PA´LLIUM
PA´LLIUM At all periods of Greek life the
characteristic outdoor garment, both of men and women, was a mantle or
shawl, consisting of a rectangular piece of cloth. Such mantles were known
generally as
e)piblh/mata or
περιβλήματα, or more specially as
ἱμάτια. Ἱμάτιον is derived from the root
ϝες or
ἑς (cf.
vestis). The cognate word
εἷμα is used in Homer of clothes in general,
and
ϝέα occurs in the celebrated
inscription from Gortyn in the same sense. The early form
εἱμάτιον is found in an inscription from
Andania (Dittenberger, No. 388, 16), with which
ἑμάτιον in another inscription (Roehl,
I. G.
A 395 a) may be compared. The older sense of the word, meaning
“raiment,” was retained in the plural at all periods of
Greek literature.
Apart from the name, the use of the cloak or shawl is, as has been shown in
the article
PALLA as old as the
art of weaving. The garments of men no less than women were woven on the
domestic loom,
τετυγμένα χερσὶ γυναικῶν,
and all of the same rectangular shape. As a consequence the sole difference
between the dress of men and that of women lay in the size and material, but
not in the shape of their garments. The earliest method of wearing such
clothes is undoubtedly as a cloak fastened round the body with a pin or
clasp and a girdle. This was the dress of women in the Homeric age [
PALLA], but men had already at
that time adopted the linen shirt as an under-garment. Some attempt has of
late been made to gather, from the representations on objects found at
Mycenae and other early sites, the nature of pre-Homeric dress, but the
Greek character of those which are clear enough to give definite information
is too doubtful to allow of even the most general conclusions. Other
attempts to settle the question by an appeal to Egyptian, Assyrian, and
Phoenician monuments have been made, but have, at the present state of our
knowledge, no claim to serious consideration. In Homer, the dress for men is
a mantle, worn over a shirt of linen (
χιτών;
TUNICA),
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Figure of Peleus, from a vase. (Helbig.)
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which is called either
χλαῖνα or
(
φᾶρος. The women, on the other hand,
are clad in the
πέπλος, but the veils which
are worn over this cannot be classed as shawls or mantles. There can be no
doubt that both the
χλαῖνα and
φᾶρος were rectangular pieces of cloth, worn
without being altered in shape by any cutting or sewing.
The
χλαῖνα [
LAENA] was of wool, and had a thick nap (
οὔλη,
Il. 10.134). Those worn by great folk were
dyed red (
Il. loc. cit.;
Od.
14.500,
21.118), or purple (
Od. 4.115,
154;
19.225), but it was the dress
of the poor man no less than the rich, for it was worn by the swineherd
Eumaeus (Od. 14.529) and by the servants of Penelope's suitors (
Od. 15.331). It was fastened round the neck
with a brooch or pin (
Od. 19.226), and, as
the brooch is not always mentioned, it is possible that it may also have
been worn without, simply wrapped round the body. Two forms of it are
mentioned, the first the
ἁπλοΐδες
χλαῖναι (
Il. 24.229), the latter
the
χλαῖνα διπλῆ (
Il. 10.134;
Od.
19.225). There can be little, if any, doubt that the latter form
is the same as the
δίπλαξ, a garment often
mentioned (
Il. 3.126,
22.440;
Od.
