Expedition Magazine – Penn Museum

By : Kenneth D. Matthews View PDF To protect his Danubian provinces, the Em­peror Marcus Aurelius personally led campaigns against the Marcomanni from A.D. 166 to 172 and from 177 to 180. The costs of the war could not be sustained by the consume department of the treasury, so Marcus decided upon a populace auction ! The goods would come from the imperial palace. actually on the Palatine Hill in Rome there were two pal­aces furnished with works of art and lavishness items collected by earlier emperors. The Flavian Palace was the most modern and had been com­pleted by Domitian in A.D. 92. Marcus Aurelius, like his adopted beget Antoninus Pius, disliked this structure and choose rather to reside in the previous palace in the first place built by Tiberius early in the first century A.D. From both of these sources Marcus made his survival of imperial heirlooms and had them wheeled down to the Forum of Trajan in carts .
Coin portrait of Nero at about twenty years of age.
The auction lasted for two months with an auction conducting the sales and a fiscal steward keeping careful records of the transac­tions. Years late, after the decision of the war, the emperor butterfly found a excess of money still left from these sales so he offered to buy back any­thing which purchasers did not wish to keep. Some did take advantage of the offer.

ancient authors specifically mention the fact that Marcus included in his auction a ticket selection of articles from his wife ’ mho wardrobe. Within the palace, under the administration of the imperial treasury ( fiscus ), there existed a special chest of drawers or treasury called the thesaurus which served as the repository for such things as imperial jewelry and precious plate. Among its duties besides was that of maintaining and storing the state robes belonging not merely to the empress but to the emperor butterfly ampere well. Whether the throne changed hands peacefully or not this clothing remained in the palace since it was used as an embellishment for imperial exponent. A particular steward known as a proxy supervised all affairs of the thesaurus. In addition, however, there were divide ward­robes belonging to the emperor butterfly and empress which consisted of their own personal garments. It was obviously from this solicitation that Marcus chose the gold-embroidered silk robes ( serica et aurata ) which were sent off to Trajan ’ s Forum for sale .
By the one-third century A.D. the parole serica, earlier used to indicate cloth looking like silk, par­tially made of silk or even completely made of silk, had come to require far definition. For clari­fication other words came into consumption such as holo­serica for a dress entirely of pure silk and subserica for a framework of silk mixed with other fibers. Faustina ’ randomness dresses may not have been woven of pure silk since Heliogabalus, forty-five years late, was supposed to have first used pure silk clothing. Yet Faustina ’ s garments demonstrate the ever-increasing amounts of money spent on imperial clothes and besides the increasing handiness of luxury fabrics.
Statue of Augustus wearing a toga with a character of it pulled over his steer as required for a sacrifice priest. The upper part of his tunic may besides be seen .
about two hundred years anterior to this his­toric auction the imperial family neither intend of such an institution as the imperial thesaurus nor owned cherished objects or garments which required such security. The emperor butterfly Augustus lived in a fairly unpretentious house which had once belonged to Cicero ’ s old rival, the orator Hortensius. The emperor ’ second charming sister Octavia and his beautiful and intelligent wife Livia knew how to use a brood and Augustus insisted that his daughter and granddaughter besides be teach how to weave. Around the house he constantly wore dress made of their homespun woolen fabric. This was an antique way of life which he prized. In the family were servants not merely to buy the wool for Livia but besides to help her and her daughter spin it into threads. The weave was done on a erect loom ( tela ) with the warp ( stamen ) fastened to the revolving clear radio beam and turned around the revolving lower beam. The weave ( filament ) used for the woof ( subtemen ) was handled from a bobbin ( pannus ) to weave the fabric upwards from the bottom of the loom. A comb ( pecten ), for pressing or beating the woof threads tight, would determine whether the fabric was wide-meshed ( trama ) or close-woven ( densum ) .
