New Ancient Rome Channel

The video embedded in this post is from a newish YouTube channel called Imperium Romanum. The presenters are based in the Netherlands, and plan to increase their production of videos in both quantity and quality and to cover all aspects of ancient Rome, including clothing and food.   

Above, I have chosen to show you a short documentary-style video about the clothing of ancient Roman soldiers and gives a good overview of the factors that drove Roman military clothing design.  Check the channel out if you have any interest in ancient Rome; the videos are short and fun to watch and contain good information.

Oldest Surviving Roman Body Armor

A recent article from Archaeology in Europe News reports on the find of a nearly complete set of Roman body armor found in the Teutoberg Forest in Germany.  This forest was the site of a disastrous Roman loss to German forces in 9 CE.  Archaeology In Europe News links to the original article from The History Blog, which can be viewed, complete with pictures, and read here.

The armor in question is of the type called a lorica segmentata--a set of largish iron plates shaped to fit around the body and laced together.  The armor was found by metal detector scan during an excavation in the summer of 2018.  Unsure exactly what the item was and knowing only that it contained a lot of metal, the entire block of soil containing the find was dug up whole and shipped to the Münster Osnabrück International Airport, which was the only nearby facility with an X-ray machine large enough to fit the soil block into.  The resulting X-ray revealed only a series of nails, which likely fastened a wooden crate large enough to hold the metal object, but did not penetrate the soil block.  The find was transferred to the Fraunhofer Institute in Fürth, which has a large CT scanner, and only after the CT scan did it become clear what the find actually was, and how it had to be excavated. 

The armor had collapsed and was crushed by the weight of the soil pressing upon it for two millennia. Despite that fact, and despite the extreme corrosion of the metal itself, the armor is surprisingly well preserved, complete with "hinges, buckles, bronze bosses and even extremely rare surviving pieces of the leather ties."  Plates from the shoulder and chest that were not in the original soil block have also been recovered.  There were no arm plates, which has been attributed to the design of this early piece.  Restoration of the armor is currently ongoing.

The find also contains an iron collar connected to a pair of handcuffs.  This item, also called in modern times a shrew's fiddle or a neck violin, was used on slaves and other captives; it indicates that the legionary who wore the armor had been captured, probably after the Teutoberg Forest battle.  

I love learning about finds like this, because it confirms that we have not learned all there is to know about the past. Archaeology continually uncovers artifacts like this one, which extend our knowledge of history.

Saalberg Shoe, Redux

A few months ago, I wrote a short post about a Roman leather shoe featured at the Saalburg Museum with a striking, openwork design. 

Today, through Instagram, I found the webpage of a leatherworker who has made a striking recreation of that shoe in red and yellow. Go and see it!  It's marvelous.

Style is Eternal

Today I found an article on the blog My Modern Met featuring an article about an ancient Roman shoe that is on display at the Saalburg, a museum and archaeological park located at the Saalburg Pass in the Taunus Mountains, near the site of an ancient fort built by the Romans.

The shoe itself is a delight, full of lacey punchwork.  It ties on across the top of the foot, near the point where the foot would join the leg, and has a large round opening on the top of the instep.  The photograph featured with the article was originally posted by u/Mictlantecuhtli on Reddit. The article suggests that its thick sole and fancy design indicate that it was a shoe made to be worn outside the home by a woman.  I wonder what the original color of the shoe was.

Enjoy the picture while I get back on track with my current costuming projects!

A Viking Age Weaving Sword

Anyone who has spent time researching the history of clothing and textile production will know that weavers In the early Middle Ages used an object, called a weaving sword, in the weaving process.  A weaving sword is a roughly sword-shaped object made from wood or bone, that was used to beat each row of the weaving so that it would be solidly in place.  It typically had a point that could be used for moving threads to make particular weaving patterns.  

Because weaving swords were made from wood or bone, few of them survive, and the surviving ones are rarely complete.  

But recently, a completely intact wooden weaving sword was found in the city of Cork, in south-western Ireland.  An article about the find, complete with pictures, can be read on the Archaeology News Network site, here.

The weaving sword was made from yew and is about 30 cm (a little under one foot) long, and carved with Viking motifs that indicate that it was made in the late 11th century.  A wooden thread-winder was also found at the site.  The dig that uncovered those items took place on the site of a brewery, where construction is planned.  It is now unclear when construction will proceed on the site.

This weaving sword is interesting because it has a "blade" shaped rather like a period knife blade, with a clip point.   I might wonder if it was actually a practice weapon or even an older child's toy, except for the thread winder found with it.

Thanks to Carolyn Priest-Dorman, from whom I learned about the find.

The Hammerum Dress--the Video

About a year ago, after I started reading the volume of papers presented about early Northern European historical costume as NESAT XI, I wrote a post about a Roman age grave found in Hammerum, Denmark, and the nearly intact wool garments of the young woman who had been buried there. 

Tonight, I discovered that a number of people from Museum Midtjylland (museummidtjylland.dk) and Sagnlandet Lejre (sagnlandet.dk) in Denmark have collaborated in making a reproduction of the Hammerum dress, starting with shearing the sheep and spinning the wool into thread to weave the cloth.  They have also made an approximately eight-minute video depicting the entire process, which can be seen below.

The one thing I wondered after watching the video is how well the actual measurements of the reproduction dress made correspond to the Hammerum find.  That made me look at part of the video again, and consult the NESAT XI article on the find.

The dress finally produced comes just to the knees of the young woman modeling it.  The NESAT article states that the surviving dress is 95 cm long and 145 cm in circumference, and that the estimated height of its wearer is 155 cm.

