Did the Romans Wear Underwear?

Getting into a toga was not simply a matter of holding onto one end of a bedsheet and twirling yourself around in a circle, despite what you might have tried that time you dressed up as a Roman for Halloween. The unfolded toga was a vast sail of a garment, 20 feet from one end to the other, with a set way of wearing it. If you were sufficiently high enough in the Roman pecking order to be able to wear one, then you probably had a slave or two to help you into the thing. Disappearing into the creases and drapes of the properly set toga was an art form that, when you managed to emerge from it, left it fashionably draped over the left arm, leaving the right one free to pluck olives from silver platters, call for more wine, or stab annoying tyrants in the neck with your stylus.

No pockets, either, although with such a voluminous billowing of folds, there was always somewhere in there where you could find room to make a loop, shove it under a belt, and fashion a handy lunchbox in which to secrete sandwiches or honeyed figs whilst you sat at the arena and pretended to be appalled by the violence that nobody was making you stay to watch.

Only male citizens could wear one of the various styles of toga; women wore something similar called a stola. The poet Virgil referred to Romans as the "togaed race" (gens togata), underscoring its significance in defining Roman identity. The white toga, the toga virilis, was given to a man to mark his transition into adulthood. Everyone else dressed in tunics unless you were one of those horrid barbarians or Persians who insisted on cluttering up the place with their alarming trousers.

But the question with us today regards what they wore underneath them. The answer is very simple.

Nothing.

Well, not generally in terms of how we see underwear today. In general, a light tunic was worn under the toga made from linen or lightweight wool, and the length of these could change to become part of the overall dress depending on the status of the wearer. Senators, for example, would wear a tunic with a broad purple stripe (latus clavus) to match the toga.

If it was a particularly chasing morning, or if one was sunning oneself on the wind-scoured fens of a Yorkshire Summer, hunkered against the storms like a limpet, one might wear a type of loincloth called a subligaculum, which came in all manner of various guises, depending on how one 'dressed' or how cold it was.

Women, too, would wear a subligaculum if the need arose, and they might also wear a form of bra called a strophium, simply fashioned by wrapping a cloth tightly around the breasts. For most of the Roman period, a flattened chest for women was considered fashionable.

The strophium and subligaculum were also important parts of a female athlete's attire, designed to help her perform at her best during competition. They were pieces of sporting equipment every bit as vital to enhancing performance as modern running shoes. The rather famous mosaic (pic, top) from the Villa Romana del Casale in Sicily, Italy, which is always rather annoyingly labelled the 'bikini girls' mosaic, does not, as is commonly held, depict girls frolicking around in bikinis (because that's what girls do, right? They frolic), but instead depicts professional athletes in competition, dressed in the attire of their job. The figure in the bottom row, centre, is the winner of the event, being presented with her victory by a judge (the woman on the left in the stola) and attended by those who came second and third, just like an Olympic ceremony today.

All this excitable genital freedom came to an end rather slowly after first the army, and then upper echelons of society began to realise that the barbarians might be on to something and that whilst having a cooling breeze drifting around one's undercarriage might be fine and dandy in the soft Summer lull of a Mediterranean olive grove, having your bits swinging around in the vicinity of an icy German's dagger was a terrible idea.

The toga, that great symbol of Roman identity, didn't go down without a fight. Emperor Theodosius I issued a decree in AD 397, recorded in the Codex Theodosianus (16.10.12), banning the wearing of trousers in the city of Rome. This law targeted the braccae (trousers) and similar garments to reinforce traditional Roman dress codes and differentiate Rome from the "barbarian" influences increasingly present within the empire.

Even so, the lure of warm legs and not being able to see another man's bollocks at the theatre proved too strong and within decades, Senators were wearing them in the presence of the Emperor.

Moral standards might have gone out of the window, but at least they had pockets now.

References

Heather, P. (2005). The Fall of the Roman Empire: A New History of Rome and the Barbarians. Oxford University Press.

Ward-Perkins, B. (2005). The Fall of Rome: And the End of Civilisation. Oxford University Press.

Codex Theodosianus. (AD 438). Book XVI: Concerning Religion. Translation by Pharr, C. (1952). Princeton University Press.

Virgil. (2008). The Aeneid (D. West, Trans.). Penguin Classics.

Boyd, M. (2005). The Roman Toga: Construction and Cultural Implications. Wright State University Libraries.

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