19.245); the only difference between the
δίπλαξ and the
χλαῖνα being
that the former is the latter doubled. That the older commentators were
wrong in understanding the difference to be one of pattern is shown by a
passage in the Odyssey (
13.224)), where
Athene, disguised as a youthful shepherd, is described as
[p. 2.319]δίπτυχον ἀμφ᾽ ὤμοισιν ἔχων
εὺεργέα λώπην, which shows that it lay in the folding. It
might be thought perhaps that the
δίπτυχος
λώπη is a different garment, but there is no reason to suppose
that it has any more definite meaning than the later
λῶπος: it is in fact a general word for clothing. The
δίπλαξ may have been larger than the
simple
χλαῖνα: but from the analogy of the
use of shawls it seems reasonable to suppose that the same garment could be
used either way. The larger size would be a simple explanation of the fact
that the
δίπλαξ was occasionally highly
ornamented. Thus Helen (
Il. 3.125):
μέγαν ἱστὸν ὕφαινε
Δίπλακα μαρμαρέην: πολέας δ᾽ἐνέπασσεν ἀέθλους
Τρώων θ᾽ ἱπποδάμων καὶ Ἀχαίων
χαλκιχιτώνων: and Andromache (
Il.
22.440) wove a
δίπλαξ with a
pattern of
θρόνα ποίκιλα, though what
these were it is impossible to determine.
Φᾶρος is a word of disputed origin. Curtius
derives it from
φέρω, but Studniczka,
following Krall, prefers to derive it from the old Egyptian
p（
h）
aar, meaning “a winding sheet,” while Fraenkel proposes
the Semitic root
ἀfar (or
ἁfar), but these are from the nature of the case only conjectures.
Whatever its derivation may be, the word is used in Homer in a general
sense, referring to a textile fabric for women's garments, swaddling
clothes, winding sheets, and as a substitute for sails (and in a more
special sense for a man's garment). These different uses lead us
irresistibly to the conclusion that the material was of linen, not wool; and
this is fully confirmed by the epithets
ἀργύφεος,
λεπτός, νηγάτεος, and
ἐϋπλυνὴς applied to it, all of which are appropriate for
linen, but not for wool.
The description of the
φᾶρος which Penelope
weaves (
Od. 24.147) is also only applicable
to linen. As a man's garment it was worn in place of the
χλαῖνα, by the princes and men of rank, never by
the poor or ordinary folk. It is also worn by both Calypso and Circe, and it
is a moot point whether this implies that ladies ever wore it. The epithet
μέγα would seem to imply that it was
larger than the
χλαῖνα. It does not seem to
have been worn double. It was dyed purple in
Od.
8.221.
Of the way in which the mantle was worn in the ages which followed the
Homeric, literature gives us but little information. The garments, however,
mentioned in Hesiod and the Hymns, are the same as in Homer, and there is
nothing to lead one to suppose that the fashion of wearing them had changed
in any essentials. The sad want of any notices, except the most general, in
the Lyric poems, is much to be lamented, for they lived in an age when great
changes in costume were taking place, as may be learned from many protests
against the growing luxury, and from the repressive enactments of early
codes. It is not indeed until Thucydides that any clear account of the
nature of this change is to be found. He, in his prefatory sketch of Greek
civilisation (1.6), distinguishes broadly three periods: (1) that when
weapons were worn in ordinary life (
τοῦ
σιδηροθορεῖν); (2) that of a leisurely mode of life, when ease
and luxury were possible (
τῆς ἀνειμένης
διαίτης); (3) that of moderation in dress (
τῆς μετρίας ἐσθῆτος). The Athenians, he says, were the
first to give up wearing arms and to adopt the leisurely mode of life, while
it was the influence of the Spartans that brought about the revolt against
luxury and the return to simplicity of the third period,--a reform which
took place in the middle of the fifth century; for he adds that it was not
long since elderly gentlemen in easy circumstances gave up the long linen
shirt (which the Ionian still wore) with the archaic head-dress--a remark
which is borne out by the mockery in the Knights of Aristophanes (425 B.C.)
of the ancient costume (Ar.
Eq. 1323 and 1331). This of
course only applies to the dress of men, but Herodotus (
5.87,
88) informs us that about the
middle of the sixth century the Athenian women gave up the old woollen shift
and adopted the linen one.
