Most men wore white. Women in the late Republic wore a lot of color, though very wealthy women would wear white stolas (outer dresses) in public just to show that they were wealthy enough to afford the laundering and whitening costs.
If an adult man was wearing a toga with a purple border, that meant he was a magistrate. If he also had vertical stripes on his tunic (see mine) he was either a senator (3 inch wide stripes) or an equestrian (1.5 inch wide stripes). Any other man wearing anything but a white toga in public was instantly identifiable as a perigrene, or foreigner. The toga virillis was the badge of roman citizenship within the pomerium, the sacred boundary of Rome.
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timeasmymeasure
Re: ouch!
Date: 2006-03-06 12:24 am (UTC)If an adult man was wearing a toga with a purple border, that meant he was a magistrate. If he also had vertical stripes on his tunic (see mine) he was either a senator (3 inch wide stripes) or an equestrian (1.5 inch wide stripes). Any other man wearing anything but a white toga in public was instantly identifiable as a perigrene, or foreigner. The toga virillis was the badge of roman citizenship within the pomerium, the sacred boundary of Rome.