09-29-2003, 12:30 PM
Hi Jackie,<br>
<br>
        Well you got me on the Pliny. From the reference to his uncle's hands it does make more sense to translate that as gloves, but I also had some thoughts that just as there is plenty of evidence that even the legions and officers wore warmer tighter clothes when they needed to, there may have been a different standard within the pomerium of the city and the country, traveling or at the villa. The farm was by definition "rustic" and therefore "uncivilized," so the adoption of "uncivilized" comfort and practicality may have been not quite the breach of Romanitas it might have been in the city.<br>
        I was browsing through an Osprey Men-at-Arms on Roman Military clothing looking for something else and I happened to find under the heading of "Trousers (bracae)" the following:<br>
<br>
Trousers were considered by Classical writers of the old school as hopelessly barbarian and effemiante. Cicero, for example, referred contempuously to the 'bracatae nationes,' "the trouser-clad peoples" (Epistulae ad Familiares IX, 15,2,6). Yet once again the pure Roman ideals were to sucumb as first the army, and then society in general adopted these garments. Trousers were known in the Classical world as early as the 5th centry BC when the Greeks encountered nomadic tribes like the Scythian. Trousers, like boots, were inventions of these warrrior horsemen, and it is very likely that it was the Scythians who passed on these fashions to other peoples like the Celts and Germans. The Greeks, however, unlike the Romans, remained true to their principles and never wore trousers......(...)....A pair of trousers carried by a servant from Silistria in Bulgaria are again almost identical to those from Thorsberg, and it was probably trousers of this type that the Emperor Honorius tried to ban within the city of Rome as late as AD 397."<br>
<br>
        So, Romans did cover up their arms, legs and feet when it got cold and hoped no one would think bad thoughts about them. But even in the late 4th century the old ideal was still an issue in the city itself.<br>
<br>
Wade <p></p><i></i>
<br>
        Well you got me on the Pliny. From the reference to his uncle's hands it does make more sense to translate that as gloves, but I also had some thoughts that just as there is plenty of evidence that even the legions and officers wore warmer tighter clothes when they needed to, there may have been a different standard within the pomerium of the city and the country, traveling or at the villa. The farm was by definition "rustic" and therefore "uncivilized," so the adoption of "uncivilized" comfort and practicality may have been not quite the breach of Romanitas it might have been in the city.<br>
        I was browsing through an Osprey Men-at-Arms on Roman Military clothing looking for something else and I happened to find under the heading of "Trousers (bracae)" the following:<br>
<br>
Trousers were considered by Classical writers of the old school as hopelessly barbarian and effemiante. Cicero, for example, referred contempuously to the 'bracatae nationes,' "the trouser-clad peoples" (Epistulae ad Familiares IX, 15,2,6). Yet once again the pure Roman ideals were to sucumb as first the army, and then society in general adopted these garments. Trousers were known in the Classical world as early as the 5th centry BC when the Greeks encountered nomadic tribes like the Scythian. Trousers, like boots, were inventions of these warrrior horsemen, and it is very likely that it was the Scythians who passed on these fashions to other peoples like the Celts and Germans. The Greeks, however, unlike the Romans, remained true to their principles and never wore trousers......(...)....A pair of trousers carried by a servant from Silistria in Bulgaria are again almost identical to those from Thorsberg, and it was probably trousers of this type that the Emperor Honorius tried to ban within the city of Rome as late as AD 397."<br>
<br>
        So, Romans did cover up their arms, legs and feet when it got cold and hoped no one would think bad thoughts about them. But even in the late 4th century the old ideal was still an issue in the city itself.<br>
<br>
Wade <p></p><i></i>
