How To: Dress as an ancient Greek

This ‘How to:’ guide is a follow up on a previous post aimed at readers wishing to recreate simple yet effective historical costume. The focus for this guide, however, is on the ancient Greeks and the typical clothing worn from the 5th century BC Classical period until the 1st century AD and Roman rule. Three garments were the basis of Classical Greek dress: the khiton (pronounced kite-n), the peplos, an overgarment worn by women, and the chlamys (pronounced klom-iss), a cloak. These three garments were draped and belted to create various styles. To this list has been added the himation, a form of dress similar to the more famous Roman toga.

First off are a few practical pointers for the modern maker:

Material  The only truly acceptable cloth should be made from the natural fibres of linen or wool. It is recognised that sometimes modern cloth contains a mixture of these and cotton. This is tolerable compromise for those seeking to be as accurate as possible since the mix of fibres will not adversely affect the appearance or the draping qualities of the base material.

Construction  There is no reason why seams that are not immediately visible cannot be machine stitched. There are some people for whom this is an anathema as it is ‘not historically accurate’. We would argue that careful use of machine stitching is merely a practical measure (we live in the 21st century and are not actually ancient Greeks) providing visible seams, such as those in collars, sleeves and hems, are hand sewn.

Fastenings  Garments that were not sewn together were typically fastened using long pins (fibulae), brooches, or buttons and toggles made of bone or wood.

Himation

The himation (ancient Greek: ἱμάτιον / hə-MAT-ee-un) is the ancient Greek equivalent to the Roman toga. In its simplest form it was a large rectangular piece of woollen cloth, approximately 4 m to 5 m in length and 1.2 m to 1.5 m wide, worn by ancient Greek men and women from the Archaic through the Hellenistic periods (c. 750 BC to 30 BC). It was typically worn over a man’s khiton or woman’s ‘peplos’ (see below) being draped about the wearer’s body from shoulder to ankle. As shown right, men sometimes wore the himation alone without a khiton underneath. In this manner it served both as a khiton and as a cloak and was called an ‘akhiton’. Many vase paintings depict women wearing a himation as a veil covering their faces. 

Draping  It is unlikely that the himation can be simply 'slipped' on. Rather it may take the assistance of one or two people. Yet, evidence on how to put on a himation does not survive and modern wearers may have to experiment with the most effective way of doing so. The following guidance is offered to those assistants charged with dressing the himation wearer:

1.  The wearer stands erect with their arms extended laterally at shoulder height, i.e. in a cruciform stance. Other than holding a fold or slowly rotating when instructed, there is little else for the wearer to do.

2.  The cloth is prepared for donning by gathering the folds, which are then placed, from behind the wearer, over their left shoulder. The folds should be uppermost and hang down the wearer’s front, with the bottom edge reaching to between calf and ankle. The folds should be adjusted as required to drape properly. The wearer can assist by bending his left arm at the elbow and gripping the material in place.

3.  Keeping the folds together, drape the material across the wearer’s back, looping up under their right arm, across the chest (the wearer’s left hand must be out of the way) and once again over the left shoulder. Depending on the available space it may be advantageous to get the wearer to perform a slow quarter or half turn to the right.

4.  The remaining material should be draped along the length of the left arm to hang towards the left foot.

Khiton

The khiton (χιτών) is the base garment worn by both men and women. Essentially it is a rectangular piece of cloth folded laterally to form a tube with one side left open. The back corners were pinned to the front to form shoulder straps. Alternatively, khiton could be sewn at the shoulders and sewn from the underarm to the hem to form the tube. The difference between the sexes is the overall length of the garment and where the hemline ends. For women, dresses are typically shown full length with the hemline at least to the ankle. By contrast, Greek men tended to wear their khiton quite short above the knee at mid-thigh level allowing more freedom of movement in exercise, manual labour and in warfare. Some depictions show very short khiton barely covering the genitals [1].

