The garment is usually represented as being sewn up along the side, sometimes along the whole length ac, bd, sometimes only along the length from the waist to the feet—that is, along the edges gc, hd; sometimes it is left open, being held in place only by the girdle. On the black-figured vases it is usually the closed Doric dress which is represented, probably because it offered the least difficulty to a technique which necessarily imposed somewhat close limitations on the artists who practised it. A good example is to be found in the figures of the Fates from the François vase, which has already been quoted in illustration of the Homeric peplos.
Photo. by The English Photographic Co.]
Fig. 10.—Metope from the Temple of Zeus, at Olympia.
[Face page 44.
A freer and more realistic representation is to be found in the sculptured metopes from the temple of Zeus, at Olympia. Athena in the metope representing the cleaning of the Augean stables wears the closed Doric dress; here the ἀπόπτυγμα, or overfold, falls slightly below the waist, and below it the kolpos is clearly visible, the slight pouch formed by drawing the superfluous length of the material over the girdle.[81] On the vases the pouch is almost invariably absent, and the girdle is always visible. This is also the case in one of the archaic statues on the Acropolis at Athens, where the Doric dress is worn over an Ionic chiton. A slight variation of the dress is to be seen on the nymph of the Atlas metope at Olympia, where the overfold hangs considerably below the waist and no girdle or pouch is visible; here the additional length of the overfold probably obviated the necessity of a pouch, and the girdle, which is hidden, simply served to hold the dress in to the figure. A bronze statuette from Herculaneum shows the dress sewn up only from the waist downwards ([Fig. 11]).
Photo. by Brogi, Naples.]
Fig. 11.—Bronze Statue from Herculaneum, Naples.
[Face page 45.