The erect brood with falsify threads fastened to a revolve upper berth and lower glow was known among near Eastern cultures at least equally early as about 1300 B.C. when the shape was represented in egyptian art. The change from a horizontal to a vertical loom of this especial style permitted weavers to be seated as they wove the fabric from the bottom up. Among the Greeks the verti­cal loom was besides employed but without a lower balance beam. This mean that the length of the deflection ribbon was limited to the acme of the loom and the deflection threads themselves were held taut by clay or pit weights tied to their lower ends. With this musical arrangement the weaver had to stand at the brood as she wove the framework downward from the top. This concept continued into Roman times and the numerous Roman loom weights found in Egypt suggest that many weavers there had abandoned the earlier form with roll amphetamine and lower beams. The Ptolemaic rulers of Egypt made a government industry of flax raising and linen weave. Weavers thus controlled by the express may have continued to use the more complicated and expensive vertical looms with upper berth and lower revolving beams. Individuals weaving alone for themselves may have turned to the cheaper mannequin using loom weights and only the upper radio beam. In A.D. 54 Ammonius sold to Tryphon, a colleague egyptian, a loom with two up­rights and two horizontal rollers. This was the better type with circus tent and bottom revolving glow or rollers. The price was 20 ash grey drachma .
In his words of advice to Roman architects, Vitruvius wrote about 25 B.C. that weaving rooms in houses should have a northern exposure so that the constant abstemious would allow the best color work. This indicates that some homes would have a special room for weaving other tell suggests that in the absence of such a room the looms would be set up in the atrium or reception hall. The four-foot-wide loom sold by Ammonius probably represents a standard size used in private homes. This commit of dwelling weave represents a situation even existing at Rome to some extent in the days of Augustus. future generations would find this aspect of family exploit relegated wholly to slaves or tied dropped completely. In Pompeii it may have been a slave who scratched on a wall the admonisher that on the seventh day before the kalends of January ( 26 December ) a begin had been made on the string of warp threads on a brood. Another Pompeiian scratched a brief note of a linen and gold tunic.
Male number wearing the toga praetexta with the broad imperial stripe. A shoulder of the tunic is besides visible with one of the two broad senatorial stripes .
All of the home-woven fabrics would be sent out to the full for washing and shearing. If they were to be colored, the services of a commercial dyer would be required. Returned to the house, the fabric was folded and sewn to the form of the craved dress. normally the loom permitted cloth to be woven to the size required for a individual tunic or like garment. Great lengths of yard goods were not produced for cutting into articles of clothe. As for the sewing, it obviously was not constantly what it should have been. In his mid teens, when Augustus performed the ritual of assuming his toga of manhood, his tunic came un­sewn and fell to his feet. many saw a good omen in this but in a more virtual vein it shows that the tunic of a man was sewed together along the shoulders. Otherwise the unmake of the seams would not have allowed the garment to fall to the floor. Augustus never was a serviceman of hard fundamental law and in winter he donned a wool chest-protector ( thorax laneus ), an singlet ( subu­cula ), four tunics, wraps for his thighs and shins, and a heavy woolen toga. There is absolutely no indication that his tunics were dyed or bore any other ornamentation than the two purple stripes, running over each shoulder to the hem in front and in back. even his toga did not follow ex­treme fashions for it was cut sol as to be neither besides full nor excessively nasty in its folds and draping. This was an significant consideration since the toga by its mannequin restricted the wearer to slow and preferably gallant movements. One shaped for besotted drap­ing could be besides restrictive while an overly-full toga might be a substantial gamble. Both Caligula and Nero experienced the embarrassment of tripping over their toga .
Though constantly made of wool, the Roman toga did change in form throughout the centuries. Under the early empire, in summation to variations in its fullness, the toga could be woven with a heavy tightly beaten torso ( toga pexa ) or a fairly at large overt weave for light ( toga levi’s ) It was during the latter separate of Augustus ’ reign that togas began to appear with a identical closely sheared smooth surface ( toga rasa ). This suggests that with the addition in demand for commercially-made fabrics and garments, the fullers tried to im­prove upon the antique appearance by closely shearing the woolen sleep raised by the full­ing process. Augustus himself did indeed keep a well, professionally-made outfit of tunic and toga in his bedroom to meet unexpected emergencies which would require his public appearance. This latter information suggests that the rest of his wardrobe was stored elsewhere. For important distinguished functions, however, Augustus kept no formal clothes in the palace but rather used those ceremony toga stored in the temple of Jupiter ; these were the purple-striped toga praetexta and the elaborately embroider toga picta. Granted the prerogative for trigger ceremonies or military victory processions, high gear officials could besides bor­row these togas .