In both cases it is very important to remember that the changes described
took place only within a restricted area, some of them in fact only at
Athens. Thus the old
π́πλος of wool was
still worn in the Peloponnese in the sixth century, and that of linen in
Ionia during the fifth; while in the more out-of-the-way parts of Greece, in
Aetolia and Thessaly, the costumes were probably almost the same as in the
times of Homer and Hesiod. All these changes can be traced with the greatest
distinctness in the monuments of the art of the seventh and sixth centuries
B.C.
The most important of these remains, both as being the most numerous and as
giving the best representations, are the vases of the blackfigured and early
red-figured styles. Next to these come statuettes of bronze and terra-cotta,
and reliefs in stone or metal plate. Least important are the statues in the
round; for these, if male, are mostly nude, and, in any case, are of a too
conventional type to be good evidence. In the earliest of these monuments we
find the men clad either in a long shirt with a mantle, with its ends
hanging in front at an equal length from each shoulder, or without shirt and
in a mantle folded double and thrown over the shoulders in the same
symmetrical way. The former is worn by old men generally, and by others in a
time of peace; the latter is the costume of youths and warriors.
There can be little doubt that the long mantle is the
χλαῖνα, most probably worn in the same way as in Homeric
times. The doubled mantle may perhaps be the
δίπλαξ, but this is by no means the way of doubling it. The
Homeric
χλαῖνα was fastened with a brooch
or clasp, but nothing of the kind is shown by the vasepaintings.
[p. 2.320]This, however, does not necessarily disprove its
use, for it is very rare to find
fibula of a
woman's
πέπλος shown, and yet it
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Figures from Frieze of the Parthenon.
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was absolutely indispensable. It is besides difficult to see in
what other way than by a clasp the
χλαῖνα
can have been kept in place in this symmetrical style of wearing it.
The women on vases of this class are clad in the
πέπλος, and wear a veil, which falls from the head
symmetrically over the shoulders, and down the back is practically a shawl.
Both this and the symmetrical mantles of the men are well shown on the
Francois vase at Florence.
On vases rather later than these one finds that the women assume the mantle,
probably owing to the adoption of the linen shift, which made a warm shawl
an absolute necessity. The way in which the change came about is shown by
the characteristic fashion in which the shawl appears fastened with a brooch
or brooches, but only at one shoulder, leaving the other shoulder and arm
free and the breast bare; the mantle being in fact a
πέπλος with the brooch at the closed side loosened. This is
by far the commonest costume on archaic statues and statuettes, in marble,
terra-cotta, and bronze from Rhodes, Athens, Magna Graecia, Etruria, and in
fact all the In places where objects of archaic art are found. It is
peculiarly well-suited for the formal elegance of the period, the Ionic
shift of linen showing at the bared breast and shoulder, in contrast with
the folds of the woollen shawl, which hangs diagonally down in artificially
arranged plaits. It is well seen in many of the statues discovered on the
Acropolis in 1886 (Rhomaidis-Cavvadias,
Les Musées
d'Athènes), on the Athene of the Aeginetan East
Pediment, and in countless vase-paintings. (Cf. Furtwängler in
Roscher's
Lexicon of Mythology, s. v Aphrodite.) In
Graeco-Roman times, this costume is important, because adopted as an archaic
trait by the archaistic artists of that time. Instances of its use in this
way are very numerous: the Artemis from Pompeii (cf. Studnizcka, in
Bulletino del Inst. 1888), the Dresden Pallas, and the
Minerva from Herculaneum. It is generally known as the “Spes”
costume, early archaeologists having wrongly imagined that it was as
peculiar to Roman statues of that goddess.
Scarcely less characteristic of archaic and archaistic art is the symmetrical
wearing of the
χλαῖνα. This is seen on the
Hermes Kriophoros of Wilton House, Oinomaos in the East Pediment from
Olympia, on the figures of Athene on late Panathenaic vases, and of Poseidon
on the various coins. It is also a common motive on the flying statues, and
reliefs of the Hellenistic time, and is usually wrongly explained as being a
χλαμύς.
