WOMEN'S COSTUME
As to the evolution of feminine costume, I speak with the greatest diffidence. Homer's women wore the loose brooched peplos, with brooch, pin, clasp, and over it the pharos. Women of the later dark age and the Dipylon period apparently dressed otherwise. In the archaic period the brooched peplos, girdled at the waist, was worn; but I think that there was also a revival or survival of Aegean sewn and shaped bodices, jackets, and skirts. Lastly, historic Greece reverted to the Homeric peplos and chlaina.
The discussion is, inevitably, concerned with minutiae in details about which our actual information is far from being minute. We must therefore state here explicitly the conclusions to which we are led: namely, that neither the male nor female dress nor the armour described in the Epics was introduced, at any period, by the Ionians employed in any one of the four or five "recensions" which are postulated by certain critics, as in the "first Iliad" of Robert, and his "second, third, and fourth Iliads"[1] On the other hand, we contend that both the costume and the armour in Homer are of a single period, earlier than the Dipylon and barbaric Tirynthian age of art, while historic Greece from the middle of the sixth century began to revert to something like the Homeric type.
We must remember that hitherto no representations of Homer's people in the free art of the Aegeans have been discovered, and thence no light can be derived. When the crude art of Tiryns and, later (?) of the "Geometric" school of ornament comes into view (1000-800 B.C.?), the designs of men and women are childish. In painted vases which may represent the palsied decadence of the Aegean age, the human figures are simply absurd, still they are recognisably human; though in vases of what may be called the "dotted" style of outline, they have heads like birds, as on dotted bronzes of northern Italy in the Early Age of Iron. In the "Dipylon" style, again, as soon as human beings are represented, the heads of the men are like potatoes set on sticks; the torso is an inverted isosceles triangle, with the pointed waist for apex; and the naked legs are enormously thick in thighs and calves. The women's bodies also are often equilateral triangles; the parts below the waist are clothed in tight skirts, as a general rule; the breasts, when the bust is represented, are either bare, or clad in a very tight bodice, or are hidden by a hood which falls below the shoulders like a cape. In one Tirynthian fragment we see a stout lady in a "princess frock" tight, "of the Menzies tartan,"[2] and all of one piece; another design shows a waist no thicker than a broomstick[3] (figs. 8, 9). These costumes of women, in Tirynthian and Dipylon art, are un-Homeric and post-Homeric. I doubt if we find such female costumes as Homer apparently describes recognisably represented in Greek art till the sixth and fifth centuries.
Fig. 8—Princess Frock: Tiryns.
This seems to be stated with unnecessary force, because, it may well be said, the meaning of the sentence turns on the words "recognisably represented." How are we to "recognise," in art, costumes of which Homer gives us only brief verbal descriptions? Are we not deceived by the free and vivid style of Homer? All his human beings and gods come in such living forms before us, that we see the flowing, glistening garments of Nausicaa and Athene swaying with their motions. We can see nothing like this represented in Greek art till the late sixth century and onwards; because, it may be said, till that date Greek art is hard, prim, constrained, conventional,—in fact, archaic. It is therefore, we may be told, a kind of logical illusion which prevents us from recognising the costumes of Homer's women in Greek plastic art, till that art itself is beginning to attain Homeric freedom.
These considerations must be kept in mind. But another error is apt to be suggested when we read that the historic Hellenic costume, or that part of it styled "the Doric peplos," "is implied by the allusions of Homer," the view of the ingenious Studniczka.[4] The remark is illustrated by fig. 10, in which we see a lady in "a Doric peplos," though how Achaean women of Homer's time could wear the dress of the Dorians whom Homer ignores is not apparent. This graceful and breezy costume is, in fact, like what we suppose Homer to have had in his mind, and to have seen. But it is not in the least like the dress shown in the art which is immediately subsequent to his age, the art of Tiryns and of the Dipylon; and, as far as I can ascertain, it is not the costume displayed in the archaic art up to the middle of the sixth century. Archaic Greek female costume, however, has this much in common with Homeric and later Greek costume, that it essentially differs, often, from Aegean or Mycenaean dress.