Exomis

A variation on the khiton was the exomis worn, it seems, by men only (although some goddesses might be depicted in one). As for a khiton, it is a rectangular piece of cloth approximately 2 m long and at least 1 m wide worn with the hemline at mid-thigh or shorter. The material is folded in half laterally about the wearer’s body with the top of the fold beneath right armpit and fastened at the left shoulder. The exomis is then belted and the material arranged to drape evenly.

Material  For most people, clothing was made predominantly of wool or linen. The wealthy could afford very finely woven cloth, with some examples being especially sheer or translucent. For our purposes, the basic garment is easily reproduced from a rectangular piece of cloth approximately 2 m long and between 2 m and 3 m wide.

Pattern  As in our previous post, we will focus on a pattern for a woman’s khiton as the men’s version is essentially a shortened form either with or without short sleeves. In its simplest form the Doric style khiton is a folded rectangle of cloth with the two halves fastened with multiple fibulae (pins) or buttons at the shoulders, or simply sewn together. Doric style dresses worn by ancient Greek women may well have been left open along the line B-C (refer to the diagram below), with the two halves of the dress belted in place. If you are feeling particularly risqué then you could follow the ancient example, but we would suggest, for modesty’s sake alone, that the seam along B-C is sewn.

An alternative is the Ionic style khiton which was also a large piece of fabric folded laterally and then pinned at intervals along the arms and at the shoulders. Belted it formed voluminous sleeves when carefully draped.

In the diagram above, the head hole is formed between D-E which, from experience, needs to be at least 25 cm to 30 cm (c. 10 to 12 inches) wide. When folded in half, and if you decide to sew the shoulders together between A-D and E-F, then the cloth must be cut at F-G to allow the right arm to pass through. If you prefer to simply pin the garment at the shoulders with brooches at D-D and E-E, then the cloth would fall on each side and cutting the F-G armhole would not be necessary [2].

In the pattern above the rectangle of cloth needs to be approximately 2 m long and at least 3 m wide (once folded it will be 1.5 m wide).

Belts  Khiton should be belted at the waist. Excess material can be pulled up and bloused over the belt to achieve the desired length. Sometimes women’s dresses were belted twice, once at the waist and again at the hips, giving a double-bloused effect. Similarly, they are also depicted belted high under the breasts, or cross-belted over the chest and tied at the waist.

Peplos

While the Doric style khiton is perfectly acceptable attire for women, a peplos (Greek: ὁ πέπλος) is the more typical clothing for women in ancient Greece by about 500 BC during the late Archaic and Classical period. As with the khiton, the Doric peplos was a body-length (A-C) garment made from a rectangle of cloth folded about the wearer and open on one side of the body. In this case, however, the top edge was folded down about halfway to, or below, the waistline thereby forming an overfold called an apoptygma (pictured below). The folded top edge was pinned from back to front at the shoulders (D-D, E-E) and the garment gathered about the waist with a belt. The shorter, waist-length apoptygma might be belted beneath the material, while longer, below the waistline apoptygma are shown belted just below the bust. In either style the apoptygma provided the appearance of a second piece of clothing. The overfold should be arranged to drape evenly.

Hats and Cloaks

Ignoring helmets, ancient Greek men are often depicted wearing broad-brimmed, bell-crowned hats to protect against sun and rain. Called petasos (below left) they seem popular with travellers and may have been made of straw, felt or leather. A simpler style of straw cap or tatulus (below middle), perhaps favoured by labourers, were also worn. There are far fewer depictions of women wearing hats but this does not they were not worn. In the artist’s impression below right, the lady is shown with her outer garment, a himation, draped over her head, which is probably how most women went abroad outdoors. In ancient societies, particularly the Greeks and Romans, for a woman to be out in public without her head covered or with long flowing, loose hair was seen as a sign of impropriety - loose hair, loose woman. With her head dutifully covered she sports a small straw sun hat known as a tholia.

As instead of the himation or akhiton previously mentioned, when outdoors or travelling ancient Greek men wore a chlamys (right), a short hunting cloak. Once again it is basically a rectangle of, usually, woollen cloth that was draped over the left shoulder and pinned on the right. It could be worn over a khiton or alone, the latter being considered ‘manly’ to endure the elements in a single garment.