More coarse cloak, dyed in solid colors, were surely in the wardrobe of Augustus. Among these would be the democratic lacerna, an general-purpose curtain generally worn over the toga at public events in the dramaturgy or amphitheater. Woven of wool and quite blockheaded in texture, it besides served as a rain cape and could be purchased in white, scar­let, purple, or even black. specially effective in badly upwind were those lacernae made of leather. It would appear that the lacerna was not constantly hooded itself but often required the use of a sep­arate hood ( cucullus ). Martial in one of his late-first hundred A.D. epigrams joked about a man whose green Libumian hood ( cucullus ) stained his white lacerna when the dye from the hood ran polish over the cape. In other remarks Martial besides referred to hoods as completely discriminate en­tities. The paenula, on the early hand, was a wool cloak obviously made with its own hood attached. The popular use of dark-colored lacernae over the toga finally aroused the anger of Augustus who decreed that this blue cloak should never be worn over the toga in or near the Forum. Another type of dissemble was the wool laena which seems to have been made of two thick­nesses of fabric and put claim to being the most ancient dress for Roman men. It frequently was rather short. The greek pallium, besides a cloak, was much like the laena since the terms were sometimes used interchangeably and finally may have come to mean any clothe in general. In addition to such mantles as these, Augustus owned at least one broad-brimmed sunhat in the shape of the Greek petasos and he tried to make himself look tall by wearing thick-soled shoes.
Bust of a charwoman from Syria about A.D. 300, showing the palla draped around the shoulders and pulled over the steer.
Museum Object Number ( mho ) : L-51-2
The empress Livia besides appears to have avoided any charges of owning excessive cloth­ing. She must have had an assortment of under-tunics, outer-tunics or stolae, wrap-around cloaks or pallae, veils and sealed unmentionables such as linen or wool breast binders ( dashboard pectoral, mamillare ) for front patronize. Her tunics, made of linen or wool, were credibly dyed solid colors as was the general fashion and they may even have had some innocuous embroidery trim. Although she may have worn house dresses of her own make, it is quite likely that a larger por­tion of her wardrobe came from commercial dealers. In this connection it is worth noting that Quintus Remmius Palaemon, while placid a youth­ful slave, was teach how to weave. After he had achieved his freedom he set himself up in Rome as a teacher ( grammaticus ) during the reigns of Tiberius and Claudius. however, for extra in­come he owned respective stores dealing in cliched clothing ( officinae promercalium vestium ) !
curtly after the death of Augustus in A.D. 14 his successor Tiberius attended a meet of the Senate in which some members criticized the growing extravagance in private life. As the Em­pire waxed greater indeed had private wealth. Among other things, the Senate decided to forbid men to wear silk garments ( serica ) from the East. From Hellenistic times silk-like fabrics had been woven on the island of Cos, but now under Tiberius silk imports were coming into the eastern provinces from China. By water they were brought through Ceylon and India to the Red Sea ports of Egypt and indeed to Alexandria. Overland through northerly India and the parthian Empire they reached syrian
From this it is quite clear that the empress ’ regalia was numerous and quite valuable by A.D. 55. It besides demonstrates that the state robes were kept break from the clothes belonging to Agrip­pina personally. The imperial wives creditworthy for accumulating these garments can be accounted for. Claudius came to the throne in A.D. 41 with his third base wife Valeria Messalina. Her successor was the celebrated Agrippina. Prior to Messalina there had been Caligula ’ s wife Caesonia. Tiberius had no choir. Thus the wives who added to the imperial wardrobe must have been Caesonia, Messalina and Agrippina herself. none were known for circumspection in taste or expenditures. But Tacitus refers besides to mothers of the imperial family and there is only one such mother other than Agrippina. This is the dowager-empress Livia. Is it possible that as a widow, during the reign of her son Tiberius, she became a act more excessive in her clothing ?