Early in the sixth, if not in the seventh century B.C., the manner of wearing the cloak which prevailed in classical
times begins to appear in works of art. In it the symmetrical fashion, in
which the ends are thrown over the shoulders, has been given up, and the
cloak is wrapped round the body, being thrown over the left shoulder across
the back, and under or right arm, according to the desire of the wearer to
cover or keep his arm free. At first this fashion was confined to men, but
by the fifth century it had become almost universal for women. The cloak
thus worn is generally own as the
ἱμάτιον:
but, as will be shown further on, this is but a very special use of the
term, the sole difference between cloaks wrapped round the body in this
fashion and cloaks worn in other fashions (
e.g the
τρίβων) being the immaterial one of
size.
At this period, as indeed at every other, such a
ἱμάτιον was the indispensable outdoor dress of the Greek;
and to appear without it in one's under-garment was indecent, and anyone so
dressed was spoken of as naked (
γυμνός). In
primitive times the cloak had probably been the sole garment of both sexes,
and it remained so among some of the Dorians and the poorer working classes
down to the close of Greek history. In Homer's time men of quality had
already adopted a shirt (
χιτών), and we
have seen that women followed their example somewhere in the sixth century.
By the fifth century, however, it had become so much the exception to wear a
cloak without an undergarment that to do so (to be
ἀχίτων ἐν ἱματίῳ,
Diod. 11.26) was a sign either of great poverty
or determined asceticism. This of course does not apply to warriors or
hunters, who wore the old garb, even to late times.
In Athens much importance was attached to the nice adjustment and elegant
wearing of the
ἱμάτιον. Indeed the way in
which it was worn was regarded as an infallible guide to the character of
its owner. To leave the left shoulder free instead of the right was a true
sign of a barbarian, as can be seen from the horror with which Poseidon in
Aristophanes'
Birds (1567) greets the outlandish god
Triballos, who had put it on
ἐπ᾽ ἀριστερα,
instead of
ἐπὶ δέξια. Even Plato, in the
Theaetetus (p. 175), speaks of one who is not a gentleman
as
ἀναβάλλεσθαι οὐκ ἐπισταμένου ἐπὶ δεξιὰ
ἐλευθέρως. The length it ought to be worn was considered a
point of great nicety; and though Quintilian (11.3, 143) says that it was
customary in antiquity to wear the cloak long enough to touch one's boots,
vet Alcibades offended many by wearing it down to his ankles (
Plut. Alc. 1; cf. Demosth.
F. L.
p. 442.314):. Theophrastus decides that it must come down low as the knees.
In the time of the early Attic orators it was apparently the custom to keep
the right hand wrapped in the folds of the
ἱμάτιον when speaking, an attitude which is seen in the
well-known statue of Sophocles. Aeschines says (
c. Timarch.
§ 27) that the custom had disappeared in his time; Cleon
[p. 2.321]being, according to Plutarch (
Nicias), the first to disregard it.
We must beware of assuming that the
ἱμάτιον
was a distinct garment, differing specifically from the
χλαῖνα and other forms of cloak. The word
originally was perfectly general, denoting clothes of all kinds; and even
when its meaning grew more restricted in classical times, it only meant a
cloak or over-garment as opposed to the shirt or under-garment. Fashion,
however, only recognised one peculiar mode of wearing it as worthy of a
gentleman, and this particular mode has in the usage of modern times usurped
the name.
Among the specific garments worn at this time, the
χλαῖνα [
LAENA] is
the most important. It was still made of thick woollen stuff (Arist.
αϝ. 493), and was used as a winter cloak
(
ἱμάτιον χειμέρινον, Hesych.) or as a
blanket, though it was finer than the
σισύρα, which was also used for this purpose (Ar.
Vespae, 1138;
Ranae,
1459). It is frequently mentioned and its compounds are numerous.
