[133]. Plut. Alcib. § 39.
CHAPTER VI.
TOILETTE, DRESS, AND ORNAMENTS.
Having now described the condition and influence of women, it will be necessary to institute some inquiry into one of the principal means by which they achieved and maintained their empire. At first sight, perhaps, the disquisition may appear scarcely to deserve all the pains I have bestowed upon it; but, as the dress of the ancients is connected on the one hand with the progress of the useful arts, as spinning, weaving, dyeing, &c., and on the other with the forms and developement of sculpture, it can scarcely, when well considered, be reckoned among matters of trifling moment. Besides, the costume and ornaments of a people often afford important aid towards comprehending the national character, constituting, in fact, a sort of practical commentary on the mental habits, and tone and principles of morals, prevailing at any given period among them.
The raiment of the Grecian women, of which the public generally obtain some idea from the remaining monuments of ancient art, may be said to have been regulated by the same laws of taste which presided over the developement of the national genius in sculpture and painting. Every article of their habiliment appeared to harmonise exactly with the rest. Nothing of that grotesque extravagance which in some of the fleeting vagaries of fashion transforms our modern ladies, with their inflated balloon sleeves and painfully deformed waists, into so many whalebone and muslin hobgoblins, was ever allowed to disfigure the rich contour of a Greek woman. As she proceeded lovely from the hands of nature, her pride was to preserve that loveliness. Her garments, accordingly, were not fashioned with a view to disguise or conceal her form, but by graceful folds, flowing curves, ornaments rich and tastefully disposed, to afford as many indications of its matchless symmetry and perfection as might be compatible with her sex’s delicacy and the severity of public morals. Consequently the art of dress, like every other conversant with taste and beauty, reached in Greece its highest perfection. A woman draped according to the prevalent fashion in the best ages of the Athenian commonwealth, was an object not to be equalled for elegance or grace. From the snow white veil which probably shaded her countenance and ringlets of auburn or hyacinth, to the sandals of white satin and gold that ornamented her small ankle, the eye could detect nothing gaudy, affected, or out of keeping. There was magnificence without ostentation, brilliance of colours, but a brilliance that harmonised with whatever was brought in contact with it; the splendour of numerous jewels and trinkets of gold, but no appearance of display, or of a wish to dazzle. Everything appeared to stand where it did, because it was its proper place.
But in Sparta where there existed little tendency towards art or refinement,[[134]] a costume the antipodes of all this prevailed. That of the virgins differed in some respects from that of the matrons, and the difference arose out of a peculiar feature of manners, in which, if in nothing else, they resembled the English. In several Ionic countries, as at present on the continent, girls were previously to marriage guarded with much strictness. At Sparta, on the contrary, and among the Dorians generally,[[135]] they were permitted, as in England, to walk abroad in company with young men, and, of course, to form attachments at their own discretion. In this, too, as in their dress, they only preserved the customs of antiquity; for in Homer we find the Trojan ladies making anxious inquiries of Hector respecting their relations and friends in the field, and going forth from their houses attended only by their maids. The married women led more retired lives, and when they went abroad fashion required that they should be veiled, as we learn from the following apophthegm of Charillos, who being asked why the maidens went abroad uncovered while the matrons concealed their faces, replied: “Because it is incumbent on the former to find themselves husbands, on the latter only to keep those they have.”[[136]]
The principal, or, rather, the sole garment of the Dorian maidens was the chiton, or himation,[[137]] made of woollen stuff, and without sleeves, but fastened on either shoulder by a large clasp, and gathered on the breast by a kind of brooch. This sleeveless robe, which seldom reached more than half way to the knee, was moreover left open up to a certain point on both sides,[[138]] so that the skirts or wings, flying open as they walked, entirely exposed their limbs, closely resembling the shift of the Bedouin women,[[139]] slit up to the arm-pit, but gathered tight by a girdle about the waist. When the girdle was removed it reached to the calves of the legs,[[140]] and would then, but for the side-slits, have been quite as becoming as the blue chemise of the modern Egyptian women, which is open in front from the neck to the waist.[[141]] When dressed in this single robe, their whole form breathing health, and modesty in their countenance, there was no doubt a simple elegance in their appearance, little less attractive, perhaps, than the exquisite and elaborate mise of an Ionian or an Attic girl. In this costume Melissa, daughter of Procles, of Epidaurus, was habited when, as she poured out wine to her father’s labourers, Periander, the Corinthian,[[142]] beheld and loved her. The married women, however, did not make their appearance in public en chemise, but when going abroad donned a second garment which seems to have resembled pretty closely their husbands’ himatia.[[143]]
Of the simple wardrobe of a Doric lady, which in ancient times was that of all women of Hellenic race, exceedingly little can be said. It is altogether different with respect to that of the gentlewomen of Attica, where, though inferior in personal beauty to none, the women exhibited so much fertility in the matter of dress, that they appeared to depend on that alone for the establishment of their empire. For this reason it would be vain to pretend to describe all their vestments and ornaments, or the arts of the toilette by which they were adapted to their purposes. To do so properly would, in fact, require a volume. But all that can be crowded into one short chapter shall be given, since I am not deterred by any such scruples as formerly arrested the pen of a very learned writer, who apprehended that, if he proceeded, he might be supposed to have been rummaging the boudoir notes of an Athenian lady![[144]]
The primary garment,[[145]] answering to the chemise of the moderns, was a white tunic reaching to the ground,[[146]] in some instances sleeveless, and fastened on the shoulders with buttons, in others furnished with loose hanging sleeves descending to the wrist, and brought together at intervals upon the arm by silver or golden agraffes.[[147]] It was gathered into close folds under the bosom by a girdle,[[148]] or riband, sometimes fastened in front by a knot, sometimes by a clasp.[[149]] This inner robe, made in the earlier ages of fine linen,[[150]] manufactured in Attica, or imported from Tyre, Egypt, or Sidon, came, in after times, to be of muslin from Tarentum, or woven at home from Egyptian cotton. The use of linen, however, for this purpose was not wholly superseded. A very beautiful kind, from the island of Amorgos,[[151]] one of the Cyclades, was often substituted down to a very late period in place of the byssos, or fine muslin of Egypt; and this insular fabric,[[152]] whether snow-white or purple, would have rivalled the finest cambric, being of the most delicate texture and semi-transparent,[[153]] like the Tarentine and Coan vests of the Roman ladies, the sandyx-coloured Lydian robe, or the silken chemises of the Turkish sultanas, described by Lady Montague.[[154]] It is in a tunic of this linen that Lysistrata, in Aristophanes, advises the Athenian ladies to appear before their husbands in order to give full effect to the splendour of their charms.[[155]]
Because the Amorginean linen was often, perhaps commonly, dyed purple, it has been inferred, that none purely white was produced; but this, as Bochart[[156]] observes, is, probably, a mistake. At all events, it was of extraordinary fineness, superior, in the opinion of Suidas,[[157]] even to the byssos and carbasos, or lawn of Cyprus, and appears to have been of a thin, gauze-like texture, like the drapery of “woven air” which Petronius[[158]] throws around his female characters.