LACERNA
LACERNA (answering in most respects to the Greek
χλαμύς) was a woollen cloak worn by the Romans
over the toga (
Mart. 8.28), which explains
Juvenal's expression “munimentum togae” (
Juv. 9.28). It had a hood (
cuoullus),
and sometimes the plural
lacernae is used to
express both together (e. g.
Mart. 14.132,
“totae lacernae” ); but in Horace,
Sat. 2.7, 55,
lacerna includes the
hood. It was worn open and loose, fastened to the shoulder by a fibula, so
that in
Mart. 2.29 the white toga is seen below
the purple lacerna; and thus it differed from the paenula, which fitted
close and was fastened all the way up, and from the birrus, because that
form of wrap was stiff (
rigens opposed to the
fluens lacerna, Sulp. Sever. 1.21, 4),
whereas the lacerna was light and of fashionable make. The Schol. on Pers.
1.51, however, uses them as convertible terms. It seems to have been
introduced at Rome by men of fashion as a protection against rain--Pliny
(
Plin. Nat. 18.225) says that the
price of lacernae goes up in threatening weather--and to wear in theatres,
&c. (
Mart. 2.29): thus we are told that
the equites used to stand up at the entrance of Claudius and lay aside their
lacernae, as a mark of respect (
Suet. Cl. 6).
Its colour depended on taste and circumstances, sometimes “fusci
coloris” (
Mart. 1.97,
9), and made of the dark wool of the Baetic sheep
(
Mart. 14.133), sometimes of bright
colours (
Juv. 1.27;
Mart.
1.97) and very expensive (
Mart.
8.10). By an order of Domitian, about 88 A.D., white lacernae only were allowed in the theatre (
Mart. 5.8;
14.137).
It would appear from
Mart. 2.29 that there was
no such rule before. The material as well as the colour varied, and for the
poorer wearers it was unfashionably coarse (
Juv.
9.27). Cicero (
Cic. Phil. 2.30, 76)
speaks of it as an unusual form of dress, but as a military cloak it may
have been worn earlier. Cassius wears it at Philippi (Vell. 2.70, 2; cf.
Prop. 4.12,
7;
Ov. Fast. 2.746), and to some extent it
displaced the sagum. Under the Empire it became common at Rome, as we learn
from Suetonius, who says (
Aug. 40) that Augustus seeing one
day a great number of citizens before the tribunal dressed in the lacerna
repeated indignantly the line of Virgil, “Romanos rerum dominos
gentemque togatam,” and gave orders that the aediles should allow
no one to wear that dress in the forum, being anxious “pristinum
vestitum reducere.” (See also Marquardt,
Privatleben, 569; Becker-Göll,
Gallus, 3.220.)
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