In describing the contrast of styles between the pre-Homeric Aegean dress and the Homeric costume for women, Mr. Leaf says that the Mykenaean (Aegean) women wore "a close fitting bodice, sharply marked off from the full skirt..."; and though there were many changes of fashion in the Aegean world, this account holds good for its later periods. "The dress of Greek women in historic times is of a totally different kind. It is marked by simplicity and flowing vertical lines.... The peplos is, in fact, no more than a square woollen blanket ... taken up round the middle by a girdle and retained in its place on the shoulders by pins." The Aegean female dress, sewn and fitted, did not need pins or brooches, περόναι, ἐνεταί, πόρται.[5] On the other hand, "no pins or fibulae have been found among the remains of the Mykenaean prime," while they are common in the latter "lower city" below the acropolis of Mycenae.
Mr. Leaf therefore conceives that "during the prime of Mykene fashion was dominated by a non-Hellenic influence," perhaps Oriental. Bodices and separate flounced skirts were in, "but for some reason which we cannot expect to guess, fashion returned, at the end of the Mykenaean age, to the older and simpler dress" (the Homeric), "which held its ground till classical times."[6] The usual explanation is that the fibulae and the pinned peplos were brought in from the north by Achaean invaders; in the north the fibulae had long been common;[7] and that the style of costume persisted continuously into historic times, being the familiar classical Greek dress.
Fig. 9—Costume of Women—Tirynthian Vase.
Now undoubtedly the fibula, and therefore the unsewn and unshaped female attire, did come in at the close of the Aegean or Mycenaean period in Greece; but, as far as I can interpret the art of very old Tirynthian and some Dipylon vases, there was an early post-Homeric period wherein women adopted the short hood-capes, the tight waists, the heavy skirts, and the princess frock.[8] This attire more resembles the Aegean than the Homeric and Hellenic. The "hood-cape" of Tirynthian art may conceivably be the κρήδεμνον, καλύπτρα or κάλυμμα of Homer; but if so, it reveals below it a waist of more than Aegean tightness, not the belted peplos. Such are the characteristics of Dipylon art, and of Tirynthian art which may have arisen before 900 B.C. It is hardly possible that if, in that age, women wore the loose Homeric peplos, the artists should have represented them with impossibly narrow waists, with the bosom fully displayed, and with heavy skirts. The women of this dark age, as far as art can enlighten us, had broken away from, or at all events are not wearing, the Homeric peplos.
This is, at least, my private interpretation of the Dipylon and the Tirynthian representation. But it is offered with diffidence, and is not shared by Mr. R. M. Dawkins, the Director of the British School of Athens. He "does not believe that the Dipylon women's dress is necessarily a tight one," and attributes the wasp waists to the limited skill of the early artist, thinking that if he had to draw a woman in a loose flowing dress he would still give her a tiny waist, because a small waist is one of the conspicuous points in the female figure. In the effort to give as much information as possible he would draw the small waist even if it were concealed by a loose dress. The primitive artist draws not from models, but from mental images.
There is much truth in this; for example, the ladies in a palaeolithic rock-painting[9] have very slim waists, clearly exaggerated, above skirts with a crescentine scoop at the bottom. But the primitive artist certainly draws under the domination of a convention which differs in different places. The woman whose figure is repeated in the clay disk from Phaestus[10] has no more waist than the stout person in a princess frock from Tiryns. The Dipylon artists may be continuing the Aegean convention of the wasp waist; though the designer of the princess frock is as candid as the Phaestos artist. Thus the reader must interpret the Dipylon waist as he pleases.
We next reach the "archaic" art of, say, the seventh to sixth centuries. The chief article of female dress, as described by Homer, was the peplos, "a square or rectangular piece of material which," like the men's outer mantle, "could be used for various purposes." It was fastened by pins or brooches (περόναι, ἐνεταί), and the περόνη was sometimes a fibula or safety pin, the cover adorned by art, as in the case of the περόνη of Odysseus (Od. xix.). But when (Iliad, v. 425) Athene mockingly tells Zeus that the wounded Aphrodite must have scratched her hand, while caressing some Achaean woman, on her περόνη, the term "safety pin," or fibula, does not apply. We think rather of one of the long sharp stiletto-like pins found in Egyptian deposits of from about 1450 to 1200 B.C. and also at Enkomi in Cyprus, and at Sparta in the Orthia sanctuary from 900 to 500 B.C.[11] Fibulae of the same date also occur. These great pins had ribbed handles, and below the handle was a perforation or a metallic loop.[12] Now very long pins, also with ribbed handles, but without the aperture in the middle, fasten the peplos of one of the Fates on the Francis vase, which Mr. Evans dates in "the seventh century," but Mr. Walters—from the characters in the inscriptions on the vase—dates about 570-550 B.C.[13] The Spartan evidence for the pin and fibulae covers the later range of dates.
