02-15-2008, 08:31 AM
Thanks to VROMA:
http://www.vroma.org/~araia/lacerna.html
It was commonly used by Roman soldiers (e.g., Trajan's Column; Ovid, in Fasti 2.746, portrays Lucretia urging her maids to help her finish weaving a lacerna so that she can send it to her husband in the field).
"greasy, coarse, and muddy in color, with threads lightly packed by the Gallic weaver" (Saturae 9.28-30). Originally it was a knee-length, dark (see tristium lacernarum and fuscos colores in Martial's Epigrammata 1.96.4-9), thick woolen mantle (see lacernae Baeticae in Martial, Epigrammata 14.133), but in imperial times the same word also applied to an elegant, lighter wrap which might be dyed Tyrian purple (Juvenal, Saturae 1. 27 and Martial, Epigrammata 8.10.1-2) or other colors (see Martial's lacernae coccineae in Epigrammata 14.131).
this garment became so popular among the Romans that Suetonius tells us Augustus, exasperated by the sea of dark colors before his tribunal, forbade the wearing of the lacerna in the Forum and at the games,
in Martial and Juvenal's day (in Epigrammata 4.2 and Epigrammata 14.135 Martial testifies to the presence of white lacernae at public spectacles)
http://www.vroma.org/~araia/lacerna.html
It was commonly used by Roman soldiers (e.g., Trajan's Column; Ovid, in Fasti 2.746, portrays Lucretia urging her maids to help her finish weaving a lacerna so that she can send it to her husband in the field).
"greasy, coarse, and muddy in color, with threads lightly packed by the Gallic weaver" (Saturae 9.28-30). Originally it was a knee-length, dark (see tristium lacernarum and fuscos colores in Martial's Epigrammata 1.96.4-9), thick woolen mantle (see lacernae Baeticae in Martial, Epigrammata 14.133), but in imperial times the same word also applied to an elegant, lighter wrap which might be dyed Tyrian purple (Juvenal, Saturae 1. 27 and Martial, Epigrammata 8.10.1-2) or other colors (see Martial's lacernae coccineae in Epigrammata 14.131).
this garment became so popular among the Romans that Suetonius tells us Augustus, exasperated by the sea of dark colors before his tribunal, forbade the wearing of the lacerna in the Forum and at the games,
in Martial and Juvenal's day (in Epigrammata 4.2 and Epigrammata 14.135 Martial testifies to the presence of white lacernae at public spectacles)
TARBICvS/Jim Bowers
A A A DESEDO DESEDO!
A A A DESEDO DESEDO!