If one was to take inspiration from the earlier Etruscans, then a square-cut or semi-circular form of poncho known as a tabenna was seemingly popular in the 7th to 5th centuries BC.

Footwear

Going barefoot was common, especially for children, but the ancient Greeks also wore simple leather shoes when outdoors. Carbatina for example, featured soles and uppers cut from one-piece of leather. Loops cut around the leather’s edges allowed laces to pass through and draw the uppers together about the foot.

Unsurprisingly there is a large variety of footwear depicted in ancient Greek art and sculpture ranging in styles from soleae, sandals held in place by a leather thong or tongue between the toes, to krepidea that enclosed more of the foot. Ankle and calf-height boots are also shown [3].

Endnotes:

1. We are all for ‘authenticity’ but in a school or at a public event this might not be a wise choice professionally and legally speaking.

2. In other words the arms pass through the gaps A-D and E-F.

3. If portraying an ancient Greek character avoid wearing Roman caligae. While these are widely available to buy online, they are the distinctive and instantly recognisable footwear of Roman soldiers and thus wholly inappropriate for the Classical Greek period.

About History: Spectacles

One of the most curious objects in the Royal Armouries collection is the ‘horned helmet’, a bizarre headpiece commissioned in AD 1511 by the Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I as a gift for the young King Henry VIII. According to the Royal Armouries, the helmet would have been part of a full armour worn by the King for court pageants.

The decoration on the grotesque mask is etched with life-like facial details such as stubble on the chin and crow’s feet around the eyes. This extraordinary helmet is distinctive for the pair of ram’s horns, beautifully modelled in sheet iron, sprouting from the skull, and the pair of spectacles that heighten its strangeness.

A number of images of fools wearing or carrying spectacles of this kind exist. The spectacles themselves are of so-called ‘rivet’ type, an almost universal design which hinged in order that they might grip the bridge of the wearer’s nose; forerunners of pince-nez. Spectacles of this type are known in Europe from at least the middle of the 14th century.

As iconic as this helmet is, however, it got us thinking, as spectacle wearers, when were these optical devices invented?

Innovative invention  The classical Roman writer Seneca is said to have read all the books in Rome by using a glass globe of water to enlarge the handwritten letters. Strictly speaking he was using a form of magnifying glass, but anything held to the eye and not worn on the face are categorised as ‘eyeglasses’ not spectacles. The innovative idea of wearing spectacles shaped in some way to sit on the face for long periods seems to have been a Mediæval European invention.

The wearing of spectacles to correct optical defects is so normal today that we barely think about it. The vast majority of people do not need corrective lens until they reach somewhere around the age of forty when it is quite normal for the crystalline lens of the eye to harden. This leads to presbyopia or farsightedness for which the convex lens in the first spectacles were intended to counter. The idea may have developed from ‘reading stones’ made from segments of glass spheres and used by presbyopic monks to read manuscripts by holding the glass against the letters (cf, Seneca’s glass globe).

Convex spectacles seem to have evolved by chance, not through optical theory, even though medieval Europe had acquired some scientific knowledge of optics from Islamic scholars. The Muslim mathematician and natural philosopher Ibn al-Haitham (c. AD 965 - AD 1039), called Alhazen by Europeans, wrote about the properties of lenses in a work translated from Arabic into Latin in AD 1266. A year later, the English monk and scientist Roger Bacon (c. AD 1214 - AD 1294) wrote about his experiments in using convex lenses to correct vision, advocating their use to help old people. It seems the first convex lensed spectacles were invented around AD 1285, and the first reference to them is contained within a manuscript written about the Popozo family from Tuscany, Italy dated to AD 1289.

