THE TUNIC.
The tunic, as well as the super-tunic, was often ornamented with rich borders and diapered with sprigs, spots, stars, &c. The tunic of the Roman women reached to the feet, with the exception of that worn by the Lacedemonian girls, which was short, and also divided at the sides so as to show their thighs; and "this indecency," says Strutt, was countenanced by the laws of Lycurgus.
THE TUNIC.
From Hope's "Costume of the Ancients."
Horace, in his twenty-fifth Ode, addressing an old woman affecting youth—"flaunting wife of the indigent Ibycus"—exclaims—
"What becomes thee best is a warm woollen dress;
Get thee fleeces from famous Luceria."
Broadly speaking, classic dress consisted of but two elements—the tunic and mantle, both being worn of a thicker material during cold weather. Ulysses exclaims, in the "Odyssey"—
"I have no cloak; the fates have cheated me,
And left alone my tunic."
Dion Cassius has given us an account of the dress of Boadicea, Queen of the Iceni. He says she wore a tunic woven chequerwise in purple, red and blue, and over it a shorter garment open on the bosom. Her yellow hair floated in the wind, and upon her shoulders was a mantle fastened by a fibula. It was, in fact, a variation of the Roman dress of tunic and mantle or toga. This was the dress which was common to all nations, both Gaul, Goth, Visigoth, and Vandal, from the Roman period to the time of Charlemagne, varied, however, according to climatic conditions, and ornamented in the manner peculiar to the particular country.