Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 06.djvu/528

DRESS. 458 DRESS. ■with of course lrc<]ueiit otvurrLiicc of laps or dou- ble loverinjji-s for cerliiiu i>arls. The doscriplion of the loiiyer and the shorter ehiton of the Greeks and of the other ^'arnients whkh are eorabined with it in our pictorial and jilastic representa- tions is given under the heading Costume. -Sniong the Uonians also the exact service expect- ed of the tunica remains soniewliat uncertain, because in the dress of the wealthier and more ]H)werful classes it is the toga only that is in question, and we know of the tunica mainly, if not altogether, as the one upper garment of slaves, or as worn under the armor of the soldiers. Nothing has come down to us as to the use of underclothing in the modern sense, even b.v the ]{omans of the most luxurious times of the Em- pire. The use of drawers, at least occasionally, is suspected, but this suspicion is founded only Tipon the cases of contorted bodies of victims of the eruption of Vesuvius, a.d. 70. The use of drawers or trousers, in the more usual sense, that is to say. of leg-coverings {ftiscia" cniralcs) , which were acknowledged as a jiart of the dress and were visible, was certainly known to the Romans of the later Empire, who took it from the people of western Asia on the one hand, and from the (.Jauls on the other; but it was for them rather the adoption of a foreign dress, when a man was in foreign parts, than an addition to their own traditional costume. We have to consider the Roman of position, ex- •cept in the earliest days, as wearing a tunica which it was assumed would about reach to the knees, but which, judging by the few ancient represen- tations which we have of it, was much fuller in the skirt than the Greek chiton or the modern shirt worn by either sex. Over this he wore the toga. With this exception his only garment was a protection for the foot in the form of sandal or shoe. The number of tofiati was. however, so very small, as compared with the vast number of slaves and freedmen employed in out-of-door tasks, who had no right whatever to wear the toga, that the streets of any great city of the Empire must have seemed to be full of men wear- ing very short gowns girded around the waist and reaching to the knees, with rough shoes to jjrotect the feet, and no other gannent whatever: while the women, nuich fewer in luimbcrs, would ap- pear much as the brown women of the West India Islands do to-day. in a single- long gown fastened at neck and wrists, and with low-heeled shoes. AVliat dress the poorer ]>eople of Italy and of Greece wore in times of great cold, when the bod> actually needed to have its vital heat niaintainec by warm clothes, is not now ascertainable. As long as the Roman Empire influenced strongly the life of the people of Gaul and Bri- tain, these more northern comnumities thought baths, taken daily and with great preparation and at leisure, the most precious of luxuries. The loss of the Roman dominion, the breaking up of the people into small societies, the comiiarative poverty and disorder of the whole country, and the influence and example of the monastic orders. all tended to do away with the ancient habits of personal cleanliness. It has been pointed out verj' often that the first adoption of those imder- carments which to the modern world are essen- tial is in the main contemporaneous with this abandonment of the ancient habits of bathing the jKTson. Nothing of the nature of stockings was kno«Ti to the ancients. They covered their feet only as a protection against extreme cold; or, if !' legging was worn, it was the high military bus- kin, for the express purpose of protecting the foot against injury. In like manner, the general use of the shirt as a garment worn next the skin to protect it from the woolen or leather outer garment begins with the fifth or sixth cen- tury. From that time these two articles of cloth- ing are universally considered as essential throughout central and western Eurojie, although frequently exceptions occur. Even in the nine- teenth century, English jwasants are known to have worn stockings without feet — in other words, mere leggings — and the shirt might often disap- pear in the case of a man wearing a garment buttoning close around the body. Sir Walter Scott describes the dress of the men of the far western islands of Scotland in the seven- teenth century as consisting of a single closely fitting garment covering trunk, arms, and thighs; in otlu'r words, strongly resembling those of our modern bathing-dresses for men which are made in one piece. The gradual adoption by the peo- l)Ie of elegant life in the great cities of the fash- ion which involved the bringing into sight of a part of the shirt made this garment more a:i obvious necessity than it had been. This bc- •-•■.n in the sixteenth century, and from that time this one undergarment has been conuuon in Eu- rope. Cotton or linen coverings for the legs were, however, nuicli later to come into ise, and very much less universal. As late as ISSO the nu)st fashionable tailor in a large city of the south of France told the writer that few of his customers wore drawers of any kind, and in answer to in- quiries made in consequence of this statement in the north and centre of Italy a similar condition was admitted to exist along the shores of the ilediterrancan, even among persons of mcins. The dress of the poorer people, even the trades- men and mechanics of the cities, continued f liroughout the nineteenth century as far removed from the ideal care of the body by ablutions, and by washable underclothes frequently changed, as had been the case among the wealthy and elegant during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. For that period, passages in many novels and essays of the time, including two or three well- known passages in Pepys's Diarii, might be cited. In short, the conscious state of cleanliness into which a small minority of the people of European descent have brought themselves, during the years beginning with 18.30 or 1840, is in a way a •evival of customs which had been almost for- gotten since the Mediterranean lands were the centre of civilization. The outer garments of men and women can hardly be treated except in connection with those questions of artistic elTeet and elegant fashion which are treated under Costi'me. It may he noted, however, that there is always a disposition 1o clothe those persons who are going a1>out active duties in such a way as not to ham|>er the move- ment of the legs, .mong the ancients and in modern .Tapan. as of course in the semi-tropi- cal and tropical lands, this is obtained by simply leaving the legs uncovered: but the extraordinary resort to this same expedient in lands as cold and damp as medieval Ireland an<l the High- lands of Scotland since the sixteenth century is diflicult to explain. The accounts we have of the Irish at the time of the first English conouest and later constantlv recur to the mention of un-