Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 05.djvu/542

* COSTUME. 466 COSTUME. arrangement and carct'ul disposition of the folds. Tlicre was no otiier garment of the men while in the city which in any way concerned their appearance, as the only leg-coverings known were bandages or wrappers, not unlike those worn to-day by the ]>easantry in some parts of Europe. On the otiicr liand, the iot/a prie- iextn, which was worn by certain ollicials, and even by some priests, had a 'purple,' that is a dark crimson border, and the irabea seems to have been a sort of cloak with still more elabo- rate stripes, including perhaps one made entirely of red clotli, which generals were allowed to wear on the day of their triumph. It is probable, however, that in this last usage the military cloak of red was worn during the triumphal pro- cession, that being the one occasion when the soldiers of the Republic were allowed to appear within the walls with their arms and military trappings. The women were dressed as simply as the men, wearing over the tunica merely a garment called the stola, whieh replaces for them the toga of the men. and when the woman of rank went abroad, usually in a litter, a shawl- like garment called the palUi miglit also be added. That which makes the peculiar statcliness of the dress seen in female statues of the early Empire is the contrast of the folds of the long tunica, reacliing the floor, nearly covering the feet, and forming a strongly marked base, as it were, for the whole figure, while the more loosely folded stola above it seems to reinforce the lines of the undergarment. A veil of more or less thin and floating material covered the head, and could be brought around to the front to hide the face at pleasure. It must be constantly kept in mind tliat the idea of beauty in dress was simply uni- form whiteness and many skillfully contrived folds; the whiteness was kept up by the use for woolen garments of the most elaborate system of cleansing applied by the /'»?/o(ies, or cleansers, and. for the folds of the drapery, highly trained experts — body servants who knew their business — were employed. It is evident how great an effect these peculiarities of dress had upon the art of sculpture. In all the above discussion of costume, one thing is very noticeable — the absence of anything like tailoring, except, perhaps, among the Chi- ne.se. The clothes of the Greeks and the Romans, like those of the people of the Pacific Islands, always approximated to the ideal of an uncut, nnsewed, unaltered piece of textile fabric: square or oblong, as in the himation, chlamys, s.agnra, or paludamentuni ; semicircular or semi-oval in sliape, or ap])roximately so, as in the toga, or simply sewn doOTi one side so as to make a tubular garment of one piece of stuff, as in the later chiton, and in the tunica. A curious re- production of this characteristic of ancient cos- tume exists among the wilder Arabs, the Bedou- ins of the desert, and the horsemen of the up- lands. They wear a shirt, indeed, and this is of thicker stufl", and covers the body more com- pletely than what we know by that name, but apart from this their covering is almost wholly a matter of unaltered or scarcely altered pieces of woolen. Perhaps two breadths of the narrower stuflT are sewn together to make the liaicl-, or. as in the north of Africa, a square of striped woolen stufl' is caught up in the middle of one side so as to form a sort of hood, as in the humous; or, as in the a6a or alaijeh, the square of stuff may have its two outer edges folded over toward the middle, so that the two edges meet or nearly meet, and then two openings are made in the two outer folds where the stuff is actually creased, which serve as armholes, so that the square blanket resembles an overcoat. But in all this there is absolutely no fitting of the piece of stuff' to the body. It is a heavy woolen blanket, which is adapted more or less to the shoulders so as not to slip off, but is not other- wise altered in any way, and miglrt cover a man or a woman, and a person of any stature. What is curious about this costume is the enormously heavy woolen dress worn in the desert and under the semi-tropical sun. It is evident that nothing but a heavy material is expected to keep oH' the heat of the sun or the burning wind of the desert; and therefore a man who wears only the long shirt, and has the legs and feet, arms and neck absolutely naked, will pile two or three of these heavy woolen things upon his shoulders and head. The result of this arrangement is that the only decoration sought for is in the beauty of two or three colors arranged in stripes of dif- ferent widths, and broken more or less by the earning of threads of difl'erent colors across the stripes, in the way of couiiter-cliarging of her- aldry. A mucli greater development of design by stripes alone is in the cotton dhurries of India. The aba may indeed be further adorned by very simple embroidery in woolen thread. The first appearance of any tendency to fit the garments to the person among nations more western than the Chinese is probably in the )eg-coveiings of the Persians and Syrians, as represented in Grecian and Greco-Roman art, and yet these garments are of extreme simplicity and there is no appearance of tailoririg in any modern sense in connection with them. They are merely loose trousers, gathered at the ankles, or sleeved tunics; and their use seems, to have come from the mountain regions of Asia Minor and the shores of the Caspian Sea. The barba- ri.nns of Europe, Gauls, Scandinavians, and Ger- mans, made up suits of clothes in a not dissimi- lar way; but it does not seem that their example affected the Greco-Roman world very much. The beginning of change is to be looked for in the Byzantine Imperial epoch. From a time as early as the seventh century a.d. there is a con- slant increase in the number of garments worn, and in the elaboration of their shape and their combination, while at the same time the costli- ness and splendor of the stuff's are in no way diminished, and the custom begins which was destined to ha^'e so much effect on the costume of later times in Europe, the sewing of Jewels, mounted in slender rings, or cliatoiix, of gold or silver gilt, to the material. Sometimes smaller fragments of glittering material of no value were used in this way, as in a later time pieces of mirror were used throughout the lands influenced by Persian decorative ideas. In the Byzantine Em])ire the dress of the officials shows ,a certain disposition to follow early Roman traditions, but only in the general shape of outer garments and to .a certain extent in their names. The general aspect of a member of the Imperial family, or an officer of the Court, as it is seen in the mosaics of Ravenna, or in the illuminated manuscripts of the time, is altogether different from that of higher antiquity. The robes reached to the feet, they were closely sewed up, and not very loose