Beards and Trousers? Not in the Strict Roman Republic

The states of Georgia and Louisiana are looking into banning sagging pants that expose the buttocks, a fashion law that has many outraged. This is not unlike ancient Rome. However, the Senate of Conscripted Fathers was much more strict. So much so that to wear something the aristocracy did not deem appropriate could make you seem either morally deviant or downright treacherous.

As paintings and etchings show, the majority of Romans tended to keep their faces shaved as well as they could until the first century A.D., while they also wore leather skirts, or tunics with no real legs. Roman legionaries for example wore a cloth or leather skirt beneath their loricca, which was reflected in the rest of typical, day-to-day fashion.

Initially these concepts arose out of simple convenience. While in modern society we see the skirt as effeminate, in ancient Rome it was seen as simply logical. On a long march, it was most expedient to simply find an area behind a tree and carry out one's business. Or as the HBO series Rome displayed, sometimes an officer simply needed to fulfill his sexual urges, and it took far less energy to simply lift a skirt than undo complex trousers.

But as Rome continued to make contact with its barbarian neighbors - specifically the Gauls and Germans - the aristocracy and Senate began to note their fashion styles. Coming from the frozen northern regions, the Gauls usually wore thick, striped trousers - as did their cousins across the Rhine. They would also wear intricate, braided beards that some carvings suggest went down to their knees, though it was usually Gallic fashion to shave off the beard and leave a long, elegant mustache.

While these originally seemed like brutish, even thuggish apparels - akin to wearing a ski mask and a black trench coat in modern days - it later became practice to become highly suspicious of citizens who acted outside the social clothing norm. While it was not officially a law, Roman officials made it clear they did not want to see trousers or beards on their Roman citizens, certainly not their aristocracy. It has even been reported that some citizens were arrested and charged with treachery for wearing Gallic style pants inside the city of Rome itself.

The idea of citizens wearing their hair in such a way, or wearing trousers, was simply unheard of. Hair, off the head, was considered to be barbaric. It was an unnecessary, natural growth that could be removed for the sake of civility. And if it could, it should. Romans were expected to behave differently, dress differently, and by all means, shave differently from those who had a ritualistic combat to decide who got the drumstick during a feast. When citizens wore Gallic apparel, it was casting a barbaric light on the entire city.

And that just wasn't something the Conscripted Fathers were going to tolerate.

http://www.roman-empire.net/society/soc-dress.html
http://www.changingthetimes.net/samples/prechrist/glory_of_rome.htm