Question regarding the Wear of Late Roman Tunic

[chukissaki]

Hi all. Sorry to throw out a stupid question but I gotta confer with the collective on this one.
I live in Florida , USA and temparatures are regularly in the 100s Farenheit here in the summer, with 70+ common for most of the year.
I have been to some events lately and most of my clothing is linen. Those linen pants are still freaking hot !!
Was it common for off duty soldiers to wear their tunics with just sandals in hotter climes in this era ?
I don't want to look too off base. I have seen some mosaics , hunting I think that IIRC, had soldiers hunting with tunics, leg wraps and boots, but cant find the sources.

[Graham Sumner]

Hello Jim

You can see mosaics with hunters even in Syria wearing tunics, cloaks, bracae and or leg bindings (puttees) or wrappings. One of the best examples is the great hunt mosaic from Apamea, now on display in the Brussels museum of art and archaeology. If you want to look for other sources I have put many of them into my 'Roman Military Dress' book.

Soldiers in Egypt were issued with wool clothing but off duty they could have worn linen or cotton if they were relatively well off.

Graham.

[Cheyenne]

The construction of many tunics also lend themselves to warmer climes. For example, many of the tunics I have studied up close are of incredibly fine weaving.. most of which use what we call a modern 'worsted' yarn. This means that the fine-ness of the finished fabric can be a lot better and the garment works rather like a thermostat regulator than an insulator.

Some older fabrics, such as fragments found in Macedonia and the Peleponese (See the recent publication on Textile and Technology Prehistory to 400AD, Danish Textile Institute) are made from a mix of wool and cashmere - which again works as a 'cooling' system when worn.

Re-enactors tend to use the wrong kinds of fabric when they are portraying a roman impression. Right through from Republic to the end of empire. To achieve some of the draping present in some sylistic representations would need a fabric with a weight as low as 250g per meter.

The weight of a yellow cloak fragment at the whitworth was incredibly fine, and that was a cloak. These are almost certainly warm weather garments which work well with the fluctuation in temperatures in dry, desert like conditions. These are very hot during the day and much colder at night. By layering many fine layers together allow for a much easier regulation of body temp by adding or removing them.

Linen is used widely in 'reused' Egyptian coptic tunics. By that I mean that linen tunics from 4th C onwards tend to have woollen decoration taken from other tunics have been recycled on to linen tunics. Linen production in Egypt was probably much more widespread than in the rest of the empire. It had over 4000 years of practice by the late roman era to refine the industry and as such could produce garments which were available to a wider demographic. Making linen however, takes much longer than wool... s the cost would probably have been slightly higher.

[Robert Vermaat]

Your problem is also that your local climate (Florida) differs quite a bit from the usual climates experienced in the Roman Empire. it's hot like Egypt or Syria), but also a lot more humid. I wonder what Romans wore in such humid climates, but I'm sure it differed fromt the tunics worn in the drier climate zones.