In this dress we already find the elements of the male costume common throughout classic Greece in the fifth century. It is modelled on the ancient elaborate style, and the sewing is reduced as much as possible, while the garment falls in regular free folds, and fits closely to the figure. According to Thucydides, it was at Sparta that it first became customary to adopt a uniform dress for the whole male population, and thus to do away with a distinction which had hitherto prevailed between the dress of poor and rich. This distinction, at any rate, held in so far that at Athens the richer people, as Thucydides states, wore the long linen chiton, the poorer people the short woollen one. At Athens and in Ionia the long linen chiton remained as the dress of older people till shortly before the time of Thucydides; but then it was universally discarded, or rather reserved for the classes mentioned above, and for festive occasions; while the short woollen chiton from that period became the universal dress. This is usually found in the form of a widish garment sewn together below the girdle, and above it divided into two parts, a front and back piece, put on in such a manner as to be fastened together by pins or fibulae on the shoulder. If the chiton was allowed to fall quite free it usually fell down about as far as the knees; but it was customary, especially when unimpeded and free movement was necessary, to draw up a part above the girdle and let it fall in folds below it. (Compare Fig. [5].) Workmen, countrymen, sailors, and others whose occupation required free movement of the right arm, used only to fasten the two pieces of the chiton on the left shoulder, then the points of the other side hung down in front and behind, and left the
Fig. 5.
right breast, shoulder, and arm exposed. This costume, of which the relief in Fig. [6] gives a representation, was called exomis. Strictly speaking, it is no actual garment, but only a particular way of wearing the chiton; but special tunics for labourers were made in
Fig. 6.
this fashion. Besides this, chitons were afterwards made with the upper part also sewn together, and with armholes or short sleeves, which, however, never covered more than a part of the upper arm. Long sleeves falling to the hand belong exclusively to barbarian costume. Yet the bib, which as late as the first half of the fifth century was worn with the male chiton also, is not a part of later costume.