Nero himself finally developed great in­terest in clothes. It was claimed that he never wore the same garment twice. Devoted to music and likening himself to Apollo, it was natural that he should adopt certain forms of greek dress. When he returned to Rome from his exultant concert enlistment of Greece he entered the capital wear­ing a purple tunic and a chlamys decorated with aureate stars. It was Nero who forbade the public use of amethyst-colored dyes or Tyrian purple dyes. once while performing on stage he noticed a female member of the audience dressed in purple. Fuming with ramp he ordered his stewards to drag her out and strip her. late authors casti­gated Nero for appearing in public in a dinner full-dress ( synthesis ) of linen with flower ornamenta­tion, unbelted, without sandals and having a hand­kerchief ( sudarium ) around his neck. But this is the overdress he wore in Greece according to the an­cient greek fashion prescribed for musicians. The garments must have come home with him and some surely went into the official wardrobe, add­ing another greek touch to the assortment.
Roman hooded paenula of jaundiced wool, from the Fayum zone of Egypt
Museum Object Number ( south ) : E16803
During Nero ’ s reign, if not before, it is pos­sible that the official wardrobe came to include a toga praetexta and a toga pieta. The latter espe­cially had become the official dress for imperial ceremony appearances and as these occasions in­creased in number one of Augustus ’ successors must have become annoyed at always having to borrow one from the synagogue of Jupiter. The ob­vious solution would be to create an excess hardened for the palace. In the time of Nero besides the paenula undergo a far change through the use of a new woolen framework called amphimallum, credibly meaning that it had a retentive nap on both sides. It was immediately, excessively, that senators ’ tunics were first weave with the same gausapina complete as the earlier paenula. Since Pliny the Elder makes this latter remark in connection merely with the senators ’ tun­ics, and since these tunics are the ones with broad imperial stripes as opposed to the narrow purple stripes of the knights ’ tunics, it is potential that he refers to the finish of the stripes themselves and not to the star framework of the tunics. The broad stripes would offer a larger and more ob­vious playing field for elaborateness than would the pin down stripes. Thus it may be that here for the beginning time is the get down of particular attention to the appear­ance of the purple stripes, finally leading to the beautiful traffic pattern weave and embellishment bring late seen in tunic stripes, particularly in Coptic fabrics from Egypt and those examples shown in third base century A.D. mosaics and former .
In the years following Nero ’ s death small worthwhile can have been placed in the imperial wardrobe of either emperor or empress. The time was besides fleeting for Galba, Otho, and Vitellius. Vespasian had mean inclinations while his son Titus reformed his extravagant ways when he be­came emperor. Of domitian it is said that on the affair of his newly-established Capitoline Games he appeared in a empurpled toga draped round him in the greek expressive style. Since the games were modeled after those celebrated in Greece the reference book may merely be to a purple himation draped in the greek dash. otherwise, for all of his innovations, Domitian was not known to be excessive or fanciful in his clothes. His wife Domitia besides seems to have escaped excommunication in this sphere.

The elder senator Nerva, during his brief tenure as emperor, did sell some of his personal belongings to raise money. In the same sale he included items from the palace but, since they are alone concisely mentioned without contingent by the writer Cassius Dio, they probably were inconsequential. Martial, writing during his reign, indicates the gen­eral cognition that satiny robes did form a por­tion of the empresses ’ wardrobe. Neither Trajan nor hadrian spend much time in Rome and, along with their wives, seem to have used the imperial palaces identical little if at all. But hadrian surely placed in the thesaurus the gold-embroidered cloaks ( chlamys ) sent him by Pharasmanes, king of Iberia, north of Armenia.
greek red-figured vase. fifth century B.C., showing Apollo wearing a chlamys over his long chiton.