Fig. 10.—Metope of Athene, Olympia.
Much turns on the date of the François vase, for many critics, with Studniczka, consider that the costume of the female figures is like that which Homer's women wear, and is a "Doric peplos." Thus Miss Abrahams, in her Greek Dress (1908, pp. 29, 30) studies the arraying of Hera.[14] Of her dress Homer says, χρυσείῃς δ' ἐνετῇσι κατὰ στῆθος περονᾶτο: "And she fastened it over her breast with clasps of gold." "We gather from this passage," says Miss Abrahams, "that the garment was fastened on the shoulders by brooches or pins inserted κατὰ στῆθος, which Studniczka rightly interprets as 'down towards the breast,' a method of fastening which is represented on the François vase and elsewhere." "The material," Miss Abrahams goes on, "is drawn from the back, and wraps over that which covers the front, the pins are then inserted downwards, and hold the two thicknesses of material together...."
But (see fig. 11) the pins are inserted upwards; we observe the long ribbed head of the pin, of known form like that of the 1450-1200 B.C. pins of Egypt and Enkomi, stuck into the fabric above the right breast. It penetrates the fabric, and passes upwards into a large oval shoulder piece, perhaps the tail of the piece of cloth which covers the decorated collar over the shoulder-joint. The Homeric phrase "pins inserted down towards the breast" does not indicate this mode of fastening, which is upwards from the breast. "A method practically impossible—the pin would fall out," says Mr. Dawkins. "If so, blame the artist." Neither the "overfold" (ἀπόπτυγμα) nor the curious oval piece on the shoulder-joint (perhaps a portion of the fabric) is mentioned by Homer. Again, when we read,[15] "the dress is held into the figure by a girdle worn round the waist, over which any superfluous length of material could be drawn, forming a κόλπος or pouch," we must remember that in the dress on the François vase there is no superfluous material. The dress ends just above the heels, there is no "tunic-trailing"; as in Homer. A woman who drew her dress up to form a κόλπος or pouch, would show much more of her legs than was fashionable in the archaic period, and would destroy the collant fit over the breast. The costume fits tightly to the bust; and in art of 600-550 B.C. this is the rule. We see no women "with deep κόλπος or pouch," whereas the nurse of Eumaeus could conceal three cups in her pouch. Here, again, Mr. Dawkins thinks that the limitations of the artist cause the absence of the kolpos. "He made any dress look tight, because he could only draw his idea of the body and then indicate dress on the body. The artist has two mental images, one of the natural body and the other of the dress, and he could only carry out his work by combining the two."
But I must reply that, in the François vase, we are far from the "primitive" artist. The artist knows very well what he is about. He draws short skirts and over the bust the dress is collant, because that is the fashion. The painter no longer draws impossible waists, they are in good proportion for girls. Moreover, artists of the same period when they design a woman in a mantle do so in the modern way. The bust is indicated; the mantle does not cover it, but covers the waist, and no attempt is made to show what the artist knows is there: he does not design what is not in sight. Even an Australian black fellow drew what he saw, not what he knew was there, in sketches of white ladies.[16] We must not explain the François vase by the limitations of "primitive art."
Fig. 11.—The Fates on the François Vase
From Miss Abraham's Greek Dress
My impression is that in the eighth to seventh centuries women still did, at least occasionally, wear a costume consisting, as in Aegean times, of separate bodices and skirts. Thus in an archaic Corinthian gold jewel we see an Ariadne naked from the belt upwards, beneath is a skirt falling to the instep. Skirts were therefore separate, and imply a separate bodice, if the upper body is to be covered[17] (fig. 12).
