Lacerna - nice descriptions

[Tarbicus]

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)

[NightHunter24]

Ave Tarbicvs!

Thanks for sharing, I have a question: In my rough knowledge on the subject , I only know of another hooded type of clothing that was worn, the short "paenula'. My question is, where there other variants of hooded clothing besides these?

[Graham Sumner]

There is always a problem with trying to marry literary descriptions with the representations seen on sculpture.

Some of the references in the quote above are not specifically military. For example the sentance starts off by saying the lacerna 'was commonly used by soldiers', but the reference is to Trajan's column not a literary source. So how do we know it was commonly used by soldiers? The cloaks seen on the column would normally be termed the Sagum. So what was the difference between a Sagum and a Lacerna? The description of the Lacerna' knee-length, dark, thick woolen mantle, would equally apply to the Sagum, which like the Lacerna also had a non Roman origin.

The Lacerna we are told was also fitted with a hood and again reference is made to the column. Once again the normal hooded cloak was the Paenula, so again what was the difference between a Paenula and a Lacerna with a hood?

Another hooded cloak worn by the military was the Caracallus but again there does not seem to be much difference between it and the Paenula. Some Roman writers indeed say it was similar. Given all the regional dialects and cultures with the empire we just have to accept that the Romans collectively had different names for similar garments much as we would use the terms Coat and Anorak today and in the eastern empire the garments all had Greek names too!

Graham.

[Hibernicus]

Graham

I had a booklet that described the use and production of the byrrhus. Can't find it. Must be in storage with the wife's collection of books on historic clothes.

Is the byrrhus just a different name for lacerna?

And the cucullus can be just a hood? .. and sometimes worn with the lacerna?

[Tarbicus]

Once again the normal hooded cloak was the Paenula, so again what was the difference between a Paenula and a Lacerna with a hood?

Graham, I'd put it down to the similar literary use of 'gladius' and 'spatha', the two simply meaning 'sword' to many sources.