erudite
audience.14 In the hands of Ovid, a near contemporary to the depictions in the House of the
Dioscuri, the tensions between immobility and action, physical boundaries and appropriate
femininity underscored in this depiction are again made clear. Perseus’s first words to Andromeda
draw a direct comparison between her bonds and the preferred state that he projects upon her.
In Ovid’s words, ‘You do not deserve these chains, but those that join passionate lovers to each
other.’15 This system of paired bonds is doubled in the depiction of Andromeda in the House of the
Dioscuri, for, together with the weathered bronze shackle that pins her arm to the rock, she wears
a set of gold bracelets, one visible directly above the restraint on her left arm, generating a firm
visual parallel between the two.
Such visual and textual correlations suggest that, for Andromeda, marriage is equated with
constrained mobility. Indeed, links between her acceptability as a bride and her immobility are
highlighted throughout the Ovidian passage. While her beauty draws the hero to her, she attempts
to hide her face when he addresses her, lowering her eyes and refusing to address him directly.16
Her probity and her modesty mark her as a proper woman; she sustains such probity through the
maintenance of boundaries. Her acceptability is articulated, not through her personal appearance
but through her inability to effectively act on her environment. While she is apparently beautiful,
this is demonstrated not through depiction but through Perseus’s perception of her and his reactions
to her. In Andromeda, beauty and immobility become synonymous.17
Perseus’s interactions with Andromeda are driven by sight, and it is through sight that she is
rendered as other, for othering is integral to the process of viewing. When engaging with an idea
visually, the viewer is encouraged to think of himself or herself as distinct from a process. While
ancient authors often phrase viewing as a connective process, one in which sight enables mental
connection, allowing viewers to mentally project themselves into the narrative they view,18 it is
only through physical distance, through a lack of embodiment, that we are capable of looking at
something. Sight is dependent upon separation. While reciprocal viewership, gazing at someone

14
Nathaniel B. Jones, ‘Starting from Places: Continuous Narration and Discontinuous Perspectives in Roman Art’, Art
Bulletin 100, no. 1 (March 2018): 16.
15
Ovid, Met. 4.678-79.
16
Ovid, Met. 4.681-83.
17
Patricia B. Salzman-Mitchell, A Web of Fantasies: Gaze, Image, and Gender in Ovid’s Metamorphoses (Columbus: The
Ohio State University Press, 2005), 78.
18
Jas Elsner, Roman Eyes: Visuality and Subjectivity in Art and Text (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007), 7.
222 DRESS IN MEDITERRANEAN ANTIQUITY

while they gaze back, may bridge such rifts, the potential for reciprocality, which might acknowledge
Andromeda as an agent of perception in her own right, is explicitly undermined within Ovid’s text.
For, as Patricia Salzman-Mitchell notes, ‘Perseus views Andromeda, but the passage insisted on her
“not seeing”’.19 Tears obscure her vision, taking the place of her hands, which otherwise would
have covered her face, generating distance between herself and Perseus’s direct questions regarding
her name and origins.20 Her lack of engagement further underscores her desirability as a bride.21
Yet, while Ovid’s Andromeda might initially appear to be an ideal marriageable maiden, the
complexity of her depicted counterpart is more readily apparent. Just as her physical position is
liminal, caught between bondage and freedom, so too is her dress. For together with undermining
ease of motion, which might serve equally to indicate a woman’s appropriate containment and
her status, an outer covering, such as a palla or mantle, also obscures the form, creating a visual
boundary between viewers and the body of a woman. Yet, in the case of Andromeda, no such
outer covering is apparent. Indeed, while her left side is obscured by her tunic and still bound by
the shackle that chains her to the rock, her right side, already freed, is depicted in a state of partial
undress, her visual availability highlighting her vulnerable position. The fabric of her tunic has
slipped, revealing the skin of her shoulder and chest.
Such undress is potentially problematic. While Perseus is rendered more acceptable in his semi-
nude state, his firm musculature visible proof against the softness engendered by the trappings of
luxuria, Andromeda, when unbound from the rock, loses the mediators that mark her respectability.
With her freedom comes the potential for transgression, and it is in this capacity for transgression
that we may begin to reassess Andromeda’s relationship to her own adornments. To reframe the
implications of Andromeda’s modes of dress, it is useful first to return to her spatial positioning
within the House of the Dioscuri. For, on the northeast pier, the partner to that once decorated
with the painting of Andromeda and Perseus was a paired painting, depicting Medea contemplating
the murder of her two children (Figure 17.4).
The paintings are, in many ways, a study of opposites. While Andromeda’s physical liminality
is reflected in her environment, her body bracketed by the contrasting exterior elements of rock
and sea, Medea’s internal liminality is underscored by her position with an exterior courtyard. She
stands on the right edge of the composition, her foot, like Andromeda’s, extending from the surface
on which she stands. Her left hand clutches a sword, while her well-muscled right arm stretches
across her frame, so that she may rest her hand on its pommel. Her head extends above the low
wall of the courtyard and is framed by the columnar structure in the background. Her wide eyes
gaze out of the frame as her two sons play knucklebones alongside her, each nude but for a drape
of deep red bordered in pale blue, their garments referencing those of Jason. Behind them, in the
open door of the courtyard, an aged tutor looks on.
The correspondence of colour in the depictions of Medea’s sons and Perseus emphasizes
interrelations between the two paintings that are further underscored by their spatial relationship.
For those looking into the peristyle from the large west-facing exedra, a once marble-clad room
that has a direct view onto the peristyle and pool, and was likely used for dinner parties, these two
images would have been viewed simultaneously, inviting comparison between the two.22 While

19
Salzman-Mitchell, A Web of Fantasies, 78.
20
Ovid.Met. 4.680-84.
21
Salzman-Mitchell, Web of Fantasies, 79.
22
Lawrence Richardson, Pompeii: The Casa dei Dioscuri and Its Painters, Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome 23
(Rome: American Academy, 1955), 63, 65; Gell, Pompeiana, 22; Bechi, ‘Relazione degli Scavi’, 21.
ANDROMEDA UNBOUND 223

FIGURE 17.4 Medea contemplating her children, House of the Dioscuri (VI.9.6-7), Pompeii, c.
62–79 CE, Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli, 8977Photo: Art Resource (ART119653).

the juxtaposition of these two women might be understood as a straightforward opposition, with
Andromeda’s normative modesty contrasting with Medea’s similarly typical capacity for mimetic
trickery, their modes of dress suggest that the two images might be understood more as entangled
than as opposed.23
While Andromeda’s appearance verges on transgressive, Medea is depicted in the trappings of
an upstanding Roman matron. Her hair is carefully arranged, her jewellery reserved. She wears a
sheer undertunic, covered by what is likely a stola, as evidenced in particular by the straps at the
shoulders, this long tunic serving as a public indicator of the married woman’s respectability.24
Her palla draped over her shoulders and tied at her waist further conceals her form. The central

23
For discussions of the oppositional dynamics of Andromeda and Medea, see David Balch, ‘Values of Roman Women
Including Priests Visually Represented in Pompeii and Herculaneum’, in Finding a Woman’s Place: Essays in Honor of
Carolyn Osiek, R.S.C.J., ed. David Balch and Jason Lamoreaux (Eugene: Pickwick, 2011), 26; Lucia Romizzi, ‘La Casa dei
Dioscuri di Pompei (VI 9,6.7): Una Nuova Lettura’, Contributi di Archeologia Vesuviana 2 (2006): 77–160.
24
Olson, Dress and the Roman Woman, 27.
224 DRESS IN MEDITERRANEAN ANTIQUITY

position of her sons within the scene further underscores her effectiveness as a wife. Much as
Cornelia, mother of the Gracchi presented her sons as her ornamenta, the prominence of Medea’s
children highlights her attention to familial duty.25 Yet, if this image references Euripides’s version
of her story, Medea will shortly undermine the stability of her husband’s household and his legacy
by doing away with his heirs, and his capacity to generate future heirs, by killing both his sons and
his intended bride. As a consequence for breaking faith with her, she effectively erases his future.
As she takes action, she steps away from normative respectability.
The thread of promises broken further binds these two images, drawing another set of connections
to the fore. For although Perseus is promised Andromeda as a bride in exchange for saving her, a
notion that is underscored in the House of the Dioscuri with her saffron tunic,26 she had already
been engaged to another, as becomes apparent on their wedding day. In the melee that breaks out
between her new husband and her betrothed, Perseus emerges victorious, harnessing the petrifying
gaze of Medusa to vanquish his rivals.27 The two depicted scenes present suspended action – the
only type of action possible in depiction – with two potential heroes poised to take action with
deadly consequences.28 For, in the House of the Dioscuri, not only women wear descriptive dress.
Much as Medea is depicted as an ideal Roman matron, Perseus adheres to the norms of the depicted
hero. He is clean-shaven, with ruddy skin and well-defined musculature that attests to his vigour. In
addition to the swath of crimson and blue fabric discussed above, he wears only his winged sandals,
here subsumed into his feet, and his dagger, held firm in his left hand.
This dagger is nearly identical to that held, also in the left hand, by Medea, with a rounded
pommel and sheath, rectilinear guard and pale bronze sheen. The implication is clear. Much as a
repetition of colour helped to equate Perseus with Medea’s sons, the reduplication of the sword
casts Perseus and Medea as visual doubles. Whether they are cast understood as heroes or villains
in their respective narratives, they are presented in tandem. Medea, in this visual equation, takes
on the mantle of a hero, together with the hero’s primary marker. Above all else, heroes bring pain.
Medea’s dress thus equates her with Perseus, even as it differentiates her from Andromeda,
generating a study in contradictions that itself parallels the multi-valenced communicative potentials
of adornments. While Medea may take on the guise of a respectable Roman matron, this does not
necessarily indicate that she is one. Andromeda may be a modest matron woman, but this does not
necessarily indicate that she dresses as one. While such disjunctions might be explained away rather
simply, to do so would be to undermine the ultimate efficacy of the medium of adornment. For,
while the deceptive capacity of dress makes it suspect for Roman writers, it is through its ability
to convey multiple divergent messages that it becomes an effective vehicle for personal agency.29
A final Ovidian juxtaposition underscores this point, further highlighting the complex
interconnections between appearance and the potential for personal prestige. While Ovid’s
Andromeda is explicitly demure, she is implicitly dangerous, and this danger is rooted in the
variable potentiality of her personal appearance. Ovid describes her as preternaturally still; only the

25
On Cornelia, see Kunst, ‘Ornamenta Uxoria’, 137; Valerius Maximus, Factorum ac Dictorum Memorabilium, 4.4.1.
26
On the uses of saffron for Roman bridal dress, see Olson, Dress and the Roman Woman, 22.
27
Ovid, Met. 4.703-5, 5.1-249.
28
With figures poised on the brink of action, these depictions recall Bettina Bergmann’s discussion of Medea in the House
of Jason. See Bettina Bergman, ‘The Pregnant Moment: Tragic Wives in the Roman Interior’, in Sexuality in Roman Art, ed.
Natalie B. Kampen (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 199–218.
29
On Roman vocabulary equating ideas of adornment with falsification, see Olson, Dress and the Roman Woman, 81–2.
ANDROMEDA UNBOUND 225

movement of her hair and the tears that fall from her eyes suggest that she is anything other than
a statue.30 The idea of humans rendered into stone is central to the Perseus and Medusa cycle.31
As the Gorgon’s gaze transmutes flesh into rock, she erases their agency. They cease to have the
ability to influence their environment; their many identities are erased as assuredly as Medea erases
her husband’s legacy. They become objects, and as such can be looked upon safely, without fear of
trickery or repercussion, both of which might well be associated with gazing upon a living human.
Indeed, Perseus defeats Medusa by effectively transfiguring her from woman to image. For, he
looks only at her reflection as he slays her, and her likeness has no power.
As Andromeda stands, immobilized by bonds and as still as a statue, her power initially seems
to be contained. But Perseus is taken by surprise, and as he looks at her form, he is transfixed –
stupefied, to use Ovid’s term – to the extent that he himself becomes frozen, forgetting, almost
to keep himself aloft.32 Thus, through her beauty, Andromeda acts as a sort of Medusa, turning
Perseus from an effective hero into a man frozen. Her body holds his gaze, even as her eyes
reject engagement. Reciprocal engagement is here generated not through simultaneous sensorial
interplays but through the mediation of the body. If Andromeda is a statue, then perhaps she has
carved herself.
This is the paradox of dressing. For, as the body is mediated and as the form is constructed
for external interpretations, the subject intentionally crafts himself or herself as an object in a
process that is underscored by the nature of viewing and viewership. Yet, even as sight generates
the other through the act of objectification, adornments produce the opportunity to exert agency,
to deliberately emphasize one of a set of intersectional identities by choice, as it is most useful
to the subject. Adornments allow the wearer to direct the eye of the viewer, casting the wearer
in the role of an artist, deliberately altering perceptions through the manipulation of material,
while simultaneously reinforcing the body’s perceptive capacities in a manner that defies attempts
to render bodies as stone – as fully other. Indeed, in this delicate equation, perception is key.
Adornments offer the opportunity not only to play upon the viewer’s expectations but also to
reinforce a wearer’s physical and mental boundaries through multi-sensorial engagements.
Thus bracelets, such as those worn by Andromeda, serve not only as bonds but as boundaries,
boundaries that, by virtue of both their circularity and the rigidity of their materials, are less
negotiable than the ephemeral constructs with which they intersect. While such bracelets, like
chains, might recall both servitude and social prestige, when worn, their weight provides a persistent
reminder of the space of the body for the wearer.33 As they press against the skin, they can refine
the habitual actions of the body they help to fashion. For free persons, the ability to choose which
adornments to wear is itself a sign of agency, of an individual’s capacity to craft and maintain the
edges of their bodily space. As much as the sheen of adornments can hold the gaze, the weight of
adornments substantiates the body.
Such multi-sensorial potentials are made apparent through the depiction of another type of
adornment associated with Andromeda in the House of the Dioscuri. For together with her
bracelets, Andromeda also wears a pair of earrings. While their small size in the depiction makes

30
Ovid, Met. 4.672-75.
31
Salzman-Mitchell, Web of Fantasies, 78–9, 82–4.
32
Ov. Met. 4.675-77.
33
For more on the haptics of adornment, see McFerrin, ‘The Tangible Self’, 240–1; for comments on adornments as markers
of servitude and status, see Alba Cappellieri, Catene: Gioielli fra Storia, Funzione e Ornamento (Milan: Silvana Editoriale,
2018), 7.
226 DRESS IN MEDITERRANEAN ANTIQUITY

these adornments more difficult to analyse, several clearly articulated components are visible. Two
rounded attachments link the central gold pendant to the attachment that joins the earring to the
ear. Beneath the central pendant dangles a smaller component, possibly an elongation of the form
above, possibly a separate bead. Such earrings are attested in the material record of the period, such
as in a gold and pearl example now housed in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (Figure 17.5). The
multiple component pieces suggest that the earring could function similarly to the more famous
crotalia. Composed of a set of pearls, suspended from a gold bar, the name of this type of earring
refers to the noise that the pearls make when they knock against each other. Described by Pliny
the Elder as a woman’s lictors, such jewellery – jewellery with movable parts – can draw attention
through sound.34 While they are not likely to be extremely loud, the sound of multiple jangling

FIGURE 17.5 Gold earring with pearl pendant, first century BCE to second century CE,
Metropolitan Museum of Art 74.51.3793 Photo: Metropolitan Museum of Art Open Access for
Scholarly Content (OASC).

34
Pliny, Nat. 9.61.
ANDROMEDA UNBOUND 227

earrings, bangles and embellishments could speak for the wearer, interjecting into spaces in which
she herself is silent. Reciprocity is once again key. While Ovid’s Andromeda is made other by
stillness, by her lack of interactivity with her environment, the adornments worn by her depicted
counterpart offers another avenue for assertion.
Sight both depends upon and generates distance, while touch and sound are made more potent
by proximity. This was no less true for living visitors to the House of the Dioscuri than for their
depicted counterparts. While a visitor to the house was aware of the correspondence between her
dress and the dress of women depicted in the space, she could not see the connections between her
form and those alongside her until her form was projected outwards, shadowed on walls or reflected
in the water of the peristyle basin. It is through such an outward projection that subject and object
are elided. Such slippage between subject and object is intertwined into the narratives that the piers
of the peristyle display. As Perseus deploys the head of Medusa, he separates those turned to stone
from the possibility of reciprocal perception. While the processes of perceiving a statue and another
human are essentially the same, and while our sensorial experiences of walls and humans are in
many ways similar, reciprocal perception is possible only with other cognizant entities.
Andromeda highlights such reciprocality through her body and, in the House of the Dioscuri,
through her adornments. Indeed, her equation with Perseus may be stronger than previously
articulated, if we return once more to her earrings. The composition of her earrings mirrors the
shape of Andromeda herself. The two rounded attachments at the top of the earring double the knot
of hair atop Andromeda’s head, the round central pendant references the shape of her face and the
dangling lower bead mimics the long line of her neck. These earrings may do more than reference
a head; they may take the shape of a head. Such earrings were not unknown in South Italy, as an
example from Taranto can illustrate (Figure 17.6). Such these earrings offer commentary upon the
nature of adornment itself.

FIGURE 17.6 Spiral earring with head pendants, Taranto, 350–320 BCE, British Museum 1872,
0604.487 Photo: © The Trustees of the British Museum.
228 DRESS IN MEDITERRANEAN ANTIQUITY

When Perseus takes up the head of Medusa, it is an explicit weapon. The juxtaposition of Medusa’s
head with the potential shapes of Andromeda’s jewellery, and with Medea’s weapon, all invite us
to think about modes of imposing one’s will onto one’s environment. Medea, rendered powerless
by convention, takes up a sword. Perseus slays a Gorgon and adopts her power. Andromeda adorns
herself; her adornments allow her to interact with her world. Indeed, it is perhaps no accident that
Andromeda’s hairstyle references the two attachments of her earrings. She is her own weapon, and
her abilities are reinforced, rather than undermined, by the jewellery that adorns her.
This jewellery reinforces Andromeda’s presence to both others and herself. It is in the engagement
of multiple senses, in moving beyond sight, that we can begin to consider how Andromeda
participates in reciprocal interactions and how the women who inhabit the space of the house
alongside her might have understood the relationships between their adornments and their bodies.
For this portion of the house is a multi-sensory interactive space, inviting visitors to think about
interfaces between their experience of the space of the house and the environments depicted within
the images around them. The splash of water in the large basin and fountain situated just beyond the
decorative pilasters on which Andromeda and Medea are situated would have enlivened the world
of the depiction, doubling the sounds of the water lapping against the rock where Andromeda was
kept captive. The space, with its interest in this multi-sensory engagement, invites us to conflate the
physical with the depicted.
Just as Andromeda’s adornments allow her to interject herself into her environment, providing
a means of interaction that might otherwise be denied to her, the sound of moving parts and the
weight of metal, stone and glass, with their rigid forms, enable individuals to continually assert
presence within their environments and within their bodies. We constitute ourselves – to the
outside world and on our own behalf – through our adornments.
 CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

On the Ambivalent Signification

of Roman Crowns
ANDREW GALLIA

For the outsider seeking to understand the customs of another culture, moments of refusal provide
an opportunity to gain insight into the meanings that participants assigned to certain behaviours.
Because the normative logic of ‘common sense’ tends to operate without explanation when actions
are familiar, routine actions are often among the most elusive objects of scholarly analysis.1
When the unspoken assumptions that underlie such conventions are challenged, however, these
justifications are more likely to be forced out into the open, sometimes revealing critical fault lines
and even contradictions within a community’s understanding of its own traditions.
In this chapter, I consider two such moments of refusal, in which some form of crown or wreath
was rejected by its intended wearer. My goal is to better understand the significance that Romans
attached to the custom of adorning their heads in this manner. The first instance, still familiar to
audiences of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, is the dictator’s refusal of the diadem presented to him
at the Lupercalia in the month before his assassination. The other case involves an anonymous
Christian soldier, whose refusal to place a laurel wreath on his own head during the celebration
of an imperial donative provided the impetus for Tertullian’s treatise On the Crown (De corona).
Taken together, these episodes offer an expansive, though not exhaustive, framework for thinking
about the ways in which certain styles of headgear were used to articulate aspects of personal status
in Roman culture.

CAESAR’S CROWNS
Julius Caesar’s rejection of some form of crown at the Lupercalia festival on February 15, 44 BCE,
is perhaps the most familiar, and consequently the most disputed, act of refusal in Roman history.2
The offer and rejection of this crown are recorded by multiple ancient authorities, all of whom
regarded this as an essential moment in the sequence of events leading up to Caesar’s assassination

1
Pierre Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977), 78–95; Jürgen Habermas,
The Theory of Communicative Action, Volume One: Reason and the Rationalization of Society, trans. Thomas McCarthy
(Boston: Beacon Press, 1984), 102–41.
2
Noteworthy recent discussions include J. A. North, ‘Caesar at the Lupercalia’, JRS 98 (2008): 144–60, T. Peter Wiseman,
Remembering the Roman People (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 170–5, Trevor S. Luke, Ushering in a New
Republic: Theologies of Arrival at Rome in the First Century BCE (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2014), 118–39,
T. V. Buttrey, ‘Caesar at Play: Some Preparations for the Parthian Campaign, 44 BCE’, JAH 3 (2015): 240–1. Stefan
Weinstock, Divus Julius (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971), 331–40, is still essential reading.
230 DRESS IN MEDITERRANEAN ANTIQUITY

the following month.3 If we set aside minor differences of detail and interpretation, these accounts
can be made to coalesce into a more or less consistent narrative. It seems that Caesar had installed
himself in a prominent position in the Forum Romanum to watch the procession of semi-naked
luperci, the religious revellers whose antics comprised the central focus of the festival. Among these
luperci was Caesar’s fellow consul Mark Antony, who at some point attempted to place a diadem
on Caesar’s head. Caesar refused, despite repeated attempts, and ultimately sent the crown to be
dedicated in the temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus instead.
The issue on which our sources diverge most significantly concerns the role of the crowd in what
transpired, which has bearing on how Caesar’s motivations are interpreted. In the course of his
diatribe against Antony in the Second Philippic, Cicero claims that the appearance of the diadem
sent a groan through the ‘entire forum’. He contrasts the crowd’s responses to Antony, who was
‘imparting the diadem with the lamentation of the people’, and Caesar, who ‘rejected it with their
applause’.4 Although Cicero dances around the question of Caesar’s foreknowledge of Antony’s
designs, he suggests that the whole scene had been planned as a royal coronation, but then Caesar
was compelled to change course in response to the public outcry this gesture provoked. Nicolaus
of Damascus, on the other hand, says that it was the crowd of onlookers who initially called for
the diadem to be placed upon Caesar’s head, and that after he rejected it, ‘those in the very back
applauded, while those nearby shouted for him to take it and not cast aside a gift from the people’.5
By assigning the primary impetus for Antony’s actions to the people, this account suggests a more
principled act of renunciation on Caesar’s part.
Without reopening the question of Caesar’s true motives, it is clear how much depended upon
the symbolic power of the ornament that Antony was attempting to bestow upon his colleague. The
diadem (diadema, from the Greek verb διαδέω, ‘tie around’) was a simple strip of cloth wrapped
over the hairline and knotted at the back of the head, which had come to be a widely recognized
marker of kingship in the wake of the conquests of Alexander the Great.6 The convention of
Hellenistic monarchs wearing the diadem is illustrated endlessly in the royal portraiture of this
period, exemplified for our purposes by a tetradrachm of Antiochus III (Figure 18.1). Although not
native to the Roman iconographic tradition, the diadem shows up in coin portraits of the legendary
kings Numa and Ancus beginning in 88 BCE, which suggests that Roman viewers were generally
familiar with this form of crown as a shorthand for royal authority by that time.7 The importance of
the headband’s connection with royalty is underscored by Caesar’s statement, recorded by Cassius
Dio, that ‘Jupiter is the only king of the Romans’, which accompanied his order to send the rejected
diadem to be dedicated in that god’s temple on the Capitolium.8 To accept the diadem would have
been a clear sign that Caesar wanted to be king.

3
Cicero, Phil. 2.85-86; Livy, Per. 116; Velleius Paterculus, 2.56.4; Nicolaus of Damascus, 71–3; Suetonius, Iul. 79.2;
Plutarch, Caes. 61, Ant. 12; Cassius Dio, 44.11; Appian, B. Civ. 2.109; [Aur. Vict.], De vir. ill. 85.1.
4
Cicero, Phil. 2.85: tu diadema imponebas cum plangore populi, ille cum plausu reiciebat. Cf. Plutarch, Caes. 61.4.
5
Nicolaus of Damascus, 72: βοῶντος δὲ τοῦ δημοῦ ἐπὶ τὴν κεφαλὴν τίθεσθαι … καὶ οἱ μὲν τελευταῖοι ἐκρότησαν ἐπὶ τούτῷ, οἱ
δὲ πλησίον ἐβόων δέχεσθαι καὶ μὴ διωθεῖσθαι τὴν τοῦ δημοῦ χάριν.
6
Hans-Werner Ritter, Diadem und Konigsherrschaft: Untersuchungen zu Zeremonien und Rechtsgrundlagen des
Herrschaftsantritts bei den Persern, bei Alexander dem Großen und im Hellenismus (Munich: C. H. Beck, 1965).
7
RRC 346/1, also 424/1, 446/1 and RIC I2 71–2, 390–9. See also Andreas Alföldi, Caesar in 44 v. Chr. Band I: Studien zu
Caesars Monarchie und ihren Wurzeln (Bonn: Rudolf Habelt GMBH, 1985), 127–31. Although Pliny the Elder refers to the
statues of the kings on the Capitol as early evidence for the wearing of rings by Numa and Servius Tullius (NH 33.9, 24),
none of the literary accounts of these monuments mentions a diadem or crowns of any sort.
8
Cassius Dio, 44.11.3: ‘Ζεὺς μόνος τῶν Ῥωμαίων βασιλεὺς εἴη’.
ON THE AMBIVALENT SIGNIFICATION OF ROMAN CROWNS 231

FIGURE 18.1 Seleucid tetradrachm with obverse portrait of King Antiochus III wearing a diadem.
British Museum (HPB, p150.1.C). Photo: © The Trustees of the British Museum.

The special significance of the diadem as distinct from other types of crowns is highlighted by
the fact that Caesar was already wearing a wreath-crown (Latin corona, Greek stephanos) when
this new symbol of authority was offered to him. As Cicero describes the scene, Caesar was sitting
on the rostra ‘clad in a purple toga, on a golden chair, crowned’ when Antony approached him.9
The historian Cassius Dio specifies that this crown was made of gold. He also describes Caesar’s
garments as ‘kingly’, while Plutarch says that he was done up in ‘triumphal adornment’.10 This
divergence in terminology probably stems from the belief among some ancient writers that the
costume of an embroidered purple cloak, gold crown and ivory sceptre worn by Roman generals
in the triumphal procession had its origins in the attire of the Etruscan kings.11 Although this claim
has figured prominently in more recent debates about Caesar’s monarchical ambitions, we should
not lose sight of the fact that it was the diadem itself that prompted an uproar, and not the gold
crown or purple cloak, which Caesar already had on when he arrived at the Lupercalia. Although
the so-called triumphal ornaments (ornamenta triumphalia) were sometimes granted as gifts to
friendly foreign kings, the Roman people were long accustomed to seeing the magistrates of their
own Republic wearing these items and thus did not necessarily associate this ensemble exclusively
(or even primarily) with monarchy.12
Although the golden crown that Caesar was wearing at the Lupercalia is best understood as part
of the overall gestalt of this triumphal costume, its significance is also intertwined with the much

9
Cicero, Phil. 2.85: sedebat in rostris collega tuus amictus toga purpurea, in sella aurea, coronatus.
10
Cassius Dio, 44.11.2: τῇ τε ἐσθῆτι τῇ βασιλικῇ κεκοσμημένος. Plutarch, Caes. 61.3: θριαμβικῷ κόσμῳ κεκοσμημένος.
11
Dionysius of Halicarnassus, AR 3.61.3, 3.62.2; cf. 2.34.2-3. See K. Kraft, ‘Der goldene Krans Caesars und der Kampf um
die Entlarvung des “Tyrannen”’, JNG 3/4 (1955): 7–97, Weinstock, Divus Julius, 68–74, 270–6; see also Mary Beard, The
Roman Triumph (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007), 225–33.
12
Cf. Livy, 30.15.11, Dionysius of Halicarnassus, AR 5.35.1. The fact that triumphal insignia continued to be awarded
to generals from outside the imperial family following the institution of the Principate (Aline Boyce, ‘The Origin of the
Ornamenta Triumphalia’, CP 37 [1942]: 130–41) undercuts the position of those who regard Caesar’s adoption of this
costume as a royal affectation.
232 DRESS IN MEDITERRANEAN ANTIQUITY

more widespread custom of using crowns as emblems of honour in the ancient Mediterranean.13
Both leafy and precious metal crowns were regularly bestowed upon individuals in recognition of
meritorious service by the city-states of the Greek world. Such awards were so common, in fact,
that the verb for the act of crowning, στεφανόω, could be used to describe the granting of honours
more generally, even when the prize was something other than a crown, such as a statue.14 This
elision of meanings between crowning and honouring also worked its way into the language of the
visual arts, as scenes portraying the bestowal of a crown (typically by a god or goddess on behalf of
the community) became common in the figural reliefs that decorated the upper frame of the stelai
on which honorific decrees were inscribed in Athens. These scenes do not necessarily depend upon
a reference to the awarding of a crown in the accompanying inscription. They reflect instead the
logic of a metaphorical commonplace, in which the awarding of honours was so closely linked with
the act of crowning as to be conceptually interchangeable with it.15
The parallels for these scenes that one finds in Roman art (e.g. Figure 18.2) often involve the
placing of a crown by a winged Victory, owing to the fact that the most important context in
which honorific crowns were bestowed in Roman culture centred on military success.16 Already
in the second century BCE, Polybius commends the Roman practice of having generals present
crowns and other prizes for valour, describing this as a noble way to encourage new recruits to
face the dangers of battle.17 As with priestly crowns and those associated with particular religious
observances, the use of different materials provided the primary means by which these military
crowns were associated with particular achievements or acts of bravery. Although the basis for
such conventions attracted a considerable amount of antiquarian scholarly interest, attempts to
explain the rationale for using particular types of foliage did not tend to get very far. The lack of
clarity can be seen, for example, in Plutarch’s account of the various theories circulating around
the use of oak:
‘Why do they give an oak crown to one who has saved the life of a citizen in war?’ Is it because oak is
easily found everywhere on campaign? Or is it because this crown is sacred to Zeus and Hera, whom
they consider the guardians of the city? Or is it an ancient custom of the Arcadians, who have some

13
On the importance of gestalt in the interpretation of dress, see Joanne B. Eicher and Mary Ellen Roach-Higgins, ‘Definition
and Classification of Dress: Implications of Analysis of Gender-Roles’, in Dress and Gender: Making and Meaning in Cultural
Contexts, ed. Ruth Barnes and Joanne B. Eicher (New York: Berg, 1992), 12–13, Grant McCracken, ‘Clothing as Language:
An Object Lesson in the Study of the Expressive Properties of Material Culture’, in Material Anthropology: Contemporary
Approaches to Material Culture, ed. Barrie Reynolds and Margaret A. Stott (Lanham, MD: University Press of America,
1987), 114–15.
14
For example, IG 9.12 4.1244 (= 9.1 539): εἰκόνι καὶ πίστει καὶ φιλίᾳ στεφανοῖ (‘Leukas … crowns him with a statue, loyalty,
and friendship’). Jon Ma, Statues and Cities: Honorific Portraits and Civic Identity in the Hellenistic World (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2013), 32–8. See also Alan S. Henry, Honours and Privileges in Athenian Decrees: The Principal Formulae
of Athenian Honorary Decrees (Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1983), 22–44, Blech, Studien zum Kranz bei den Griechen (Berlin:
De Gruyter, 1982), 153–62.
15
For example, SEG 12.87. Marion Meyer, Die Griechischen Urkundenreliefs (Berlin: Gebr. Mann, 1989), 132–40, Carol L.
Lawton, Attic Document Reliefs: Art and Politics in Ancient Athens (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), 30–1.
16
Valerie A. Maxfield, The Military Decorations of the Roman Army (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981), Paul
Steiner, ‘Die Dona Militaria’, Bonner Jahrbücher 114 (1906): 1–98. Victory: RRC 44/1 and passim (‘Victoriatus’ coinages),
421/1; also Diana E. E. Kleiner, Roman Sculpture (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992), 187, cf. 71, 153; Birgit
Bergmann, Der Kranz des Kaisers: Genese und bedeutung einer römischen Insignie (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2010), 322, cf.
327–33.
17
Polybius, 6.39, cf. Onasander 34.3.
ON THE AMBIVALENT SIGNIFICATION OF ROMAN CROWNS 233

FIGURE 18.2 Marble relief from the Sebasteion of Aphrodisias depicting Agrippina the Younger,
in the guise of Concordia, crowning Nero with a laurel wreath. Aphrodisias Museum. Artist: Ethan
Henkel.

kind of kinship with oak? For they are believed to have been the first men born from the earth, just
as the oak was the first plant.18

The only thing certain, in principal at least, was that this oak crown (known as the corona civica)
was reserved for Roman soldiers who had saved the life of another citizen in battle.
When one looks more closely into the history of these crowns, however, it becomes clear that
even such straightforward definitions were subject to interpretation and therefore more fluid than
they might first appear. Long before Polybius wrote in praise of the use of crowns as a means
of fostering military valour, Cato the Elder had lambasted the commander Fulvius Nobilior for
granting these awards indiscriminately in order to curry favour with his troops.19 Rather than a tidy
set of regulations, the chapter on military crowns in Aulus Gellius’s Attic Nights presents the reader
with a litany of disputes and contestations through which the criteria for awarding these honours
were scrutinized and/or expanded through political maneuvering.20 When M. Crassus resented
being limited to an ovation (a kind of second-tier triumph) for his victory over Spartacus, for
example, he refused to wear the myrtle corona ovalis traditionally associated with this ceremony

18
Plutarch, Mor. 286a (RQ 92): ‘Διὰ τί τῷ σώσαντι πολίτην ἐν πολέμῳ δρύινον διδόασι στέφανον’; Πότερον ὅτι πανταχοῦ καὶ
ῥᾳδίως ἔστιν εὐπορῆσαι δρυὸς ἐπὶ στρατείας; Ἢ ὅτι Διὸς καὶ Ἥρας ἱερὸς ὁ στέφανός ἐστιν, οὓς πολιούχους νομίζουσιν; Ἢ παλαιὸν
ἀπ᾿ Ἀρκάδων τὸ ἔθος, οἷς ἔστι τις συγγένεια πρὸς τὴν δρῦν; πρῶτοι γὰρ ἀνθρώπων γεγονέναι δοκοῦσιν ἐκ γῆς, ὥσπερ ἡ δρῦς τῶν
φυτῶν. Cf. Pliny, Nat. 16.11-14; Gellius, N.A. 5.6.11-14. Ancient uncertainty about the meaning of particular plants has not
dissuaded modern researchers from pursuing their own theories: Germaine Guillaume-Coirier, ‘Les couronnes militaires
végétales à Rome. Vestiges indoeuropéens et croyances archaïques’, RHR 210 (1993): 387–411.
19
Cato, ORF 151 (ap. Gellius, N.A. 5.6.25).
20
Gellius, N.A. 5.6.
234 DRESS IN MEDITERRANEAN ANTIQUITY

and instead obtained a special senatorial decree allowing him to wear the laurel crown of the
triumph instead.21 A special senatorial decree was also proposed to the effect that Cicero should be
awarded the oak corona civica for his role in suppressing the Catilinarian conspiracy, even though
he had not taken part in any actual combat.22
A similar proposal was among the long list of honours enacted to honour Julius Caesar following
his victory over Sextus Pompey in 46 BCE, which included statues of Caesar wearing both the oak
corona civica and the grass corona obsidionalis (traditionally awarded for rescuing a camp or city
under siege) in addition to the privilege of attending religious ceremonies (such as the Lupercalia) and
games in triumphal dress.23 The last of these awards, which had previously been granted to Pompey
the Great, is significant in that it did not involve altering the requirements necessary for obtaining
the award in question.24 Caesar had already celebrated a quadruple triumph over Gaul, Egypt,
Pontus and Africa and thus had already ‘earned’ the privilege of wearing the triumphal costume.25
What this decree did instead was to expand the time frame in which these military decorations
could be worn by permitting Caesar to continue to wear these insignia in certain contexts after his
triumph was over. A separate award entitled him to wear a laurel wreath at all times.26
Because of the special honour conferred by the wearing of crowns, this activity was a jealously
guarded privilege within Roman society. Pliny the Elder could point to specific cases in which
men were imprisoned for the unlicensed wearing of crowns in public.27 In general, crowns could
be worn by appropriate persons on certain occasions but not outside of those specified contexts.
The triumph was such an occasion.28 As part of the ritual procession that followed the successful
conclusion of a military campaign, every soldier would be crowned in laurel, and those who had
received additional awards could wear those decorations during the parade as well.29 In addition to
his special tunic, purple toga and ivory staff, the commander would also be marked out by a crown
of gold, sometimes referred to as an Etruscan crown (corona Etrusca), which was held over his
head by a slave who stood behind him on his chariot.30 The slave’s role is sometimes attributed to
the weight of the crown, but it more probably reflects the importance of the act of crowning itself,
which through the slave’s gesture would have been made to last throughout the procession, making

21
Gellius, N.A. 5.6.23, cf. Pliny, Nat. 15.126, Dionysius of Halicarnassus, A.R. 5.46.3. Jean-Luc Bastien, Le Triomphe
Romain et son utilisation politique à Rome aux trois derniers siècles de la république, CEFR 392 (Rome: École Française de
Rome, 2007), 270.
22
Gellius, N.A. 5.6.15, cf. Cicero, Pis. 6. Bergmann, Der Kranz des Kaisers,192–4.
23
Appian, B.C. 2.106, Cassius Dio, 44.4.5. Weinstock, Divus Julius, 148–52, 163–7, Bergmann, Der Kranz des Kaisers,
189–91, 197. The grass crown had previously been granted by public decree to Fabius Maximus (Gellius, N.A. 5.6.10) and
Sulla (Pliny, Nat. 22.12).
24
Vellius Paterculus, 2.40.4, Cassius Dio, 37.21.4. Beard, The Roman Triumph, 30–1.
25
Suetonius, Jul. 37, Plutarch, Caes. 55. Carsten Hjort Lange, ‘Triumph and Civil War in the Late Republic’, PBSR 81
(2013): 75–7.
26
Suetonius, Jul. 45.2, Cassius Dio, 43.43.1.
27
Pliny, Nat. 21.8, Germaine Guillaume-Coirier, ‘En prison pour une couronne de fleurs (Pline l’Ancien, NH XXI, 8-9)’,
Latomus 69 (2010): 778–91.
28
See, in general, H. S. Versnel, Triumphus: An Inquiry into the Origin, Development and Meaning of the Roman Triumph
(Leiden: Brill, 1970), Bastien, Le Triomphe Romain, Beard, The Roman Triumph, Ida Östenberg, Staging the World: Spoils,
Captives, and Representations in the Roman Triumphal Procession (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009).
29
Appian, Pun. 6.6, Polybius, 6.39.9. Bastien, Le Triomphe Romain, 257–8. The wearing of laurel crowns by soldiers at the
celebration of an imperial donative (Tertullian, Cor. 1.1, below) is presumably an extrapolation from triumphal practice.
30
Pliny, Nat. 33.11, cf. Tertullian, Cor. 13.1. Ann Kuttner, Dynasty and Empire in the Age of Augustus: The Case of the
Boscoreale Cups (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), 145.
ON THE AMBIVALENT SIGNIFICATION OF ROMAN CROWNS 235

it possible for every spectator to witness the general’s moment of glory.31 Once the ceremony was
over, however, all of the crowns and awards were put away, hung up in a conspicuous place in
the houses of their recipients, whereupon they ceased to function as articles of dress and became
instead monuments, or ‘symbols and testimonies of each man’s virtue’, as Polybius describes them.32

CAESAR AND THE DIADEM

For the purpose of most discussions, the implications of the diadem, as distinct from the wreath-like
corona Caesar was already wearing as part of his triumphal insignia, are straightforward enough.
In the context of a volume devoted to dress, however, there is a further complication that calls out
for closer attention. While every ancient discussion of these events mentions the diadem or at least
its regal implications, uncertainty remains concerning the manner in which this marker of regal
status was offered to Caesar. Cicero and most of the other sources give the impression that Antony
presented the diadem on its own.33 However, Nicolaus of Damascus (who also attributes the initial
presentation of the diadem to an otherwise unattested ‘Licinius’) describes a ‘laurel crown, on
which a diadem was clearly visible all around’.34 Plutarch also says that Antony offered Caesar ‘a
diadem woven around a crown of laurel’.35 This description is echoed in Suetonius’s and Appian’s
accounts of a separate attempt to implicate Caesar with kingship, in which a ‘laurel crown bound
up with white bands’ was placed on one of the statues of the dictator.36 In this latter case, Nicolaus
is among the ranks of those who only mention a diadem, explaining ‘the Romans regarded this with
great suspicion, supposing it (sc. the diadem) to be an indicator of slavery’.37
It was not unheard of for the royal diadem to be combined with other forms of headgear in
other contexts. According to Xenophon, the Achaemenid kings of Persia wore a diadem wrapped
around the Median tiara.38 Alexander regularly wore the diadem wrapped around his kausia, a floppy

31
Cf. Richard Brilliant, Gesture and Rank in Roman Art: The Use of Gestures to Denote Status in Roman Sculpture and
Coinage (New Haven: Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences, 1963), 73, on the depiction of this ‘incoronate gesture’
in the visual arts.
32
Polybius, 6.39.10: σημεῖα ποιούμενοι καὶ μαρτύρια τῆς ἑαυτῶν ἀρετῆς. T. Peter Wiseman, ‘Conspicui postes tectaque digna
deo: The Public Image of Aristocratic and Imperial Houses in the Late Republic and Early Empire’, in L’Urbs: éspace urbain
et histoire (Ier siècle av. J.-C. – IIIe siècle ap J.-C.) (Rome: École française de Rome, 1987), 393–413.
33
Cicero, Phil. 2.85, Livy, Per. 116, Suetonius, Iul. 79.2, Cassius Dio, 44.11.2. Velleius Paterculus refers ambiguously to
‘royal insignia’ (2.56.4: insigne regium).
34
Nicolaus of Damascus, 71: … δάφνινον στέφανον, ἐντὸς δὲ διάδημα περιφαινόμενον. On the figure of Licinius, Mark Toher,
Nicolaus of Damascus: The Life of Augustus and the Autobiography (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), 306–7,
suggests he may have been the conspirator L. Cornelius Cinna instead.
35
Plutarch, Caes. 61.3: διάδημα στεφάνῳ δάφνης περιπεπλεγμένον. This complication appears to have made an impression on
Shakespeare, who has Casca prevaricate, ‘yet ’twas not a crown / neither, ’twas one of these coronets’ (Julius Caesar I.2.236-
7). The Elizabethans, of course, had their own notions about what constituted a royal crown.
36
Suetonius, Jul. 79.1: coronam lauream cadida fascia praeligatam; Appian, B. Civ. 2.108: ἐστεφάνωσε δάφναις, ἀναπεπλεγμένης
ταινίας λευκῆς.
37
Nicolaus of Damascus, 69: ὑπόπτως δὲ πάνυ πρός αὐτό ἔχουσι Ῥωμαῖοι δουλείας οἰόμενοι εἶναι σύμβολον; cf. Plutarch, Caes.
61.4, Cassius Dio, 44.9.2, also Plutarch, Ti. Gracch. 19.2.
38
Xenophon, Cyr. 8.3.13, cf. Suetonius, Nero 13.2. Hans-Werner Ritter, Diadem und Königsherrschaft 31–55, Josef
Wiesehöfer, ‘Das Diadem bei den Achaimeniden: die schriftliche Überlieferung’, in Das Diadem der hellenistischen
Herrscher, ed. A. Lichtenberger, K. Martin, H.-H. Nieswandt and D. Salzmann (Bonn: Habelt-Verlag, 2012), 55–62. The
role of diadems in the royal insignia of the Achaemenids was in fact more complex than this. See Alföldi, Caesar in 44 v. Chr.
Band I, 108–11, Wouter Henkelman, ‘The Royal Achaemenid Crown’, Archäologische Mitteilungen aus Iran 28 (1995–6):
275–93, Andrew W. Collins, ‘The Royal Costume and Insignia of Alexander the Great’, AJP 133 (2012): 383–5.
236 DRESS IN MEDITERRANEAN ANTIQUITY

Macedonian-style hat.39 There is even a precedent for the conjunction of the diadem with a laurel
wreath in portraits of the Pergamene king Philetairos on Attalid coins (although the strip of cloth is
sometimes identified by scholars as an honorific tainia, see below).40 The possible use of laurel at the
Lupercalia would presumably have been a local or personalized adaptation, however, insofar as the
laurel wreath had already been adopted by Caesar as a regular feature of his attire. Its inclusion does
not seem to have done anything to diminish the regal associations of the diadem itself, however. In
light of the profound political implications of this particular form of adornment, those writers who
neglect to mention the presence of a laurel wreath (if indeed there was one) at the Lupercalia can be
forgiven for focusing exclusively on the aspect of the crown that implied a monarchical role for Caesar.
The implications of the distinctive format of a diadem-wrapped laurel crown are nevertheless
worth pursuing. For one thing, the inclusion of laurel would render Caesar’s decision to repurpose
this crown as a dedication to Jupiter Optimus Maximus somewhat more comprehensible, because
the wreath-like corona was already a traditional offering to this deity. Jupiter is regularly depicted
with a wreath of laurel on Roman coins, and his statue on the Capitolium was evidently adorned
with some form of corona as well.41 Dedications of crowns, when offered by Rome’s allies or
recently conquered subjects, were generally made of gold (and therefore functioned as a form of
tribute), although Gellius claims that these crowns were also originally fashioned out of laurel.42
Pliny the Elder confirms that laurel was the traditional offering presented to Jupiter Optimus
Maximus on the occasion of Roman military victories.43 While I know of no other case in which a
diadem on its own was said to have been dedicated on the Capitolium, in combination with a laurel
crown, this would become a more conventional offering for ‘Rome’s only king’.44
It is also possible that these accounts of a composite wreath-diadem have some bearing on the
style of crown subsequently adopted by Caesar’s heirs, the Roman emperors. Silver coins minted in
the East sometime around 39 BCE depict Mark Antony with a Dionysian crown of ivy, with strips of
fabric hanging down at the back in a manner reminiscent of the ties of the Hellenistic royal diadem.45
Following the battle of Actium, Antony’s portrait was replaced by that of Octavian, who wears a laurel

39
Ephippus, FGrH 126 F 5 (ap. Ath., 12.537e-f); Pausanias ap. Eustath. 1399; Arrian, Anab. 7.22.2; cf. Plutarch, Ant. 54.5.
The combination of kausia with diadem also appears on the coinage of certain Bactro-Indian kings: BMC India 12 nn. 1-6;
see Bonnie M. Kingsley, ‘The Cap that Survived Alexander’, AJA 85 (1981): 39–46.
40
Ulla Westermark, Das Bildnis des Philetairos von Pergamon (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1960), 21–2, 55, BMC Mysia
116–18, nn. 35–46, 48–53. I am grateful to Eric Kondratieff for bringing these coins to my attention.
41
RRC 44/1, 89/1-98/1, 348/1, 398/1, etc. Plautus, Tri. 83–85, Men. 941.
42
Gellius, NA 5.6.5-7, cf. Servius, Aen. 8.721, Livy, 2.22.6, 3.57.7, etc. See in general T. Klauser, ‘Aurum Coronarium’,
MDAIR 59 (1944): 129–53. Bergmann (Der Kranz des Kaisers, 41–7) argues that the practice of awarding crowns of gold
was introduced from the Greek world as a consequence of Roman conquests in the East: see, for example, Polybius, 20.12.1,
with F. W. Walbank, A Historical Commentary on Polybius, vol. III (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979), 86 ad loc.
43
Pliny, Nat. 15.134. This dedication was typically in the form of a branch, rather than a crown, however: Bergmann,
Der Kranz des Kaisers, 51, pace Georg Wissowa, Religion and Kultus der Römer, 2nd edition (Munich: Beck, 1912), 127,
Versnel, Triumphus, 70.
44
A limiting case might be provided by Plutarch, Luc. 28.5-6, in which the diadem of Tigranes, which had been entrusted
to a slave who was captured following the battle of Tigranocerta, is said to have become part of the spoils (αἰχμάλωτον) of
that campaign and thus potentially part of some triumphal dedication. Cf. North (‘Caesar at the Lupercalia’, 158), who
interprets the diadem of the Lupercalia not in terms of kingship but rather as a marker of Caesar’s divinity.
45
RPC I 2201. Further evidence for Antony’s use of the diadem in the East is discussed by David Biedermann, ‘Trug Marc
Aton ein Diadem?’ in Das Diadem der hellenistischen Herrscher, 425–48. Assuming that a diadem is depicted on these coins,
the Dionysian associations of ivy (on which, Dietrich Mannsperger, ‘Apollon gegen Dionysos: Numismatische Beiträge zu
Octavians Rolle als Vindex Libertatis’, Gymnasium 80 [1973]: 385, Blech, Studien zum Kranz, 185–209) might point to the
tradition whereby the diadem originated with this god: Pliny, Nat. 7.191, see below.
ON THE AMBIVALENT SIGNIFICATION OF ROMAN CROWNS 237

FIGURE 18.3 Cistophorus with obverse portrait of Octavian wearing laurel crown with fillets
hanging down behind his neck (RPC I 2203). Photo: Art Resource (ART307010).

wreath instead but with the same fillets dangling behind his neck (Figure 18.3).46 Thereafter, leafy
wreaths of laurel or oak with ribbons tied at the back become the characteristic form of crown worn in
depictions of the Roman emperors (Figure 18.4). This style of crown, sometimes greatly elaborated,
had its roots in traditional military honours as already discussed but attained a special status as a form
of monarchical insignia, providing a unique emblem of imperial authority until supplemented by the
widespread adoption of radiate, or ‘solar’, crowns by emperors in the third century CE.47
Whether the descriptions of the invidious symbol of monarchy in accounts of Caesar’s final months
as a diadem-entwined laurel wreath reflect an authentic forerunner of this style of imperial crown
or a retrojection of later developments in the fashion of Roman monarchs cannot be established
with certainty. More importantly, in the absence of clear testimony such as Cicero provides for
the Lupercalia, we cannot be certain that the strips of cloth incorporated into the structure of the
emperors’ wreaths were themselves a form of royal diadem at all. Multiple alternative explanations
for these ribbons are available for our consideration. In a section of his encyclopedic Natural History
devoted to a class of flowers dubbed coronamenta, Pliny the Elder discusses crowns wherein the
leaves were fashioned out of silver and gold, to which ribbons or bands (lemnisci) were introduced,
‘the addition of which contributed to the honour of the crowns themselves’.48

46
RPC I 2203 (= RIC I2 Augustus 476), datable to 28 BCE. See C. H. V. Sutherland, The Cistophoroi of Augustus (London:
Royal Numismatic Society, 1970), 12–14, 40. On the connection between these issues and their implications for an
opposition between Dionysus and Apollo, see Mannsperger, ‘Apollon’.
47
Paul Zanker, The Power of Images in the Age of Augustus, trans. Alan Shapiro (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press,
1990), 93, compares Augustus’s use of the oak corona civica, which Augustus received in 27 BCE, to the royal diadem:
‘By the addition of gems and fillets the simple wreath was turned into a kind of crown.’ See also Andreas Alföldi, Die
monarchische Repräsentation im römischen Kaiserreiche (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1977), 137–40.
Bergmann (Der Kranz des Kaisers, 154–8, 361–86) demonstrates that the bands (which she identifies as tainia, see below)
were initially absent from representations of this crown.
48
Pliny, Nat. 21.6: accesseruntque et lemnisci, quos adici ipsarum coronarum honor erat. Interestingly, no lemnisci are visible
in the portraits of Caesar wearing what Kraft (‘Der goldene’) argues is the golden crown (corona Etrusca), RRC 480/2-16.
This may lend credence to the arguments of Bergmann (Der Kranz des Kaisers, 119–34) that the crown represented is in fact
a grass crown (corona obsidionalis).
238 DRESS IN MEDITERRANEAN ANTIQUITY

FIGURE 18.4 Colossal portrait of the emperor Claudius wearing an oak crown (corona civica)
with fillets hanging down in back and draped along his shoulders, from Cerveteri. Vatican, Museo
Gregoriano Profano, inv. 9950. Photo: D-DAI-ROM-0337_A12.