The
χλανὶς was a much finer garment and of
Milesian wool; it was worn in hot weather by men, at other times by ladies,
old men (Arist.
Eccl. 848), and effeminate persons. It is
first mentioned by Simonides, but
χλάνδια
(=
χλανίδια, which are among the festival
robes in Arist.
Lys. 1188) and
χλάνισκα are among the robes in the Komos of the Heraeum at
Samos (cf. C. Curtius,
Inschriften und Studien zur Geschichte von
Samos).
The
λῃδάριον was also a summer garment, as
we see from Arist.
Av. 715, where the swallow is said to
announce
ὅτε χρὴ χλαῖναν πελεῖν καὶ λῃδάριον
πρίασθαι. The word is a diminutive of
λῇδος (cf.
λῄδιον in an
Attic inscription,
C. I. 155, 45).
The
ξυστὶς was also a garment of fine
quality worn by women of quality at festivals (Arist.
Lys
1189), which would have been intended rather to complete a gorgeous costume
than to form an essential part of it. In Theocr. 2.74, however, it is an
ordinary over-garment. It was also worn by men (Arist.
Nub.
70), especially on state occasions, and seems to have been used on the stage
for the attire of heroic personages.
The
ἐφεστρὶς was somewhat similar to the
ξνστίς, and also worn by both men and
women. In
Xen. Symp. 4, 38, it
has the epithet
παχεῖα, from which it would
appear that it was not so light as the
ξυστίς.
The
ἐφαπτίς, according to the Scholiast on
Clemens Alexandrinus (4.128, ed. Klotz), is a more costly form of the
χλαῖνα, was used by hunters and
warriors, and is very probably the garment which is often seen wrapped round
a hunter's arm. Polybius uses it (quoted by
Ath.
194f) as a translation of the Latin
sagum.
The
ἀμπέχονον (Theocr. 15.39),
ἀμπεχόνη, and
ἀμπεχόνιον do not seem to refer to any special form of
ἐπίβλημα or mantle, but to be quite
general. The same is the case with
λώπη and
λῶπος.
Pollux (7.47) divides
χλαῖναι into
ἁπληγίδες and
διπληγίδες (cf.
C. I. Afr. 1.405). The varieties
of the
ἱμάτιον hitherto described come
under the former head, while under the latter are grouped varieties in which
the mantle was worn folded double and pinned by a clasp or brooch round the
neck. Such forms were the natural dress of poor folk and those who led
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Statue of Sophocles, in the Lateran.
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an active life. Lycurgus (
c. Leocr. § 40)
tells how, in the panic which followed Chaeronea, aged citizens went about
with their mantles doubled and pinned
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Lady in outdoor dress. (From a terra-cotta in the British
Museum.)
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（
διπλὰ τὰ ἱμάτια ἐμπεπορπημένους). For
the
TRIBON see that article.
It is only necessary to mention in this place that the
τρίβων, though not regarded strictly as a
ἱμάτιον (inasmuch as it was not an
over-garment, but a sole garment, supplying the place of
χίτων and
ἱμάτιον), yet belongs in form to the cloak and not to the
shirt.
The dress of the common people was probably not very different from this, but
often consisted of skins or of the
ἐξωμίς.
The
ἐξωμὶς is a hybrid garment, at once
cloak and shirt (
χιτὼν ὁμοῦ καὶ
ἱμάτιον, Hesych.), worn by men in much the same way as the Doric
shift or
πέπλος [
TUNICA] was by women, only being much shorter,
barely reaching to the knees. The right arm, however,
[p. 2.322]was left free by loosing the clasp at the shoulder. On this
account it has been generally described as a
χιτὼν
ἑτερομάσχαλος, in contrast to the ordinary
χιτών, which was
ἀμφιμάσχαλος. It was essentially the garb of servants
(
σχῆμα οἰκετῶν: cf. Arist.
