Part 4 (2/2)
Children wear miniature imitations of the dress of their elders.
Boys are taught to toughen their bodies by refraining from thick garments in cold weather. In hot weather they can frequently be seen playing about with very little clothing at all!
36. Footwear and Head Coverings.--Upon his feet the Athenian frequently wears nothing. He goes about his home barefoot; and not seldom he enjoys the delight of running across the open greensward with his unsandaled feet pressing the springing ground; but normally when he walks abroad, he will wear SANDALS, a simple solid pair of open soles tied to his feet by leather thongs pa.s.sing between the toes. For hard country walking and for hunting there is something like a high leather boot,[*] though doubtless these are counted uncomfortable for ordinary wear. As for the sandals, simple as they are, the Attic touch of elegance is often upon them. Upon the thongs of the sandals there is usually worked a choice pattern, in some brilliant color or even gilt.
[*]Actors, too, wore a leather boot with high soles to give them extra height--the COTHURNUS.
The Athenians need head coverings even less than footgear. Most of them have thick hair; baldness is an uncommon affliction; everybody is trained to walk under the full glare of Helios with little discomfort. Of course certain trades require hats, e.g. sailors who can be almost identified by their rimless felt caps. Genteel travelers will wear wide-brimmed hats; but the ladies, as a rule, have no headgear besides their tastefully arranged hair, although they will partly atone for the lack, by having a maid walk just behind them with a gorgeously variegated parasol.
37. The Beauty of the Greek Dress.--Greek Costume, then, is something fully sharing in the national characteristics of harmony, simplicity, individuality. It is easy to see how admirably this style of dress is adapted to furnish over ready models and inspiration for the sculptor.[*] Unconventional in its arrangement, it is also unconventional in its color. A masculine crowd is not one unmitigated swarm of black and dark grays or browns, as with the mult.i.tude of a later age. On the contrary, white is counted as theoretically the most becoming color on any common occasion for either s.e.x;[+] and on festival days even grave and elderly men will appear with chitons worked with brilliant embroidery along the borders, and with splendid himatia of some single clear hue--violet, red, purple, blue, or yellow. As for the costume of the groom at a wedding, it is far indeed from the ”conventional black” of more degenerate days. He may well wear a purple-edged white chiton of fine Milesian wool, a brilliant scarlet himation, sandals with blue thongs and clasps of gold, and a chaplet of myrtle and violets.
His intended bride is led out to him in even more dazzling array.
Her white sandal-thongs are embroidered with emeralds, rubies, and pearls. Around her neck is a necklace of gold richly set,--and she has magnificent golden armlets and pearl eardrops. Her hair is fragrant with Oriental nard, and is bound by a purple fillet and a chaplet of roses. Her ungloved fingers s.h.i.+ne with jewels and rings. Her main costume is of a delicate saffron, and over it all, like a cloud, floats the silvery tissue of the nuptial veil.
[*]”The chiton became the mirror of the body,” said the late writer Achilles Tatius.
[+]No doubt farmers and artisans either wore garments of a non-committal brown, or, more probably, let their originally white costume get utterly dirty.
38. Greek Toilet Frivolities.--From the standpoint of inherent fitness and beauty, this Athenian costume is the n.o.blest ever seen by the world. Naturally there are ill-advised creatures who do not share the good taste of their fellows, or who try to deceive the world and themselves as to the ravages of that arch-enemy of the h.e.l.lene,--Old Age. Athenian women especially (though the men are not without their follies) are sometimes fond of rouge, false hair, and the like. Auburn hair is especially admired, and many fine dames bleach their tresses in a caustic wash to obtain it.
The styles of feminine hair dressing seem to change from decade to decade much more than the arrangements of the garments. Now it is plaited and crimped hair that is in vogue, now the more beautiful ”Psyche-knots”; yet even in their worst moods the Athenian women exhibit a sweet reasonableness. They have not yet fallen into the clutches of the Parisian hairdresser.
The poets, of course, ridicule the foibles of the fair s.e.x.[*]
Says one:--
The golden hair Nikylla wears Is hers, who would have thought it?
She swears 'tis hers, and true she swears For I know where she bought it!
And again:--
You give your cheeks a rosy stain, With washes dye your hair; But paint and washes both are vain To give a youthful air.
An art so fruitless then forsake, Which, though you much excel in, You never can contrive to make Old Hecuba young Helen.
[*]Translated in Falke's ”Greece and Rome” (English translation, p. 69). These quotations probably date from a time considerably later than the hypothetical period of this sketch; but they are perfectly proper to apply to conditions in 360 B.C.
But enough of such scandals! All the best opinion--masculine and feminine--frowns on these follies. Let us think of the simple, dignified, and aesthetically n.o.ble costume of the Athenians as not the least of their examples to another age.
Chapter VII. The Slaves.
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