DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.9177#0177
X
DRESS AND DRAPERY
157
Indian or the overcoat of the soldier, carried about to be used
for any necessary purpose. It is also obvious that it could be
put on in a great variety of ways, so as to produce a number
of artistic effects. Women would very commonly pass it not
under the arm, but over both shoulders, in which case
they would be warmly
wrapped up, but
scarcely capable of any
active movement of
hand or foot. If we
judged by statues, we
should suppose that
while women always
wore a chiton, or shirt,
under the cloak, the
men usually wore no
other garment. But a
study of vases corrects
this impression. Men
are there very com-
monly represented as
wearing the chiton as
well; and one sees
clearly that the sculp-
tor usually omitted the
chiton in order to dis-
play the nude forms of breast and shoulder, just as in
the case of soldiers he usually omits the body armour of
breastplate and backplate, the stiff lines of which would be
in sculpture unpleasing. Occasionally in sculpture, as in the
case of the Bearded Dionysus and Mausolus, we have a male
figure wrapped in ample chiton and himation. This is doubt-
less the state or formal dresswhich men of mark wore on occasion.
Fig. 39. — From a Greek Amphora.1
1 Ashmolean Catalogue, Fig. 25.
DRESS AND DRAPERY
157
Indian or the overcoat of the soldier, carried about to be used
for any necessary purpose. It is also obvious that it could be
put on in a great variety of ways, so as to produce a number
of artistic effects. Women would very commonly pass it not
under the arm, but over both shoulders, in which case
they would be warmly
wrapped up, but
scarcely capable of any
active movement of
hand or foot. If we
judged by statues, we
should suppose that
while women always
wore a chiton, or shirt,
under the cloak, the
men usually wore no
other garment. But a
study of vases corrects
this impression. Men
are there very com-
monly represented as
wearing the chiton as
well; and one sees
clearly that the sculp-
tor usually omitted the
chiton in order to dis-
play the nude forms of breast and shoulder, just as in
the case of soldiers he usually omits the body armour of
breastplate and backplate, the stiff lines of which would be
in sculpture unpleasing. Occasionally in sculpture, as in the
case of the Bearded Dionysus and Mausolus, we have a male
figure wrapped in ample chiton and himation. This is doubt-
less the state or formal dresswhich men of mark wore on occasion.
Fig. 39. — From a Greek Amphora.1
1 Ashmolean Catalogue, Fig. 25.