Wool in Ancient Rome

Wool:

Wool was the most important fiber in the Roman world:

Spinning wool & weaving wool cloth were considered part of every woman’s duty to her family, and symbols of her virtue and womanliness. Roman matrons were remembered with epitaphs that included phrases such as “I kept the house” and “I worked with wool.” Alongside such statements, implements of their virtuous craft often adorn their tombstones, including distaffs, spindles, baskets of wool roving, and balls of spun wool.

There is an ancient Roman morality tale about a handful of Roman husbands who, back in the days of the Roman kingdom, were camped outside an enemy city. They started drinking and bragging about their wives to such an extent that they decided to ride back to Rome to decide whose wife was the worthiest. Titus, Aruns, and Sextus all found their wives feasting and drinking at a lavish dinner party. Tarquinius discovered that his wife, Lucretia, was at home, quietly spinning and weaving with her slaves. The other husbands declared her the winner and the most virtuous wife. The later rape of the blameless Lucretia by Prince Sextus, and her subsequent suicide due to having been dishonored, spurred the rebellion that ended the monarchy and established the Roman Republic.

The association between womanly virtue and the spinning and weaving with wool was so strong that Augustus, the first Roman Emperor, required his wife and daughter to personally spin and weave his togas as an example of feminine virtue for other Roman women to follow. In fact, when at home he always wore clothing made from their homespun, home-woven cloth. Most upper class households also had slaves who participated in the spinning and weaving, and probably produced the bulk of the household fabric, but supervising their production, as well as participating in the work, was the duty of the matron and her daughters. This old-fashioned way of life was highly prized by Emperor Augustus and Empress Livia. By the 1st century CE professional weavers began supplying the bulk of the yarn and fabric used in many large upper class households, but wool working remained the symbol of matronly responsibility throughout the Roman Empire.

Baskets containing spindles and wool in the process of being spun were often displayed in the atrium of the Roman home as a demonstration of the matron’s dedication and virtue. Ideally the matrona would be sitting in her atrium, spinning, while she welcomed and entertained her guests. 

Wool was believed to contain animus, or spirit, because it is made from a living animal and is therefore associated with life, health, strength, and a correct relationship with the gods. It was well-known that stroking wool with a piece of amber produced static electricity, which was then equated with flashes of lightning from the heavens. The cosmos was the ultimate source of what the Greeks called the pneuma and the Romans called the animus – the spirit, the living air, and the breath of life. The “wooly” looking clouds that flashed with lightning brought the liquefied essence of animus (rain) to the earth. Static electricity proved that wool also contained animus, and was therefore sacred, as was every step of its preparation and use.

The Romans built their beliefs upon the knowledge and beliefs of those who had come before them. So beginning with the Sumerians, who discovered that a cone-shaped shadow falls over the earth during a lunar eclipse and likened it to the cone-shaped collection of thread on a spinner’s spindle. The (supposed) whirling motion of the moon, sun, and stars around the earth which gathered in the animus to the earth was reflected in the whirling motion of spinning, which gathers in the loose wool fibers to create thread. The Greeks and Romans likened the universe to the whorls of thread around a spindle, with each sphere connected to the other spheres by the thread of the animus, which is spun by the goddesses of fate, who the Romans called the “Parcae.” Nona spun the thread of life from her distaff onto her spindle on the day the child was born. Decima measured the thread of each life with her rod on their dies lustricus – the day on which the child’s name was chosen, which was on the eight day from birth for a girl, or the ninth day from birth for a boy. Morta cut the thread of life and chose the manner of their death, visiting them in their dreams with warnings about the pain or death they would endure. That which has been spun into thread can then be woven into clothing, hence the common Mediterranean metaphor of “wearing one’s fate.

An individual’s anima resided in their head. When a child was born, a spiritual entity came into existence and accompanied the child throughout his (or her) lifetime. This guardian spirit, similar to the modern concept of a “guardian angel”, was called the Genius for males or the Juno for females. The child’s newly “born” anima needed special protection and nurturing until it could mature and become strong. The anima received this protection from the toga praetexta worn by both boys and girls, and from the amulets they wore around their necks. Girls, whose Juno was the life force that created new life, received additional protection by wearing a woolen band, or vitta, around her head.

Like the metaphysical animus woven into thread and garments by the Parcae, Roman women spun wool into thread which they wove into garments which were folded around the body, thus wrapping them in life force. As a child grew and matured, each new phase of its life was marked by rights of passage involving changes in their clothing. From the woolen swaddling bands of the newborn, to the child’s first toga praetexta, to the young man’s first adult toga or the young girl’s bridal dress, in spinning and weaving the wool for these garments the mother was re-enacting the Parcae’s weaving of the child’s fate. The wool, which contained the animus, would enhance and strengthen the child’s weak animus to help protect him from evil spirits and diseases. 

