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Rh great lovers of bodily perfection, and their women knew nothing of such things as corsets or stays. If you look in a gallery of ancient sculptures you will see how beautifully and lovingly the figure is draped in its flowing robes, moulded so closely upon the curves and contours of the body, yet so free from constriction of any kind. Such a thing as a waist in our acceptation of the term is not to be seen; the women of that time, however, found it necessary to wear bands and sashes to support the bosom, but these were of extreme sim­plicity. Homer in describing in the Iliad the toilette of Juno says: "Then she encircled her waist with a girdle." The Greek cestus was a girdle of embroidered leather or other material, and it was placed some­times above the hips to hold up the tunic or, again, beneath the bosom. The famous "Girdle of Venus" had worked upon it an ornamental scroll depicting the joys and the sorrows of love. A Greek writer tells us that the first article of clothing a lady put on was the girdle under the bosom. It may be noticed here, in passing from what was worn in antiquity, that one of the features of the French Revolution was an attempt to revive ancient usages as regards dress, and to return to the simplicity of Classical times. Hence the Directory adopted the Greek style, somewhat modified.

After the fall of Rome there appears to have been nothing as regards female costume very fixed in the way of waists; but there was a gradual transition from the ancient band or girdle, with its severe simplicity, to bodices more or less shaped to the figure, yet free from anything approaching tightness. The women of the Anglo-Saxons were guiltless of waists, but wore long flowing garments, which might perhaps be described as cloaks, held in at the middle by a sort of belt. The waist begins to put in an appearance during the Norman period. People were no longer satisfied with the simplicity of earlier days; men and women alike gave way to all manner of extrava­gances of attire, both as regards material and shape. The symmetry of the waist was at first more clearly indicated in dress than ever before; then, as time went on, it was emphasised more and more, until something very much like tight-lacing of a very pronounced kind came into vogue.

A good example of the waist of the period is to be seen in one of the illuminated manu­scripts of the Cotton Collection, of which the subject is, "Christ being tempted of the Devil." Here the carica­turist of that day represents the devil attired in the costume of a fashionable lady of his own time, and the most conspicuous features of the picture are the long sleeves and the slim, slender waist confined by a tightly laced corset, or bodice.

The waists favoured by ladies during the heroic epoch of the Plantagenets were of very much the same character as those adopted by the women of the Normans, but less exaggerated in type. Still the great aim was to make the waist as slim as possible, and that not only with ladies, but with gentlemen also. Mediæval romances teem with allusions to the ethereal smallness of the waist of dames and demoiselles, and the canons of taste demanded that the perfect knight should have a waist of almost similar slenderness.

During the Yorkist and Lancastrian period