For the past two decades dress has emerged as a critical area of study for scholars of Graeco-Roman antiquity. Titles include edited volumes, such as L. Llewellyn-Jones, Women's Dress in the Ancient Greek World (2002) and C.S. Colburn and M.K. Heyn, Reading a Dynamic Canvas: Adornment in the Ancient Mediterranean World (2008), as well as monographs, such as K. Olson, Dress and the Roman Woman: Self-Presentation and Society (2008). These studies and others commonly take their cues from anthropology and treat dress as a broad category, encompassing clothing as well as bodily modification and composure. Abandoning earlier attempts to reconstruct the real clothing of ancient people (see, e.g., J.L. Sebesta and L. Bonfante, World of Roman Costume [1994], G. and H. cite this title in their introduction, p. 16), recent studies examine the Graeco-Roman world as a context in which dress was symbolically potent and provided people a means to exercise authority, establish identities, maintain group boundaries and in-group distinctions.
The volume shares in recent trends within the study of ancient dress highlighted above. It is the product of two research days in 2008 as well as an international colloquium held at the University Paris Diderot on November 26–27, 2009. In their introduction, G. and H. note that practices as well as discourses (both literary and visual) establish codes around dressing and undressing whose meaning derives from the particular contexts in which dress is worn or represented (p. 23). For the editors vêtements encompasses real garb as well as bodily movements and gestures – that is, what is worn as well as how it is worn, and by whom (p. 16). Further, they are interested not only in what dress might mean, but also what might be signified by its absence (p. 16). Indeed, it is this focus on the dynamics of dressing and undressing that enable the contributors to emphasise the role that context plays in the semiotics of clothing.
The eighteen contributions (all in French) variously explore dressing and undressing in a wide range of materials from ancient Greece to Imperial Rome (the contribution by Bonnet and Slobodzianek stretches back to Sumeria-Akkadia, while that by Bartholeyns moves forward to Christian late antiquity and the middle ages). It is oriented towards the work of continental European scholars, though not exclusively (for instance, L. Llewellyn-Jones, writes the epilogue for the volume, and classicists D. Cairns and C. Vout offer contributions).
The volume is divided into three broad thematic sections, ‘Values and Symbols of Clothing’, ‘Clothing and Identity’ and ‘Clothing in Context’. While these themes have been explored in other volumes on ancient clothing, the reader will encounter some novelty here. First, the volume is extensive both chronologically and in the kinds of material under consideration (history, philosophy, myth, artistic representation on various kinds of media, from private pieces to large built monuments). Like earlier studies of antique dress this collection illustrates how dress can establish social and gender roles and navigate rites of passage. Yet it expands the discussion to include the religious meaning of dress and the dress of religious as well as ethnic groups – an important contribution to this burgeoning area of study.
Part 1 features essays by P. Schmitt Pantel, B. Wagner-Hasel, H., A. Vigourt and A. Serghidou that consider the clothing symbolism of historical or imagined figures, such as emperors, political leaders and Amazons, as well as the symbolism associated with particular garments, the himation or belt. Schmitt Pantel addresses Attic Greek representations of the belted Amazons. She suggests that the belt commonly indicated a sexual status change for women from adolescence to motherhood. When applied to men the belt signalled military readiness and the status of adult citizenship. In the exceptional case of the Amazons, however, the polysemy of the belt expresses the unique status of the female warrior. H. examines the motif of velato capite on reliefs of Roman sacrifice. In keeping with the theme of the collection, H. asks not only what the head-covering might signify, but also what might be said about reliefs in which this motif does not appear. Where other scholars have understood these scenes as sacrifice in the Greek rite, H. suggests the images conform to Roman ritual prescriptions in which military men (on certain occasions) perform sacrifice aperto capite.
The second section, ‘Clothing and Identities’, features contributions by G. Pironti, P. Brulé, G. Bartholeyns, C. Bonnet and I. Slobodzianek, B. Cohen, and F. Lissarrague. These authors examine how dress and its representation served in the characterisation of mythic figures, such as Innana/Ishtar in the Sumerian-Akkadian myth of her descent into the underworld, or the Satyrs. Other essays look at dress and the maintenance of social groups, such as Athenian women and Cretan youth. Bartholeyns's essay, the longest in the volume, for example, offers a rich survey of late-antique Christian views of dress stretching into discussions of iconography and medieval clothing production. Bartholeyns suggests that Christian authors crafted a moralistic discourse in which their clothing became an outward visible sign of inner spiritual status. This discourse drew on its ‘pagan’ antecedents, but shifted the focus to make dress a primary part of the construction and support of Christian culture.
Essays in the third section from D. Cairns, M. Galinier, M.-C. Villanueva Puig, A. Stähli, C. Vout, O. van Nijf and S. Benoist consider how the meaning of dress is contingent upon the context in which it is worn or represented. These authors focus equally on dressing the body and its undressing or nudity, and as a result this section has the most thematic overlap. Readers might be interested to consider the various tensions that emerge in these discussions, around shifting notions of nudity in Greek versus Roman materials, and around nudity and gender. Following A. Stewart, Vout notes nudity is a costume in the ancient world, ‘a self-fashioning’, which is stylised, and brings with it normative ideals about status and power (p. 239). She looks at the Attic vase painting of Atalanta, a female hunter who became a model for nude female athletes. This iconography questioned the limits of ‘the heroic, democratic, and erotic’ (p. 241). Stähli considers how the image of Heracles in the nude as a symbol of male strength (andreia) obtained popularity in concert with the Panathenaic festivals that stressed the physicality and athletic formation for Athenian youths.
There is much to recommend the volume to advanced students and scholars of Classics, art history and ancient history. Readers can easily approach the volume selectively, considering thematic or chronological criteria of interest to them. The volume is somewhat uneven, with some essays offering short discussions, where other essays offer rich surveys with excellent notes and bibliography (notably H. and Bartholeyns). On the whole, the editors have produced an attractive volume that reveals some of the ways that ancient people utilised the rich signification of dressing and undressing in social, political and religious contexts.