155 cm is about 61 inches--five feet, one inch tall.  That's about how tall I am.  95 cm is approximately 37 inches long.  My brown linen-lined apron dress is about the same length, but it fastens with straps that suspend it so that the top edge starts just above my breasts.  If I pinned that dress at my shoulders like the dress in the video, the way the Hammerum dress is believed to have been worn, it probably would fall about to my knees--just as shown in the video.   The reproduction dress looks heavy, misproportioned and awkward, but that may be because the dress was originally sewn and not pinned at the shoulders, or was meant to be worn unbelted, or for other reasons.  Or maybe it simply would have looked awkward to us if we could somehow have met the occupant of the Hammerum grave while she was alive and wearing her dress.  The NESAT article makes it clear that the original dress was woven in a balanced 2/2 twill with a thread count "comparable with the lowest range of thread counts recorded in other graves from this period."*

The video does an excellent job of conveying the amount of work that has to be done in order to spin thread, dye it, weave it, and fashion it into clothing, using the spinning and weaving technologies available in third century CE Denmark.  It has some particularly nice views of changing the shed on a warp-weighted loom as well as of the weaving process.  I commend it to the attention of anyone seeking a better idea of how much effort even the simplest clothing once took to make from scratch.  

Hammerum Girl from Ole Malling on Vimeo.

EDIT:  (2/19/2016) Modified to more exactly reflect what I concluded about the accuracy of the reproduction dress after reviewing the NESAT XI article.


* Mannering, Ulla and Knudsen, Lise Raeder. Hammerum: The Find of the Century, p. 160, in Banck-Burgess & Nübold, Carla, eds. NESAT XI. Verlag Marie Liedorf GmbH (2013).

Roman Buttons

Almost half a lifetime ago, I made myself a Roman tunic to wear as part of a costume for a live-action roleplaying game.  It was meant to be the kind of tunic where the top edge is fastened at intervals, so that bits of skin peep out between the edges.   Because I had no idea how such tunics were actually fastened, I simply sewed the edges together at intervals, and sewed shank buttons on top of the sewed portions for decoration.  

Pretty crude, right?  That's what I thought, and for at least the past 5 years I've been planning to remake the tunic to be more historically accurate.

A few weeks ago, however, I found (or, rather, re-found) a research article which suggests that my tunic may not have been quite as inaccurate as I'd thought.

The article is by Margarita Gleba and a colleague and it's available for free on Academia.edu here. To my embarassment, the article had appeared in NESAT IX (of which I own a copy, and had read), and I had forgotten it.  Here's the full citation:

Gleba, M., and J. MacIntosh Turfa. “Digging for Archaeological Textiles in Museums: ‘New’ Finds in the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology,” in Archäologische Textilfunde—Archaeological Textiles. Proceedings of the 9th North European Symposium for Archaeological Textiles, 18–21 May, 2005, edited by A. Rast-Eicher and R. Windler, pp. 35-40. Näfels: Ragotti & Arioli Print, 2007.

The article is about turning up textile finds that have gotten buried in museum collections and, therefore, gone ignored.  One of the more interesting finds discussed in Ms. Gleba and Ms. Turfa's article is a set of 44 bronze domed objects, so unmistakably shank buttons that they are described that way in the article.  Thirty-seven (37) of them still have threads in the hole in the shank. Originally, the buttons were found among the personal effects of a young woman whose cremated remains were excavated in Vulci and were brought to Philadelphia in the late 19th century; the tomb from which the items came has been dated to c. 680 BCE.   The buttons are tiny; 5-7 mm in diameter and about 2 mm high. The thread is mineralized (i.e., the original fiber content has been replaced by mineral deposits from the metal), but microscopy indicates that the fiber originally was linen.  In addition, the article  mentions two other tomb finds in the University Museum's possession that included very similar buttons. Ms. Gleba and Ms. Turfa suggest that the buttons may have been used as decoration on clothing, particularly leather, given the thickness of the thread.

I'm not suggesting that the buttons rediscovered at the University Museum were used to fasten a tunic--at 5 to 7 mm, they are too small for such use. However, the fact that these buttons have such a modern form shows that the Romans knew how to make such items, and suggests that they might have made larger ones in the same shape for tunics or other garments.  That's why it's important to remember that absence of evidence is not proof of absence, and subsequent discoveries may show that some clothing technologies believed not to be available in a particular period were actually in use.

My Roman Necklace

The complete parure.

The completed necklace.

Before life creeps up and mugs me again, I figured I'd make and share some photographs of my Roman necklace. The photograph showing the necklace in wear was taken by my wonderful husband.  

Because it's so shiny, it's hard to photograph the necklace in such a way as to give a good idea of its true color--the pearls are more pink than golden in color, contrary to what you see in the picture on the top right.  The photograph on the left of the post shows the necklace being worn with the earrings I'd previously made, using the same type of glass pearls.

Since I finished the necklace, I've been looking more closely at actual period necklaces of this type, and they do a better job of closing each loop; on some, the loops look as though the end of the wire is wrapped around the shaft, or at least is tucked inside the bead hole.  On the other hand, a piece of my necklace fell off while I was laying it out for the photograph, and I was able to correct the problem simply by squeezing the loop a bit tighter after reattaching the errant piece.

For comparison -- Necklace, Roman or Byzantine
c. 400 CE.  Photo:  Kunstpedia Foundation (artwis.com)

Unfortunately, when I was donning them for the photographs, the earwire on one of the earrings broke!  I actually put both earrings on for the photo session (though you can't see the broken one in the final photograph) but it would not stay put in normal wear; I'm going to have to re-make one of the earrings. Fortunately, the re-make will only require buying more earwires and finding the rest of my crimp rings, though it's annoying to have to remake the earring at all.