Fig. 12.—Ariadne, Theseus, and Minotaur
From a Corinthian Gold Ornament
The pouch is Homeric, but in art of 600-550 B.C. no woman, as far as I have observed, has any "superfluous length of material," or, at least, almost none draws it up through the girdle to form such a pouch as we see on Miss Abrahams's fig. 10 (Metope from the temple of Zeus at Olympia). The wearer could hide the family plate in her pouch, not so the women of the Francois vase. Such a costume cannot be called, as a rule, τανυπέπλος, or ἑλκεσίπεπλος, "trailing robed," like Homer's women.
Thus the Greek dress of the seventh to sixth century, when many artists drew what they saw under no "primitive" limitations, is not Homeric. Homeric female dress is loose and flowing, and trailing. Archaic Greek female dress is tight, not flowing, not trailing. Historic Hellenic female dress is loose, flowing, and trailing; it returns to the Homeric type. In holding these opinions we are not, then, deluded by the freedom of Homer's art; he insists on the kolpos, or loose fold which makes a pouch, and on the trailing loose peplos; nor, at least in my opinion, are we deluded by the stiffness of archaic art, which really represents the brevity and tightness of the prevailing fashion.
Thus we cannot cite the François vase "in illustration of the Homeric peplos."[18] The François dress is not trailing, nor is it pouched, nor is it Homeric. A thick, round, embroidered collar with no apparent breach in its continuity is either pinned or sewn over the François peplos, and the overlap is tight enough to indicate the bust very gracefully. Moreover, the costume of Athene[19] is not that of the François vase (fig. 13). Both, I think, cannot be "the closed Doric dress." Athene has a garment much more flowing than that of the François dress; and, unlike that costume, it has a pouch, though her dress falls rather lower than that of the François ladies; and she has no thick collar, and no long pins thrust up from the breast.[20] Athene's dress would be long and trailing, if it were not drawn up through the girdle. By the date of the Olympian figure of Athene, Greek female dress had moved back from the fashion of the François costume towards that which Homer knew and described.
We now reach the strange story which Herodotus tells to account for the alleged enforced change of Athenian women's costume from the peplos fastened with long stiletto-like pins, as in the François vase (an Athenian work of art), to the Ionic dress, which had no long pins. The women, he says, slew, with their long pins, a messenger who bore the tale of the massacre of their husbands; and the men therefore compelled them to wear the Ionian linen chiton, which does not require the περόνη, the stiletto pin.[21] The event was of the first half of the sixth century; 568 B.C. is the date conjectured, which tallies fairly with Mr. Walters's dating of the François vase made while long pins were still fashionable. But if the wearing of Ionic costume were, as Miss Abrahams supposes, one of the luxuries which Solon (594 B.C.) tried to check, then we must date the François vase in the seventh century. Yet the costume of the vase, with its expensive embroideries, is much more "luxurious" than the linen Ionian chiton or smock. In any case it is certain, from the dangerous long pins of, say, 1200 B.C. at Enkomi and in Greek deposits in Egypt, that women wore these stiletto pins five centuries before they did so at Athens, in, say, 620-560 B.C. So Homer had his mind, when Aphrodite scratched her hand with an Achaean woman's pin, on Achaean female dress, not on that of Athenians of the seventh or sixth century.
Fig. 13.—Historic Greek
Costume From Leaf's Homer's Iliad vol. ii
In short, Homeric female dress was not introduced into the Epics by any "recension," by any interpolators of any post-Achaean date, as Pinza argues that it was.[22] He supposes the Ionian female costume to be a long linen smock with short sleeves.
