Roman Clothing

Clothing and Status
Roma is very much a "face-to-face" society (actually more of an "in-your-face" society), and public display and recognition of status is an essential part of having status. Most Roman clothing is designed to reveal the social status of its wearer, particularly for freeborn men. In typical Roman fashion, the more distinguished the wearer, the more his dress is distinctively marked, while the dress of the lowest class is often not marked at all.

In the picture to the right, for example, we can deduce that the first man on the left is a Roman Citizen (because he wears a toga ), but is not an equestrian or senator (because he has no stripes on his tunic). We know that the woman is married because she wears a stola. Colored shoes and the broad stripes on the tunic identify the next man as a senator, while the border of his toga indicates that he has held at least one curule office. The laurel wreath on the head of the next man and his special robes indicate that he is a Consul, while the uniform and cloak of the following man identify him as a general. It is more difficult to determine the exact social status of the two men on the right; their hitched-up tunics indicate they are lower-class working men, but the two lowest social classes in Roma (freedpeople and slaves) do not have distinctive clothing that clearly indicates their status. These man could both be freedpeople (or citizens at work, for that matter); however, the man in the brown tunic is carrying tools and the other man is lighting his way, so we can deduce that the man in the white tunic may be a slave of the other man.

Official dress is required for public performances and public seating in theaters and amphitheaters is regulated. A prominent section is reserved for the male and female members of the Consul's family as well as the Vestal Virgins; the first rows are reserved for senators, the next for male equestrians, the next for male citizens (with women of all classes relegated to the top rows of this section), and the top "standing room only" tiers for the lowest classes. Performers and spectators at these events would thus see a striking visual display of the different status groups in the form of blocks of color created by the different types of togas (the modern film Gladiator recreated this effect in the computer-assisted simulation of the Colosseum).

Production and Cleaning of Garments
Typically, Roman garments are made of wool. In the early Republic, women spun the fleece into thread and wove the cloth in the home, and many women of the less wealthy classes have continued this practice throughout the history of Roma. By present-day, however, upper-class Roman women do not spin and weave themselves (unless trying to demonstrate how traditional and upright they are!). Instead, slaves do the work within the household or cloth is purchased commercially. Well-to-do Romans can also buy cloth made of linen, cotton, or silk.

There are many businesses associated with textiles besides spinning and weaving, including operations such as dyeing (fibers are usually dyed before being spun into thread), processing, and cleaning. Garments are cleaned by fullers (fullones) using chemicals such as sulfur and especially human urine.