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

CLOTHING

could be increased, although it is certainly not improbable, that such devices were employed less by respectable housewives than by the ever obliging ladies of the demi-monde, who at that time were distinguished by the amiable name of hetaerae, that is, companions. Thus we hear of a bandage, which was intended to confine a too stout body, and thus to appear to get rid of an approaching pregnancy (zepilworpa or epilwpa; cf. Pollux, vii, 65). A fragment from a comedy of Alexis (Frag. 98 (Kock), in Ath. xiii, 568a) gives us further information concerning such means of beautifying oneself : ‘When a girl is small, she stitches cork soles in her shoes, when tall, she wears quite thin slippers and goes out with her head between her shoulders ; one who lacks hips puts on under her clothes some material as a substitute, so that all who see her praise aloud her eupygia (beautiful buttocks).

Of the materials of which women’s clothing was made, only flax and silk need be considered in the framework of our statement. Fine flax grew best on the island of Amorgos, hence clothes made from it were called ‘“‘ Amorgina”’ (Pollux, vii, 74). They were extraordinarily thin and transparent and hence a very favourite costume among beautiful women. Still more attractive were the famous Coan dresses, with the invention of which Erotic reached its highest point. ‘They are the fabrics of silk which were made in the island of Cos in such perfection that an old writer (Dionysius Periegetes, 753, 242) could say of them that they were like the colours of a meadow sown over with flowers and that no cobweb could rival them in thinness. The silkworm cocoons were imported to the island of Cos, later the silkworm also was reared ; yet many ready-made silken garments were imported to Greece, expecially from Assyria, whence the Latin expression bombycinae vestes (from bombyx, silkworm), which perhaps indicates that this importation did not take place until Roman times. The effect of these