PALLA
PALLA The
palla and its Greek
counterpart, the
πέπλος, were identical in
shape with the
pallium or
ἱμάτιον, being square or rectangular shawls or plaids; but
while the
pallium was worn by both sexes, the
palla was, originally at any rate, confined
to women. It was worn as it came from the loom, generally with the addition
of embroidery, but without any alteration in shape at the hands of tailor or
sempstress. It is usual to divide the modes of wearing such garments into
two great divisions: first, those in which they are loosely thrown round the
body [
AMICTUS]; and, secondly,
those in which they are fastened more closely and securely by means of pins
and brooches [
FIBULA], and at
times a girdle [
ZONA]. To the
latter class is given, with somewhat questionable correctness, the name
indumenta. It is unwise to press this
division too far, and the failure to perceive that the same garment might be
worn either way has led to much needless controversy as to the use of words.
The actual modes of wearing dictated by fashion, or suggested by the needs
of life, were truly endless, as were also the differences in size, material,
and pattern required to suit the wants of woman and girl, matron and maid,
rich and poor, mourner and reveller, in all the varied pursuits and on all
the many occasions which demand a special dress. These manifold uses are
reflected in language, but the difficulty in determining what they were is
increased by the fact that, as fashions changed and life became more
complex, old words became obsolete or changed their meaning, while new words
were applied to garments known formerly by other names. In no case is it so
truly necessary to bear this in mind as in that of the
πέπλος. Its derivation is uncertain, but Studniczka's
conjecture that it is a reduplicated form of the root seen in
palla, pallium, and
pellis, is at once plausible and satisfactory.
In Homer it is used of the chief dress of women, which is also called
ἑανός (
Il.
3.385;
14.178;
21.507) or
εἱανός (
Il. 16.9); but from
their use in other passages these would seem to be merely epithets (
Il. 5.734;
8.385;
18.352,
613;
23.254),
πέπλος being the
distinctive name. It was worn next the skin, for Hera on leaving her bath
put it on first (
Il. 14.178); and Athene,
when she dons the shirt (
χιτὼν) and armour
of Zeus, has first to loose the brooch at her shoulder and let the
πέπλος fall from her (
Il. 5.734). The latter passage shows that the garment was not a
sewn one, like the shirt which the men wore (
χιτών), but one which could be thrown off in an instant
(
κατέχευεν). Everything in fact goes to
show that it was worn in the same way as the Doric shift [
TUNICA], but fastened below the
shoulder just above the breast (cf.
χρυσείῃς
δ᾽ἐνετῇσι κατὰ στῆθος περονᾶτο,
Il. 14.180); mode of wearing which is
admirably illustrated by the figures on many early Greek vases (
v. infra). This method of wearing a dress, as heavy
as one's chief garment must be, has the obvious defect that it throws the
whole weight on the shoulders. This was met by the use of the girdle [
ZONA], which had the further
advantage of keeping the open side of the
πέπλος in some degree closed. The girdle was worn universally,
and is always mentioned when details of the toilet are given. Even such
apparent exceptions as in the case of
[p. 2.315]Athena
(
Il. 5.734;
8.385) do not imply that it was not worn; nor is it necessary to
suppose that when Aphrodite protected Aeneas from the Greek darts with the
πτύγμα of her gown that she necessarily
was without a girdle (
Il. 5.315), for
πτύγμα may well have a different
meaning (
v. infra). In many cases the open side was
no doubt held together by a row of brooches, for it is impossible to assume
that the twelve golden
περόναι that
accompanied the
πέπλος which Antinous
presented to Penelope had any other use (
Od.
18.292). Whether the
πέπλος
still further resembled the Doric shift in being doubled at the top, into a
fold falling over the breast, is not clear, though this is very possibly the
meaning of
πτύγμα in the passage quoted
above.
What little knowledge we have of the fashions of the ladies of Epic times,
and the way in which they wore their gowns most becomingly, is given by the
epithets which the bard applies to fair women. We learn, for instance, that
even though their robes were long and swept the ground (
ἑλκεσιπέπλοι,
Il. 2.442;
10.185), they did not hide the charms of a neat ankle (
εὔσφυρος, Hesiod.
Theogn. 254,
961;
Scut. Herc. 16, 86;--
καλλίσφυρος,
Il. 9.557,
560,
14.319;
Od. 5.333,
11.603, &c.;--and
τανύσφυρος,
Hymn. in Cer. 2, 77) any more than those of their snow-white
arms (
λευκώλενος,
passim). Epithets referring to the nice
adjustment of the girdle are common, but are, with the exception of
εὔζωνος and
καλλίζωνος, very obscure, and those cannot be said to give us
any very definite information.
