Sexual life in ancient Greece : with thirty-two full-page plates

THE HuMan FIGURE

In the rest of Greece the chiton as a single article of dress was only worn in the house; in public the himation was indispensable for women; this, with the exception of the somewhat modified cut required by the differently conditioned build of the female body, was not essentially different from the man’s himation, although it is not improbable that slight variations were due to time, fashion, and locality.

We need not go into such details, as the question of dress in this book only belongs to the subject so far as it plays any kind of part in the morals and sexual life of the Greeks.

The girdle that surrounds the hips and keeps up the dress had an erotic meaning so far as it was the symbol of virginity, so that the turn that often occurs in Homer “to loose the maiden’s girdle” is easy to explain.

Greek women and girls knew nothing of stays or corsets, but they wore breast-bands, or ‘ bustsupporters’, which may be compared to the brassiere of to-day. ‘The object of this band, worn as it was round the breast, usually under the chiton and therefore on the bare skin, was to raise the bosom and thereby not only to prevent the unsightly hanging of the breasts, but also to emphasize them or to cover any defect in their beauty (Ovid, Remedia Amoris, 337); and it also served to limit excessive development of the bosom, that “ there may be something for our hand to encompass and cover”’ (Martial, xiv, 134.) Allthis would consequently agree with the functions of the modern stays; but the ancient breast-band differs from the modern corset in that it did not include any lacing-up of the waist.t

For the rest, anumber of toilet-secrets were already known to the ladies of classical antiquity, by which charms which they lacked could be imitated so as to appear real or at least those which were defective

1 A covering for the private parts eee is often mentioned : Aristoph., Wasps, 844, Lysist. 1073.

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