Pliny goes on to mention the Etruscans, who he says attached lemnisci exclusively to crowns
of gold, but it is clear that ribbons and crowns could be combined in other contexts as well. For
example, Livy’s account of the joyous reaction to Flamininus’s announcement of the liberation of
Greece at the Isthmian games in 196 BCE involves the audience rushing forward to bestow coronae
and lemnisci upon the Roman general.49 Livy’s phrasing adheres closely to the Greek of Polybius,
who also describes the crowd as pelting Flamininus with stephanoi and lemniskoi. Comparison with
Appian’s account of the same events confirms that these ribbons might also be described as tainiai,
the headbands bestowed upon athletic victors in conjunction with the leafy wreaths that made up
the principal prizes of the major Panhellenic festivals.50 Scholarly uncertainty about whether the
bands intertwined with the laurel wreath in Philaeterios’s coin portraits represent a diadem or a

49
Livy, 33.33.2: turba … coronas lemniscosque iacientium.
50
Polybius, 18.46.12: οἱ δὲ πολλοὶ στεφάνους ἐπιρριπτοῦντες καὶ λημνίσκους; cf. Appian, Mac. 9.4: στεφάνους τε καὶ ταινίας
ἐπέβαλλον τῷ στρατηγῷ. Cf. Thucydides, 4.121.1, 5.50.4; Dio Chrysostom., 9.14. In a passing comment of the varieties of
Roman coronae, Servius defines ‘contest’ crowns in terms of their conjunction with ribbons (Aen. 6.772: agonales, id est
lemniscatae).
ON THE AMBIVALENT SIGNIFICATION OF ROMAN CROWNS 239

tainia has already been noted, and this is in fact the term that Appian used when describing the
fillet-wrapped laurel crown that had appeared on Caesar’s statue.51
Certainly the diadem was not the only form of headband known to inhabitants of the ancient
Mediterranean. In addition to athletic tainiai and lemnisci, there was also the mitra, a headband
associated with Bacchic revelry that was believed, like ivy wreaths and some other floral garlands,
to help stave off the headaches associated with heavy drinking. This was similar enough in form
to the diadem that Dionysus was also credited by some authorities as the inventor of both forms
of adornment.52 Add to these the Greek strophion, a twisted band of cloth worn by certain priests,
which on etymological grounds was sometimes conflated with the Latin stroppum, a simplified
form of floral wreath.53
Unlike with coronae, in which the use of leafy materials provided at least some semblance of
a framework for drawing distinctions between different types of wreaths, it is extraordinarily
difficult to correlate the terminological distinctions between these various ribbons and bands with
the distinctive physical form of these adornments.54 Servius’s account of the headgear worn for
certain Roman religious ceremonies is revealingly unhelpful in this regard:
infula: a band in the style of a diadem, from which vittae [another form of headband] hang down on
either side, which is generally wide and generally of woven strands of white and crimson.55

Reference to the width of the band and use of distinctive colours may seem promising, but the
repeated appearance of the qualifying adverb ‘generally’ (plerumque) does not inspire a high degree
of confidence in the usefulness of this information for establishing the difference between the
various adornments under discussion.56 More confounding still is Servius’s easy equation of the

51
Appian, B. Civ. 2.108: ἐστεφάνωσε δάφναις, ἀναπεπλεγμένης ταινίας λευκῆς. Note also Alföldi’s arguments (Caesar in 44 v.
Chr. Band I, 112–27), rejected by Hans-Werner Ritter, (‘Die Bedeutung des Diadems’, Historia 36 (1987): 290–301, but see
now Stephan Lehmann, ‘Sieger-Binden im agonistischen und monarchischen Kontext’, in Das Diadem der hellenistischen
Herrscher, ed. A. Lichtenberger, K. Martin, H.-H Nieswandt and D. Salzmann [Bonn: Habelt-Verlag, [2012], 181–208),
that the diadem was adapted from the athletic tainia. Bergmann (Der Kranz des Kaisers, 154–8, 283, 305, 309) identifies the
bands attached to the back of Augustus’s oak corona civica as tainia without explanation.
52
Diodorus Siculus, 4.4.4, Pliny, Nat. 7.191, emphasized by E. A. Fredricksmeyer, ‘The Origin of Alexander’s Royal
Insignia’, TAPA 127 (1997): 102–7. Ritter (‘Die Bedeutung’, 298) points out that the mitra was worn around the forehead,
whereas the diadem sat above the hairline. See now Kai Michael Meyer, ‘Die Binde des Dionysos als Vorbild für das
Königsdiadem?’, in Das Diadem der hellenistischen Herrscher, 209–31, also Collins, ‘The Royal Costume’, 381–2.
53
SIG 869.21, Festus 410 L, cf. Pliny, Nat. 21.3.
54
This is not to say that typological distinctions cannot be observed in the iconographic record, only that these distinctions
do not necessarily correspond to clearly delineated terminological divisions. For the former, see Antje Krug, Binden in der
griechischen Kunst: Untersuchungen zur Typologie (6-1.Jahr. v. Chr.) (PhD Diss., University of Mainz: Hösel, 1968), Dieter
Salzmann, ‘Anmerkungen zur Typologie des hellenistischen Königsdiadems und zu anderen herrscherlichen Kopfbinden’,
in Das Diadem der hellenistischen Herrscher, 337–83.
55
Servius, Aen. 10.538: infula: fascia in modum diadematis, a quo vittae ab utraque parte dependent, quae plerumque
lata (lana?) est, plerumque tortilis de albo et cocco. Cf. Festus 100 L. See Elaine Fantham, ‘Covering the Head at
Rome: Ritual and Gender’, in Roman Dress and the Fabrics of Roman Culture, ed. Jonathan Edmondson and Alison
Keith (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008), 163–6, and Olson, ‘Dress and Religion in Roman Antiquity’, this
volume.
56
Our evidence for the colour of the royal diadem is mixed: Alföldi, Caesar in 44 v. Chr. Band I, 111. Curtius Rufus, who
claims that Alexander adopted the diadem from Persian custom, describes it as ‘purple, set off by white’ (6.6.4: purpureum
diadema distinctum albo), but elsewhere describes Darius as wearing a crown adorned ‘with a blue band, set off by white’
(3.3.19: caerulia fascia albo distincta). Pausanias (ap. Eustath 1399) said that the diadem of the Macedonian kings was
white, however. The diadem-wrapped crown on Caesar’s statue involved simply a ‘white band’ (Suetonius, Iul. 79.1:
candida fascia; App., BC 2.108: ταινίας λευκῆς; cf. Valerius Maximus, 6.2.7).
240 DRESS IN MEDITERRANEAN ANTIQUITY

infula with the diadem. These two types of headband clearly had different uses and meanings, but
the degree of formal overlap seems to have done little to mitigate the potential for confusion.
I have thus far steered clear of the vittae, redimicula and the countless other forms of ribbons
and scarves that Roman women used to keep their hair in place in various contexts.57 However, an
image of a woman may serve to illustrate, in its own distinctive way, the nature of the difficulties we
face (Figure 18.5). On some of the silver denarii struck to pay Antony’s legions, Cleopatra’s portrait
appears with her hair neatly tied back in a bun at the nape of her neck, with a ribbon encircling
her head behind the hairline.58 The hairstyle and adornment are virtually indistinguishable from
depictions of other female figures on Roman coinage of the late Republic, such that it might be easy
to overlook the significance of the headband in this context.59 It is almost certainly a regal diadem,
however, as the coin’s legend identifies her as ‘Cleopatra, Queen of Kings and of the Sons of Kings’
(CLEOPATRAE REGINAE REGVM FILIORVM REGVM).60
Despite the apparent similarities in the iconography of portraits of Roman emperors and those
of diademed monarchs, we cannot say with confidence that the ribbons hanging down from the

FIGURE 18.5 Roman denarius with reverse image of Cleopatra wearing regal diadem (RRC
543/1) Photo: Art Resource (ART209512).

57
See, for example, Cato, FRH F 109; Varro, L. 5.130., Kelly Olson, ‘Matrona and Whore: The Clothing of Women in
Roman Antiquity’, Fashion Theory 6, no. 4 (2002): 392, Dress and the Roman Woman: Self-Presentation and Society
(London: Routledge, 2008), 36–9, 53–4. On the gendered significance of covering the hair in Roman culture, see Fantham,
‘Covering the Head at Rome’, 158–71, Andrew B. Gallia, ‘The Vestal Habit’, CP 109 (2014): 223–5.
58
RRC 543/1. Cf. RPC I 4094-4096, 4741-2, 4771. I thank Kelly Olson for encouraging me to address this use of the diadem.
59
Cf. RRC 481/1, 458/1 (Venus), 499/1 (Libertas), 440/1 (Fortuna). Cleopatra’s hairstyle is comparable to that of Octavia,
although the latter lacks a visible headband: RRC 527/1, RPC I 4088-90, 1453-1455, 1462-1464.
60
Hana Al Shafei, ‘The Crowns of Cleopatra VII: An Iconographical and Analytical Study’, Scientific Culture 2, no. 2
(2016): 36–7.
ON THE AMBIVALENT SIGNIFICATION OF ROMAN CROWNS 241

back of an emperor’s crown were a vestige of the royal diadem. They may instead have been
honorific lemnisci or perhaps some novel instantiation of the vittae that hung down from priestly
infulae in other contexts. The difficulty of establishing clearly defined physical criteria with which
to identify the nature of these ribbons suggests that this might not be the proper way to frame
the issue in the first place. Perhaps instead, the cultural meaning assigned to these various forms
of headgear depended as much on the social position of the person wearing them as it did on the
physical characteristics of the adornment itself.
An anecdote recorded by Valerius Maximus drives home the point:
When he (sc. Pompey the Great) had his leg bandaged with a white strip of cloth, Favonius said to
him, ‘it does not matter, on what part of the body the diadem may be’, thus rebuking his royal powers
with a joke about a mere rag. But by keeping an unaltered and impartial expression, he (Pompey) was
careful not to appear either to accept this implication willingly by smiling, or, with a gloomy look,
to express anger at it.61

The contrast with Caesar, who was forced to acknowledge the royal and therefore invidious
implications of the diadem when it was offered to him at the Lupercalia, is stark. By remaining
impassive, Pompey preserved a measure of ambiguity not only as to the meaning of the strip of
cloth tied around his leg but also about the nature of his position within Rome’s political order. To
put this another way, the material format of the diadem mattered less than the (imputed) intentions
of the wearer. The fact that we cannot find a definitive explanation for the strips of cloth that were
intertwined with the crowns of Augustus and his heirs is therefore unsurprising, given that the
position of the princeps was itself carefully fashioned to combine a manifest reality of monarchical
powers with the pretence of a ‘restored’ Republic.62

CHRISTIANS AND CROWNS

The other act of refusal for us to consider took place in a military camp at some point in the early
years of the third century CE, most likely in 211 or perhaps 208.63 In contrast to the abundance
of historical documentation available for Caesar’s refusal of the diadem, our knowledge of this
episode rests entirely upon the testimony of Tertullian’s contemporaneous account, which can be
quoted in full:
It recently happened that the largess of our most outstanding emperors was being distributed in the
camp. Laurel-decked soldiers were in attendance. Taking part there was one more steadfast as a
soldier of god than those other brothers, who presume that they can serve two masters. He was the
only one with a bare head, the unused crown in his hand. Having been revealed through this conduct
as a Christian, he stood out like a beacon. Then some pointed. Those at a distance mocked him; those
at closer range snarled at him. The grumbling was unrelenting. He was handed over to the tribune,
who was already advancing from the front of the line. The tribune immediately inquired, ‘why are

61
Valerius Maximus, 6.2.7: Cui candida fascia crus alligatum habenti Favonius ‘non refert’ inquit ‘qua in parte sit corporis
diadema’, exigui panni cavillatione regias ei vires exprobrans. at is neutra <m> in parte <m> mutato vultu utrumque cavit,
ne aut hilari fronte libenter agnoscere potentiam aut <tristi iram> profiteri videretur.
62
Andrew Wallace-Hadrill, ‘Civilis Princeps: Between Citizen and King’, JRS 72 (1982): 32–48; Andrew B. Gallia,
Remembering the Roman Republic: Culture, Politics, and History under the Principate (Cambridge: Cambridge, 2012),
29–32.
63
Timothy David Barnes, Tertullian: A Historical and Literary Study, rev. ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985), 37.
242 DRESS IN MEDITERRANEAN ANTIQUITY

you so different in your appearance?’ The soldier said that it was not permissible for him to be like
the others. Asked for his reasons, he replied, ‘I am a Christian.’64

As with Caesar’s actions at the Lupercalia, the meaning of the Christian soldier’s refusal to don his
laurel wreath is registered, and given meaning, by an assembled crowd of onlookers. His defiance
of the normative dress code on this occasion generates an uproar among the other soldiers. When
taken before the prefect of the camp, the soldier went on to strip off all of his military garb,
depositing his heavy cloak, uncomfortable scouting boots and sword along with the crown he was
holding on the ground. For this act of insubordination, he was led off to prison, where, according to
Tertullian, he awaited the ‘largess of Christ’, being ‘kept warm with the hope of his own bloodshed,
shod by the promise of the Gospel, girded with God’s sharper word, and armed entirely by the
apostle, that he might be crowned more favourably with the white laurel of a martyr’.65
Although Tertullian’s description of the negative reactions of the other soldiers reveals a great
deal about expectations of conformity within the ranks of the Roman military, it was the response of
other Christians that constitutes his primary concern in this work.66 The speaker sets out to defend
this soldier’s act of sartorial self-assertion against those who would accuse him of causing trouble
unnecessarily, deliberately courting martyrdom and placing his fellow Christians in danger.67 As
a meditation on norms of bodily adornment and how these can be used to articulate a distinctive
identity for Christians in a Roman world, On the Crown stands alongside a number of other works
by Tertullian, namely On the Pallium (de Pallio), On the Apparel of Women (de Cultu Feminarum
1 and 2) and On the Veiling of Virgins (de Virginibus Velandis), in which similar concerns are
repeatedly foregrounded.68
The arguments of the De corona are too varied to examine in their totality here, but the central
premise is that the wearing of a crown is fundamentally an idolatrous act and therefore represents
a form of conduct from which Christians must refrain. To support this claim, Tertullian adduces
the evidence of pagan literature (litterae saeculares) itself, including a monograph on the origins,
purposes and varieties of crowns by Claudius Saturninus, which he uses to demonstrate that ‘the
custom of the crowned head was established by, and then provided as an honour for, those whom
the pagan world believes to be gods’.69 In this regard, Tertullian aligns himself with the views of

64
Tertullian, Cor. 1.1-2: Proxime factum est: liberalitas praestantissimorum imperatorum expungebatur in castris, milites
laureati adibant. Adhibetur quidam illic magis dei miles ceteris constantior fratribus, qui se duobus dominis seruire posse
praesumpserant, solus libero capite, coronamento in manu otioso. Vulgato iam et ista disciplina Christiano, relucebat. Denique
singuli designare, eludere eminus, infrendere comminus. Continuo murmur: tribuno defertur et persona. Iam ex ordine
accesserat. Statim tribunus: ‘Cur,’ inquit, ‘tam diuersus habitus?’ Negauit ille sibi cum ceteris licere. Causas expostulatus,
‘Christianus sum’ respondit.
65
ibid., 1.3: et nunc, rufatus sanguinis sui spe, calciatus de euangelii paratura, succinctus *acutiore uerbo dei, ac totus de
apostolo armatus, ut de martyrii candida laurea melius coronatus, donatiuum Christi in carcere expectat.
66
On uniform dress and conformity, see Nathan Joseph, Uniforms and Nonuniforms: Communication through Clothing
(New York: Greenwood Press, 1986), 66–83.
67
The framing of the issues in these terms leads many scholars to regard the De corona as an early expression of Tertullian’s
association with the uncompromising ‘new prophecy’ of Montanism. See, for example, Barnes, Tertullian, 132–5, Christine
Trevett, Montanism: Gender, Authority, and the New Prophecy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 72.
68
Carly Daniel-Hughes, The Salvation of the Flesh in Tertullian of Carthage: Dressing for the Resurrection (New York:
Palgrave Macmillan, 2011); T. Corey Brennan, ‘Tertullian’s De Pallio and Roman Dress in North Africa’, in Roman Dress
and the Fabrics of Roman Culture, 257–70.
69
Tertullian, Cor. 7.7: coronati capitis institutionem ab eis prolatam et in eorum deinceps honorem dispensatam, quos
saeculum deos credidit.
ON THE AMBIVALENT SIGNIFICATION OF ROMAN CROWNS 243

Pliny the Elder, another reader of Saturninus’s work, who described the expansion of human uses
of crowns as flowing from an original association with the divine.70
The invocation of a specialist treatise calls attention to the complex system of signification made
possible by the varieties of plant material from which a crown might be fashioned, as particular
trees had traditional associations with individual gods: laurel with Apollo, myrtle with Venus,
olive with Minerva and so on. The use of different types of foliage for the wreaths awarded in the
contests at the major Panhellenic festivals would have tended to reinforce the importance of these
connections.71 For Tertullian, the range of these botanical affiliations underscored the ubiquity
of pagan superstition in determining the ends to which soldiers might be crowned with various
branches.72
On the other hand, the very existence of an antiquarian literature on this topic indicates that
the nature of these connections was not always straightforward or even readily apparent to the
participants. As has already been noted, investigations into the basis of these associations often
engendered more confusion than clarity. Within Roman cult practice, the symbolic register of
crowns seems to have varied not only according to the divinity involved but with the ritual context
as well. This is reflected in the records of the priesthood of the Arval Brethren, who in the course
of a single festival performed a sacrifice wearing coronae spiceae (crowns made up of ears of grain)
before changing into coronae pactiles rosaciae (crowns of plaited roses) to watch chariot races, at
which the victors were awarded coronae argenteae (silver crowns).73 While the force of tradition
determined what crowns were worn by whom at which events, the logic of these rules did not
necessarily derive from a unified or coherent system of meaning. Antiquarian researchers were
forced to speculate, for example, as to why Apollo’s laurel was worn in the triumph, a festival that
honoured Jupiter, whose tree was the oak.74
As the number of occasions for wearing crowns increased, Tertullian’s insistence that this practice
constituted a form of idolatry begins to lose some of its force. The soldier who refused to wear the
laurel when mustering to receive an imperial donative was obviously not acting as a priest, after
all. To the casual observer, whatever connection this element of his costume had to any overtly
religious features of the ceremony may have appeared attenuated at best. Tertullian acknowledges
this objection, listing an array of other contexts in which crowns were regularly worn, from awards
for magistrates to civic festivals to weddings to games. He discounts each of these contexts in turn
by insisting that none of them have anything to do with the proper conduct of a Christian life.75

70
Pliny, Nat., 16.9-10.
71
Laurel crowns were awarded at Delphi (Paus. 10.7.8), while at Poseidon’s games in Isthmia there were crowns of pine
and celery (Paus. 2.1.3, Oscar Broneer, ‘The Isthmia Victory Crown’, AJA 66 [1962]: 259–63). Different varieties of Olive
were apparently used for the wreaths at Olympia (Paus. 5.7.6-7) and the Panathenaia (Suid., π 151, s.v. ‘Panathenaia’). See
generally Ludwig Deubner, ‘Die Bedeutung des Kranzes im klassischen Altertum’, ARW 30 (1933): 72–3, Blech, Studien
zum Kranz, 127–38, also Jutta Rumscheid, Kranz und Krone: Zu Insignien, Siegespreisen und Ehrenzeichen der römischen
Kaiserzeit (Tübingen: Ernst Wasmuch Verlag, 2000), 79–89, Soteria Yiannaki, ‘The Comparative Spirit in Flora’, Gerión
26 (2008): 267–80.
72
Tertullian, Cor. 12.1-2.
73
ILS 5037 (= CIL 6.2065); see John Scheid, Romulus et ses frères. Le collège des frères arvales, modèle du culte public dans
la Rome des empereurs (Rome: École français de Rome, 1990), 572–3.
74
Pliny, Nat.15.134-5, lists a number of possible explanations, including Masurius’s suggestion that the burning of laurel
served to cleanse the stain of human slaughter, before settling on the observation that laurel is the only tree never struck
by lightning.
75
Tertullian, Cor. 13.1-7, at 7: uniuersas, ut arbitror, causas enumerauimus, nec ulla nobiscum est: omnes alienae, profanae,
illicitae, semel iam in sacramenti testatione eieratae.
244 DRESS IN MEDITERRANEAN ANTIQUITY

The refusal to wear crowns was thus part of a larger theological debate about the extent to which
the Christian community should seek to set itself apart from the conventions of the secular world.76
Tertullian goes on to link his rejection of the crown to the biblical injunction against putting on a
veil to sacrifice in 1 Corinthians 11:4, which has also been interpreted as a deliberate renunciation of
prevailing Roman practices.77 This comparison introduces a gendered element into the discussion,
as Paul’s guidelines for men and women diverged on this point, with women instructed to retain
the veil as a symbol of the male ‘authority’ placed over their heads.78 Tertullian would elaborate
on the importance of the veil as an expression of female chastity in his treatise On the Veiling of
Virgins, but in the context of the De corona, the contrast with women’s use of the veil serves to
highlight the essential meaning of the crown as a form of exaltation. Whereas a covered head
conveys modesty (humilitas, verecundia), the wearing of a crown calls attention to one’s head by
decorating it. Such conduct, for men as well as women, is inconsistent with Christian precepts of
humility and therefore shameful.79
Nevertheless, Christians could not entirely escape the symbolic resonances of the crown as
manifested in the world around them. Its importance as a marker of prestige inevitably comes
into play by way of the Passion narrative and the crown of thorns with which the soldiers mocked
Christ as ‘king of the Jews’ before his crucifixion.80 Tertullian first invokes this crown sardonically,
responding to an imagined interlocutor who points to crowned images of the saviour as contradicting
his claims about the lack of biblical authority for crowning as a Christian practice: ‘and so may you
be crowned; that is allowed’.81 Just as the use of thorns transformed the saviour’s crown into an
instrument of abuse, so too did Christians continue to redefine the meaning of the crown for their
own purposes.
Tertullian goes on to develop an exegesis that stresses the material from which this crown was
fashioned, which he interprets in light of Genesis 3:18, where thorns are a consequence of original
sin and so become a symbol of the salvation achieved through Christ’s suffering. He admonishes
his fellow Christians, ‘You should not be crowned with flowers, if you are not capable of being
crowned with thorns.’82 The crown of thorns can thus be reclaimed via the paradoxes of Christian
soteriology as an exceptional symbol of honour. It is this understanding of the crown of thorns
that seems to be reflected in a remarkable early depiction of this scene from the Passion on a
fourth-century sarcophagus, in which the posture of the figures calls to mind other, pre-Christian
depictions of crowning (Figure 18.6, cf. Figure 18.2).83

76
Cf. Mary Ellen Roach-Higgins and Joanne Eicher, ‘Dress and Identity’, Clothing and Textiles Research Journal 10, no. 4
(1992): 6.
77
Tertullian, Cor. 14.1: siquidem caput viri Christus. est tam liberum quam et Christus, ne velamento quidem obnoxium,
nedum obligamento; cf. Plutarch, Mor. 266 c-e (Quaest. Rom. 10); Richard Oster, ‘When Men Wore Veils to Worship: The
Historical Context of 1 Corinthians 11:4’, NTS 34 (1988): 481–505.
78
1 Cor. 1.10: ὀφείλει ἡ γυνὴ ἐξουσίαν ἔχειν ἐπὶ τῆς κεφαλῆς. Mary Rose D’Angelo, ‘Veils, Virgins, and the Tongues of Men
and Angels: Women’s Heads in Early Christianity’, in Off with Her Head! The Denial of Women’s Identity in Myth, Religion,
and Culture (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), 131–64; Daniel-Hughes, The Salvation of the Flesh, 94–7.
79
Cf. Tertullian, Cult. Fem. 2.3.2: porro exaltatio non congruit professoribus humilitatis ex praeceptis Dei.
80
Mark 15.17-18, par. Mt. 27.28-9. See Joel Marcus, ‘Crucifixion as Parodic Exultation’, JBL 125 (2006): 73–4.
81
Tertullian, Cor. 9.2: ‘sic et tu coronare: licitum est.’
82
Tertullian, Cor. 14.4: aut nec floribus coroneris, si spinis non potes.
83
Guntram Koch, Frühchristliche Sarkophage (Munich: C. H. Beck, 2000): 284, Jas Elsner, ‘Image and Rhetoric in Early
Christian Sarcophagi: Reflections on Jesus’ Trial’, in Life, Death, and Representation: Some New Work on Roman Sarcophagi
(Berlin: De Gruyter, 2011), 378–80.
ON THE AMBIVALENT SIGNIFICATION OF ROMAN CROWNS 245

FIGURE 18.6 Fourth-century columnar sarcophagus with scenes of the Passion, detail: Christ
receives the crown of thorns. Vatican, Museo Pio Christiano. Artist: Ethan Henkel.

Although early Christians could assert their independence from secular conventions by refusing
to wear the crowns associated with Roman celebrations, they could not entirely escape the symbolic
resonance of this practice. Its enduring hold on their thought is demonstrated even more forcefully
in the other scriptural context in which they would have encountered a reference to this form of
adornment, the promise in the book of Revelation of a ‘crown of life’ for those who remain faithful
unto death.84 Tertullian treats this crown as a metaphorical construct, which employs the trappings
of this world to convey the promise of what lies beyond for those who can prove their worthiness
by rejecting those trappings in life.85 As we have already seen, he also described the reward that the
Christian soldier hoped to attain by rejecting his military crown as the ‘white laurel of a martyr’.
His interpretation of the crown of life as a symbol or emblem of salvation that stands apart from
the actual practice of crowning is thus in keeping with the overall rhetorical posture of this work.
Through such manoeuvres, Christians might continue to embrace the honorific implications of the
crown even as they rejected its secular associations.

84
Rev. 2.10, cf. Jas. 1.12.
85
Tertullian, Cor. 15.1.
246
 CHAPTER NINETEEN

Clothes Make the Jew: Was

There Distinctive Jewish Dress in
the Greco-Roman Period?
JOSHUA SCHWARTZ

INTRODUCTION
Shakespeare teaches us that ‘apparel oft proclaims the man’ (Hamlet, 1.3.72). Dress conveys
information. Clothing carries cultural meaning and can reflect social, ethnic and religious norms.
Apparel sheds light on personality, tastes, ideals, status and even morals. In the Greco-Roman
world, men and women, young and old, had numerous dress options. In general, though, in Greco-
Roman society, one dressed like a Greek or a Roman and would have been recognized as either.1
What about Jewish society? Could one dress as a Jew? Was there distinctive dress for Jewish men
and women in Greco-Roman society and would this dress have been distinctive enough to mark
them off as Jews? Would a non-Jew recognize a Jew by his or her dress? Would a Jew recognize
another Jew? Did Jewish men and women consider certain garments or styles as being Jewish even
if technically they were not? Was there a difference between ‘Jewish garments’ and ‘Jewish style’, if
either or both existed? Were there garments that Jews would not wear and would this mark them
as Jews?
The limited framework of the study prevents dealing at length with all of these questions.
Moreover, any discussion on ‘Jewish clothing’ necessitates the use of numerous different types of
sources, such as rabbinic literature, Greco-Roman literature, archaeology, and each of these has its
own methodological problems.2 Also, in discussing distinctive or unusual, it is necessary to make
reference to normative clothing. Each object of normative apparel is worthy of detailed study, but

1
See Lucille A. Roussin, ‘Costume in Roman Palestine: Archaeological Remains and the Evidence from the Mishnah’,
in The World of Roman Costume, ed. Judith L. Sebesta and Larissa Bonfante (Milwaukee: The University of Wisconsin
Press, 1998), 182–90. See also Alicia J. Batten, Carly Daniel-Hughes and Kristi Upson-Saia, ‘Introduction: “What Shall We
Wear”?’, in Dressing Judeans and Christians in Antiquity, ed. Kristi Upson-Saia, Carly Daniel-Hughes and Alicia J. Batten
(Farnham: Ashgate, 2014), 1–18.
2
For a brief discussion of some of these problems, see Joshua Schwartz, ‘The Material Realities of Jewish Life in the Land of
Israel, c. 235–638’, in The Cambridge History of Judaism, Volume IV: The Late Roman-Rabbinic Period, ed. Steven T. Katz
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 431–3. For a detailed summary of the types of rabbinic literature used in
the study of material culture of ancient society, see, for example, Joshua Schwartz, ‘Ball Playing in Ancient Jewish Society:
The Hellenistic, Roman and Byzantine Periods’, Ludica 3 (1997): 16–17, n. 1. For the purpose of this study, I use the texts,
standard printed and manuscript versions, conveniently collected in the Bar-Ilan Responsa Project (https://www.responsa.
co.il/default.aspx) available in many academic libraries. All translations are mine.
248 DRESS IN MEDITERRANEAN ANTIQUITY

this cannot be done in a framework that seeks to examine Jewish clothing within the broad context
of the Greco-Roman world.

JEWISH STYLE OR JEWISH DRESS CODE?

Could one recognize a Jew by his or her clothing? It depends on who was doing the wearing and
who was doing the looking and where looking and wearing took place. A Jew might be more
sensitive than a non-Jew to subtle nuances of ‘Jewish dress’ worn by a Jew who thought that he
or she was ‘passing’. There were also undoubtedly differences between the Land of Israel and the
Jewish and non-Jewish Diaspora. In Jewish surroundings, Jews might have been more comfortable
dressing and looking Jewish than in non-Jewish surroundings.3
A number of scholars have addressed some of these questions. The most prominent representative
of the ‘non-distinctive Jewish dresser’ school is Shaye Cohen. In general, in his view, Jews did not
wear distinctive clothing, whether distinctly Jewish or non-Jewish. Jews did not stand out in their
dress.4 True, there might be exceptions such as the Jewish ephebes in Hellenistic Jerusalem who
wore the petasos, the markedly Greek wide-brimmed headgear appropriate for the gymnasium and
not ordinarily worn by Jews,5 or Jewish women in the eastern Roman empire wearing veils, which
might have been considered by many distinctive Jewish dress for women.6 The non-distinctive
clothes to which Cohen refers are non-distinctive Greco-Roman-style clothes worn by the majority
of Jews in the Greco-Roman world. Cohen, of course, does not ignore the fact that there were
two distinctively Jewish items of clothing, tzitzit (fringes) and tefillin (phylacteries), which might
have identified those who wore them as Jewish. As we shall see, though, Cohen and others of the
‘non-distinctive Jewish dresser’ school claim that the sources are silent as to the extent to which
Jews wore these items publicly, meaning that they were not worn by many in public.7 I shall discuss
these two items below and try to determine to what extent they were worn publicly and served as
ethnic or religious markers.
Non-distinctive clothing, however, might turn out to be distinctively Jewish, at least in the case
of a Jewish woman. However, as Gail Labovitz points out in this volume, identifying a unique
feature of Jewish women’s dress, at least in the rabbinic period, is very difficult. Naftali Cohn sees
the Jewish woman dressing in keeping with the laws of adornment of the rabbis, stressing modesty,

3
It is important to avoid anachronisms regarding Jewish ‘passing’ in modern times vis-à-vis ancient times. Interaction is also
not the same as passing or blending in. See, for example, Leonard V. Rutgers, ‘Archaeological Evidence for Interaction of
Jews and Non-Jews in Late Antiquity’, American Journal of Archaeology 96, no. 1 (January 1992): 101–18.
4
See Shaye J. D. Cohen, ‘“Those Who Say They Are Jews and Are Not”: How Do You Know a Jew in Antiquity When You
See One?’, in The Diaspora in Antiquity, ed. Shaye J. D. Cohen and Ernest S. Frerichs (Brown Judaic Studies 288; Atlanta:
Scholars Press, 1993), 1–45. A revised version appeared in idem, The Beginnings of Jewishness: Boundaries, Varieties,
Uncertainties (Berkeley/Los Angeles/London: University of California Press, 1999), 25–68 and esp. 30–4. See also Katie
Turner, ‘“The Shoe Is the Sign!” Costuming Brian and Dressing the First Century’, in Jesus and Brian: Exploring the
Historical Jesus and His Times via Monty Python’s Life of Brian, ed. Joan E. Taylor (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark,
2015), 221–37.
5
2 Maccabees 4:12.
6
Cohen, Beginnings, 31–2, n. 19. There were exceptions to the rule. See Kelly Olson, Dress and the Roman Woman: Self-
presentation and Society (London and New York: Routledge: Taylor Francis Group, 2008), 33–4, on the woman’s palla as
a veil and as a mark of honour, dignity and sexual modesty.
7
Ibid., 32–3.
CLOTHES MAKE THE JEW 249

as displaying her unique Judaean identity.8 Such a woman would see herself as dressing Jewish,
even though her garments were exactly the same as those of a non-Jewish woman. Would she
be identified as a Jew by Jews or non-Jews looking at her? To the extent that modesty or modest
dress was considered a Jewish marker, and it was, she would be so identified. However, modest
dress was certainly not limited to Jewish women and the Roman matron was also expected to dress
modestly.9 Thus, the answer to the question might depend on the venue of the Jewish women. Was
she in Jewish, non-Jewish or mixed surroundings? This Jewish woman might be described as the
non-distinctive distinctive Jewish dresser. She abided by a Jewish code of dress.
Distinctive could be just as difficult to discern as non-distinctive. Romans, for instance, would
usually fasten the fibula, the brooch that was used to pin an outer garment, over the right shoulder.
This left the right arm free while the garment was draped over the left shoulder.10 The Jews,
however, probably used the fibula to fasten the tallit, their outer garment, over the left shoulder,
leaving the left arm free, perhaps to allow the wearing of phylacteries or tefillin, which most Jewish
men placed on their left arm.11 However, a rabbinic tradition in y. Demai 4:6, 24b, tells of taking
the fibula (lit. filbah) from the left shoulder, the normative for Jewish users of the brooch, as just
pointed out, and moving it to the right, as a sign that a person had been invited to dinner and should
not receive another invitation.12 Would a left-shoulder fibula wearer be recognized a Jew or just as
an eccentric fibula wearer still adhering to Greco-Roman fashion norms? Setting and surrounding
would probably be of importance in determining the answer. The same is true for the Jewish switch
back to the right shoulder. Would the Jew doing so be now blended into Roman society or would
the internal Jewish message of the switch be recognized? Once again it probably depended on the
setting. The significance of the switch would be recognizable only in a Jewish setting. In a non-Jewish
setting switching the fibula back to the right shoulder helped one blend in. Of course there was also
the possibility that the invitation generated switching was just a midrashic literary invention.

SAGES AND RABBIS

We just saw that it was not always easy to discern distinctive Jewish modes of dress. Was this true
of rabbis and sages? A number of rabbinic traditions hint that rabbis wore distinctive clothing that
marked them as rabbis.13 Thus, while most Jewish males, including sages, wore the tallit or mantle

8
Naftali S. Cohn, ‘What to Wear: Women’s Adornment and Judean Identity in the Third Century Mishnah’, in Upson-Saia
et al., Dressing Judeans and Christians, 23.
9
Olson, Dress and the Roman Woman, 25–42. Most women in the Greco-Roman world, except perhaps for prostitutes,
would dress modestly, although the definition of modest might change from culture to culture.
10
On outer garments, see Mary G. Houston, Ancient Greek, Roman and Byzantine Costume and Decoration (London: A &
C. Black, 1947), 97–9. Not all of these would have been worn by Jews. The paludamentum was a military coat and worn
by distinguished personalities. The abolla and lucerna also had military usage.
11
On the tallit or mantle, possibly identical with the pallium, see Samuel Krauss, Talmudische Archäologie (Leipzig: G. Fock,
1910 [Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1966]), I, 604–5, n. 541. See also Dafna Shlezinger-Katsman, ‘Clothing’, in The Oxford
Handbook of Jewish Daily Life in Roman Palestine, ed. Catherine Hezser (Oxford/New York: OUP, 2010), 368–71.
12
Cf. Lam. Rab. 4:2. See Daniel Sperber, Material Culture in Eretz-Israel during the Talmudic Period (Jerusalem: Yad Izhak
Ben-Zvi and Bar-Ilan Press, 1993), 126–7 (Hebrew).
13
Cohen, The Beginnings, 30, n. 17. Cohen cites Gen. Rab. 82:8 (p. 984, ed. Theodor-Albeck) which tells of two rabbinic
disciples changing their clothes during a time of persecution so as not to look like rabbis. See also Sif. Deut. 343 (p. 400,
ed. Finkelstein) (and parallels) which states that a scholar is recognized by his gait, discourse and attire. Mekhilta de-Rashbi
Ex. 19:18 adds that this refers to the market.
250 DRESS IN MEDITERRANEAN ANTIQUITY

as an outer garment in public, some scholars claimed that they had special gowns.14 The sources in
question, however, can also be read as implying that the sages always wore a tallit or outer garment
at formal occasions, but the garment was generic.15 Babylonian tradition, however, does mention
a ‘tallit of a student of a sage’, perhaps reflecting a special garment, but the tradition also indicates
that non-sages might have also worn it causing confusion.16 Babylonian tradition also assumed
that an important marker of rabbinic apparel in general was that it was meticulous and spotless.17
Possibly then the sages of Babylonia might have made an effort to distinguish themselves from the
general Jewish population through some aspects of their clothing.
What about their beard or hairstyle? While this is technically not apparel, in the ancient world it
often went together with clothing in the case of a philosopher or sage. During the Roman Empire,
the beard became a symbol of the philosopher’s moral integrity and all philosophers wore beards
but of different styles, full, half, short, carefully tended or unkempt. By the third century CE,
one’s philosophical school could be recognized by beard and hair.18 Was the same true for rabbis?
Shaving with a razor was forbidden for all Jewish males, so it stands to reason that all males would
have beards. We also know that many trimmed their beards and kept them neat, but this relates
to the general population.19 What about rabbis? In a fairly early tradition, one second-century CE
Palestinian rabbi turns to another and asks him why his beard is long (and unkempt?). He answers
that his facial-hair style is in response to those who would ‘destroy’ (shave) their beards.20 The
impression from the source is that a long unkempt beard was unusual for a sage or perhaps for
anybody? It is not clear against what he is protesting.

TZITZIT
We mentioned above that there were two distinctive Jewish objects of apparel. The first was the
tzitzit or fringes attached to the edges or corners of a mantle worn by a male (Num. 15:37-38,
Deut. 22:12). The lection in Numbers requires a blue (tekhelet) fringe.21 It is fairly safe to say that a

14
See Catherine Hezser, The Social Structure of the Rabbinic Movement in Roman Palestine (TSAJ 66; Tübingen: Mohr
Siebeck, 1997), 127.
15
Lev. Rab. 2:4; b. B. Meṣ`ia 85a on a figurative ‘golden cloak’ given to a student upon ordination, Gen Rab. 70:5 (p. 802),
Hezser, The Social Structure, 127–9. Cf. Mk 12:38 on scribes dressing in stolais (στολαῖς). These were apparently robes
worn by persons of rank and distinction. The stola was usually used as an outer garment worn by a modest Roman matron
(Olson, Dress, 27–33). It is unlikely that Mark here is describing a specific garment of the scribes and perhaps he is referring
to the generic tallit.
16
On the tallit worn by both sages and non-sages, see B. B. Bat. 98a. Hezser, The Social Structure, 129.
17
See Daniel Sperber, A Commentary on Derech Ereẓ Zuta: Chapters Five to Eight (Ramat-Gan: Bar-Ilan University Press,
1990), 35.
18
Paul Zanker, The Mask of Socrates: The Image of the Intellectual in Antiquity, trans. Alan Shapiro (Berkeley/Los Angeles/
Oxford: University of California Press, 1995), 110.
19
On all matters of beards, trimming and shaving, as well the decree against shaving with a razor, see Joshua Schwartz,
‘Haircut and Barber in Ancient Jewish Society’, Jerusalem and Eretz Israel 10–11 (2018): 7–40 and esp. 16–22 (= ‘The
Neatness Imperative’).
20
Sif. Deut. 34 (p. 62, ed. Finkelstein, New York: The Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 19692 [Berlin: Jüdischer
Kulturbund in Deutschland E.V., 1939]).
21
On identifying tekhelet, see the summary of Levi Kitrossky, ‘Do We Know Tekhelet?’ (http://www.tekhelet.com/pdf/1003.
pdf). A summary of the earlier research material is found in Jacob Milgrom, ‘Of Hems and Tassels’, BARev 9 (May–June
1983) (http://cojs.org/of_hems_and_tassels-_jacob_milgrom-_bar_9-03-_may-jun_1983/). See now Martin Lockshin, ‘What
Do Tzitzit Represent?’, TheTorah.com (https://thetorah.com/what-do-tzitzit-represent/).
CLOTHES MAKE THE JEW 251

Jewish male with tzitzit would be recognized as Jewish. How common, though, was the wearing of
tzitzit? Was practice the same in both Palestine and Babylonia and the rest of the Jewish Diaspora?
Were there differences among different social and religious strata? If few Jews wore fringes in public
then this would not have much effect on the ‘non-distinctive Jewish dresser school’. However, if
tzitzit were popular, then even if all the common clothing was worn in the accepted and normative
manner, the Jewish male would still be recognized as Jewish through the wearing of tzitzit.
Were tzitzit worn in the Second Temple period? The Letter of Aristeas (157–158) mentions
tzitzit, while neither Josephus nor Philo do. That of course does not prove anything as they do not
mention all laws, whether in the Bible or in actual practice.22 Did the Qumran sectarians or Essenes
of the Second Temple period wear tzitzit? The few clothing remains from the Qumran community
provide no answers. Literary sources on the Essenes, assuming that they are identical with the
Qumran sectarians, offer some clues.23
The Essenes wore undyed white linen garments. Fringes were usually of wool and adding wool
fringes would violate the biblical prohibition of sha`atnez, combining wool and linen in a garment
(Deut. 22:11) (further discussion on sha`atnez below). Would this prevent an Essene from wearing
fringes? It is possible that the Essenes felt that the wearing of fringes was so important that it superseded
the biblical prohibition. Or, it is possible that the Essenes wore linen fringes attached to their linen
mantles. In both cases, it is possible that the Essenes/Qumran attached tzitzit to their mantles. However,
as the Essene/Qumran community would not be very visible outside of their local venue, while they
might be recognized as Jews by one another, this would have little bearing on Jewish dressing in public
in general. If sectarians wore fringes in public does this mean non-sectarians also did so, making it
common across the board in Jewish society? It is hard to reach a conclusion just from this.
New Testament tradition provides additional evidence. The Synoptic Gospels have Jesus wearing
a fringed mantle while healing, once in the case of a woman suffering from prolonged vaginal
bleeding (Mt. 9.20-21; Lk. 8.44) and a second time in the Galilee when the sick were brought to
Jesus and they begged to touch his tzitzit to be healed (Mt. 14.35-36; Mk 6.56).24 Matthew 23:5
states that Jesus criticized the Pharisees for wearing long tzitzit. He does not, however, criticize
them for wearing tzitzit in general, since after all so did he, and one would assume that the Matthean
Jewish community also did so. The criticism is just against an ostentatious wearing of long fringes.
How long were standard fringes in relation to long ones? A rabbinic source states that fringes were
‘four fingers in length’ (Sif. Deut. 234) roughly 8 to 9.6 cm which would be in keeping with the
length of ancient fringes found in the Cave of Letters in Naḥal Ḥever, more or less contemporary
to the period under discussion. The fringes of the Pharisees were then probably longer than that.25
These sources seem to indicate that the public wearing of fringes was rather widespread.

22
See, for example, Eyal Regev and David Nakman, ‘Josephus and the Halakhah of the Pharisees, the Sadducees and
Qumran’, Zion 67 (2002): 401–33 (Hebrew).
23
See Jodi Magness, Stone and Dung, Oil and Spit: Jewish Daily Life in the Time of Jesus (Grand Rapids, MI/Cambridge,
UK: William B. Eerdman’s, 2011), 112–17.
24
Magness, Stone and Dung, 117–20, and particularly on the use of kraspedon as tzitzit and not just edge or hem. I have been
unable to find Jewish references to tzitzit and healing, and the few references that seem to imply this are Judaeo-Christian
and based on the above passages. For the rabbinic view on the attributes of tzitzit, bordering on the magical, see below.
25
See Eric Ottenheijm, ‘Matthew and Yavne: Religious Authority in the Making?’ in Jews and Christians in the First and
Second Centuries: The Interbellum 70–132 CE, ed. Joshua Schwartz and Peter J. Tomson (CRINT 15; Leiden/Boston: Brill,
2018), 386–8. See, however, Magness, Stone and Dung, 112–13. These fringes were not actually attached to the mantles
but were unspun wool, identified by some as unfinished tzitzit.
252 DRESS IN MEDITERRANEAN ANTIQUITY

We have yet to address the main issue here: why wear tzizit? Without them one was just another
Greco-Roman non-distinctive dresser. True, it was a biblical commandment, but there were
numerous ways to get around it. One could avoid wearing a mantle altogether or one could wear an
outer garment without four corners, which obviates the obligation. There had to be corners. Wear
tzitzit and one could no longer ‘pass’ or blend into general society. Was the biblical commandment
enough of an impetus?
To answer that question it is necessary to understand what wearing tzizit in public meant.
Rabbinic Judaism attaches great significance to this biblical commandment. The biblical lection in
Numbers 15 became part of the daily liturgy recited twice a day. Wearing them was considered by
one tradition the equivalent of observing all commandments.26 Just looking at them would have a
positive effect on religious observance.27 It was as if one were greeting the face of God28 and gazing
upon them saved a person from sin.29
Did the rabbis invent all this to ensure that the unusual biblical precept would be observed?
Jacob Milgrom, followed by other scholars, studied the significance of the hem in the ancient
Near East. The tzitzit were an extension of that hem. The hem, and subsequently the tzitzit,
marked one off as a member of the nobility. The tekhelet or blue mentioned above was the
sign of royalty. The wearing of tzitzit added social-religious significance to the commoner. By
observing God’s commandments, and wearing tzitzit, one could undergo a social and religious
transformation.
As mentioned above in relation to Qumran, the wearing of tzitzit could conflict with the biblical
prohibition of sha`atnez (Deut. 22:11). The rabbis, however, exempted tzitzit from the sha`atnez
restrictions.30 Milgrom and others argue that the original sha`atnez prohibition was actually rooted
in the fact that priestly apparel made use of wool and linen.31 Sha`atnez was reserved for priests.
By wearing tzitzit, the commoner was transformed into a priest.32 All of this would suggest that the
wearing of tzitzit was common and if this was the case regarding common people, it was likely that
sages and rabbis would be especially particular in their observance.33 While the traditions above
relate to Palestine, it is likely that Jews in Babylonia also wore them.34
Tzizit then were an ethnic and religious marker with added social and religious significance and
benefits, marking one off clearly as a Jew.35 Non-Jews, moreover, were forbidden to wear them,
not so much to prevent them from acquiring those benefits, but because a non-Jew attempting to
‘pass’ as a Jew might be dangerous and cause harm.36 If there were Jewish communities in which the
wearing of tzitzit was not common, these were probably in the Diaspora. It is likely that for Jews

26
Sif. Zuta 15.
27
B. Menaḥ. 43b.
28
Sif. Num. 115.
29
B. Menaḥ. 44a. See Lockshin, ‘What Do Tzitzit Represent?’.
30
B. Menaḥ. 39b. The verse following the sha`atnez prohibition was followed by the verse commanding fringes (Deut.
22:11-12).
31
See the descriptions in Exod. 28.
32
See Israel Knohl, ‘The Concept of Kedusha (Sanctity) in the Priestly Torah and the Holiness School’, The Torah.com
(https://thetorah.com/the-concept-of-kedusha-sanctity/).
33
Hezser, The Social Structure, 130.
34
B. Ta`an. 22a.
35
See b. Menaḥ. 44a (and parallels).
36
B. Menaḥ. 43a.
CLOTHES MAKE THE JEW 253

there, it was more important to not stand out and they probably succeeded in this as reflected by
the fact that non-Jewish sources do not mention Jews wearing them.

TEFILLIN
The second distinctive item of Jewish ‘clothing’ mentioned above was the tefillin or phylacteries,
small leather cases containing parchment with biblical lections and attached to one’s arm and head
with leather straps (Exod. 13:1-10; 13:11-16; Deut. 6:4-9; 11:13-21). They were usually worn
by an adult male but sometimes also by women and children. The ‘wearing’ of these is different
than the wearing of tzitzit. The fringes, as we remember, were attached to a four-cornered outer
garment which might be worn by both Jews and non-Jews. The fringes made the garment Jewish.
The phylacteries were not attached to a garment but worn (technically laid or placed) independently
on arm and head without recourse to a garment.37
Like tzitzit, tefillin were worn in observance of a biblical commandment. We limit our discussion
here to tefillin as clothing of sorts, since wearing them in public was a clear Jewish marker.38 The
questions are also the same as those asked regarding fringes. Did Jews wear them often in public?
And if so, was this a general phenomenon or just limited to certain groups? Was the situation the
same in the Land of Israel and in the Diaspora?
There is a relatively large amount of archaeological evidence regarding the wearing of tefillin in
the Second Temple period, some from as early as the second century BCE. These include the boxes,
the battim (lit: housings) and parchment slips. While these tefillin are from Qumran, there is little
that marks them off as sectarian. Unfortunately, as they are from a sectarian context they cannot
provide an indication as to how common the public wearing of tefillin was.39 Matthew (23:5), in
attacking what he saw as the hypocrisy of the Pharisees, mentioned their long fringes, as we saw
above, as well as their broad phylacteries or tefillin. Were large or broad phylacteries worn by all
or just by (certain) Pharisees? The phylacteries discovered in the Judaean Desert were tiny, certainly
not broad, so perhaps only Pharisees (or rabbis later on?) wore such broad phylacteries?40 Josephus
incorporated tefillin into a list of biblical laws, unlike tzitzit which he neglected. Some have claimed
that this reflects a universal practice of tefillin and not just one restricted to Pharisees or rabbis.41
The archaeological evidence for tefillin after the Second Temple period up until the third century
CE is much more limited, and what there is also comes from the Judaean Desert and as before,
adds little to what is known about the prevalence of wearing tefillin.42 As far as the rabbis were
concerned, though, the wearing of tefillin was common among all Jewish males: ‘And R.Meir also
used to say: There is no person in Israel whom the commandments do not surround: tefillin on his

37
See Yehudah B. Cohn, Tangled Up in Text: Tefillin and the Ancient World (Brown Judaic Studies 351; Providence: Brown
Judaic Studies, 2008). On women and children, 113–21.
38
As they were considered by some to have apotropaic functions, there is also the chance that they might have also been
worn occasionally by non-Jews. Jerome, for instance, makes reference to their questionable use by non-Jews, to his chagrin.
See Cohn, Tangled, 9, 124. The rabbis forbade one from selling them to non-Jews (t. `Abod. Zar. 2:4). Even if non-Jews
wore them from time to time, it was doubtful that they wore them in public.
39
Cohen, Tangled, 55–79.
40
Ant. 4.212-213. Cohn, ibid., 123.
41
Ibid., 108–9.
42
Ibid., 103–5.
254 DRESS IN MEDITERRANEAN ANTIQUITY

head, tefillin on his arm, and a mezuzah on the entrance (to his home), circumcision on his flesh,
four fringes on his tallit. (All these) surround him.’43 Except for circumcision, all of these religious
markers are visible. They mark out home (for the mezuzah), body and (Jewish) dress. Deuteronomy
11:21 specifically connects the observance of the commandment of tefillin to remaining in the
promised land.
How visible were the tefillin? The Judaean Desert tefillin are tiny and might not have even been
seen on one’s head and could be covered by a tallit or mantle used at times to cover one’s head
outdoors. Those on the arm could also be covered by the tallit. Rabbinic tradition prohibits wearing
them in an ostentatious manner or making the boxes from gold.44 One gets the impression that those
who could wore these and other Jewish markers, but just as the sign of circumcision was hidden,
these other markers could be worn but also somewhat hidden. It should also be pointed out that
wearing tefillin for long periods is not comfortable, more on account of the leather straps than on
account of the boxes, and wearing them makes most physical work activity difficult if not impossible.
Were tefillin worn in the Diaspora? We saw in the case of fringes that it was likely that they were
not widely worn in public to allow Jews to fit in. The rabbis specifically decreed, however, that
tefillin be worn also in the Diaspora, not differentiating between public and private wearing.45 The
Nash Papyrus, now dated to the second century BCE, containing the Decalogue and an insertion
might be a tefillin slip and thus provide some indication that tefillin were worn in Egypt at this
time.46 In the Letter of Aristeas (159), right after the reference to tzitzit there might also be a
reference to tefillin, more proof perhaps for Egypt, and Philo seemingly also refers to them.47
Unfortunately, none of these references relate to them even remotely as clothing or describes how
they were worn and whether they were part of distinctive Jewish apparel.
Later tradition regarding the Diaspora is also not very helpful. Justin Martyr in his Dialogue with
Trypho seems to be aware of Jews in Asia Minor in the second century CE wearing them, but as
Justin came from Samaria in Palestine and as his opponent in dialogue, Trypho, is depicted as being
a Judaean, one cannot be sure whether Justin has real knowledge or is just projecting his memories
on Asia Minor.48 The Babylonian Talmud has Jews east of Palestine wearing tefillin, but it is hard
to know how historically reliable these traditions are.49 If worn in public, they might have been
concealed as described above.

SHA`ATNEZ
Sha`atnez, the biblical prohibition of combining wool and linen in a garment (Deut. 22:11), was
mentioned above in relation to tzitzit and to the fact that woolen fringes attached to a linen garment
were exempted from this prohibition. We also saw that this exemption was possibly related to the
fact that sha`atnez was reserved for priests and that the wearing of sha`atnez imparted priestly
elements to the commoner. For everyone else though, sha`atnez was prohibited.

43
y. Ber. 9:5, 14d.
44
M. Meg. 4:8.
45
Sif. Deut. 44.
46
Cohen, Tangled, 67–8.
47
Spec. 4.138-139.
48
Cohn, Tangled, 121–2.
49
Ibid., 123.
CLOTHES MAKE THE JEW 255

Was this prohibition observed and if not, was the wearing of sha`atnez discernible and if so,
what did that mean to one who recognized it and one would have needed an extremely sharp
eye to do so. The biblical prohibition was only against wearing a garment of wool and linen and
there were ways around it such as mixing in camel’s hair into the weave of the fabric.50 Would
anyone notice the difference? Silk was not subject to sha`atnez, but certain types of silk looked like
garments made of wool and linen and were, therefore, forbidden. Some thick coarse outer garments
or cloaks, some imported and some domestic, and certain types of shoes had to be checked before
they could be worn because flax or linen might have been woven into their fabric.51 All of these
laws, though, seem to show that Jews were wearing the same clothes as everybody else and that
even if the clothes were problematic in terms of sha`atnez, this was not easily discernible without
a thorough examination.
If it was hard to discern sha`atnez, then why bother with it? The impression from rabbinic
tradition is that most Jews made an effort to observe this commandment. Those who did not
were considered evil, similar to the uncircumcised or to those who tattooed their bodies, serious
transgressions.52 Observing it was not easy. Rabbinic literature shows that many garments sold in
the marketplace were contaminated with sha`atnez, especially if woven by non-Jews or imported
from abroad. However, the rabbis also provide instructions as to how to remove the offending
threads or fibres when that was possible.53
The archaeological finds from the Land of Israel also indicate that the laws of sha`atnez were
observed. While many garments throughout the Roman world were woven from linen and wool as
a matter of course, those clothes found in Israel rarely contain sha`atnez. In Masada there is even
evidence of sha`atnez fibres being removed from a garment.54 Thus, not many Jews would wear
sha`atnez on purpose, but if worn, the discerning eye might notice. Jew or non-Jew? More likely
the one wearing it was a non-Jew and if a Jew, an unsuspecting one.

