Cois tibi paene videre est
Ut nudam, etc.
[376] By a law of Honorius the Romans were forbidden to wear long hair (in 416), or garments of fur (in 397), such being characteristic of the Goths who were then devastating Italy; Cod. Theod., XIV, x, 4, 3, 2.
[377] See the lowest bas-reliefs on the Theodosian obelisk (Banduri, ii, p. 499; Agincourt, ii, pi. x); Cod. Theod., XIV, x, 1; Hefner-Altenek, Trachten des Mittelalters, pl. 91, 92.
[378] Chrysostom, the pulpit declaimer against the abuses of his time, was so enraged at seeing the young men delicately picking their steps for fear of spoiling their fine shoes that he exclaims: “If you cannot bear to use them for their proper purpose, why not hang them about your neck or stick them on your head!”; In Matt. Hom. xlix, 4 (in Migne, vii, 501).
[379] “You bore the lobes of your ears,” says Chrysostom, “and fasten in them enough gold to feed ten thousand poor persons”; In Matt. Hom. lxxxix, 4 (in Migne, vii, 786); cf. Sozomen, viii, 23.
[380] Chrysostom, In Ps. xlviii, 3 (in Migne, v, 515); Sozomen, loc. cit., etc. Women’s girdles were worn under the breasts.
[381] See Bingham’s Christian Antiquities, vii, 1, and Racinet, Costume historique, iii, pl. 21. Read Lucian’s Cynicus for a defence of a somewhat similar life on a different plane.
[382] Chrysostom, In Epist. Tim. II, viii, 2 (in Migne, xi, 541). Even these he rates for coquetry; cf. Bingham, op. cit., vii, 4, etc. See also Viollet-le-Duc (Dict. du mobil. fr., i, pl. 1) for a coloured figure which, though of the thirteenth century, corresponds very closely with Chrysostom’s description. Formal costume, however, of the present day, political, legal, ecclesiastical, is for the most part merely a survival of the ordinary dress of past ages.
[383] Basil Presbyt. ad Gregor. Naz., Steliteut. Const. Porph., op. cit., ii, 52, p. 753, with Reiske’s notes, p. 460.