Museum Object Number ( second ) : MS5465
therefore it would appear that the valuable im­perial garments existing at the clock time of Marcus Aurelius had been contributed to the wardrobe largely during the first hundred A.D. indeed these could have been preserved through careful fold and store in wooden chests and cupboards ( arcula, armarium, vestiarium ). For warding off woodworms and noxious insects Pliny suggested sprinkling these storage containers with the lees of olive oil. For a pleasant aroma he urged pack­ing nard or valerian among the articles of dress. The clothes press ( prela ) was besides employed and one example has been recovered in Herculaneum. Clothes brushes ( muscarium bubulum ) of oxtail hair’s-breadth could be used to dust off dress before packing the pieces away. With this worry possibly there still existed some of the handkerchief which Nero ’ s elocution teacher held to the emperor ’ sulfur mouth in populace so that his throat might be pro­tected for singing .
Under Commodus, the son and successor of Marcus Aurelius, the imperial wardrobe was cer­tainly refurbished. This aureate emperor butterfly ap­peared in the amphitheater wearing a white silk tunic with long sleeves and gold threads waver all through the fabric. On juncture he dressed in a purple robe covered with aureate spangles, a imperial perianth fastened across his shoulders. The sale held after his murder in A.D. 192 exposed for leverage more rarities belonging to Commodus. There were silk clothes interlacing with gold threads, long-sleeved dalmatian tunics ( chiri­dota ), fringed military cloaks ( cirratae militares ), purple Greek cloak ( perianth ), imperial camp cloaks, Illyrian-style hooded cloaks ( aucullus ), versatile other tunics, lacernae, and paenulae deoxyadenosine monophosphate well as gladiator ’ south equipment made of gold and gems .
The adjacent emperor to make sartorial history was that strange Sun-priest from Syria, Helio­gabalus who came to the toilet in A.D. 218. His tastes were surely non-Roman and may best be explained by remembering that his fatherland was more a part of Near Eastern acculturation. Through Syria passed one of the silk routes from China. The parthian Empire was not far away nor was Babylon, celebrated for its pattern weaving in colored threads of great kind. Heliogabalus owned at least one tunic made entirely of gold fabric. There was one, possibly less identify, dyed all pur­ple and another tunic covered with gems in the persian style.
Painted trope of a Roman Lar or family deity wearing a tunic with purple stripes .
An ancient biographer states that Helioga­balus, according to reports, was the first Roman to wear dress made wholly of silk ( holoserica ) which strongly suggests that earlier gar­ments described as satiny were either imitations of silk-like fibers or else made of silk threads inter­woven with base fibers. This agrees with the modern understanding that the alleged silk of the island of Cos was not derived from domesti­cated true silkworms. It besides conforms with the opinion that earlier Romans, finding imported taiwanese fabric patterns not to their like, had the threads unravelled and used for weaving more acceptable pieces, constantly including threads of less valuable fibers. Heliogabalus, excessively, was criti­cized for wearing long-sleeved tunics ; after a din­ner party he would often change into such a tunic, called a dalmaticus, and mix again with his guests. Considering his hope for ostentation and dislike for used clothe it is not surprising to read that he often ripped valuable garments to pieces !
Severus Alexander, who came to the throne in A.D. 222, wore no dress entirely made of arrant silk ( holoserica ), owned merely a few made in separate of silk ( subserica ), and limited his wife ’ mho use of silk and amber. Outside of Italy he normally wore a perianth dyed with cochineal insect but in Italy he reverted to the respected toga. He preferred good linen dress left unbleached so that its smoothness would not be affected and he disliked the rough­ness of gold threads weave into linen fabric. The garments bought for his use were kept in the thesaurus for one year. then, after personally inspecting them, he had the pieces given off. surely these were not valuable state of matter robes but rather more ordinary items obtained per annum .
