FRINGED CLOTHING IN ROMAN ART
Channel: European Association of Archaeologists
Date: 2020-11-19

This paper will examine the presence and meaning of fringed garments in Roman art and literature. Usually, fringe was simply the warp end of weaving left unfinished (Barber 1991, 274) although inlaid fringe does occur (ibid, 151-2). While it appears on Egyptian and Persian garments with some regularity (Barber 1991, 146-7; Cleland et al. 2007, 74-5), and to a certain extent on Greek, fringed garments in Roman society do not seem to have been as common. In Latin literature, fringe is described as being on some religious garments (such as the rica; Fest. 368L; Paul ex Fest. 369L; and on the cloak of the goddess Isis at Apul. Met. 11.3). Fringed blankets are described at Var. L. 5.79 and Cels. 2.6.6. But it is also implied that, at least in the late Republic and early Empire, fringes were effeminate or somehow inappropriate wear for a man: Caesar is described as being “remarkably” dressed in a tunic with fringed, wrist-length sleeves (usum enim lato clavo ad manus fimbriato; Suet. Iul. 45.3). The upstart Trimalchio wears at his neck a napkin with a broad stripe and fringes hanging from it all round (laticlaviam immiserat mappam fimbriis hinc atque illinc pendentibus; Petr. Satyr. 32). We see clothing fringe on a bronze statuette of an Etruscan priest now in the Vatican (fourth century BCE); on the military paludamentum of a bronze statue of Augustus (12-10 BCE; found in the Greek east); on garments on the Ara Pacis (two women and two young boys); and on a cloak on a female statue now in the Capitoline Museum at Rome (late second- early third century CE), among others. This paper will examine the technology of fringes and the appearance of fringe on garments as well as its cultural resonances, whether effeminate, Eastern, Egyptian, or religious.


Author(s): Olson, Kelly (University of Western Ontario)