Anybody also having the least official business at the palace must wear the toga; and the reigning Hadrian has just issued an edict commanding all senators and equites to wear the garment on the city streets at all times except when returning from dinner parties; while the distinguished rhetorician Titus Castricius has lately delivered a public lecture,--probably by imperial request, on “the proper costume for senators walking about Rome,” urging obedience to the law. The toga in short occupies a place in Roman manners hardly equaled by any other garment in any other nation. Nevertheless, many a client or nobleman, as he dons this mantle, inwardly curses the folly of the men of “the good old times” in selecting the toga as the national garment. It is very hot, very clumsy, very hard to drape around one’s self without expert assistance. Everybody knows the story of old Cincinnatus, how when he was out plowing and the committee of Senators suddenly appeared to say, “You are named dictator; make haste to save the imperilled army”, would not receive them until his wife had run and fetched his toga and he was suitably clad. In his day, however, the toga was almost the only garment worn and was hardly more than a small-sized woolen shawl. Now one always wears a _tunica_ as a house and undergarment, and the toga has been growing ever larger and more elaborate. Dandies still wear togas so huge as to justify Cicero’s sneer: “They wrap themselves in _sails_ not in togas.” But even for decent citizens the garment is disagreeably complicated. The use thereof is one of the penalties for the splendid right to boast, “Civis Romanus sum!” =67. Varieties of Togas.=--The normal toga is always of wool and is usually of a dull white, the natural color of the wool; but in the Republican days seekers for election to public office would have their togas bleached to a conspicuous snowy whiteness, and hence their name, _Candidati_--“extra-white” men. Boys wear the _toga prætexta_, a toga with an elaborately embroidered purple hem. When they put this off on reaching manhood (fourteen to sixteen) they proudly assume the pure white toga, inwardly hoping, however, that they can some day reappear in the _prætexta_--for it is also the official robe of the high “curule” magistrates. More glorious still is the _toga picta_ entirely of purple and with gold embroidery, which can be worn by great officials while they are presiding over public games, and which is used by the Emperors on all state occasions. Quite different, of course, is the gloomy _toga pulla_, dyed to some dark color, and worn as mourning or to excite sympathy in some threatened calamity; _e.g._ if one is the defendant in a dangerous lawsuit.