The necklace shown on the artwis.com site dates to 400 C.E., but I've found necklaces of a similar design from about 100 C.E. onward.  It's an easy to make and wear style, and could even be worn with modern fashions.  If I end up making ancient Roman clothes, I will probably make a few more of these necklaces with beads of different colors.

EDIT:  (1/7/2014)  One commenter asked me how fake pearls were made in ancient Rome.  I didn't have time to do serious research on the subject, but I found several references on the Internet repeating the claim that the ancient Romans made fake pearls by coating glass beads with silver, and then adding a coating of glass on top of the silver. I'm not sure how effective this would have been or what the source of the claim was, though I'll continue trying to find out.  The first place I found it reported on the Internet was here: http://big-bead-little-bead.blogspot.com/2011/07/history-man-made-faux-pearls.html

EDIT:  (1/10/2014)  I have re-made my broken earring; now I have the full set again.

The Roman Beaded Chain Necklace--Complete!

Happy New Year, everyone!  This post, my first post of 2015, will to document my completion of the last challenge I completed for the Historical Sew Fortnightly of 2014. 

The final challenge of the Historical Sew Fortnightly for 2014 was "All that Glitters".  The objective was to make a historical costume item that was shiny or glittery.  I had decided long ago to make an ancient Roman style rose gold pearl beaded chain necklace, to match the Roman earrings I had made for the "Heads and Toes" challenge.

Despite the fact that the jump rings I bought for the necklace are of a finer gauge than the wire I used for the rest of the necklace and my difficulties in making "tight little loops" of wire as Stephens's video directs, I think the necklace turned out rather well.   To my surprise, I needed fewer beads than I feared that I would need to make the necklace as long as I wanted it to be; the combination of jump ring connectors and wire links for each bead extends the length easily without requiring many beads. Perhaps that is why the Romans used this technique--it allowed the jeweler to use fewer precious stone beads (such as emeralds) to make a full necklace, and if the necklace broke, you were unlikely to lose more than one bead, if any.  

I'll post photographs sometime this weekend, but for now I want to record the basic statistics.

The Challenge:  #24--All That Glitters

Fabric:  None involved, since this item was made from Swarowski glass pearls, rose gold plated silver beads, rose gold filled  (I can't recall now if the wire is gold filled or plated); brass wire, and rose gold jump rings.    

Pattern:   I followed Janet Stephens' tutorial video on how to make a Roman beaded chain necklace. 

Year:   Roughly first century C.E. 

Notions:  Eight rose-gold plated silver beads, 8mm; eight rose-gold Swarowski pearls, 12 mm; 18 gauge rose gold filled brass wire in a surprisingly tiny quantity; about 30 rose gold wire jump rings in 20 gauge wire; and a pre-made rose gold wire clasp (gauge unknown, but thicker than 18 gauge).

How historically accurate is it?   The basic design is period.  The Romans used real pearls and metal beads in their jewelry, and so far as I know glass pearls also are period.  The main differences are that I used pre-made jump rings and a pre-made clasp.  So I'd say 90%.

Hours to complete: About an hour and a half, not counting the time it took me to select all the materials and watch Janet Stephens's video a few times.

First worn:  Only to confirm that the necklace was the right length.  I will post photographs of the necklace in wear soon.

Total cost:  About $40.00 (including the round-nosed pliers I bought for the project; not including the beads I originally bought and ultimately rejected).  Now that I know how economical this type of design is and have some wire and jump rings left, I could make another such necklace much more cheaply.

Another pair of Roman earrings to make

A day or so ago, I discovered the new webpage of Laura Storey, an SCA member who has done some good research, and prepared some excellent, clear articles, on ancient Roman clothing, as well as other SCA-appropriate subjects.

I had read a number of Laura's articles and handouts before, but the page included an interesting tidbit that was new to me; a link to a photographic tutorial she prepared on how to make your own version of a pair of earrings from Oplontis, which are in the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, California.  Oplontis was a town located near Pompeii in the first century CE   Like Pompeii, Oplontis was buried by the Mount Vesuvius eruption that simultaneously took many lives but also preserved some choice items of Roman material culture for study by archaeologists.

Laura's tutorial clearly shows that a pair of earrings with pearls or beads dangling from little posts, called crotalia, can easily be made with suitable beads and 22-gauge wire. Perhaps I'll make a pair after I complete my Roman necklace project.

The Clothing of Roman Prostitutes--Still a Mystery

Wall painting from the Villa San Marco, Stabiae.
Is she a prostitute?  How could we tell?

More than two years ago, I did some reading in an attempt to learn what kinds of clothing were likely worn by prostitutes in ancient Rome.  The short answer to that question appeared to be that scholars don't really know what the prostitutes wore, because the written evidence on the subject is, at best, lacking in context and difficult to interpret.

I received a copy of one of the books I mentioned when I originally discussed this topic, Prostitutes and Courtesans in the Ancient World (Faraone, Christopher A. & McClure, Laura, eds., University of Wisconsin Press, February 6, 2006), as a birthday present this year.  Thus, I've had the opportunity to review not only Olsen's article about the clothing distinctions between matrons and whores, but also to read the other articles in that book about prostitution in antiquity.

When I first wrote about this topic, a Roman-era reenactor commented to chide me for (apparently) accepting the idea that there was such a thing as sacred prostitution in ancient Rome. Having read Prostitutes and Courtesans, it's clear that, if anything, he understated the case.  The weight of modern scholarship maintains that there is no evidence for sacred prostitution anywhere in the ancient world, period. The belief that there was such a thing appears to have arisen from a variety of translation errors (and perhaps some overheated scholarly imaginations) during the Victorian period and afterward.  