Whether spectacles were invented in Pisa or Florence is uncertain, although for centuries patriotic historians of both Italian cities have reputedly altered manuscripts and invented evidence to claim the prestige of the invention for their city. Regardless, Venice became an early centre for the mass production of lenses. Having already produced the best ‘reading stones’ than elsewhere in Europe, the skilled glass blowers of the Venetian suburb of Murano went further to produce thicker and clearer glass that proved superiors for grinding high-quality lenses. Indeed, in AD 1301 the Venetian crystal workers' guild created the first regulations for producing ‘glass discs for the eyes’, and by around AD 1320 a guild of spectacle-makers had been established in Venice.

Medieval spectacles were riveted at the centre and had leather grips to hold on to the bridge of the nose. Some contemporary paintings (see right) show readers holding spectacles on the face by hand, and some frames were made of leather to reduce their weight. By the AD 1360s the early Renaissance writer Petrarch could refer to spectacles for the elderly as if they were commonplace in Florence, and in paintings of this period and of the 15th century they are often included in portraits of saints and scholars to signify piety and learning. By the late 15th century their use had spread so far outside the elite that artists increasingly used them to signify folly or senility.

Eventually, between AD 1725 and AD 1730, Edward Scarlatt of London invented sidepieces, or temples, by which nearly all spectacles are worn today.

Reference:

‘The Invention of Spectacles’, Encyclopedia.com, Available online (accessed August 26th, 2022).

On This Day: Nurse Edith Cavell executed as a Spy

October 12th, 1915: On this day, in the early hours of October 12th, 1915, a British national, still wearing her nurses’ uniform, was led out into a yard at Belgium’s national rifle range in Brussels. Alongside her was Phillipe Bancq, a Brussels-based architect. Shortly after dawn, two German firing-squads, each of eight men, were paraded in front of the pair. When ordered, the soldiers fired executing both Bancq and the British nurse - Edith Louisa Cavell.

She was born in Norfolk on December 4th, 1865. After training as a nurse in London, in 1907, Edith travelled to Brussels where she became Matron of the Berkendael Medical Institute, a pioneering training establishment for nurses in Belgium.  When the German Army invaded and occupied Belgium, the Institute became a Red Cross hospital, treating casualties from both sides. Nurse Cavell had been permitted to remain and continue her work by the occupying German forces.

The offence for which she was executed was for helping British soldiers trapped behind German lines after the Battle of Mons escape to neutral Holland. Clearly Cavell was guilty of aiding the enemy, as the Germans saw it, but the decision to shoot a nurse whose only crime was to help others was met with utter revulsion around the world including in the United States.

Cavell’s remains were returned to Britain after the war and a state funeral was held at Westminster Abbey. On May 19th, 1919, her body was reburied at the East side of Norwich Cathedral. A graveside service is still held there each October. 

1940s Weekend at Tanfield Railway

Tanfield Railway near Gateshead (NE16 5ET) is the world's oldest railway still in use. Originally built to transport coal from the local pits to the docks on the River Tyne for onward shipping, today the railway offers visitors 'an unforgettable journey on a vintage steam train with unique Victorian carriages and lovingly restored locomotives'. Steam trains run every Sunday & Bank holiday until the end of October for you to enjoy a six-mile round trip through beautiful rolling countryside and a spectacular wooded valley. Afternoon Tea on the train is even available until late October.

When the Tanfield Railway - or 'waggonway' as it was known at the time - was built in 1725, it was a revelation. Its massive engineering was unlike anything else at the time and a clear signal that a new industrial age had arrived. It was first laid down more than a quarter of a century before the first railway officially sanctioned by government, over 75 years before the first steam locomotive and a whole 100 years earlier than the Stockton and Darlington Railway. In 2025, the Tanfield Railway will be the first railway to celebrate its tricentenary.

For several years, albeit interrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic, the Marley Hill Engine Shed site has hosted a 1940s weekend involving many local military history enthusiasts. In September this year (2022), Tastes Of History were invited to deliver a two-day cooking demonstration in keeping with the World War Two theme. We chose, therefore, to recreate healthy Home Front dishes on wartime rations following official WW2 instruction leaflets.