The praetexta border was the first part of the toga woven and served as extra protection against bad luck and evil influences. The Greeks and Romans associated the deep purplish-burgundy color of Tyrian purple, or purpur, with blood. They viewed purple as one of the many shades of red. Garments dyed red or purple were often used for special protection, and we can imagine that the traditional red of a soldier’s cloak or the purple toga of the emperor contained at least an element of protective significance. A passage in the Scriptores Historiae Augustae describing the birth of the future Emperor Clodius Albinus mentions that the baby was first wrapped in white linen cloth, and because the red-colored bandages traditionally used in that family to swaddle babies had been washed and were not yet dry, the child was wrapped in his mother’s purple fascea (breast-band) instead. The praetexta border had another, more worldly, significance as well – the author Festus noted that obscene, impure, and harmful words were not to be uttered in the presence clad in a toga praetexta. The purple border acted not only as a magical charm, it acted as a symbol of the child’s innocence and protected status.

At least through the 1st century CE, when a boy reached the age of fifteen or sixteen, his family celebrated his coming of age with a ceremony. The toga praetexta he had worn throughout his youth was offered to his lares (household gods), and hung his bulla (protective amulet worn by young boys) on their altar. The young man was then formally arrayed in the all-white toga virilis of the Roman citizen. When the future Emperor Augustus performed the ritual of assuming his toga virilis, his tunic came unsewn at the shoulders the fell to his feet. While those observing the ceremony considered this a good omen, the incident also shows us that men’s tunics, at least on ceremonial occasions, were sewn at the shoulders and were possibly constructed in the same model as the women’s tunica recta. 

For girls the coming of age ceremony was her marriage. Girls also offered their toga praetexta to the goddess of Virginal Fortune and hung her lunula (the protective amulet worn by young girls) on their altar, but her ceremony involved symbolically bound herself to a new fate as she passed from her father’s family to her husband’s family. Roman girls wore their hair combed, braided, and tied with a single woolen band, or vitta, but the night before her marriage she took extra precautions and slept with her head, and Juno, covered in a yellow-red woolen hairnet she had made herself. The yellow-red color, called luteum, was described by Pliny as the color of an egg yolk – an obvious connection between the food of the growing chick and the anima that would sustain and produce future children. In addition to the luteum-colored hairnet, the bride slept in an undyed wool tunic that she had spun, woven, and sewn by herself. 

On the day of her wedding, the bride dedicated the hairnet to her lares and then had her hair done in the style called sera crines (six tresses). Attendants use a special spear, the curved hasta caelibaris, which had been used to kill a gladiator, to part the bride’s hair into six locks. The locks of hair were then twisted back formed into a knot on the back of the head. The ritual act of parting her hair with a spear that had been in contact with the dead both invoked the ancient beginnings of the Roman kingdom and ritually bound her fate to her new family while activating the fertility of her Juno. Over this hairstyle she would wear a garland of flowers, which were a symbol of fertility.

On her wedding day, the bride also tied her tunica below the breast with a special belt made from the fleece of an ewe using a square knot, which the Romans called the “Hercules knot.” A difficult knot to untie, it was also a symbol of fertility since Hercules fathered seventy children. She wore yellow felt shoes on her feet, which are believed to have been made of wool felt like those of the flaminicae (priestesses) who could not wear leather shoes. Over everything she wore a flammeum – the golden yellow palla worn over her head and covering much of her body. 

The morning after her wedding, the bride put on the stola over her tunica for the first time, and bound up her hair with thin vittae to protect her Juno. Together, the stola and vittae were symbols of the virtuous matrona. In the early years of the Republic the matrona wore an additional covering for the head, and her Juno residing inside – the rica. The rica was a small, square or rectangular veil that covered the head and hair while in the house. When outside the home the matrona would cover her head and body with the palla. The covering palla was the symbol of marital rank, isolating her, protecting her, and signaling that she and her anima were reserved for her husband and his anima. Not wearing the palla and rica could have serious consequences in the early years of the Republic as being seen in public with an uncovered head was a sign of a woman’s lack of faithfulness and withdrawal from her marriage. In 166 BCE the consul Sulpicius Gallus divorced his wife because she left their home unveiled and allowed everyone to see what only he should see. 

All ritual and ceremonial garments were made of wool: priest & priestess robes, wedding clothes, the vittae (wool hair ribbons worn as a headband), infulae, toga, stola, etc. The matrona was also responsible for creating small woolen effigies of family members for protective rituals.