BLACK CLOTHING
As most of the clothing worn by Jews was the same as that worn by non-Jews, colour was likely
not a significant factor in potentially distinguishing between Jewish and non-Jewish apparel. Was
there Jewish coloured clothing? The Cave of Letters in the Judaean Desert yielded the remains of
a woman’s black scarf, and in Masada a tattered piece of black fabric was found which might have
been part of a black tunic. It is possible that these garments were worn by mourners. Thus, in the
third-century CE Dura-Europos mural, a grieving widow is depicted wearing a black mantle which
also covers her head.55 Jewish Hellenistic and rabbinic literature depict both men and women
mourners wearing black.56

50
M. Kil. 9:1, 7.
51
Ibid. Some sages exempted these garments from examination as the material woven in was probably hemp and not flax
or linen.
52
On sha`atnez, see Lev. Rab. 19:6, 434; 23:2, 528. On the prohibition against tattooing, see Lev. 19:28.
53
See the sources and detailed discussion in Shmuel and Ze’ev Safrai, Mishnat Eretz Israel: Tractate Kilayim (Zeraim 4)
(Jerusalem: Lifshitz College, 2012), 17–19 (Hebrew).
54
Safrai, Kilayim, 19.
55
See Shlezinger-Katsman, ‘Clothing’, 377. See also Taylor, this volume.
56
For example, Jos. Asen. 14:12. The angel tells Aseneth to take off her ‘black tunic of mourning’ and to ‘dress in a new linen
robe’. See also Pes. Rab. 26; Sem. /Evel Rab. 4:3, et al.
256 DRESS IN MEDITERRANEAN ANTIQUITY

Was this unusual? Did this mark them as Jews? In the Roman world both men and women
mourners wore black, whether the toga pulla for men or the lugubria for women and other black
garments.57 If everyone was wearing black then the Jews wearing black would not stand out.
For Jewish women, though, the issue is irrelevant. Jewish women mourners often had their hair
uncovered, loose and even dishevelled.58 As such they would not leave their homes. They would
not be seen, wearing clothes of any colour. Jewish men might not wear the ‘official’ mourning
garments of black that a Roman might, but it is also doubtful that all Roman men wore the ‘official’
garments. Jewish men, like women, also spend a good part of their mourning period at home and
thus their clothing would not be seen in public. There was then little unusual in these Jewish black
garments of mourning.
There were a number of black clothing motifs in rabbinic literature. Black was worn by
disqualified priests,59 by those standing trial,60 and symbolized sins and sinners in general.61

CONCLUSION
Was there distinctive Jewish dress in the Greco-Roman period? That all depends on how one defines
‘distinctive’. Jewish men and women dressed from head to toe in garments that were common and
accepted in the Greco-Roman world. As such one might claim that they were ‘non-distinctive
Jewish dressers’. However, there were often markers such as tzitzit or tefillin which many Jewish
men might have worn in public, marking them as Jews. This would certainly be the case in Jewish
areas in Palestine or Babylonia, while in the rest of the Diaspora they might have sought to avoid
standing out.
What about Jewish women who for the most part did not wear these Jewish markers. Would
they be recognizable as Jewish women by their dress? Their modest dress, in keeping with Greco-
Roman custom, might not have marked them off as Jewish women, but I should like to suggest that
Naftali Cohn is correct. By following rabbinic dicta regarding modest dress, Jewish women dressed
Jewish, recognized one another as Jewish and were often recognized as Jewish by non-Jews. It
mattered not at all that they were dressed in Greco-Roman garments.

57
See, for example, William Smith, A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities (London: John Murray, 1875), s.v.
Toga (http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/secondary/SMIGRA*/Toga.html). On the lugubria and female
mourning garments, see Olson, Dress and the Roman Woman, 42.
58
Pesiq. Rab. 26.
59
M. Mid. 5:4.
60
Y. Roš Haš. 1:3, 57b.
61
B. Mo`ed Qaṭ.17a.
 CHAPTER TWENTY

What Did Mary Magdalene Look

Like?: Images from the West, the
East, Dura and Judaea
JOAN E. TAYLOR

In the 2018 film Mary Magdalene (dir. Garth Davis), Mary appears as a simple fisherwoman of
Magdala, clothed in quasi-Palestinian attire, though it is beige rather than black. She looks like the
other women around her, indistinguishable but for her earnest faith in Jesus. Had we not known
that the film was about Mary, and that she was being played by Rooney Mara, we would not
instantly spot her. Usually, in Western art and film, Mary Magdalene is the most recognizable and
distinctive of all Jesus’s women disciples.1 As we all know, she is quite youthful and beautiful. Her
hair is exposed, and often long and flowing. She wears clothing that shows off her shapely figure. In
the art of the East, however, she is harder to spot, since she looks like other women, heavily veiled.
In this chapter, we will review what Mary has looked like in artistic representations West and
East, with specific interest in dress, and then go back further to the way she is presented in the
earliest image we have of her in Dura-Europos, from the third century. We will think about how
dressing Mary becomes a means of showing essential aspects of how her character is constructed,
at different times, sometimes by combining different biblical stories and sometimes by imaginative
invention. If we disassemble these to look for the core historical elements in order to reveal what
she looked like in reality, we have precious little, and yet the clothing of first-century Jewish
women, surviving in caves next to the Dead Sea, presents us with a picture that asks us to re-
imagine Mary in a more authentic way.

MARY IN THE WEST

The image of Mary Magdalene in many ways is a kind of cipher of difference for the Church West
and East, representative of how little the two sides communicated, with ramifications about how
the discipleship of women was understood. How Mary is visualized by artists, or more specifically
how Mary is dressed by them, has characterized Mary and – as a corollary – taught the faithful
about the paths of Christian womanhood. In the fifth century the Church became more and more

1
As explored in depth in Susan Haskins, Mary Magdalene: Myth and Metaphor (New York: HarperCollins, 1993), and see
also Michelle Erhardt and Amy Morris, eds., Mary Magdalene, Iconographic Studies from the Middle Ages to the Baroque
(Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2012).
258 DRESS IN MEDITERRANEAN ANTIQUITY

divided along theological, linguistic and geographical grounds, and Mary changed with it. In 451
the Council of Chalcedon decided in favour of two natures in one person in Christ and ripped
off the arm of the Monophysite (one nature) Armenian, Coptic and Ethiopic churches as well as
the larger part of the Syrian Church. But Rome was already very different to Constantinople or
Antioch. When in 1054 the Great Schism tore apart the Church, it had already been stretched
culturally in different directions, with the Western (Catholic, Roman, Latin) Church on the one
hand and the Eastern (Orthodox, Greek) Church on the other.
In terms of the West, Mary Magdalene as a culturally accepted ‘character’ of Christian tradition
is actually a patch-worked composite of biblical and later stories. We see this in the features of
her representation in an altarpiece panel in the National Gallery, painted by Carlo Crivelli, dated
around the year 1491(Figure 20.1).2 One of the most striking aspects of this representation is her
clothing.3 In this, she is shown as a noblewoman, as she was widely known from ‘The Life of Mary
Magdalen’ in Jacob de Voragine’s thirteenth-century compendium, the Golden Legend.
What long hair she has, all the better to wipe Jesus’s feet with, given the fusion of Mary with the
unnamed sinner of Luke 7. This association was powerfully made by Pope Gregory I in a sermon
delivered in the year 592 (Homily XXXIII).4 What a lovely perfume jar she has; all the better to
spill it on Jesus’s head, given she is also Mary of Bethany, sister of Lazarus and Martha (Jn 11.1-45;
12.1-8), the woman with the alabaster jar of pure nard (Mk 14.3-4). What a sad face she has, all
the more appropriate to the task of weeping at the tomb (Jn 20.11-15), a woman ‘full of grief’.5
In Crivelli’s painting we get a hint at something not entirely pious about her too. While haloed,
and apparently at that moment before she will use the jar to anoint Jesus, her expression (looking
down and askance out of the corner of her eye) and her stance (hitching up of her red-and-green
garment edged with gold, to expose her delicate bare foot) suggest that she is still quite conscious of
her own body and its stunning attractiveness. One can see in her wolf eyes that she might well have
recently had seven demons, understood at this time to be moral evils (Mk 16.9; Lk. 8.2).6 Robin

2
Saint Mary Magdalene, c. 1491–4, 37.5 x 18.5 cm, NG 907.2, National Gallery, London. This duplicates an original
painting done for the church of Santa Maria Magdalena, on the hill of Serriote, Carpegna, dated 1478–80, now in the
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. The panel painting is all the more remarkable when compared to the original painting Crivelli
made of the saint where she appears more elegant and well-to-do. In the National Gallery panel, she is not so sumptuous,
and the architecture is less grand; indeed it is cracking. For discussion, see Ronald Lightbown, Carlo Crivelli (New Haven:
Yale University Press, 2004), 463–4, 470–3.
3
Reviewing an exhibition in which this panel was shown, La Maddalena: Tra peccato e penitenza, presented at the Museo
Antico Tesoro della Santa Casa di Loreto, Susan Haskins comments: ‘[the] Scholl-sandalled Magdalen by the Venetian Carlo
Crivelli …[is] magnificent in sumptuous scarlet, gold-trimmed silk, lined in green (symbolic of hope and spiritual renewal),
which is parted to reveal a gold bodice and gown, embroidered with pomegranates (symbolic of spiritual fertility). Her
pale blue silk sleeve is embroidered in gold thread and pearls with a phoenix – emblem of the Resurrection, and possibly of
her own spiritual resurrection. She looks oddly and archly at the viewer’, Times Literary Supplement, 19 December 2016.
Online: https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/public/apostle-to-the-apostles/.
4
This association was formally revoked by the Pope in 1969; see Katherine Ludwig Jansen, The Making of the Magdalen:
Preaching and Popular Devotion in the Later Middle Ages (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), 33 and 168–84.
See also Peter Loewen and Robin Waugh, eds., Mary Magdalene in Medieval Culture: Conflicted Roles (London: Routledge,
2014). For the long, blonde hair, see Haskins, Myth and Metaphor, 247.
5
See Lightbown, Carlo Crivelli, 470.
6
As Jack Lundbom notes: ‘It is thought the demons were those of unchastity, for which reason a tradition has grown up
around Mary that she was a harlot. That may or may not have been true. There is no evidence that she was a harlot, and
some have suggested it is the city from which she came that compromised her character. But she did have seven demons,
which would seem to indicate evil aplenty within her’; Jack R. Lundbom, ‘Between Text and Sermon: Mary Magdalene and
Song of Songs 3:1-4’, Int 49 (1995): 172–5.
WHAT DID MARY MAGDALENE LOOK LIKE? 259

FIGURE 20.1 Saint Mary Magdalene, probably about 1491–4. 37.5 x 18.5 cm, NG 907.2 Photo:
© The National Gallery, London.
260 DRESS IN MEDITERRANEAN ANTIQUITY

Griffith-Jones rightly comments regarding the sinner who washes Jesus’s feet with her tear-soaked
hair in Luke 7, ‘never has sexual degradation been admitted and regretted with a more potent
sexual charge’.7 Once the sinner was identified with Mary, this charge then attached itself to her.
This presentation of Mary Magdalene’s body and clothing can be used even today to make her
instantly recognizable to viewers of most modern motion pictures. In Martin Scorsese’s film The
Last Temptation of Christ (1988), she is severed from her fusion with Mary of Bethany and is
clearly not a noblewoman, but very much attached to the identity of the sinner of Luke 7 and the
woman taken in adultery of John 8, and we know exactly who she is the moment she appears on
screen, even when the ‘story’ of the film – based on the book by Nikos Katzanzakis – has departed
quite substantially from the Gospels. Played by Barbara Hershey, she may not be blonde, but her
hair is kinky, full and long. She is bejewelled, her robes plunging, exposing skin.
At the foot of the cross, in Western art and film, Mary is recognizable as being clearly not the
mother of Christ, the Blessed Virgin. We see the contrast expertly portrayed in the Crucifixion by
Anthony van Dyck (c. 1619), now in the Louvre.8 On the left there is the Blessed Virgin, her hands
placed together, looking sadly over her left shoulder at the dying Christ. She is shown with a dark
veil flowing down over her shoulders, clad in a long-sleeved grey dress, swathed in a blue cloak.
On the right is Saint John, wrapped in a red blanket. And in the middle is the kneeling figure of
Mary Magdalene, embracing the cross like a lover and kissing Christ’s feet, her shiny blonde hair
blending into the golden silk of her dress, veil-less, cloak-less, and showing her pale arms.
As Marina Warner explored, Western art gives us on the one hand the demure, restrained
Virgin and on the other the overt, emotional Magdalene, the latter being the model of the penitent
whore:9 ‘together, the Virgin and the Magdalene form a diptych of Christian patriarchy’s idea of
women’.10 The veiled versus the unveiled (or less veiled) is the most obvious clue to their respective
identities at a time when a single woman, unveiled, was either a whore or a joke: in traditional
Italian songs the zitella, the old maid who has not taken the veil, is ‘a pathetic figure of fun’.11 Earlier
on, when Mary Magdalene is shown veiled, wearing the maphorion of Byzantine and Medieval
woman’s wear, it can be distinguished by colour, usually red, or by style. In a Crusader icon from
St. Catherine’s, Sinai, she is clad in such a red maphorion, but her emotion breaks through the
apparently modest attire, so that her veil is thrown back, her hair pokes out around her face and
her garment is revealed as having a plunging neckline.12
She may also be shown naked, covered in her own hair, an image also relating to Voragine’s
legend, as an older woman ascetic, as most famously depicted in the bronze statue by Donatello,
1453–55, now in the Museo dell’Opera del Duomo, Florence, the result of fusing her memory with
that of the penitent prostitute Mary of Egypt.13

7
Robin Griffith-Jones, Mary Magdalene: The Woman Whom Jesus Loved (Norwich: Hymns Ancient and Modern, 2014), 7.
8
Oil on canvas, 330 cm × 282 cm. Room 800, inv. 1766. For image, see https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/
File:CrucifixionVanDyckLouvre.jpg.
9
Warner, Alone, 232–6.
10
Ibid., 235.
11
Ibid., 236.
12
Vassiliki A. Foskolou, ‘Mary Magdalene between East and West Cult and Image, Relics and Politics in the Late Thirteenth-
Century Eastern Mediterranean’, DOP 65, no. 66 (2011–12): 271–96, Figure 1.
13
Haskins, Myth and Metaphor, 110–11.
WHAT DID MARY MAGDALENE LOOK LIKE? 261

The Virgin and the (penitent) Whore shown below Christ’s dying body repeat in countless
images, and we can feel fairly confident we know how to identify both of them by dress and hair
and by posture. We can recognize these women in any portrayed image because of features that
play out time and time again. But if we move away from the Western world and break off the
various encrustations of the Western tradition that give Mary a large iconographical character, the
visual contrasts between Mary the Virgin and Mary the Magdalene are not so obvious.

MARY IN THE EAST

In the Eastern Orthodox traditions we rapidly come unstuck in terms of any simple clues
concerning clothing and hair that would enable us to identify Mary Magdalene. While we still
have the template of the Virgin clad in a long, dark blue veil (maphorion), as in the great mosaic of
Santa Sophia, Constantinople (depicting the triumph of orthodoxy in 843), we have a dark-clad,
veiled Magdalene in various church paintings as well, for example in an eighth-century panel from
St. Catherine’s Monastery, Sinai, where she and the other Mary encounter the risen Christ. One
Mary is kneeling and one standing, but there are no definite iconographical features that would
enable us to differentiate between the two. In sixth-century pilgrim flasks made in Jerusalem to be
carried away by pilgrims, she is one of two indistinguishable veiled women in front of the tomb,
sometimes shown carrying censers.14 Further back still, in the fifth-century Maskell Ivory in the
British Museum (MME 1856.06-23.4-7), the two Marys of the Gospel of Matthew 28.1-10 might
as well be twins, both veiled, both leaning on their elbows almost as mirror images of each other,
behind sleepy guards, no one quite noticing that the tomb door is open (Figure 20.2).15
In the Orthodox churches, Mary was not usually fused with the sinner of Luke 7. She was simply
Jesus’s leading (virgin) woman disciple, from whom Jesus cast out seven demons (Mk 16:9; Lk.
8:2), but these are not associated with sexual sins. In iconography, one common accessory can
remain in that she at times carries a perfume container, but the perfume is not the pure nard of
the woman with the alabaster jar (Mk 14.3-9 = Mt. 26.6-13, cf. Lk. 7.36-50, Jn 12.1-8). Mary
Magdalene in the East is one of the myrrh-bearers, Myrrhophores (Μυροφόροι), since it is held that
she came with another woman, or other women, to the tomb after the Sabbath was over with myrrh
to anoint the body of Christ.16
The legend of Mary Magdalene in the East reached its fullest expression in the thirteenth-century
account by Xanthopoulos, who also emphasized the importance of her relics in Constantinople.17 In

14
André Grabar, Ampoules de Terre Sainte (Monza, Bobbio) (Paris: C. Klincksieck, 1958), 20–5, 34–6, 39–40, Pl. 9, 11–13,
16, 18, 26, 28, 47, see discussion in Ally Kateusz, Mary and Early Christian Women: Hidden Leadership (New York:
Palgrave Macmillan, 2019), 37–9.
15
Felicity Harley-McGowan, ‘The Maskell Passion Ivories and Greco-Roman Art: Notes on the Iconography of Crucifixion’,
in Envisioning Christ on the Cross: Ireland and the Early Medieval West, ed. Juliet Mullins, Jenifer Ní Ghrádaigh and
Richard Hawtree (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2013), 13–33. The panel measures 7.5 x 9.8 cm. We might include the so-
called Reidersche Tafel in the Bayerisches Nationalmuseum (Inv. Nr. MA 157), usually dated to the early fifth century, but
here the type of aedicule shown corresponds to the Crusader form, not the Constantinian. The risen Christ is shown as a
young Christ-type ascending to the clouds, but this may represent an artist’s attempt to show an unrecognizable Jesus and
may not be an indication of an early date.
16
On this identification of Mary, see discussion in Haskins, Myth and Metaphor, 62.
17
Foskolou, ‘Between East and West’, passim; Andrea Taschil-Erber, ‘Apostle and Sinner: Medieval Receptions of Mary of
Magdala’, in The High Middle Ages, ed. Kari Elisabeth Børresen and Adriana Valerio, The Bible and Women 6.2 (Atlanta:
SBL Press, 2015), 301–26, at 324–6.
262 DRESS IN MEDITERRANEAN ANTIQUITY

FIGURE 20.2 The Maskell Ivory, fifth century CE. 7.5 x 9.8 cm. MME 1856,0623.6. British
Museum, London. Photo: © The Trustees of the British Museum.

the Eastern tradition, found in a seventh-century work by Abbot Modestus of Jerusalem (preserved
in the ninth-century Bibliotheca by Photius), Mary Magdalene is the apostolic companion of
John, who travels with him to Ephesus and dies there.18 Here Mary Magdalene is anything but
a prostitute. She is a pure virgin and teaching companion of John, closely aligned also with the
Virgin Mary, Jesus’s mother.19 As Vassiliki Foskolou has argued, a linkage was nevertheless made
between Mary and emotion, in that she can be shown as lamenting deeply, close to the Virgin, in
some artistic representations; despite this, ‘the Magdalene is depicted in the same way (i.e. wearing
the same clothes) as the other women, and nowhere is she represented with any of the iconographic
features of the sinner saint of the West’.20
The other women here are her fellow female disciples, loyal to the end. While the Western
tradition came to mark out Mary Magdalene as highly distinctive and something of a loner (by means
of her especially alluring dress and hair or covered in hair), in the Eastern tradition Mary appears in
a group of women, looking like them. The other women are likewise veiled from head to toe.
Artists made choices on the basis of both texts and tradition, and the cast list of the women
who come to the tomb is a variable in the Gospels. Mary does appear alone in John 20.1-2, and

18
Her relics were translated from Ephesus to Constantinople by Leo VI, in the late ninth century, see Haskins, Myth and
Metaphor, 108.
19
Photius, Bibliothèque (Codices 257–80), ed. René Henry (Paris: Société d’édition les belles lettres, 1977), vol. 8: 118 (=
Photius, Bibliotheca 274: 511a).
20
Foskolou, ‘Between East and West’, 189. See Haskins, Myth and Metaphor, 106–8, for Mary Magdalene’s burial in
Ephesus by the tomb of the Seven Sleepers.
WHAT DID MARY MAGDALENE LOOK LIKE? 263

for Western artists that singularity in the encounter with the risen Christ has often seemed most
enticing.21 But in the Synoptic tradition she is in company, and that is what is usually shown in
Eastern art. In Mark 16.1-2 we learn that Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James and Salome
bought aromata (ἀρώματα) that they might go and anoint Jesus’s body. In Matthew 28.1 it is Mary
Magdalene and ‘the other Mary’ (the mother of James and Joseph, so Mt. 27.56) who go. In Luke
(24.1, 10-11) Mary Magdalene, Joanna and Mary the mother of James with other women bring
aromata they have previously prepared. In fact, in the biblical texts it is not specifically said that
Mary and the other women bring myrrh; in John 19.40 it is Nicodemus who brings ‘a mixture of
myrrh and aloes’, referred to as aromata (τῶν ἀρωμάτων). An intertextual reading, with a little help
from the Song of Songs (3.1-4), then resulted in an understanding of the aromata the women bring
in the Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark and Luke) as being indeed myrrh (and aloes).22 Mary then
appears in the East with a vessel not made of alabaster but with a perfume flask suitable for pouring.
But Mary is primarily remembered for her subsequent announcement that she had seen the risen
Lord (Jn 20.18, cf. Mk 16.10-11; Lk. 24.10-11; Mt. 28.8).23
It is the Eastern style of depicting Mary that is the more ancient. Before the developed Western
association of Mary with the sinner of Luke 7, the well-veiled body of Mary Magdalene was
the normal way of depicting her in Early Christian and Byzantine art, as in the depiction of the
two women at the tomb in the sixth-century mosaic of Sant’Apollinare Nuovo, Ravenna.24 Mary
Magdalene is one of the holy women who comes to the empty tomb. She is clad in the maphorion,
thus entirely modest and pious.
The veil, however, was not a garment that advertised modesty at all times and places. The
earliest Christian art found in the catacombs and sarcophagi shows many Christian women of the
third and early fourth centuries unveiled. As we go back in time, then, identifying Mary in art might
be harder to spot, because any distinctive clothing showing her modesty, or her role and character,
may be gone.

MARY BETWEEN WEST AND EAST: HIPPOLYTUS

AND DURA-EUROPOS
With the focus of this volume being dress prior to 300 CE, we need to leave behind all these
representations of Mary Magdalene to think of how she might have been represented in the earliest
Christian art. But how might we recognize her? We may look for clues in texts. Before the severing

21
For example, in Titian’s Noli me Tangere (1514), in the National Gallery, London, 110.5 x 91.9 cm. Inv. Nr. NG270.
22
Brendan McConvery, ‘Hippolytus’ Commentary on the Song of Songs and John 20: Intertextual Reading in Early
Christianity’, Irish Theological Quarterly 71 (2006): 211–22; Lundbom, ‘From Text to Sermon’, passim.
23
Contemporary Russian icons can blend West and East. Mary can be shown with kinky blonde hair peeking out from a
red veil, or she may also be carrying a red Easter egg. This latter iconography results from the peculiarly Eastern tradition
of Mary, arising in the Russian Orthodox Church: a story of Mary Magdalene and the egg is depicted in the church of the
Russian Monastery in Jerusalem, built in 1885, where it is claimed that there is manuscript of the story. According to this
story, Mary Magdalene, who was a woman of wealth and status, discussed Christ’s resurrection with the Roman emperor
Tiberius over dinner, explaining it all by means of an egg she picked up from the table. He said there was as much chance
of a human being returning to life as for the egg to turn red. Miraculously, it immediately turned bright red in her hand.
I am grateful to Father Ioakeim of the Greek Orthodox Ecumenical Patriarchate of Thyateira and Great Britain for this
information.
24
Discussed in Haskins, Myth and Metaphor, 61–7; Diane Apostolos-Capadona, In Search of Mary Magdalene: Images and
Traditions (New York: American Bible Society, 2002), 17–18.
264 DRESS IN MEDITERRANEAN ANTIQUITY

of Eastern and Western tradition and the different characterizations of Mary Magdalene, she can
be mentioned in our surviving literature in diverse ways, from being the ‘companion of the Lord/
Saviour’ in the Gospel of Philip (59.6-11; 63.31-64:5) to an esoteric teacher of truth in the Gospel
of Mary. These presentations are consistent with (some version of) the account of the Gospel of
John in which Mary Magdalene alone goes to the tomb, is the first witness of Christ’s resurrection
and seeks to touch him, and tells other disciples what she has seen (Jn 20.1-18). They also reflect,
already in the second century, an identity of Mary Magdalene as the sister of Martha, since there
is no alternative disciple named Mary presented. In the Epistula Apostolorum 9, dated to the later
second century, but preserved in its earliest form in a fourth-century Coptic codex,25 there is the
story of the women at the tomb and it is stated: ‘There went to that place three women: Mary
belonging to Martha and Mary [Mag]dalene.’26 There is reference to three but only two women are
mentioned. It is common to restore Martha here, to make three women, but then only two women
(Martha and Mary) are sent to the male disciples. This then may indicate some textual instability
in the fourth century pointing to an earlier version just with Martha and Mary (= Magdalene). As
Mark Goodacre has noted, the composite Mary (combining Mary the sister of Martha and Mary
Magdalene) actually appears to have been very common in the earliest tradition.27 One can add that
it may well be the intended implication in John 12.1-8. When Martha’s sister Mary anoints Jesus’s
feet, Jesus states: ‘Leave her alone, so that she preserves it for the day of my burial. You always have
the poor with you, but you do not have me’ (12.7). In John 20, no perfume is mentioned with Mary
Magdalene at the tomb and no reason is given for her being there; the explanation for her presence
harks back to John 12.7: she has saved some perfume for his burial.
Among the more interesting works there is the commentary on the Song of Songs by Hippolytus
(Comm. Cant.), a baptismal homily dated to the third century, surviving only in full in Georgian,
in which Mary’s role in the resurrection is bifurcated.28 This commentary penned in Rome points
ahead to what would become normal in both traditions, in that it is possible to use an imaginative
story about Mary or oral tradition that can expand or rewrite what is in the Gospels (witness Jacob
de Voragine’s Golden Legend in the West or Xanthopoulos’s story in the East), and to engage inter-
textually, using in this case the Song of Songs.29
Here we have as resurrection witnesses not specifically Mary Magdalene but rather the sisters
Martha and Mary together (In Cant. 24.2-3). It seems as if Mary Magdalene herself has been split
into two. As Allie Ernst has argued, the identification of Martha and Mary as the key witnesses
appears to be an early tradition (which creates a parallel between the Raising of Lazarus and

25
This text is found only in this, in Greek fragments and a modern Ethiopic version, see Julian V. Hills, Tradition and
Composition in the Epistula Apostolorum (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2008).
26
Translated from the fourth-century miniature Coptic codex (Cairo IFAO P.416), in Carl Schmidt, Pierre Lacau and
Isaak Wajnberg, Gespräche Jesu mit seinen Jüngern nach der Auferstehung; ein katholisch-apostolisches Sendschreiben des 2.
Jahrhunderts (Leipzig: Leipzig, J.C. Hinrichs, 1919), leaf II, lines 1–3.
27
Mark Goodacre, ‘The Magdalene Effect: Reading and Misreading the Composite Mary in Early Christian Works’,
Rediscovering the Marys: Maria, Mariamne, Miriam, ed. Mary Ann Beavis and Ally Kateusz (London: Bloomsbury T&T
Clark, 2020), 7–24.
28
Yancy Smith, The Mystery of Anointing: Hippolytus’ Commentary on the Song of Songs in Social and Critical Contexts:
Texts, Translations, and Comprehensive Study (Pickaway, NJ: Gorgias Press, 2015), and see Victor Saxer, ‘Les Saintes Marie
Madeleine et Marie de Bethnie dans la liturgique et homiletique orientale’, RSR 32 (1958): 1–37; J. A. Cerrato, Hippolytus
Between East and West: The Commentaries and the Provenance of the Corpus (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002),
197–9.
29
See Cerrato, Hippolytus between East and West, 200.
WHAT DID MARY MAGDALENE LOOK LIKE? 265

the Resurrection), reflected in the Jerusalem Holy Week celebrations and the depictions of the
myrrhophores.30 At any rate, in Hippolytus’s sermon we are told that it is Martha who pours the
anointing oil, myron, on Christ before the crucifixion (In Cant. 2.29), and she is implicitly a virgin,
since – as a consequence – the church is itself ‘like a virgin’ (In Cant. 2.32-34). Martha and Mary
here are Mary Magdalene, and they in fact unify to become one:31 Martha and Mary together, at
the tomb, stand in place of the lover in the Song of Songs, in that they come to the tomb to meet
their beloved/bridegroom (new Adam) becoming, together, new Eve (In. Cant. 23.1-25.10). They
are both, together, in the place of the Magdalene in John 20, since they jointly speak the words of
John 20.16, ‘Rabbouni’ (In Cant. 25.2)32 and Christ responds to them as he responds to Mary in
John, though with some differences, in that he gives a loud cry after she grasps his feet (In Cant.
25.2). The homily creates an intertextual back-and-forth with Song 3.4. The following translation
of In Cant. 25.2-3 from the Georgian (by Yancy Smith), is set out to show the dance:33

But the Savior answered and said to them: ‘Martha, Mary.’ And they said, ‘Rabbouni’ (John
20.16), which means ‘my Lord’.
‘I found the one I have loved, and would not let him go’ (Song 3.4).
For in that moment, with [his] feet embraced (Matt. 28.9), she holds fast to him. And he with
a loud cry says to her, ‘Do touch me, for I have not yet ascended to my Father’ (John 20.17).
Indeed, she held on to him and it was said, ‘I will not let you go, until I take you in and I
bring you into my heart.’ ‘I will not let you go, until I take you into my mother’s house and
the chamber, [of] the one who conceived me’ (Song 3.4).
In her womb she treasured the love of Christ, she did not wish to be moved.
For this reason (or form) with a cry she says, ‘I found him and will not let him go.’
O blessed woman, who held on to his feet, that she might be able to fly up in the air! Martha and
Mary said this to him, ‘The mystery of Martha (or: righteousness) was being shown beforehand
through Solomon’. ‘We do not let you fly up’.

In the next sections, Hippolytus, continuing to play with singular and plural, works by bouncing
from the Song of Songs to a Gospel synthesis, in an allegorical mash. Martha-Mary keep holding

30
Allie Ernst, Martha from the Margins: The Authority of Martha in Early Christian Tradition (Leiden: Brill, 2009), 139–75.
This would mean the pilgrim flasks depicting the two women at the edicule may well be Mary and Martha rather than
Mary Magdalene and the Other Mary (as in Matthew). Smith (Mystery of Anointing, 528) notes Martha’s appearance in an
unpublished manuscript MS Copte D in the Bibliothèque Nationale de Paris, a partial version of an early Easter hymn also
found on a wooden tablet from Cologne.
31
In Ambrose, Or. 5.42-43, there seems to be use of Hippolytus, but the two women are Mary Magdalene and the other
Mary, as in Matthew 28.1-10. The composite Mary Magdalene as Martha-Mary may raise various questions, given that in
Aramaic and Syriac the term Martha Mariam would mean ‘Lady Mary’ and also given the Western tradition of equating
Mary the sister of Martha with Mary Magdalene. Elizabeth Schrader has pointed out that in some early manuscripts of the
Gospel of John (particularly p66* and Vetus Latina) Martha’s name is unstable. Schrader argues that Martha’s name (from
Lk. 10.38-42) was added to a previous version of John 11 and 12 to diminish Mary, who should indeed be identified with
Mary Magdalene. See Elizabeth Schrader, ‘Was Martha of Bethany Added to the Fourth Gospel in the Second Century?’
HTR 110 (2017): 360–92.
32
Hippolytus is working with texts, since he refers to ‘the books of the gospel’ (Cant. 24.3, Georgian) but one wonders if
it is already some kind of conflation, since in the Paleo-Slavonic and Armenian versions of this text ‘book of the Gospel’
(singular) is found. Into this core story he adds imaginative elements and interpretation, so the boundaries of the source(s)
are hard to distinguish.
33
Smith, Mystery of Anointing, 533–5.
266 DRESS IN MEDITERRANEAN ANTIQUITY

on to the feet and knees of Jesus, asking to be made into a ‘new sacrifice’ of Eve holding on to
the tree of life (In Cant. 25.3). She wants to mix her body with the heavenly body, to be clothed
with the Holy Spirit, no longer clad in the fig leaf (metaphorically meaning deception); instead,
‘clothed through the Holy Spirit, she has put on a good garment, of which there is no corruption’
(In Cant. 25.5).34 The women become ‘apostles to the apostles’ or ‘apostles of Christ [who] …
complete through obedience the failure of the old Eve’ (In. Cant. 25.6). Restored Adam and Eve
are now married, and she is re-established as his helper (In. Cant. 25.8), and ‘this is why the women
evangelized the [male] disciples’. When the male disciples did not believe them, Jesus appears and
states: ‘It was my desire, I who appeared to these women, to send them also as apostles to you.’35
While this kind of allegorical mystery of the marriage is not strongly attested in Latin Christianity,
it is found particularly in Valentinian writings,36 but also in the Epistula Apostolorum 58-62, which
draws on the parable of the wise and foolish virgins as brides of Christ (Mt. 25.1-13, see below).
The Odes of Solomon, a work of Syrian Christianity from the second to third centuries, uses the
imagery of the bridegroom and the bride to represent the spiritual marriage of Christ and believers.
The entire collection has quite persuasively been interpreted as hymns for baptism, and it has long
been thought that the Odes weave a poetic reflection on baptismal initiation as being a kind of
marriage, in which the bridal pair are crowned (Ode 1).37 The link here is implicit in the curious
title of the Odes being ‘of Solomon’, just as the Song of Songs is likewise ‘of Solomon’ (Song 1),
hence Christ is ‘the Beloved’ (Ode 3, 7, 8, 38). The final Ode (42) is written as if Christ speaks in
the first person, triumphantly at his resurrection, and here the language of ‘Beloved’ changes to
‘Bridegroom’. Nevertheless, the link is not explicit, and it is in the work by Hippolytus that the
correlation between the tomb/resurrection and spiritual marriage is clearest, with Christ as Adam
united with Martha/Mary as Eve.
Given such mystical concepts, we should not then be entirely surprised to find in the oldest of
all surviving early Christian art, from the famous baptistery of the Dura-Europos house church,
an image of the women at the tomb dressed as brides: at least, this is what I wish to argue here.
To understand why I have reached this conclusion, we will consider the evidence, with particular
interest in dress.
Excavated in joint French and American excavations led by Michael Rostovtzeff of Yale and
Franz Cumont of the French Academy (from 1928 until 1937), the baptistery is found in a house
church dated c. 235 CE.38 It comprises a home with a central peristyle courtyard around which

34
Ibid., 539.
35
Ibid., Mystery of Anointing, 542. Note that Smith (97–132) argues against considering this an indication of women’s
ordained leadership in the Church, though Martha and Mary may represent patronesses.
36
Lubbertus Klass van Os, ‘Baptism in the Bridal Chamber: The Gospel of Philip as a Valentinian Baptism Instruction’
(Doctoral Diss, University of Groningen, Groningen, 2007); Risto Uro, ‘The Bridal Chamber and Other Mysteries: Ritual
System and Ritual Transmission in the Valentinian Movement’, in Sacred Marriages: The Divine Human Sexual Metaphor
from Sumer to Early Christianity, ed. Risto Uro and Martti Nissinen (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2008), 457–86; Gaye
Strathearn, ‘The Valentinian Bridal Chamber in the Gospel of Philip’, Studies in the Bible and Antiquity 1 (2009): 83–103.
37
J. H. Bernard, The Odes of Solomon (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1912); Mark Pierce, ‘Themes in the “Odes
of Solomon” and Other Early Christian Writings and Their Baptismal Character’, Ephemerides Liturgicae 98 (1984): 35–59.
38
Carl H. Kraeling, The Christian Building: Excavations at Dura-Europos 8/2 (Locust Valley, NY: J.J. Augustin, 1967); Ann
Perkins, The Art of Dura-Europos (Oxford: Clarendon, 1973), 52–55; Michael I. Rostovtzeff, Dura-Europos and Its Art
(New York: AMS Press, 1978); Kurt Weitzmann and Herbert Kessler, The Frescoes of the Dura Synagogue and Christian Art
(Washington DC: Dumbarton Oaks, 1990), Michael Peppard, The World’s Oldest Church: Bible, Art, and Ritual at Dura-
Europos, Syria (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2016), and see discussion in Haskins, Myth and Metaphor, 58–61.
WHAT DID MARY MAGDALENE LOOK LIKE? 267

are rooms on two levels; the north-western corner room, on the lower level, is a baptistery. This
room contained a basin about 1 metre deep under a plaster-lined canopy. The plastered walls were
painted extensively with Christian scenes, with the northern wall painting showing two registers:
an upper one with scenes from the life of Christ and the lower one identified by Paul Baur as
depicting women coming to Christ’s tomb on Easter morning, with the tomb shown as a large,
white sarcophagus, the left side of which closely abuts the baptismal basin (see Figures 20.3 and
20.4).39
As we examine this image, we must remember that the frescoes and plastered walls were stripped
off, taken to Yale University Art Gallery and displayed in a reconstructed form, fortunately recorded
in early colour slides and drawings, since after their excavation they have very greatly faded.40 We
can see that there are three women in the preserved section, but it has long been suggested that

FIGURE 20.3 Composite drawing of painting, Dura-Europos house church, third century CE.
Healing of the Paralytic; Parting of the Red Sea; Procession of Women at the Tomb. Photo: Courtesy
of Yale University Art Gallery Dura-Europos Collection.

39
P. V. C. Baur, ‘The Paintings in the Christian Chapel’, in The Excavations at Dura-Europos Conducted by Yale University
and the French Academy of Inscriptions and Letters, Preliminary Report of the Fifth Season of Work, October 1931–March
1932, ed. M. I. Rostovtzeff (New Haven: Yale, 1934), 254–83.
40
For details of the restoration, see http://media.artgallery.yale.edu/duraeuropos/dura.html ‘Conserving the Wall Paintings’:
the paintings were already flaking as a result of ancient damage. No ancient binder was used to help preserve the pigment.
Already in the field they had been sprayed with a cellulose nitrate coating. In Yale, the paintings were again sprayed, this
time with polyvinyl acetate (in the 1930s and in the 1940s). In 1975 the paintings were restored using an Italian strappo
technique and sprayed with acrylic resin, and again in 1985 they were treated with beeswax and heat. Finally in 2010
restoration took place, aiming to remove some of the excess previous treatments, with ‘in painting’, using removal pigments,
to clarify the images.
268 DRESS IN MEDITERRANEAN ANTIQUITY

FIGURE 20.4 Dura-Europos house church, third century. Reconstruction of baptistery in Yale
University Art Gallery. Photo: Courtesy of Yale University Art Gallery Dura-Europos Collection.

there would have been one or two more figures not preserved on the right.41 The programme of a
procession of women starts in fact on the eastern wall, where there are here five pairs of women’s
feet (identifiable as women because of their long tunics) that have survived on a panel measuring
3.17 m. These figures are oriented to the northern wall (left), moving in that direction.
In Ulrich Mell’s study of the baptistery paintings, he uses the second-century Gospel conflation
of Tatian’s Diatessaron as a key for interpretation. He has suggested that there are five women
shown on the baptistery walls coming to the tomb on Easter morning, and that these represent four
named women as found in the (Arabic) Diatessaron and another woman representative of all the
others.42 The five women on the northern and eastern walls are the same women.43 Thus, here there
are Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James and Joses, the mother of the sons of Zebedee,
Salome and other women who had followed together with him from Galilee (Diat. 52.21-23).
There are certainly good reasons to look to the Diatessaron, which was very popular in the East,
as a foundation for the art. In Hogg’s version of the Arabic Diatessaron the story reads (52.45-49):
[45] And in the evening of the sabbath, which is the morning of the first day, and in [46] the dawning
while the darkness yet remained, came Mary Magdalene and the other Mary and other women to
see the tomb. They brought with them the [47] perfume which they had prepared, and said among

41
Kraeling, The Christian Building, 81.
42
Ulrich Mell, Christliche Hauskirche und Neues Testament: Die Ikonologie des Baptisteriums von Dura Europos und das
Diatessaron Tatians (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2010), 176–87.
43
Mell, Hauskirche, 30–2, 179–80.
WHAT DID MARY MAGDALENE LOOK LIKE? 269

themselves, Who is it that will [48] remove for us the stone from the door of the tomb? for it was
very great. And when they said thus, there occurred a great earthquake; and an angel came down [49]
from heaven, and came and removed the stone from the door.44

This provides an image of numerous women coming to the tomb before dawn, so we do not really
need to imagine duplicates on the eastern wall. Quite rightly scholars note that Baur’s usage of the
canonical Gospels, notably Mark 16.1-2, to interpret the scene is wrong because, as Sanne Klaver
states, the ‘text says … that the visit took place after sunrise, which is not in accordance with stars
and torches’.45 But using this Diatessaron text as the basis for the painting solves this issue neatly.46
As in the Dura painting, it is still dark, and thus the women would have needed torches, and in
the Diatessaron text they are said to have prepared perfumes in advance, which correlates with the
fact that the women in the painting are holding bowls.47 We may see that there is heavy stone slab
depicted on top of the sarcophagus and imagine the women are saying, as in Mark, ‘who will roll
away the stone for us … ?’ (16.3), reflected in the Arabic Diatessaron.48
That the women are the myrrh-bearers can be understood by an important detail. Yale University
Art Gallery has made available online the original photographs taken by the excavation team in
situ when these frescoes were first discovered,49 and one can see in one of these photographs more
clearly than in the later images the fine detail of the containers held in the hands of Mary and her
second companion. These containers are open bowls, not vials with stoppers, more suited to pot
pourri or a thick salve than liquid (Fig. 20.4).50
If we read the painting in line with this interpretation, Mary and the other women move
sequentially towards a large sarcophagus. First in line, Mary Magdalene is bearing a torch vertically
in her right hand. She is front facing, though moving to her right, and is wearing light clothing: a
long-sleeved tunic dress with a broad sash and a white veil. Her dark, wavy hair is visible under the
veil, which would have been raised off the top of her head, as was the style in Dura and Palymra
for women at this time, with hair done after the fashion of Julia Mamaea.51 Her companions are

44
H. W. Hogg, The Diatessaron of Tatian, ed. Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson; Ante-Nicene Fathers 9 (Edinburgh:
T&T Clark, 1896), 201–2.
45
Sanne Klaver, ‘Brides of Christ: The Women in Procession in the Baptistery of Dura-Europos’, ECA 9 (2012–13): 63–78,
at 64.
46
Peppard considers that an argument that the painting represents the Diatessaron is ‘circular’ because the text of the
Diatessaron remains ‘hypothetical’ (Peppard, World’s Oldest Church, 143). This shows a lack of trust in the Arabic version,
translated from the Syriac Diatessaron, made in the eighth century.
47
Note that the Arabic Diatessaron translated by Hogg has a later return of only two women at the tomb, using the account
in Matthew, so: ‘And Mary Magdalene and Mary that was related to Joses came to [37] the sepulchre after them, and
sat opposite the sepulchre, and saw the [38] body, how they took it in and laid it there. And they returned, and brought
ointment and perfume, and prepared it, that they might come and anoint him. [39] And on the day which was the sabbath
day they desisted according to the command.’
48
In this text, the irony of Mark – that the stone had already been removed from the tomb – is not preserved. The stone
removal happens subsequent to the womens’ question: ‘And when they said thus, there occurred a great earthquake; and an
angel came down [49] from heaven, and came and removed the stone from the door.’ Thus we may have here a miraculous
‘pow’.
49
http://media.artgallery.yale.edu/duraeuropos/dura.html
50
The word aromata indeed does take in quite a range of meanings, given it essentially means ‘perfumed things’. BDAG
(140–1) then helpfully translates it as ‘any kind of perfumed substance fragrant spice/salve/oil/perfume, esp. used in
embalming the dead’, referencing, inter alia, Diodorus Siculus, Bibl. 18.26:3, regarding the ἀρὠματα in Alexander’s coffin.
See also LSJ 254.
51
Baur, ‘Paintings’, 337–80.
270 DRESS IN MEDITERRANEAN ANTIQUITY

wearing similar attire. Mary is holding in her left hand a perfume bowl, as too the woman to her
left (the other Mary) who is also raising her right hand, holding a torch. The third woman is barely
seen, but she has an identical stance and carries a bowl, and so it would appear all the women
would have been depicted in the same way. Mary would then cohere with the Eastern and early
tradition as being indistinguishable by dress from the other women.
However, there is one element of the painting over the two walls which does not make sense in
this interpretation. One can see a frame at the bottom edge of the painting, which goes all the way
around the scene, and above their heads. At the bottom corner of the northern wall painting there is
the bottom of a box-like structure, for which the frame is the side, after which the frame reappears,
carrying over to the eastern wall.52 Perhaps the structure is supposed to stand in for a doorway
from which the myrrh-bearers exit to go to the tomb, but a long-standing counter-interpretation
of the scene has been that it depicts a doorway that separates the women on the northern and
eastern walls. They are not the myrrh-bearers but the five wise and foolish virgins (as bridesmaids)
of Jesus’s parable in Matthew (Mt. 25.1-12).53 In the parable the virgins carry lamps (τὰς λαμπάδας),
and the wise virgins prepare for the future and also take oil in small vessels (‘they took oil in the
flasks / vessels with their lamps’, ἔλαβον ἔλαιον ἐν τοῖς ἀγγείοις μετὰ τῶν λαμπάδων ἑαυτῶν). This
could be represented by the torches and the bowls. We would see five wise virgins moving to the
left on the northern wall, and the white structure then would not be interpreted as a sarcophagus.
Slightly complicating this interpretation, it is not entirely secure that there are five women shown
on the northern wall. The total length of the fresco is just under 2 m. The white structure is 75
cm wide. The first female figure takes up approximately 50 cm of the width as her arm is the most
outstretched, but the two figures behind her take up approximately 40 cm each from the elbow of
the woman in front. There are 90 cm from the third woman’s elbow to the edge of the frame, but
in the lower part that is preserved there are no feet, which might mean that there are only four
women shown on the wall, unless the fifth woman is in a different, higher position, passing through
the door. However, we will assume there are five for the present discussion.
A veiled woman in third-century Syria would not immediately suggest a virgin bridesmaid but
rather a married woman or bride. Notwithstanding the arguments made by Tertullian of North
Africa in his exhortative essay, ‘On the Veiling of Virgins’, written around the time the paintings
were made, it was the church of a later time, in the fourth century, that adopted the ritual of the
marriage ceremony, along with veiling, to ensure consecrated virgins were veiled in church like
married women.54 Tertullian’s recommendations themselves appear to be directed at dedicated,
ascetic virgins in the church of Carthage, even though much of what he says has ramifications also
for unmarried girls.55 While veiling in the ancient Mediterranean was often quite culturally specific

52
Klaver (‘Brides of Christ’, 63) assumes it is a door. See for the positioning of the images at http://media.artgallery.yale.
edu/duraeuropos/dura.html.
53
It was first presented by J. Pijoan, ‘The Parable of the Virgins from Dura-Europos’, Art Bulletin 19, no. 4 (1937): 592–5,
and see now Michael Peppard, ‘Illuminating the Dura-Europos Baptistery: Comparanda for the Female Figures’, JECS 20
(2012): 543–74, and id., World’s Oldest Church, 111–13.
54
For example, Jerome’s Epist. 130 to Demetrias, and further see David Hunter, ‘The Virgin, the Bride and the Church:
Reading Psalm 45 in Ambrose, Jerome and Augustine’, CH 69 (2000): 281–303. For an excellent study of Tertullian’s context
in regard to veiling, see Mary Alice Fellman, ‘The Social Context of Tertullian’s on the Veiling of Virgins’ (MA Thesis,
Cornell University, Ithaca, NY), 2009. https://ecommons.cornell.edu/bitstream/handle/1813/13596/Fellman%2c%20Mary.
pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y
55
See the arguments in Fellman, ‘Social Context of Veiling’, 16–17.
WHAT DID MARY MAGDALENE LOOK LIKE? 271

and also variable in regard to class, with high-status women more modestly covered than low-status
women, the veil is often found as the marker of a bride or married woman.56 From marriage, in
Roman contexts, a man was said to ‘lead a wife’, ducere uxorem, and a woman was to ‘veil for a
man’, nubere viro.57 Thus, on the basis of the veil the women represented in the Dura baptistery are
brides but not really virgins attending a bride.58
Usefully, Michael Peppard and Sanne Klaver both resource a host of Syrian Christian literature,
including baptismal liturgy and poetry, that uses bridal symbolism for the baptizand moving
towards the baptismal font, symbolized as the bridal chamber, where they will meet (and be united
with) the bridegroom, Christ.59 Indeed, the virgins are already understood not as bridesmaids but
as brides when the parable is used in the Epistula Apostolorum.
Usual bridal attire in this Roman colony on the Euphrates, with its mixture of Syrian, Greek
and Roman culture, might be hard to define precisely, but certainly an elite Roman bride would be
expected to wear a flammeum veil, often dyed luteum (off-white to yellow), and otherwise wear
white, though many other accoutrements can be listed also, including a belt with a Herculean
knot.60 The women in Dura are presented appropriately in white bridal attire, as Klaver has well
noted.61 The torches in the hands of the women are a key feature of the procession accompanying
a bride, though here the brides themselves hold the torches, which should normally be in the hands
of bridesmaids. Indeed, the white structure may not be a sarcophagus but rather a tent or canopied
bed, as a bridal chamber.62
That eminent art historians can see two different things in the Dura paintings points to an
intended effect. The women are both myrrh-bearers and brides, given Hippolytus, who identifies
the women who come to the tomb with the bride in his Commentary 24.63 The artist is here
reflecting the story of Mary Magdalene and other women coming to the tomb at the moment of
the resurrection of Christ, as in the (Arabic) Diatessaron, and also aligning these women, shown as
brides, with the faithful baptizands who are moving towards the baptismal basin, ready to immerse
in the ‘bridal chamber’ in which they are to be brought into union with the risen Christ. In short,
in regard to Mary Magdalene and her depiction prior to 300 CE, we have her visualized, by her
dress, as a kind of bride, like the other women with her. In the context of the early church it is
not strange in that the other women could also be conceptualized as virgins and brides, despite
the other Mary being the mother of James and Joses or there being the mother of the sons of

56
Kelly Olson, Dress and the Roman Woman: Self-Presentation and Society (New York: Routledge, 2008), 33, and see
regarding the debate about veiling in 1 Corinthians 11:1-9, Cynthia L. Thompson, ‘Hairstyles, Head Coverings, and St.
Paul: Portraits from Roman Corinth’, BA 51, no. 2 (1988): 99–115. Dale Martin, ‘Prophylactic Veils’, in The Corinthian
Body (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995).
57
Karen Klaiber Hersch, ‘Introduction to the Roman Wedding: Two Case Studies’, CJ 109/2 (December 2013–January
2014): 223–32, at p. 229.
58
Virgins, also, at this time, should usually be imagined as younger than marriageable age, which could take place from
the age of twelve. Karen Klaiber Hersch, The Roman Wedding: Ritual and Meaning in Antiquity (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2010), 20, n.14.
59
See especially Klaver, ‘Brides of Christ’, 66–7, 75–7.
60
Hersch, ‘Two Case Studies’, 225; Klaver, ‘Brides of Christ’, 68, 77 n.71.
61
Klaver, ‘Brides of Christ’, 68, and see Kersch, Roman Wedding, 71.
62
Klaver (‘Brides of Christ’, 69–70) sees it as a tent, but a veiled, canopied bed is equally possible: the sexual metaphor of
union is obvious in the language of the bridal chamber.
63
Haskins, Mary Magdalen: Myth and Metaphor, 63–5.
272 DRESS IN MEDITERRANEAN ANTIQUITY

Zebedee. ‘Virgins’, as ascetic women, could be placed in the category of ‘widows’, and vice versa.64
Interpreted mystically, much is possible.

