penfairy:

belleandthetardis:

penfairy:

In ancient Rome, pants were considered effeminate. Only dirty barbarians wore pants. A good Roman male was expected to keep a breeze on his privates at all times. Also, women couldn’t wear togas. If you saw a woman wearing a toga, it meant she was a prostitute.

History side of tumblr: verify please?

*Bursts through the door*
You rang?

I should probably clarify I mean trousers, not underpants, for all you folks of the British persuasion out there. Romans didn’t have undies as we do, but they did have loincloths. Generally they just let it all hang out, though. Wearing leg wraps or thick loincloths was a sign of old age or weakness. Think of high school boys today who wear shorts in winter to prove their toughness; it was the same for Romans.

Trousers were despised in ancient Rome because they were worn by barbarian Germanic tribespeople. In iconography that depicts Germans, they are shown with wild hair, long beards and pants to distinguish them from the good, civilised, neatly-shaven toga-wearing Romans.

Just look at those filthy barbarians. In trousers! So unlike us masculine Roman men.

#judgingyou

Wearing pants in Rome was a big no-no. A good Roman citizen simply wouldn’t wear pants, and they were banned from the Senate, Forum and Circus, so any Gallo-Germanic representative from the provinces had to change into Roman dress before he would be admitted.

Slaves and non-citizens still wore them, but freeborn Romans attached enormous prejudice to trousers. Inevitably, however, they became popular among lower classes until, in the lead up to the sack of Rome by the Goths, strong anti-Germanic sentiment against barbarian invaders led to Emperor Honorius banning pants in Rome. That’s right, trousers were banned. (Codex Theodosianus 14.10.2-3, tr. C. Pharr, “The Theodosian Code,” p. 415)

This site here should give you a quick run down on the basics of Roman dress. Togas were for men, and women wore long flowy dresses called stola that covered everything down to their feet. There’s a hilarious poem by Ovid where he talks about getting off on seeing a girl’s ankles; that’s how modestly they dressed (Amores, Book 3, Elegy II). The stola also came with a headscarf attached. Women were expected to cover their hair when they went out, which means dress standards for women were not unlike the dress codes of some Muslim countries today. Wearing the stola with the headscarf up says “back off boys. I’m a respectable Roman lady. Go find someone else to annoy.”
can’t touch dis

Prostitutes, of course, need to send out the opposite message, and the simplest way to do that was by cross-dressing. If a Roman man walked down the street and saw a group of girls wearing men’s clothing and scandalously showing off their legs, he’d know instantly they were lupae, she-wolves; what we might call ‘ladies of the night’. In law, prostitutes actually came to be denied the privilege of the stola so that at all times they would be marked as meretrices. Prostitutes were also known to cut their hair short and dye them fantastic colours to further advertise their availability. This site should give you further information; it’s got some great quotes from source texts too.