The late second and third gear centuries A.D. saw many newly manner styles appearing in Rome and surely these were included in the imperial wardrobe. Severus Alexander is said to have worn white trousers ( bracae ) rather of the red ones previously worn. These baggy trousers gathered at the ankles were introduced in Rome from Gaul during the second century A.D. The tunic besides changed, peculiarly in the phase of the upright stripes. Whereas at beginning these had been sold purple in color and limited to two on a tunic, indicating sealed social ranks by their width, by the reign of Aurelian ( A.D. 270-275 ) the emperor is found giving to his soldiers tunics with stripes ranging from one up to five in number. The social distinction has been lost and the stripes are no longer solid purple. already military tunics had come to display imperial stripes but now the stripes are described as lace-like ( paragauda ) which surely associates them with the lovely ornamen­tation found on coptic textiles from Egypt. Earlier the emperor Gallienus had sent gifts to a military tribune, Claudius, which included a tunic with this same paragauda strip, the entire dress weighing three ounces. During Aurelian ’ mho reign the consul Furius Placidus besides gave similarly decorated linen tunics to charioteers in the Circus.
Roman relief from Pozzuoli showing a soldier wearing a hood paenula or a sagum.
Museum Object Number ( mho ) : MS4916A
Tunics besides had primitively been quite simply made without true sleeves but with a fullness falling over the upper arms to give the appearance of sleeves. Yet the emperor butterfly Gallienus ( A.D. 260­268 ) was particularly singled out for wearing a purple and aureate tunic provided with true sleeves. This indicates that tailors had already begun to cut substantial sleeves to be inset into the tunic .
Since the first hundred A.D., imperial cloth­ing styles had changed well and the man­agement of imperial affairs had grown from a odds and ends of family slaves to a true politics organization whose costs were largely borne by the imperial department of the treasury. The thesaurus as it finally developed was put in charge of a rid slave bear­ing the title proxy. The fiscal department of ratio purpurarum or the accounts of the im­perial purple was quite possibly a initiation of Severus Alexander. besides headed by a proxy, this department may have been responsible for costs in manufacturing country robes vitamin a well as the expenses of imperial purple dyes. Slaves in the imperial family, as in private homes, wove garments for the overhaul personnel of the palace. With such facilities available it was natural that some planning be made for the output of imperial garments. Fulling and dyeing establish­ments would besides be required and during the predominate of Severus Alexander one Aurelius Probus served as praepositus baphii or head of the imperial dye-works. It was this Probus who developed an es­pecially bright empurpled dye at the cheer of the emperor who wished to put it on the populace mar­ket. besides by the time of Severus Alexander there were indeed fullers and tailors ( vestitor ) kept as slaves for serving the needs of the palace .
Low-ranking servants known as vestifices or vestiarii castrenses attended to the casual treat of imperial garments as they were needed. Lucius Agrius was a vestiarius tenuarius attended ( in bang of sparse vestments ) for Antoninus Pius. Prosenes, who died in A.D. 2l7 while serving adenine cham­berlain to Caracalla, was apparently a greek freedman who started his career in the imperial family as proportion castrensis ( keeper of palace accounts ). then he was appointed procurator vinorum ( wine steward ) and moved up through the posts of procurator munerum ( stew­ard of services ), procurator patrimonium ( steward of the emperor butterfly ’ s individual estates ) and proxy thesaurum.
Part of a third-fourth century A.D. tunic from the Fayum area of Egypt. The stripe or corn and the shoulder control panel are of tapestry work using purple woolen thread. This may represent that paraguada decoration of earlier times .
even with this detailed palace organization relative to the imperial regalia, many crude materials for producing invest within the palace came from merchants in the city. These negotiatores stocked wool from all over the Mediterranean. Pertinax, before becoming emperor, managed a cloth-maker ’ second shop once belonging to his father in Liguria. Apulian wool was best used in mak­ing the paenula. White wool from the Po valley was very highly esteemed while the best black wool came from Spain. other types were imported from Miletus, Greece, and Gaul. The best wools for darning were produced at Narbo in Gaul and in Egypt. Flax was imported from Gaul, Spain, and Egypt and tied grown in Italy. Egypt pro­vided the greatest assortment and not all of the flax from other sources was deemed appropriate for fabric. Raw flax or flax already spun into linen weave could be obtained in Roman shops. Linen thousand goods already waver came from northern Italy, Tarraco, and Egypt .