With that idea in mind, I re-read Kelly Olsen's essay in this volume, "Matrona and Whore:  Clothing and Definition in Roman Antiquity" with a view toward ascertaining whether I had missed any useful information in it.  Unfortunately, Kelly's conclusions amount to saying that there is no way to be certain what Roman prostitutes wore.  As I read her essay, those conclusions are:

• Roman society attributed specific symbolism to different types of costume; for example, the stola and palla denoted the proper Roman matron, and, due to Augustus's statute, the toga, when worn by a woman, denoted loose morals (either as an adulteress or a whore).  Male costume also carried symbolism of various kinds.
• However, we have no evidence that women typically wore the costume symbolic of their rank and status, and some evidence that many of them did not. 
• Thus, to quote from Olsen's conclusion, "Matron and whore were surely distinguishable from each other on the street but perhaps not as easily as our authors [i.e., the Roman authors whose remarks form a large part of our evidence for prostitutes' clothing] could have wished (and certainly they are exaggerating the similarities between matron and prostitute for rhetorical purposes)." (pages 200-201).

A logical conclusion from Olsen's research is that real women in ancient Rome varied their clothing choices deliberately, to evoke clothing symbolism that suited their individual purposes.  This topic is squarely addressed in a more recent article on Roman women's clothing, by Mary Harlow of the University of Leicester, titled "Dressing to Please Themselves:  Clothing Choices for Roman Women," in Dress and Identity (Harlow, Mary, ed, University of Birmingham IAA Interdisciplinary Series: Studies in Archaeology, History, Literature and Art 2, 2012).  A copy of Harlow's essay can be downloaded for free from this page.

In  the "Dressing to Please Themselves" essay, Harlow seeks to determine to what extent Roman women had and used free choice in selecting particular attire to present a particular image of themselves to the public.  Her conclusion, based largely upon the quantity of Roman cosmetic tools found by archaeologists and literary evidence of the wide availability of fabrics in different fibers (including silk, which was expensive and available in improper transparent weaves) and colors, is that women likely did alter their public image by varying their clothing and cosmetics--though the evidence of their having done so remains sparse:

Evidence demonstrates that within a relatively limited repertoire of styles a range of choice existed in terms of colour and textiles, and also that colour was very much part of the Roman visual world. The constant refrain against female adornment throughout the time span of the Roman empire suggests that women certainly were exploiting the market that was available to them despite any disquiet it might cause their menfolk. Roman writers were adept at manipulating the image of the dressed (and undressed) woman to suit their agenda and presumably women were equally as adept at manipulating their own draped clothing to suit their agenda, or at least give them power over their immediate social space. (page 43)

My conclusion, after reading the analyses of Olsen, Harlow, McGinn, and others, is that we cannot generalize about what Roman prostitutes wore for the same reasons we cannot generalize about what modern prostitutes wear--because individual women choose whether and how to signal their status by their clothing, or may decide to give false or misleading information about that status in different situations.  A woman may choose dress like a prostitute to conceal her identity, or for sexual stimulation, and a prostitute may dress like a high-class matron to conceal her status as a prostitute, or to attract a different sort of customer.  Moreover, prostitutes are not, to our knowledge, depicted in sculpture or fresco art, so we cannot even discern what the conventional "prostitute's toga" looked like.  Without further evidence, the clothing of Roman prostitutes likely will continue to remain a mystery.  

Ideas for a Roman Necklace

I have been planning for months now to make a necklace with good quality rose gold fake pearls and rose gold findings for Historical Sew Fortnightly Challenge No. 24, "All that Glitters," to coordinate with the earrings I made for Challenge No. 7. It was my original thought that I'd string rose gold pearls of two different sizes, using rose gold plated beads as spacers.

A few days ago, however, I learned that Janet Stephens has done her own video on how to make a common style of Roman necklace, which she refers to as a "beaded chain" necklace.  The video in question appears to the left of this post.  Despite the name, no actual chain is involved.  Instead, you string each bead on a small piece of wire and bend the ends into small round loops.  Then, you connect each pair of beads with a third piece of wire (or a modern jump ring), until you have "chained" all of the beads together.  Add a simple hook to one end, and you have a necklace.   Stephens gives directions for making your own clasp from the same wire used to make loops for the necklace, but I had already ordered a rose gold plated hook-and-eye clasp that looks very similar to the wire clasp Stephens shows the viewer how to make, so I will use that for my necklace.

If I adopt this approach, I won't need rose gold spacer beads; I could use just rose gold pearls.  However, lovely as the pearls are, they don't "glitter."  I thought it would be lovely to intersperse the rose gold pearls with gold foil glass beads (i.e., clear glass beads with gold foil inside), but I couldn't find any evidence that foil beads are period for ancient Rome.  I settled upon faceted pink glass beads with an iridescent gold luster.  Probably that kind of color isn't period either, but faceted beads are, and an ambitious glass maker might have come up with such a color as a one-off experiment with trace additions to the glass, right?  ;-)

So I have already ordered the clasp, jump rings, and the iridescent beads.  I guess that means I"m committed to this plan.  I can hardly wait to see how it all turns out.

EDIT:  (8/15/2014)  I have ordered all of the components except for the rose gold wire, and I have a potential source for that.  There's no rush, since the deadline is New Year's Day and the idea is to complete each challenge no earlier than about a month before.  But it will be good to see whether the pearls and iridescent pink glass look good together before I start working on the necklace!

