“In very truth, however, this dress is not originally Ionian, but Carian; for anciently the Greek women all wore the costume which is now called the Dorian.”—Rawlinson.
He goes on to say that after this the Argive and Æginetan women, out of rivalry with the Athenians, wore much larger brooches than before.
The importance of the passage is that it tells us of the two types of dress worn by Greek women. We learn that down to the early years of the sixth century all the Greek women wore the Dorian dress fastened with pins of such size and strength that they could become dangerous weapons in the hands of women excited by grief or passion. Later the Athenian women adopted a different dress, which did not need these large pins to fasten it, and which Herodotus calls the linen Ionic chiton, afterwards correcting himself and explaining that this kind of dress was really Carian in its origin.
The story of the slaying of the sole survivor of the Æginetan expedition, and of the punishment meted out to the Athenian women, seems in itself far-fetched and highly improbable; but there is probably some foundation of truth in it. Possibly the tale was invented by Herodotus, or, more probably, was current in his day as an explanation of a change in the style of dress which actually took place in Athens at the beginning of the sixth century, or more probably even earlier. Among the sumptuary laws introduced by Solon was one regulating women’s dress, and forbidding them to wear more than three garments when they went out to funerals or festivals.[80] The passing of such a law could only be necessary if the Athenian women had already adopted a luxurious and extravagant style of dress. Now, the essence of the Doric dress, as will be shown later, is simplicity; it did not admit of great variety or elaboration. On the other hand, that the Ionic dress was somewhat luxurious is clear from Thucydides, i., 6; so we may infer that by the time of Solon’s archonship, 594 B.C., the Athenian women had already adopted the Ionic dress, and had perhaps elaborated it by some modifications added by their own invention. If this is so, Herodotus’s story places the change at least a generation later than its actual occurrence; but as he is writing at a distance of more than a century from the event, we need not be surprised if he is a generation or so out in his dating.
The simple Doric dress mentioned by Herodotus as being universally worn by Greek women down to the sixth century, finds abundant illustration in early art, especially in the Attic black-figured vases. It consists of a large oblong piece of material, in length about 1 ft. more than the height of the wearer, in width about twice the distance from elbow to elbow when the wearer’s arms are held out horizontally at shoulder level. The additional foot in height is used up by folding the upper edge over so that the material is double from neck to waist. The garment is put on by folding it round the body and pinning it on the shoulders at points a third of the distance from the middle line and the edges respectively. A diagram will make the arrangement clear.
Fig. 9.
a, b, c, d represents the original rectangular piece of material, ab being twice the wearers distance from elbow to elbow—that is to say, about 5 ft. 9 in.—ac being 1 ft. more than the wearer’s height—namely, about 6 ft. 6 in.
After the upper edge ab has been folded over to a width of about 1 ft., the dress is pinned on the shoulders at the points e e′ and f f′; the part which covers the back is drawn slightly forward over the front, so that there are four thicknesses of material where the pins are inserted; the garment is then girded at the waist, the position of which is indicated by the points g and h, and any superfluous length is drawn up over the girdle.
The distance between the points a′ f, f e, e′ f′, etc., varies slightly, but is always approximately one-sixth of the whole width of the material. In practice, a better effect is produced if the width of stuff e′ f′, which covers the back of the neck, is shorter than the other sections.