Vesp. 444), whereas the
χιτὼν
ἀμφιμάσχαλος was the garb of freemen (
σχῆμα ἐλευθερῶν, Poll. 7.47). An immense number of
εξ̓ωμίδες were exported from Megara
(cf. Blümner,
Gewerbliche Thätigkeit, p.
71, n. 4). In art the
ἐξωμὶς is, after the
fourth century, the characteristic garb of Odysseus, Hephaestos, and
Daedalus, and at all periods is peculiar to handicraftsmen, labourers,
seafaring folk, and beggars. In such cases the
πῖλοςis generally worn with it. [
EXOMIS]
Other names for mantles denote colour and texture, but apparently no
characteristic difference in the manner of wearing. The
κροκωτὸς is a good instance of this; it is an
over-garment worn exclusively by women (Arist.
Thesm. 253;
Eccles. 1332); and when it is adopted by men, as by
Agathon in the Frogs (Arist.
Ran. ), a joke is always
intended. The
βατραχίς, a frogcoloured
cloak, was on the contrary a man's garment.
Of the cloaks and shawls worn in the Hellenistic age but little that is
definite can be said, for, though the material is not scant, no writer of
authority has treated of the subject. The old Greek
χλαῖνα, ἐξωμίς, τρίβων, and
χλαμὺς still survived, doubtless in much the same forms as
before, but they were no longer fashionable, except perhaps with philosophic
Romans, who were more Greek than the Greeks themselves. The cosmopolitan
spirit of the age had led to the adoption of many foreign garments; and
where Roman dress was not worn, Oriental was to be found. The Greeks had,
even in the time of Aristophanes, a liking, for Persian dress, but it was
not until the third century that garments like the Lydian
μανδύη or the
καπυρὶς
ἀκταῖα or
σαραπὶς of Persia
were adopted wholesale from the East, and nationalised all over the Greek
world. With the exception of the terra-cottas and a few reliefs which
unfortunately have, as yet, not been systematically studied, the art of this
age gives only the faintest idea of the costume actually worn. In sculpture
the love of the nude figure was continually growing, and, with it, the
drapery became more and more conventional. On the vases, on the other hand,
the costumes, though varied and elaborate, are only too evidently theatrical
or idealised. Next to the terra-cottas, which are a perfect mine for
garments of every conceivable size and shape, worn in the most diversified
ways, the Pompeian wall-paintings are perhaps the most useful guides, though
the information they give is rather as to the gaudy colours which were
regarded as tasteful, than the actual shape of the dresses. In Rome itself
the Greek mantle never became naturalised, though, under the name
pallium, it was well known to them as the
distinctive mark of a Greek. Indeed
palliatus
is used as meaning Greek, in opposition to
togatus, meaning Roman, not only in the well-known division of
comedies into
palliatae and
togatae, but apparently in ordinary speech. Conservative
Romans regarded it as beneath their dignity to wear a
pallium, and we find it cast up as a reproach against Scipio
Africanus (
Liv. 29.19) and Rabirius (
Cic. pro Rab. 9, 25) that
they did so. Cicero speaks with indignation of Verres (
in
Verrem, 5.33, 86), “stetit soleatus praetor populi
Romani pallio purpureo tunica talari,” and even under the Empire
Germanicus offended some people by adopting a “par Graecis
amictus” (
Tac. Ann. 2.59).
Palliolum is frequently used as an equivalent
for
πρίβων or
ἐξωμίς, but is also found in the more general sense.
(See Hermann--Blümner,
Lehrbuch Pt. iii.; Iwan
Müller,
Handbuch, 1887, Pt. iv. p. 396
seq.; Baumeister,
Denkmäler,
s. v
Himation; and for Homeric and early history of subject,
Studniczka,
Beiträge zur Geschichte der altgriechischen
Tracht, Vienna, 1886, the main results of which have been
incorporated by W. Helbig in the 2nd edition of
Das homerische
Epos, 1887.)
[
W.C.F.A]
