Women's Clothing: Underwear
Roman Ladies’ Underwear:
Martial mentions that women wore “tunicae” – plural tunics, probably inner and outer:
“Whenever you get up from your hair (I have noticed it again and again), your unfortunate tunics sodomize you, Lesbia. You try and try to pluck them out with your left hand and your right, till you extract them with tears and groans, so firmly are they constrained by the twin Symplegades of your ass as they enter your oversized Cyancan buttocks. Do you want to know how to correct this ugly fault? I’ll tell you how. Lesbia, I advise neither to get up nor sit down.”
This quote also implies that the frequently mentioned "Roman underpants" were not commonly worn beneath women's clothing. It is now thought that they may have been provided by bathhouses for their modest female customers to wear while exercising. (See Subligar below)
“indusium” or “intusium” – the undertunic worn by matrons
Varro in Nonius: “afterwards they began to wear two tunics, and started to call them the subucula and the indusium”
Varro states that the indusium is “a garment which clings to the body inside most clothes”
Varro also states that it is a garment worn under the tunic
“Subucula” – an undertunic worn by both men and women, and were probably identical
“Supparus” or “Supparum” – undertunic worn by young girls and brides
Varro says that the supparum is a linen covering for the thighs which is worn underneath clothing and which hangs to the feet
Lucan mentions it as part of the clothing of the bride and seems to suggest that it had narrow short sleeves: “no narrow suppara hanging from the tips of the shoulders enclosed the bare upper arm”
"Caltula" – short undergarment worn by women
Nonius quotes Varro in stating that a caltula is a little mantle [palliolum]which women wear under their tunics, girded up below their breasts when they no longer wear the subucula.
This may imply that the subucula is a young girl’s garment, which is contradicted by other sources. It may also imply that the subucula was an "old fashioned" garment which was replaced by the caltula.
"Strophium" (also called fascia, fasciola, taenia, or mamillare) – breastband; a band of linen or cotton wrapped around a woman’s chest to hold the breasts and give them firmness.
Breast-bands were intended to give support, but could also make a flat-chested woman appear busty by increasing the amount of wrapping material and/or stuffing it (Roman "falsies"!)
Martial's Epigrams: "band, compress my lady's swelling breasts, so that my hand my find something to clasp and cover." (14.134)
The strophium could also used to flatten overly large breasts to a more fashionable size.
Ovid stated that the site of a large-breasted woman unrestrained by a fascia would cure any man of love (Remedies of Love, 338),
The strophium was used to restrain the growing breasts of young girls to help them achieve the ideal figure - the ideal Roman figure was small breasts with wide hips.
A “respectable women” kept her strophium on even during lovemaking (with her husband, of course)
Martial complains that his wife make love with her strophium, tunica and caltula on
Female slaves apparently wore strophia, but prostitutes did not
Strophia could be made of very soft wool or linen.
Wool has the advantage of being somewhat elastic naturally, while linen has a tendency to stretch and require tightening throughout the day. It is thought that some of the strophia worn by female athletes may have been made of soft leather.
Strophia were long enough to swaddle a baby in, so they were probably at least 10' long (based on 18th century swaddling bands) and 3-8" wide.
Scriptores Historiae Augustae: the birth of Clodius Albinus – “it was customary in his family that the bandages in which the children are wrapped should be of a reddish color. In his case, however, it chanced that the bandages which had been prepared by his mother during her pregnancy had been washed and were not yet dry, and he was therefore wrapped in a breast-band of his mother’s, and this, as it happened, was purple.” (SHA Clodius Ablinus 5.9)
"Subligar" - There is no Roman era literary evidence to suggest that Roman women wore underpants
Cicero's 1st century BCE description of the clothing worn by P. Clodius when dressed as a woman mentions strophium on two different occasions, but never mentions subligar
Ovid also mentions strophium and leg wraps and common places for women to hide love letters in his Art of Love (3.621-4), but never mentions subligar
In Apulius' novel Metamorphoses [The only ancient Roman novel in Latin to survive in its entirety, which St. Augustine referred to as The Golden Ass (Asinus aureus)], Lucius' lover undresses "without delay she stripped off her clothes, even down to the band that bound up her breasts" (10.21). No mention is made of any subligar.
Although its an artistic reference rather than a literary one, the woman depicted in the act of undressing on the silver bucket in the Naples Museum is wearing a strophium, but no subligar.
The garment worn by the famous “bikini girls” at Piazza Amerina in Sicily is probably a “subligar” which was the female equivalent of the “subligaculum” – a kind of underpants mentioned only in relation to actors, workers, slaves, and athletes.
It's possible that Roman women also wore these during menstruation
The depictions of female athletes wearing briefs all come from large bath-houses, where women could exercise in relative privacy and then wash off the sweat with a bath.
These possible that the leather, openwork brief with ties at the sides, like those found in London, were provided by the bathhouse for their female customers just as they provided towels and sandals for their convenience.
The side ties would make the briefs fairly adjustable for differently sized women
These briefs may also have been worn in the water of the public baths by modest customers
Other “underclothes”:
“Tibiale” – leg wraps worn around the lower part of the leg in cold weather
“Thorax” or “Capitium” – a chest protector worn by men and women under their tunics in cold weather
“Camisia” – tunics worn in bed, “in camis” = “in bed”, similar to subucula, worn by men and women