The color was often known as Tyrian purple. The reason purple was only worn by an Emperor is because the purple of the ancient world was only obtained from the Phoenician coast’s Murex sea snails. The Little Hunt-300’s AD, Villa Romana del Casale, Amerina, Sicily On this very beautiful Little Hunt mosaic (below), the six men and one boy sport brightly-colored and patterned tunics for their hunting trip. 300’s AD (Bikinis do go in and out of style.) The mosaic below (from Villa Romana del Casale in Amerina, Sicily) has been dubbed “Bikini Girls” because of the bright-colored, scanty clothing these girls are wearing, They are actually competing in a sporting event and the girl in the middle at the bottom has won and is wearing her crown and holding her winner’s palm leaf. One imagines them only in statues wearing white marble togas because the normal person sees few paintings or mosaics from the time that picture Romans in colored fabrics. The ancient Romans loved colored clothes. Only the Emperor was allowed to wear a Tyrian purple cape trimmed in golden threads. The later Roman Empire (27 BC- c.420 AD), on the other hand, discarded all the Sumptuary Laws except the law regarding the wearing of the color purple. Some of those laws were “dress codes” to distinguish the patrician from the plebeian.

The austere Roman Republic (509-27 BC) which conquered most of the known world passed many Sumptuary Laws in an attempt, among other reasons, to curtail the excesses of wealth and to remain an outwardly disciplined, republican country. Sumptuary laws are: ”Laws made for the purpose of restraining luxury or extravagance, particularly against inordinate expenditures in the matter of apparel, food, furniture, etc.” “Sumptuary” comes from the Latin sumptuarius “relating to expenses,” from sumptus “expense, cost.”

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