Who Is The Girl In That Toga?

For years, I had been hearing, usually as a throw-away line, the repeated claim that prostitutes in ancient Rome wore the toga. Implied (though not always stated) in this claim was the idea that they were the only female toga wearers.

Recently, I started thinking more seriously about this idea. I wondered what the support for it was, and whether it is true. In addition, I started to wonder why prostitutes were wearing the toga, and how the garment that represented a man's pride in his Roman citizenship somehow became transmogrified into a woman's badge of shame.

So I began attempting to gather information on both issues. First, I sought to confirm (or refute) the main point that prostitutes wore the toga. I started checking out websites first (because that was easiest). It soon became clear that most of them were simply repeating what they had heard from other third (or fourth or fifth) hand sources, without even providing any references for potential documentation, let alone any rationale. However, there are a few that are worth at least a brief examination.

Wikipedia's article on prostitution in ancient Rome says simply, "Female prostitutes were the only Roman women who wore the toga, a formal garment otherwise only male citizens were permitted to wear. This crossing of gender boundaries has been interpreted variously. Expensive courtesans wore gaudy garments of see-through silk." At the end of this passage is a citation to the following source:

Catharine Edwards, "Unspeakable Professions: Public Performance and Prostitution in Ancient Rome," in Roman Sexualities (Princeton University Press, 1997), p. 81.

There is, interestingly, no reference to prostitutes in Wikipedia's essay on the toga itself. That article refers, albeit somewhat vaguely, to a fact I ultimately confirmed elsewhere; namely, that the toga was originally worn by male and female Romans alike. The web page on Roman costume created by Barbara McManus of the College of New Rochelle states this fact, but adds an odd conclusion that merely whetted my curiosity:

Although women had apparently worn togas in the early years of Rome, by the middle of the Republican era the only women who wore togas were common prostitutes. Unlike men, therefore, women had an item of clothing that symbolized lack of (or loss of) respectability—the toga. While the toga was a mark of honor for a man, it was a mark of disgrace for a woman. Prostitutes of the lowest class, the street-walker variety, were compelled to wear a plain toga made of coarse wool to announce their profession, and there is some evidence that women convicted of adultery might have been forced to wear “the prostitute's toga” as a badge of shame.

Another web article claims: "In the early republic, clothing for women was simple and indistinguishable from that of men. Both sexes initially wore plain woollen togas. This changed by the middle of the republic when distinctions in the clothing became clearer. The toga became an almost exclusively male garment. The only women who were allowed to wear it were prostitutes who had to wear rough woollen togas in public to advertise their trade."

This site, an on-line version which appears to be an online version of William Smith's A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities, (John Murray, London, 1875), avers that "The Stola was the characteristic dress of the Roman matrons as the toga was of the Roman men (Cic. Phil. II.18). Hence the meretrices were not allowed to wear it, but only a dark-coloured toga (Tibull. IV.10.3; Mart. I.36.8)". Clearly, then, there are references in classical literature to the wearing of some kind of toga by prostitutes.  Professor Lillian May Wilson, in her landmark work The Roman Toga (originally published by Johns Hopkins Press, 1924), confirms this:

According to literary references, the toga in very early times was also worn by women as well as by men, and we shall see that the wearing of it by young girls was continued at least until about the beginning of the imperial period. But in later times the plain inference from literary passages is that the wearing of it was discontinued by women excepting those of the disreputable sort." (p. 27) (emphasis supplied).

Professor Wilson cites Juvenal (II, 68) and Martial (X, 52) for the statement I have quoted above. Unfortunately, I am no Latin scholar, and Google Translate makes a terrible hash of the relevant passages from Martial--so terrible that I cannot make anything useful enough of them to be worth quoting here.

In any event, there appears to be grounds in Roman literature for believing that all Romans once wore the toga, and when wearing the toga ceased to be customary for women, it somehow remained the custom to compel loose women to wear it.  That makes no sense to me. Why should a garment that was once worn by both sexes but ultimately was identified with men be associated with disgrace when worn by a woman? More precisely, why should the garment that symbolized Roman citizenship when worn by a man be forced upon a woman as a symbol of sexual disgrace?

Anne Duncan, in an essay published in Prostitutes and Courtesans in the Ancient World (University of Wisconsin Press, February 6, 2006), suggests that the symbolism involved with prostitutes wearing the toga may relate to the fact that prostitutes, unlike decent women, were expected to act for themselves in the world--like men--and that this was the reason they continued to wear the toga after decent women had ceased to do so:

But why the toga, of all garments? It was not only because it signified that the prostitute had lusts more appropriate to a man.  Wearing the toga, the ultimate signifier of Roman citizen manhood, marked out the female prostitute as a public figure, while working both to naturalize and to privilege the customary garment of respectable Roman women, the palla. ... Respectable Roman women, while apparently not as secluded as women were (at least ideally) in classical Athens, did not go out in public unattended, and they did not conduct business in the public eye alone.  The female prostitute, on the other hand, made her living in the streets, or sitting in front of a brothel, or, if she was very unfortunate, in places like graveyards; she worked in the public eye, and she worked alone. She acted, in this way, more like a citizen man, out on business in the Forum, than a woman, tending to stay at home, or go out accompanied by servants/male guardians. (p. 270)

I wonder if there wasn't a slightly different reason why prostitutes retained the toga in republican/early imperial Rome. In the ancient world, prostitutes often were a kind of priestess. In Rome, citizen men also performed certain priestly functions for their households, typically while togated. Perhaps the Roman prostitute once had a similar function, which she discharged while wearing the toga, the ultimate Roman garment, and her association with the garment remained after her religious or ceremonial function had long since been discarded.

In my search, I learned that there is a book-length study of Roman prostitution: Prostitution, Sexuality, and the Law In Ancient Rome, by Thomas A. J.McGinn (Oxford University Press, Jan. 30, 2003).  I intend to track down a copy of this book (by interlibrary loan, if all else fails), and see how Professor McGinn addresses the subject.  (The Google Books preview I link to above, sadly, omits most of the discussion of the wearing of togas by prostitutes.)  Hopefully, Professor McGinn will have mustered sufficient evidence to permit at least some reasonable inferences as to the answer to my question, as well as some more detail about what a prostitute's toga looked like.

EDIT:  (March 16, 2012)  I just put in a request to obtain a copy of McGinn's book by interlibrary loan.  Once I obtain and read it, I'll see where I go with this.  Possibly his bibliography will suggest a lead, or there'll be something in the text I don't know of yet that will give me a clue where to go next.  Thanks for all the wonderful comments so far!