2nd EDIT:  (8/17/2014)  I received my pearls and the iridescent beads yesterday, and I already have to change my plan.  The holes in the beads are too small to take 18 gauge wire, and the iridescent beads are way too dark--they look dreadful with the pearls.  I can still buy rose gold (filled or colored) metal beads instead, but I'm now uncertain about whether to stick with the beaded chain idea, since I'd probably have to use a 20 gauge wire or smaller to make the necklace work.  The best part about the beaded chain idea is that it lets me make a necklace of the size I want with significantly fewer beads, so I'm not ready to give up on that quite yet.

3rc EDIT:  (8/19/2014)  I have a solution; there's a website that sells the same color of pearls I've been using, so I can use 18 gauge wire after all.  Though I hate the additional expense, I can always use the other pearls for another project.  My plan now is to make a beaded chain necklace with the new pearls  and with smaller rose gold-filled beads.  

Free Article For Ancient Roman Period Costumers

I just found this free article by Janet Stephens, the hairdresser who has made a name for herself by using her hairdressing knowledge to derive the plausible construction of ancient Roman and Greek hairstyles that have been preserved in period sculpture.* Stephens writes well, and the article, which appeared in Journal of Roman Archaeology,** is well illustrated. Enjoy!

* Stephens continues to operate a hair dressing salon in Baltimore, Maryland. In case you're curious, the website for her salon may be found here. 

** The full citation of the article is Stephens, Janet. Ancient Roman hairdressing: On (hair)pins and needles, Journal of Roman Archaeology, vol. 21, pp. 110-132 (2008).

Fastest Project Ever!

My new Roman earrings

After failing even to begin four of the last six challenges, and finishing another one (the bog blouse) more than two weeks late, I am really happy to have a challenge I could finish on time, namely, my Roman earrings for this fortnight's HSF challenge.  I made them yesterday afternoon, doing a step at a time in between other chores that I was supposed to be doing.  ;-)

Threading the pearls onto the head pins was easy.  So was adding the crimp rings and closing them. But the crimp covers nearly turned out to be my undoing. I kept dropping them, and had a hard time keeping them in place long enough to apply the pliers in order to close them over the crimp rings.  They did not want to fit neatly over the crimp rings, and I bent one slightly trying to get it in place.  However, I finally managed to get them more or less closed and in position without mangling them too badly, and the earrings are small enough that it's nearly impossible to detect the mangling while I''m wearing them, unless you stand close enough to me to touch my nose with your nose.

Stephens's video claims that the Romans liked the s-hook design because it made it difficult for precious-bead earrings to accidentally fall out.  The same factor makes them tricky to insert at first (particularly since my head pins are especially thin and fragile).  However, by the time I got the second one in place for the first time, the process was going better.  I still have spare crimp rings, too, so if I ever have to remake them all I'll need are new head pins and a new set of crimp beads.

My current plan is to get enough beads make a matching necklace for the final challenge of HSF 2014 ("All That Glitters").  That will give me more incentive to finally do the makeover of my Roman garments.  I find I'm looking forward to that.

The Challenge:  #7 Tops and Toes

Fabric:   No fabric involved.  The earrings are made from two 10 mm rose gold glass pearls, two rose gold filled head pins, two crimp rings and two rose gold crimp beads. 

Pattern:   I followed Janet Stephens' tutorial video on how to make Roman earrings, except I added a crimp cover over each crimp ring to make it look as though there is a gold bead above each pearl.

Year:   First century C.E., more or less.  Jewelry styles often persist longer than clothing styles do, so similar earrings may have been worn centuries earlier or centuries later than the time period during which we perceive them as having been fashionable.

Notions:  See above.

How historically accurate is it?   The design and shape are period.  Gold wire and beads and glass pearls also are period.  However, some of the jewelry findings and the specific techniques (i.e., using pre-made head pins, crimp beads and crimp rings) are not.  So let's say 50%.

Hours to complete: Probably no more than 5 minutes all told (6.5 minutes, if you count the time I spent reviewing the Janet Stephens instructional video).  Possibly less.  If I'd had better tools for handling the crimp covers, it might have taken as little as a minute and a half.

First worn:  Only to confirm that I could put them on and take them off.  I need to get photographs of myself wearing them soon.

Total cost:  $9.16, including shipping!  (Pity I didn't save this one for the "under $10" challenge!)

Roman Earrings

Gold earring with convex disk and small disk
(Photo:  metmuseum.org)

The seventh Historical Sew Fortnightly is "Tops and Toes", i.e., accessories worn on the head or the feet.  

After pondering how I'm going to make the various components of the völva costume on my miniscule recreational costuming budget, I was tempted to forgo this challenge until I noticed that the Dreamstress's post specifically says that earrings would qualify for the challenge.  Then it occurred to me that I could make a simple pair of ancient Roman earrings. Janet Stephens, the "hairdresser archaeologist," has a video (see left) demonstrating the manufacture of a simple pair of earrings.  It's clear from the video that such earrings would take less than five minutes to make.  Perfect!

Ms. Stephens's example features (artificial) pearls.  It occurred to me that the same basic technique could be used to make a pair of gold earrings similar to the pair shown in the photograph below the video, which is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.*

The earrings in the Met's pair have a small disk above a larger, hemispherical gold disk and use the same type of s-shaped hook Ms. Stephens shows her viewers how to make.  If I use gold-filled balls instead of the pearls featured in Ms. Stephens's instructions, and cover the crimp rings with matching crimp-covers that look like little beads, the result will look broadly similar (though definitely not identical) to the Met's pair. 

The Met sells two different reproductions based upon this pair of earrings.  One is done in 14K gold, with 18K gold "overlay" and 14K gold earwires, and costs the non-member $625.00 USD.  The other is 24K gold "overlay" (underlying metal unspecified), 14K gold-filled earwires, and costs the non-member $95.00 USD. By using gold-filled components from JewelrySupply.com, I can make a similar pair for less than $13.00 USD!  I am planning to use rose-gold filled components, to give the result a different color than the Met's originals also.  I will order the components as soon as the contours of my budget for the month become established.

