A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities/Abolla

ABOLLA a thick, double cloak, which, according to Servius (ad Verg. A. 5.421), resembled the chlamys, and which he identifies with the duplex pannus of Horace (Hor. Ep. 1.17, 25). It was of foreign origin; and in a Roman inscription (A.D. 202) found in Mauretania, there is mentioned the abolla cenatoria in a Lex vestis peregrinae (C. I. L. 8.4508). The generally accepted identification of the word with the Greek is questionable etymologically; and it is rightly pointed out by Daremberg and Saglio (s. v.), that the Greek word applies especially to the manner of wearing any cloak (thrown back over the shoulder), while the Latin denotes a cloak of a particular form. Varro (ap. Nonium, p. 538, 16) contrasts it with the toga as a distinctively military garment (vestis militaris), much as the sagum and toga are commonly contrasted. The sagum (q. v.) appears as early as Cato (Cat. Agr. 59) to have been not confined to military wear; and the abolla similarly had become in imperial times an indiscriminately worn garment. Thus we find it used as an outdoor dress in Juvenal, 4.76. Ptolemy of Mauretania offended Caligula by the splendour of his purpurea abolla (Suet. Cal. 35), and Martial satirizes a similar extravagance in the fop Crispinus (abolla Tyria, 8.48). While for rich and fashionable wearers the original [p. 1.4] military form of the abolla was probably altered, and its rough texture exchanged for fine linen, it seems to have retained or exaggerated its simple coarseness when adopted by philosophers. It was thus worn by the cynic, serving alike for day-and night-clothes (Martial, 4.53.5; Hor. Ep. l.c., same as the, D. L. 6.22). Hence facinus majoris abollae (Juv. 3.115) means “a crime committed by a deep philosopher.” The abolla as worn by soldiers is probably to be recognised in the bas-relief from the arch of Septimius Severus, figured above; as worn by philosophers, in the annexed representation from a silver vase in the Paris Cabinet des Médailles (apud Daremberg and Saglio, s.v. cf. Marquardt, Röm. Alterth. vii. p. 553).