MARY IN FIRST-CENTURY JUDAEA

While we have seen different Mary’s over time, we now need to ask: what did Mary Magdalene
really look like, as a historical woman?
In terms of her historical reality, we have the key texts of the Gospels and other early Christian
writings that indicate a memory that Mary Magdalene was one of many women who followed
Jesus as disciples in Galilee and that she was a witness to the empty tomb (Mt. 27.55; 28.1, 6;
Mk 15.41, 47; 16.6; Lk. 24.10; Jn 20.2 see especially Lk. 8.1-3) and resurrection (Mk 16.9; Mt.
28.8-10; Jn 20.11-18). We learn that she had been the subject of an exorcism (healing) by Jesus,
and seven demons went out of her (Mk 16.9; Lk. 8.2), but in terms of the folk traditions of the
time this simply means she was very ill, not that she was morally lax. There is nothing distinctive
about her.
Fortunately, in terms of her clothing, a great array of material has come to light from sites
around the Dead Sea, where the dryness and saltiness of the environment have naturally preserved
organic substances that would elsewhere have decomposed.65 Using comparative study of clothing
and appearances on Egyptian mummy portraits66 from the first to third centuries, and other art
(particularly from Pompeii, Palmyra and Dura-Europos), it is possible to gain quite a good idea of
how women in first-century Judaea dressed. It is also possible, from skeletal remains, to determine
their average height and other aspects of their physicality. These remains can provide more than
just bones. In the excavations of 1964, on the steps of the bathhouse in the northern palace of
Masada, fragmentary and disturbed skeletons were found, and one of these skeletons was from a
young woman; her long, black, plaited hair was still intact.67 This plait would have been rolled up
into a bun (see below).
According to the Israel Antiquities Authority human osteological database68 for the later Second
Temple period, the average height for a woman was 147 cm, or 4 feet 8 inches, with the average
for men being 166 cm, or 5 feet 5 inches.69 In addition, we may note that Judaeans would have
been of ‘Middle Eastern’ appearance, with olive-brown skin. The biological anthropologist Yossi
Nagar goes further to specify that Jews of this time, in Judaea, had a strong biological connection
with people from the area of Iraq, so that in fact if you want to get the best ‘look’ of a Jew of Jesus’s

64
See Charlotte Methuen, ‘The “Virgin Widow”: A Problematic Social Role for the Early Church?’, HTR 90 (1997): 285–98.
65
For excellent examples, see Hero Granger-Taylor, ‘Textiles from Khirbet Qazone and the Cave of Letters, Two Burial
Sites Near the Dead Sea: Similarities and Differences in Find Spots and Textile Types’, in Textiles in Situ: Their Find Spots
in Egypt and Neighbouring Countries in the First Millennium CE, ed. Sabine Shrenk (Riggisberg: Abegg Stiftung, 2006),
113–31; Avigail Sheffer and Hero Granger-Taylor, ‘Textiles from Masada: A Preliminary Selection’, in Masada IV: The
Yigael Yadin Excavations 1963–1965 Final Reports, ed. Joseph Aviram, Gideon Foerster and Ehud Netzer (Jerusalem: Israel
Exploration Society, 1994), 149–256.
66
See, for example, Susan Walker, ed., Ancient Faces: Mummy Portraits from Roman Egypt (The Metropolitan Museum of
Art Publications, New York: Routledge, 2000).
67
Yigael Yadin, Masada (New York: Random House, 1966), 54, cf. 193, 196, though Joe Zias has doubted that these
remains are of Jews, in ‘Whose Bones?’ BAR 24, no. 6 (1998): 24–36.
68
Yossi Nagar, ‘Human Osteological Database at the Israel Antiquities Authority: Overview and Some Examples of Use’,
Bioarchaeology of the Near East 5 (2011): 1–18.
69
Nagar, ‘Human Osteological Database’, 8.
WHAT DID MARY MAGDALENE LOOK LIKE? 273

time you might consider the Iraqi Jewish community.70 We are not told anything about Mary
Magdalene’s age, and there is absolutely nothing in our texts that would require us to imagine
Mary as young, or as beautiful, though we may choose to do so. Since Luke 8.1–3 indicates that
she was a woman with resources that could be used for supporting Jesus’s work, we should think
not think of her as a minor.
With regard to Mary’s dress, studies conclude that women in Judaea wore, overall, Mediterranean-
wide clothing,71 in having a long tunic (in Greek, a chitōn).72 Women’s tunics were distinguished
from men’s by being both longer on their bodies and baggier. Such tunics were usually made of
wool, but linen was associated with warmer environments, like Jericho (Josephus, War 4.469-70).
Woollen tunics usually had coloured stripes (called clavi) which ran from shoulder to hem.73 In
Hebrew, a tunic, haluq, means ‘divided’, since these have separate front and backs, sewn together
at the shoulders and sides.74
The ‘sleeves’ of a tunic at this time were not separate, or long, but created from the width of
the material, though such ‘sleeves’ could have tucks at the shoulders.75 Long sleeves appeared
increasingly on women’s tunics over the course of the Roman period, but overall women’s tunics
are simply baggier and longer than men’s.76 For example, there is one side of an undyed tunic with
purple stripes found in a grave in Khirbet Qazone, now in the British Museum (2004, 0910.5;
Figure 20.5). It is approximately 117 cm long and 142 cm wide, that is wider than it is long.77
This would have provided longish sleeves, a women’s tunic with ‘sleeves’ down to the wrist, and a
baggy shape.78 On an average woman standing some 147 cm tall it would have reached her ankles.
Such a tunic was drawn in at the waist under the breasts (and sometimes at the hips) with a cloth
band, an example of which has been found at Naḥal Hever, but it could also be made of leather
or cord.79

70
Yossi Nagar, personal communication (emails of February and March, 2017).
71
See especially Lucille A. Roussin, ‘Costume in Roman Palestine’, in The World of Roman Costume, ed. Judith L. Sebesta
and Larissa Bonfante (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2001), 182–91; Dafna Schlezinger-Katsman, ‘Clothing’, in
The Oxford Handbook of Jewish Daily Life in Roman Palestine, ed. Catherine Hezser (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2010), 362–81; Katie Turner, ‘“The Shoe Is the Sign!” Costuming Brian and Dressing the First Century’, in Jesus and Brian:
Exploring the Historical Jesus and His Times via Monty Python’s Life of Brian, ed. Joan Taylor (London: T&T Clark, 2015),
221–37 id. ‘The Representation of New Testament Figures in Passion Dramas,’ PhD thesis (King’s College London, 2019),
34–105. See also Joshua Schwartz’s chapter in this volume.
72
Steven Fine, ‘How Do You Know a Jew When You See One? Reflections on Jewish Costume in the Roman World’,
Fashioning Jews: Clothing, Culture, and Commerce, ed. Leonard J. Greenspoon (Studies in Jewish Civilization, West
Lafayette, Ind: Purdue University Press, 2013), 19–28.
73
In linen these stripes were made out of a different weave alone and are called ‘self-bands’. See Orit Shamir and Naama
Sukenik, ‘Qumran Textiles and the Garments of Qumran’s Inhabitants’, DSD 18 (2011): 206–25, at 217–20: nos. 7 and 58;
see the example in Yigael Yadin, The Finds from the Bar Kokhba Period in the Cave of Letters (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration
Society, 1963), 261–2. It is 85 cm wide and 80 cm long. IAA no: 1997–9049.
74
Mishnah (m.Nega’im 11:9; Yadin, Finds, 212, Pl. 66; IAA no: 1996–9132.
75
Yigael Yadin, Bar-Kokhba: The Rediscovery of the Legendary Hero of the Last Jewish Revolt against Imperial Rome
(London: Random House, 1971), 66–71.
76
This became quite standard in the later (third century onwards) Coptic tunic; there was also a tendency to have more
decoration around the collar and sleeves, see M. S. Dimand, ‘Coptic Tunics in the Metropolitan Museum of Art’,
Metropolitan Museum Studies 2 (May 1930): 239–52.
77
Granger-Taylor, ‘Textiles from Khirbet Qazone’, 120, Fig. 3.
78
This would be practical also allowing for pregnancy and (modest) breast-feeding.
79
Taylor, What Did Jesus Look Like, 173.
274 DRESS IN MEDITERRANEAN ANTIQUITY

FIGURE 20.5 Khirbet Qazone. Undyed tunic with purple stripes, c. 117 cm long and 142 cm
wide, second to the third centuries CE. British Museum 2004,0910.5. Photo: © The Trustees of
the British Museum.

Over her head and shoulders it is likely that a Judaean woman wore a shawl (veil), as we see in
the depictions of Syrian women from the Roman period in Palmyra or Dura-Europos, and in later
synagogue art, for example in the image of Virgo in the fourth-century zodiac mosaic of Hammat
Tiberias. In literature this shawl could have different names (e.g. in Hebrew a tsammah (Song Sol.
4.1, 3; 6.7) or rādīd (Song Sol. 5.7; Isa. 3:23, in Aramaic redīd, so Targum Neophiti 24.25; 38.14),
translated as theristron in the Greek Septuagint).
A mantle (Greek: himation; Hebrew: tallit) could be worn as an outer garment, especially by
elite women, and there were different types and qualities. A himation was sometimes called (in
Greek) a chlanis, chlainion or chlanidion, the latter indicating one of finer wool worn by refined
rich women (Plutarch, Alciphon 23/2.253a).80 A well-preserved woman’s mantle, found in the Cave
of Letters in Naḥal Hever, measured when whole 140 x 270 cm.81

80
Such words relate to the verb ‘warm’, chlainō, and thus mean ‘warmer’: LSJ 1994.
81
Yadin, Finds, 238, IAA no. 43–8.11.
WHAT DID MARY MAGDALENE LOOK LIKE? 275

There is also some evidence to suggest that women were expected to wear more colourful
clothing than men, though Pompeian art shows there was no simple correlation. Josephus associates
coloured clothing with women’s apparel in War 4:561-3, but recently found tomb paintings in Beit
Bas (ancient Capitolais) in Jordan show male physical workers wearing bright red, yellow, pink,
pale green and other coloured chitōnes.82 Remains of clothing found by the Dead Sea indicate that
people sometimes wore undyed clothing but also a great range of strong colours, particularly reds
(dyed with madder), yellow and green.83 The himatia of women were probably also distinguished
by a gamma shape in the corners, as opposed to what I would call an iota shape in the garments
of men.84
In terms of hair, women’s hair was long, yet invariably bound up and secured in hairnets (svachot,
m.Kelim 24:16), as have been found in Murabba`at and Masada. The plaits (braids) of the woman
in Masada would indicate a style in which these were wound up on the head rather than hanging
down. A bun support ring has also been found in Murabba`at, dating to the second century CE.
As Janet Stephens has explored, elite women throughout the Roman Empire tended to follow the
patterns of imperial Roman women, whose elaborate hairstyles were distributed via portrait busts
and coins.85 The hair of elite women, who could employ a slave as a personal hairdresser, could be
tied up with string: sewn into place and unsewn by nimble fingers. Less elite women presumably
followed local traditions, as today. Plaiting/braiding is one of the most convenient ways of dealing
with long hair, as it makes it particularly easy to secure with a net and pins. A Judaean or Nabataean
woman may have worn a bun-wrapper scarf since small coloured cloths have been found on either
side of the Dead Sea.86 There were several such cloth scarves found in Masada. At Khirbet Qazone
an exceptionally well-preserved cloth has been found, with some fringes intact. Measuring 23.7
cm by 18.9 cm it is made of wool, dyed red and has three thin stripes at the surviving edge in blue
and yellow (Figure 20.6).87 It may be that a scarf was worn in lieu of a hairnet, since hairnets, being
finer, may not have been so commonly available to poorer women, though shown on portrait busts
of elite women.88
Once bound up, a woman’s hair would not have been easy to loosen. The sinner woman of
Luke 7 had hair that was apparently already loose and hanging down at the time she appeared
with the alabaster jar, ready for wiping Jesus’s feet. Traditionally, in a legal setting, the loosing of
a woman’s hair was one of the trials inflicted on women suspected of adultery (Num. 5.18-31, cf.
Jn 7.53–8.11), as Gail Labovitz also discusses in her chapter in this book, but women’s unbound
hair in Mediterranean antiquity was far more often associated with grieving.89 No texts associate
unbound hair with prostitution. Thus, in John 12 it is Mary the sister of Martha, Jesus’s disciple,

82
For image, see https://www.archaeology.org/news/7000-180928-jordan-capitolias-murals
83
Orit Shamir, ‘Textiles, Basketry, Cordage and Whorls from Mo’a (Moje Awad)’, ‘Atiqot, 50 (2005): 99–152 at 100–3.
84
Taylor, What Did Jesus Look Like, 181–4.
85
Janet Stephens, ‘Ancient Roman Hairdressing: On (Hair)pins and Needles’, Journal of Roman Archaeology 21 (2008):
111–33.
86
Hero Granger-Taylor (pers. comm.). This is probably indicated by the Aramaic word mandila, meaning ‘small scarf’.
87
It is now in the British Museum (BM 2004,0910.3).
88
I. Jenkins and D. Williams, ‘A Bronze Portrait Head and Its Hair Net’, Record of the Art Museum, Princeton University
46, no. 2 (1987): 8–1; Elizabeth Bartman, ‘Hair and the Artifice of Roman Female Adornment’, American Journal of
Archaeology 105, no. 1 (2001): 1–25.
89
Charles H. Cosgrove, ‘A Woman’s Unbound Hair in the Greco-Roman World, with Special Reference to the Story of the
“Sinful Woman” in Luke 7:36-50’, JBL 124 (2005): 675–89.
276 DRESS IN MEDITERRANEAN ANTIQUITY

FIGURE 20.6 Khirbet Qazone. Headscarf, 23.7 cm by 18.9 cm. British Museum 2004,0910.3.
Photo: © The Trustees of the British Museum.

who pours perfume on Jesus’s feet, wiping them with her unbound hair, apparently momentously
grieving ahead of time for what would soon happen in a way not appreciated by her critic, Judas.
A woman could draw her himation over her head for special modesty, and especially in situations
of mourning, as we see in terms of the representation of a Judaean woman in a coinage issued
after the First Revolt in 70 CE by Vespasian and Titus (Figure 20.7). In this Judaea Capta type,
the woman is sitting dejectedly under a palm tree, with a Roman soldier towering over her. The
woman is illustrative both of local women and of Judaea as a humiliated, mourning nation. It is
implied she has been raped:90 the Roman soldier holds a staff upright by his right hand and holds
in his left hand a parazonium scabbard meant to signify an erect penis, indicating Roman virility
(dominance) against Judaean femininity (submission).91 The woman is shown sitting, covered, in
grief. Perhaps the woman portrayed weeping in the Judaea Capta coinage may have been imagined
as a rich woman, with a large mantle, reflecting the wealth of Judaea symbolized by the date palm
now captured by the Romans.
As for Mary Magdalene, however, an ordinary woman who worked physically would not
usually have worn a cumbersome mantle except to keep warm on cold days. On Mary’s feet were
sandals. Many examples of these have now been found,92 including very ‘as new’ sandals from the

90
Davina C. Lopez, ‘Before Your Very Eyes: Roman Imperial Ideology, Gender Constructs and Paul’s Inter-nationalism’,
BibInt 84 (2006): 115–62, 118.
91
Ibid., 123.
92
Renate Rosenthal-Heginbottom, ‘A Man Must Not Go Out with a Nail-studded Sandal’ – Footwear in Jewish Sources
and from Archaeological Remains’, in Drawing the Threads Together: Textiles and Footwear of the 1st Millennium AD from
Egypt, ed. Antoine De Moor, Cäcilia Fluck and Petra Linscheid (Tielt: Lanoo, 2013), 268–75.
WHAT DID MARY MAGDALENE LOOK LIKE? 277

FIGURE 20.7 Roman sestertius of the emperor Vespasian. Coin of Vespasian, 69–79 CE, bronze
sestertius, 71 CE in Rome. Soldier (Vespasian) in armour stands facing to the right, with spear and
parazonium; a mourning and veiled woman (Judaea) sits under a palm tree. Private collection of
Andreas Pangerl. Photo: Andreas Pangerl, www.romancoins.info.

burial of the woman with braids in Masada. Sandals were invariably made according to the soleae
type, with the sole composed of thick leather and the upper parts much like thongs but with a heel
strap, and they were tightened at the toe for a close fit.93
Women are shown in portraits as wearing brooches (fibulae), earrings and other jewellery,
especially in the case of wealthy women, though it is unlikely that a disciple of Jesus like Mary
would have worn much, given the early Christian discourse against jewellery (e.g. 1 Tim. 2:9).94
Overall, we need to see Mary and the other women disciples as dressing without much regard to
looking well turned out, especially given that they were on the road with Jesus: their appearance
would have been as poor women.
Thus we arrive at an image of Mary Magdalene (Figure 20.8). The colour of her tunic may have
been bright. She would have had a coloured shawl (veil) and sandals on her feet. Her hair would
have been bound up and secured. She is, in some ways, an everywoman, indistinguishable. We have
yet to have her depicted as such in art, accurately, as a Jewish woman in appropriate dress of first-
century Judaea. The time for this has surely come.

93
See discussion with photographs in Joan E. Taylor and Naama Sukenik, ‘Organic Materials from Cave 11Q: A. Leather,
Basketry, Ropes, Wood and Seeds’, in Khirbet Qumrân and Ain Feshkha IVa: Qumran Cave 11Q. Archaeology and New
Scroll Fragments, ed. Jean-Baptiste Humbert and Marcello Fidanzio (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2019), 125–33
at 125–6.
94
Kristi Upson-Saia, Early Christian Dress: Gender, Virtue, and Authority (London: Routledge, 2012), 43–6.
278 DRESS IN MEDITERRANEAN ANTIQUITY

FIGURE 20.8 Mary Magdalene. Illustration by Joan E. Taylor.

CONCLUSION
This examination has travelled back in time from the portrayals of Mary Magdalene West and East
to the early period of Christian art in the third century. Here, we see a Mary Magdalene portrayed
in bridal attire, advancing with other women to the tomb of Christ/bridal chamber. In terms of
actuality, the real Mary Magdalene can be loosely visualized by considering the clothing she would
have worn as a woman of Judaea in the first century. This type of clothing has been preserved in
caves and burial grounds around the Dead Sea and shows us that the people of this area dressed
similarly to elsewhere in the ancient Mediterranean. We may imagine Mary as looking like other
women of her time. Even if she is to be elided with the sinful woman of Luke 7, or Mary of Bethany
who lets down her hair in John 12, her hair would not generally have been loose: only in expressing
grief. In resisting elisions, we resist much of Mary’s later characterization. We are left only with
the barest outline.
 CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Robes of Transfiguration and

Salvation in Early Christian Texts
JANELLE PETERS

Both the transfigured robes of Jesus and the baptismal garments of believers represent an
individual’s identity and the revealed nature of salvation. During his transfiguration, Jesus’s robes
become radiant as three of his disciples watch in awe (Mk 9.1-8; Mt. 17.1-8; Lk. 9.28-36). Paul
tells believers to clothe themselves in Christ. Similarly, Luke’s resurrection account instructs the
disciples that Jesus will clothe the disciples with power from on high (24.49).
In this chapter, I will examine interest in the transfigured robes of Jesus and the putting on of
new clothes by believers in Christ. These garments are androgynous, and they contribute to the
moral development of the individual. They create an identity located in the self, Christ, morality
and the divine. While these textiles intersect with garments from Jewish, Greek, Roman and other
traditions, they acquire a larger function of orienting the baptized in the meaning of the divinity
and baptism of Christ.1

PUTTING ON CHRIST AND THE NEW SELF

Several letters exhort recipients to clothe themselves with Christ. Believers are to put on this new
self as part of their initiation into their new identity and membership in the communal body of
Christ. The moment at which one could first ‘put on Christ’ was one’s baptism. In this way, as
commentators such as J. Albert Harrill have noted, the motif could have paralleled the toga virilis
ceremony for Roman boys that conferred upon them a coming-of-age.2 Candida Moss observes
that white garments featured frequently in Roman culture, appearing at Roman initiations, parties,
processions for Isis and Roman triumphs.3 However, the exhortations in early Christian literature
suggest that this clothing would then be one’s identity, even more so than the ceremonial toga.
The imperative to put on Christ is ongoing in several references, going beyond morning rituals of
donning garb or maintaining purity to the metaphorical state of one’s consciousness. Fabric and
cloth have already become Christ – Paul does not need to explain how believers are to don the

1
Receiving the gift of a royal robe in ancient Persia also entailed being touched by the king’s spirit: see Lloyd Llewellyn-
Jones, ‘Dress and Ceremony in Achaemenid Persia: The *Gaunaka’, this volume.
2
J. Albert Harrill, ‘Coming of Age and Putting on Christ: The Toga Virilis Ceremony, Its Paraenesis, and Paul’s Interpretation
of Baptism in Galatians’, Novum Testamentum 44, no. 3 (2002): 252–77.
3
Candida Moss, Divine Bodies: Resurrecting the Perfection in the New Testament and Early Christianity (New Haven: Yale,
2019), 102–3.
280 DRESS IN MEDITERRANEAN ANTIQUITY

identity of Christ by using a simile about clothing. One is always to put on Christ, to remember
one’s baptismal identity and to be ready for Christ following his model.
a. Putting on Christ
The letters to the Galatians and the Romans from the apostle Paul emphasize that new members
are putting on Christ. Galatians 3.27 depicts its recipients’ baptism as an event in and after which
those believers clothed themselves ‘with Christ’. As Stanley Porter opines, the clothing with Christ
is what culminates the process from faith in God leading to adoption as ‘sons of God’ to baptism
and ‘the resulting egalitarian relations’.4 Likewise, Romans 13.14 features the apostle giving the
instruction: ‘put on the Lord Jesus Christ’. Both letters convey agency on the part of the believer.
Neither Paul nor Jesus garbs the baptized in Christ; rather, the baptized clothe themselves in their
new identity in Christ on an ongoing basis. Moreover, the baptized are not only made new, but
they assume a particular identity, that is, that of Christ.
In 2 Corinthians, Paul presents the idea of a doubly garmented believer. At the end of this world,
or the death of the baptized, believers will lose their earthly bodies. Paul refers to these as ‘earthly
dwellings’ (5.1) or ‘tents’ (5.1, 2, 4). However, the baptized will retain the heavenly buildings
they had by virtue of their baptism. Wayne Meeks draws attention to the ‘down payment’ of the
Spirit already received (5.5) for the eschatological future.5 Proper desire, accordingly, is not to be
unclothed, that is, stripped of the mortal body. Rather, Paul teaches that the goal is to be ‘further
clothed, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life’ (5.4). Such a formulation implies that
when Paul insists on putting on Christ in Galatians and Romans he means that the identity of the
second garment, that of Christ, is the permanent identity of the baptized.
Yet, Paul is not always clear on precisely when this new garment of Christ is assumed. When Paul
talks about the raising of the dead at the last trumpet at the Resurrection in 1 Corinthians 15.50-58,
he envisions the dead as sleeping. With the sounding of the last trumpet, ‘the dead will be raised
incorruptible’, meaning Paul and his associates ‘will be changed’. Elsewhere, in Philippians 3.21,
the apostle states that Jesus has the power to change our lowly human bodies to conform to his
glorious body. Here, in 1 Corinthians 15, Paul says that the corruptible must be clothed with the
eternal at verse 53, but he indicates in the next verses that this will not happen until the fulfillment
of Hosea’s prophecy about victory over death. Thus, although the baptized put on Christ, he says
in 1 Corinthians 15 and implies in Philippians 3 that the continual process is not complete until
the resurrection.
b. Putting on the new self
Texts developing the Pauline idea of ‘putting on Christ’ tend to see this in terms of putting on
the new self. Whereas both Galatians and Romans specifically refer to the putting on of ‘Christ’,
Colossians 3.10 and Ephesians 4.24 exhort recipients to ‘put on the new self’. This new self is an
identity that has been created through a relationship to Christ, but it is a more nuanced proposition.

4
Stanley Porter, ‘The Church in Romans and Galatians’, in The New Testament Church: The Challenge of Developing
Ecclesiologies, ed. John P. Harrison and James D. Dvorak; McMaster Divinity Biblical Studies Series 1 (Eugene, OR: Wipf
and Stock, 2012), 85–102, 97.
5
Wayne A. Meeks, The First Urban Christians: The Social World of the Apostle Paul, 2nd edition (New Haven: Yale, 2003),
188.
ROBES OF TRANSFIGURATION AND SALVATION 281

Both texts position the identity of the baptized in terms of creation and the Creator, but Colossians
links this new identity to a more fully developed ethical framework with defined vices and virtues.
The Gospel of Philip, meanwhile, interprets what the believer puts on as clothes, light and the
perfect human.
Colossians 3.10 envisions the ‘new self’ that is worn as being continually ‘renewed in knowledge
in the image of its Creator’. Forged by baptism, it has put away vices and dressed virtuously.6 This
connection to creation ties the new self to a cosmic love. As Rosemary Canavan notes, Colossians
3.1-17 suggests that the clothing is a love that shapes the body, resembling the Stoic notion that
a unifying spirit keeps together the universe. Believers put on the new self, which is a ‘love which
unifies the body to be mature in Christ’.7 The garment of the new self in Colossians is the conclusion
of the letter’s references to love: ‘your love in the Spirit’ (1.8), ‘united in love’ (2.2) and ‘over all of
these, love’ (3.14). After removing the ‘old human being’ (3.9), the believer puts on a sequence of
garments. First, in what is now described as a layering of garments, one dons ‘heartfelt compassion,
kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience’ (3.12). Over all of these, one dons love, which is
described as a bond of perfection (3.14). This outfit stands in contrast to ethnic and socio-economic
status.
In Ephesians 4, body language turns into an instruction to ‘put on the new self’. The overall goal
of this section is to develop the ‘one Lord, one faith, and one baptism’ (4.5) idea. We learn of the
necessity for different roles within the church: apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers
(4.11). The community grows into Christ, the head of the body. Having put off the old self, the
members put on their new self (4.23), acquiring new morals that show their likeness to God (4.24).
Stephan Fowl connects this putting on of a new self with donning the ‘whole armour of God’ in
6.10-11.8 As this armour permits the new self to resist the devil by wearing the equipment of God,
the new self does, in fact, embody characteristics of God and Christ.
Referencing 1 Corinthians 15.50, the Gospel of Philip features the related idea of putting on
new clothes as part of participation in the eucharist. Carly Daniel-Hughes observes that the various
exhortations to put on the perfect man and the light have similarity.9 For the Apocalypse of Paul,
Anthony Hilhorst includes the idea of the putting on of the monastic and angelic garb as reasons to
consider the document Christian.10
c. Putting on the toga
All of these texts within the broader Pauline tradition give us a metaphorical garment. They
suggest the conflation of identity and apparel that was present in the Roman world. Rather
than focusing on the fabric used for the garment, they use the idea of putting on clothing to
indicate the willing and intentional taking on of a new identity. These texts reference more than

6
Elsa Tamez, Cynthia Briggs Kittredge, Claire Miller Columbo and Alicia J. Batten, Philippians, Colossians, Philemon,
Wisdom Commentary Series 51 (Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 2017), 181.
7
Rosemary Canavan, Clothing the Body of Christ at Colossae: A Visual Construction of Identity, WUNT 2.334 (Tübingen:
Mohr Siebeck, 2012), 3.
8
Stephen E. Fowl, Ephesians: A Commentary, NTL (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2012), 203.
9
Carly Daniel-Hughes, ‘Putting on the Perfect Man: Clothing and Soteriology in the Gospel of Philip’, in Dressing Judeans
and Christians in Antiquity, ed. Kristi Upson-Saia, Carly Daniel-Hughes and Alicia J. Batten (Farnham, UK: Ashgate Press,
2014), 225–6.
10
Anthony Hilhorst, Visio Pauli and the Gnostic Apocalypse of Paul, ed. Jan N. Bremmer and Istvan Czachesz (Leuven:
Peeters, 2007), 1–23, 18.
282 DRESS IN MEDITERRANEAN ANTIQUITY

fashion; they tell us that the donning of clothes is closely linked conceptually with the new and
permanent identity of the baptized.
Possibly in the background of Paul’s imagery could be notions of Israelite priestly garments
(Exod. 29.4-9; 40.12-15; Lev. 16.3-4) and events such as the replacement of Joshua’s dirty high
priestly robes (Zech. 3.3-5).11 Multiple places in the Hebrew scriptures associate priestly and
prophetic clothing with salvation. 2 Chronicles 6.41 contains a prayer for Solomon’s priests to be
clothed with salvation and so too does Psalm 132.16 attribute the clothing of the priests of Zion
with salvation. Being clothed with the garments of salvation is something that causes the author to
rejoice in Isaiah 6.10.12
The repeated and persistent use of garments as identity also probably comes from the Roman
imperial context of the communities of Galatians, Romans, Colossians and Ephesians. The Romans
had a traditional garment, the toga, which was the emblem of Roman citizenship.13 A specific
coming-of-age ritual, a Roman boy’s putting on the toga virilis, occurs abundantly in both Latin
and Greek sources. Harrill has shown how the mere reference to a toga functioned to mark the
beginning of public life for a Roman man. According to Seneca, for instance, this ceremony was
a major life event, one that a parent would envision as a necessary milestone for a complete life:
‘So many funerals pass our doors, yet we never think of death! So many deaths are untimely, yet
we make plans for our own infants – how they will don the toga, serve in the army, and succeed
to their father’s property’ (De consolatione ad Marciam 9.2).14 The toga would have encompassed
ceremonially the whole of a Roman man’s adult and public life. In this way, the toga is analogous
to baptismal robe, which denotes a changed identity that is permanent.
What is interesting here is that the descriptions of these put-on garments in these epistles are all
androgynous, particularly when compared to descriptions of the toga. Quintilian praises the toga
for making a Roman man’s chest look ‘distinguished and manly’, explaining that the excessive and
sometimes cumbersome fabric of the toga puffed the chest so as to render its appearance larger
(Inst. 11.3.137). Though the ideal divine is still based on the self as male rather than female, the
Pauline texts under consideration present a largely divine and androgynous garment that may
be ‘put on’ by all the baptized. As F. F. Bruce has commented, ‘when the “new man” is said in
Ephesians 4:24 to be “created according to God in righteousness and true holiness” (cf. Col. 3:10,
“renewed after his Creator’s image so as to attain true knowledge”), the new man or new humanity
is Christ himself – not Christ in isolation from his people but Christ in his people’.15

TRANSFIGURATION
Garments that radiate divine light feature in the various accounts of the transfiguration, when
Jesus’s appearance changes and God’s voice claims Jesus as his son.16 Jesus’s transfigured form fits

11
Jung Hoon Kim, The Significance of Clothing in the Pauline Corpus, LNTS 268 (New York: T&T Clark, 2004), 120–1.
12
Kim, Significance, 130–1.
13
Canavan, Clothing, 3.
14
Harrill, ‘Coming of Age’, 257. Harrill cites Suetonius, Divus Augustus 26.3; Tiberius 15.1; Gaius Caligula 15.2; Livy
26.19.5; Tacitus, Annales 4.4.1; Germania 13.1.
15
F. F. Bruce, The Epistles to the Colossians, to Philemon, and to the Ephesians (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1984), 235.
16
Moss astutely places the location of personal identity ‘in the body’s materiality’ with authors beginning with Irenaeus.
Candida Moss, ‘Heavenly Healing: Eschatological Cleansing and the Resurrection of the Dead in the Early Church’, Journal
of the American Academy of Religion 79, no. 4 (2011): 1008.
ROBES OF TRANSFIGURATION AND SALVATION 283

both within Jewish apocalyptic expectations of the Messiah and heavenly figures and his prediction
of his own role as the Son of Man.17 The accounts of the transfiguration occur in the Synoptics (Mt.
17.1-8; Mk 9.2-8; Lk. 9.28-36), 2 Peter (1.16-18) and apocryphal literature (e.g. Eth. Apoc. Pet.
15-17; Akh. Apoc. Pet. 1-20; Acts Pet. 20; AJohn 90-91).18 Although the accounts contain many
similarities, their description of the changed raiment of Jesus and its effects varies substantially.
In the Synoptics, the resurrection accounts demonstrate the celestial nature of Jesus’s white
garments at the transfiguration by featuring the white garments of one or more angels at the empty
tomb.19 This is seen to correspond to the Synoptics’ accounts of the developing understanding
of Christology, contrasting with the resurrection account of the transfiguration-less and highly
Christological Gospel of John.20
a. Transfigurations
Transfigurations appear in other near contemporaneous texts and contemporaneously read texts.
Joseph and Aseneth describes the heroine as literally radiant with her shining face and lightning-
dress. As her clothes shine light rather than simply appear pure white, Meredith Warren argues that
they demonstrate her connection to Joseph’s God.21 And God does wear a ‘sunlit-like gown’ in 1
Enoch 14.20. She also observes that Achilles’s armour shines with his power in the Iliad (19.374-6;
22.25-32).22 Moreover, Moss has noted that the venerable and long-kept Homeric tradition would
have been rife with such garments, citing the goddess Aphrodite appearing in a robe more brilliant
than fire.23
b. Synoptics
In Mark’s account of the transfiguration, Jesus’s clothes are so ‘dazzling white’ that ‘no fuller on
earth’ could have been responsible for bleaching them (9.3). A fuller bleached and carded garments
to give them a nap, and woollen garments were more prevalent in Israel than were linen ones, with
linen textiles found at Qumran constituting a notable exception.24 Fullers would be responsible

17
Arthur Michael Ramsay, The Glory of God and the Transfiguration of Christ (London: Longmans, Green, 1949), 109.
18
Other transfiguration texts include Acts of Thomas 143 and Gospel of Philip 58.5-10. David Wenham and A. D. A. Moses
think it is possible for John 1.14c and d to have an echo of transfiguration with references to ‘glory’, ‘we have seen’, ‘the
only begotten of the Father’ and ‘tabernacled’. See David Wenham and A. D. A. Moses, ‘“There Are Some Standing Here
… ”: Did They Become the “Reputed Pillars” of the Jerusalem Church? Some Reflections on Mark 9:1, Galatians 2:9 and
the Transfiguration’, Novum Testamentum 36, no. 2 (1994): 153.
19
Although the two events are similar, it is unlikely that the transfiguration event was a resurrection account that was
relocated by Mark, as was argued by Bultmann. Robert H. Stein, ‘Is the Transfiguration (Mark 9:2-8) a Misplaced
Resurrection-Account?’, Journal of Biblical Literature 95, no. 1 (1976): 79–96.
20
D. Moody Smith, John. ANTC (Nashville: Abingdon, 1999), 39. In Acts of John 90-91, Jesus is dressed not in garments
but is naked and not like a man. Yet, he has feet that are ‘whiter than snow’ that illumine the ground on which he stands.
Jonathan Potter argues that this transfiguration subtly reworks Synoptic topoi with which the author disagrees and serves
to further the high Christology of the Johannine tradition by being just one of the many transfigurations that happens in
the Acts of John. Jonathan M. Potter, ‘Naked Divinity: The Transfiguration Transformed in the Acts of John’, in Jesus and
Mary Reimagined in Early Christian Literature, ed. Vernon K. Robbins and Jonathan M. Potter (Atlanta: SBL, 2015), 183.
21
Meredith Warren, ‘A Robe Like Lightning: Clothing Changes and Identification in Joseph and Aseneth’, Dressing Judeans
and Christians in Antiquity, 152.
22
Warren, ‘A Robe’, 146.
23
Homeric Hymn V (To Aphrodite) 84–7. Candida Moss, ‘The Transfiguration: An Exercise in Markan Accommodation’,
Biblical Interpretation 12, no. 1 (2004): 79.
24
Orit Shamir and Naama Sukenik, ‘Qumran Textiles and the Garments of Qumran’s Inhabitants’, Dead Sea Discoveries 18
(2011): 216.
284 DRESS IN MEDITERRANEAN ANTIQUITY

for bleaching linen and woollen garments and also using a teasel such as a hedgehog brush on
woollen garments.25 Though a luxury process, fulling nonetheless would have been available to
non-wealthy individuals in the Roman Empire.26 While the emphasis on the brilliance of Jesus’s
robes undoubtedly references heavenly attributes, one also wonders whether these robes might not
have been interpreted as linen early on, given that no nap is mentioned and linen garments were
important to the Essenes as described by Josephus (Jewish War 2.137, cf. Exod. 28.39-42) and as
indicated by the 1 QM 7:9-10.27 A linen robe is also worn by Aseneth in Joseph and Aseneth 3.6.
As fullers used their Egyptian natron and other surfactants possibly to remove oil introduced in
weaving, a fulled garment need not be a used garment, so Jesus’s transfigured robes are more than
simply new.
Mark’s unusual comparison of Jesus’s white robes to mundane garments rather than celestial
raiment suggests that perhaps he could be thinking of earthly robes, including the toga candida.
Given that Jesus, Peter, James and John have just hiked up a high mountain in Mark’s Gospel, it
does make sense within the developing story that Jesus would require at least the services of a fuller
in order to wear dazzling white garments. The fact that these garments are whiter than a fuller
would be capable of producing suggests that they have both a supernatural origin and a connection
to the civic sphere, where dry cleaning would have been necessary.28 Dennis Ronald MacDonald
compares Jesus’s transfiguration with that of another traveller, Odysseus, but Moss notes that the
Homeric convention of shining epiphanies could easily have been transmitted by oral culture.29
Mention of the fuller, moreover, situates the spiritual activity in the wilderness with reference to
the economic and aesthetic standards of the city.
However, Mark gives no direct indication that the disciples are impressed specifically with the
radiant garb of Jesus. It is only after Elijah and Moses appear that Peter makes his offer to erect
tents for the three luminaries on the mountain, which Mark explains as Peter’s bumbling attempt
at problem resolution because the disciples are ‘terrified’ (9.6). Mark does not elaborate on the
attire or countenance of either Moses or Elijah.30 Among the Synoptics, the evangelist is unusual in
placing the fright of the disciples so early; both Matthew and Luke connect the fear of the disciples
with the cloud from which the voice of God emanates. Along with his mention of a fuller, the
Markan lack of Moses’s shining face would seem to lessen the strength of his allusion to Mount
Sinai, the high mountain on which Moses received the Ten Commandments from God in the
Torah.31 The ancient commentator Jerome thought Mark’s reference to a fuller proved that Jesus
was present in the flesh, keeping Jesus on earth before his ascension.32

25
Elena Soriga, ‘A Diachronic View on Fulling Technology in the Mediterranean and the Ancient Near East: Tools, Raw
Materials and Natural Resources for the Finishing of Textiles’, in Textile Terminologies from the Orient to the Mediterranean
and Europe, 1000 BC to 1000 AD, ed. Salvatore Gaspa, Cécile Michel and Marie-Louise Nosch (Lincoln, NE: Zea Books,
2017), 24–46.
26
Miko Flohr, The World of the Fullo: Work, Economy, and Society in Roman Italy (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2013), 69.
27
Todd S. Beall, Josephus’ Description of the Essenes Illustrated by the Dead Sea Scrolls, SNTS 58 (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2004), 46.
28
Wenham and Moses, ‘“There Are”’, 157.
29
Dennis Ronald MacDonald, The Homeric Epics and the Gospel of Mark (New Haven: Yale, 2000), 227. See Candida
Moss, ‘The Transfiguration: An Exercise in Markan Accommodation’, Biblical Interpretation 12, no. 1 (2004): 83.
30
Candida Moss notes that the actions of Jesus ‘mimic those of Elijah and Moses’. See Moss, ‘The Transfiguration’, 73.
31
A. D. A. Moses, Matthew’s Transfiguration Story and Jewish-Christian Controversy (Sheffield: Sheffield, 1996), 45–6.
32
Jerome, In Matthaeum 3.17.2 (CCSL 77:147). Albert Paretsky, ‘The Transfiguration of Christ: Its Eschatological and
Christological Dimensions’, New Blackfriars 72, no. 851 (1991): 313–24.
ROBES OF TRANSFIGURATION AND SALVATION 285

The allusion to the fuller’s work in Mark’s transfiguration bears analogy to the purified robes
in Revelation.33 Just as Revelation invites readers to imagine the faithful washing their robes in the
blood of the Lamb, assuring audiences that one need not have been perfect to embark on a path
towards Jesus, the image of the fuller presents the reader with the idea that God is a perfect lower
class craftsperson. Jesus brings vestiges of his previous ministry through his transfiguration, but his
garments have also been carded into the divine image by a celestial fuller. Reading the image of the
fuller in the Markan transfiguration through a Derridean lens, Andrew Wilson argues that the white
robes of the transfigured Jesus in Mark ‘open up the field of meaning’ to ‘pure undifferentiated
potential’ while being ‘indelibly marked by a weave of traces’.34
For Matthew, the transfigured appearance of Jesus in and of itself does not appear to frighten
the disciples; only the voice of God does that. Matthew refers to the altered face and clothes of
Jesus as being ‘like the sun’ and ‘white as light’ (17.2). Directly after Jesus’s appearance radiates
divine light, and Moses and Elijah appear and begin conversing with him (17.3). The reader is left
to wonder about the attire of Moses and Elijah and the content of their conversation. One imagines
that the conversation must have been sufficiently intense to suggest to Peter that Moses and Elijah
would be staying around awhile, because he offers to make three tents for Jesus, Moses and Elijah,
despite Jesus’s travel party only numbering four people and probably not having three spare tents.
It is only after a cloud casts a shadow on them and reveals a voice that claims Jesus as his beloved
son that the disciples fall prostrate in a state of fear (17.6). The garments emanating light do not
seem to trouble the disciples in and of themselves.
A more elaborate heavenly raiment appears in Matthew’s account of Jesus’s resurrection. After
Mary Magdalene and ‘the other Mary’ go to the tomb, an angel arrives and causes an earthquake.
He then proceeds to roll the stone from the entrance of the tomb and then sits on it. Matthew
gives a lengthy description of the transfigured appearance of this angelic man, relating that his
appearance is ‘like lightning’ and his clothing is ‘white as snow’ (28.3). This impressive clothing
and performance shakes the guards – not mentioned in Mark – with fear. The angel instructs the
women not to be afraid, because they are seeking Jesus the crucified and he has risen. At this, the
‘overjoyed yet fearful’ women spread this information to the rest of the disciples (28.8).
While the logic of Peter in the Matthean narrative is imperfect, there are parallels in contemporary
Jewish literature to the disciples’ lack of fear of Jesus’s changed form and their trembling before
the numinous cloud. Many interpreters of the transfiguration point to Jewish texts in which
celestial garments signify angelic status or prophetic power, such as Ascension of Isaiah 9, 2 Enoch
22.8-10, Testament of Levi 8.2 and Apocalypse of Zephaniah 8.1-5.35 Yet, in the contemporary
Jewish romance novel Joseph and Aseneth, we do find white garments that indicate the conversion
of Aseneth to Judaism for her beloved Joseph. Aseneth’s robe is ‘like lightning in appearance’
(18.5), and she has a ‘golden … girdle’ (18.6).36 Her holy attributes mirror but are nowhere as
developed as those of the man in linen in Daniel 10.5. That degree of holiness would seem to fit
the level of holiness of Jesus before conversing with Moses and Elijah and being offered mundane
tents by Peter.

33
John C. Poirier, ‘Jewish and Christian Tradition in the Transfiguration’, Revue Biblique 111, no. 4 (2004): 516–30.
34
Andrew P. Wilson, Transfigured: A Derridean Re-Reading of the Markan Transfiguration (New York: T&T Clark, 2007),
99.
35
Wilson, Transfigured, 62–3.
36
Peter R. Carrell, Jesus and the Angels: Angelology and the Christology of the Apocalypse of John (Cambridge: Cambridge,
1997), 83–4.
286 DRESS IN MEDITERRANEAN ANTIQUITY

By contrast, Luke explains that Jesus’s clothes are ‘dazzling white’ and amplifies the description
of Moses and Elijah by stating that they appear ‘in glory’ and speak of an ‘exodus’. Peter, James
and John sleep in this account of the transfiguration, and they wake to see Jesus’s glory and his
two visitors. Luke’s mention of ‘glory’ is rather vague, and it does not give certitude as to whether
the appearance of Moses and Elijah ‘in glory’ means that their clothes were as brilliant as those of
Jesus.37
For Luke, the white robes that the angels wear are the iconographic marker of a celestial
messenger. Luke recounts the ‘two men in lustrous garments’ (24.4) who terrify the women –
Mary Magdalene, Joanna and Mary the mother of James – and cause them to remember Jesus’s
words (24.9). Though Luke calls the angels ‘men’, their lightning clothing reveals their angelic
status.38 When the women return to share the news, their reports of angels are dismissed (24.10-
11). Nonetheless, despite the scepticism, Peter runs to the tomb, sees only the burial cloths and
bis amazed. Luke 24.24 privileges the story of the women, whose entire story is now accepted as
completely authoritative once the incredible aspect of the resurrection of Jesus has been resolved.39
c. Petrine tradition
Eyewitness account is the narrative conceit of the account of the transfiguration (1.16-18) in the
pseudepigraphal 2 Peter. According to verse 16, the first-person plural group has visually confirmed
Christ’s ‘majesty’. This corresponds with the transfiguration in the next few verses, but the author
never explicitly described the transfigured appearance of Jesus, whether robes or face. Instead, the
author describes hearing the pronouncement of God: ‘This is my Son, my beloved, with whom I
am well pleased’ in verse 17. The author confirms that this auditory revelation occurred on a holy
mountain while with Jesus (1.18). Surrounding this core, there is a reference to the author being in
a ‘tent’ in verse 13, and verse 19 holds that the author has a ‘reliable’ prophetic message. Though
the robes of Jesus are not present in 2 Peter, the details of the transfiguration story known from the
Synoptics are evident with the addition of some Petrine tradition details such as the Christological
title ‘Lord Jesus Christ’.40 The idea that the robes of Jesus support a new identity could be true here,
because the auditory revelation is used to prove that the author has true prophetic authority. Not
forefronted is the new identity in Christ that believers put on at baptism.
In the Apocalypse of Peter, the robes that shine belong not to Jesus but to ‘two men’, Moses and
Elijah. The resplendent garb is perhaps the least impressive aspect of their theophany. The men
are described with a number of impossible features, including (from one) emanating light brighter
than the sun and (from the other) hair of a rainbow in the sky.41 Richard Bauckham notes that
if the Apocalypse borrowed from 2 Peter it made more substantial borrowings from Matthew.42
Moreover, the type of imagery – auditory versus visual – differs between the two texts.

37
C. C. McCown, ‘The Geography of Luke’s Central Section’, Journal of Biblical Literature 57, no. 1 (1938): 65.
38
John Granger Cook, Empty Tomb, Apotheosis, Resurrection (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2018), 604.
39
Stef Van Tilburg and Patrick Chatelion Counet maintain that the absence of the body both at the empty tomb and on the
roof to Emmaus is as important as the presence of Jesus’s body. See Stef Van Tilburg and Patrick Chatelion Counet, Jesus’
Appearances and Disappearances in Luke 24 (Leiden: Brill, 2000), 69.
40
Paul Foster, ‘Does the Apocalypse of Peter Help to Determine the Date of 2 Peter’, in 2 Peter and the Apocalypse of Peter:
Towards a New Perspective, ed. Jörg Frey, Matthjs den Dulk and Jan van der Watt (Leiden: Brill, 2019), 241.
41
Foster, ‘Does the Apocalypse’, 240.
42
Richard Bauckham, ‘2 Peter and the Apocalypse of Peter: Towards a New Perspective’, in 2 Peter and the Apocalypse of
Peter, 268–9.
ROBES OF TRANSFIGURATION AND SALVATION 287

The luminous appearance of the clothing of the two prophets reinforces the supernatural
conditions of their visit. With features like hair comprised of the rainbow, the prophets seem to
merge with elements of the natural world and perhaps emphasize towards the unity of creation and
the divine and away from the individual accomplishments of each. This could orient believers into
a baptismal attitude of faith rather than of worldly deeds as they contemplate the awe-inspiring and
heavenly features of Moses and Elijah.

CONCLUSION
Celestial and purified robes weave through the Pauline corpus, gospels and apocryphal literature.
The familiarity of shining garments for epiphanies and theophanies in Greek and Jewish tradition
allows audiences of transfiguration texts to interpret their dazzling clothes as part of a divine scene.
Jesus appears with heavenly robes in order to convey the Christological message of his divine
nature. For Pauline texts, this results in the imagery of a Christ garment that believers may wear as
their new baptismal identity. For the Synoptics, the transfigured robes of Jesus find parallels in the
garb of angels at the resurrection. This illumines the salvific aspect of Jesus’s divine identity, which
can be appropriated by individuals who merely touch his garments out of faith.
Paul’s call to put on Christ anticipates the eschatological change of believers’ bodies from the
corruptible to the eternal. Galatians repeatedly instructs believers to put on Christ. The implication
is that those who receive baptism into Jesus assume a new identity in the risen Christ. 2 Corinthians
likewise envisions the garments of salvation as clothing believers on top of the clothing they already
wear, demonstrating that those who follow Christ wear an identity beyond that of themselves.
Putting on Christ entails both moral transformation and encouragement.
In the Synoptic Gospels, we learn that power can flow through robes and that brilliant white
robes can belong to Jesus or angels. Purified robes demonstrate that the self can take on Christ
and be shaped into this new identity, just as a fuller would bleach a garment. More importantly,
this identity is based in the resurrection of Jesus, as indicated by the luminous, white garments
associated with angelic figures at the resurrection.
For Petrine literature, the emphasis on the transfigured robes of Jesus fades away. 2 Peter places
greater emphasis on the divine announcement that Jesus is the son of God. The Apocalypse of
Peter displays only Moses and Elijah in heavenly garments. The elements of the transfiguration are
largely present and not only in order to be refuted. The incarnational aspect of 2 Peter and the
heavenly visit of the Apocalypse of John serve to remind believers that the divine is present and
active in the world. The connection of Jesus’s identity with Jewish scriptural prophets is affirmed.
Overall, the transfigurational robes of Jesus in early Christian literature map onto the garments
of those around him. Moses and Elijah appear as figures sharing in the divine revelation into
the mundane world. Angels at the resurrection likewise demonstrate that the celestial realm
unites the life and death of the human Jesus and the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ. Believers
put on the robes of Jesus at baptism and as part of their baptismal identity to participate in the
transfiguration.
288
 CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Worn Stories: (Ad)dressing

Wives in 1 Peter
KELSI MORRISON-ATKINS

INTRODUCTION
In 1 Peter 3.1-6, the author calls upon wives in the community to manifest a submissive spirit of
obedience to their husbands through their wardrobe, writing,
Likewise wives, be subjected to your own husbands, so that if some of them are not persuaded by the
word, they might gain an advantage without a word through their wives’ way of life by overseeing
with reverence your holy conduct. Do not adorn yourselves outwardly by braiding your hair, and
by wearing gold ornaments or fine clothing; rather, let your adornment be the hidden person of the
heart with the lasting beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is very precious in God’s sight. It was
in this way long ago that the holy women who hoped in God used to adorn themselves by accepting
the authority of their husbands. Thus, Sarah obeyed Abraham and called him lord. You have become
her daughters as long as you do what is good and never let fears alarm you.1

These six verses have a long effective history and were of particular interest to later commentators
on the letter, including Tertullian and Cyprian.2 In light of this, John Elliott observes that ‘the
Church Fathers show more interest in this text in 1 Peter than in other passages that might be
expected to draw attention such as the letter’s Christological statements or other soteriological
formulations’.3 Implicit in this statement is an assumption that the rhetorics of clothing are
peripheral to or less significant than the letter’s loftier theological stakes. On the contrary, I argue

The ideas in this chapter will be developed substantially in my dissertation, ‘The Rhetoric of Dress and Adornment and
the Construction of Identity in Early Christianity’ (ThD Dissertation, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA), forthcoming.
I am so grateful for the generous reading and feedback on this chapter from the editors of the volume, Alicia Batten and
Kelly Olson, and to Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza and Kristi Upson-Saia for providing feedback and support throughout the
writing process.
1
All translations are NRSV, with slight modifications. The NRSV translates ὁ κρυπτὸς τῆς καρδίας ἄνθρωπος as the ‘inner
self’.
2
See Carly Daniel-Hughes, The Salvation of the Flesh in Tertullian of Carthage: Dressing for the Resurrection (New York:
Palgrave Macmillan, 2011) and Kristi Upson-Saia, Early Christian Dress: Gender, Virtue, and Authority (New York:
Routledge, 2011), especially ‘Scripting Christians’ Clothing and Grooming’ and ‘Performance Anxiety’. See, for instance,
Clement, Paed. 3. 11; Tertullian, On Prayer, 20 and Cult. Fem., especially 2.2; Cyprian, Hab. virg, 8.
3
John Hall Elliott, 1 Peter: A New Introduction with Translation and Commentary AB 37B (New York: Doubleday, 2000),
565. Emphasis mine.
290 DRESS IN MEDITERRANEAN ANTIQUITY

that much is at stake politically and theologically for 1 Peter in defining and policing the dress of
wives4 in the community.
Through rhetorics of dress and adornment, the author of 1 Peter ties the cultivation of (feminine)
virtue to the proper performance of Sarah’s obedience to Abraham, whose paradigmatic submission
led her to call her husband ‘lord’, as a slave might refer to a master. The author’s argument thus
constructs wives’ ideal clothing practices as an imitation and embodiment of Sarah, as the text
makes genealogical connections between ‘the gentle and quiet spirit’ (3.4) demanded of wives in
the present and the behaviours of ‘holy women of old’ who ‘adorn[ed] themselves by accepting
the authority of their husbands’. This genealogical impulse was common among ancient moralists,
such as Seneca and Plutarch,5 who connected women’s clothing practices to the cultivation of the
virtues of exemplary historical women. Using Judith Butler’s theory of gender performativity as a
framework, I will argue that 1 Peter works to construct Sarah as paradigm of wifely submission and
to solidify wives’ place in this lineage of subordination by compelling them to perform it again and
again through everyday practices of dress. Nevertheless, the author’s need to normalize his version
of Sarah’s stories hints at other possible traditions in relation to which wives in the community
might have fashioned themselves.
While Elliott’s statement draws an implicit binary between 1 Peter’s loftier theological themes
and the banal materiality of clothing practices, recent studies of dress and adornment in early
Christianity demonstrate that attempts at regulating and policing women’s bodies are bound up
with debates about the salvation of the flesh, the authority of social distinctions based on gender,
free/slave status and/or race and ethnicity in the ekklesia, and the reshaping of gendered norms
in relation to ascetic bodily practices.6 Rather than setting clothing discourses apart from the
theological and philosophical aims of the texts in which they are situated, these scholars prioritize
contextual readings that underscore dress as integral to the debates and struggles for power

4
It is important to note that these prescriptions were likely addressed not to women in general but particularly to wives in the
community. The Greek words γυνή and ἁνήρ can refer either to gender (woman/man, respectively) or marital status (wife/
husband), but in this case, given that 1 Peter here draws on a ‘household’ code tradition and references Abraham and Sarah
it is likely that the author speaks directly to wives. Nevertheless, Jennifer Bird notes the ways in which these regulations
are often understood and applied not just to wives but to all women in many contemporary Christian communities. See
her Abuse, Power, and Fearful Obedience: Reconsidering 1 Peter’s Commands to Wives (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark,
2011), 133.
5
The quintessential example of ancient discussions of clothing, ethics and politics is Livy’s account of the debate over the
repeal of the Oppian Laws (sumptuary legislation, which limited women’s access to luxurious garments and jewellery) in
book 34 of his History of Rome.
6
In addition to Daniel-Hughes, Salvation of the Flesh in Tertullian of Carthage and Upson-Saia, Early Christian Dress,
see also Kristi Upson-Saia, Carly Daniel- Hughes and Alicia J. Batten, eds., Dressing Judeans and Christians in Antiquity
(London: Routledge, 2014); Joseph A. Marchal, ‘Female Masculinity in Corinth?: Bodily Citations and the Drag of History’,
Neotestamentica 48, no. 1 (2014): 93–113. On the question of modesty as a gendered virtue, see Kate Wilkinson, Women
and Modesty in Late Antiquity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015) and Susan Hylen, A Modest Apostle: Thecla
and the History of Women in the Early Church (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015). While not explicitly focused
on dress and adornment, Antoinette Clark Wire’s classic The Corinthian Women Prophets: A Reconstruction through Paul’s
Rhetoric (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, c. 1990) also speaks to the ways in which the practice of veiling becomes the focal
point of debates about gender and authority in 1 Corinthians 11.
WORN STORIES: (AD)DRESSING WIVES IN 1 PETER 291

operative in the text as a whole. In the context of 1 Peter7 specifically, regulations concerning
dress emerge at the intersection of debates over theological ideals of equality versus cultural mores
which demanded relations of domination and subordination, a particularly urgent dilemma for a
community facing (real or perceived) persecution on the grounds of non-conformity.8 On the one
hand, it is likely that women and slaves were attracted to the more emancipatory elements of early
in-Christ communities as evidenced by texts such as Galatians 3.27-28.9 On the other, the presence,
active engagement and even leadership roles taken on by those of low or lesser status in the eyes
of the Empire brought charges of impiety and even insubordination upon in-Christ assemblies.10
Walking this tightrope, 1 Peter grants women authority, but only insofar as their superior virtue
might win over their husbands ‘without a word’ (3.1). Schüssler Fiorenza writes, ‘The goal here
is the conversion of the husband, which be brought about not by [wives’] preaching to them but
by their proper, “lady-like” conduct of purity and subordination, which was exemplified by the
matriarch Sarah, the prime example for female converts to Judaism.’11 The potentially transgressive
mode of social organization indicated in Galatians 3.27-28 is thus adapted to mimic imperial power
relations.
But these kyriarchal12 aims are not inevitably and universally successful, a fact often forgotten
when we only have access to one side of the conversation. Following the feminist insight that if a
regulation or norm needs to be stated then it is likely not being followed,13 scholars such as Alicia
Batten have pointed to clothing prescriptions as an indication of women’s resistance to these very
norms. In this way, clothing practices represent sites of struggle whereby women of means in the

7
1 Peter is a circular letter, likely written in the late first century CE. The letter pseudonymously claims Petrine authorship and
is addressed to assemblies (ekklesiai) in Asia Minor who understood themselves as persecuted outsiders in the communities
in which they were situated. While many have argued that 1 Peter’s application of language and themes from the Septuagint
represents an instance of Christian supersessionism, Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza argues that 1 Peter should be understood
as a Jewish text and in particular an instance of Jewish proselyte discourse. See Schüssler Fiorenza, 1 Peter: Reading against
the Grain; Phoenix Guides to the New Testament 18 (Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2015).
8
1 Peter is very concerned with suffering, as the text admonishes slaves to accept suffering by appealing to Christ as a
paradigmatic model (2.18-25) and emphasizes ‘suffering for what is good’ (3.8-22). Nevertheless, it is unlikely that the
reader should imagine formal imperial persecution as these persecutions were sporadic and local rather than widespread
and systematic as many have often assumed. See Karen King, ‘Rethinking the Diversity of Ancient Christianity: Responding
to Suffering and Persecution’, in Beyond the Gnostic Gospels: Studies Building on the Work of Elaine Pagels, ed. Eduard
Iricinschi, Lance Jenott, Nicola Denzey Lewis and Philippa Townsend; Studien Und Texte Zu Antike Und Christentum 82
(Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2013), 60–78.
9‘
As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is no longer Jew or Greek, there
is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.’
10
See, for instance, Katherine Shaner, Enslaved Leadership in Early Christianity (New York: Oxford, 2017) and Katherine
Bain, Women’s Socioeconomic Status and Religious Leadership in Asia Minor in the First Two Centuries C.E. (Minneapolis:
Fortress Press, 2014). For household codes as apologetic response to such criticisms, see David L. Balch, Let Wives Be
Submissive: The Domestic Code in 1 Peter (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 1991).
11
Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, ‘Empire and the Rhetoric of Subordination’, in The Power of the Word: Scripture and the
Rhetoric of Empire (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2009), 149–94, 176.
12
I use Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza’s neologism ‘kyriarchy’ to replace the more common ‘patriarchy’. She defines kyriarchy
as the ‘complex interstructuring of dominations’ determined by gender, class/status, race/ethnicity, sexuality and other
structures of power. See The Power of the Word, 14.
13
See, for instance, Shelly Matthews, ‘Feminist Biblical Historiography’, in Feminist Biblical Studies in the Twentieth
Century Scholarship and Movement, ed. Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2014), 236.
292 DRESS IN MEDITERRANEAN ANTIQUITY

community resisted the author’s attempt to constrain their bodily self-expression.14 Batten also
addresses the enduring legacy of these clothing prescriptions, stating,
Considering the attention it receives in patristic writings, one might speculate that some women,
in certain contexts, resisted giving up their adornment because they wished to display their status
and assert their importance by maintaining some degree of economic power, while their male
counterparts, concerned about the church’s perception by the larger society, sought to control their
appearance even more.15

Thus, the meanings and practices of dress were and continued to be contested in early Christian
ekklesiai, underscoring that these prescriptions are not only regulatory but speak to critical questions
of gender, power and the place of the community within the larger society.