Pinza argues that the costume of women in Homer "is wholly different from that of Spartan ladies of archaic and classical times; and, on the other hand, exhibits many analogies with the more antique linen chiton with short sleeves, certainly of Asiatico-Semitic origin, as is proved by the etymology of the name" (chiton).[23] He supposes the Ionian costume of women, described as a long linen smock with short sleeves, to be derived, through Phoenicia, from the Syria of, say, 690 B.C., citing Hebrew female captives in Layard's Monuments of Nineveh (i. plates 61, 83, and others). In plate 61 we see a tall female captive, wearing a long garment, with a broad fringe over her head, and below it another long garment with short tight sewn sleeves, and a broad border which falls over the legs, leaving them bare from the calf. There are no pins or fibulae visible; the upper garment hides the girdle, if girdle there be. In plate 65 two figures of goddesses are carried, on chairs, in a procession. They wear long sewn smocks, with sewn sleeves ending above the elbows, and with very broad belts. The dresses end above the ankle bones. They are far from being loose or trailing; no pins or fibulae appear. The same costume, without any girdle, is worn by two women in a kitchen: they seem to have bodices and skirts (plate 30). The sleeves have no small round brooches like the Ionian chiton, which, like the Assyrian dresses, reached the feet (ποδήρης).
Miss Abrahams remarks that it is a mistake to suppose the Doric chiton to have been always fastened by pins or brooches, the Ionic always sewn on the shoulders (like those quoted from Assyrian monuments). In many Greek works of art, a chiton, clearly Ionic, is not sewn on the shoulders, but fastened down the upper arm by a series of small brooches.[24] The Assyrian dresses often answer to the Ionic chiton as thus described, but are without any brooches; and they are much shorter than the Ionic chiton, which, as thus described, is always longer than the height of the wearer; "the superfluous length is drawn up through the girdle to form a kolpos, which varies in depth according to the length of the chiton."[25] Not so in archaic Greek art! In any case, the Ionic dress as described is much longer than that of the Assyrian designs, has a kolpos, where they have none, and may either be sewn, like them, over the shoulder, or, unlike them, may be fastened over the upper arm with small brooches. Thus the Ionic, as described, is not the same as the Syrian, when the Ionic has brooches; nor is it, in my opinion the female costume of the Greek vases of the seventh and early sixth centuries.
In Layard's plate 67 A, from the Assyrian monuments, we see two of the captive women from Lachish kneeling and giving suck to their children. Their smocks are tight, girdled, and reach the heels. The dress of the upper woman has short sleeves on both arms, and the line where it crosses below the neck is perfectly well marked. How the infant, in these circumstances, reaches the natural source of nourishment is a deep mystery. In the figure of the lower woman certain faint lines appear to indicate that the dress has been opened at the centre of the neck and drawn aside over one breast. In neither case is there any trace of fibula, pin, button, or hook and eye, or loose hanging flap.
Pinza, however,[26] finds here an exact parallel to Hera's peplos in Iliad, xiv. 175, "fastened over her breast with clasps of gold," that is, "fastened on the shoulders by brooches or pins inserted down towards the breast"; and this, again, is said to be illustrated (as above) by the François vase. In answer, it may suffice to look at the two pictures, Layard 67 A and the Fates on the François vase. A simple button and button-hole, as Pinza remarks, in the dress below the centre of the neck, would, if withdrawn, do all that these Hebrew babies need. A man may illustrate this for himself by opening his shirt at the collar stud. The lower Hebrew woman might even be naked above the belt, like the kneeling woman just beneath her, were it not for the line of her dress across her neck. She has no sleeves. There is no sign of any openings at the shoulders or precisaménte come l' ἑανός della Epopea.
These Assyrian designs do not, it seems to me, encourage the opinion that Hebrew female costume of the date of Hezekiah, say, 690 B.C., was thrust into Homer about that period, at an Ionian "recension," and remained there unaltered by later "recensions."[27] The brooched costume of Homeric women is not the sewn costume of the Assyrian art. Other Hebrew ladies from Lachish wear the long piece of cloth over their heads, falling to the top of the ankle, and under that a tight smock of the same length. There is no girdle, the arms are bare, no fibulae are shown.[28] As the Syrian female costume never shows brooch, pin, or fibula, it certainly cannot be the origin of the Homeric or the Doric peplos, or of the brooched historical costume of Hellas.
