Page:History of Art in Primitive Greece - Mycenian Art Vol 2.djvu/514

 Dress. 457 name yirwv is derived from the Semitic word ketonet, cotton, tunic ; and points to Syria as the place of its birth. When kings and nobles wished to show themselves with the pomp befitting their rank, they did not confine their costume to a tunic that left the limbs exposed from the knee ; but seem to have been clad in long trailing robes resplendent with plates of metal. That this state dress folded them in death and in life is gathered from a number of monuments where it is distinctly indicated (PI. Xyi. 16, Fig. 424, 4). Swords and sceptres with elaborate decorations completed a costume towards which the weaver had furnished his most gorgeous textiles and the jeweller his most exquisite ornaments. Youthful humanity showed a marked pre- dilection for rich display in the matter of jewellery. Thus, near the body at Vaphio — which, to judge from the weapons buried with it, must have been a man — were found rings for the fingers, bracelets, and necklaces. Rings of every description have been picked up in the graves, showing that the fingers were loaded with them. In this refined display of luxury, however, there remains something of the tastes and habits of the savage. The women*s costume, necessarily more elaborate than that of the men, cannot be as easily restored on the authority of monuments either inexpressibly rude in style or of very small dimension. Old marble idols represent a nude goddess (Figs. 327-330). But at Mycenae, as far back as the shaft-graves, women are invariably draped from crown to toe. If on certain monuments the bosom seems to be uncovered, it is because on the one hand the bodice is tight-fitting and void of ornament, so that it marries every detail of the form and is thus apt to mislead, and on the other because of the small dimension of the image ; coupled with the fact that the engraver was more concerned to bring out the roundness of the bosom beneath the stuff than to make the drapery visible ; but it is plainly indicated on not a few monuments (Fig. 433). The skirt, on the other hand, is always full, beflounced to the ground by bands of a different colour. Were the bodice and the skirt of the dress made in two separate pieces, as some at first surmised ? The primitive dress of women among these semi-barbarous populations, they contended, was no more than a piece of cloth folded round the middle, which with the passage of time grew longer and descended to the ankle. The bodice, however, was an after-thought, added on when these societies