WEARING DOWN: CLOTHING AND THE RHETORIC OF WIFELY

SUBORDINATION
1 Peter’s clothing rhetorics are not unique but part of a larger web of ethical discourse which used
dress and adornment to ‘think with’. Elite male writers frequently exhorted women to cast aside
external, sumptuous materiality in favour of an eternal, ‘inner beauty’ and sought to shape women’s
ethical self-formation by tying clothing practices to their place in a historical lineage of heroic
women. A commonly cited instance of this trope may be found in Seneca’s letter of consolation
to his mother upon his exile, in which he praises her modesty as a mark of her transcendence of
‘typical’ feminine impulses. He writes,
You never defiled your face with paints or cosmetics; you never liked clothes, which showed the
figure as plainly as though it were naked; your sole ornament has been a consummate loveliness
which no time can impair, your greatest glory has been your modesty. You cannot, therefore, plead
your womanhood as an excuse for your grief, because your virtues have raised you above it; you
ought to be as superior to womanish tears as you are to womanish vices.16

As in 1 Peter 3.4, which emphasizes the ‘lasting beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit’, Seneca here
establishes a dichotomy between the passing materiality of luxury and the beauty of modesty, which
lasts eternally. A desire for luxury is thus established as modesty’s antithesis, and the development
of external beauty is understood as a ‘womanish vice’ to be overcome. Furthermore, a woman’s
virtue must be performed and presented as a matter of public opinion to be drawn at a glance from
her bodily comportment.

14
Alicia Batten, ‘Neither Gold nor Braided Hair (1 Timothy 2.9; 1 Peter 3.3): Adornment, Gender, and Honour in
Antiquity’, NTS 55 (2009): 484–501. See also the important work of Kelly Olson on dress and self-representation in
the Roman world, Dress and the Roman Woman: Self-Representation and Society (New York: Routledge, 2008). Batten,
‘Neither Gold nor Braided Hair’, 501.
15
See also Batten, ‘(Dis)Orderly Dress’, in Scribal Practices and Social Structures among Jesus Adherents: Essays in Honour
of John S. Kloppenborg, ed. William E. Arnal, Richard S. Ascough, Robert A. Derrenbacker, Jr., and Philip A. Harland;
BETL 285 (Leuven: Peeters, 2016), 567–84. Here Batten productively frames this manifestation of modesty using Harry
O. Maier’s notion of ‘wearing theology’. See Maier, ‘Dressing for Church: Tailoring the Christian Self through Clement of
Alexandria’s Clothing Ideals’, in Religious Dimensions of the Self in the Second Century CE, ed. Jörg Rüpke and Gregory D.
Woolf; Studien und Texte zu Antike und Christentum 76 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2013), 66–89, 86.
16
Seneca, Helv. 16 (LCL 254; trans. John W. Basore).
WORN STORIES: (AD)DRESSING WIVES IN 1 PETER 293

Ancient writers also deployed genealogical arguments, which symbolized the formation of the
ethical self as a mode of ‘dressing’ in the virtues of historical women. Writing to the bride-to-be,
Eurydice, in Advice to the Bride and Groom, Plutarch constructs a genealogy of virtue that she
should aspire to embody. He advises,
You cannot acquire and put upon you this rich woman’s pearls or that foreign woman’s silks without
buying them at a high price, but the ornaments of Theano, Cleobulina, Gorgo the wife of Leonidas,
Timocleia the sister of Theagenes, Claudia of old, daughter of Scipio, and all of the other women who
have been admired and renowned, you may wear about you without price and, adorning yourself
with these, you live a life of distinction and happiness.17

In this training in virtue,18 Plutarch raises up women who put civic and domestic interests ahead
of their own and seeks to inspire Eurydice to do the same.19 Here again, the parallels with 1 Peter
are striking. Whereas Plutarch advises Eurydice to ‘put on’ specific women with whose stories
she must have been familiar, so also does 1 Peter draw out the more general example of the ‘holy
women of old’, including Sarah, who adorned themselves in obedience to their husbands. In both
cases, women are called to ‘put on’ a shared history that, implicitly or explicitly, circumscribes their
civic or communal belonging by situating them within a lineage of women deemed exceptionally
virtuous in their adherence to the traditional mores of household and state. While I do not aim here
to make any claims that the author of 1 Peter was a reader of Seneca and/or Plutarch, I do seek to
demonstrate that these rhetorics of clothing and the cultivation of feminine virtue were intertwined
ideologically across a wide range of communities and contexts. Within this small sample, attempts
at ethical formation coalesce with strategies of social control even as the need to restate these
norms again and again hints at the persistence of other ways of configuring and performing the
relationship between gender and virtue.

TAILORING SARAH: NATURALIZING WIFELY OBEDIENCE

In light of these examples, 1 Peter’s clothing regulations might be read not only as attempting to
manage the perceptions of outsiders but also as constructing a history of ‘holy subordination’ to
which wives must consent in order to be understood as daughters of Sarah. Jennifer Bird draws
out the implications of this association, writing, ‘Re-interpreting Sarah as having called Abraham
“lord” gives the author a hero, a model of obedience which, when combined with the previous
admonition to have a gentle and quiet spirit, is quite useful for controlling or containing the
wives.’20 Nevertheless, while the author of 1 Peter writes with confidence of Sarah’s obedience
to Abraham such that she ‘called him lord/master’, this claim is in tension with evidence from the

17
Plutarch, Conj. praec. 145F (LCL 222; trans. Frank Cole Babbitt).
18
For more on the intersection of philosophical training for women and early Christian texts, see Annette Bourland
Huizenga, Moral Education for Women in the Pastoral and Pythagorean Letters:Philosophers of the Household; Supplements
to Novum Testamentum 147 (Boston: Brill, 2013).
19
For a discussion of paradigmatic women in Plutarch’s Moralia, see Kathleen O’Brien Wicker, ‘Mulierum Virtutes (Moralia
242e-263c)’, in Plutarch’s Ethical Writings and Early Christian Literature, ed. Hans Dieter Betz (Leiden: Brill, 1978),
106–34.
20
Bird, Abuse, Power, and Fearful Obedience, 118.
294 DRESS IN MEDITERRANEAN ANTIQUITY

Septuagint from which 1 Peter repeatedly draws and likely references in 3:6.21 Indeed, nowhere in
the Septuagint does Sarah behave precisely as the author of 1 Peter would like.
Sarah refers to Abraham as ‘lord/master’ only once in the Septuagint and even then in tones
more mocking than obsequious. In Genesis 18.12, Sarah learns that she is to give birth to Isaac
in her advanced age and in response, the text states, ‘Sarah laughed to herself saying “it has not
happened to me yet, and my lord is rather old”’.22 What is particularly striking about this oblique
reference is that the author of 1 Peter thought it was possible to get away with it, as at least
some members of the community would likely have been familiar with the tradition in question.
Troy Martin notes that it would be rhetorically irresponsible and counterproductive to undermine
without further elaboration a (possibly) shared understanding of Sarah’s story between author and
audience.23 He writes,
If the author of 1Pet created the situation of Sarah’s calling Abraham ‘lord’ or misinterpreted Gen
18,12, he should have provided an explanation for his readers similar to Paul’s explanation in
Galatians 4,21-31 ….The paraenetic example of Sarah would only be meaningful if the recipients
and author of 1Pet shared a common opinion about Sarah.24

As I will draw out using examples from the writings of Philo and Josephus below, the problem is
precisely that the author and audience do not share an opinion about Sarah, as elements of her
story as indicated in Genesis fit ill within the gender mores these authors wished to instill.
Multiple attempts have been made to smooth the stubborn wrinkles between 1 Peter and
Septuagint traditions, including Martin’s own proposal which points to The Testament of Abraham
as an alternative intertext.25 In contemporary scholarship, this quest for a single, stable referent
does not allow for a consideration of the ways in which the author of 1 Peter actively sought to
shape Sarah’s story by compelling women to perform his interpretation of her legacy with and
through their dress. Indeed, as Dorothy Sly notes, ancient writers such as Josephus and Philo were
forced to contend not with Sarah’s obedience to Abraham but with the overwhelming evidence
of Abraham’s obedience to Sarah.26 For Josephus, the notion that ‘Abraham obeyed Sarah’ (Gen.
16.2) was unthinkable, and in Jewish Antiquities it is God, not Sarah, who hatches the plot to

21
Magda Misset-van de Weg points to a number of references, direct or indirect, to the Septuagint in 1 Peter including
‘the “stone texts” as Christological marker in 2.6-8 (cf. Isa. 8.14; 28.16; Ps. 118.22); the Isaian basis for the theology of
atonement (Isa 52-53); the importance of Hos. 1 and 2 in defining Christianity’s new identity as the people of God in 2.1-
10 and the use of Ps. (3.10-12) for underlining the ethical admonitions’. See Magda Misset-van de Weg, ‘Sarah Imagery
in 1 Peter’, in A Feminist Companion to the Catholic Epistles and Hebrews, ed. Amy-Jill Levine and Maria Mayo Robbins
(Cleveland: Pilgrim, 2004), 50–62, 52 n. 8.
22
Translation NRSV.
23
Troy W. Martin, Metaphor and Composition in 1 Peter, SBL Dissertation Series 131 (Atlanta: SBL Press, 1992), 114–16.
24
Troy W. Martin, ‘The TestAbr and the Background of 1 Pet 3, 6’, ZNW 90, no. 1 (1999): 139–45, 140.
25
Martin’s proposal is based on three key insights in relation to T. Abr.: (1) that Sarah refers to Abraham as lord in A 5:12-
13; A 6:2, 4, 5, 8; A 15:4; 4:1; B 6:5; (2) Sarah is understood to be mother of proselytes in both texts; (3) that fear and
good deeds are connected in both texts. For alternative approaches to this problem, see Bird, ‘Daughters of Sarah’, in Abuse,
Power, and Fearful Obedience, 110–34; Mark Kiley, ‘Like Sara: The Tale of Terror behind 1 Peter 3:6’, JBL 106, no. 4
(1987): 689–92; Dorothy I. Sly, ‘1 Peter 3:6b in the Light of Philo and Josephus’, JBL 110, no. 1 (1991): 126–9; James
R. Slaughter, ‘Sarah as a Model for Christian Wives (1 Pet. 3:5-6a)’, Bibliotecha Sacra 153 (1996): 357–65; Jeremy Punt,
‘Subverting Sarah in the New Testament: Galatians 4 and 1 Peter 3’, Scriptura 96 (2007): 453–68.
26
See Gen. 16:2.
WORN STORIES: (AD)DRESSING WIVES IN 1 PETER 295

impregnate Hagar and whom Abraham obeys.27 In On Mating with the Preliminary Studies, Philo
celebrates Abraham’s obedience to Sarah, though he develops her personhood allegorically as the
virtue towards which one should strive. Philo writes, ‘Abraham, it says, “hearkened to the voice of
Sarah” (Gen. 16. 2), for the learner must needs obey the commands of virtue’.28
While Josephus and Philo approach the issue very differently – the former erasing Sarah’s agency
from the narrative and the latter moving her from historical woman to abstract personification –
both authors take liberties in shaping Sarah’s story in ways that indicate the fluidity of these
traditions as well as the patriarchal politics of interpretation that these writers engage. The way
Sarah’s story gets told matters, not just for tracing a history of interpretation but for the social-
political organization of the community. If Sarah is understood as a central figure for women in
the community, as she likely was, attempting to paint her as dutifully subordinate to Abraham
thus establishes an oppressive model whereby wives are understood as ‘naturally’ submissive and
secondary to their husbands. By tying this lineage of subordination to clothing practices, the author
seeks to solidify this self-understanding as it is subtly repeated and performed day in and day out
until it becomes almost impossible to contest.29

GENDER AND GENEALOGY: ‘PUTTING ON’ SARAH?

But what does this detour through the history of interpretation of Genesis have to do with clothing
regulations? So far, I have argued that decentring the search for a stable textual referent allows us
to reconsider not the origins but the effects of particular understandings of Sarah and her legacy for
constructing relations of gender and power in the community. Asking what this reference to Sarah
does thus requires that we examine its close association with clothing practices and the construction
of embodied ethic of subordination for wives in 1 Peter.
Regarding 1 Peter’s genealogical approach, Misset-van de Weg observes that ‘such an appeal
to the past could create a sense of belonging to a community and of being a part of a history
that transcends immediate experiences of, for example, conflict, difference, and division’.30 Tying
this history to women’s bodies by regulating the meanings of their clothing practices, however,
makes this belonging somewhat more precarious. As noted in the ancient moralizing literature
cited above, these appeals are never neutral but seek to discipline women’s moral formation by
connecting women’s bodily practices to the performance of virtue and/as belonging in community.
While we unfortunately do not have access to the alternative stories and traditions that may have

27
Ant. 1.1.187 (LCL 242; trans. H. St. J. Thackeray): ‘Abraham was living near the oak called Ogyges, a place in Canaan
not far from the city of the Hebronites, when, distressed at his wife’s sterility, he besought God to grant him the birth of
a male child. Thereon God bade him be assured that, as in all else he had been led out of Mesopotamia for his welfare, so
children would come to him; and by God’s command Sarra brought to his bed one of her handmaidens, an Egyptian named
Agar, that he might have children by her.’
28
Philo, Congr. 63 (LCL 261; trans. F. H. Colson and G. H. Whitaker). See also Maren Niehoff, ‘Mother and Maiden, Sister
and Spouse: Sarah in Philonic Midrash’, HTR 97, no. 4 (2004): 413–44.
29
Bird underscores the ongoing effects of such frameworks, stating that ‘in addition to erasing or taming the image of Sarah,
this move reflects a freedom to manipulate women and the texts that give voice to them. Given the significance of narratives
in forming the Judeo-Christian traditions, this kind of freedom has a far-reaching effect’. See Jennifer Bird, Abuse, Power,
and Fearful Obedience: 1 Peter’s Commands to Wives (London: T&T Clark, 2011), 32.
30
Misset-van de Weg, ‘Sarah Imagery in 1 Peter’, 60.
296 DRESS IN MEDITERRANEAN ANTIQUITY

circulated among women in this context, Butler’s theory of gender performativity does allow us to
hold up for analysis the ideologies of gender and power at play in this letter and the potential sites
of resistance encoded within it.
‘Gender performativity’ refers to the ways in which gender comes to be understood as
proceeding ‘naturally’ from biological sex through the repetition of embodied practices that make
one intelligible as ‘man’ or ‘woman’. She writes, ‘Gender is the repeated stylization of the body, a
set of repeated acts within a highly rigid regulatory frame that congeal over time to produce the
appearance of substance, of a natural sort of being.’31 This ‘repeated stylization of the body’ has no
concrete archetypical or orginary model but is produced and sustained through the performance of
gendered scripts, which promote the illusion of gender as natural or given. To this end, she argues,
‘gender is a kind of imitation for which there is no original; in fact, it is a kind of imitation that
produces the very notion of the original as an effect and consequence of the imitation itself’.32
Finally, Butler underscores that power functions not through outright proscription but through the
formation of intelligible subjects. She states,
Here it becomes important to recognize that oppression works not merely through acts of over
prohibition, but covertly, through the constitution of viable subjects and through the corollary
constitution of a domain of unviable (un)subjects – abjects we might call them – who are neither
named nor prohibited within the economy of the law.33

Gendered scripts thus become self-policing, as ‘insider’ and ‘outsider’ are defined by the success of
one’s performance of the norm.
In 1 Peter 3.1-6, as in the ancient moralizing literature cited above, the constitution of what
Butler refers to as ‘viable subjects’ via assent to and performance of a particular genealogy of
femininity is operative. As we have seen, attention to luxurious outward adornment is at odds with
the development and display of ‘the hidden person of the heart’, and 1 Peter underscores this point
by appealing to a particular framing of Sarah’s history and subjectivity. Assent to and imitation
of this vision of submission and obedience as adornment becomes the condition of belonging for
women in the community, as ‘you have become her daughters as long as you do what is good and
never let fears alarm you’ (1 Pet 3.6). Daughterhood is not once-and-for-all but constructed and
sustained by the repetition of this gendered framework of subordination in order to manifest with
and through the body one’s proper ‘adornment’ in virtue. In short, Sarah as obedient wife is not an
entrenched and unchanging narrative but a compulsory framework of behaviour whose originality
is undermined by the necessity of its performance. Sarah might thus be ‘put on’ otherwise.

31
Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (New York: Routledge, 1999), 43.
32
Judith Butler, ‘Imitation and Gender Insubordination’, in Inside/Out: Lesbian Theories, Gay Theories, ed. Diana Fuss
(New York: Routledge, 1991), 21.
33
Ibid., 20. See also Butler, Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence (London: Verso, 2006).
34
Butler also states that ‘it seems to me that there is no easy way to know whether something is subversive. Subversiveness
is not something that can be gauged or calculated … I do think that for a copy to be subversive of heterosexual hegemony
it has to both mime and displace its conventions’ in Liz Kotz, ‘The Body You Want: Liz Kotz Interviews Judith Butler’,
Artforum 31, no. 3 (1992). Online: https://www.artforum.com/print/previews/199209/the-body-you-want-an-inteview-
with-judith-butler-33505 (accessed 30 November 2019).
WORN STORIES: (AD)DRESSING WIVES IN 1 PETER 297

CONCLUSIONS
While Butler’s insights help us to see cracks in the logic of the text, they also caution against
attempts to determine or limit what subversion or resistance to these norms might look like.34 This
is compounded even further by the fact that we do not have direct accounts of ancient women’s
experiences or the alternative (hi)stories they might have retold and embodied in fashioning
themselves. Nevertheless, what I underscore in this chapter are the ways in which the diversity of
attempts to rewrite Sarah’s legacy complicate the author’s attempt to ‘clothe’ the women in the
community with obedience, submission and secondary status as a condition of their belonging.
Clothing oneself otherwise might thus be understood not as ‘mere bodily adornment’ but as an
embodied and material challenge to the structures of subordination and domination that the
author’s rhetoric seeks to naturalize.
298
 CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Exposed! Nakedness and

Clothing in the Book
of Revelation
HARRY O. MAIER

This chapter considers the motifs of nakedness and dress in the last book of the Christian Bible,
the book of Revelation or the Apocalypse. Nakedness and dress also appear in the Hebrew Bible
as well as Jewish and Christian apocalyptic literature roughly contemporary with Revelation,
and furnishing a consideration of their presence there offers a broader perspective with which to
interpret John’s development of these motifs. The representation of conquered enemies as stripped
or improperly dressed also often appeared in Roman imperial iconography to celebrate victory
and conquest. Since Revelation adapts a number of Roman imperial concepts and images in the
communication of its message, attention to this iconography helps to situate the writing in its
broader setting. John, the Apocalypse’s author, aimed for his intended audience to hear his writing
read aloud in a public assembly and as a strategy of persuasion he used vivid description to turn its
listeners into viewers through the oral performance of a text filled with lively images.1 By drawing
on representations of nakedness and dress in the Hebrew Bible and by creating images of them
at home in the propaganda of Roman imperial conquest, John added his voice to an apocalyptic
tradition which played a central role in communicating religious ideals.2 Once canonized, his
depictions helped to create an enduring set of meanings associated with clothing and nakedness
that have become part of the foundation of the Western tradition.3
At first glance it may seem odd to discuss nakedness in a volume dedicated to dress, but the
absence of clothing is as salient as its presence in the discussion of this topic.4 My discussion is

1
For the role of vivid speech in Revelation as a rhetorical strategy of persuasion, see Robyn J. Whitaker, Ekphrasis, Vision,
and Persuasion in the Book of Revelation. WUNT 410 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2015), 1–70.
2
Attention to dress and specifically nakedness in Hebrew Bible and ancient Near Eastern Studies is a growing field; for a
wide-ranging study with literature, Christoph Berner, Manuel Schäfer et al., eds., Clothing and Nudity in the Hebrew Bible:
A Handbook (London: Bloomsbury, 2019); Antonios Finitsis, ed., Dress and Clothing in the Hebrew Bible: ‘For All Her
Household Are Clothed in Crimso’. Library of Hebrew Bible/Old Testament Studies 679 (London: T&T Clark, 2019); for
New Testament and early Christian treatments, Kristi Upson-Saia, Carly Daniel-Hughes and Alicia J. Batten, eds., Dressing
Judeans and Christians in Antiquity (Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2014); for Roman considerations, Jonathan Edmondson and
Alison Keith, eds., Roman Dress and the Fabrics of Roman Culture (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2011); Christopher
H. Hallett, The Roman Nude: Heroic Portrait Statuary 200 BC–AD 300 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011).
3
For a general orientation, see Kenneth Clark, The Nude: A Study in Ideal Form. Bollingen Series 35.2 (New York: Pantheon,
1956) and John Berger, Ways of Seeing (London: BBC and Penguin, 1972), 45–64.
4
Oliver König, Nacktheit: Soziale Normierung und Moral (Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlg, 1990), 25–62; Hans Peter Duerr,
Der Mythos vom Zivilisationsprozess. Vol. 1. Nacktheit und Scham (Frankfurt a.M: Suhrkamp 1988), and Jean-Claude Bologne,
Histoire de la pudeur (Paris: O. Orban, 1986) consider dress and nakedness as inextricably bound cultural phenomena.
300 DRESS IN MEDITERRANEAN ANTIQUITY

oriented towards anthropological treatments of dress, a subset of anthropology that has, especially
since the 1980s, become a topic of growing interest.5 Social scientific study reveals that there is
a repertoire of meanings associated with dress, a term that describes what one wears as well as
adornment, whether by way of accessories or through body modification by such means as piercing
and tattooing.6 The list includes items such as rites of passage, ritual identity, social performance,
familial ties, social boundaries, body definitions, authority, protection, wealth, happiness, gender
performativity, group affiliation, status, grief, spiritual power, social dissent and resistance, beauty
valuation and temporal and spatial designation. A more recent trend has been to consider the
function of clothing in globalization, colonization and the fashioning of postcolonial identities.7
Anthropologist Terence Turner describes dress and adornment as a ‘social skin’ by which he
means ‘the construction of the individual as social actor or cultural “subject”’.8 Dress becomes the
site of a social construction of self and others through which cultural value is invested and displayed
and reproduced across generations or where social values are contested and redefined. Dress in this
sense belongs to what the anthropologist and sociologist Pierre Bourdieu describes as ‘habitus’,
‘a particular but constant way of entering into a relationship with the world which contains a
knowledge inhabiting it to anticipate the course of the world, without any objectifying distance,
in the world and the “forth-coming” that it contains’.9 Habitus expresses the structural elements
of a culture or society that patterns daily behaviour, attitudes, tastes and beliefs.10 Bourdieu likens
habitus to a kind of social dress: the dispositions, behaviours, values that we are caught up in and
inhabit in our daily lives. Dress can also be a site or field of competition, a means by which status
is secured and made visible. In this sense, it can become a form of what Bourdieu calls symbolic
capital – the social assets, knowledge and tastes that distinguish one person or class from another
and grants them a particular kind of social advantage.11
Once these aspects of dress are considered, the absence of dress can be easily recognized as
its own form of habitus and medium of symbolic capital and thus also a topic of anthropological
interest, as for example in the study of burlesque.12 Even as dress speaks a particular social language

5
The anthropological study of clothing is a relatively recent development in the field; for a survey of the literature, see Joanne
B. Eicher, ‘The Anthropology of Dress’, Dress 57 (2000): 59–70; Karen Tranberg Hansen, ‘Anthropology of Dress and
Fashion’, in Bloomsbury Bibliographical Guide (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2015), DOI: 10.5040/9781474280655-
BG004 (accessed 16 March 2019); Lars Allolio-Näcke, ‘Nudity and Clothing from the Perspective of Anthropological
Studies’, in Clothing and Nudity in the Hebrew Bible, ed. Christoph Berner, Manuel Schäfer et al. (London: Bloomsbury,
2019), 33–49; also the chapter by Lynne Hume in this volume. (I am grateful to Prof. Hume for allowing me to read her
essay before it went to press.)
6
Joanne Eicher and Mary Ellen Roach Higgins offer an anthropological definition of dress as an ‘assemblage of body
modifications and/or supplements’ (‘Definition and Classification of Dress: Implications for Analysis of Gender Roles’, in
Dress and Gender: Making and Meaning (Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Women), ed. R. Barnes and J. B. Eicher (Oxford:
Berg, 1992), 15, a definition also used by Lynne Hume in this volume.
7
Karen Tranberg Hansen, ‘The World in Dress: Anthropological Perspectives on Clothing, Fashion, and Culture’, Annual
Review of Anthropology 33 (2004): 369–92.
8
Terence S. Turner, ‘The Social Skin’, Journal of Ethnographic Theory 2 (2012): 486–504.
9
Pierre Bourdieu, Pascalian Meditations (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2000), 142.
10
Pierre Bourdieu, The Logic of Practice (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1990), 53.
11
Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1984),
whose main ideas are well summarized in Pierre Bourdieu, ‘Symbolic Capital and Social Classes’, Journal of Classical
Sociology 13 (2013): 292–302, first published in 1978.
12
Becki Ross, Burlesque West: Showgirls, Sex, and Sin in Postwar Vancouver (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2009).
For accounts from other disciplinary perspectives, see Bologne, Histoire; Ruth Barcan, Nudity: A Cultural Anatomy
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004); Jean Brun, La nudité humaine, 2nd edition (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1986).
EXPOSED! NAKEDNESS AND CLOTHING IN THE BOOK OF REVELATION 301

that is embedded within larger cultural dynamics, so does its absence; nakedness can paradoxically
also be a kind of social skin that covers the self with cultural meanings and is situated within a
cultural field of values, practices, tastes and symbols. The oft-juxtaposed terms nude and naked
have a wide range of connotations. From an anthropological perspective, both terms imply a
range of inter-subjective meanings embedded in cultural contexts. Both can refer to a natural state;
naked – a cultural category that is broader than that of nude – can be value neutral such as when
we say we are born naked; or it can communicate a positive state such as when one says that the
naked body is beautiful; or it can have a negative meaning, the chief interest of this chapter.13 In
this last sense, it can bring a host of associations such as being exposed, without protection, shame,
being stripped and laid bare.
In the ancient world, the period with which this chapter concerns itself, the words nude and
naked (Greek: gymnos; gymnotēs; Latin: nudos; nuditas) were deployed in a variety of ways.14
Because poor people often worked in the nude, the words could communicate a servile identity
of powerlessness. At the other extreme, nudity also communicated the status of being a hero or
possessing divine power, with an idealized form of the naked body portraying strength and virtue,
notions at home in the Greek East where there was from the classical period onward a tradition
of exercising naked, hence the Greek term gymnasia.15 In the Roman west, where there was not
a tradition of depicting rulers without clothing, Greek classical and Hellenistic models were
nevertheless adapted for the purposes of political portraiture. Emperors could be depicted as nude
or semi-nude to associate them with gods, heroes or the leading protagonists of Greek and Roman
myths.16 Since my interest here is in the negative connotations of nakedness, I will focus on the
motif as part of the violent loss of identity, being stripped and forced exposure. In the agonistic
honour-shame culture of antiquity, being stripped and exposed was symbolic of public humiliation
and loss of status. As a form of orally performed rhetoric, Revelation’s graphic representations
of nakedness were designed to conjure in the minds of its listeners vivid pictures of the loss of
identity as well as emotions associated with shame and public exposure. As we will see, in Roman
imperial iconography, imitating themes that appeared in ancient Near Eastern and Hellenistic art,
the vanquished are often in varying states of absence of dress, which signifies their conquest, often
accompanied with gestures or emotional depictions of sorrow or pain.17 This is a cultural code that
continues into the present day.18

13
Allolio-Näcke, ‘Nudity and Clothing’, 36–7.
14
Valerio Neri, ‘Nacktheit I’, Reallexikon für Antike und Christentum 22 (2013): 601–29. Albrecht Oepke, ‘gymnos,
gymnotēs, gymnazo, gymnasia’, in Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, vol. 1, ed. Gerhard Kittel, trans. Geoffrey
W. Bromiley (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans), 773–6.
15
For the spectrum of meanings and their history, see P. Stewart, ‘Nacktheit II (Ikonographie)’, Reallexikon für Antike und
Christentum 22 (2013): 630–51.
16
Hallett, Nude, 159–270.
17
For an orientation to the ancient Near Eastern evidence, which this chapter will not discuss, see Andrea Beyer, ‘Nudity
and Captivity in Isa. 20 in the Light of Iconographic Evidence’, in Berner, Schäfer et al., Nudity, 491–8. I am grateful
to Dr. Beyer for allowing me to see this essay before it was published; also Julia Asher-Greve and Deborah Sweeney,
‘On Nakedness, Nudity and Gender in Egyptian and Mesopotamian Art’, in Images and Gender: Contributions to the
Hermeneutics of Reading Ancient Art, ed. S. Schroer (Frebourg and Göttingen: Academic Press, 2006), 123–76.
18
One need only recall the 1972 photo of Kim Phuc Phan Thi that depicts her as a naked girl burning with napalm
and running down a Vietnamese road with clothed American soldiers walking behind her, http://www.apimages.com/
Collection/Landing/Photographer-Nick-Ut-The-Napalm-Girl-/ebfc0a860aa946ba9e77eb786d46207e (accessed 22 March
2019). A more recent set of examples can be seen in photos taken in 2003 of humiliated naked Iraqi prisoners in Abu Ghraib
prison near Baghdad in front of American soldiers, http://100photos.time.com/photos/sergeant-ivan-frederick-hooded-man
(accessed 1 April 2019).
302 DRESS IN MEDITERRANEAN ANTIQUITY

THE NAKED AND THE DRESSED IN THE BOOK OF REVELATION

Before turning to observations concerning nakedness in the Apocalypse a few words of introduction
to the setting and literary form of the writing are necessary. Revelation was composed sometime
during the second half of the first century. It is the fullest example of apocalyptic literature in the
New Testament; as a literary type its closest biblical parallel is the book of Daniel (composed in the
second century BCE).19 Revelation and Daniel share a set of properties common to a large body
of Jewish and Christian writings, most of which are not canonical, that span roughly from the
third century BCE to the Byzantine era and beyond. ‘Apocalypse’ is a cognate of the Greek noun
apokalypsis and verb apokalyptein, ‘to unveil’ (a word whose etymology invites a playful set of
connotations related to the shedding of clothing). In short, the primary element of this literature
is that of disclosure, typically mediated by one or more heavenly messengers, whether of God, of
the future, of humans, of heaven and hell, and so on, couched in coded symbols and metaphors
often drawn from the Hebrew Bible.20 In the case of Revelation, the writing comprises a series of
visions John receives while he is on the eastern Aegean island of Patmos, probably in prison, to
Jesus followers in western Asia Minor, designed to persuade them of the impropriety of their too
extensive participation in Roman imperial life.21 His visions serve two chief purposes: to expose the
empire as an idolatrous political order governed by Satan through his servant the emperor whose
chief aim is to destroy the church and to portray the reward of those who resist the idolatry of the
imperial order, even to the point of losing their lives. In the history of its interpretation, Revelation
has been used in multiple ways, often to comfort the oppressed, but frequently also to expose
political leaders as corrupt and to challenge believers who participate or benefit from their rule.
Revelation, as other instances of literature with which it shares many features, is strewn with
clothing and nakedness plays an important role in its unfolding fashion code. John uses clothing
to disclose purity or corruption. Revelation’s protagonists are always dressed in white (Rev. 3.4-5,
18; 4.4; 6.11; 7.9, 13-14) – a widely shared cultural signifier in Antiquity designating purity and/
or divinity.22 The twenty-four elders who sit around God in the heavenly throne room are dressed
in white robes (4.4), with golden crowns on their heads; similarly, each of the martyrs beneath
the throne of God who await their vindication receives a white robe (6.11). The most extended
instance appears in Revelation 7.4-17, where John sees a vision of 144,000 virgin men (14.4), who
‘have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the lamb’, a reference to John’s
ideal of martyrdom. At the opposite extreme of the white gowns of John’s protagonists is the

19
In biblical studies the word ‘apocalypse’ is a literary term created in the nineteenth century to refer to a genre of literature
with a shared set of properties; apocalyptic refers to a type of eschatology often associated with end-time calamity, but not
always and not exclusively present in the apocalypse genre; for the definitions and their discussion, John J. Collins, The
Apocalyptic Imagination: An Introduction to Jewish Apocalyptic Literature, 3rd edition (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2016),
1–52.
20
For discussion of apocalypse as divine disclosure in this sense, Christopher Rowland, The Open Heaven: A Study of
Apocalyptic in Judaism and Early Christianity (New York: Crossroad, 1982), 9–10.
21
I follow here the interpretation pioneered by Leonard L. Thompson, The Book of Revelation: Apocalypse and Empire, rev.
ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), developed more fully in Harry O. Maier, Apocalypse Recalled: The Book of
Revelation After Christendom (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2002); the more traditional account is that the Apocalypse was
written to comfort the oppressed or those experiencing real or imagined deprivation, for which see Adela Yarbro Collins,
Crisis and Catharsis: The Power of Apocalypse (Philadelphia: Westminster John Knox, 1984).
22
M. Gotheins, ‘Gottheit lebendiges Kleid’, Archiv für Religions Wissenschaft 9 (1906): 337–64; R. Eisler, Weltmantel und
Himmelszelt. Religionsgeschichtliche Untersuchungen zur Urgeschichte des antiken Weltbildes (München: Lili von Pausinger,
1910), 49–112; A. Kehl, ‘Gewand (der Seele)’, Reallexikon für Antike und Christentum 10 (1978): 945–1025. Alicia J.
Batten’s chapter in this volume also discusses the association of white with purity.
EXPOSED! NAKEDNESS AND CLOTHING IN THE BOOK OF REVELATION 303

luxurious clothing of his antagonists. He portrays Rome, coded in Revelation as the Great Whore
of Babylon, as a ‘woman … clothed in purple and scarlet, and adorned with gold and jewels and
pearls’ astride a scarlet beast with seven heads and ten horns (Rev. 17.3-4). Here John draws on
a rhetorical commonplace or topos found in contemporary Greek and Latin literature, as well as
the Old Testament, of the rich courtesan in which luxurious adornment is the sign of seduction
and corruption.23 John intends this depiction as both satirical and grotesque. As satire, he clothes
Rome in luxuriating costume to assault the political propaganda of the Empire with exposure;
Roman goddesses such as Roma, Venus, Concordia, Pax and Tellus were iconographically depicted
as modest and self-possessed female figures properly dressed and coifed, the emblem of Roman
virtue and self-mastery, values that were lauded for elite women more generally.24 The motif of
a whore is the opposite of this and functions as a kind of exposé. He reaches for the grotesque
in his graphic depiction of her allies drunk from ‘the wine of her fornication’ (17.2) and she
herself ‘drunk with the blood of the saints and the blood of the witnesses to Jesus’ (17. 6). John
seems to revel in grotesqueness in his vivid description of Rome’s demise and the use of violent
sexual narratives; he depicts the destruction of Rome, the great whore, as a gang rape and murder
by her erstwhile lovers (code for the nations that have sought allegiances with Rome). For the
author of Revelation where there is luxury, nakedness is not far behind. Significantly, ‘the ten
horns and the beast’ ‘will hate the whore; they will make her desolate and naked; they will devour
her flesh and burn her up with fire’ (17.16) – a vivid description that, as we will see, both echoes
Hebrew Bible prophetic denunciation of unfaithful Israel and imitates the depiction in Roman
iconography of conquered peoples, personified as sexually violated and humiliated women. Being
exposed as naked is a sign of both divine punishment and imperial victory. With respect to the
imperial context, John reverses the hermeneutical flow of Roman depictions, but at the same time
re-inscribes violence by pornographically ‘othering’ Rome as a vanquished and raped woman and
as harlot.25 John juxtaposes his graphic representation of Babylon/Rome with another extended
ekphrastic representation at the end of the Apocalypse (21.2–22.5), in which the heavenly Jerusalem
descends from heaven ‘prepared as a bride adorned for her husband’ (21.2), which also echoes a
host of Hebrew Bible texts and deploys a topos that idealized brides.26 It is against these binary
oppositions between the whore and the bride, corruption and purity, luxury and modesty, clothing
and nakedness, that John’s representation of nudity finds its place.
John’s treatment of the luxuriously clothed and then stripped whore of Babylon is the most
sustained instance of nakedness in the Apocalypse, and it is in concert with it that Revelation’s two
other nudity passages are best understood, where again the author associates nakedness with divine
punishment. The first reference to nudity, no less striking than the one related to Babylon, appears
in Revelation 3.17:

23
David E. Aune, Revelation 17-22. Word Biblical Commentary 52C (Nashville: Nelson, 1998), 935, with citations.
24
See Kelly Olson, Dress and the Roman Woman: Self-Presentation and Society (London: Routledge, 2008), 80–95.
25
For the uses of depictions of women as strategies for feminizing enemies and vivid iconographical representation of sexual
abuse of women in imperial art of the ancient Near East, J. Assante, ‘The Lead Inlays of Tukulti-Ninurta I: Pornography
as Imperial Strategy’, in Ancient Near Eastern Art in Context. Studies in Honor of Irene J. Winter and Her Students, ed.
Jack Cheng and Marian H. Feldman (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 369–407; for the narrative device of the humiliation of woman
as apocalyptic strategy in Revelation, Tina Pippin, Death and Desire: The Rhetoric of Gender in the Apocalypse of John
(Philadelphia: John Knox Westminster, 1992); for Roman imperial uses, see below.
26
Ibid., 1121–2.
304 DRESS IN MEDITERRANEAN ANTIQUITY

For you say, ‘I am rich, I have prospered, and I need nothing’. You do not realize that you are
wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked. Therefore I counsel you to buy from me gold refined by
fire so that you may be rich; and white robes to clothe you and to keep the shame of your nakedness
from being seen; and salve to anoint your eyes so that you may see.

The passage is near the start of the work, as part of a message to a Christ assembly at Laodicea
(3.14-22), a city located along a network of Roman roads built primarily for trade near the west
coast of Asia Minor (contemporary Turkey). It is part of the last, the numerologically significant,
seventh message (seven being a number associated in biblical tradition with God, as God rested
on the seventh day of creation – Gen. 2.1-3), to seven Christ assemblies (Rev. 2.1–3.22). As the
passage from 3.17 indicates, it is a message of censure. John magnifies his critique by placing it in
the rhetorically forceful last position in the sequence of messages and by making it the seventh one,
he emphatically juxtaposes the impoverished state of the Laodiceans with the divine. The message
to Laodicea is the dramatic conclusion to the literary unit of the seven messages that began in 2.1;
at 4.1 John will change location, from messages to the seven churches to a vision of the heavenly
throne room of God, whence the contents of the rest of the writing will come. The exhortation
to buy white robes complements his depiction of some of the members he describes in his fifth
message to the church at Sardis ‘who have not soiled their clothes’. ‘They will walk with me’, Jesus
promises, ‘dressed in white, for they are worthy’ (3.4). He goes on to exhort those who are not
yet like them: ‘If you conquer, you will be clothed like them in white robes, and I will not blot
your name out of the book of life.’ (v. 5). The other reference to nakedness in Revelation occurs in
16.15: ‘See, I am coming like a thief! Blessed is the one who stays awake and is clothed, not going
about naked and exposed to shame.’ The admonition echoes the association of nakedness and
shame in 3.17 and foreshadows the desolation and nakedness of 17.16.

DRESSING UP AND THE NAKED TRUTH IN THE HEBREW BIBLE

As is the case of most other aspects of the Apocalypse, Revelation’s treatment of clothing and
nakedness draws from the Hebrew Bible and parallels traditions found in the Intertestamental
period.27 Clothing in the Hebrew Bible has a wide array of associations.28 It represents the body and
creation as (perishable) garments (Job 10.11; 13.28; 38.14; 38.9; 39.19; Pss. 65, 13; 102.26; Isa.
50. 9; 51.6-8; Sir. 14.17). It depicts God as robed in splendid incorruptible garments, light, glory
or similar holy qualities, or wearing the weapons of a warrior (Job 40.10; Isa. 6.1; 59.17; 63.1-3;
Dan. 7.9). Predictably, it has God’s heavenly emissaries dressed in white or the clothing of divine
holiness and glory (Dan. 7.9). It dramatizes divine punishment and blessing as stripping off of
garments and the covering of or the putting on of positive and negative qualities as clothing (Judg.
6.34 [LXX]; 1 Chron. 12.18 [LXX]; 2 Chron. 24.20 [LXX]; Job 8.22; 29.14; Pss. 30.11; 35.26;
109.29; 132.9, 16, 18; Isa. 52.1; 59.17; Prov. 31.25; Zech. 3.3-5; Ps. of Sol. 2.20-22). Salvation
and righteousness are states of being one puts on as a garment (Job 29.14; Ps. 131.9, 16; Isa. 61.10;
2 Esd. 2.39, 40, 45; Bar. 5.1). Conversely, it describes the unrighteous as robed in vices (Job 8.22;
Ps. 35.26; Pss. 73.6; 109.18-19, 29; 132.18; Isa. 64.6).

27
For an overview, Steve Moyise, The Old Testament in the Book of Revelation. Journal for the Study of the New Testament
Supplement Series 115 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1995).
28
For closer analysis of the spectrum of these uses and meanings, see Berner, Schäfer et al., Nudity.
EXPOSED! NAKEDNESS AND CLOTHING IN THE BOOK OF REVELATION 305

Nakedness in the Hebrew Bible and the Intertestamental as well as other Jewish literature is a
motif that describes a variety of notions. In its most value-neutral sense, nakedness is associated
with creatureliness (Gen. 2.25; 3.7; Job 1.21; Qoh. 5.15; Hos. 2.3; Tob. 1.17; 4.16; 2 Esd. 2.20).
In the Jahwist’s creation account, Adam and Eve are first naked and unashamed (Gen. 2.25). The
first-century Alexandrian philosopher and biblical commentator Philo interpreted the nudity and
freedom of shame of the first couple in a unique way. He read the two accounts in Genesis 1.26-27
and 2.7, 18-24, of the creation of Adam and Eve as an account of a two-stage generation, first of
spiritual incorporeal beings and then corporeal ones. The nakedness of Adam and Eve symbolizes
for Philo an ostentationless existence, a state of being clothed with virtue or divine properties – the
pre-lapsarian period of freedom from corporeal sensuality when the couple lived in conformity
with a pre-corporeal intellectual nature (leg. alleg. 2.7,22-28, 25; 15. 53–17.69; 18.58-60; fug.
et inv. 20.108-112; quaest. in Gen. 1.69). God’s clothing Adam with skins (Gen. 3.20) signifies
the second creation of them as corporeal beings, entangled in the physical order, in order to begin
the long process of a return to God. The negative association of nakedness and shame, which
Revelation deploys, is a recurring theme. Adam and Eve discover that they are naked only after
eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and clothe themselves with loincloths (Gen.
3.7), a symbol of their shame and their desire to hide themselves from God (3.9-11). In Philo’s
exegesis of Genesis 2 and 3, he links clothing with the sensual, luxury-loving, sexual life, focusing
in particular on clothing and nakedness in Genesis 2.25 and 3.7, 21, and on Adam and Eve’s post-
lapsarian entanglement with corporeal existence and pursuit of pleasure (leg. alleg. 2.18,71-2;
51.148-52, 154; quaest. et sol. in Gen. 1.40-53).
In the prophetic tradition, divine judgement is often represented as either God’s stripping or
a conquering power’s public exposure of nakedness. Anja Klein argues that representations of
nakedness and exposure as divine judgement in the exilic and post-exilic prophets Isaiah, Jeremiah
and Nahum are in part rooted in the ancient Near Eastern practice of stripping the conquered and
the traumatic experience of the sexual violation of women by the Babylonian army (Jer. 13.25-27;
Ezek. 16.36-39; 23.10, 18, 29; Lam. 1.8; Hos. 2.3, 9; Mic. 1.11; Nah. 3.5; Isa. 20.2-4; 47.3).29
In Hosea 2 and Ezekiel 16 and 23, nakedness is part of a metaphorical description of Yhwh as
husband and Israel and Judah personified as unfaithful wives. In Nahum 3.1-7 and Isaiah 47.1-4
judgement as stripping is directed to Nineveh and Babylon, respectively, a reversal of the terror
they have inflicted on others. The Septuagint magnifies the idea of nakedness where it translates
the Hebrew word for naked, cerwã, with the Greek term aischynē, ‘shame, disgrace’ (Isa. 20.4;
47.3; Ezek. 16.36, 38; 22.10; 23.10, 18, 29).30 The warning against the Laodiceans in 3.17 and the
more general portent in 16.15 that the shame of nakedness will be exposed have as its backdrop
these biblical traditions. Additionally, the charge against the Laodiceans of being poor and naked
builds on the association found in biblical tradition (Job 24.7, 10; Ezek. 18.16). The extended
ekphrasis of ch. 17 where John portrays Babylon as stripped naked, left desolate, cannibalized and
burned reworks prophetic descriptions of Judah’s demise into statement about Rome’s destruction.

29
For discussion Anja Klein, ‘Clothing, Nudity, and Shame in the Book of Ezekiel and Prophetic Oracles of Judgment’, in
Berner, Schäfer et al., Nudity, 499–523 at 518; also ‘Uncovering the Nymphomaniac: The Verb ‫ הלג‬and Exile as Sexual
Violence in Ezekiel 16 and 23’, in Images of Exile in the Prophetic Literature Copenhagen Conference Proceedings 7–10 May
2017. FAT 103, ed. Jesper Høgenhaven, Frederik Poulsen and Cian Power (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2019), 167–86. I am
grateful to Professor Klein for allowing me to see these essays before they went to press.
30
David E. Aune, Revelation 6-16. Word Biblical Commentary 52B (Nashville: Nelson, 1998), 897.
306 DRESS IN MEDITERRANEAN ANTIQUITY

In Ezekiel 23.26-29 the prophet predicts Israel’s conquest and massacre: ‘Your survivors shall be
devoured by fire. They shall also strip you of your clothes and take away your fine jewels. So I will
put an end to your lewdness and your whoring brought from the land of Egypt …. [T]hey shall
deal with you in hatred … and leave you naked and bare, and the nakedness of your whorings shall
be exposed.’31 John reverses the direction of violence by having Babylon (Rome) suffer violation
rather than its victims.