raw dyes could be purchased but the gen­eral exercise was to have the fabric dyed by com­mercial dyers. The best harebrained for dyeing wool was found in the neighborhood of Rome. As for empurpled dyes, so democratic in Rome, there was a wide variety of shades available. basically all came from the murex and the purpurus but the timbre of the discolor varied according to the parti­cular mollusk and the localization where it was found. Tyre, the best generator, supplied a darkness rose-colored dye ( purpura ) although something exchangeable besides came from Djerba south of Carthage. In other centers a dull red ( conchylium ) was produced. By mixing the basic dyes the manufacturer could create a brilliant scarlet, a soft amethyst, or a very blackish imperial. extra effects could be secured by dyeing the fabric doubly or by diluting the dye. The latter march was by and large used for garments which were to be dyed in their en­tirety. Another red tinge came from the kermes insect found in Spain and Turkey among other places. The italian persimmon, for one source, offered a scandalmongering dye for woolens. From oak-galls came a black dye and from walnuts a brown dye for wool. vegetable dyes offered a wide-eyed roll of colors and could be secured from Transalpine Gaul but Pliny, in the first hundred A.D., complained that the colors faded with wash­ing. This is a curious remark inasmuch as Pliny elsewhere indicates that Romans knew of alum as a black for setting dye permanently in fabric or fibers. credibly he was referring to dyed fab­rics woven by the Gauls themselves and processed without the use of mordants.

Wool and flax provided the fibers for Roman clothe and dye was accomplished largely in shades of red, purple, and amobarbital sodium. Black was es­sentially saved for mourning and browns were more probable used for workmen ’ second tunics. Yellow was available and green could be obtained by mix­ing other dyes.
A sleeved wool and linen tunic from the Fayum zone of Egypt. This striped dress of loss, blue, green, and yellow dates to the sixth century A.D. or slightly late .
valuable ready-made garments could be pur­chased in the Vicus Tuscus, a street to ‘ the south­west of the Palatine Hill. The shops in the Saepta Julia on the Campus Martius besides had their valuable offerings such as ready-made Tyrian imperial lacernae, possibly imported from Tyre. Most probably the extravagant satiny robes inter­woven with amber were imported from Egypt or Syria where the silk routes terminated and clever weavers knew how to make the best profit from exotic fabrics. In Egypt particularly, gold was more than adequately available for weaving into silk or linen garments. surely in clock Rome ac­quired weavers who could perform this fine work but the Near East must have remained the prin­cipal generator. The many Greek-style vestments. of silk and gold or linen and gold or wool most credibly came from Egypt where a potent greek heritage still prevailed .
By the mid-fourth century A.D. the imperial government maintained countless weaving es­tablishments manned by slaves and controlled by the Count of the Sacred Imperial Largesses. Working chiefly in linen, these weavers pro­duced goods for issue by the emperor to vari­ous personnel employed by the government. In the restrictive heart of the times these weavers were compulsorily bound to the imperial guilds to which they belonged. The like control was asserted over collectors of empurpled dyefish. Silk goods were collected as a tax in kind from com­munities in the easterly part of the empire. In A.D. 369 and again in 382 it was forbidden for any private person to weave or use garments with gold or silk and gold borders. ultimately in A.D. 424 not only was it forbidden to weave at home cloaks and tunics of arrant silk dyed purple but all owners of such pieces were directed to sur­render them to the treasury without reimbursement. failure to comply with this law was a crime like to high treason. Silk garments and purple dyes were for imperial use only. The luxury nowadays discernible in imperial apparel was in­deed far removed from that simplicity which Augustus, the first Roman emperor, had hoped to establish.
A tunic ornament from the Fayum area of Egypt. This tapestry-woven panel of unbleached linen and imperial wool probably decorated the lower share of a tunic and may be related to the paraguada style of ornamentation

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Category : Fashion