Βαθύζωνοι
is difficult to explain, though it certainly cannot mean that the Homeric
ladies wore their gowns with thick folds, hanging over a low-girt girdle, in
the style of a later age (best seen in the Parthenon marbles). It very
probably refers to slimness of waist, which was beyond any doubt looked on
as beautiful. (This is possibly the point of the comparison of the waist of
Agamemnon to that of Ares,
Il. 2.479.)
Neither does
βαθύκολπος refer to the
fashion mentioned above, as seen in the Pheidiac statues, but rather
expresses the poet's admiration for a well-moulded bust (
Il. 18.122;
24.315, &c.). The
πέπλος
was sometimes richly embroidered (
Il. 6.294;
Od. 15.107); indeed, to judge by the
frequency of the epithets
ποίκιλος and
παμποίκιλος, it was seldom without this
kind of ornament. The cloth from which it was made seems to have been of the
brightest colours,--saffron (
Ἠὼς κροκόπεπλος,
Il. 8.1
et passim), purple (
Hymn. in
Cer. 182, 360; Hesiod.
Theogn. 406), and flaming red
(if we may trust the description of Aphrodite's robe,
φαεινότερος πυρὸς αὐγῆς,
Hymn. in Ven. 86). The material cannot have been anything
else but wool, for no other stuff would be sufficiently warm for such an
important garment, neither is it likely that linen would be embroidered as
the
πέπλος was. Besides, if we may take the
goddesses Calypso and Circe as examples of the fashions of the time, the
linen mantle (
φᾶρος), which the men of Epic
times wore as an over-garment, was used as a dress girded round the waist,
and probably was also pinned at the shoulders in the same fashion as the
πέπλος (
Od.
5.230,
10.543; cf. Hesiod,
Op. 198). Even if this passage does not allow us to argue
that the women of the time wore the (
φᾶρος,
we have the account of the dancing maidens on the shield of Achilles (
Il. 18.597), who wore linen raiment, though
we are not told in what way.
Besides being a lady's garment, the
πέπλος
appears in the Homeric poems as a covering for chariots (
Il. 5.193) and seats (
Od. 7.96), and also as the purple pall in which the golden urn
that contained the ashes of Hector was wrapped (
Il. 24.795). It was for these reasons and for the richness of
their ornament that the
πέπλοι form such a
large part of the treasures of the household, and that they were acceptable
presents (
Od. 17.292; cf.
Il. 14.178), forming part of Hector's ransom
(
Il. 24.229), and being the choicest
gift that could be offered by the Trojan women to the patron goddess of the
town (
Il. 6.90,
271). [
DONARIA]
Of the changes which Greek dress underwent during the ages which followed
that of the Epic, we can learn but little from literature. We gather from
the occasional protests of the lyric poets and the rigorous measures of the
lawgivers that the influence of Oriental luxury was ever on the increase. It
is not, however, until this luxury had given way to the healthy reaction
which followed the Persian wars that we can get contemporary information
about the costume of the times. Then we find that the
πέπλος was no longer an every-day garment, but the
characteristic robe of hero and god on the stage, or in poetry. It occurs
very frequently in the Attic tragedians, but always with an indefinite
meaning, as indeed we might gather from the frequency with which the plural
and the word
πέπλωμα are used. In
Aeschylus, for instance, we find that not only is a woman's robe, be it
woollen or linen (
Choeph. 25;
Suppl. 111;
Pers. 125), called
πέπλος, but that men's clothing also bears the name. Sophocles
uses the word with equal laxity, while Euripides makes it a word for clothes
in general, using it for the over-not less than the undergarments of both
men and women. In all literature subsequent to the tragedians the word
occurs in the same loose way, with one very important exception; that of the
πέπλος which was each year carried in
the Panathenaic procession on a mast to the Parthenon, where it was solemnly
presented to Athena Parthenos. [ARRHEPHORIA;
PANATHENAEA.] This robe was embroidered with scenes from the
battles between the gods and the giants, in which Athena took a prominent
part (
Eur. Hec. 466-
474, cf.
Ion, 184 ff.). There can
be no doubt whatever that this robe, as is usual in the case of such ancient
cults, went back as regards texture to very early ages, in fact in all
probability prior to the Homeric.
By a fortunate coincidence we are able to date approximately the
disappearance of the
πέπλος at Athens.
Herodotus (
5.87,
88）
tells us that the women of Athens gave up the archaic dress of Greece, which
resembled the Doric, and adopted the Ionian, in order to be able to dispense
with the use of the fibula. The occurrence which brought this change about
was the murder of the only man who returned from the disastrous expedition
against Aegina; and as this took place in the first half of the sixth
century B.C., we have an approximate date for the
change in question, even if we discard the story as a fiction. This rough
date is moreover
[p. 2.316]borne out by the monuments. As to
the monuments: it has so far been impossible to recognise the
πέπλος in any of the objects found at Hissarlik,
Mycenae, Archomenos, and Tiryns; but this does not preclude the possibility
of its having been worn at that age, for the objects are in most cases of a
foreign origin. The fact, however, that no fibulae were among the numerous
ornaments found in the graves at Mycenae would seem to cast a doubt on it.