EDIT:  (1/9/2014) It's a good thing I reviewed my planned purchase.  The biggest rose gold beads I can get for the body of the earrings are significantly smaller than I'd like.  So I'm going to use pearls after all, in a "rose gold" shade.

EDIT:  (1/10/2014)  Components ordered.  Total cost with shipping:  $9.16 USD. 
 

* Accession Number: 74.51.4001.

Janet Stephens and the Seni Crines

A friend recently sent me a link to the YouTube video that appears on the left.  This video was made by a woman named Janet Stephens, who presents herself as a Hairdressing Archaeologist.  This video is the latest of a number of videos Ms. Stephens has made, demonstrating her theories for how the hairstyles of classical Greece and Rome likely were created. 

Chief Vestal (from Wikimedia Commons)

As this interview indicates, Ms. Stephens's re-creations of period hairstyles are based upon more than 20 years of personal experience as a hair stylist, careful analysis of period sculpture, and her knowledge of the hairstyling tools that were available during the classical period. The resulting videos show a strong and clear resemblance to the period artworks Ms. Stephens has studied, and provide simple instructions on how motivated reenactors can recreate the styles for themselves.

Ms. Stephens's latest video, which is the subject of this post, shows Ms. Stephens's step-by-step recreation of the hairstyle that was part of the distinctive hairstyle worn by the Vestal Virgins.   The photograph on the left is a picture of one of the many sculptures of Vestals that Ms. Stephens examined in the course of her research.  This sculpture depicts a Vestal of the 2nd century CE, and is now in the Museo Nazionale in Rome.  It is useful in that it shows all of the layers of headcovering that a Vestal might wear, and is prominently featured in the video.  A comparison between the sculpture and the end result of the video presentation demonstrates how closely Ms. Stephens's recreation duplicates the appearance of the sculptured portrait.

The style worn by the Vestals was called in Latin "seni crines"; this term is sometimes erroneously referred to as the "six braids", because it was believed to have been constructed with only six braids (though Ms. Stephens demonstrates that, to achieve the look shown in the sculptures, a seventh braid, made from hair taken from the hairline at the forehead, must have been involved).   This style was not just the trademark of the well-connected priestesshood that played such a prominent role in Roman religious life.  The seni crines was deemed emblematic of virginity in general, and thus was also worn by Roman brides; speculation has ranged for centuries as to how the style was made. Ms. Stephens's reconstruction of the appearance of the seni crines style thus gets us much closer to a foundational piece of Roman culture, and is all the more valuable for that reason.

Interested readers may also wish to check out Ms. Stephens's other historical hairdressing videos on her YouTube page.  These videos may be interesting to folk who are not reenactors or historical costuming enthusiasts.  At least one of them (an ancient Greek style) requires only a long thin scarf to achieve, can quickly be done on one's self, and stays tidy if the scarf is made from a non-slippery fabric. 

Rome and Feminine Adornment--Some Things Never Change

Me, dressed up (aged 10 months)

Recently, I read the following book by Kelly Olson, a scholar of women's and girls' clothing in ancient Rome:

Olson, Kelly. Dress and the Roman Woman: Self-presentation and Society. (Routledge 2008).

Unsurprisingly, Olson's book contains much of the same information I commented upon in my last post about Roman prostitutes and the toga, but there were a few extra nuggets that are interesting enough to be shared.

My bracelet

One of those nuggets (which also turns up in Olson's essay in Roman Dress and the Fabrics of Roman Culture) is Olson's discussion of whether jewels and makeup were solely the province of adult women or whether they were also worn, at least on occasion, by girls.  Olson appears to be a bit surprised by the evidence that at least some very young girls wore gold jewelry and were buried with makeup cases and the like:

In 1889 there was excavated in Rome the tomb of a young girl named Crepereia Tryphaena who had died unmarried at 17-19 years old. The burial was dated to the late second century CE, and contained haircombs, a beryl necklace, pearl necklace, pearl earrings, mirrors and finger rings (as well as a beautiful jointed ivory doll). The burial chamber of a baby girl in the Hadrianic era in Rome was found to contain a doll, makeup cases, and a gold ring. The contents of Crepereia's tomb may indicate that young or unmarried girls adorned; or perhaps the items in both burials were meant to make the girls' deaths all the more poignant by alluding to a stage of life they would never attain. (p. 116)

Perhaps Olson is right about the makeup cases, but the apparent oddity of real gold jewelry for very little girls may be only a few generations old.

Portrait of a Saxon Princess (1517)

Portinari triptych (1478)

I was born to working-class parents of Eastern European ancestry in 1959.  The picture on the top left shows me at about 10 months of age, dressed up for a formal portrait (that was later reproduced in a larger size to look like an oil painting, and hung on the wall of my family's home until I sold the home after my mother's and stepfather's death).  A quick trip through WikiPortraits also shows no lack of well-born children, at least, wearing jewelry at young ages (see below).
  

The other photograph near the top of this post shows the gold-filled bracelet I am wearing in the portrait.  I was able to capture the delicate engraving on the front, though my initials "CCO" are  mostly lost in the glare of my camera's flash.  There were also two little gold rings, like wedding rings, and I think I was wearing one of them (on my right hand, though it's not at all clear from this photograph) for the portrait.  I can't find them now for some reason.  

I suspect (though I can't prove it, of course) was that the parents of the Roman baby who buried their daughter with a little gold ring, like my parents, simply felt that to be female is to be adorned, to as great an extent as the family's budget (and, by implication, social class) allows, and that they wanted their baby daughter to be properly adorned in death.