REVEALING DRESS IN APOCALYPTIC

The discussion has shown that Revelation’s representations of clothing and nakedness draws heavily
from and parallels texts and motifs found in the Hebrew Bible. We turn now to a large corpus of
apocalyptic literature that can be dated from the centuries before the Common Era through to the
Byzantine and Medieval periods, which, like the book of Revelation, deploys analogous themes and
shows the degree to which John is at home in this tradition. Thus agents of revelation, evil forces,
heavenly beings, as well as the resurrected righteous, are depicted as crowned, clothed in purple,
many-coloured garments or with imperishable garments of divine glory. In the body of apocalyptic
literature associated with the Hebrew Bible figure of Enoch (Gen. 5.18, 21-24), dress plays an
important role. It often signifies God’s act of redemption. God clothes the righteous or elect ones
in garments of glory (1 Enoch 62.15-16 [second century BCE to first century CE]). Enoch gives up
his ‘earthly clothing’ and is put into ‘the clothes of my glory’ (2 Enoch 22.6-10 [late first century
CE]). In 3 Enoch (fifth to sixth century CE), heavenly beings are robed in majesty or light (12.1-
5; 18.25). The Apocalypse of Sedrach (third to fourth century CE) offers an extended ekphrastic
account of the pre-incarnate Christ’s adornment, which he gives up when he descends to earth
(11). Ascent to heaven with the putting on of garments and descent to earth putting them off is a
common theme in apocalyptic literature. Paul’s reference to putting on the armour of light (Rom.
13.12; cf. 1 Thess. 5.8; Eph. 6.11, 14-15) or putting on imperishability in the resurrection (1 Cor.
15.53; cf. Gal. 3.28; Col. 2.9-12; 3.9-14) may reflect this influence. In the first to second century
CE Ascension of Isaiah, Isaiah describes exchange of ‘the honour of the garments of the saints for
the garments of the covetous’ (3.25). Elsewhere it represents bodies as garments of flesh which are
exchanged for new ones when one ascends to the seventh heaven (4.16-17; 8.14, 26; 9.8-9,11-12,
17-18). When Isaiah ascends there he sees garments and a crown reserved for him (7.22; 9.2) even
as he beholds clothing, thrones and crowns reserved for those who follow Jesus’s teachings and
believe in him (9.24-26). In the roughly contemporary 2 Baruch 15.8, the righteous are crowned
with divine glory in the world to come. 5 Ezra (also second century) concludes with a vision of the
faithful who ‘have received shining garments from the Lord’ and ‘who are clothed in white’ (39-
40). These passages form a striking correspondence with the white clothing of the martyrs John
sees in the heavenly throne room.
The descent from earth into infernal regions is also accompanied by dress. In the second century
CE Apocalypse of Peter, those punished in hell are clothed ‘in tattered and filthy raiment rolled
about on them in punishment’ (29) and in the Byzantine Book of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ,
Judas is stripped of his ‘glorious apparel’, he is ‘arrayed for cursing’ and lice cover him like a
garment.32 In the Apocalypse of Moses (a Greek text also known as The Life of Adam and Eve dating

31
For nudity as part of prophetic judgement in Ezekiel more generally.
32
E. A. Wallis, trans. and ed., Coptic Apocrypha in the Dialect of Upper Egypt (London: British Museum, 1913), 185–6.
EXPOSED! NAKEDNESS AND CLOTHING IN THE BOOK OF REVELATION 307

from the third to the fifth century, but which probably reflects traditions older than that), Adam’s
shame at his nakedness is associated with the loss of the glory of the Lord that had covered him
(20.1-4). The Coptic Apocalypse of John, an eleventh-century text also known as The Mysteries of
Saint John the Apostle and Holy Virgin, similarly refers to Adam’s nakedness that came about when
‘God removed the righteousness wherewith he was once arrayed’.33 This is a theme Paul may be
invoking in his own apocalyptically toned account of death in 2 Corinthians 5.3 where he uses a
clothing metaphor to state that the saved once deceased will put off the body but will not be found
naked, a passage consistent with the apostle’s other juxtaposition of Adam and Christ (Rom. 5.14;
1 Cor. 15.22, 45) and representation of putting on Christ (Rom. 13.14).34 Hebrews 4.13 may
invoke the same theme in its description that no creature is hidden but naked before God to whom
everyone must give an account. This places Revelation’s association of nakedness and shame within
a larger apocalyptic tradition and cosmic set of meanings.
In the Qumran literature, a body of texts named after their origins in a community of Jews living
near the Dead Sea from the first century BCE until its destruction by the Romans in first century
CE, clothing takes on a variety of meanings.35 In the Vision of Amram (4Q544 1, 10-14), Malki-
Resha – the angel of darkness – wears a many-coloured robe; in 4Q405 23, 7-10, ministering spirits
wear woven and ‘splendidly purified’ garments in the heavenly temple. The War Scroll (1QM,
4QM491-496 7, 10-12; late first century BCE to early first century CE) gives instructions about
seven priests and seven Levites who will take part in the battle against the Kittim (the Romans)
in the final apocalyptic battle; they are to dress in ‘vestments of white cloth of flax, in a fine linen
tunic and fine linen breeches’ with belts embroidered with blue, purple and scarlet thread and
decorated hats. The soldiers are to take care not to expose ‘the shame of their nakedness’ in the
camp and to remain pure. The description of priests in white is strikingly parallel with Revelation
19.14 in which ‘the armies of heaven, wearing fine linen, white and pure’ follow Jesus in battle
against the Devil and his earthly military allies (i.e. Rome; vs. 17-21). There are several instructions
in the scroll to wash clothes and to clean them after any contact with menstrual blood or semen
(e.g. Damascus Document 11, 3; 4Q274 1, 4-9, 2, 4-9; 4Q514); the coincidence with Philo’s
description (Therapeutae 51) of those whom he calls Essenes as wearing white clothing is striking
and furnishes the evidence of their identification with the Qumran community. These concerns
furnish an interesting parallel with Revelation’s account of the 144,000 white-robed male virgins
of Revelation 7.13 and 14.3-5.
Finally, we turn to The Shepherd of Hermas, a text written in Rome between the end of the
first and the middle of the second century CE. Hermas, a Roman freedman, receives a series of
revelations from a variety of figures including the eponymous shepherd, designed to exhort and
admonish Jesus believers who are charged with the pursuit of riches. The Shepherd exhorts Hermas
to clothe himself with good desire and to resist evil desire (Mandate 12.1-2 [44.1-2]). In a later
vision he sees people entering a tower (the church) wearing the same clothing ‘white as snow’
(Similitude 8.2.3 [68.1.3]). In another vision of the tower (Similitude 9.13.1-9 [90.1-9]), Hermas

33
For the text John M. Court The Book of Revelation and the Johannine Apocalyptic Tradition (Sheffield: Sheffield University
Press, 2000), 144–5.
34
For a discussion of the motif of putting on in Paul and its relation to broader biblical and extracanonical literature, Jung
Hoon Kim, The Significance of Clothing Imagery in the Pauline Corpus (London: T&T Clark/Bloomsbury, 2004).
35
For the dating and a general orientation to the literature, Michael Wise, Martin Abegg and Edward Cook, eds., The Dead
Sea Scrolls: A New Translation (San Francisco: HarperOne, 2005), 3–37.
308 DRESS IN MEDITERRANEAN ANTIQUITY

sees a company of female virgins that symbolize the powers of God and learns that no people can
enter the kingdom of God unless the women clothe them in their garments; each garment is the
name of a spiritual power. Those ‘clothed with these spirits’ wear garments of ‘one colour’ (9.13.5
[90.5]); they have ‘one spirit and one body and one garment; for they had the same mind and did
what was right’ (9.13.7 [90.7]). He also sees women with ‘uncovered shoulders, loose hair, and
beautiful figures’ who wear dark garments and seduce believers; those who wear their garments
cannot enter the tower (9.13.8-9 [90.8-9]). Hermas likens the gift of the spirit to reception of a
clean garment that believers are to keep intact and not return damaged (Similitude 9.32.3 [109.3]).
Taken together, these texts and traditions furnish the context for situating Revelation’s account
of his white-clothed protagonists, his luxuriating antagonists, as well as his warnings concerning
nakedness. John was obviously well acquainted with a tradition that used clothing as a narrative
device for communicating reward and punishment. His audience, however, situated as it was in
the west coast of Asia Minor would have also associated nakedness with punishment through
their daily experience of Roman propaganda that celebrated imperial conquest by depicting the
vanquished as stripped and naked. It is with this set of images that this chapter concludes.

STRIPPED IN DEFEAT
Roman imperial imagery was ubiquitous in the cities of the Roman Empire.36 The second-century
CE philosopher Marcus Cornelius Fronto acclaims the frequency with which he beholds the
emperor’s image: ‘You know that in all the banks, booths, shops, and taverns, gables, porches and
windows, anywhere and everywhere, there are portraits of you exposed to public view.’37 A part
of this imperial portraiture was the celebration of the reigning emperor as victor over enemies.
Representation of him as triumphant functioned as a way to honour the emperor as the person the
gods had chosen to unite the peoples of the Mediterranean Basin under one rule and through him
bring peace and prosperity to his subjects. It is difficult to know whether John’s audience was as well
versed in the biblical imagery and texts of the Hebrew Bible as John was or how acquainted it was
with the kinds of apocalyptic tradition the book of Revelation appropriates. It is certain, however,
that as inhabitants of the cities of western Asia Minor they would have had regular experience of
the iconography that honoured the emperor as victor over enemies. This imagery took several
forms – numismatic, statues, mosaics, as well as a host of media that because of time have long since
disappeared such as placards and frescos.38 Among the most important of these media were temples
designed to honour the emperor through worship of him as divine. Little survives of the temples
that once existed in many of the cities that dotted the eastern Mediterranean.39 At Aphrodisias,
however, not far from Laodicea (where there was also a temple dedicated to the worship of Domitian

36
For the ubiquity, social functions and meanings of imperial imagery, see Clifford Ando, Imperial Ideology and Provincial
Loyalty in the Roman Empire (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), 206–73. For strategic locations of images
of the emperor and his family and the cultural values and ceremonial associated with those images, see Thomas Pekáry,
Das römische Kaiserbildnis in Staat, Kult und Gesellschaft. Das römische Herrscherbild Abt. 3 Bd. 5 (Berlin: Mann, 1985),
42–65.
37
Marcus Cornelius Fronto, Ep. 4.12.6 (LCL 112, translation Haines).
38
For a general orientation, see Harry O. Maier, Picturing Paul in Empire: Imperial Image, Text and Persuasion in Colossians,
Ephesians and the Pastoral Epistles (London: T&T Clark/Bloomsbury, 2013), 35–61.
39
For a map that designates the presence of temples in Asia Minor, S. R. F. Price, Rituals and Power: The Roman Imperial
Cult in Asia Minor (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), xx–xxiii.
EXPOSED! NAKEDNESS AND CLOTHING IN THE BOOK OF REVELATION 309

[81–96 CE] and his wife Domitilla), archaeologists have excavated a temple completed under Nero
(54–68 CE) and have uncovered a cycle of reliefs that reveal the kind of imagery that we can expect
was used in other temples to honour the emperor with a cult.40 A number of these reliefs are of
interest for our purposes here because of the way they deploy motifs of clothing and nakedness
to mark imperial victory and conquest. They show emperors standing in triumph over women
in various states of nudity. These reliefs feminize enemies by representing them as subordinated
females and they masculinize Rome by portraying the emperor as a nude heroic male. In a relief (see
Figure 23.1) that represents the crowning of the emperor Claudius (41–54 CE), the emperor stands

FIGURE 23.1 Relief of emperor with conquered figure and personified senate, Aphrodisias, first
century CE. Aphrodisias Museum, Aphrodisias, Turkey. Photo: Author.

40
For a detailed account of these reliefs with images, R. R. R. Smith, ‘The Imperial Reliefs from the Sebasteion at Aphrodisias’,
JRS 77 (1987): 88–138.
310 DRESS IN MEDITERRANEAN ANTIQUITY

in the nude (signifying his divine power) holding a military trophy in his right hand, with a stricken,
vanquished woman kneeling below him. The woman has unbound hair and a bare breast to reveal
her defeat as well as her barbarian, uncivilized identity. She contrasts with the figure personifying
the Roman senate to Claudius’s left, with coiffed hair and a properly arranged peplos. Her sober
expression indicates her self-regulation and civilization. The relief uses the nakedness and grief of
the kneeling figure to signify the public shame and humiliation of the conquered, which is indicated
also in her being diminished in size in the lower part of the portrait with the enlarged emperor and
the personified senate above. As such it uses nakedness strategically to indicate both submission and
power; the enemy is ‘othered’ as distraught female while the senate personified as properly dressed
matron and the emperor and the senate together as sombre symbolize their divinely appointed
domination. A second example (Figure 23.2) uses the iconographic representation of nakedness
in a similar way to display conquest and shame. It celebrates the victory of Claudius over Brittania
by depicting the emperor (again as a heroic nude) astride a half-naked woman with unbound hair

FIGURE 23.2 Relief of Claudius’s victory in Britannia, Aphrodisias, first century CE. Aphrodisias
Museum, Aphrodisias, TurkeyPhoto: Author.
EXPOSED! NAKEDNESS AND CLOTHING IN THE BOOK OF REVELATION 311

in the lower half of the relief, about to strike her with a sword (no longer present). A third relief
(Figure 23.3), this time of Nero victorious over a female figure personifying Armenia, uses the
same iconographical depiction of nakedness. In all these examples, gender and the public display
of nakedness express public humiliation and punishment and assert imperial power.
Roman imperial representation of the conquered as feminine and naked offers an important
resource for interpreting and understanding the references to nakedness and clothing in the book
of Revelation. When John imagines the Great Whore of Babylon as naked and defeated by her
erstwhile lovers, John is echoing Hebrew Bible imagery, but perhaps more provocatively he is

FIGURE 23.3 Relief of Nero’s victory in Armenia, Aphrodisias, first century CE. Aphrodisias
Museum, Aphrodisias, TurkeyPhoto: Author.
312 DRESS IN MEDITERRANEAN ANTIQUITY

inviting his listeners to imagine Rome personified as a woman in the humiliated position we see
in these reliefs, a reversal of the iconographic celebration of imperial power and domination.
Similarly, when he threatens the Laodiceans with public exposure of their nakedness and later
warns them that Jesus’s coming will be as a thief that will catch people unaware and expose their
nakedness, he is using vivid speech to create in his listeners’ minds the kinds of images we see in
this imperial iconography of conquest.
Considered from an anthropological perspective, the imagery of conquest and defeat is part of
the creation of symbolic capital. Imperial portraiture of the emperor astride his feminized, naked
enemies was a way of granting the emperor and those in whom he invested his authority to govern
the precious commodity of honour. Those who donated funds to build these temples and furnished
them with imagery were engaging in a form of communication with Rome that used the expression
of provincial loyalty to further their own interests. The furnishing of symbolic capital for the
emperor was a means also of garnering honour for oneself amid one’s own civic peers.41 It also
expresses the agonistic elements of the honour-shame culture of the ancient world, namely that
honour was something people competed for and that often came at the cost of another’s shame.
In the Apocalypse, John deploys the symbols of honour and shame but reverses their flow so that
those who expect to win symbolic capital through their allegiance with Roman power can expect
to find themselves shamed and those who suffer at the hands of Rome for their faith can look
forward to honour. Thus, the Laodiceans who boast of wealth (thanks to their increased economic
fortunes in the imperial economy) will be exposed as naked, whereas those such as the 144,000
who are punished – and thus publically shamed – by the imperial regime for their faithful witness
to Jesus will be clothed with white robes washed in the blood of the lamb (7.13-14; see also
Rev. 3.4-5; 6.11; 19.14). John feminizes Rome as a whore drunk on blood (the opposite of the
modest properly dressed and arranged representation of the Roman senate seen in Figure 23.1); he
masculinizes the white robed 144,000 as males (14.4; presumably it is both men and woman whom
he imagines should suffer for their religious witness – the masculinization of both male and female
martyrs is telling when seen from the perspective of the imperial gender code). He thus honours the
imperially shamed with new dress. This reversal of fortunes provides John with a means to ‘lift the
veil’ on imperial power and to engage in a kind of political satire or parody that reverses fortunes
and unsettles expectations.
The Book of Revelation is both unveiling and re-veiling. John uses clothing to dress his enemies
and to celebrate those who keep the faith the champions. He uses representations of nakedness
to pillory the Empire and to criticize those who fail to resist the imperial order in the way he
expects. The Apocalypse’s treatment of clothing belongs to a long tradition that clothes religious
identity in various kinds of dress. John reverses imperial iconographical expectations by showing
the conquerors naked and the conquered clothed. Roman triumph is thus defeat and victimhood
is conquest. John’s Apocalypse is a text strewn with the clothing that John has his characters try
on for size and the garments he strips off of them. Given the enduring fascination with this text in
contemporary culture, it offers a dress code that shows no sign of going out of fashion.

41
For the temples and cult as a form of imperial communication, see Ando, Ideology, 73–276.
 CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Dirty Laundry in the Christ Cult

ALICIA J. BATTEN

INTRODUCTION
Most cultures throughout the world make distinctions between clean and dirty. Such categorizations
can play significant roles in fostering and maintaining individual and social boundaries,1 and they
may influence political, social and legal agendas,2 among other functions. Anthropologists have
observed that the association of dirtiness with moral suspicion has been widespread throughout
history: ‘unwashed hands, greasy clothes, offensive smells, grime on the skin all entered into
complex judgments about not only the social position of the “dirty” person but also his or her moral
worth’.3 People also sometimes associate that which is ‘dirty’ with ‘disgust’, the latter a powerful
emotion that the majority of human beings experience at one point or another.4 As a response to
‘dirty’, disgust only increases the degree to which people perceive the unclean as a violation of a
prohibition and as a potential contaminant upon contact.5 Such a ‘feared contagion extends the
danger of a broken taboo to the whole community’,6 and anxieties about contamination have not
dissipated in the modern world given the ongoing industrial and technological developments that
people often experience as threats and dangers.7
The decision as to whether something is clean or dirty is partly subjective and depends upon a
range of factors specific to context. This is not to say that such judgements are arbitrary but that
they ‘depend on our appreciation of the situation – the character of the item, its current state and
its current role. And we may be right or mistaken’.8 Moreover, just as assessments of ‘dirtiness’ can
vary from group to group, perceptions of particular items or substances as dirty or clean can change
according to time, place and overall perceptions and attitudes.

1
Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger; Routledge Classics Edition (London and New York: Routledge, 1966; repr., 2002),
153.
2
For a recent philosophical treatment of dirt, see Olli Lagerspetz, A Philosophy of Dirt (London: Reaktion Books, 2018).
3
Adeline Masquelier, ‘Dirt, Undress, and Difference: An Introduction’, in Dirt, Undress, and Difference. Critical Perspectives
on the Body’s Surface, ed. Adeline Masquelier (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2005), 6.
4
See William Ian Miller, The Anatomy of Disgust (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997).
5
Martha C. Nussbaum, ‘“Secret Sewers of Vice”: Disgust, Bodies, and the Law’, in The Passions of Law, ed. Susan A. Bandes
(New York and London: New York University Press, 1999), 23. See also Martha C. Nussbaum, Hiding from Humanity.
Disgust, Shame, and the Law (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2004).
6
Douglas, Purity and Danger, xiii.
7
Ibid., xix.
8
Olli Lagerspetz, ‘“Dirty” and “Clean” between Ontology and Anthropology’, in Philosophical Anthropology. Wittgenstein’s
Perspective, ed. Jesús Padilla Gálvez; Aporia 1/1 (Frankfurt: ontos Verlag, 2010), 161.
314 DRESS IN MEDITERRANEAN ANTIQUITY

Ancient notions of these phenomena were no doubt as variable as modern ones. A case in point
is the somewhat indelicate topic of Roman attitudes towards human urine. On the one hand, this
particular type of human waste was clearly disgusting, and there are examples of people urinating
on monuments as a means of desecration, such as the account of Nero befouling an image of the
Syrian goddess.9 On the other hand, the Romans used urine as a cleaning agent – a detergent – for
washing clothes and for a range of other purposes such as preparing dyes, removing stains and
healing injured animals. Pliny the Elder understood it to be a curative for gout,10 and in popular
parlance, it was a lotium – ‘virtually dish-washing liquid’.11 Use, then, appears to determine the
attributes of urine; it could be either dirty or clean, depending upon its purpose.
Likewise, attitudes towards clean and dirty vary among some of the writings stemming from
the ancient Christ cult. The following discussion explores the variety of assessments of clean and
dirty in this literature but with specific reference to dress.12 At a symbolic level, we encounter a
link between clean or washed clothes and righteous behaviour such as in the book of Revelation
(3.4; 7.14; 22.14), although the appearance of Christ in a blood-soaked robe (19.13) offers an
intriguing exception. The contrasting association between stained clothes and bad behaviour or
beliefs is evident in Jude 23. There are other moments, however, when discrimination against
those who are literally wearing dirty clothes receives criticism (Jas 2.2). Dirt, in this instance, does
not provoke discrimination or receive disdain. This chapter therefore engages the rich social and
symbolic background of dirty and clean dress in antiquity in order to analyse the references to such
attire in the literature of the Christ cult. Images of grimy or clean dress, as we shall see, assist in
advancing some of the moral and theological aims of these ancient texts.

ANCIENT ATTITUDES TOWARDS DIRTY AND CLEAN DRESS

The Latin term polluo means ‘to make dirty’, but we cannot assume in all cases throughout antiquity
that a dirty item was also ‘polluted’ in the sense of ‘immoral’ or ‘accursed’.13 There was plenty of
dirt, garbage and decaying, stinking matter lying around or flowing along the streets and gutters
of ancient cities and towns; it would be impossible for most people to avoid such filth, and it was
normal to be grubby.14 Most people, possessing few garments, probably wore soiled clothes much
of the time. Dirt was simply too hard to avoid.
Notions of dirty and polluted or ‘impure’ could overlap, however, and ‘cleanliness is often
an important part of purity, but a dirty robe may be ritually far purer than a clean one’.15 Mary
Douglas’s groundbreaking 1966 book Purity and Danger demonstrated that within a given system,
there are many connections between dirt and pollution. She defined dirt or uncleanness as ‘matter

9
Suetonius, Nero 56.1. This reference appears in Mark Bradley, ‘“It All Comes Out in the Wash”: Looking Harder at the
Roman fullonica’, JRA 15 (2002): 31.
10
Pliny, Nat. 28.65; as discussed by Bradley, ‘It All Comes Out’, 31.
11
Bradley, ‘“It All Comes Out”’, 31.
12
Given space limitations, the essay confines itself to examples from the New Testament.
13
Roger L. Beck, ‘Sin, Pollution, Purity – Rome’, in Religions of the Ancient World. A Guide, gen. ed. Sarah Iles Johnson
(Cambridge, MA and London, UK: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2004), 509.
14
See Alex Scobie, ‘Slums, Sanitation, and Mortality in the Roman World’, Klio 68 (1986): 399–433. On pollution in the
city of Rome in antiquity and throughout history, see the essays in Mark Bradley, ed., with Kenneth Stow, Rome, Pollution
and Propriety. Dirt, Disease and Hygiene in the Eternal City from Antiquity to Modernity, British School at Rome Studies
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012).
15
Robert Parker, Miasma. Pollution and Purification in Early Greek Religion (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983), 56.
DIRTY LAUNDRY IN THE CHRIST CULT 315

out of place’.16 Polluted things are matter out of place. However, this does not mean that all matter
out of place is polluted, defiling or impure,17 and today, many would make distinctions between
dirty and polluted objects.18 To be dirty was not, by definition, to be defiled. As indicated above,
much depended upon the specifics of place and time.
And, as Catherine Hezser has explained, because ancient peoples regularly recycled items,
parts of what was once impure or susceptible to impurity could be recycled and reused for a
different purpose, rendering them unsusceptible to impurity.19 Hezser points to Joshua Schwartz’s
examination of the Mishnah tractate Kelim, which clarifies that broken household goods such as
utensil parts are not susceptible to impurity if their function has shifted to a secondary purpose.
Thus a ‘secondary or recycled usage was not similar to a primary usage’.20 According to this
Mishnaic text, an object that is technically garbage or dirty is not always vulnerable to impurity.
Some scholars concur that Israelite purity laws reflect two major types of purity: ritual purity
and moral purity. The relationships between these two types of purity, their connections to notions
of sin and their relative importance could vary among different groups with ancient Judaism and
could shift over time.21 In the Hebrew Bible, ritual impurity could result from either direct or
indirect contact with natural occurrences such as birth, death, disease and genital discharge. Such
impurities were generally not sinful22 and although they could spread,23 they were not permanent.
Moral impurity was the result of serious sin such as idolatry or murder, but unlike ritual impurity,
was not contagious. Moreover, moral impurity could lead to enduring, if not permanent,
‘degradation of the sinner and eventually, the land of Israel’.24 One could regain moral purity
through punishment, atonement and/or exile but not through ritual cleansing. Thus within many
forms of ancient Judaism, washing one’s clothes was important for ritual purity but it would not
salvage moral purity.
How did clothing become impure within the context of ancient Judaism, which was itself
diverse? Generally, contaminated garments were a result of contact with a corpse or an impure
object or a person in an impure state. The purification of dress items that had had physical contact

16
Douglas, Purity and Danger, 50.
17
For a discussion of Mary Douglas’s ideas of dirt and pollution, see Jonathan Klawans, Impurity and Sin in Ancient Judaism
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 7–10.
18
Catherine Hezser, ‘Dirt and Garbage in the Ancient Jewish Religion Imagination and in Daily Life’, in Envisioning Judaism.
Studies in Honor of Peter Schäfer on the Occasion of his Seventieth Birthday, ed. Ra’ana S. Boustan, Klaus Herrmann,
Reimund Leicht, Annette Y. Reed, Giuseppe Veltri, with the collaboration of Alex Ramos (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2013),
107.
19
Hezser, ‘Dirt and Garbage’, 109–10.
20
Joshua Schwartz, ‘“Reduce, Reuse and Recycle”: Prolegomena on Breakage and Repair in Ancient Jewish Society: Broken
Beds and Chairs in Mishnah “Kelim”’, Jewish Studies: An Internet Journal 5 (2006): 174. Online: http://www.biu.ac.il/JS/
JSIJ/5-2006/Schwartz.pdf (accessed 15 July 2019). See m. Kelim 2:1; 11:1; 15:1.
21
See Klawans, Impurity and Sin.
22
For exceptions, see Klawans, Impurity and Sin, 25.
23
In a helpful discussion of the Priestly purity regulations in the Hebrew Bible, Yitzhaq Feder (‘Contagion and Cognition:
Bodily Experience and the Conceptualization of Pollution (ṭum‫ ۥ‬ah) in the Hebrew Bible’, JNES 72 [2013]: 163) points out
that the Priestly regulations not only ‘distinguish between pollution and sin, … [they] also seem to distinguish pollution
from infection’. He goes on to point out although various types of pollution, such as genital discharges, leprosy and corpse
pollution, may have originally evoked fears of infection, the Holiness Code restricts the ‘threat of pollution to the sacred
domain’. What this means is that although the physiological hazards of these forms of pollution were ‘neutralized, [their]
powerful socio-religious influence – as reflected in subsequent Jewish and Christian traditions – was only beginning to be
manifested’ (167).
24
Klawans, Impurity and Sin, 26.
316 DRESS IN MEDITERRANEAN ANTIQUITY

with an impurity, such as skin disease, included careful inspection and then washing. If the spot
on the clothing has spread after the item had been washed, then destruction of the garment by
burning was necessary (Lev. 13-14 and m. Neg. 11-12).25 If one entered a quarantined house and
slept on the furniture and/or ate in that house, one must launder one’s clothes (Lev. 14:46-47; see
also m. Neg. 13:9-10). David Wright, building on Jacob Neusner’s work, points out that the later
rabbis thought that when people touched certain impurities, they become ‘charged’ with impurity.
‘Momentarily thus charged, they pollute the clothes they are wearing and can pollute other articles
and persons.’26 Worn directly on the body, dress, no matter how clean it was, was immediately
susceptible to impurity.
It is not entirely clear whether all practitioners of Judaism during the Second Temple period
thought that impurity was transmissible by touching dress or fringes (tzitzit).27 At Qumran, one
had to launder clothes if one touched a carcass (11QT 51:1-5), but the later rabbis did not share
that view and thought that touching a carcass of a clean animal did not render the clothes impure
(Sifra on Lev. 11:39-40). However, there is guidance in the Mishnah to avoid the clothes of those
who do not observe purity carefully (m. Demai 2:3), and a later text, Hekhalot Rabbati (225–28),
indicates that a garment became contaminated if an impure person touched it.28 It could be, as Jodi
Magness and E. P. Sanders surmise, that ordinary people during the Second Temple period did not
worry too much about contaminating their clothes unless they were about to enter the temple.29
To reiterate, contaminated garments were not the same thing as having dust or grime on one’s
clothes. The latter would be almost impossible for most people to avoid even though clean dress
was preferred, at least for those with access to some sort of laundry. In general, dirty, ragged and/or
patched clothing was worn by poor people because ‘not only the type, but also the maintenance of
clothing distinguished the rich from poor; well washed clothing was important’.30 No matter where
one lived in the Roman Empire, it was better to be clean or at least ‘to look’ clean.31 Concerns about
having clean clothes go back as far as Homer, when, for example, Nausicaa expresses a desire to

25
For discussion, see David P. Wright, The Disposal of Impurity: Elimination Rites in the Bible and in Hittite and
Mesopotamian Literature; SBLDS 101 (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1987), 90–1.
26
Wright, The Disposal of Impurity, 186, n. 39.
27
Jodi Magness, Stone and Dung, Oil and Spit. Jewish Daily Life in the Time of Jesus (Grand Rapids and Cambridge, UK:
Eerdmans, 2011), 118. Due to space limitations I will not examine the story of the woman with the flow of blood (Mk 5.25-
34) who is healed after she touches Jesus’s garment. However, the story has been subject to much debate. For example, has
Jesus’s garment, and indeed, Jesus, become impure because of her touch? The account focuses on healing and the health and
faith of the woman, but some scholars think that purity issues are also important to consider as part of the background. For
some discussion, see Thomas Kazen, Jesus and Purity Halakhah: Was Jesus Indifferent to Impurity? ConBNT 38 (Stockholm:
Almqvist & Wiksell, 2002), 132–6; and Susan Haber, ‘A Woman’s Touch: Feminist Encounters with the Hemorrhaging
Woman in Mark 5:24-34’, JSNT 26 (2003): 171–92. For further discussion of tzitzit, see Joshua Schwartz’s chapter in this
volume.
28
See Magness, Stone and Dung, 238, n. 64.
29
Magness (Stone and Dung, 120) cites Sanders (Judaism: Practice and Belief 63 BCE-66 CE [London: SCM Press;
Philadelphia: Trinity Press, 1992], 220), who wrote: ‘Common people, one gathers from rabbinic discussions, did not
worry about midras impurity, except when they entered the temple, and possibly then they did not worry about midras
impurity on their clothes.’ This point by Sanders reflects Feder’s (see note 22) observation that although people during the
Second Temple period may have worried less about the physiological dangers associated with various types of impurities
than the ancient Israelites, such impurities were problematic when it came to the sacred domain.
30
Kelly Olson, ‘Status’, in A Cultural History of Dress and Fashion in Antiquity, ed. Mary Harlow; A Cultural History of
Dress and Fashion, vol. 1 (London, New York: Bloomsbury, 2018), 111.
31
Mark Bradley, ‘Approaches to Pollution and Propriety’, in Rome, Pollution, and Propriety, 23.
DIRTY LAUNDRY IN THE CHRIST CULT 317

wash the entire family’s clothes prior to her wedding, indicating that honour and desirability are
associated with clean linens.32 Although men who preoccupied themselves with dress and toilet
receive ridicule, Romans upheld their status in part through the appearance of cleanliness and
neatness.33 Ancient writers sometimes describe slaves as ‘dirty’ (sordidata),34 while in contrast the
‘well-washed’ (lautus) embodied the refined Roman male.35
In the Odyssey, women wash clothes in the river and lay them out on the riverbanks to dry, but
eventually the professional ‘fuller’ emerges within the Roman Empire. The fulling process included
washing the items in ‘stale urine and clay, trampled by the bare feet of slaves, rubbed with chalk,
and fumigated with sulphur’, which was quite different from the application of detergents, bleaches
and fabric softeners that many employ today.36 ‘Clean’ clothes in the Roman Empire probably
stank, but ancient noses must have been accustomed to it, and thus smelly garments, as Kelly Olson
explains, could bestow a certain status on their wearers. But, as Olson elaborates, because the
cleaning methods were quite tough on fabric, a cloak or tunic that had been fulled many times was
less valuable. An item that had never been washed was worth much more.37
In classical antiquity people deliberately donned dirty attire at certain moments. Greek and
Roman mourners, particularly women, would sometimes don sullied clothes,38 although there is
evidence of boys wearing a dirty mourning toga.39 Interestingly, an inscription from Gambreion
from the third century BCE seeks to prohibit mourning women from wearing grubby dress. This
inscription addresses post-burial practices and insists that women should participate. It decrees that
they should wear grey clothing and not soiled garments (κατερρυπωμένην). Its function may be to
strong-arm women into taking part in the public processes perhaps because they were otherwise
preoccupied with attending to the dead.40 The reason for the grey as opposed to dirty clothing
may be because grey clothes represent dirty white clothes; wearing grey instead of soiled garments
would ‘tame and curtail’ some aspects of mourning rituals while allowing particular sacred aspects
of them to continue.41 It could be, as well, that the social implications that resulted from wearing
soiled clothes did not sit well with the framers of these regulations.
Other examples of the purposeful wearing of sullied garb include when a man receives a capital
accusation and subsequently, he and his family put on vestes sordidi. An individual who had been
victimized in some manner could venture out in the city dressed in sordibus in order to make

32
Homer, Od. 6.25-70.
33
Kelly Olson, ‘Masculinity, Appearance, and Sexuality: Dandies in Roman Antiquity’, Journal of the History of Sexuality 23
(2014): 187. Olson points to Horace, for example, who disparages a man for his bad haircut and dishevelled dress (Horace,
Ep. 1.1.94-97).
34
Cicero, Pis.67. Juvenal (3.149) refers to the soiled toga of an indigent person.
35
Bradley, ‘It All Comes Out’, 23.
36
Ibid., 23.
37
Kelly Olson, Masculinity and Dress in Roman Antiquity; Routledge Monographs in Classical Studies (Oxford, New York:
Routledge, 2017), 124–5. Olson refers to Martial, 7.86.8, on the value of an unfulled cloak.
38
Glenys Davies and Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones, ‘The Body’, in A Cultural History of Dress, 68. See, for example, Euripides,
Hec. 495; Cicero, Dom. 59.
39
Seneca, Con. 9.5.1. For discussion of sordes clothing in antiquity, see Kelly Olson, ‘Insignia lugentium: Female Mourning
Garments in Roman Antiquity’, American Journal of Ancient History 3–4 (2004–05): 115–16.
40
Robert Garland, ‘The Well-Ordered Corpse: An Investigation into the Motives behind Greek Funerary Legislation’, BICS
36 (1989): 10. See LSAM 16.
41
Daniel Ogden, ‘Controlling Women’s Dress: Gynaikonomoi’, in Women’s Dress in the Ancient Greek World, ed. Lloyd
Llewellyn-Jones (London: Duckworth Classical Press of Wales, 2002), 207.
318 DRESS IN MEDITERRANEAN ANTIQUITY

known his or her distress and provoke anger in the community against the perceived victimizer.42
In Greek and Roman court settings, which were highly performative, defendants often dressed
in filthy clothes in order to procure the sympathy of the jury.43 People changed into dirty clothes
during a political crisis or as ‘an official protest decreed by the Republican Senate during which
large numbers of citizen males were encouraged to exchange their clean togas for sordes’.44 One
can therefore observe that in the Greco-Roman world, soiled attire was associated with death,
mourning, injustice, political conflict, slavery and/or poverty but that generally people preserved
status, in part, by wearing clean clothes.
Although it is difficult to delineate discretely the ‘sacred’ from the ‘secular’ in antiquity, the
value of pure dress extended to the sacred realm. Proper hygiene was requisite for worship just
as it was for daily activities, such as eating, and ‘clean clothes [were] essential to a display of
respect or a sense of wellbeing’.45 Shoes were often forbidden to be worn by those entering sacred
precincts as they were easily soiled and could convey ordinary dirt into a sanctified space.46 Priests,
in particular, had to be fastidious about their attire. The second-century grammarian Festus states
that priests’ garments are pure (pura vestimenta) and white, without any stains (macula).47 Macula
refers to physical blots or stains,48 but it can also function as a descriptor of a person’s shady past,
a dishonourable life or their questionable character in general.49 In contrast, the people who had
to kill the sacrificial animal, known as victimarii, wore a limus or robe that covered the lower half
of their body as they would presumably be spattered with blood and debris. The differences in
clothing between the priest and the man who slaughtered the victim underscored their distinctive
roles and their status dissimilarity, for the term limus could refer to the muddiness and grime that
went hand in hand with poverty and destitution.50
The colour white, with its luminosity and connotations of purity, figured not exclusively but
importantly in many contexts.51 Members of ascetic communities such as those at Qumran as
well as the Pythagoreans apparently wore white,52 and numerous inscriptions from throughout

42
See Michel Blonski, ‘Les sordes dans la vie politique romaine: la saleté comme tenue de travail?’ in S’habiller, se déshabiller
dans les mondes anciens, ed. Florence Cherchanoc and Valèrie Huet, Métis 6 (Paris: Éditions de l’École des hautes études
en sciences sociales, 2008), 41–56.
43
See Edith Hall, ‘Lawcourt Dramas: The Power of Performance in Greek Forensic Oratory’, Bulletin of the Institute of
Classical Studies 40 (1995): 39–58; Julia Heskel, ‘Cicero as Evidence for Attitudes to Dress in the Late Republic’, in The
World of Roman Costume, ed. Judith Lynn Sebesta and Larissa Bonfante (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press,
2001), 133–45; Jon Hall, Cicero’s Use of Judicial Theater (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2014), 43.
44
Olson, ‘Insignia lugentium’, 115. Olson refers to Cicero, in particular, who provides the most references to the practice of
vestem mutare. See, for example, ad Quir. 13; Dom. 55, 99; Planc. 87. See also Aerynn Dighton, ‘Mutatio Vestis: Clothing
and Political Protest in the Late Roman Republic’, Phoenix 71, no. 3–4 (2017): 345–69.
45
Parker, Miasma, 68.
46
For example, LSAM 14; LSCG 68. See Alicia J. Batten, ‘(Dis)Orderly Dress’, in Scribal Practices and Social Structures
among Jesus Adherents. Essays in Honour of John S. Kloppenborg, ed. W. E. Arnal, R. S. Ascough, R. A. Derrenbacker and
P. A. Harland; BETL 285 (Leuven: Peeters, 2016), 575. See also Sue Blundell’s chapter, this volume.
47
Festus, s.v. ‘pura vestimenta’.
48
See Ovid, Trist 3.5.15.
49
For example, Cicero, Att. 1.16.3. Jack J. Lennon provides a helpful discussion of macula in his Pollution and Religion in
Ancient Rome (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014).
50
See Jack J. Lennon, ‘“Victimarii” in Roman Religion and Society’, Papers of the British School at Rome 83 (2015): 77–8.
51
See Carly Daniel-Hughes, ‘Belief’ in A Cultural History of Dress and Fashion in Antiquity, 72. See also Olson, ‘Dress and
Roman Religion’, this volume.
52
See Eibert Tigchelaar, ‘The White Dress of the Essenes and the Pythagoreans’, in Jerusalem, Alexandria, Rome: Studies in
Ancient Cultura Interaction in Honour of A. Hilhorst, ed. F. Garcia Martínez and G. P. Luttikhuizen; JSJSup 82 (Leiden and
Boston: Brill, 2003), 301–21.
DIRTY LAUNDRY IN THE CHRIST CULT 319

the Mediterranean evince the importance of wearing clean or white robes in sacred processions.53
Initiates into the mysteries of Isis put on white robes54 signifying a new sacred status. Not
surprisingly, white robes figured importantly in early Christian baptismal rituals55 and signified
purity and self-control in Christian narratives from the medieval period.56
Clean (and white, in religious contexts) dress therefore had considerable symbolic purchase,
denoting economic and social status, and purity, or at least, normalcy.57 One might think of clothes
as an extension of the body; to wear grimy, stained garb is to be unclean, literally and/or symbolically.
Executioners and undertakers, for instance, were noted for physical dirtiness and obliged to live
outside city boundaries because of their polluted status. Such men were manifestations of the
identification of dirt with pollution even though, as discussed, such associations were and are not
automatic. A law code from Puteoli states that members of these professions had to ring a bell,
warning of their presence.58 As Jack Lennon points out, such ‘measures only make sense if physical
contact with these men was considered plausible and undesirable or dangerous’.59 Thus, a body
polluted by physical death, and by extension, its dress, was a threat; it was a potential source of a
contagion that many sought to avoid.

DIRTY LAUNDRY IN THE CHRIST CULT

Within the canonical collection of documents known as the New Testament we find a few scattered
references to dirty clothes. The Letter of James contrasts the treatment of a prospective patron60 in
gold rings and fine clothes (ἐσθῆτι λαμπρᾷ) with that of a poor man in filthy dress (ῤυπαρᾷ ἐσθῆτι).
The author criticizes the audience for pandering to the rich fellow by offering him the best seat
while humiliating the indigent one by ordering him to stand somewhere or sit at their feet (Jas 2.3).
The letter employs the example as a means of demonstrating how showing partiality to the wealthy
patron is a violation of the Law (Jas 2.9) and states that it is actually the ‘poor in the world’ who are
rich in faith and inheritors of the kingdom.61 Ironically, the clothes of the rich wind up moth eaten
(σητόβρωτα) along with their rotted riches and rusted gold and silver (Jas 5.2-3).
The reference to the dirty attire of the poor man is literal here and serves to underscore the
economic and social differences between him and the rich dandy62 that, in turn, lead to the type of
favouritism that the letter writer criticizes. The scene may refer to a courtroom setting63 in which

53
See, for example, LSCGSup 91; LSAM 11; LSAM 14; LSCG 65.
54
Apuleius, Met. 11.7-11.
55
See Daniel-Hughes, ‘Belief’, 72.
56
See Guillemette Bolens and Sarah Brazil, ‘The Body’, in A Cultural History of Dress and Fashion in the Medieval Age, ed.
Sarah-Grace Heller; A Cultural History of Dress and Fashion, vol. 2 (London: Bloomsbury, 2017), 61.
57
Andreas Bendlin (‘Purity and Pollution’, in A Companion to Greek Religion, ed. Daniel Ogden [Oxford: Blackwell, 2007],
178) helpfully states that purity is not the opposite of pollution; rather, ‘with regard to both purity and pollution, the
opposite is normality’.
58
L’Année Épigraphique (1971) 88. For discussion, see Jack J. Lennon, ‘Contaminating Touch in the Roman World’, in
Touch and the Ancient Senses, ed. Alex Purves (London and New York: Routledge, 2018), 129.
59
Lennon, ‘Contaminating Touch’, 129.
60
See Nancy J. Vyhmeister, ‘The Rich Man in James 2: Does Ancient Patronage Illumine the Text?’ AUSS 33 (1995):
265–83; John S. Kloppenborg, ‘Patronage Avoidance in the Epistle of James’, HvTSt 55 (1999): 755–94.
61
See Wesley Hiram Wachob, The Voice of Jesus in the Social Rhetoric of James; SNTSMS 106 (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2000).
62
For more on the question of ‘dandies’ in antiquity, see Olson, ‘Masculinity, Appearance, and Sexuality’.
63
See Roy Bowen Ward, ‘Partiality in the Assembly: James 2:2-4’, HTR 62 (1969): 87–97.
320 DRESS IN MEDITERRANEAN ANTIQUITY

case one could also deduce that the poor man’s dirty clothes are fitting if he is indeed a defendant.
Yet whatever situation the author had in mind, the references to the dress of the rich and poor assist
in creating exaggeration, which continues in James 5.1 when the author describes the weeping
and howling that will come upon the rich and subsequently, their moth-eaten clothes and rusty
metals. This sort of hyperbole is characteristic of ‘joke structures’, a term that John S. Kloppenborg
has applied to James building from the insights of Mary Douglas.64 Kloppenborg perceives the
contrasting descriptions and treatments of the rich and poor in James as comparable to a standard
Greco-Roman rhetorical trope whereby poor people are juxtaposed to the wealthy. The point of
such tropes, however, is not to identify with the poor or even to address them directly but to render
explicit the vices of a situation in which unbridled pursuit of wealth and patronage is rampant.
As he says, ‘Joking serves as a kind of social safety valve that relieves pressures and ambivalences,
without actually undoing the structures that cause those pressures.’65 There is a lampooning of the
rich in James, to be sure, but the letter is not advocating that the audience all put on dirty clothes
and identify with the poor. Rather, the poor man’s dirty laundry abets the author’s argument about
the futility of pursuing the rich man’s patronage.
In addition, it is important to state that the Letter of James reflects concerns about purity and
pollution. For example, James 3.6 uses the verb σπιλόω (‘to stain’) in its attack on the tongue, which
stains the whole body. The tongue is ‘a world [κόσμος] of iniquity’ (Jas 3.6) and has been described
as ‘an agent of pollution’.66 Earlier, the author declares that one should ‘keep oneself unstained
by the world’ (ἅσπιλον ἑαυτὸν τηρεῖν ἀπὸ τοῦ κόσμου) (Jas 1.27) and there are a variety of other
elements in the letter that underscore how concepts of purity and pollution shape the behaviour and
attitudes to which the author thinks the audience should aspire.67 All this is to say that despite the
author’s concerns about pollution, the pauper’s dirty clothes are clearly not a polluting influence
in the scenario of James 2. On the contrary, the author objects to the preferential treatment of the
finely dressed man and castigates those who ‘dishonour the poor’ by ordering around the man in
dirty clothes. Here, soiled garments are not problematic but markers of a person who is an heir of
the kingdom and rich in faith (Jas 2.5). Unlike many ancient contexts discussed earlier, a man in
soiled dress should be treated well in James. His clothes may be dirty but neither he nor his garment
is defiled or defiling.
James and the Letter of Jude uniquely share the verb σπιλόω (‘to stain’) within the New Testament.
In Jude, however, it is not the tongue that stains but the ‘flesh’ of those whom the writer perceives
to be in opposition. This flesh ‘stains’ the ‘tunic’ (χιτών) of such people. The text of Jude 22–23 is
much debated as the manuscripts do not agree on wordings, making translation and interpretation
difficult. The phrase μισοῦντες καὶ τὸν ἀπὸ τῆς σαρκὸς ἐσπιλωμένον χιτῶνα (‘hating the very tunic

64
John S. Kloppenborg, ‘Poverty and Piety in Matthew, James, and the Didache’, in Matthew, James, and the Didache: Three
Related Documents in Their Jewish and Christian Settings, ed. Huub van de Sandt and Jürgen K. Zangenberg; SBLSymS
45 (Atlanta: SBL, 2008), 231. Kloppenborg borrows the term ‘joke structure’ from Mary T. Douglas, ‘Jokes’, in Implicit
Meanings: Essays in Anthropology, ed. Mary T. Douglas (London and Boston: Routledge & Kegan, 1975), 90–114.
65
Kloppenborg, ‘Poverty and Piety’, 231.
66
Darian Lockett, ‘“Unstained by the World”: Purity and Pollution as an Indicator of Cultural Interaction in the Letter of
James’, in Reading James with New Eyes: Methodological Reassessments of the Letter of James, ed. Robert L. Webb and John
S. Kloppenborg; LNTS 342 (London: T&T Clark, 2007), 60.
67
See John H. Elliott, ‘The Epistle of James in Rhetorical and Social Scientific Perspective: Holiness-Wholeness and Patterns
of Replication’, BTB 23 (1993): 71–81.
68
For a recent discussion of the textual issues, see Alexandra Robinson, Stephen Llewellyn and Blake Wassell, ‘Showing
Mercy to the Ungodly and the Inversion of Invective in Jude’, NTS 64 (2018): 194–212.
DIRTY LAUNDRY IN THE CHRIST CULT 321

stained by the flesh’) in verse 23 is not disputed,68 but it is not clear exactly to whose flesh the
author refers. Throughout the letter, ‘false teachers’ come under considerable attack, even earning
the epithet ‘blemishes’ (σπιλἀδες) (Jude 12), but we cannot assume that Jude 23 has such people in
mind when it speaks of this flesh that stains or pollutes.
The letter employs purity and pollution language throughout in its invective against the false
teachers, whether they are real or imagined.69 Interestingly, the opponents are often described as
‘out of place’ bearing comparisons to Douglas’s definition of dirt, discussed earlier. They have
entered where they do not properly belong (Jude 4) and have no place, as they are waterless clouds
drifting in the winds, uprooted and fruitless trees (Jude 12) and wild waves and wandering stars
(Jude 13). They are also comparable to the angels in Genesis 6 who left their proper dwelling and
whom God has imprisoned in chains in the deepest darkness until judgement day (Jude 6).70 They
are morally dissolute, comparable to the immoral and sexually indulgent people of Sodom and
Gomorrah (Gen 19.4-11) (Jude 7); they reject authority and insult the angels (Jude 8). They are
irrational animals (Jude 10), ungodly (Jude 15), grumblers and malcontents (Jude 16).
As indicated, whether the ‘stained’ tunics come from the flesh of this same opposition is subject
to debate. But what is clear is that the reference to the tunic stained by the flesh is symbolic
language, unlike James’s mention of literally dirty clothes. Jude 23 evokes an image of contagion.
As J. N. D. Kelly put it:
What this crudely vivid expression is intended to convey is that any kind of contact with these
wretched people is to be shunned, even such slight and casual relations as brushing against them in
the street. Their very clothing (chitōn: the inner garment immediately next to the body) has become
contaminated or polluted by its proximity to their flesh.71

The image of the garment infected by its wearer’s flesh is a powerful one. It may be indebted to
both Judaean and Greco-Roman fears of contagion that, as discussed, informed the sensibilities
of ancient Mediterranean peoples. Jude is certainly not the first example of invective to engage in
such a characterization of pollution as a stain and a sign of moral corruption for such portrayals
of pollution were widespread in ancient polemic in a variety of literatures.72 Here the image of the
stained tunic functions symbolically and may have been intended to invoke disgust at the debauched
nature of the flesh, as the ‘stain’ caused by the flesh is a rather visceral illustration of how evil the
flesh in question must be.
This image of the contaminating flesh reflects the notion of a ‘magical law of contagion’ whereby
people and objects are understood to be able to transfer properties through contact, positive or
negative, and these properties endure even after contact has ended.73 Contemporary Americans,

69
See Alicia J. Batten, ‘The Letter of Jude and Graeco-Roman Invective’, HvTSt 70 (2014): 2. Online: http://dx.doi.
org/10.4102/HTS.V7011.2750 (accessed 10 June 2019).
70
See Jerome H. Neyrey, 2nd Peter and Jude. A New Translation and Commentary; AB 37C (New York: Doubleday, 1993),
38.
71
J. N. D. Kelly, A Commentary on the Epistles of Peter and Jude; Black’s New Testament Commentaries (London: Adam
and Charles Black, 1969), 289.
72
For an examination of Cicero’s use of pollution in his polemical writings, see Jack J. Lennon, ‘Pollution and Ritual Impurity
in Cicero’s De Doma Sua’, CQ 60 (2010): 427–45. As Hezser (‘Dirt and Garbage’, 118) points out: ‘The association of
“dirt” with certain worldly labors that were rejected by religious leaders and philosophers is quite common in post-biblical
Jewish, Christian, and Graeco-Roman writings.’
73
Carol Nemeroff and Paul Rozin, ‘The Contagion Concept in Adult Thinking in the United States: Transmission of Germs
and of Interpersonal Influence’, Ethos 22 (1994): 158–86. For the notion that positive characteristics could be transferred
via a garment, see Llewellyn-Jones’s chapter on the Persian dress and ceremony, this volume.
322 DRESS IN MEDITERRANEAN ANTIQUITY

for example, evidence discomfort at the prospect of wearing an ‘evil’ person’s sweater and some
indicate that laundering the garment would not make any difference – they still would not wear
it.74 Although intellectually people understand that the ‘badness’, shall we say, of someone such as
Adolf Hitler cannot be transferred through a garment, they remain deeply uncomfortable with the
prospect of wearing a garment on their body that had been worn by a person convicted of crimes
and corruption.
The letters of James and Jude share an interest in purity and pollution, but dirty laundry figures
differently. In James it reflects the socio-economic level and possibly victimized poor man, who is
not morally suspect but an heir of God’s kingdom. In Jude, however, a stained garment is the result
of the corrupt flesh of questionable persons. It is an example of moral impurity, a moral impurity
that can contaminate a garment. We recall that the ancient Israelites did not view moral impurity as
contagious. Yet in Jude such impurity can now infect a tunic. It is a powerful image that may have
indeed prompted disgust, as images of filth often do.
The last text referring to dirty and clean laundry under discussion is the book of Revelation,
which Harry Maier explores in this volume as well. Within the document as a whole, Revelation
3.4 forms part of an embedded letter to Sardis warning the audience to wake up, obey what has
been taught and repent. The verse in question states that there are still a few people in Sardis ‘who
have not soiled their clothes’ (οὐκ ἐμόλυναν τὰ ἱμάτια αὐτῶν) and who will ‘walk with me in white,
for they are worthy’ (περιπατήσουσιν μετ’ ἐμοῦ ἐν λευκοῖς, ὅτι ἄξιοί εἰσιν). Here, the references to
clean and white clothing recall descriptions of human processions found in Josephus,75 as well as in
Greco-Roman sacred contexts, as discussed earlier. The clean garments are indicators of either new
or well-laundered items, and, as Dietmar Neufeld also observed, ‘frequency and ritual in laundering
clothes indicates not only status but also concern for purity’.76 Perhaps because Sardis was known
as a centre of wealth and luxury, and expensive textiles, the author underlines the purity of white
and the upright morality and discipline that it represents as a means of dissuading the residents
of Sardis from pursuing a luxurious lifestyle.77 White robes, moreover, appear on the righteous at
numerous points throughout the Apocalypse (3.18; 4 4; 6.11; 7.9; 7.13). And although the image
of those who have not soiled their clothing may be symbolic and point to moral fortitude, it betrays
the fact that the author also seeks to preserve an element of status in the characterization of those
whose name will appear in the book of life (3.5).
Revelation also describes to those who have come out of a great tribulation and who have ‘washed
their robes’ (καὶ ἔπλυναν τὰς στολὰς αὐτῶν) and made them white in the blood of the Lamb (7.14),
and later the book pronounces a blessing on those who wash their robes (Μακάριοι οἱ πλύνοντες
τὰς στολὰς αὐτῶν) (22.14). In the first instance, the author describes people who will appear before
the throne of God and worship the deity within God’s temple (7.15). The image may recall texts
from ancient Israel such as Exodus 19.11, which portrays the Lord telling Moses to command the
people to wash their clothes before the Lord appears on Mount Sinai. In addition, when Joshua
the high priest stands before the angel of the Lord in dirty clothes, the angel insists that his filthy
garments be removed and that he be clothed in festal apparel (Zech. 3.1-5).78 Likewise, as we have

74
Nemeroff and Rozin, ‘The Contagion Concept’, 181.
75
See, for example, Josephus, Ant. 11. 327, 331.
76
Dietmar Neufeld, ‘Sumptuous Clothing and Ornamentation in the Apocalypse’, HvTSt 58 (2002): 682.
77
Neufeld, ‘Sumptuous Clothing’, 681. See also Revelation 3.5.
78
See Frederick J. Murphy, Fallen Is Babylon. The Revelation to John; New Testament in Context (Harrisburg: Trinity Press,
1998), 227.
DIRTY LAUNDRY IN THE CHRIST CULT 323

seen, Greek and Roman priests wore clean and often white robes. In Revelation 22.14, the blessed
ones who wash their robes will have the right to the tree of life and will be able to enter the New
Jerusalem. Again, such imagery is consistent with a wide range of ancient contexts in which those
in dirty attire cannot enter the sacred precincts.
The notion of being washed in blood in Revelation 7.14 may not at first make sense because blood
was known to stain and was a source of pollution in so many contexts.79 Unlike the victimarii, as we
saw, Roman priests avoided being spattered with blood. However, sacrificial blood could also be
purificatory and serve to remove pollution from places and communities provided that participants
follow proper procedures.80 In Revelation 7.14, the blood in question is the blood of Christ, the
Lamb. Other texts emerging from the Christ cult, such as Hebrews 9.13-14, perceive Christ’s blood
to be purifying the conscience of people from ‘dead works’ in order to worship God.81 Although
blood procured through a violent execution such as crucifixion could bring pollution, here, in
Revelation, it cleanses the robes of the worshippers who appear before the throne of God.82
Finally, in Revelation 19.13-14 a rider on a white horse called ‘The Word of God’ – that is,
Christ, emerges in a robe dipped or dyed (βεβαμμένον) in blood while the armies of heaven appear
in pure white linen. Interpreters debate whose blood this is. Is it Christ’s own blood or that of his
enemies?83 I concur with those who think that it is the blood of Christ’s enemies given the particular
literary context of a great battle in which Christ bears a sword protruding from his mouth, a sword
that will strike down the nations. Moreover, Christ will tread the wine press of God’s anger. This
wine press had been trod upon earlier, causing blood to flow for a great distance (14.19-20). The
scene of Revelation 19.13 is not one in which worshippers are about to appear before God. Nor
is it addressing the question of moral behaviour or preparedness. It is a combat scene depicting
Christ as a fighter comparable to other warrior images,84 and therefore the notion of Christ’s robe
(ἱμάτιον) drenched in blood of his opponents is appropriate for Revelation’s author. Here dirty,
stained clothes are not problematic, at least not those on the body of Christ.