In the graves of a later date, such as those of the Dipylon and Phaleron at
Athens, and of Assarlik in. Caria, fibulae have been found in large
quantities. Unfortunately the figures on the pottery of this age are too
rude to give us any idea of the costume of the time in which they were used.
It is in fact on the early “black-figured” ware from Athens and
Corinth that we are first able to find a garment answering to the Homeric
description. This is, perhaps, best seen on the figures of the famous
François vase (now in Florence), which represent the women as
wearing an archaic form of the Doric shift, which, in most cases, is their
only garment. It is fastened not above, but below, the shoulder (
κατὰ στῆθος) with a large fibula of archaic
pattern. This is well shown
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Moirae. (From François vase.)
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by the representations of Moirae. Other vases prove that this
garment was open down the side; for instance, a cylix of the vase-painter
Xenocles, showing Polyxena as she flies from Achilles, with the whole leg
displayed. The style of these vases proves that this costume was at least as
old as the seventh century B.C., and it continues
to appear in all the vase-paintings of the “black-figured”
style. When this style was given up and the “red figure” was
adopted, other forms of female garments are seen in the paintings, and this
archaic
πέπλος disappears. If the latest
system of dating is correct, this change of style in vase-ornamentation took
place not later than the middle of the sixth century B.C.; and as this agrees exactly with what Herodotus tells us, we
may accept it as certain that it was then that the
πέπλος, or archaic dress, was given up by the women of
Athens. The statues of the latter half of the sixth century lately
discovered on the Acropolis, and the vase-paintings of the same period, show
clearly enough how the transition took place. The characteristic of all
these statues and figures is that they wear over their linen chiton a
mantle, which is pinned or fastened at one shoulder and passes under the
left arm. It fits closely to the form, and the top is doubled over into a
fold, so that it is nothing but a Doric shift, with the brooch at one
shoulder loosened and the arm shoved out. It is in fact the
πέπλος worn over the linen or Ionic shift, and
without a girdle. The resemblance is made still greater by the fact that it
is generally richly embroidered. However, in this form it has lost its old
name, and was known as
ἱμάτιον [
PALLIUM]. It was noted above
that the
πέπλος of Athena was retained in
the original meaning of the word throughout the whole of antiquity, and this
is strikingly borne out by the artistic tradition seen in the statues of
Athena. In nearly all the oldest representations (e. g. in the metope from
the oldest temple at Selinus and on the Burgon vase) she is clothed in the
garment described in Homer and shown on the vases. The same type was adopted
by Pheidias for his Athene Parthenos, as we see by the numerous
reproductions of it that have come to light. The best
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Statuette of Athene Parthenos.
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of these is the statuette found at the Varvakeion, near Athens, an
accurate Roman copy of the great original. Even in Hellenistic art it is
often retained as the characteristic garb of Athena (e. g. “Minerve au
collier” in the Louvre).
[The view as to the nature of the
πέπλος
taken above is that first propounded by Franz Studniczka in his
Beiträge zur Geschichte der altgriechischen
Tracht, p. 92
seq. (Wien, 1885). It has been
accepted by Helbig in
Das Homerische Epos (Leipzig, 1887),
and by Iwan Müller,
Handbuch der klassischen
Alterthumswissenschaft, IV. (Nordlingen,. 1887).]
Palla, though it denotes a genuinely Roman
garment, is used as the translation of
πέπλυς (
Serv. ad Aen.
1.479), for
peplus and
peplum are artificial forms which were never
naturalised. Used as a translation, it is
par
excellence the garb of heroic personages on the tragic stage (cf. Hor.
A. P. 279, “personae pallaeque repertor
honestae;” Aeschylus; and Milton,
Il Penseroso,
“Tragedy in sceptred pall” ). Closely connected with this
is its use in poetry, where
[p. 2.317]it is worn not only by
gods and goddesses, but by mythical figures in general. In both cases its
meaning is quite as vague as that of
πέπλος
in Attic tragedy (
v. supra). The garment itself was
a rectangular piece of cloth (Isidor. 19.25), which could be worn either as
a dress or a shawl, which at times served the purposes of a curtain (Sen.
de Ira, 22, 2).