Rationing  Despite the physical and emotional stress many had to endure, the health of the nation was surprisingly good during the austere war years. As strange as may seem infant mortality declined and the average age of death from natural causes increased. One reason was the change in eating habits forced on the British public by the war. For the poorer sections of society rationing introduced more protein and vitamins, while for others it reduced their consumption of meat, fats, eggs and sugar. Many doctors and nutritionists today would champion any regimen that reduces cholesterol and increases the amount of fibre in our diet. With the link between food and health now generally recognised, perhaps it is a good time to look once more at the wartime recommendations.

Rationing in wartime Britain was a necessary evil but the government of the day went to great lengths to ensure everyone had enough to eat. Lessons had been learnt from the problems encountered during the Great War and plans for rationing and distribution had already been drawn up by the outbreak of WW2 in 1939. An extensive programme of cookery teaching and of education in nutrition was undertaken by means of leaflets, books, radio broadcasts and demonstrations. Some eighteen million people listened to the early morning five-minute BBC radio programme The Kitchen Front. The following recipes have been recreated from official Ministry of Food leaflets. Metric measurements are favoured but the Imperial equivalents are given. Please note, the cooking temperatures given in degrees centigrade are specifically for modern fan assisted ovens as most households now use these. For non-fan assisted ovens, a rule of thumb is to add 20 degrees to the temperature quoted. Thus, a Hot oven is 200°C for a fan assisted oven, 220°C for a non-fan oven, 425°F or gas mark 7.

Girdle Scones  With eggs rationed to one per person per week, when they were available, recipes that dispensed with their use became more important. One such is for simple Girdle Scones:

Fritters  As an alternative to girdle scones, why not try bacon fritters for a breakfast treat? It is worth noting, however, that this dish calls for 2 oz of bacon which, in 1942, equates to half of a person's typical weekly ration.

Fish and Potato Pancake  Ministry of Food Leaflet Number 7 offered cooks ten menus for high teas and suppers. The leaflet states: 'A good high tea or supper should include either a raw salad or a correctly cooked vegetable dish and one of the body-building foods such as cheese, egg, bacon, meat or fish. These can be supplemented with a vegetable body-builder such as peas, beans, lentils or oatmeal.' The recipe for Fish and Potato Pancake comes from Menu 7 on said leaflet and would have been accompanied by coleslaw with rock buns for afters.

Creamed Sardine Pie  Also taken from Ministry of Food Leaflet Number 7 is this recipe for Creamed Sardine Pie. It formed part of Menu 6 to served alongside a green salad and followed with bread, margarine and jam. We found this was somewhat of a 'marmite' moment for those sampling the dish. Perhaps it was the grey colour that put some people off, but those who partook discovered a very tasty sardine dish.

Woolton Pie  Named after Frederick Marquis, 1st Lord Woolton, the Minister of Food in 1940, ‘Woolton Pie’ was an adaptable dish of vegetables. It was one of a number of recipes commended to the British public by the Ministry of Food to ensure a nutritional diet despite food shortages and rationing.

Potato Pastry  The recipe for Potato Pastry is one used by Marguerite Patten, a Home Economist who worked for the Ministry of Food demonstrating how to make the ration work to feed families healthy, nutritious meals. She was also one of the broadcasters on the BBC's The Kitchen Front and would go on to author several cookery books based on her experiences.

Syrup Loaf  Our Syrup Loaf seemed popular even though its texture is more bread-like than cake. This is largely due to the use of plain flour with a little baking soda, which produces a denser loaf, rather than self-raising flour more likely to be used today. To modern tastes so used to highly sugared products, the amount of syrup used seems meagre but remember sugar and its derivatives were in short supply. Indeed, Ministry of Food Leaflet Number 21 extolled all to stretch the sugar ration 'by making full use of other sweetenings such as saccharin, honey, syrup or treacle, jam, marmalade, sweetened condensed milk and dried fruit.'

Only six recipes, but ones that represented the efforts people had to go to create healthy, nutritious meals while cooking on the ration. Do get in touch if you have any questions or would like further information on rationing, wartime cooking or other WW2 related topics.