CONCLUSION
This chapter has attempted to provide a sense of attitudes towards clean and dirty clothing in a
variety of settings in antiquity, before turning to specific examples from the literature of the early
Christ cult. What we have seen is that the extent to which a garment was laundered or had grime
on it mattered to ancient peoples, especially within the milieu of worship. Clean or dirty dress
conveyed clear messages about social status as well as, in some circumstances, moral rectitude
and purity. Examples found within some of the literature that eventually became canonical in the
Christian tradition both conform to and diverge from these general attitudes. The Letter of James,
despite its interest in purity and pollution, defies the widespread discrimination of the filthily clad

79
See Lennon, Pollution and Religion in Ancient Rome, 90–135.
80
Ibid., 103; Murphy, Fallen Is Babylon, 227.
81
See Murphy, Fallen Is Babylon, 227.
82
See Craig R. Koester, Revelation. A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary Anchor Yale Bible 38A (New
Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2018), 422.
83
Murphy (Fallen Is Babylon, 388–9), for example, identifies the blood as that of Christ’s enemies and sinners whereas
Koester (Revelation, 755–6) understands it to be Christ’s blood.
84
Murphy (Fallen Is Babylon, 389) points out how the image of Christ in a blood-soaked robe recalls the Palestinian Targum
on Genesis, depicting the Messiah who will slay his enemies and whose garments will be dipped in blood.
324 DRESS IN MEDITERRANEAN ANTIQUITY

poor by contrasting the indigent man with the wealthy one, whose garments will be moth eaten.
The Letter of Jude uses the rather visceral reference to a stained tunic in order to undergird a
negative characterization of those whom it opposes. The book of Revelation, the canonical text that
engages dirty and clean dress imagery the most, furnishes visions of people clothed in clean, and
often white, dress in order to prepare for and enter sacred spaces and worship God. The blood of
Christ is the detergent for laundering these garments. Christ’s sacrificial and bloody death ‘cleanses’
such that these worshippers can enter the holy realm. The ‘Word of God’, however, appears clad in
a garment stained by the blood of his enemies, whom he has defeated. There is no indication that
such a stained item of clothing has polluted him in any way. In some literary contexts of this ancient
movement, therefore, soiled clothes appear to have been entirely acceptable, while in others, they
were not. Yet in this literature, dirty laundry was always charged with meaning.
 CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

‘He Must Buy Her New Clothes

for Winter’: Women’s Attire in
the Rabbinic Imagination of the
Tannaitic Period
GAIL LABOVITZ

INTRODUCTION: ‘HER FOOD, HER CLOTHING,

HER CONJUGAL RIGHTS’
If, as a number of scholars who have addressed the topic agree, it is true that ‘the basic items of
clothing worn by Jews did not differ significantly from those worn by other inhabitants of the Graeco-
Roman world’, then what is there to say, as Joshua Schwartz similarly asks in another chapter of
this book, about something specifically Jewish/rabbinic related to clothing, ornamentation and self-
presentation?1 Lucille A. Roussin, author of the above quote, continues with one possible answer:
‘there are two traditions about Jewish garments that are distinctive: the laws of shatnez and tzitzit’.2
The first of these, however, would probably not have been immediately visible to an observer,
and the latter is likely associated particularly with men.3 Rather than attempt to seek a unique
characteristic of Jewish women’s dress in the early rabbinic period, likely an unrewarding task, I
turn here instead to considering aspects of the social meaning of women’s clothing, particularly in
the context of the marital relationship, as constructed by the rabbis of Late Antiquity. I will explore
this topic by reading together a variety of interrelated sources found in tannaitic rabbinic literature,

1
Lucille A. Roussin, ‘Costume in Roman Palestine: Archaeological Remains and the Evidence from the Mishnah’, in The
World of Roman Costume, ed. Judith Lynn Sebesta and Larissa Bonfante (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1994),
183; as she continues, ‘indeed, almost all of the Hebrew words for the clothing mentioned … are transliterations of Greek
and Latin words’. See similar statements in (for example) Dafna Shlezinger-Katsman, ‘Clothing’, in Jewish Daily Life in
Roman Palestine, ed. Catherine Hezser (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 367 and Steven Fine, ‘How Do You Know
a Jew When You See One? Reflections on Jewish Costume in the Roman World’, in Fashioning Jews: Clothing, Culture, and
Commerce, ed. Leonard J. Greenspoon (West Lafayette: Purdue University Press, 2013), 20.
2
For example, the prohibition of mixing wool and linen in one garment (Deut. 22.11), and ritual fringes (Num. 15.37-41),
respectively. Similarly, Fine notes that fringes in depictions of Moses in the Dura-Europus synagogue are the only feature
that distinguish his garments from typical Roman or Persian garb of the time: ‘How Do You Know a Jew’, 24.
3
Although there is some debate around this point in rabbinic literature at the time period under consideration here; see Gail
Labovitz, ‘A Man Spinning on His Thigh: Gender, “Positive Time Bound Commandments” and Ritual Fringes (MMoed
Qatan 3:4)’, Nashim 28 (2015): 75–87.
326 DRESS IN MEDITERRANEAN ANTIQUITY

produced by members of the rabbinic movement in the Land of Israel – known more commonly at
the time as Roman Palestine – from approximately the beginning of the Common Era to the mid-
third century.4 We begin, however, briefly in the Bible and more particularly the Torah.
Exodus 21.7-11 describes a case in which a man sells his daughter as a servant, intending that
eventually she will be taken as a wife by the master or his son. Should this occur, the woman
must then be treated ‘as is the practice of free maidens’ (21.9). Moreover, if the (now) husband
takes another wife, as is permitted in biblical law, ‘he must not withhold from this one she’erah,
k’sutah, v’onatah’ (21.10). Leaving aside what each of these terms denotes, which I will return to
momentarily, let me first note that rabbinic exegetes presumed, not illogically, that if the former
slave is entitled to these three considerations upon becoming the master’s (or his son’s) wife/
concubine,5 then certainly a wife who came into the marriage as a free woman (or one given to
the husband by her father directly for marriage rather than servitude) would be entitled to similar
consideration from the husband, as in the following midrashic exegesis of the verses:
‘as is the practice of free maidens’ … Just as this one (the former slave), ‘he must not withhold …
she’erah, k’sutah, v’onatah,’ so too a (free) daughter of Israel, ‘he must not withhold … she’erah,
k’sutah, v’onatah.’ (Mekilta de Rabbi Yishma’el, neziqin 3)6

That is, if such rights are granted to a formerly enslaved woman transitioning to the status of wife,
then all the more so they must be the rights of a free woman when married; alternately, the text
assumes free women have these rights when entering into marriage, and the passage specifies that
these rights are also extended to the former slave. From here, the rabbis established that any Jewish
husband has these obligations to his wife/wives.7
What, then, are these obligations? The simplest to translate – the one that will form my
focus here – is k’sutah. K’sut elsewhere means clothing in biblical Hebrew (e.g. Exod. 22.26
and Deut. 22.12) and thus the rabbis understood the term straightforwardly: ‘k’sutah,
according to its plain sense’ (Mek.a deRebbe Yishma’el, neziqin 3). The rabbinic consensus
came to be that she’erah indicates maintenance (primarily food)8 and o’natah as regular sexual

4
Although later texts in the rabbinic canon, for example aggadic midrashic works such as Genesis and Leviticus Rabbah and
the two Talmuds of Israel and Babylonia, cite sources that they identified as tannaitic, in this chapter I will limit myself to
passages from texts that are considered to originate and have been edited in the tannaitic period itself (or just after its close).
These consist of: (a) the Mishnah, considered the first and foundational redacted work of rabbinic Judaism and redacted at
about the turn of the third century; (b) the Tosefta, which roughly follows the format and structure of the Mishnah (and
typically parallels its content) and which contains material out of which mishanaic passages were likely shaped, parallel and
variant versions of mishnaic material and early supplemental material to mishnaic passages, likely redacted sometime after
the close of the Mishnah; and (c) the exegetical (midrashic) collections known as Mekilta (Exodus), Sifra (Leviticus) and
SipreNum (Numbers and Deuteronomy).
5
Rabbinically, the formerly enslaved woman becomes a full-fledged wife. How her status was to be understood in the
biblical context is a question of interest but not immediately relevant here.
6
All translations of rabbinic sources and other Hebrew works are my own unless otherwise noted. As rabbinic texts are often
quite terse, explanatory additions appear in brackets as necessary.
7
Indeed, the obligation is sufficiently binding (given its force as a Torah law) that if a man attempts to marry a woman on
the condition that he will not be not obligated in these requirements, the condition is null; m. Qidd. 3.7.
8
Thus Nahum M. Sarna, The JPS Torah Commentary: Exodus (Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society, 1991), 121:
‘It is generally agreed … that Hebrew she’er, literally “flesh”, is an ancient word for ‘meat,’ perhaps, like leḥem, extended
to cover food in general.’
WOMEN’S ATTIRE IN THE RABBINIC IMAGINATION OF THE TANNAITIC PERIOD 327

contact,9 perhaps based on a meaning of onah as a season or set period of time10 hence indicating
something that should happen with set regularity.11
Based in part on this biblical prescription, and other factors, the rabbis imagined12 a family
economy that flows through the husband/paterfamilias.13 While women were considered economic
agents, who might contribute to the family income and productivity through various types of
paid labour or by activities (such as textile work) that yielded marketable commodities, a married
woman’s earnings were (according to rabbinic law) remanded to her husband, who was in turn
required to provide for her material needs, most particularly food and clothing.14 Moreover,
tannaitic rabbis presumed that the obligations of husband to wife (and vice versa) could be quantified
and delineated. Thus m. Ketub. 5 considers how much food the wife is entitled to and how much
spun wool she should produce – and what the minimal obligation is in providing clothing or a
clothing allowance. In particular, this is considered under the rubric of a man who is supporting his
wife through a third party, as in 5.8:
One who provides for his wife through a trustee may not give her less than two kavs of wheat or 4
kavs of barley … And he gives her a covering (kippah15) for her head and a girdle for her loins and
shoes from festival to festival, and clothing worth fifty zuz from year to year.16

‍ his, then, appears to list the basic components of a woman’s wardrobe. The mishnah, however,
T
then adds a qualification:

9
In this case, Sarna notes that this is also the understanding found in the Septuagint and Aramaic translations but
comments ‘this interpretation … has no philological support’ and lists several other possible understandings: The JPS
Torah Commentary, 121.
10
See Marcus Jastrow, A Dictionary of the Targumim, the Talmud Babli and Yerushalmi, and the Midrashic Literature,
reprint, 1886 (New York: The Judaica Press, Inc., 1996), 1054.
11
Though the rabbis also considered the possibility that sh’erah indicates conjugal rights and onatah means food maintenance
(see Mek. de Rebbe Yishma’el, parashah 3 and Mek. de Rebbe Shimon bar Yohai), and also read all three terms in relation to
each other, as will be seen just below.
12
I borrow this framing from Miriam Peskowitz, Spinning Fantasies: Rabbis, Gender, and History (Berkeley, Los Angeles,
London: University of California Press, 1997). See, for example, 98: ‘Ancient references to everyday life seem factual and
real, but in this passage [the reference is to m. Ket. 5:5], we are deeply immersed in the realm of rabbinic fantasies about
domesticity.’
13
See my discussion in Gail Labovitz, ‘The Scholarly Life–The Laboring Wife: Gender, Torah, and the Family Economy in
Rabbinic Culture’, Nashim 13 (2007): 8–48.
14
See also Peskowitz, Spinning Fantasies, on this topic. The association of this obligation/arrangement with the marital
economy between husband and wife is also demonstrated in m. Ketub. 6.5: ‘One who marries his daughter unconditionally
(i.e., without specifying a particular amount for her dowry) may not give her less than fifty zuz. If he arranged to marry her
naked (i.e., without any dowry provisions, or at least without clothing as part of the dowry), the husband (to be) may not
say, When I take her into my house (i.e., marry her) I will cloth her in my clothing; rather he must cloth her while she is
still in her father’s house.’ The father is under no strict obligation to provide for his daughter (and may even deliberately
arrange not to do so when betrothing his daughter); the future husband becomes obligated even from the time of betrothal,
once a legal bond between groom and bride is established.
15
Note that while this term today designates the various forms of religious head coverings worn by Jewish men, this does
not mean that there is necessarily any obvious analogy to what women’s head coverings in antiquity might have looked like.
It is translated commonly as ‘cap’ or ‘hat’. See the next section below.
16
See also the following mishnah, which makes clear that the food, clothing and other allotments are a minimum, for those
of limited means; wealthier husbands should provide in accordance with their means.
328 DRESS IN MEDITERRANEAN ANTIQUITY

And one does not give her either new (items) for the sunny season or worn/thin garments (shehakim)
for the rainy season, but rather gives her clothing worth fifty zuz in the rainy season, and she clothes
herself in their worn out remnants (b’la’ot) in the sunny season. And the worn garments belong to
her.17

With this addendum, then, the mishnah appears to describe something beyond the husband
controlling the funds that might be disbursed to the wife in order for her to purchase clothing
items; he ‘gives’ her the items and must give her seasonally appropriate clothing. That is, the
mishnah can be read strongly, with the implication that the husband is himself buying the clothing
and presenting it to his wife.
It is also possible to understand the text such that he must provide her an allowance to purchase
new clothing (and accessories) particularly at the time of the rainy season, i.e., the fall months in
the Land of Israel. But complicating this latter reading is a more expansive version of this tradition
found in midrashic literature, which considers reading ‘k’sutah’ in light of the other terms in the
biblical verse:
‘sh’erah k’sutah’ – clothing which is appropriate for her flesh/body (sh’erah): If she were a young
woman, he should not give her (clothing) of an old woman; an old woman, he should not give her
(clothing) of a young woman. ‘v’onatah’ – that he should not give her (clothing) for the sunny season
in the rainy season, and not (clothing) for the rainy season in the sunny season, but rather he gives her
each in its (appropriate) season (onatah). (Mek. de Rebbe Yishma’el, Mishpatim, neziqin 3; similarly
Mek.de Rebbe Shimon bar Yohai)

The latter of these corresponds to the rule of the Mishnah, but what of the former instruction to
the husband? In what way might he ‘give’ the wife clothing inappropriate to her age? Is he himself
choosing the clothing? Is he perhaps insisting that his wife dress in certain way even if not himself
purchasing the exact items he wishes for her to wear?
Moreover, while the ruling of the Mishnah – a wife should receive seasonally fitting clothes –
may be understood as focused on her well-being (so that she can stay warm in cooler months and
cool during the hot summer), whose interests are centred in the case of age appropriate clothing as
discussed in the Mekilta? Is it the woman who is shamed by inappropriate clothing? Perhaps there
is a concern for marital strife that might result if a woman feels embarrassed or otherwise unhappy
about the clothing she has received? Or, does the shame redound to the man whose wife is seen in
inappropriate clothing?
Rather than directly answer these sorts of questions posed by m. Ketub. 5.8 – and the midrashic
and toseftan texts introduced so far – I intend in this chapter to pull further on some of the strings

17
‘Rags were not necessarily worn, but they had value and could be used by the woman or others for many purposes and
therefore the woman wanted to keep them. Needless to say, clothes would be mended many times, and remnants would
be used to mend other clothing, before anything would be relegated to the dust bin.’ Joshua Schwartz, ‘Material Culture in
the Land of Israel: Monks and Rabbis on Clothing and Dress in the Byzantine Period’, in Saints and Role Models in Judaism
and Christianity, ed. Marcel Poorthius and Joshua Schwartz (Leiden: Brill, 2004), 133. Among the other uses for worn-out
clothing he lists are ‘burned to maintain a fire … as a stopper … to clean … as pot holders … as bandages’ (n. 41). Similarly
t. Ket. 5.9: ‘And left over food (costs) are his, and worn out remnants (of clothing) are hers.’ That is, even if the worn-out
clothes are apparently more than she needs to dress herself, they remain hers (and similarly if the wife does not need or
use the entire food allotment provided by her husband, the unspent excess returns to him). Indeed, it appears the wife has
a right of possession over clothing items she has received even before they wear out, as in a case in m. ‘Arak. 6.5: ‘It is the
same regarding the one who dedicates (all) his property (to the Temple) and the one who dedicates his own value [see Lev.
27.1-8] – he does not have a claim to his wife’s clothing and not to his children’s clothing, and not to dyed (items) that he
dyed for them, and not to new sandals that he had purchased for them’ – i.e., these items are not included in the man’s
dedicated property.
WOMEN’S ATTIRE IN THE RABBINIC IMAGINATION OF THE TANNAITIC PERIOD 329

of its fabric (so to speak), tracing particular elements of the arrangement through yet other tannaitic
texts to see what larger patterns emerge regarding women, women’s clothing and the significance
of women’s clothing to marital relationships.

GARMENTS AND VOWS

Let us start by considering two rulings from t. Ketub. 7, regarding vows that either the husband
or the wife took regarding her clothing choices. First, 7.3 considers a vow made by the husband:
Even if she were young and he restricted her by vow that she should not wear the clothes of an old
woman; even if she were old and he restricted her by vow that she should not wear the clothes of a
young girl – he must divorce her and pay the marriage settlement. Rabbi Yose says: regarding poor
women, (this is so) if he did not give a (time) limit; and regarding wealthy women, (more than) thirty
days.

S‍ uch a vow, it appears, is an undue burden on the wife – and this is so even regarding ‘inappropriate’
clothing. Even though (according to the midrashic tradition) the husband may not provide/impose
such items on his wife, neither, in this toseftan passage, may he restrict her from wearing them if
(it seems) these are her choice.
Yet conversely, a vow not to wear certain kinds of clothing particularly associated with women’s
wear18 is (or should be?) unacceptable to a husband:
One who betroths a woman on the condition that she has no vows upon her, and they were
found upon her, she is not betrothed (i.e., the condition nullifies the betrothal) … If he married
her unconditionally and vows were found upon her, she is divorced without (rights to collect) her
marriage settlement. If she went to a sage and he released the vow for her, he (the husband) should
retain her (as his wife) … About what sort of vows did they speak? Such as if she vowed not to eat
meat, and not to drink wine, and not to wear coloured clothing. (t. Ketub. 7.8)

‍ uestions such as those above recur: Why are such vows unacceptable, to the husband or more
Q
generally? Whose interests are at stake when a woman dresses in a particular way?
One clue may be that vows regarding a woman’s use of cosmetics or other adornments (such as
jewellery) are met with similar rulings and similar considerations over which party made the vow.
Multiple scholars have discussed the significance of female self-beautification within the context
of marriage and maintaining the wife’s (sexual) attractiveness to her husband (and conversely, the
dangers of a woman’s ornamentation and cosmetics in making her attractive, or even signalling
her intent to be attractive, to another man),19 but also as part of what is simply considered normal,
typical female practice, which a woman enjoys/desires in her own right and which additionally

18
On the association of coloured clothing with women in rabbinic literature, see Rivka Ulmer, ‘The Rabbinic Term Beged
Tzevah haIsha: The Semiotics of “a Woman’s Colored Garment”’, in Or Le_meyer: Studies in Bible, Semitic Languages,
Rabbinic Literature, and Ancient Civilizations, ed. Shamir Yona (Be’er Sheva: Ben-Gurion University of the Negev Press,
2010), 203–21 (though note that her discussion is not limited to the tannaitic period or to tannaitic texts). See also
Shlezinger-Katsman, ‘Clothing’, 369.
19
Gail Labovitz, ‘”Even Your Mother and Your Mother’s Mother”: Rabbinic Literature on Women’s Usage of Cosmetics’,
Nashim 23 (2012): 12–34; Ishay Rosen-Zvi, ‘Masculine Adornments, Feminine Adornments: A New Look at the Religious
Status of Women in the Mishnah’, Reishit 2 (2010): 55–79 [Heb.]; David Kraemer, ‘Adornment and Gender in Rabbinic
Judaism’, in Envisioning Judaism, Studies in Honor of Peter Schäfer I, ed. Ra’anan S. et al. Boustan (Tübingen: Mohr
Siebeck, 2013), 217–34; Naftali S. Cohn, ‘What to Wear: Women’s Adornment and Judean Identity in the Third Century
Mishnah’, in Dressing Judeans and Christians in Antiquity, ed. Kristi Upson-Saia, Carly Daniel-Hughes and Alicia J. Batten
(Farnham, UK: Ashgate Publishing, 2014), 21–36.
330 DRESS IN MEDITERRANEAN ANTIQUITY

marks her in the eyes of others as a respectable married woman. Thus, both Mishnah (Ketub.
7.3) and Tosefta (Ketub. 7.3) state that a man may not make a vow (or at least a vow over an
indefinite time period) to restrict his wife from adornments; conversely, a vow made by a woman
to forego cosmetics or jewellry may be annulled by her husband, or even deemed invalid from the
outset (m. Ned. 11.1; t. Ned. 7.1). As Naftali S. Cohn writes, ‘Adornment leading to appropriate
sexual attraction is made subject to the dictates of traditional law as developed by the rabbis … If
a husband’s vow prevents a wife from making herself beautiful, the husband will not be attracted
to the wife and the marriage will be undermined.’20 Moreover, as I have observed elsewhere, the
law that a man who takes a vow that would deprive his wife of cosmetics must divorce her could be
read as a comment on the importance of cosmetic usage as a wifely obligation for the pleasure of her
husband. And yet, the law also suggests that he has placed an unfair burden on her, one that she is not
expected to have to tolerate for any extended period of time.21

‍ he obvious parallels in the laws of vows regarding clothing strongly suggest that similar
T
considerations apply here as well. A proper wife is expected to dress herself in a way that is attractive
to (and perhaps also reflects well on) her husband, but also ought not, in a normally functioning
relationship, be overly restricted in her own choices of attire.

HEAD COVERING
M. Ketub. 5.8 suggests that a head covering was a ‘standard’ part of a (married) woman’s attire,
sufficiently so that it is accounted as part of a man’s obligation to provide his wife’s clothing.
That said, tannaitic literature nowhere describes explicitly the particular nature of appropriate
(or inappropriate) head coverings for women, nor specifies unambiguously that head coverings
are particularly associated with and/or required for married women (vs. all females or perhaps all
adult women).22 One context in which women’s head coverings appear with regularity – typically
using the words kippah or sevakhah (hairnet) – regards common household objects and how they
contract, transmit and/or are cleansed of ritual impurity. Several rulings refer to the kippah or
hairnet of a z’kainah, an ‘old’ woman, though without specifying her marital status,23 and once
there is reference in the Mishnah, with a near parallel in the Tosefta, to a girl’s hairnet24 but not a
girl (married or unmarried) wearing or possessing a kippah. M. Šhabb. 6 (and similarly t. Šhabb. 4)
considers a variety of personal items in relationship to Sabbath law – does one wear these items
(permitted), or does one in effect carry them from domain to domain, which is prohibited? The
listed items that women25 might wear or carry are largely in the category of ‘adornments’ (such

20
Cohn, ‘What to Wear’, 32.
21
Labovitz, ‘Even Your Mother and Your Mother’s Mother’, 26; see also 19–20.
22
Hence, perhaps, the modal form in Bronner’s statement that ‘single women may not have covered their hair in the days of
the Talmud’ (466; emphasis added); she additionally writes in a note, ‘There is sparse, contradictory evidence as to whether
unmarried girls covered their hair in the ancient period, whether Biblical or Talmudic.’ Leila Leah Bronner, ‘From Veil to
Wig: Jewish Women’s Hair Covering’, Judaism 42, no. 4 (1993): 475, n. 8.
23
Examples include m. Kelim 24.16, 28.9, 29.1; t. Kelim B. Bat. 2.10, 5.16, 6.10.
24
m. Kelim 24.16; t. Kelim B. Bat. 2.10. There are also several texts which mention head coverings and nothing about the
age (or gender) of the person who wears or owns it: m. Kelim 28.8 and 10, m. Zabim 4.1, t. Zabim 4.4.
25
On the highly gendered nature of this passage and its implications, see Kraemer, ‘Adornment and Gender in Rabbinic
Judaism’, Cohn, ‘What to Wear’ and Rosen-Zvi, ‘Masculine Adornments, Feminine Adornments’. And see also Cynthia M.
Baker, Rebuilding the House of Israel: Architectures of Gender in Jewish Antiquity (Stanford, California: Stanford University
Press, 2002), 122–6, on the spatial considerations (i.e., a woman in the public domain versus in a courtyard) also at work
in the passage.
WOMEN’S ATTIRE IN THE RABBINIC IMAGINATION OF THE TANNAITIC PERIOD 331

as jewellery) and include items a woman might place on her head and/or in her hair, such as a
headband/ribbon, a hairnet (qabul rather than sevakhah in this case), a ‘Jerusalem of gold’ (a type of
tiara in the form of city walls),26 bands made of hair and wigs; mishnah 5.6 also notes that ‘Arabian’
(i.e. Jewish women from Arabia) women may/do go out veiled.27
Nonetheless, several other contexts in which women’s head coverings are discussed particularly
address married women or strongly suggest that they address married women. Thus, for example,
testimony that a woman went to her wedding with hair uncovered is deemed by m. Ketub. 2.1
and 10 to be valid proof that she was a previously unmarried virgin and hence entitled to a larger
marital settlement. Particularly notable in this regard is a text in t. B. Qam. (11.5), in which one
rabbi allows a woman to conduct economic transactions in order to acquire funds to purchase a
head covering:
And one does not buy fruit, wine, oil, or fine flour neither from women nor from slaves, nor from
minors. Abba Shaul says: one may purchase from a woman for five dinars, so that she can buy with
them a kippah for her head.

‍ he concern here is that the persons selling these items may not be authorized to do so because
T
they do not own the items they are selling, such that the sale may amount to a form of theft if the
true owner did not want the sale made and/or the seller retains the money from the sale. Rather,
the items belong to the slave’s master, the minor’s father – and almost certainly the woman’s
husband; that is, there appears to be a presumption here that the woman in need of a head covering
is married. The ruling, therefore, effectively relies on the obligation we have already see in m.
Ketub. 5.8 that a woman’s head covering is an item she is entitled to as part of her ‘appropriate’
costume, and thus it is permissible (and perhaps even desirable to the husband) that she be able to
use a limited amount of her husband’s property to acquire the head covering that he is in any case
obligated to provide for her.
Critical here, however, is Cynthia Baker’s caution that ‘the fact that Abba Shaul would “enable”
her to provide her own hat for her head is no gesture toward female empowerment’.28 As she
observes, ‘“a hat for her head” is an item very heavily invested with gendered/sexualized meaning
in rabbinic parlance’. Thus, ironically, this very exception to the tannaitic domestic ‘exchange’
of a woman’s control over her own economic activity and production for the provision of her
basic needs by her husband is also proof of this arrangement’s centrality. Underpinning Abba
Shaul’s ruling is ‘an insistence that women/wives are to be under male authority and economically
dependent on men … somewhere, somehow, there is ultimately a man in charge – somebody
who should be providing “a hat for her head”’.29 It further suggests that it is not only the wife’s
reputation that is at stake. The man who has failed to cover his wife’s head properly is implicated,

26
See Susan Marks, ‘Follow That Crown: Or, Rhetoric, Rabbis, and Women Patrons’, Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion
24, no. 2 (2008): 77–96.
27
‘Besides covering their heads with a corner of their mantles or with a cap or a hairnet, women could use a scarf made of
wool or linen.’ Shlezinger-Katsman, ‘Clothing’, 374 (and see the fuller section, 372–4). See also 369–70, in which she notes
in that paintings in the Dura-Europus synagogue, women are depicted wearing ‘one corner of the mantle … fastened with a
brooch above the left shoulder, whereas the other corner was wrapped around the head like a long scarf’. A reproduction of
such a painting appears in Roussin, ‘Costume in Roman Palestine’, 187. See also Joan Taylor’s chapter on Mary Magdalene
in this volume.
28
Baker, Rebuilding the House of Israel, 88.
29
Ibid., 88.
332 DRESS IN MEDITERRANEAN ANTIQUITY

and as it were ‘punished’, with the forfeiture of property that rightly belongs to him so that she can
have the funds she needs to acquire a head covering.
Abba Shaul is both expressing charitable concern for the woman vendor and, at the same time, calling
into question her (or her presumed husband’s) propriety by characterizing her as hatless … If a woman/
wife is not being properly maintained (fed, clothed, and so on) by her husband (or his agent), then she
has a right to earn her own maintenance. If she does so by ‘stealing’ goods that belong to her husband,
then she must be truly degraded – her husband, it seems, is able but unwilling to treat her properly. A
degraded woman/wife is a hatless woman – just as a hatless woman/wife is a degraded woman.30

‘SHE GOES OUT WITH HER HEAD UNCOVERED’

This is not to suggest, however, that the shame of a woman with her head uncovered is only,
or even primarily, a reflective shame on the man who should have provided her head covering.
Indeed, removing a woman’s head covering in a public space is considered punishable shaming of
her, equivalent to spitting on a man or stripping him of his tallit, his outer cloak, as detailed by m.
B. Qam. 8.6:
If he split his (another person’s) ear, plucked his hair, spat (at another person) and the spittle reached
him, removed his cloak from him, (or) uncovered a woman’s head in the marketplace31 – he must pay
(to his victim) four hundred zuz.

This is followed by a story in which a man uncovers a woman’s head and is duly fined the four
hundred zuz by Rabbi Akiva. The man then tricks the woman into removing her own head
covering32 so as to make the claim ‘to one like this I should have to pay four hundred zuz?!’ The
rabbi, however, replies that ‘one who harms himself, even though he is not permitted (to do so) is
exempt; others who harm him are liable’.
Yet although neither the mishnaic law nor story mention marital status or associate marriage in
particular with the shame done to a woman whose head covering is forcibly (and publicly) removed,
Rabbi Akiva’s leniency regarding a woman’s own act of uncovering may not actually be true if the
woman who removes or fails to wear a head covering is married. A set of parallel mishnaic and
toseftan passages treat a married woman’s act of going out bare headed into a public space (such
as the market of m.B. Qam. 8.6) not a matter of regrettable but non-punishable self-harm; rather,
her bare headedness is a violation of custom and/or law that can carry very serious consequences:
And these (women) should be divorced without the marriage settlement: The one who transgresses
the law of Moses and of the Jews/Jewish woman33 …

30
Ibid., 87.
31
I find the juxtaposition here of removing a man’s cloak and removing a woman’s head covering as parallel and equally
punishable offenses intriguing but beyond the scope of this chapter.
32
Which she does at the entrance to her own courtyard, a space at the boundary between public and private. As Baker
writes, ‘the woman’s precarious position, hovering at the entry to her courtyard – neither inside nor outside, but suspended
between the two – mirrors topographically the implicit uncertainty of her moral footing’. Baker, Rebuilding the House of
Israel, 103–4.
33
The Hebrew phrase is dat yehudit. The challenge for translation is determining if yehudit should be understood as an
adjective (Judean, Jewish) or a feminine noun (Jewish woman). See Baker, Rebuilding the House of Israel, 208, n. 41. On
the possible significance of the distinction between ‘law of Moses’ and ‘Jewish law’ in the context of classifying what sort
of offense a bare headed wife has committed, see Bronner, ‘From Veil to Wig’, 467–8 and Baker, Rebuilding the House of
Israel, 126–7.
WOMEN’S ATTIRE IN THE RABBINIC IMAGINATION OF THE TANNAITIC PERIOD 333

And what is (included in the category of) the law of the Jews/Jewish woman? She goes out and her
head is uncovered; and she spins (yarn) in the marketplace; and she speaks with anyone … (m.
Ketub. 7.6)
And so too she, if she goes out with her head uncovered, she goes out and her clothing is split
(open), she is (overly) intimate with her male slaves and with her female slaves (or) with her female
neighbors,34 she goes out and spins in the marketplace, she bathes and washes with anyone in the
bathhouse – she should be divorced without her marriage settlement because she has not acted with
him in accordance with the law of Moses and Israel35 … (t. Ketub. 7.6)
This is the characteristic of a wicked man, that he sees his wife go out with her head uncovered,
go out with her shoulders exposed,36 she is intimate with her male slaves and intimate with her
female slaves, she goes out and spins in the marketplace, she bathes and jests with anyone – it is a
commandment to divorce her.37 (t. Sot̩ah 5.9)

I‍ n these passages, as in t. B. Qam. 11.5, head covering (at least when in public spaces) is strongly
associated with appropriate wifely attire in particular. It is married women who have committed
a violation worthy of punishment in being seen bare headed, and the nature of the punishment
is specific to women (currently) in marriage: divorce and deprivation of the marriage settlement.
Perhaps this is again suggestive that head covering was (intended by the rabbis to be) a practice
expressly of married women.38
Moreover, in each of these texts failure to wear a proper head covering is only one of multiple
possible infractions. The three passages share a common emphasis on both the woman’s visibility39
and free sociability in public and with the public. Yet while there are clearly parallels, we cannot
necessarily assume that they concur in all detail. For example, Baker notes of the passage from t.
Sot̩ah that its emphasis appears to be on the husband who sees these behaviours in his wife and does
not respond; he is deemed wicked because ‘he does not and will not properly “house” this woman’
(though of course this intimates that she is hardly free of blame) and the ‘commandment’ to divorce
her might be deemed a sanction against him.40 Indeed, this passage does not mention depriving her

34
But see Saul Lieberman, Tosefta Ki-feshuta: Be’ur Arokh la-Tosefta, second, reprint ed., vol. 3 (Nashim) (New York: The
Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1995), 291.
35
Note that the category of ‘the law of the Jews/Jewish women’ does not factor here as a distinct category, but rather ‘the
law of Moses and Israel’ functions as a single conflated category. See Baker, Rebuilding the House of Israel, 126–7. Also,
as will be seen in the next section, at least one tannaitic text presents female (wifely?) head covering as a biblically derived
obligation.
36
Following Jastrow (A Dictionary, 1230), but note that the verb (p,r,m) is the same in the two toseftan texts, so perhaps
alternately, ‘with her sides (of her clothing) split’. But see also Lieberman, Tosefta Ki-Feshuta (Nashim), 291, who argues
based on parallel versions in later texts that the meaning of this phrase is not ‘that the sides of her clothing were torn, rather
that they were open, and when the woman moved her flesh was revealed’.
37
The text then cites Deuteronomy 24.1, which allows (or even encourages) a man to divorce his wife ‘if he finds some
indecency in her’ – that is, this passage indirectly indicates that ‘indecency’ should be understood to include actions such as
these on the part of the woman, even if they fall short of actual adultery or sexualized contact with a man other than her
husband.
38
‘The impression that the wearing of distinctive headgear (or hairstyle) distinguishes married from unmarried women in
these texts is conveyed by the fact that divorce and the loss of one’s marriage settlement are the only real consequences
discussed by the tannaim for failure or refusal to “cover one’s head.”’ Baker, Rebuilding the House of Israel, 196, n. 96.
39
‘A hat, it seems, is what stands between a woman and the stares of the multitudes; a hat decreases or disrupts the common
gaze …. Needless to say, the wearing of a hat does not render a woman invisible in fact (on the contrary, the practice
assumes women are seen, and, indeed, heavily monitored), yet it invests a woman’s self-controlling gesture of subjection …
with the power to diffuse (and defuse) the invasive gaze of others.’ Baker, Rebuilding the House of Israel, 63–4.
40
Baker, Rebuilding the House of Israel, 61.
334 DRESS IN MEDITERRANEAN ANTIQUITY

of the marriage settlement. That m. and t. Ketub. do include this penalty, however, suggests that
their focus is on the wife and her responsibility for her transgressive behaviour.
But even here, Ishay Rosen-Zvi argues that there are subtle differences in and even tensions
between what the mishnaic passage and both toseftan versions of the tradition place at the core
of the woman’s impropriety, or put another way, how broadly they define that impropriety. The
mishnaic list appears to prioritize the spatial dimensions, for example the wife’s location; it is the
very going out and being in the marketplace, among the public, that is marked as promiscuous, and
she is liable for an offense as broad as ‘speaking to any person’. In the Tosefta, though, intolerable
promiscuity is more closely linked to (lack of) physical modesty and potentially sexualized
behaviours: ‘Hence: (a) “conversed with any many” becomes “bathes in the bathhouse with any
man”; (b) A new accusation has been added: “she has no shame around her slaves … ”, and: (c)
ripped clothing has been added to the accusation of wearing hair loose, indicating that the issue at
hand is indeed sexual modesty.’41
Additionally, I would note that the markers of a promiscuous woman, particularly in the toseftan
versions of this tradition, track (or contrast) with the list in m. Ket. 5.8 of clothing items that
should be provided by a husband, in several ways. The most obvious, of course, is the missing head
covering. There is no indication in this case that the husband has failed in his duty to provide said
head covering; rather it is the woman who has failed to avail herself of it as she should (though, as
noted, if the husband sees and yet tolerates her bare headedness, some blame redounds on him).
But so too the woman who is not sufficiently covered by her clothing. She may be expected to wear
somewhat worn down clothing in warmer weather, and she may have possession over the ragged
remnants of previously wearable items, but if she wears these (or any other) items in such a way
that her shoulders are bared or her seams are ripped and/or open – she is liable to be divorced.
Finally, the woman in the public bath has shed her clothes altogether. The woman depicted in
these passages seems to have rejected the proper clothing – clothing fitting for her body, her age,
her station – which her husband was required to provide for her. Might we even see a logic here
that presumes that when a woman does not cover herself properly, her actions may be read as
a rejection of the conditions of the marital economy between husband and wife, including his
provision of proper clothing, and hence a rejection of the husband and the marriage itself?

SOTAH (THE SUSPECT WIFE)

The considerations of a woman being stripped of her (head-)covering and failing to cover herself
properly – or being forcibly uncovered – converge again in the tannaitic recreation of the ‘sotah’
trial, the biblical trial by ordeal for the woman whose husband suspects her of infidelity but lacks
proof thereof (Num. 5.11-31).42 As Rosen-Zvi has emphasized in his extended analysis of the

41
Ishay Rosen-Zvi, The Mishnaic Sotah Ritual: Temple, Gender and Midrash (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 40, n. 63, emphasis in the
original. Thus this move in the Tosefta may even be read as one which ‘moderates the extensive grounds in the Mishnah’,
43, n. 75. See also Baker, Rebuilding the House of Israel, 208, n. 45; reading m. B, Qam. 8.6 in light of these texts, she
concludes that ‘the involuntary removal of a woman’s head covering is tantamount to sexual assault, and her own removal
of it tantamount to sexual exhibitionism’.
42
The verbal root used throughout the passage for the wife’s (possible) betrayal is s,t,h – hence the woman who is so
suspected is known as a ‘sotah’.
WOMEN’S ATTIRE IN THE RABBINIC IMAGINATION OF THE TANNAITIC PERIOD 335

mishnaic account of the ritual, the procedures it describes include significant details not present in
the biblical account. According to Numbers 5.16 and 18, at the start of the procedure, ‘the priest
shall bring her forward and have her stand before the Lord … After he has made the woman stand
before the Lord, the priest shall bare the woman’s head’. SipreNum., piska 11, even posits that this
verse demonstrates the scriptural status of this female practice: ‘It teaches about the daughters of
Israel that they (must) cover their heads.’43 The mishnaic account, however, lists additional actions
of the priest – and in doing so, also pictures the woman’s attire when she is brought for the rite:

The priest grasps her clothing; if they tore – they tore, if they split – they split, until he uncovers
her ‘heart’. And he unravels44 her hair …45
If she were wearing white garments, he would dress her in black garments46; if she had on
gold items and necklaces and nose-rings and rings, he would remove them from her in order
to disfigure her; and afterwards he would bring a twisted rope and tie it above her breasts. (m.
Sot̩ah 1.6 and 7)

‍ hile m. So̩tah describes the woman’s appearance at the outset of the ordeal, t. Sot̩ah also
W
imagines47 her attire and acts as she committed the adulterous act for which she is now being tested
and connects these to the steps of the ordeal itself as a form of ‘measure for measure’ punishment:
She spread a sheet for him, therefore the priest takes the cap from her head and places it under her
feet; she plaited her hair for him, therefore the priest unravels it … She let him see her flesh, therefore
the priest tears her tunic48 and shows her disgrace to the public; she girded herself with a belt for him,
therefore the priest brings a twisted rope and ties it above her breasts. (t. Sot̩ah 3.3 and 4)49

‍ learly the intent of the ritual is to humiliate and shame the woman, and additionally, as m. Sot̩ah
C
1.7 says explicitly, to disfigure her, make her appear ugly. Moreover, the ways in which this is
done – her head is uncovered, her clothes are torn and her body is bared – have obvious echoes
with a number of other sources already discussed.

43
Although the passage references the ‘daughters of Israel’ without mention of marital status, perhaps this is implicit in the
very context, as a woman must be married to be suspect of adultery.
44
Based on the use of the verb s,t,r here rather than the biblical p,r,’a, Rosen-Zvi argues that the uncovering of the woman’s
head is a given in the mishnah (in that this is how the biblical term is otherwise typically interpreted), while the point is to
add the unraveling of her hair (in contradistinction to SipreNum interpretation of this element of the rite): ‘The Mishnah’s
language aims to emphasize the need to unbind the hair, as opposed simply uncovering it.’ Rosen-Zvi, The Mishnaic Sotah
Ritual, 78, and see the surrounding discussion, 76–9.
45
To here, similarly t. Sot̩ah 1.7.
46
Similarly SipreNum., piska 11, which adds, ‘if black garments were attractive for her, they would take them off and dress
her in ugly garments’.
47
As Rosen-Zvi observes, ‘The Tosefta’s structuring of the list – a chronological progression of the sin matched with
corresponding stages of the ritual – is meant to create the impression that the ritual is a response to sin. The literary reality
is of course reversed, since the sotah’s sin is hidden, and in any way there is not just one form of adultery. The sin … is
obviously a construct inspired by the ritual, rather than vice versa.’ Rosen-Zvi, The Mishnaic Sotah Ritual, 137.
48
Haluk – on this garment, see Roussin, ‘Costume in Roman Palestine’, 183, and Shlezinger-Katsman, ‘Clothing’, 367–8.
49
There are in fact multiple variants of this tradition; note that Lieberman presents that of the Vienna manuscript (translated
here) and the Erfurt manuscript side by side; Saul Lieberman, The Tosefta according to Codex Vienna, with Variants from
Codices Erfurt, Genizah Mss. and Editio Princeps, vol. 3 (The Order of Nashim) (New York: The Jewish Theological
Seminary of America, 1973), 159, and see also Rosen-Zvi, The Mishnaic Sotah Ritual, 134, n. 3. Compare also m. Sot̩ah
1.7, which presents a similar concept but with less detail.
336 DRESS IN MEDITERRANEAN ANTIQUITY

Baker, for example, considers the uncovering of the sotah’s head as an ‘inversion’ of the
uncovered head that is the hallmark of the virgin bride at her wedding (m. Ketub.t 2.1). Just as the
bride’s ‘uncovered head appears to serve as public certification of her virginity (and its impending
loss)’, so too the forcible removing of the sotah’s head covering ‘serves as a public certification of
her sexual status – this time, as accused adulteress. In each case, the uncovering of a woman’s head
to the common gaze is clearly a sexually charged act denoting the sexual availability (sanctioned or
unsanctioned) of that woman’.50 Of course, that difference between ‘sanctioned’ or ‘unsanctioned’
stands at the crux of the humiliation and public shaming involved in the sotah ritual.
Thus, in a related vein, Rosen-Zvi draws out the connection between these images of the sotah
and that of the woman whose behaviour demands that she ought to be divorced, discussed in the
previous section: ‘The sources construct two typological feminine figures distinguished by their
attire: the adulteress and the promiscuous woman.’ Whereas the one ‘goes out in public with loose
hair, wearing clothes torn at the seam’, the adulterous woman imagined by t. Sot̩ah ‘braids her hair
and wears pretty clothes’. So too, ‘The former exposes her body in public, whereas the latter adorns
and covers herself, exposing her body only to her lover in their hiding place.’51 The (or at least
one significant) point of this part of the ritual, then, is to transform the sotah, who keeps her sinful
behaviour secret, into the visible image of the promiscuous woman.52 But this implies that at the
other end of the spectrum is a third woman, the woman the adulteress pretends and visibly appears
to be, the virtuous wife. As Rosen-Zvi continues, ‘She adorns herself like any other woman, but her
adornments are aimed at a man who is not her husband.’
Yet her clothing and adornments are not only supposed to be aimed at her husband – by the
ruling of m. Ketub. 5.8, those items should have been provided by her husband. In this light, at
issue here is not only a misdirection of her self-adornment and dress but a misappropriation. The
husband was obligated to give her appropriate clothes, but she then used that clothing to attract
her lover. Even as she is brought to the Temple for the rite, it appears she ‘disguises’ herself in
accessories, a head covering and attractive clothing. Is this perhaps even clothing (and jewellery
and so on) that was provided by the husband she may have betrayed? In any case, the priest strips
her of these things, and both changes the clothing she is wearing for items that make her appear
unattractive (black for white, ugly for black if flattering to her) and tears them from her. The texts
create, as it were, a continuum: a good wife can make appropriate warm-weather use of worn-out
clothing, a promiscuous one wears them as they are, torn and letting her body show, while the
adulterous wife has her clothes deliberately torn from her. The good wife resists visibility through
clothing and head covering even or especially when in public space, the promiscuous one reveals
her head and her body publicly to anyone, the sotah pretends to cover but reveals herself to her
lover, and so is uncovered – head and body – in the (public) ordeal.

50
Baker, Rebuilding the House of Israel, 208, n. 45.
51
Rosen-Zvi, The Mishnaic Sotah Ritual, 80.
52
There is an additional association in that both m. Sot̩ah 1.6 and SipreNum., piska 11, allow (or even encourage) anyone
who wants to view the sotah ritual (and hence the humiliated woman at its centre) – ‘except for her male slaves and female
slaves because she is familiar with them’ – obviously reminiscent of the fact that one of the divorceable offenses of the
promiscuous woman is over familiarity with her slaves. Although Rosen-Zvi discusses the import of prohibiting the woman’s
slaves from viewing the ritual, he does not emphasize this connection: Rosen-Zvi, The Mishnaic Sotah Ritual, 89–94.
WOMEN’S ATTIRE IN THE RABBINIC IMAGINATION OF THE TANNAITIC PERIOD 337

CONCLUSION: THE WAR CAPTIVE

In his own attempt to seek intertexts to the tannaitic descriptions of the sotah ritual, Rosen-Zvi
states that ‘I know of only one other rabbinic ruling where defacement of women is a desirable
end’.53 This is the case of a woman whom an Israelite soldier captures and wishes to take as a
concubine/wife (Deut. 21.10-14), and here again is one more example in which clothing, provided
by a man, also figures in a context of sexual possession and marriage. The biblical passage describes
a series of measures by which the captive ‘shall trim her hair, pare her nails, and discard her captive’s
garb’, and ‘shall dwell in your house and lament her father and her mother for a month’s time’
(21.12-13). A midrashic passage, however, reimagines what is presented in its original context as a
gesture of mourning, to serve a different purpose:
‘And she shall discard her captive’s garb’ (Deut. 21.13) – this teaches that he removes from her
fine clothes and dresses her in widow’s garments. For (other) nations are cursed; their daughters
adorn themselves in war in order to lead others into sexual licentiousness after them. (SifreDeut.,
piska 213)

‍ ote that the text presumes that ‘captive’s garb’ is not clothing given to the woman in her captivity,
N
nor even ordinary women’s garb, nor that her clothing might have been torn or dirtied by the
circumstances of or even violence done to her in the course of the battle or her capture. Rather
the woman was (deliberately) wearing fine and attractive clothing at the time she was captured by
the Israelite soldier. The purpose of the change in garments is, then, according to the midrash, to
make her unattractive to the man (and to contrast her to a properly adorned and attractive Israelite
woman/wife) thereby inducing him to reconsider; he is supposed to house her in his own dwelling
such that he regularly encounters her in her disgraced and disfigured state.
Note also that what was her act in Deuteronomy (‘she shall remove … ’) becomes something
he must do to her (‘he removes from her … ’).54 The man ‘dresses’ her – he determines what she
wears, it seems he even provides what she wears. And so, should the man persist in his desire for the
captive woman, then the outcome of this process is intended to be, as Deuteronomy 21.14 states,
that ‘she shall be your wife’. It is at this point that the midrash notes – and here we come, as it were,
full circle to where we began:
in accordance with what is said, ‘he must not withhold … she’erah, k’sutah, v’onatah’ (Exod. 21.10)

Much like the former enslaved woman married to her once master or his son, the former captive
takes on the status of a full-fledged wife, thereby entitling her to the same rights as any other
Israelite wife – or perhaps it is the very granting of these rights that establishes her status as a
wife. In any case, among those rights is receiving clothing – clothing which is appropriate to the
season, appropriate to her age and appearance, clothing to make her (once again) attractive to her
Israelite husband – clothing which signals that she is no longer foreign but assimilated into the
Israelite marital economy as a proper Israelite woman.
Although I did not highlight this point at the outset, in returning here at the conclusion to the
slave woman turned wife, I want to point out that she is a woman without agency. She is sold by her

53
Rosen-Zvi, The Mishnaic Sotah Ritual, 82.
54
A point noted by Rosen-Zvi, The Mishnaic Sotah Ritual, 83, n. 68.
338 DRESS IN MEDITERRANEAN ANTIQUITY

father, married by her master or given to his son. The conjugal rights and financial maintenance she
is granted in marriage, biblically and rabbinically, should not obscure that the marriage does not
happen with her active participation. Despite their different national origins and paths to marriage,
she has much in common with the war captive, another woman whose desire – or lack thereof – to
enter into a marriage with her Israelite captor is in no way relevant to her fate.
Furthermore, in the hands of the rabbis, every woman’s maintenance becomes tied to her
economic subordination to her husband, in an ‘exchange’ of his right to all she produces and earns
for her food – and her clothing. But though he is largely at liberty to use her earnings as he sees fit,
she has far less freedom to determine how to wear the clothing provided to her. Misuse (wearing it
an overly revealing manner) or failure to use it (going bare headed into public) becomes a rejection
of the marriage itself, grounds that ought to obligate him to divorce her.
In conclusion, I also want to bring in one more observation of Rosen-Zvi’s regarding the tannaitic
picture of the sotah, her sin as the tannaim imagine it and the ritual by which she is tried:
The Tosefta’s adultery is the result of feminine activity through and through … Even the act itself
is portrayed as initiated by the woman … The entire narrative of the adultery, from start to finish,
consists of the woman’s acts …. As an antidote, the ritual is structured inversely, with an active priest
and a completely passive woman.55

‍ t issue in this account is not ‘sin, the husband’s agony or the expected damage to the family
A
lineage and status’, but rather female freedom in dress and association that moves from promiscuity
to betrayal. Thus, he continues, the ritual ‘is a reinstatement of the natural order of the world.
Feminine pro-activeness is replaced by a masculine one, and the sexual act returns to its proper
form – a masculine initiative met with feminine passivity’.56 In contrast to the sotah who is stripped
of her head covering and whose clothes are torn for all to see, then, we may conclude that the
proper married woman’s clothing symbolizes not only her (obligation to maintain her) sexual
attractiveness to her husband, nor just her economic subordination to him, but also, in some
combination of these, her sexual subordination to him.