The notices in literature give us but little satisfactory information as to
the various ways in which it was worn, owing to the fact that in very many
cases (e. g. in Plautus) it is impossible to say whether a Greek or a Roman
garment is meant. This difficulty has given rise to a controversy which has
raged since the time of Rubenius and Ferrarius, and cannot be said to have
yet come to an end. That the original way of wearing it was practically the
same as that of wearing the Doric shift, may be regarded as certain, for
Varro includes it among the garments
quae indutui
sunt (
L. L. 5.131), and there is good reason to
believe that it took the place of an archaic garment of somewhat the same
shape, but of a smaller size, which survived until classical times in a
ceremonial dress called the
RICINIUM Whether the
palla continued to
be worn as a shift after the introduction of the tunica, must, at the
present state of our knowledge, remain undecided. Marquardt
(
Privatleben, p. 579) maintains that it did, supporting
his view by an appeal to the phrases
tunico-pallium,
tunicae pallium, and
tunica
palliata, and to statues found at Herculaneum. The statues,
however, are Greek, not Roman, while the phrases are only used by late
commentators, and must be referred to
pallium
and not to
palla. Even the
palla picta which was sent by the senate
cum amiculo purpureo (
Liv. 27.4）
does not prove that even at that time it was worn at Rome as an
undergarment, for it is probable that it was a
περονατρὶς of the style then so fashionable at Alexandria.
However this may be, it is as a shawl, covering the
stola, that we hear of it in classical times, when it took
the same place in the dress of women as the
toga did in that of men. When thus worn, it was thrown over the
left shoulder, drawn across the back, brought either over or under the right
shoulder, and tucked round the body. This manner of wearing it is well
described by Apuleius (
Met. 11.3): “Palla nigerrima
splendescens atro nitore quae circumcirca remeans et sub dextrum latus
ad umerum laevum recurrens, umbonis vicem dejecta parte laciniae
multiplici contabulatione dependula ad ultimas oras nodulis fimbriarum
decoriter confluebat.” Worn thus, it was practically identical
with the
ἱμάτιον [
PALLIUM], and was the outdoor dress of all
respectable women (Hor.
Sat. 1.2, 97; Sen.
Troad. 91: cf.
Mart.
11.104,
7, where it is called
pallium), as well as by girls (Tib. 4.2, 11). As a
woman's shawl it seems to have, like the toga, become unfashionable under
the Empire; and we find that, even in the time of Tiberius, Caecina
inveighed against the change (Tertull.
de Pall 4). In the
third century it seems to have gone out of use entirely as a garment, for it
is not mentioned by Ulpian, nor is it in the list given in the edict of
Diocletian. The garments which supplanted it were more especially the
dalmatica and the
colobium.
[
DALMATICA] On the
monuments of all kinds, especially the portrait statues of the Empire, it
frequently appears used as a shawl, wrapped round the body as described
above. Nowhere, however, do we find any support for the assumption that it
was sometimes girded, which some base on the use of
succincta in Hor.
Sat. 1.8, 23;
Verg. A. 6.555 On the monuments the
palla is easily recognised in the mantle worn by Roman women, though, except
in the case of certain portrait statues and reliefs, there must be always a
doubt whether the garment is Greek or not.
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Statue of Livia wearing the Palla.
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The modes of wearing it are very numerous; but in all a third part is thrown
over the left shoulder from behind, and the garment drawn round the body,
covering or leaving free the right arm. Sometimes it is wrapped so tightly
round the body that the end is thrown once more over the left shoulder from
the front. Sometimes it is drawn over the head, to serve either as a veil or
as a protection against the weather. In nearly all cases it is a rectangular
piece of cloth, the dimensions varying very considerably. In some few
instances, however, it resembles the toga in having one of its sides cut in
a circular form.
Palla is also one of the names given to the
χιτὼν ὀρθοστάδιος (
tunica talaris), which with the
χλαμὺς formed the conventional costume of the Citharoedus (cf.
Auctor
ad Herenn. 4.47, 60; Apuleius,
Florid.
2, 15). This had no real connexion with the
palla, being a long sleeved tunic girded high above the waist; it
was also, known as stola and
σύρμα. Statues
and reliefs representing citharoedi (especially Apollo Citharoedus) are clad
in this robe. The best known of these works is the statue of Apollo
Citharoedus in the Vatican. Martial (
1.93）
mentions a
gallica palla, but this is a short
jacket ( “Dimidiasque nates gallica palla tegit” ), which seems
to have been peculiar to Gaul, and is described
[p. 2.318]by
Strabo iv. p.196, (
κέλται)
ἀντὶ δὲ
χιτώνων σχιστοὺς χειριδωτοὺς φέρουσι μεχρὶ αἰδοίων καὶ γλουτῶν.
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Apollo Citharoedus. (From the Vatican.)
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[References to the earlier literature will be found in Marquardt,
Privatleben, p. 576 ff. A criticism of Marquardt is given
in Göll's edition (1882) of Becker's
Gallus, p. 258 ff The best account of palla =
χίτων ὀρθοστάδιος is in Stephani,
Compte-Rendu, 1875, pp. 102-153. For the monuments, see
Müller in Baumeister's
Denkmäler des klassischen
Alterthums, s. v. Toga.]
[
W.C.F.A]