 Children of Edward Hollen Cruttenden (18th c)

Another tidbit I got from Olson's book is the observation that "Men naturally wore a natural wool toga, white if they were canvassing, black or gray if they were in mourning...  but, as in nineteenth-century France and England, 'black, white and grey, the very negation of colour, were the paradigm of dignity, control, and morality' and thus were the everyday color of male garments; the greater part of the rainbow was left to women." (pp. 13-14) 

Finally, and amusingly, Olson cites Pliny as support for the proposition that "the toga was at some point in Rome's history a mark of status or honor for a woman."  (p.127-128 n. 125) Olson's citation to Pliny's Natural History (Plin. Nat. 34.28) is clearly incorrect (the chapter is about how to make a kind of verdigris called "scolex").  However, the following passage from Bostock and Riley's (1855) translation of the Natural History contains the following relevant passage at 34.13:

Pedestrian statues have been, undoubtedly, for a long time in estimation at Rome: equestrian statues are, however, of considerable antiquity, and females even have participated in this honour; for the statue of Clælia is equestrian, as if it had not been thought sufficient to have her clad in the toga; and this, although statues were not decreed to Lucretia, or to Brutus, who had expelled the kings, and through both of whom Clælia had been given as a hostage.  I should have thought that this statue, and that of Cocles, were the first that were erected at the public expense—for it is most likely that the statues of Attus and the Sibyl were erected by Tarquinius, and those of each of the other kings by themselves respectively —had not Piso stated that the statue of Clælia was erected by those who had been hostages with her, when they were given up by Porsena, as a mark of honour.

(emphasis mine).  Not having seen the original Latin, or having sufficient knowledge of Latin to judge the quality of this translation if I had, I will simply leave the matter rest with this quote.

Roman Beauty?

In my last post, I wrote about what Kelly Olson said about the wearing of the toga praetexta by girls too young to marry. Olson's essay had other interesting tidbits, not just about what Roman women and girls wore, but to some extent on their outlook on female beauty. 

Hans Memling's Eve

One of these tidbits involved the strophium, the breastband Roman women and girls wore, instead of our brassiere or the early modern corset.  The strophium, a band of linen or fine wool wound over the breasts to support and compress them, makes pretty good sense for mature women, since when properly worn a strophium gives good breast support, as this SCA member found.

Roman nude (in Musée Saint-Raymond)

But support, it turns out, was not the only thing the Roman ladies had in mind in binding their breasts with the strophium, and what they actually had in mind makes sense of why their young daughters' breasts were bound too.

What they wanted from this breast-binding was smaller breasts.  Ms. Olson reports that the Roman ideal of beauty featured small breasts and generous hips, and the hope was to keep a girl's breasts small by introducing her to the strophium at a very young age:

On an examination of the evidence it is clear that the ideal shape of a woman was different in antiquity:   the modern erotic ideal of full breasts, small waist, and rounded hips has not in fact been a cultural constant.   An alluring Roman woman possessed small breasts and wide hips, an ideal that is borne out by artistic as well as literary evidence.  Thus Soranus directed nurses to swaddle a female infant tightly in the breasts and more loosely at the hips, 'to take on the shape that in women is more becoming.' (Sor. Gyn. 2.15 [84])

[Olson, Kelly, "The Appearance of the Young Roman Girl," in Roman Dress and the Fabrics of Roman Culture, page 143 (University of Toronto Press 2008).

I was able to find on Wikimedia Commons an example of a Roman nude female sculpture demonstrating this ideal (see the photograph above on the left).  Interestingly, this taste for wide hips and small breasts lasted well into medieval times, judging by some of the nudes painted by Netherlandish painters in the 15th century, one of which I found on Wikimedia Commons and also posted here (see the photograph above on the right). 

I can't help but view Ms. Olson's statement about the Roman ideal of female beauty with amusement, because it also describes *my* figure, which to modern taste is far from perfect.  Maybe I was simply born a few...dozen... centuries too late. 

Ms. Olson also has some interesting things to say about the wearing of jewelery and cosmetics by Roman girls, which I'll save for another post.

Still More About The Toga

In my last post, I briefly discussed Thomas McGinn's book about prostitution and Roman law, and how a statute from the reign of Augustus relating to adulteresses shed at least a little light on the link between prostitutes and the toga.  

Since I read McGinn's analysis, I've discovered two more scholarly works that address the issue from a different angle.  These works talk about the wearing of the toga by children--girl children as well as boy children.  The information they discuss from both art and literature suggests that the main thing that what the toga symbolizes--no matter what sort of person wears it--is the wearer's Romaness.  All other meanings may well arise from the context in which the toga is worn and the color, ornamentation, etc. of the particular toga involved.  

Lunula  (from Wikimedia Commons)

The earlier source I read is Lillian A. Wilson's book, The Roman Toga.  Professor Wilson's primary interest was to deduce the appearance and construction of the toga, particularly the basic toga worn by male citizens.  She accomplished this by painstakingly examining the appearance of Roman sculptures depicting toga-wearing males, then taking cloth, cutting and shaping it, and draping the results on volunteers until the drapes shown photographs of her volunteers matched the appearance of the drapes in the sculpture. By this means Professor Wilson showed that the shape of the toga was not rectangular, nor semicircular, but was roughly trapezoidal, and that the garment became more trapezoidal with the passage of time.  