Meanwhile a mere untutored man who looks at the Fates on the François vase thinks, I find, that the embroidered overlap is simply a short jacket worn over the peplos, This appears to be an error. But I had, as an amateur, come to the conclusion that the dress of the women in archaic Greek art often consists of sewn bodice and skirt, or of a tight jacket with a separate skirt, not of the peplos. Mr. Myres had already expressed similar opinions as to the late survival (or revival?) of that Aegean costume.[29]
Moreover, Mr. Walters, judging from vase-paintings, says, "The Ionic costume is introduced about 500 B.C., but its vogue does not seem to have lasted long at Athens."[30]
Perdrizet thought that the archaic costume more resembled the Mycenaean (or Aegean) than the Doric style; while Mr. Wace (in the catalogue of the museum at Sparta), Mr. Leaf, Mr. Dawkins, and others hold that the archaic dress is merely a long chiton tied at the waist. This question of the late survival, or revival, of non-Homeric Aegean female costume is thus delicate and obscure, though I have little or no doubt that it did in many cases survive or was revived.
The woman in the archaic sepulchral monument from Etruria (British Museum) wears a short jacket, and a very brief skirt; and a woman in a leaden figurine of Sparta wears only a girdle and a kirtle. She is running, and has thrown off her jacket or bodice. An archaic Victory, a terra cotta in the British Museum, wears only a very short skirt.[31] The Ariadne of an archaic Corinthian jewel, in a belted skirt, with no bodice, has already been cited.
Thus the evidence of art, in the dark period of, say, 900-700 B.C., inclines me to believe that women sometimes wore shaped and sewn bodices and skirts, or jackets and skirts; sometimes a strait brooched and girdled peplos, not flowing, not trailing, not Homeric; that there was none of the Homeric uniformity of attire. Varieties of fashion are not discordant with feminine nature.
[1] Studien zur Ilias, von Carl Robert, Berlin, 1901.
[2] The Menzies tartan is of white and pink checks, which the artist renders lovingly.
[3] Schliemann, Tiryns, plate xvii. Studniczka, Altgr. Tracht.
[4] Leaf, Iliad, vol. ii. p. 596.
[5] Iliad, v. 425, xiv. 180, xviii. 401.
[6] Leaf, Iliad, vol. ii. pp. 595-598.
[7] Ridgeway, Early Age of Greece, vol. i. pp. 553-577.
[8] Tiryns, plate xvii.
[9] In northern Aragon.
[10] Scripta Minoa, vol. i. p. 282.
[11] B. S. A., vol. xiii. pp. no, 113.
[12] Journal of the Anthrop. Institute, vol. xxx., 1900, p. 203, fig. 2. Evans on "Mycenaean Cyprus."
[13] Walters, History of Ancient Pottery, vol. ii. p. 270.
[14] Iliad, xiv. 175 et seqq.
[15] Greek Dress, p. 30.
[16] Mrs. Langloh Parker, Australian Legendary Tales.
[17] See fig. 2 in Roscher's Lexikon, ii. 2. 3007.
[18] Greek Dress, p. 44.
[19] Ibid., fig. 10.
[20] Here, it must be said, Mr. Dawkins dissents, not seeing any difference in the two costumes. I think that is because he supposes the François artist not to be able to draw what he sees; for the dresses seem, in fact, to me different.
[21] Herodotus, v. 87.
[22] Pinza, Hermes, 1909, p. 526.
[23] Ibid. pp. 527, 528.
[24] Greek Dress, p. 60.
[25] Greek Costume, p. 60.
[26] Pinza, Hermes, p. 538.
[27] Ibid. p. 526.
[28] Layard, Nineveh and Babylon, p. 152.
[29] Proceedings British School of Athens, vol. ix. p. 386, citing the difference of colour, and we may add of decorative design, on the part of the costume above, and the part below the girdle. This difference could not always occur in a dress all of one piece. For example, see the female figures incised on the fragments of a corslet of bronze plates at Olympia (Bronzen, plate lix.). But this question is sub judice; it is argued that the difference of pattern and colour in upper and lower parts of the dress is a decorative caprice of the artist, and corresponds to nothing that he saw in women's costume. It is impossible to deny that Ariadne in the archaic Corinthian piece of gold-work has come to see the Minotaur killed, wearing her skirt, and leaving her bodice in her bedroom (Roscher's Lexikon, ii. 2. 3007, fig. 2).
[30] History of Ancient Pottery, vol. ii. p. 200.
[31] Cf. B.S.A., vol. xii. p. 323, fig. K.