This is a book sorely needed by clothing historians. No monograph in English on the toga has appeared for almost a century (that of L.M. Wilson in 1924: The Roman Toga; H.R. Goette's typological work Studien zu römischen Togadarstellungen appeared in 1990). The toga is important because, as R. notes, ‘the toga was Roman and distinctive, but it was also the dress of an empire’ (p. 3). This is a wonderful up-to-date work on the toga, incorporating lashings of literary, archaeological finds and artistic evidence, and giving a full picture of draping styles well into late antiquity. I also appreciated the very close readings of ancient sources (e.g. concerning the phrase oblitus togae on p. 45).
R. begins with a really impressive overview of previous scholarship (going as far back as the seventeenth century), a discussion of the previous scholarly disregard of clothing and comments on the importance of clothing in Roman antiquity. She also takes into account new finds such as those from Villanovan graves at Verucchio near Rimini (p. 19), and reliefs from Çukurbağ in modern Turkey (Nicomedia, p. 61).
R. has interesting thoughts on the unisex nature of the early toga (pp. 40–1). She writes, sensibly: ‘instead of seeing the toga as naturally male dress, and the palla and stola as naturally women's dress, it makes more sense to see the toga as the original default garment of all Romans, with the stola as a special privilege for some women and the palla gradually entering Roman culture through contact with Greece, eventually almost entirely replacing the toga as a female cloak’. Roman prostitutes, then, were simply those from whom the outward marks of respectability (i.e. stola and palla) were withheld. Possibly togate girls represent an ancient ideal of children as genderless until puberty (p. 41).
R. further reminds us (p. 54) that togate bodies and portrait heads were sold separately and then attached: this is why we do not have extant statues of short togate men, skinny or corpulent ones etc. ‘The perfect male body draped in the toga was an archetype to which a man could literally attach himself’ (ibid.). She fascinatingly equates the difficulties of wearing a toga with a modern sari (pp. 55–6); controlling one's toga also meant the man had control over himself (p. 57). R. really shines in Chapter 6, ‘The Toga in the Provinces’, and reaches exciting conclusions about how the toga was adapted in different regions and what it meant in different provinces.
In the last chapter, ‘The Toga in Late Antiquity’, R. details the demise of the toga: by the late third century it had mostly been replaced by different garments (the paenula, trabea etc.) – although she notes that as early as the second century ce not everyone who was entitled to wear a toga wanted to be depicted in it on their tombstone (pp. 96–7). Interestingly, literary mention of the toga continued well into the fifth century. R.'s book unfortunately could not take into account N. Rollason's intriguing new work on late antique clothing (‘Climate Change and Clothing Changes in Late Antique Male Dress’, in M. Harlow, C. Michel and L. Quillien [edd.], Textiles and Gender in Antiquity from the Orient to the Mediterranean [2020]), in which she posits that it was the ‘little ice age’ of late antiquity that drove the Romans to adopt the sleeved clothing and trousers of their ‘barbarian’ enemies.
And yet despite its many excellences there are (of course) parts of R.'s work I question or disagree with. Her assertion that there was in fact ‘fashion’ in antiquity (pp. 33–4) is quite correct, but only if one defines fashion as any change in clothing styles at all, not merely rapid change, which there was not: six or seven changes in toga draping over 500 years is not rapid. Speaking of a ‘toga statue’ rather than a ‘togate statue’ is to my ear a bit jarring. I disagree with her assertion (pp. 51–2, 60) that the Arringatore statue wears a toga praetexta; R. does not mention the inscription winding its way along the ‘border’. A creased or wrinkled toga was in fact a sign of status (e.g. Sen. Tranq. 1.5), not a sign of shabbiness (p. 94). Unfortunately, R. makes no clear distinction between the terms ‘class’, ‘rank’ and ‘status’ etc., although on page 71 she does say that ‘status’ relates to a wide variety of social classifications: I would have preferred more concrete definitions. The footnotes throughout are quite sparse, and far more citation of previous scholarship is I think essential.
But despite these desiderata, this is a welcome, readable and scholarly tome, chock-full of useful information. Throughout the book R. emphasises that the toga was not merely formal or ceremonial wear – that it was worn every day by thousands, functioned in part as a modern business suit does and had widespread and enduring importance (p. 88). I learned an enormous amount from this volume, and it should be on the bookshelf of everyone interested in ancient dress.