55
Rosen-Zvi, The Mishnaic Sotah Ritual, 138–9.
56
Rosen-Zvi, The Mishnaic Sotah Ritual, 139.
 CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

Textual Problems in Textile

Research: The Use of the
Talmud in Studies of Ancient
Jewish Dress
KATIE TURNER

INTRODUCTION
For historians interested in dress and adornment, material remains – textiles, jewellery and
accessories, footwear – provide our most tangible resource. These are the personal items that past
peoples arranged on their bodies each day, worn to denote their sense of self. However, material
remains do not come to the historian collated as ‘complete outfits’, and they are often fragmentary
(textile remains in particular). Artistic representation and literary references to clothing and dress
behaviour are invaluable resources, therefore, as they can clarify and contextualize the material
artefacts: providing information on how items were arranged on the body; what styles were
popular during specific periods; what was considered ‘appropriate’ or ‘normative’ dress behaviour;
and how gender, class, occupation, ethnicity, geographic location, trade and religion affected one’s
appearance. Still, one must be careful to avoid using art and literature as ‘tools’ for interpreting
material artefacts, but instead recognize that they too were created in response to many of the same
factors that influence clothing construction and dress behaviour. Considering, then, the context
and motivations underlying the creation of any artistic or literary work used in one’s analysis of
clothing and dress is an important part of the research process.
Looking specifically to Jewish clothing and dress in antiquity, one finds an impressive quantity
of clothing artefacts from the Roman period, preserved primarily in the Dead Sea region (and
surrounding locales).1 In contrast to this wealth of material, however, one also finds a challenging
lack of artistic representation. Biblical prohibitions regarding idolatry (Exod. 20.3-6; Lev. 26.1;
Num. 33.52; Deut. 4.16, 27.15) were generally understood as a proscription against all depictions
of the human form. The earliest instance of Jewish self-representation is found in a mid-third-
century synagogue in Dura-Europos: numerous frescos depicting biblical scenes decorate the

Many thanks to Dr. Laliv Clenman and Ann Helfgott for their invaluable help with the talmudic literature.
1
Thousands of Roman-era textile remains, as well as additional dress items (belts, shoes, pins and fibulae, jewellery, hairnets,
veils, etc.) known to have belonged to Jewish people have been discovered at Masada, Qumran, Nahal Hever (the Cave of
Letters), Nahal Mishmar, Nahal Qidron (in a site known as the Christmas Cave), Wadi Murabba’at, Wadi Ed-Daliyeh and
Ketef Jericho.
340 DRESS IN MEDITERRANEAN ANTIQUITY

interior, displaying both Greco-Roman and Parthian-Iranian dress styles.2 Additional examples of
Jewish self-representation come even later, in the fifth and sixth centuries (cf. the mosaic floors in
the Zippori [Sepphoris] Synagogue, the Beth Alpha Synagogue and the Huqoq Synagogue).
Literary references are more numerous and, seemingly, more illuminative. Those found in biblical
texts tend to be regulatory in nature: the law of sha’atnez (‫ )שעטנץ‬prohibits the mixing of animal
with plant fibres (Deut. 22.11); the law of tzitzit (‫ )ציצית‬prescribes the addition of knotted tassels
on the ‘four corners’ of a man’s garment (Deut. 22.12); Numbers 15.38 requires the inclusion of a
blue thread, tekhelet (‫)תכלת‬, in tzitzit. Other passages focus on issues of appearance (cf. Deut. 22.5;
1 Tim. 2.9; 1 Pet. 3.3-4) or relay details of dress within unrelated discussions (notably, 2 Tim.
4.13; also Mt. 9.20, 23.5; Mk 15.17; Lk. 8.44, 23.11; Jn 19.2, 23; and the apocryphal 3 Macc.
2:28-29). The passages with the greatest level of detail and visual description deal specifically with
the sacred vestments of the High Priest Aaron and his sons (Exod. 28, 39; Lev. 8.7-9, 23; Ezek.
44.17-18). Further description of the Priestly vesture is found in the first-century writings of Philo
of Alexandria (Spec. Laws 1.83) and Flavius Josephus (Ant. 3.152-78, 4.80, 20.216-18).
Rabbinic discussions of dress provide our greatest collective Jewish resource, and it is to this
literature that scholars frequently turn when evaluating and contextualizing Jewish material remains
from the Late Roman period.3 From some of the earliest rabbinic texts (Mishnah and Tosefta) we
learn that the textile production process was long and arduous (m. Šabb. 7.2; t. Ber. 6.5), and men
(m. Šabb 13.4; t. Ber. 6.5) and women (m. Ketub. 5.5, 9; m. B. Qam. 10.9; m. Neg. 2.4) participated.
We can tell from context that two main articles of clothing were the haluq (‫חלוק‬, tunic or shirt) and
tallit (‫טלית‬, equivalent to the Greek himation or Latin pallium, possibly with tzitzit; m. Me’il. 5.1;
m. Šabb 10.3; t. Meg. 1.6; t. Tehar. 8.9).4 A small passage implies that a haluq was constructed from
two sheets of fabric (m. Neg. 11.9). Garments were white (m. Šabb 1.9, 15.3), vibrantly hued (m.
B. Mesi’a. 2.2; m. Neg. 11.4) or were a combination of both.

RABBINIC LITERATURE: CONTEXT AND CONSIDERATIONS

Overall, the rabbinic material is an excellent source, but it is also our most challenging. As with all
written material, the texts have been filtered through the lens of the authors and their contexts,
with all the biases that may imply: generally, this means elite, literate and male. In this respect,
the rabbinic material, produced from within the rabbinic community and centred around rabbinic
concerns, is little different. Beyond that, the challenge to the historian is quite specific to this
body of literature. The entire catalogue of rabbinic writings (Mishnah, Tosefta, Midrash, Talmuds
Yerushalmi and Bavli) are the products of various geographic and cultural environments, spanning

2
The full catalogue of murals from Dura is available to view at ‘Dura-Europos: Excavating Antiquity’, Yale University Art
Gallery, http://media.artgallery.yale.edu/duraeuropos/dura.html
3
Roman writing is generally more descriptive than rabbinic. For example, Quintilian discussed the proper length of one’s
tunic and how one should wear a belt (Inst. Orat. 11.3.138-9), while Ovid wrote long passages on attractive dress behaviour
for men and women (Ars Amoria I.XIV, III.II-V). Still, the rabbinic literature offers a wealth of information with which to
engage.
4
On tallitot with tzitzit in antiquity, see Catherine Hezser, Rabbinic Body Language: Non-Verbal Communication in
Palestinian Rabbinic Literature of Late Antiquity (Leiden: Brill, 2017), 39–41, 47–8; Orit Shamir, ‘Special Traditions
in Jewish Garments and the Rarity of Mixing Wool and Linen Threads in the Same Textile in the Jewish Tradition’, in
Prehistoric, Ancient Near Eastern and Aegean Textiles and Dress: An Interdisciplinary Anthology, ed. Mary Harlow, Cécile
Michel and Marie-Louise Nosch, Ancient textiles series (Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2014), 298–398.
TEXTUAL PROBLEMS IN TEXTILE RESEARCH 341

a composition and redaction period of over 600 years. Each ‘text’ is a compilation of oral and
written material, not easily classifiable, redacted and co-authored across generations.5
At some stage along this process, as Sacha Stern writes, the ‘redacted works began … to be
treated as single, identifiable entities’: this is how the Bavli considers the Mishnah.6 Furthermore,
although authorial attributions exist, and some are indeed credible, most are rooted in tradition and
faith, much like the Gospels. Moshe Levee argues that attributions attached to ‘later developments’
may simply be a means of imbuing them with the authority of ‘earlier generations, and to sages
from the Land of Israel’.7 Consequently, dating the rabbinic material with precision is exceedingly
challenging. Still, some texts can be placed in ‘compilation eras’ more reliably than others. The
earliest set of texts – the Midrash Tannaim, the Mishnah (edited c. 200 CE) and Tosefta (edited c.
250 CE) – all ‘composed’ in Hebrew, emerged late in the Tannaitic period (1–250 CE).8 The aggadic
Midrashim, Talmud Yerushalmi (Jerusalem/Palestinian Talmud) and Talmud Bavli (Babylonian
Talmud) came later, during the Amoraic (250–500 CE) and, for the Bavli, into the early Geonic (c.
mid-sixth century) periods. The Talmuds, ‘composed’ in Hebrew and Aramaic, each reflect their
geographically disparate schools of thought (developing from within the Palestinian and Babylonian
rabbinic academies, respectively) and display dialectical differences between Western and Eastern
Aramaic. The Yerushalmi was completed first, redacted sometime between the third and mid-fifth
centuries, in a Late Roman and Early Byzantine context. The Bavli, displaying stronger editorial
involvement (a unifying ‘voice’) than any of the previous rabbinic texts, was redacted sometime
between the fifth and eighth centuries in Persia.9
The use of rabbinic literature in clothing and dress research is further complicated by authorial
motivation. Naftali Cohn explains:
According to the Mishnah itself, rabbis were a relatively small group within the complex social
landscape of Roman Palestine, and the majority of Judeans did not follow rabbinic teachings. Even
though the rabbis were not particularly powerful or influential, they still saw the relationship between
themselves and the entire Judean people as one of instruction.10

Rabbinic literature represents the rabbis’ specific (male-centric) notion of idealized behaviour
and practice. Furthermore, as Isaiah Gafni writes, ‘the variegated corpus of rabbinic literature
did not preserve any work that might point to an effort on the part of the rabbis at producing a

5
Charlotte Elisheva Fonrobert and Martin S. Jaffee, The Cambridge Companion to the Talmud and Rabbinic Literature
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 2–3.
6
Sacha Stern, Jewish Identity in Early Rabbinic Writings (Leiden: Brill, 1994), xxiii.
7
Moshe Lavee, ‘No Bounderies for the Construction of Boundaries: The Babylonian Talmud’s Emphasis on Demarcation
of Identity’, in Rabbinic Traditions between Palestine and Babylonia, ed. Ronit Nikolsky and Tal Ilan (Leiden: Brill, 2014),
116.
8
‘Some talmudic material predates the destruction of the Second Temple … from groups or individuals other than rabbis,
since the earliest rabbis lived after … The Talmud does not explicitly distinguish this material from Tannaitic statements per
se … Much of this material has been rabbinized, that is, made to conform to rabbinic standards.’ Richard Kalmin, Migrating
Tales: The Talmud’s Narratives and Their Historical Context (Oakland: University of California Press, 2014), x–xi.
9
Works addressing the content, composition, redaction, cultural contexts and dating of the rabbinic literature are plentiful
(cf. many of the texts cited throughout this chapter). Due to developments in the field, one is advised to refer to more recent
scholarship.
10
Naftali S. Cohn, ‘What to Wear: Women’s Adornment and Judean Identity in the Third Century Mishnah’, in Dressing
Judeans and Christians in Antiquity, ed. Kristi Upson-Saia, Carly Daniel-Hughes and Alicia J. Batten (Farnham: Ashgate,
2014), 23.
342 DRESS IN MEDITERRANEAN ANTIQUITY

systematic and critical study of the past’.11 Of course, no ancient author ‘recorded history’ in a
modern, academic sense. Still, the rabbis did not apply a natural causality to historical events (in
the classical fashion) and often incorporated anachronistic elements in their treatment of the past.12
This does not mean that there is no valuable historical information contained within the corpus of
literature, but instead that we must first understand the motivations, desires and methods employed
by the various rabbinic communities as they discussed and evaluated both the biblical past and their
contemporary situation.13

JEWISH DIASPORA AND THE TALMUD

One topic that weighed heavily on the Jewish mind, addressed both biblically and rabbinically, was
the very existence of a Jewish Diaspora. The migration patterns of Israelites were interpreted not
simply as the consequences of war, economic needs and other factors common to human history
but as a result of disturbances to the connection linking God to his people and therefore to the
land promised to them. This plays a large role in the shaping of all rabbinic literature post-70 CE,
but specifically within the diasporic Babylonian population. As Ronit Nikotsky and Tal Ilan write,
‘the importance of narrative in creating a sense of a unified group becomes very clear in cases of
diaspora’.14 The desire to maintain group identity outside of one’s homeland, to prevent total
assimilation to the local culture, functions as an undercurrent, pulling at and shaping the creation
and compilation of the Bavli. There is, for example, a preoccupation throughout the texts with
various ‘others’, undoubtedly a by-product of post-Temple diasporic identity formation. Lavee
demonstrates a distinctly different attitude towards conversion between the Yerushalmi and the
Bavli as one iteration of this concern:
Palestinian rabbinic sources portray positively the spread of Jewish customs and beliefs among the
gentiles … They drew gentiles near, brought them to recognize God, the value of the people of Israel
and their norms, and in rare cases even stimulated their conversion. Babylonian parallels of these
sources tend to ‘convert’ these traditions, internalise them, and present them as an inner-Jewish
issue.15

There is a preference in the Bavli, Lavee writes, ‘to reject liminal modes of identity, and to mark
people as either fully here or completely there’.16 Undoubtedly, these concerns would have affected

11
Isaiah Gafni, ‘Rabbinic Historiography and Representations of the Past’, in The Cambridge Companion to the Talmud
and Rabbinic Literature, ed. Charlotte Elisheva Fonrobert and Martin S. Jaffee (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2007), 295.
12
Bohak finds examples of rabbis using the tools of ‘Hellenistic historiography’ (cf. y. ‘Abod. Zar. 3a:1) a rarity. Some
‘demonstrate how disinterested the rabbis really were in Greek-style historiography’. Others can reveal ‘positive attitudes’
towards the Greco-Roman world (cf. Gen. Rab. 12:2). Gideon Bohak, ‘The Hellenization of Biblical History in Rabbinic
Culture’, in The Talmud Yerushalmi and Graeco-Roman Culture, ed. Peter Schäfer and Catherine Hezser (Tübingen: Mohr
Siebeck, 2002), 3–16.
13
The ‘trustworthiness’ of rabbinic narratives must be evaluated with an understanding of how the community producing the
material interacted with the world around them (a different experience for the Palestinian and Babylonian communities),
as this affected how they depicted the past. Richard Kalmin, ‘Jewish Sources of the Second Temple Period in Rabbinic
Compilations of Late Antiquity’, in The Talmud Yerushalmi and Graeco-Roman culture, ed. Peter Schäfer and Catherine
Hezser (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2002), 17–54.
14
Ronit Nikolsky and Tal Ilan, ‘From There to Here, Rabbinic Traditions between Palestine and Babylonia: An Introduction’,
in Rabbinic Traditions between Palestine and Babylonia, ed. Ronit Nikolsky and Tal Ilan (Leiden: Brill, 2014), 2.
15
Lavee, ‘No Boundaries’, 107.
16
Ibid., 112.
TEXTUAL PROBLEMS IN TEXTILE RESEARCH 343

both one’s personal presentation and interpretation of appearance as it related to the notion of
‘self’ and ‘other’, and to one’s place within the increasingly insular diasporic community.17
Due credit has not thus far been given to the ways in which the differing temporal and cultural
contexts of the rabbinic communities – and the subsequent divergent forms of identity construction
presented in the rabbinic literature – may have impacted Jewish clothing and dress behaviour
recorded therein. Christina Katsikadeli observes that
the study of possible differences due to regional factors has been played down by generalizing
conclusions, stating that Jewish people would more or less share the same ‘basics’ with other
inhabitants of the Roman Empire.18

Even less attention has been given to Jewish dress farther East and to the evidence in the Bavli from
within its own context.
Diaspora and dress behaviour: Tzitzit as exemplar

Take, for example, one distinctly Jewish aspect of clothing: tzitzit. Although some early rabbinic
references (cf. Midr. Num. Rab. 27.5) indicate that tzitzit (with tekhelet) acted as a desirable visible
marker of identity, whether this biblical prescription was adhered to during the Roman period
remains ambiguous: no Greco-Roman author mentions this aspect of Jewish clothing, and neither
does Philo or Josephus;19 the archaeological record is absent of any examples of tzitzit;20 and
though fringe seems to be depicted on the edge of some mantles illustrated at Dura-Europos,
whether this should be interpreted as tzitzit is debatable.21 By contrast, and as Joshua Schwartz has
also mentioned in his chapter in this book, the pseudepigraphical Letter of Aristeas (158) mentions
‘symbols of remembrance’ of God worn on ‘our garments’; there is an unambiguous reference
made to tzitzit (Greek: Κρασπεδον) in Matthew 23.5, denoting the author’s, and his community’s,
familiarity with this adornment;22 and, in his Dialogue with Trypho (46), Justin Martyr notes the
biblical commandment to remember God through tzitzit.
Turning back to the talmudic literature, one finds only a few references to tzitzit in the Yerushalmi.
The Bavli, by contrast, displays a protracted concern with adherence to tzitzit, including the
necessary addition of tekhelet (b. Menah. 38a–44a). Catherine Hezser persuasively argues that
references to tzitzit (and other aspects of dress and appearance) in the Mishnah and Yerushalmi

17
Some rabbinic passages may be interpreted as condemnation against assimilation, even in appearance (cf. Sifre Dev. 81.4).
18
Katsikadeli’s re-evaluation of one such oft-repeated conclusion (on supposed Greek and Latin loanwords found
among rabbinic clothing terminology) provides a good companion piece for this chapter. Christina Katsikadeli, ‘Jewish
Terminologies for Fabric and Garments in Late Antiquity: A Linguistic Survey Based on the Mishnah and the Talmuds’,
in Textile Terminologies in the Ancient Near East and Mediterranean from the Third to the First Millennia BC, ed. Cécile
Michel and Marie-Louise Nosch (Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2010), 153–63, 55.
19
Shaye Cohen’s well-known argument for assimilated Jewish appearance in antiquity is largely based on this absence: Shaye
J. D. Cohen, ‘Those Who Say They Are Jews and Are Not: How Do You Know a Jew in Antiquity When You See One?’, in
Diasporas in Antiquity, ed. Shaye J. D. Cohen and Ernest S. Frerichs (Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press, 1993), 25–68.
20
Shamir, ‘Prehistoric’, 304–6.
21
Carl H. Kraeling, The Synagogue (New York: Ktav Pub. House, 1979), 81–2, especially fn. 239; Steven Fine, ‘How Do
You Know a Jew When You See One? Reflections on Jewish Costume in the Roman World’, in Fashioning Jews: Clothing,
Culture, and Commerce, ed. Leonard J. Greenspoon (West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, 2013), 24; Hezser,
Rabbinic Body Language, 45, fn. 85.
22
κράσπεδον is also mentioned in Matthew 9.20 (also Lk. 8.44). It can translate to either (1) an edge/border or (2) a tassel/
corner. Given the context in Matthew 23.5, only the second definition, ‘tassel’ (i.e. tzitzit), makes sense and thus other
instances of the word, though more ambiguous, are best understood accordingly.
344 DRESS IN MEDITERRANEAN ANTIQUITY

should be treated as examples of ‘staged’ rabbinic identity: a desire on the part of the rabbis to
visually mark themselves as sages, separated from their compatriots by their unique wisdom and
piety.23 This differs significantly from that found in the Bavli, which instead focuses on adherence
to the Law within the wider Jewish population and on Jewish identity within the gentile world.
Though some scholars have looked to the Bavli when studying tzitzit in Greco-Roman Judaea,24
it is worth considering whether this is appropriate. Babylonian references to tzitzit may be better
analysed in relation to diasporic identity formation in easterly communities of Late Antiquity/
the Sassanian period. Did visible markers of identity hold greater importance and/or were they
emphasized in one’s dress more so than in earlier, more westerly Jewish populations? The Bavli’s
focus on tzitzit would suggest so, but this must be studied further. The historical realities and
motivational needs behind the composition of rabbinic literature necessitate a careful evaluation
before one uses these texts as carriers of historical detail or as historicity proof texts.

NEW METHODOLOGIES IN RABBINICS AND THEIR RELEVANCE TO

TEXTILE RESEARCH
Among rabbinicists, methodologies have progressed significantly since the 1960s; not only are
historical- and literary-criticism being employed but, as Nikolsky and Ilan explain, ‘historians are
conceding the significance of the literary components of rabbinic literature, [and] literary criticism
is rediscovering the importance of context, including historical context’.25 Rabbinicists once
believed that the Bavli and Yerushalmi originated from within the same cultural milieu and could
therefore be read and understood synthetically (i.e. ‘if the Palestinian text displayed difficulties,
scholars believed that the explanations supplied by the Bavli were the ones intended by the original
authors of the texts’). Now the consensus is that it is ‘unsound to assume that the Greco-Roman
backdrop [appropriate to study of the Yerushalmi] is a priori the correct one against which to study
the Bavli’.26 Babylonian rabbinic culture is increasingly studied alongside Sassanian, with the Bavli
read in the company of Middle-Iranian languages and literature (keeping in mind rabbinic concerns
about the Diaspora).
I would contend that this same thought process should be applied when looking at rabbinic texts
in conjunction with material remains. When comparing textiles discovered in Jewish sites of the
Roman East – particularly those dated to the Second Temple period and the two revolts against
Rome (c. 70 and 132–135 CE) – to references found in rabbinic literature, the earliest and most
contextually related texts – the Mishnah and Tosefta, chiefly, as well as the Yerushalmi – should
be given preference to the Bavli.27 Moreover, references to clothing and dress behaviour should be

23
Hezser, Rabbinic Body Language, 24–68. Perhaps this ‘staged identity’ began among the Pharisees, the forbearers to
rabbinic Judaism, accounting for Jesus’s rebuke of the Pharisees ‘long κρασπεδον’ found in Matthew 23.5.
24
cf. Yigael Yadin, The Finds from the Bar Kokhba Period in the Cave of Letters (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society,
1963), 183–7, 221; Jodi Magness, Stone and Dung, Oil and Spit: Jewish Daily Life in the Time of Jesus (Grand Rapids, MI:
Eerdmans, 2011), 112–15.
25
Nikolsky and Ilan, ‘From There to Here’, 18.
26
Ibid., 9–10, 25–6; Also, Hezser, Rabbinic Body Language, 20.
27
Dafna Shlezinger-Katsman argues similarly: ‘The focus must be on Palestinian rabbinic sources, [although] at times a
cautious use of traditions transmitted in the Babylonian Talmud is necessary … Additional research must focus on the study
of ancient Jewish literary references to garments worn by Jews, both in rabbinic and Greek Jewish literature, [as] little has
been done in this regard, particularly from a historical-critical and gender studies point of view.’ Dafna Shlezinger-Katsman,
‘Clothing’, in The Oxford Handbook of Jewish Daily Life in Roman Palestine, ed. Catherine Hezser (New York: Oxford
University Press, 2010), 365, 78.
TEXTUAL PROBLEMS IN TEXTILE RESEARCH 345

evaluated from within the temporal and cultural contexts in which the texts were composed and
redacted. Approaching the rabbinic literature in this manner should lead to many fascinating and
diverse studies on Jewish dress, its regional differences, nuances and particularities.28 Additionally,
some key conclusions drawn about Jewish clothing in previous decades should be re-evaluated
in light of these developments within rabbinics. For the remainder of this chapter, I will briefly
readdress one such conclusion.
’imrah as clavi

In his monumental study of the excavation of the Cave of Letters, Yigael Yadin analysed and
contextualized material remains using the full catalogue of rabbinic literature. Looking to the
construction of the tunics (sewn together from two rectangular sheets), he settled a dispute on the
etymology of haluq and confirmed its translation as ‘tunic’. Yadin continued:
The identification of the tunics found in the cave with the talmudic haluq brings forth another matter,
the term ’imrah, often used together with the word haluq.29

Yadin examined talmudic references to ’imrah (‫ )אימרא‬in relation to recognizably Roman clavi (two
decorative bands running from shoulder to hem) found on Jewish-worn tunics and presented his
now widely accepted conclusion that ’imrah should be identified as the Hebrew equivalent to
clavi.30 Yadin begins by citing y. Qidd. 42a (65b):
R. Avun in the name of R. Pinchas: They stood themselves out like ’imrah on a haluq.

It was customary for men (and less frequently, women) to display their clavi by draping their outer
garment, their mantle, in a way that left one tunic shoulder, with its decorative clavus, exposed.31
This style is frequently depicted in Roman-era art, notably on many Fayum mummy portraits

28
cf. Hezser’s study of rabbinic self-presentation, Rabbinic Body Language, as recorded in the Palestinian texts asks how
rabbinic aspects of non-verbal communication (including dress) may have differed from that of the wider Jewish population,
as well as from other sages and philosophers of Greco-Roman and early Christian societies. Like Heszer, Cohn’s, ‘Women’s
Adornment and Judean Identity in the Third Century Mishnah’, looks beyond the simple (though no less important)
conclusion that Jewish populations dressed as their neighbours did, recognizing that even as this holds broadly true, clothing
and bodily adornment may still have been worn in a way to express specifically Jewish identity, ideologies and beliefs (with
variations across sects, communities, geographic regions and temporal lines). See also the chapter by Joshua Schwartz, this
volume.
29
Yadin, The Finds, 210.
30
Ibid., 209–11; Lucille Roussin, ‘Costume in Roman Palestine: Archaeological Remains and the Evidence of the Mishnah’,
in The World of Roman Costume, ed. Judith Lynn Sebesta and Larissa Bonfante (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin
Press, 1994); Orit Shamir, ‘Dress, Hellenistic and Roman Period’, in The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Bible and Archaeology,
ed. Daniel M. Master (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013); Orit Shamir and Naama Sukenik, ‘Qumran Textiles and
the Garments of Qumran’s Inhabitants’, Dead Sea Discoveries 18, no. 2 (2011); Jodi Magness, Debating Qumran: Collected
Essays on its Archaeology (Leuven: Peeters, 2004).
31
On Roman-era dress, see Norma Goldman, ‘Reconstructing Roman Clothing’, in The World of Roman Costume, ed.
Judith Lynn Sebesta and Larissa Bonfante (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1994); Alexandra Croom,
Roman Clothing and Fashion (Stroud: Amberley, 2010); J. C. Edmondson and Alison Keith, eds., Roman Dress and the
Fabrics of Roman Culture (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008). On its relation to Jewish dress: Shamir, ‘Dress,
Hellenistic and Roman Period’; Joan E. Taylor, What Did Jesus Look Like? (London: T&T Clark, 2018); Katie Turner, ‘The
Representation of New Testament Figures in Passion Dramas’ (PhD Thesis, King’s College London, 2018 [unpublished]).
On clavi specifically: Lise Bender Jørgensen, ‘Clavi and Non-Clavi: Definitions of Various Bands on Roman Textiles’ in
Purpureae Vestes III. Textiles y Tintes en la Ciudad Antigua, ed. C. Alfaro et al. (Naples: Universitatde Valencia, 2011). See
also Bender Jørgensen’s chapter in this volume.
346 DRESS IN MEDITERRANEAN ANTIQUITY

and on the Greco-Roman figures depicted in the Dura synagogue murals.32 The above passage
certainly reads like a comprehensible Roman-era expression when Yadin’s interpretation of ’imrah
as clavi is applied. In his full analysis, however, Yadin used rabbinic sources from the Bavli and
Yerushalmi interchangeably, with no consideration for differing contexts (changing time periods,
geography and authorial motivation), a methodology now considered outmoded and problematic.
For example, Yadin cites b. Šabb. 118b:
And R. Yose said: In all my days, the walls [or, beams] of my house never saw the ’imrah of my tunic

as well as a similar verse in y. Yoma 38d (5a):

She told them: there should come over me if the beams of the roof of my house even see the hair on
my head, and the ’imrah of my tunic.

While both passages deal with modesty, the passage from the Bavli refers to male dress behaviour,
while the Yerushalmi describes the dress of a woman, Qimchit. Interestingly, Yadin does not
mention this important dissimilarity; he does not include the opening ‘she told them’ (‫ )אמרה להן‬in
his reproduction of the Yerushalmi text, as he does when he notes that R. Yose spoke the words
recorded in the Bavli.33 Because dress behaviour could differ considerably between the genders, this
distinction should have been taken into consideration as he sought to understand the terminology
being used.
Looking at y. Yoma 38d first, we find Yadin’s interpretation of ’imrah is acceptable. The full
portion tells us that Qimchit’s seven sons all served as High Priest, in part due to her extraordinary
modesty. Women were more likely than men to cover their bodies completely with their mantle,
or with a mantle and veil, in such a manner that their tunic would not be seen.34 This type of
veiling, however, was generally part of public behaviour (m. Šabb 6.5-6). It is noteworthy then that
Qimchit is said to cover herself thusly within the privacy of her own home.
Applying Yadin’s conclusion to b. Šabb 118b meanwhile, we may reason, as Lucille Roussin
did, that ‘in Roman Palestine’ ‘the tallit [covered] the entire tunic’.35 However, this is likely an
overgeneralization. There is little evidence for widespread usage of this draping style by men in
the Greco-Roman world (the ‘expression’ in y. Qidd. 42a would be less intelligible if there had
been). Nearly all Greco-Roman figures illustrated in the Dura synagogue have part of their tunic
exposed. Only David is illustrated with his mantle draped over both shoulders, covering his tunic
(Samuel Anoints David, WC3). Perhaps the talmudic passage represents a rabbinic way of dressing.
As Hezser writes, ‘the midrashic text … implies that [the scholarly wrapping style] was different

32
For a selection of mummy portraits: David L. Thompson, Mummy Portraits in the J. Paul Getty Museum (Malibu, CA:
J. Paul Getty Museum, 1982); Susan Walker, ed., Ancient Faces: Mummy Portraits from Roman Egypt, The Metropolitan
Museum of Art Publications (New York: Routledge, 2000).
33
Yadin, The Finds, 210.
34
There is a considerable amount that can be said on veiling in antiquity. Suggested here is a brief but varied selection:
Douglas Cairns, ‘The Meaning of the Veil in Ancient Greek Culture’, in Women’s Dress in the Ancient Greek World, ed.
Lloyd Llwellyn-Jones (London: Duckworth, 2002); Mary Rose D’Angelo, ‘Veils, Virgins, and the Tongues of Men and
Angels: Women’s Heads in Early Christianity’, in Women, Gender, Religion, ed. Elizabeth A. Castelli and Rosamund C.
Rodman (New York: Palgrave, 2001); Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones, Aphrodite’s Tortoise: The Veiled Woman of Ancient Greece
(Swansea: Classical Press of Wales, 2003); K. Olson, Dress and the Roman Woman: Self-Presentation and Society (New
York: Routledge, 2008), 33–5; Turner, ‘The Representation’.
35
Roussin, ‘Costume in Roman Palestine’, 184.
TEXTUAL PROBLEMS IN TEXTILE RESEARCH 347

from that of ordinary non-rabbinic Jews’.36 Furthermore, by the late fourth century, prior to the
Bavli’s redaction, this style is seen more frequently in Christian images seeking to depict Jesus as a
Mediterranean rabbi.37
Nonetheless, when one reads R. Yose’s full statement on his modesty, one finds a discussion
on the exposure of male genitalia. Not only were the ’imrah of R. Yosi’s tunic concealed from the
beams of his house, but he never looked at his own circumcision and never put his hand below his
belt. As clavi were usually associated with the shoulders, or upper body (the area left exposed by
one’s mantle), Yadin’s interpretation would make that section less compatible with the other two.
Further, one must ask, were the redactors, compilers and readers of the Bavli familiar with Roman
clavi? If not, what would they have understood ’imrah to mean? How would this anecdote about
R. Yosi have been visualized within the Babylonian rabbinic community?
The Jewish settlement in Babylonia lived under Assyrian (until 538 BCE), Persian (538–333
BCE), Hellenistic (333–247 BCE), Parthian (247 BCE–224 CE) and Sassanian (224–651 CE) rule
before the Bavli’s completion. At no point did the clothing of these dominant cultures include
tunics with decorative clavi. The Parthian tunic, an antecedent to the Sassanian tunic, was distinctly
different from the Greco-Roman tunic: it was long sleeved and featured decorative borders around
the neck and hemlines. Alternatively, one may have worn a jacket, wrapped around the chest and
belted, in place of a tunic. Jackets were also decorated at the lapels and along the hem with, as
Vesta Curtis has catalogued, ‘a variety of floral, astral, geometric, and even animal-shaped motifs’.38
The tunic or jacket was worn over trousers. Outerwear consisted of a long-sleeved coat or cloak
wrapped around the shoulders. In some regions, with more contact with the Greco-Roman world,
the rectangular mantle (himation) may also have been worn.39 In this context, Marcus Jastrow’s
earlier definition (c. 1895) of ’imrah as ‘border’ may be more comprehensible. R. Yosi was asserting
that the bottom border of his tunic (the area closest to his genitalia and a part of the Parthian and
Sassanian tunic that would have had its own decoration) remained modestly concealed.40 This
interpretation conforms with another passage from the Bavli cited by Yadin (though he does not
discuss it in this way).41 In b. B. Bat. 57b we find that the tallit of a Torah scholar may be worn in
any fashion, so long as ‘a handbreadth’ of one’s tunic is not visible from beneath it. R. Yosi was
seemingly following the appropriate attire of a Torah scholar.

36
Hezser, Rabbinic Body Language, 41.
37
Ibid., 45, fn. 88.
38
Vesta Curtis, ‘The Parthian Costume and Headdress’, in The Arsacid Empire: Sources and Documentation, ed. Josef
Wiesehöfer (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1998), 62; For more on Parthian and Sassanian dress: Trudy S. Kawami,
‘Archaeological Evidence for Textiles in Pre-Islamic Iran’, Iranian Studies 25, no. 1/2 (1992); Elsie H. Peck, ‘CLOTHING
iv. In the Sasanian Period’, in Encyclopædia Iranica (1992); Joel Walker, ‘Iran and Its Neighbors in Late Antiquity: Art
of the Sasanian Empire (224–642 C.E.)’, American Journal of Archaeology 111, no. 4 (2007); Vesta Curtis, ‘A Parthian
Statuette from Susa and the Bronze Statue from Shami’, Iran 31 (1993).
39
This raises an important question regarding the tallit in Babylonia: If rectangular mantles were not commonplace, were
Rabbis notable for their inclusion of this garment in their daily attire? Or were tzitzit attached to another form of outwear?
On clothing in border regions: Bernard Goldman, ‘Graeco-Roman Dress in Syro-Mesopotamia’, in The World of Roman
Costume, ed. Judith Lynn Sebesta and Larissa Bonfante (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1994); Vesta Curtis,
‘The Parthian Haute-Couture at Palmyra’, in Positions and Professions in Palmyra, ed. Tracey Long and Annette Højen
Sørensen (Copenhagen: Det Kongelige Danske Videnskabernes Selskab, 2017).
40
Marcus Jastrow, A Dictionary of the Targumim, the Talmud Babli and Yerushalmi, and the Midrashic Literature; with an
Index of Scriptural Quotations (New York: GP Putnam, 1926), 51.
41
Yadin, The Finds, 210.
348 DRESS IN MEDITERRANEAN ANTIQUITY

It is worth considering that the understood meaning of ’imrah changed over time and/or
across cultural contexts. This would not be unusual, of course. Clothing terminology retained in
common usage through generations or across geographic regions often holds multiple meanings.
For example, thong carries distinctly different meanings based on region: in American and British
English, a thong is a specific type of undergarment, while in Australian English, it is a type of sandal.
Both definitions are accepted in all three language variants, but each also maintains a preferred
understanding. Accordingly, Yadin certainly did not misstep in suggesting that ’imrah be interpreted
as clavi. Nevertheless, the word likely also meant ‘border’, particularly in the Bavli.
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 INDEX

Achaemenid dress. See Persian dress Christianity (early) 24–5, 241–5, 201, 257–8, and
Adam and Eve 305 clothing prescription 244, 270, 292; and identity
adornment, attitudes towards 96 279–82, 287; and modest dress for women 292–7;
Agamemnon 179, 192, 194 and wifely submission 289–97 passim
Alexander III 171, 230, 235–6 Christianity (modern) 21, 30
Amorgina textiles 82 Chlamys 88
Amish dress 45–6 class. See rank
androgyny 279 Clavi 113, 114, 115, 116, 119, 124, 132, 133, 134,
Andromeda 216, 219–22, 223, 224, 227, 228 144, 145, 146, 148, 273, 345–8
angels 269, 281, 283, 285, 286, 287, 307, 321 Cleopatra VII 150, 240
anthropology, areas of study 27–9 cleanliness of dress 74, 83, 134, 178, 206, 250, 304,
anthropology, dress and 11–12, 19, 21, 27–38 passim, 306, 307, 313–24 passim, 337, see also Sordes
300, 312, 313 cloaks 97, 113, 114, 118, 119, 208–9, 211, 255, 260,
Antonius, Mark (Mark Antony) 150, 230, 235, 236, 240 347; definition of 116
Apex 210 clothing. See dress
apocalypse 281, 285, 286, 287, 299, 302, 322 Clytemnestra 194
approaches to dress 11–13 colour: ancient terms for 84–9; in ancient art 89–94;
Artaxerxes II 168, 171 in Greek clothing 55, 67, 71, 72, 74, 77–94
Athens 69, 70, 73, 78, 79, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89–90, 189, passim; in Jewish clothing 255, 256, 258, 277,
232 329, 340; in Judaea 275; multi-colored 89, 306,
307; in mummy portraits 141, 142, 143, 144,
baptismal garments 279–82, 286, 287 145, 146; preservation of in Roman wall-paintings
battle dress 159, 160, 192, 202–3, 232, 307, 323 125–6, See also black, blue, grey, purple, scarlet,
belts 54, 57, 72, 114, 120, 125, 136, 212, 269, 273, white, yellow; in Roman clothing 113, 114,
285, 307, 327, 335, 347 118, 119, 120, 125, 129, 130, 131, 133, 134,
black 88, 204, 255–6, 257, 335, 336 136, 209
bleaching 82, 83. See also white communication, dress and 12, 40, 74, 75
blood 88, 101, 180, 204–6, 307, 314, 318, 323, 324 conquest, dress and 299, 301, 305–6, 308, 309–12,
Blue 81, 86, 88, 89, 90, 91, 250, 252, 260, 261, 275, 337–8
307, 340, 343 consumer culture, dress and 12, 35, 40, 42, 46,
Blumer, Herbert 43 47
body, and dress 21–2, 27, 30–7, 39, 95, 176 Corinth 70
body modification 30–1, 255, 300 Cornelius Scipio Nasica Serapio, Publius 206–7
bordered clothing 57, 58, 59, 71, 72, 85, 86, 88, 91, cosmetics 292, 329–30
92, 347–8. See also toga praetexta costume. See dress
brauron 71–2, 85, 86, 87, 88 cotton 84, 121
Brides 187, 192–3, 195, 199, 207, 222, 224, 265–6, cross-dressing 25
270–1, 278, 293, 303, 317, 336 crowns 229–45 passim; as a mark of honour 232–5;
Bulla 96, 97, 108 Christian 241–5, 302, 306; diadems 230, 235–41;
wreaths 152–4, 231
China 176 cultural forces, dress and 12
Chitōn 54–5, 57, 60, 72, 75, 86, 87, 93, 273, 321, Cyrus (king of Persia) 160, 162, 164, 165, 167, 168,
chitōniskos 70, 71, 72, 86, 87, 88, see also Tunic 170
398 INDEX

Davis, Fred 43 habitus 300

Deities, dress of 20, 61, 65, 75, 87, 92, 93, 94, 134, hair 37, 76, 141, 173–88 passim; braiding 182, 212,
152, 174, 178, 179, 180, 181, 186, 190, 192, 195, 275, 289, 335, 336; of Cleopatra VII 240; and
197, 199, 230, 236, 239, 243, 283, 301, 303, 304 conquest 310; facial hair 173, 174, 182, 183, 185,
Delos 63, 85, 86, 92 250; and female sexuality 186, 275, 334, 335, 336;
diadems. See crowns and grieving 275, 278; and health 182; in ancient
diners 129–31 Hebrew law 177; in the Hebrew Bible 175–7; in
dirt. See cleanliness Homeric Greece 178–80; Jewish 256, 272, 275–6,
drapery 53–4, 60–3, 65 331; of Mary Magdalene 257, 258, 260, 262, 269,
‘double’ 208–9 275–6, 277; in the Near East 173–4, 176, 177,
dyes and dyeing 79–83, 85, 134, 155. See also colour 181–6; of rabbis 250; in Rome 128, 215; of Vestals
212; of sages 250
Egypt, dress in 14, 24, 25, 109–24 passim, 137–55 hair net (kippah/sevakhah) 330–1
passim; Berenice (port) 111–12, 120, 121, 123; hairpins 97, 186, 275
Coptic textiles 24–5, 109–10, 114, 120; Didymoi haptic experience of dress 17–18, 35, 215
112, 117, 119, 120, 123, 146, 147; hair in 177; hats and headgear 68, 76, 114, 119–20; 146, 152,
Jewish 254; Krokodilô 112, 117, 119, 121; 209–10, 236, 248, 307, 331–6, 338; Persian 160
Maximianon 112, 117, 121; Mons Claudianus Hellenistic dress 53, 60, 62, 63, 64, 67, 70, 74, 78,
146, 111, 114–15, 116, 117, 119, 120, 121, 122, 79, 83, 85, 89, 92, 230, 301, 347
123; Mons Porphyrites 111; Myos Hormos 112, Hellenistic era 137–8, 139, 230
123; textiles 82, 83, see also Mummy portraits Herculaneum 125–36 passim
embroidery 78, 120, 129, 231 Himation 54, 55, 56, 60, 62, 71, 72, 75, 86, 88, 93,
emperor 308–12 116, 274, 276, 340
Eleusis, inscriptions from 68–9 Hindu religion 32
Epiblēma 54–5 history, dress and 12, 13
Epic of Gilgamesh 173–4 Homer, clothing in 84, 87, 187, 192, 195, 283, 284,
epigraphy, textiles and dress in 67–76 passim, 84–9 316
ethnicity 78, 95, 106–7, 139, 290 horses 162–3, 167, 168, 169, 179–80, 191
Etruscan dress 16, 202–3, 238 Horus 152

fashion. See dress Infula 204, 211, 212, 239, 241

Flamines 56, 203, 204, 205, 208, 209, 210, 211, 212, inscriptions. See epigraphy
213 Isis 127, 128, 152, 319
flax. See linen Islam, and dress 19, 23, 26, 33–4, 36, 44, 48
fold marks 60 Israel 113, 248, 253, 282, 303, 315, 322, 326, 328,
fringe 118, 120, 127, 250–3, 254, 275, 315, 343. See 337, 338, 342
also Tzitzit
fulling 283–4, 285, 314, 317, 322. See also cleanliness Jesus Christ, dress of 244, 251, 279–80, 282–7, 323
jewellery 145, 306, 329, 330, 331, 336, 339; and age
Galerus/um 203, 210 98–100; bracelets 96, 97, 100, 101, 102, 105, 106,
gemstones 100–1, 150, 159; counterfeit 100–1, 168, 221, 225; brooches 97, 116, 141, 146, 147,
150 208, 209, 210, 211, 249, 277; children’s 98–9,
gender theory, dress and 13, 26, 46–7 152, see also lunula; bulla; earrings 96, 97, 101,
Gilman, Charlotte Perkins 42 105, 106, 225–7, 277; Greek 71, 72; for males 95,
girdles. See belts 96, 97, 98, 99; and marital status 105–6, 149; on
gods. See deities Mary Magdalene 260; in mummy portraits 141,
gold 72, 74, 168, 169, 180, 181, 304; crowns 231, 146, 147, 149–52; necklaces 96–7, 99, 105, 106,
234, 236, 237, 238, 302, 331; in jewellery 98, 100, 168, 335; Persian 168; and the poor 100, 102;
101, 102, 108, 141, 150, 151, 152, 169, 226, 289, and provincial identity 106–8; and religion 151–2,
319, 335; tefillin 254; on textiles 78, 79, 83–4, 90, 303; rings 96, 97, 105, 106, 335; Roman 95–108
93, 159, 170, 258, 260 passim, 215, 216, 217, 218, 223, 225–8; signet
green 72, 88 rings 97, 108; and slaves 102–5, see also Gold,
grey 74, 82, 88, 260, 317 Gemstones, Pearls.
INDEX 399

Jewish dress 19, 23, 26, 36, 247–56 passim, 315–16, mummy portraits 99, 100, 105, 109, 137–55 passim,
339–48 passim; and age 328–9; in Babylonia 346; categories of 141; dating of 140; jewellery in
250, 251, 252, 342, 347; brooches and 249; 149–52, 155; production of 140, subjects of 140,
Diaspora 248, 251, 252, 253, 254, 342–4; of 154–5
Essenes 251; priests and sages 249–50, 252, 253, Muslim dress. See Islam
254, 256; of the Qumran community 250, 252,
253, 283, 307, 316; of women 248–9, 257, 272–7, Near Eastern dress 14, 17, 106–8, 177–8, 186–7, 301.
325–38 passim, see also hair net, Tallit, Tefillin, See also Persian dress, ‘Median dress’
Ttzitzit nakedness. See nudity
Joan of Arc 25 nudity 32, 61, 62, 196, 260, 299–312 passim, 334,
Judaea 249, 253, 254, 255, 272–7 335, 336; and nakedness 301
Julius Caesar, Gaius 229–31, 234–7, 241, 242
Julius Caesar Octavianus, Gaius (Augustus), 97, olive oil 64, 82
236–7
Palla 57, 116, 126, 127, 129, 131, 133, 134, 136,
Kandys 71, 88 217, 222, 223
Korai 54–6, 61, 89–90, 197 Pallium 113, 114, 116, 117, 209, 340
knots 210–12 Paint 82
Palmyra 81, 107–8
leather 36, 160, 197, 210, 253, 273, 277 Parthian dress 340, 347
leisure, clothing and 42 pattern, in dress 71, 72, 90, 91, 113–14, 116–17, 148,
light, garments and 281, 282, 283, 285, 286, 287, 275, 347. See also embroidery
304, 306 pearls 25, 98, 101, 105, 106, 150, 226, 293, 303;
Limus 205, 318 counterfeit 101–2
linen 63, 64, 82, 83, 121, 127, 129, 159, 166, 251, perfume 258, 261, 263, 264, 265, 268, 269, 270, 275,
252, 254–5, 273, 283, 284, 307, 323. See also 276
Sha`atnez Persian dress 4–5, 14, 71–2, 159–72 passim, 347;
loincloth 305 bestowal of 165–9; crowns 235; and horse-riding
loomweights 68, 70 160, 162, 163; as talisman 169–72
Lunula 98, 108, 151 Pella 83
Lupercalia 229, 231 Peplos 57, 60, 61, 310
performativity 295–7
Macedonia 138 Pergamon 92
mantles, definition of 116. See also Himation, Palla, Persepolis 160, 161, 162
Pallium, Tallit Perseus 221–2, 224, 227, 228
Martha 258, 264, 265, 266, 275 Pharisees 251, 253
Mary Magdalene 257–78 passim pollution 314–17, 318–19, 320–2, 323, 330
Mary, mother of Jesus 260, 261, 262 Pompeii 216, 219, 125–36 passim
masculinity, dress and 25, 32, 33–4, 47, 114, 143–4, Pompeius Magnus, Gnaeus (Pompey the Great)
146, 159–72 passim, 189, 190, 195, 224, 317 241
materiality and material culture 40–1 poverty 100, 189, 301, 304, 305, 316, 318, 319–20,
‘Median dress’ 160, 163, 168 322, 324
Mesopotamia 82 power, dress and 24–5, 165
Medea 216, 222–4, 228 Praesidia. See Egypt
Medusa 224, 225, 227, 228 priestesses, dress of: Greek 65, 93, 94, 202; Roman
metics 69 201–2, 203; Vestals 203–4, 210, 211–12
Mennonite fashion 44–5, 47–9 priests, dress of: Greek 74–5, 323; Jewish 249–50,
Miletos 85, 86, 88 252, 253, 254, 256, 282, 340; Roman 201–2,
military dress 17, 202, 241–2. See also battle; 203–4, 204–5, 206–7, 209, 210, 211–12, 232,
weapons 243, 318, 323
Mitra 239 prostitution 69, 187, 188, 196, 260, 261, 262, 275,
mosaics 125–36 passim 303, 311
mourning 276, 317, 318, 337 provincial dress 17, 106–8
400 INDEX

pseudomorphs 77–9 slaves 69, 102–5, 111, 175, 176, 177–8, 187, 188, 190,
Ptolemaic Egypt 137, 138–9, 111, 112 225, 234, 275, 290, 291, 317, 326, 331, 333, 337
purity 314–15 sleeved garments 36, 49, 56, 72, 128, 129, 160, 164,
purple 55, 61, 63, 71, 72, 74, 79, 85, 86, 89, 114, 273, 347
119, 130, 144, 145, 146, 168, 170, 204–6, 209, snakes 102–4, 108, 151–2
210, 231, 234, 273, 274, 303, 306, 307; purple sociology, dress and 12, 19, 21, 39–50 passim
dye 85, 88 socks 114, 120
Sordes 317–18
Rabbinic period 248, 325 Sotah 334–6
Rabbinic tradition 247, 248, 249, 250, 251, 252, 255, Sparta 190
340–8 Spencer, Herbert 42
rags 113, 123 spinning 64, 121, 122, 123–4, 133
rank: and dress 42–3; and jewellery 100–5 status, dress and 95, 100–5
red. See scarlet Stola 57–8, 126–7, 223
religion: definitions 20–1, materiality of 21–2 subculture, dress and 12, 41, 45
religious dress (ancient). See ritual dress Sumptuary legislation 74, 101, 218
religious dress (modern) 22–6, 35, 36, 37, 44–5,
47–8 Tallit 249, 252, 254, 274, 332, 340, 346
religious practice 19, 21, 22, 25–6 Tanagra 85, 86, 87, 88, 93, 94
religious studies 19–23, 26 Tefillin 248, 253–4
resistance, dress and 25–6, 48–9 terminology of dress 1–2, 14
resurrection 280 textiles: archaeological evidence for 63–4, 77–9,
Ricinium 209 109–24 passim, 139, 141, 146, 199, 339, 345; and
ritual dress (ancient) 56, 314; of ‘embedded’ religions the economy 68–70, 327; production /construction
201–2; funerary 83, 199, 205, 255–6, 317–18, of 68, 70, 109, 110, 114–15, 118, 121–4, 131,
319; Greek 73–6, 87, 88–9, 190, 191, 197–9, 201; 273, 340; repair of 114, 146, 119, 120; sale of
Jewish 249–55; Roman 125, 126–7, 128, 201–13 68–9
passim, 230, 243 Thebes 85, 86, 87
theories of fashion 11–13, 42–3
saints 22 toga 57, 64, 65, 107, 113, 116, 127, 132, 134, 147,
Samos 85, 86, 87 206–7, 209, 231, 234; candida 284; cinctus
Sarah, wife of Abraham 289–91, 293–7 Gabinus 202–3; praetexta 59, 204–5, 206–7; pulla
Sarapis 152 256, 317; virilis 279, 282
Sardis 168, 304, 322 transfiguration 282–7
scarlet 81–2, 86, 88, 89, 90, 127, 132, 133, 134, 145, transparency 62, 63, 64, 75, 82
147, 168, 205–6, 212, 258, 260, 275, 303, 307 Triumph, Roman 96, 231, 233, 234, 235, 243,
scarves 19, 23, 44, 113, 114, 117, 120, 255, 275 279
sculpture: dress in 3, 53–65 passim, 225; colour in trousers 159, 160, 347
89–94 tunic 58–9, 64, 73, 92, 113, 114, 115, 116, 117, 118,
second-hand clothing 123, 284 124, 126, 127, 128, 129, 131, 132, 133, 134, 136,
Semiramis 171 141, 146, 148, 178, 223, 224, 234, 255, 268, 269,
sexuality and dress 46, 129, 132, 334–6 274, 277, 320, 321, 322, 335, 340, 345, 346, 347;
Sha`atnez 251, 252, 254, 325, 340 Persian 159, 160
shoes 24; and eroticism, 195–7; Greek 72, 73, 74, Tzitzit 248, 250–3, 254, 315, 325, 340, 343–4
76, 189–99 passim; Jewish 255, 276–7, 327, 339;
lack of 189–90, 197; monosandalism 199; outdoor ugliness 180
194; with platform soles 189, 190; Persian 160; in
a ritual setting 318; shoeseller 68 Veblen, Thorstein 42
Sikh dress 19, 24 veiling 24, 25–6, 54, 55, 126, 127, 134, 152, 186–8,
Silk 64, 159, 255, 293 193, 244, 248, 255, 257, 260, 261, 262, 263, 269,
silver 102 270–1, 274, 276, 277, 330–1, 346; and men 33–4,
Simmel, Georg 42–3 35, 36, 127, 206–8
INDEX 401

Vergina 78, 79, 84 89, 147, 170; Jewish 251, 318–19, 335, 336, 340;
Vittae 212, 239, 240, 241 Roman 127, 128, 129, 132, 133, 134, 136, 203–4,
210, 212, 241, 318
wall-paintings 125–36 passim wigs 331
wealth 42, 93, 95, 102, 104, 108, 109, 149, 155, 164, wool 61, 63, 64, 68, 82, 83, 84, 86, 114, 120, 121,
165, 174, 186, 190, 218, 284, 292, 303, 304, 307, 124, 133, 141, 159, 164, 209, 210, 251, 252,
319–20, 322, 324 254–5, 273, 274, 283, 284; wool-workers 69, see
weapons 169, 192, 202, 217, 218, 222, 224, 228, also Sha`atnez
242, 304, 311, 323 wreaths. See crowns
weaving 64, 115, 116, 118, 119, 121–4, 133, 255;
types of weaves 121 Xerxes 166, 171
white, early Christian use of 242, 245, 269, 279,
283–7, 285, 286, 287, 302, 304, 306, 307, 308, yellow 79, 81, 82, 87, 88, 90, 120, 129, 130, 134,
312, 322, 323, 324; Greek 74, 82–3, 86, 87, 88, 136, 221, 224, 271, 275; saffron dye 87–8
402