The toga of a Roman priest had to be “pure,” which meant that it was both clean of dirt and impurities, but also that it was clean of all religious pollution, such as contact with a corpse (especially a human corpse). Magistrates also conducted sacrifices and religious ceremonies, so their togas had to be “pure” as well, as did, presumably, the togas of young children. The wool fillets,  or bands (also referred to as vittae), worn around the heads of priests, priestesses, and wives, and tied onto sacred trees, altars, temple pillars, tombs, and around the heads of sacrificial animals, appear to be made of long rolls of carded, un-dyed wool wrapped, or tied together at intervals, with wool yarn. The Flamen Dialis (priest of Jupiter) wore a cap topped with a spike wrapped in wool. These woolen bands provided protection against evil and indicated that the people and objects they adorned were pure, sacred, and protected from the secular world. They were also tied onto the sick to help cure their diseases. Priests, priestesses, and brides on their wedding day were forbidden to wear leather shoes because the skin of dead animal was religiously polluted. Instead they wore slippers made of wool felt. 

It is widely believed that the stola and the toga were generally made of wool, though Judith Sebesta states that while the garments of priests and priestesses had to be made entirely of wool, common togas could be made of blends of wool and linen, or even cotton or other vegetable fibers. It is possible that women’s ceremonial garments were made entirely of wool, but, like the common togas, their common stolas could be made of wool blends as well. 

We know that the Roman valued certain breeds of sheep for the fineness and whiteness of their wool, but other colors of sheep were also valued. The sheep of northern Italy were famous for their pure white wool, in fact Pliny mentions that the districts of Tarnato and Canossa had such fine, soft, pure white wool that they were kept in jackets made of Arabian sheep’s wool to protect their fleece while in the field. The most highly prized wool for cloaks was from the Apulian sheep, and other Roman districts were known for their sheep as well. Spain was known for sheep with pure black wool, the sheep of Asia Minor produced reddish wool, Cordoba produced grey wool, and Puglia produced tawny wool.  

Extant Roman literature suggests that Romans could judge the quality and value of another man’s toga by its color and the type of wool used to make it. Mary Harlow, working from H.R. Goette’s comprehensive study of togate statues, estimates that togas measured approximately 5 feet wide by 12-15 feet long. Based on experimental work done at the Center for Textile Research at the University of Copenhagen, she estimates that such a toga would require nearly 25 miles of finely spun thread which, depending on the skill of the spinner or spinners, could take up to 900 hours to produce. Weaving a toga is a job for an experienced weaver as well, since it must be woven with a curved edge, and depending on the rank or age of the wearer, with a purpura border. Weaving would take skilled weavers about 100 hours working in tandem at a loom at least 5-6 feet wide, or double the amount of time (at least) if the weaver worked alone. If all this work was the production of a single Roman Matrona, it would take her 1000-1200 hours to produce a single toga for her husband. If she did nothing but spin and weave for 10 hours a day, it would take about 120 days. This estimate does not include the shearing of the sheep or any preparation of the wool prior to spinning, which would extend the process to at least 6 months or longer to produce a single toga. 

Granted, we know that most upper class Roman Matronae had slaves, and presumably daughters, to assist with the preparation of the wool, the spinning, and the weaving, but even so, the amount of woman-hours devoted to the production of a single male garment must have made togas very precious indeed. For much of Rome’s history Senators were forbidden to be engaged in trade or financially-oriented businesses. They were land owners, and as such probably raised their own sheep on their country estates, but how many sheep would it take to produce enough wool for a single toga? What is your family was not landowners? How much would it cost to purchase the wool to produce a toga? How many togas did a man own? How often was a toga worn? Senators, who had to wear the toga to all their business in the Forum, surely owned more than a single toga, but a man of the middle or lower classes might only own one toga in his lifetime. We know that the Romans had second-hand clothing merchants, so surely it was possible to acquire a second-hand toga, though it would probably still have been quite expensive. Is it any wonder that the toga rapidly died out in popularity in the 1st century CE? 

Linen, cotton, and silk were also used for clothing, but there is no known specific mention of a stola made in any fabric other than wool. Was a stola considered a ritual garment? Perhaps it was considered a garment that *could* be a ritual garment, in which case those stolas intended to be worn as ritual garments would have been made of wool, while others could have possibly been made of other materials or wool blends.  

Maybe the vestis longa & the early stola were always made of wool, but later versions (after the stola became an indicator of rank in the late 1st century CE) might have been made in other materials? Based on the drape of the fabric found in period imagery, the wool fabric used must have been very light, even diaphanous, similar to modern-tropical weight wool, but with a more open weave to reduce stiffness. Wool gauze is a good modern fabric to use, or a soft tropical weight wool with a nice, soft drape.