Lady of Ancient Greece.
Strutt informs us that the Roman women, married as well as unmarried, used girdles, and besides them they sometimes wore a broad swath or bandage round their breasts, called strophium, which seems to have answered the purpose of the bodice or stays, and had a buckle or bandage on the left shoulder, and that the mitra or girdle of the Greeks probably resembled the strophium of the Romans. The annexed illustration represents a lady of Ancient Greece. He also speaks of the Muses as being described by Hesiod as being girt with golden "mitres," and goes on to inform us that Theocritus in one of his pastorals introduces a damsel complaining to a shepherd of his rudeness, saying he had loosened her mitra or girdle, and tells her he means to dedicate the same to Venus. So it will be seen that the waist and its adornment were considered at that early period of the world's history matters of no ordinary importance, and whether the term strophium, zone, mitra, custula, stays, bodice, or corset is made use of, the end sought to be obtained by their aid was the same.
Constant mention is made by early writers of the peplus as being a very elegant garment, and there are notices of it as back as the Trojan war, and the ladies of Troy appear to have generally worn it. On the authority of Strutt, it may be stated to have been "a thin light mantle worn by Grecian ladies above the tunic;" and we read that Antinous presented to Penelope a beautiful large and variegated peplus, having twelve buckles of gold, with tongues neatly curved. The peplus, however, was a very splendid part of the lady's dress, and it is rarely mentioned by Homer without some epithet to distinguish it as such. He calls it the variegated peplus and the painted peplus, alluding to ornamental decorations either interwoven or worked with the needle upon it, which consisted not only in diversity of colours, but of flowers, foliage, and other kinds of imagery, and sometimes he styles it the soft purple peplus, which was then valuable on account of the excellence of the colour. We learn from a variety of sources that the early Roman and Grecian ladies indulged in almost unprecedented luxury in matters of personal adornment, as the following extract from Fullam will show:—
"The toilet of a Roman lady involved an elaborate and very costly process. It commenced at night, when the face, supposed to have been tarnished by exposure, was overlaid with a poultice, composed of boiled or moistened flour spread on with the fingers. Poppæan unguents sealed the lips, and the body was profusely rubbed with Cerona ointment. In the morning the poultice and unguents were washed off; a bath of asses' milk imparted a delicate whiteness to the skin, and the pale face was freshened and revived with enamel. The full eyelids, which the Roman lady still knows so well how to use—now suddenly raising them, to reveal a glance of surprise or of melting tenderness, now letting them drop like a veil over the lustrous eyes—the full, rounded eyelids were coloured within, and a needle dipped in jetty dye gave length and sphericity to the eyebrows. The forehead was encircled by a wreath or fillet fastened in the luxuriant hair which rose in front in a pyramidal pile formed of successive ranges of curls, and giving the appearance of more than ordinary height.
"'So high she builds her head, she seems to be,
View her in front, a tall Andromache;
But walk all round her, and you'll quickly find