As background information, however, Professor Wilson briefly discusses who wore the toga. She states:

Among primitive peoples generally there is little difference in form between the garments of children and those of adults. Doubtless from the beginning of its existence the toga was worn by boys as well as by men, but it is not until after the development of the sinus [a loop or pouch formed by a common method of draping the toga] that extant monuments tell us much about the dress of Roman children. On the Ara Pacis, we see children apparently from 4 to 10 or 12 years of age wearing togas longer and more cumbersome than those of their elders, and one of the children is a young girl. There are a number of extant statues in the round showing a similar toga on Roman boys. Literature furnishes positive evidence that the toga worn by these high born young Romans was the toga praetexta, or a toga with a purple border. (page 51; internal citations omitted)

The picture below shows the southern frieze from the Ara Pacis, including a little girl who, like her brothers, is wearing the toga.

Ara Pacis, south wall; the little girl is the second from the right in the front row.  (from Wikimedia Commons)

In Roman Dress and the Fabrics of Roman Culture, (Jonathan Edmondson & Alison Keith, eds., University of Toronto Press, 2008),Kelly Olson's essay "The Appearance of the Young Roman Girl" takes a more detailed look at the evidence for what a Roman girl below the age of matrimony would have worn.  

Ms. Olson describes the various items such a girl would have worn, drawing upon Roman literature and artworks because relatively few sources address the subject of girls' clothing.  To make matters worse, the literary sources do not accord with the art source.  According to the literary sources, a young Roman girl would typically wear a tunica, a instep-length, sleeveless gown, a linen undergarment of unclear nature called the suppurus, a breast band called a strophium, wool bands called vittae binding her hair, a necklace with a crescent-shaped pendant called a lunula--and the toga praetexta.  Surviving sculptures do not depict girls wearing the vittae, and few images show the lunula or the toga praetexta, with the Ara Pacis reliefs being among the few exceptions.  Roman sculpture often was enhanced with painted details, and it is certainly possible that the sculptures that appear to show girls without lunulae or vittae originally had them painted on, or even that real lunulae or vittae would be tied onto the necks and heads of statues.  The toga praetexta, however, could not be painted on, and few surviving works of art (sculptural or otherwise) show the toga praetexta on little girls. Since the Ara Pacis reliefs appear to show the Emperor and his family (scholars debate which emperor it was, or even whether it was Agrippa's family and not the imperial family at all, but either way a high-born family was involved) at a public sacrifice, it may simply be that the children are wearing togas to emphasize their role as well-born, Roman children.

Ms. Olsen theorizes that most Roman parents would not have clothed their daughters in the toga but would have them wear Hellenic garments to display their own sophisticated tastes. However, another piece of information she derives from the literary sources suggests still another reason why girls might well have worn the toga praetexta sometimes:

Why children wore the toga itself is unclear, but the wool of the garment and especially its purple band (likely woven directly onto the toga) had a general apotropaic significance.  Persius described the purple stripe as the 'guard' of pre-adolescence (custos purpura, Sat. 5.30); in a declamation attributed to the rhetorician Quintilian, the colour purple is described as the one 'by which we make the weakness of boyhood sacred and revered.' (quo infirmitatem pueritiae sacram facimus ac venerabilem, [Quint.] Decl. 340.13).  It guarded the child and preventing [sic] him/her from seeing any bad omens, for instance.  More importantly, however, the costume served to mark off those citizen boys and girls who were to be shielded from obscenity or sexual contact. Thus Festus reports that impure words were not to be uttered in the presence of a child clad in the toga praetexta. Valerius Valentinus boasted in a ribald poem that he has seduced a puer praetextatus and a freeborn girl, which was used in court to undermine his authority as prosecutor. (pp. 141-142, emphasis supplied)

If the toga praetexta--the white toga with the narrow purple stripe--not only served as ritual protection but also symbolized that the child wearing it was too young to be involved in sexual matters--the apparent inconsistency between the literary references associating children with the garment and the lack of artistic images makes much more sense.  Perhaps it's not surprising that the toga praetexta does not turn up in portraits of young girls and does not turn up often in Roman art.  In the context of a portrait (likely painted in the privacy of her home) the need to wear protection from evil and from sexual assault may have been seen as unnecessary, resulting in a lack of portraits of togate girl children. On the other hand, if this "marking off" function was the real reason boys and girls wore the toga, the children likely would have worn togas only when they were out on display, so to speak, in public--as was patently the case with the Imperial children on the Ara Pacis relief.   Since female children in particular are seldom depicted in Roman artwork in public roles, that might suffice to explain the shortage of images of little girls in togas.  

The idea of the toga praetexta also suggests a possible answer to another question I've had. The toga praetexta was also worn by magistrates. Why on earth would a magistrate and a minor child both be entitled to wear the same garment?  Perhaps the ritual protection function is the answer.  Just a good Roman would want to protect his or her offspring from seeing evil omens, so Rome would also to protect its public officials from seeing evil omens--to avoid bringing evil down upon the City and its people.

The sources cited by Ms. Olson and Professor Wilson tend to confirm that the toga was not specifically symbolic of gender, but of being Roman. Moreover, Ms. Olson's discussion of the toga praetexta suggests that the real symbolism of the prostitute's toga lies in the fact that it was not white, but dark. Romans wore a dark drab toga, the toga pulla, for mourning. Perhaps prostitutes--and later on, adulteresses--were associated with the toga as mourning for their lost virtue. Yes, it's still only speculation, but it's speculation that fits better with the limited surviving evidence than my original thought that Roman prostitutes might originally had a sacerdotal function.

There are a few more interesting details about Roman girls' clothing that Ms. Olsen discusses that aren't relevant to the toga.  I'll comment on those in another post.

EDITED (6/14/2012) to clarify certain points and to correct the text to reflect the fact that the identity of the man shown with his family on the south frieze of the Ara Pacis is, and has been, in dispute by scholars. See the Wikipedia article on the Ara Pacis for more details.

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!