ALTERNATIVE USES OF GARMENTS IN THE GRAECO-ROMAN WORLD
Ton Hilhorst
When visualizing daily life in Antiquity we tend to think in particular of the absence of the technological conveniences we are so accustomed to. Yetthatabsencecannotexplainallofthedifferences.Music,forinstance, was an important feature of leisure among the Ancients, and was part of the liberal arts, but among the range of musical instruments the bowed ones were completely lacking, although the principle was known and the Pythagoreans did use the monochord for the study of intervals. Another example is dining habits. Leonardo da Vinci, in his well-known painting of the Last Supper, depicted the guests sitting at a laid table, and he was not the first or the last to do so. Nevertheless, the Gospels clearly speak of an ν!κεισαι, a reclining, and Luke : even makes Jesus ναπ πτειν, which, if it is not actually flopping down, is certainly not the act of taking one’s seat. And this position during dining, which was normal at the time, was apparently still embarrassing enough for modern Bible translators to render the Greek verbs of lying with verbs of sitting. In this paper, we shall discuss yet another instance of dissimilarity between Antiquity and later history, namely dress. The subject is not of a religious tenor in itself, but as religious texts can- notbeproperlyunderstoodunlessweareawareoftheaspectsofeveryday life that they take for granted, we run the risk of misinterpreting them. I came to this realization when, preparing an edition of the Martyrdom of Pionius, I stumbled upon the curious passage . where somebody ‘knotted a scarf around his (= the martyr’s) neck’. The use of a garment as a rope, I found, was not an isolated case but occurred in a number of texts, both pagan and Christian.1 This, in turn, was only one of the many uses made possible by the nature of ancient clothing. It therefore seemed
1 A. Hilhorst, “Martyrium Pionii”, i n Atti e Passioni dei Martiri (eds. A.A.R. Basti- aensen et al.; Milan: Mondadori, ): –, –, – (). J. den Boeft and J.N. Bremmer, ‘Notiunculae Martyrologicae III: Some Observations on the Martyria of Polycarp and Pionius’, Vigiliae Christianae (): –, graciously left the topic for others to explore. ton hilhorst worthwhile to survey its various applications and to point out how they might help to clarify obscure passages in sacred as well as profane litera- ture. If we approach our subject as philologists and look for Greek or Latin words denoting a tailor, we will be disappointed. The harvest in Greek is confined to ;πητ/ς and !πτης, but these terms, Liddell-Scott- Jones informs us, mean ‘repairer, mender’ and ‘clothes-mender’ rather than ‘one who makes men’s outer garments to measure’, as the Concise Oxford Dictionary defines the tailor. In Latin we have the words uestifex, uestificus and uestitor, but only in inscriptions and all rendered by the Oxford Latin Dictionary as ‘a maker of clothes’, not ‘a tailor’. The fact of the matter is that the Greeks and the Romans did not wear clothes made to measure. Essentially, there were two categories of garments: ) a tunic, worn next to the skin, called ιτ ν in Greek and tunica in Latin, and ) a mantle, worn over the tunic, called μ!τιν in Greek and pallium in Latin; the proverbial tunica propior pallio est keeps the memory of this clothing alive. Both were simply rectangular pieces of wool or linen, but whereas the tunic was held secure by means of pins, a girdle and/or sewing, the mantle—at least the μ!τιν; the short mantle called λαμDς was fastened with a pin or brooch—was thrown around the shoulders and held in place by the hands and arms of the wearer. People did not always wear both sorts at once; both literature and the visual arts provide evidence of either the tunic or the mantle as the only garment. Whereas the tunic was the indoor dress and the sole garment of slaves and craftsmen, draped mantles were the characteristic outdoor dress of freeborn citizens—understandably so, since wearing a garment that had to be held in place showed the wearer to be free from the necessity of manual work; lots of statues represent persons proudly displaying their left arms or both arms covered by the folds of their mantles. The dimensions of the mantle could differ greatly, from a small kerchief to the Roman toga, which was a semicircular piece of cloth measuring approximately . ×m (×ft). For our purposes, the crucial feature is the looseness of the mantle. This aspect made it fit for several uses that are rather unexpected to modern minds. We will discuss them by presenting some relevant passages. As our focus is on the Graeco-Roman world, passages from the Old Testament will be quoted in the version of the Septuagint.2
2 Older works on ancient dress include M. Johnson (ed.), Ancient Greek Dress: A New Illustrated Edition (Chicago: Argonaut, ; reprint of E.B. Abrahams, Greek Dress