Costumes, Stitched and Draped--The Chiton--The Himation or Chlaina--Drapery--The Uniform Male Dresses of Sparta--The Chlamys--Similarity Between Male and Female Costumes--The Difference Between Doric and Ionic Garments--The Fashion at Athens in the Fifth Century B.C.--The Materials--Footgear--Leggings--Head-Coverings--Mode of Dressing the Hair.
To obtain a complete insight into the life of former ages we require primarily a knowledge of the historical and geographical, political, and religious conditions of the people in question, as well as of its intellectual development in art and science. These, however, it is not our purpose to consider here. The second requisite for a vivid picture is a clear notion of the surroundings in which the people of that time lived: their dwellings, furniture, utensils, etc. And lastly, there is another point, the knowledge of which is no less indispensable in order to obtain a clear image of the past, and that is the costume. Our knowledge of the customs and habits of daily life appears far more real, and stands out more vividly, if we can also form in our minds a picture of the people of that time. Thus no one can expect to form a clear picture of mediaeval life without at least a general notion of the costume of that period. This is equally true of every epoch of civilisation, even of a period so little distant from us in time as the eighteenth century.
We therefore preface our description of Greek life with an account of the details of Greek costume, and of its historical development; and our reasons for going into greater detail here than in other domains is that there are so many wrong, or at any rate incomplete, notions extant concerning it. For when we speak to-day of Greek costume we may generally assume that the majority of people, if female dress is in question, think of the drapery of the magnificent female figures in the Parthenon marbles; while, as regards male costume, their minds will at once recur to the classic figure of Sophocles in the Lateran or of the Aeschines of Naples, and form their notion of Greek male costume accordingly. It is, however, absolutely wrong to regard these as typical of Greek dress. They represent neither the costume of all Hellas nor that of the whole Greek age. That "noble simplicity and quiet greatness," which is as conspicuous in the dress of the age of Pericles as in its art, is, like the latter, the product of slow development through various phases, concerning which, with the exception of a few literary allusions, the monuments give us all the information we possess.